CHAPTER THIRTEEN PRESENT DAY
I roll around in the dark, my shoe connecting with a hard surface. “She’s gonna break my car!” I hear a familiar voice complain. Aida.
“Mina, stop wiggling!” comes another voice. It’s Lucia. “Ugh, I knew this was a bad idea.”
“What other choice did we have? Talbot’s hanging around her all the time now.” My breath stutters. Alex.
“Well, what do you think he’s gonna do when he finds out we kidnapped his girlfriend, smart guy?” The last voice, striking the perfect note between spite and boredom, can only be Rainie.
“She’s not his—shut up, Rainie,” Alex growls. “I’m not scared of him.”
“We didn’t have to put a tote bag over her head,” Lucia continues. “Poor Mina. Your heart is beating so fast.”
The screen over my vision lifts, and I blink until the shifting dots settle into Lucia’s apologetic grimace. I’m strewn across her and Rainie’s laps in the back seat of Aida’s Honda Civic.
“Hi!” Lucia waves. “We’re rescuing you.”
“Rescuing me?” I struggle to sit up, and they release me, scooting until I sandwich myself between them. “From what?”
“I’m still pissed at you, but Talbot is a menace,” Rainie says. “The hostage vibes you were giving off at the diner were hard to miss.”
I gape. “There were no hostage vibes! Listen, you guys have got it all wrong.”
The click of a seat belt comes from the front. Alex twists in his seat, angling his body into the back of the car. “Baby, please. We just want to talk. We’re all really worried about you.”
“I can’t,” I insist, but it’s uncertain.
Weak, just like my rapidly breaking resolve.
Being around them is too addictive. Too long, and I might start to feel normal again.
Like the old me, who never knew how blood tastes when it fills your mouth.
How fear can grow so deep inside you it becomes almost boring, like a tumor you forget about until it’s covered every surface it can reach.
Despite my protest, my resistance begins to drain. The familiarity of their presence, of sitting squeezed between them in the back of Aida’s car while she breaks several traffic laws, settles me in a way nothing else can.
At least, until another smell replaces the scent of Aida’s Vanillaroma tree freshener. One so faint, it’s almost forgettable. It sneaks into my nose, metastasizes in my lungs.
Decay. Rancid, bloodcurdling decay.
It’s here.
“You guys have to let me out. Let me out, please!” Can it possess someone if there’s five of us in the car? I try to reach over Lucia to grab the door handle, but she bars my path, her arms clasping mine to my sides.
“Mina, it’s okay!”
I think it’s getting stronger.
What if it finds a way to possess everyone in the car at once?
I renew my struggles, but to what end? Aida is driving at her usual horrifying ninety miles an hour. Throwing myself out of the car would break more than my neck.
Lucia tries to cross my arms over my chest. “Mina, relax! We’re just going to the drive-in theater. They’re showing Enchanted tonight. You love Enchanted.“
“I think she’s having a panic attack,” Rainie says, a hint of concern finally leaking into her voice. “Lucia, back off.”
“Please, I have to go,” I whimper.
Aida pulls to a stop in front of the ticket booth before Lucia can follow her sharp glance toward Rainie with an equally sharp retort.
Normal drive-in movie theaters don’t open until six or seven in the evening, but thanks to Ward’s suffocatingly dark winters, ours stays open around the clock. Aida drives past lawn chairs facing the giant plastic screen and honks at a couple trying to throw popcorn into each other’s mouths.
As soon as she parks, everyone piles out of the car. Indecision holds me still. Spending time around my friends, even in public, flirts too close to danger for my taste. Jesse would surely disapprove. Even when he’s reckless, he’s smart about it.
There’s nothing smart about testing the bounds of a curse while far away from the only person who can help me if it goes wrong.
“This wasn’t my idea,” Rainie says, startling me. The fading sunlight turns liquid in her eyes, a reddish tint reflecting off pools of hazel. “I suggested we just go for Talbot’s car with a crowbar.”
I groan, momentarily distracted. “Why do you hate him so much?” I ask. “You guys haven’t even had an actual conversation.”
Rainie blinks. “Who said I hate him? I think the guy’s a hoot.”
The sunlight in her eyes wavers, glimmering the faintest shade of orange.
I scramble backward, yanking open the door on the opposite side of the car. Rainie stares after me for a second, then shakes her head, as though waving away an errant thought. She emerges from the other side.
