CHAPTER SEVEN PRESENT DAY
I’ve rarely spent much time thinking about what happens after we die. In many ways, I’m my father’s daughter. I care about what’s in front of me, what I can affect and change.
Lately, I can’t stop thinking about the details of it. Whether my coffin will be brown or black. What recipes I should leave for Baba so he doesn’t subsist solely on takeout.
What will people remember about me?
Ha. Like they’ll remember anything other than how I died. If the thing successfully possesses someone to kill me, the murder trial will be the biggest scandal to hit Ward in decades. Especially if the murderer can’t remember how or why they killed the former dance team captain and homecoming queen.
I halt at the gate blocking the Talbot property from the rest of the neighborhood. The house rises against the clouds like a headstone, nothing but gray paint and moldering walls.
My clammy palms almost slip from the rusted iron bars. As reluctant to grip the gate as I am to walk through it.
Closing my eyes is a mistake. Ice rolls down my spine, and suddenly, it isn’t the gate beneath my hands, but a smooth banister. Steps carved into the darkness, leading me to an orange light spilling beneath the lip of a pale door.
Gasping, I drop my hold on the gate. A shudder crawls from the nape of my neck to the back of my knees, and I nearly drop to the sidewalk.
Damn it. Every time I see the door, the details shift. The elaborate carvings on the frame. The grain of the wood. The shine on the handle. Is it my memory playing tricks on me, or is something else?
I pull myself together and tug the gate open. The hinges scream in protest. Dead grass lays in matted brown patches across the front lawn, split in the center by the cracked concrete path leading to the porch.
I grimace. If Jesse’s house was a person, it would be the kid on the playground who skins his knee and spends the rest of recess drawing with the blood.
What kills me is how hard Jesse’s tried to turn this hovel into a home.
When the Talbots moved in, I would watch Jesse hammer at the front steps every winter.
He’d set up his toolbox on the top step and stick the handle of a paint scraper between his teeth before crawling under the porch.
I may know next to nothing about home repair, but Baba’s ongoing battle with mold taught me that wood—especially wet wood—deteriorates dangerously fast. Every year, Jesse fights his house’s slow slide into dereliction, and every year it drags him a little closer to the end.
Yet, he never seems to stop trying. There’s not a single leaf left in the gutters.
The grass—the living patches, at least—is always mowed and maintained.
Baby branches poke out of plants potted along the far side of the gate, angled to catch every drop of sun.
I touch a dented bird feeder dangling from a metal hook.
Something in my chest squeezes painfully at the thought of Jesse all alone, waiting to refill a bird feeder that never ran empty.
I don’t waste my time on lost causes.
“Liar,” I mumble.
Too absorbed navigating the wooden steps, I don’t notice the door open until my feet are safely planted on the porch.
Jesse leans against the doorframe, wearing a faded gray T-shirt and flannel. “Did you have a good trip? Four steps can be harrowing.”
I huff. “I didn’t want my leg to go through rotted wood.”
Jesse scowls. Fantastic; I’ve been here two seconds and I’ve already injured his pride. “The steps are fine. I took care of them in October.” He disappears inside the house, leaving me tripping over myself to keep up. No way am I being left alone anywhere on the Talbot property.
The door swings shut behind me. I shriek.
“Mansour!”
“Sorry, sorry! Did you see the door? Are those hinges heavy? How did it just—you know, actually, I felt a little bit of a breeze, so that probably explains how a million-pound door slammed shut on its own.”
Darkness paints the inside of Jesse’s house, and I blink until my eyes adjust. Two stairwells take shape in the gloom. One heads to the second floor, while the other descends below the house.
Morbid curiosity compels me closer. Could these stairs lead to the rumored Talbot mortuary? What if Mr. Talbot is down there with a body right now?
The same question floats to the top of my mind: Is this what will happen after I die?
Is this where I’ll go when it kills me?
A shadow appears beside me, a hand clapping over my mouth in time to muffle my next shriek. Jesse’s eyes are velvet black, darker than our surroundings.
“Wrong stairs,” he says, ice cold.
When he retracts his hand, wiping it rather offensively on his hip, I blurt, “You smell like jasmine. And rain. Jasmine rain.”
Jesse stares. “I do not.”
“Oh, my bad.” I forgot I was talking to the guy who dresses like a sixties gangster to cover up his ridiculously pretty features. “I meant motor oil and, um, danger?”
Jesse drags a hand down his face, giving me his back to climb the stairs to the second floor. “Hurry up. Wouldn’t want you getting lost in the horror house.”
“I wouldn’t get lost,” I mutter. When his footsteps grow fainter, I abandon any pretense of dignity and rush after him.
The door at the end of the hall lies open. I cautiously poke my head in.
Jesse’s room is … not what I expected. I venture inside to inspect the bottle caps fighting for space in a chipped ashtray on top of his dresser. Books with foreign titles sway in a giant pile next to his bed, and torn envelopes litter the chair next to the window.
I pluck a black eyeliner pencil from inside a stack of empty Styrofoam cups. “This is how your get your lashes to look so luscious. The girls at school think you made a deal with the devil.”
Jesse, who has been watching me peruse his bedroom with uncharacteristic patience, shoots me a wicked smile. “Don’t rule it out.”
I sigh. “You can’t just say stuff like that when the kids at school are already scared of you.”
He squints, as if waiting for a prolonged punchline. “Which is bad because …”
“Don’t you want friends? You’ve lived in Ward for years and you’re still—” Alone, I almost say, but I hold my tongue at the last instant.
Jesse tolerates his time in Ward with gritted teeth and a clenched fist, never making any effort to leave a mark on this place.
Is there somewhere else he considers home?
Or does he think everyone in Ward is just too far beneath him?
My whole life I’ve done nothing but try to belong.
If I couldn’t be Masriya Mina, I’d take American Mina to her extreme.
Homecoming queen, dance captain, leader of the Girl Scouts.
In preschool, I’d write my name in the sandbox during recess and cry if another kid tried to wipe it away.
This is mine, I would cry. You can’t just sweep me away.
I desperately wanted to plant roots in Ward. What’s wrong with Jesse that he’s not remotely interested in doing the same?
“Sit down, Mansour,” is all Jesse says. Mild, despite my insult. He points to the threadbare rocking chair by his window. “Let’s get to business.”
I plop myself into the chair. The eyeliner is still clenched in my fist. I’m keeping it. He doesn’t deserve lusciously lined lashes.
A somberness settles over Jesse. “What I’m about to tell you can’t leave this room. Do you understand?”
A strange, childlike urge to make myself as small as possible has me drawing my knees to my chest. What I want to say is please don’t tell me.
I don’t want to know. I have this terrible feeling I won’t leave this room the same person I was when I walked into it, and I want everything to go back to the way it was.
You have so much darkness, crawling in this house and inside you, and if you spread it to me, I’ll never be the Mina Mansour I was.
Instead, what comes out is a tiny, “I understand.”
Jesse searches my face. Whatever he finds seems to satisfy him, and he takes a deep breath before he straightens.
“You aren’t the only one who’s cursed.”