CHAPTER SIX PRESENT DAY
The bell rings, and I brace myself.
I’ve claimed my spot under the jacaranda tree, sitting on the side facing the cracked rubber running tracks.
Behind me, backpacks hit stained tables and everyone still in PE shorts winces at the sting of the frigid metal bench against their skin.
The chatter is less cacophonous out here by my tree, more of a comfort than an itch.
I don’t hear the strains of conversation reminding me of prom preparations and monogrammed graduation invites.
I can pretend none of it is passing me by.
I can pretend there is still a chance I’ll get to be part of it.
Rainie, Aida, and Lucia enter the quad. Rainie tosses her backpack onto the table, mouth furled into a snarl as she talks.
Probably complaining about Mr. Clay, who sprinkles passive-aggressive comments into his history lecture like racist seasoning.
With her spiky red hair, sharpen-your-knives winged eyeliner, and unending supply of black clothes, Rainie Nguyen specializes in bringing her enemies to their knees.
Lucia reaches for Rainie’s shoulder. Anyone else wouldn’t dare touch Rainie in the middle of one of her rants, but Lucia Romano is the kind of girl who could befriend a ravenous wolf if you just gave her enough time.
The third in a family of six, Lucia has years of crisis control experience under her belt.
She wears sundresses with dancing ladybugs and a flower in her long hair.
Her binders are covered in mismatched stickers, and she keeps colored tabs for her homework and class notes.
When I introduced rich, perky Lucia to Rainie, I worried Rainie would squeeze the life out of her. Rainie’s reputation among strangers ranges from a wastrel (an insult from Mr. Clay that Rainie so enjoyed, she renamed our group chat) to a delinquent.
To everyone’s surprise, Rainie developed a soft spot for Lucia. Lucia is the most well-protected senior on campus, because Rainie will use her three-inch spiked combat boots to stomp the stuffing out of anyone who breathes at her wrong.
Meanwhile, it took years of effort to convince Aida to open up to us.
Aida, the quiet, reclusive artist had spent middle school as the only Black girl in our grade, and in a tiny town like Ward, where the Mr. Clays make it their mission to suck the joy out of every day, I didn’t blame Aida for keeping to herself until high school.
The first time we had a real conversation was in the library.
I was checking in the tattered third book in a paranormal vampire series, smoothing down the laminated cover before I slipped it into the return slot.
Aida was sitting behind the circulation desk, and she’d tentatively asked me how I liked the twist at the end.
We spent the next two hours passionately arguing the merits of the ending, and I’d sped read the rest of the series to give myself an excuse to keep coming back to the library.
By our tenth argument, I had shored up the nerve to invite her to eat lunch with us.
“I don’t know,” she said, picking at the plastic spiral of her sketchbook. “I usually eat in the locker room.”
I was aghast. “The gym locker room? With the shower mold and the smells?”
She grinned briefly. “That’s the one.”
She’d finally agreed to a trial lunch if I promised not to get angry if she decided to leave halfway through.
To my knowledge, she never ate in the locker room again. She still spends most of her free time sketching or reading, but now she doesn’t mind doing it around us.
No one has ever seen Aida’s art. If we even joke about glancing into her sketchpad, she’ll slam it shut.
Aida glances over, and I quickly drop my gaze, blinking away the sting in my eyes.
I will get them back. I have to.
I spread my lunch out on the grass, brushing aside the jacaranda petals scattered everywhere. A legion of ants stir at the base of the tree, tiny black specks vibrating with anticipation.
“Never say I don’t spoil you guys.” I wag my finger. “We’ve got a turkey sandwich on the menu for today.”
I’m peeling the rest of the plastic from my turkey sandwich when someone slides into a cross-legged seat in front of me. Whip-quick fear slashes across my insides, spewing a million scenarios that span the next two minutes. Most of them involve a rotting smell and orange eyes in a familiar face.
My apprehension fades at the sight of scratched-up work boots. It’s just Jesse.
I snort, wadding the plastic into a ball. Just Jesse.
“Are you lost?” I ask bluntly. Seeing my friends has left me too raw—too likely to bleed under one of Jesse’s casual barbs.
He peers at me with a distinctly unimpressed air. Then, to my shock, he grins. The expression transforms him, and for a split second, my mind goes blank of everything but one word: whoa.
Unfortunately, all my appreciation for his looks disappears the minute he opens his mouth.
“Damn, Mansour. I wish I’d known earlier you had such a mean streak. I might not have had to get up at dawn Monday through Friday to avoid running into you. Do you know how much sleep that adds up to?”
My jaw drops. I don’t even know which part is most offensive. “You woke up early just to avoid seeing me on the way to school?”
He shrugs. “You kept asking how my morning was going. I ran out of answers.”
“You mean you ran out of ways to grunt in my general direction.” I figured Jesse wouldn’t be a morning person, but it takes a staggering level of commitment to rearrange your entire schedule simply to avoid a few minutes of awkward small talk.
“I was worried you’d start in on the weather or how I slept last night,” Jesse continued, undeterred by steadily climbing aggravation. “I once had a nightmare about you asking me my plans for the weekend.” He shuddered.
When he pulls out a notebook, clearly intending to stick around for a while, I recover long enough to snap, “What are you doing?”
He makes a show of looking down at the notebook and back at me. “Take a wild guess.”
“But you didn’t even bring lunch.”
Another nonchalant lift of his shoulder. “I’ll eat when I get home.”
I wait, but no luck. He’s serious. Does he think I can actually continue eating my food while he has none of his own? I’m Masriya. My parents had drilled into me the etiquette of never keeping my plate full while someone else’s was empty.
Sending a silent apology to the ants, I split my sandwich and hold the other half out to Jesse. “You can’t help me on an empty stomach,” I point out, preempting his refusal. If he thinks I’m acting out of pity or misplaced guilt, he might squash the sandwich in his fist.
Jesse nods sagely, plucking the sandwich from my hand. “So true.”
I drop a sliver of my turkey onto the base of the tree, smiling at the rush of exultant ants.
“Whatcha writing?” I ask a few minutes later, not fully caring.
The clouds are shining a pleasant silver, the turkey to lettuce ratio in my sandwich is perfect, and I have company.
He could be scribbling more annoying nicknames to throw at me, for all I care.
I’m just happy not to spend another lunch break idly feeding my ant army.
It occurs to me that I’ve never seen him sit with someone during lunch. The table at the far end of the quad serves as his island, severing him from the rest of us lowly creatures.
“I’m getting an outline ready,” Jesse answers after a long moment. His pen rotates between his knuckles, slipping across surprisingly elegant fingers. “We need to find the patterns in the attacks.”
“Outlining on paper?” I wipe a smear of mayo from the corner of my mouth. “Couldn’t fit the typewriter into your backpack?”
Jesse shoots me a disparaging glance. “Anything can get copied off a computer. I don’t want to leave a trace if this goes sideways.”
The bite of turkey turns to sawdust in my mouth. I force myself to swallow. “Goes sideways.”
Jesse’s pen pauses over the page. The answer blooms in our silence, unfurling in black-tipped petals of possibility.
She loves me, she loves me not, except now it’s she dies at a stranger’s hand, at her father’s, in a gas station, in a classroom.
The petals curdle into gray ash, but the sticky knob in the center of the flower reads the single, inevitable conclusion: She dies.
“Mansour, hey. Look at me.”
It hasn’t sunk in until now, how close I am to my own death. One misstep. One repeat of the mistake I made with Miss Diaz.
From behind the sheen of tears blanketing my vision, Jesse shifts uncomfortably. Unaccustomed to dealing with a weeping girl, I’d bet. If he plans to stick around, he better get used to it.
“We’re gonna get this thing. I don’t waste my time on lost causes,” Jesse says. He doesn’t shrink from my watery gaze, and his own is colored with such confidence, such unequivocal certainty.
For a dizzying moment, reality splashes cold water on my face, and I regard Jesse warily. He believed what I told him about my trip to my mother’s childhood home without second-guessing, without even a moment of doubt. Why?
“I’m not a cause,” I say, wiping my cheeks. “Why are you helping me, Jesse? Who are you?” Nothing makes sense anymore. Before Jesse waltzed in, at least I had an idea about how this thing operated. I could cling to a degree of control. But where does his immunity to possession fit into the picture?
I cross my arms over my chest. “Why can’t the thing possess you?”
He stiffens. I wouldn’t have noticed if I wasn’t watching him so closely. “Maybe I’m a bad host. I always forget to ask if they want tea or coffee to go with my body.”
“That’s not funny.” It is, a little bit, but I maintain my scowl. “How come you knew it wouldn’t possess you? Did you feel it try? Has it happened before?”
Jesse rubs his forehead. Tiny scars mar his palm, crisscrossed over his skin. “God, of everyone at this crap school, it had to be the homecoming queen with the curse.”
I ball my fists. “Are you making fun of me?”
“Not successfully, if you have to ask.”
I snatch my backpack from the grass and shove to my feet. “Screw you, Jesse. You don’t know me.”
Storming away in a haze of anger isn’t really an option in my situation. I stomp an embarrassing circuit around the quad, debating between the parking lot and the locker room to finish my lunch.
Jesse catches up. “What’s your deal? I’m trying to help you.”
“By mocking me? I’m already miserable in a thousand different ways that can’t be avoided, but you? You can be avoided. So if you could just leave me to it, that would be great.”
A deep groan tears out of Jesse, startling me. A long arm blocks my circuit around the quad. “Ditch your last class. I’ll explain everything.”
Some of the wind goes out of my sails. Despite my better judgment, I’m curious. Jesse and his dad are our town’s biggest enigmas, and Jesse’s strange immunity to possession has only added to my intrigue.
“I’m not ditching class.”
Jesse rolls his eyes. “Yeah, wouldn’t want to get a blemish on that perfect attendance record.”
“My attendance record isn’t perfect.” I missed fifth period last semester. Rainie insisted we could go get lunch at the pizzeria across town and be back by the bell.
It’s alarming how quickly Jesse gets me worked up. I’m a mellow person by nature, but every time he speaks, I switch into the worst version of myself. “Ditching class makes you truant. If I get a citation, I can’t audition to be a speaker at graduation.”
“Oh my gosh darn, a citation? What’s next—a demerit?” He utters the last word in a scandalized whisper, and the urge to strangle him arrives fast and heavy.
I stare at my hands, utterly appalled. What is happening to me?
Something in my expression gives Jesse pause, and he sighs. “Whatever. Come to my place after school.”
Jesse strides away before I can politely let him know that the only way he’s getting me to visit his father’s property is in a body bag.
He hops over the fence separating the quad from the parking lot and lands on the other side in a slight crouch, unrolling his impressively limber body as he walks toward his truck.
The lunch monitor spots him, but she must not be in the mood to deal with Jesse’s particular brand of trouble.
She turns away with a shake of her head.
If there is anything living in Ward long enough will teach you, it’s that not everybody can be saved.
I watch his truck disappear and nibble the end of my thumbnail. Okay, going to Jesse’s house. Decidedly not scary. Maybe his house will be fun creepy, like the Addams’s family mansion. Or the funny haunted mansion from that Eddie Murphy movie.
I turn around, still trying to remember the name of the Eddie Murphy movie, and run directly into Alex.
“Oh!” I squeak at a pitch somewhere between parrot and bald tire spinning against asphalt. Behind Alex, Rainie, Lucia, and Aida watch us from the table. Aida’s pencil moves over her sketchpad.
The despondent frown Alex has worn the last few weeks is nowhere to be seen. In its place lies pure disbelief. “Are you hanging out with Jesse Talbot?”
I should have figured the sight of Jesse and me together wouldn’t go unnoticed. We don’t exactly run in the same circles.
I’ve missed Alex so much. I can’t help swaying closer to him.
He’s wearing a forest green sweatshirt with CANYON HIGH BASKETBALL spelled on the front.
I’m sure if I tuck myself against his chest and press my nose to the spot where his sweatshirt meets his throat, I’ll catch the scent of his cologne.
A spicy, expensive mix I gave him for his seventeenth birthday.
“No. Not technically. Hanging out implies I’m seeing him for fun.”
“You’re seeing him?” Alex sounds like someone kicked him in the windpipe.
“No, no!” Frustration bubbles up. Nothing is coming out right. I haven’t spoken to Alex in weeks, not since I stopped answering his texts. This isn’t how I imagined our first conversation going. “Jesse is just helping me out with a project.”
“What project? Talbot doesn’t care about school.”
The bell rings, saving me from an answer.
I don’t want to lie to Alex, but I can’t exactly tell him the truth.
Alex is a logical guy. He drives according to the speed limit, buys his teachers an end of the year thank-you gift, and uses the same brand of shampoo and conditioner he’s had since he was fourteen.
If I told him that Jesse was helping me break a curse, Alex would undoubtedly call Baba.
Or 911. Neither option ends well for me.
I back away, half-eaten lunch gathered in the crook of my arm. “I gotta go. See you later,” I say.
“Will you?” Alex replies, and he’s lost all his steam. I can’t stand knowing I put the wounded note in his voice.
I’m trying to fix this, I want to say. I’m trying to put it all back together. Wait for me, please. Trust me.
“I hope so.”