“C’mon, Mina. Sit.” Lucia points at my usual seat, a lavender lawn chair with paisleys and pink-rimmed cupholders. “The movie’s starting soon, and we need to talk.”
The logical choice is clear. Break into a run and get the hell out of here. Call Jesse to pick me up and go wait for him somewhere crowded. Jesse, who’s probably convinced I drowned in the toilet at Grease & Grind by now.
But logical isn’t how I feel when Alex cups my face, thumbs sweeping over my cheekbones. “For me, Mina? Please?”
I swallow. Just a few minutes. A few minutes, and then I’ll leave.
I let Alex guide me into the seat. My friends form a loose U in front of me, convening in a council of grim faces and crossed arms.
Of all people, it’s Aida who breaks the silence. She folds herself into the chair to my right and asks, “So what’s Jesse like?”
Anger steals across Alex’s features. “He’s a thug. You shouldn’t be anywhere near a guy like him.”
“Way to guarantee he’s gonna be hotter than ever to her.” Rainie shoulder checks Alex. “Jockstrap here has a point, Mina.”
I can’t blame them for coming down on Jesse. His reputation in Ward is well-earned, and he’s done nothing to repair his image. “He’s not a bad guy. Really,” I add. “He’s helping me figure some stuff out.”
“The same stuff that’s kept you away from us?” Lucia crouches next to my chair, her cardigan buttoned over a bumblebee sweater dress and knee-high winter boots. Earnest brown eyes peer up at me.
I rub the soft fabric of Lucia’s sleeve and nod. “Exactly. Once I figure it out, I can come back. Things will go back to normal.”
“What is this stuff, Mina?” Rainie drags her chair in front of mine and perches on the edge, elbows on her knees and fingers laced together like a detective across an interrogation table.
“The sequence of events here doesn’t make sense.
You disappear for spring break without telling anyone where you’re going, then you come home and basically tell us to go screw ourselves. What is going on with you?”
“And why do you think nobody but Jesse Talbot can help?” Alex adds.
They won’t let this go. I need to give them something, or they’ll just try again.
This is the exact reason I was so harsh about pushing them away when I realized the curse had followed me from the Haikal villa—once they get the impression that I need their help, absolutely nothing in the world will dissuade them from trying to rescue me.
I flounder for a good lie and settle on a flimsy truth. “I’m … sick.”
“Sick?” Lucia’s eyes widen. “Sick how?”
“It’s a kind of virus. Not contagious, necessarily, but still not super safe for me to be around people one on one.
I spent spring break getting treated down in SF.
Jesse is … he’s immune, because he had it when he was a kid.
He’s helping me get better.” Not a perfect explanation, but it covers enough that I’m simultaneously proud of myself and annoyed I didn’t think of it sooner.
Rainie stares at me for a long beat. “That is such a load of—”
“Oh, Mina.” Tears spill down Lucia’s cheeks, and guilt stabs me straight through the chest.
“No, it’s okay! Really. The virus will pass out of my system soon enough. I just don’t want to risk any of you guys getting sick, and I knew if I told you the truth you’d never give me space.”
“You got that right,” Alex mutters.
“Please don’t tell anyone. My dad doesn’t know, and if the town catches whiff of this, they’ll be knocking on our door at all hours of the day.”
On the screen, the opening credits of the movie roll. I spot the attendants waving at people to shush and asking them to put their phones away. Mist curls between the scattered seats, drifting low over the grass. I pull my coat tighter around me, tucking my chin into my collar.
Alex, ever the rule-abiding golden boy, quiets down. “You’re not making any sense. How can your dad not know?”
“I still don’t see why you have to hang out with Jesse just because he’s immune.” Rainie shoots the attendant a dirty glare when he tries to shush her, and he quickly moves on.
“I’d say she traded up,” Aida mumbles, and I make a mental note to figure out how long our quietest member has harbored a crush on Jesse.
The screen goes black. Two spotlights flicker to life on the edges of the field.
The camera pans out, and I sit ramrod straight in my chair. An image of a house appears where a cartoon Amy Adams should be.
The Haikal villa.
I raise a hand to my mouth as Khalto Safa appears on the second-floor balcony, a cigarette pressed between her red lips. She’s young, twenty-six or twenty-seven. An older woman joins her on the balcony.
“Is she really coming?” Khalto Safa asks in Arabic. Ash drifts from the end of her lit cigarette, catching on the breeze. She and the old woman watch the street.
“So it seems,” the woman clips. The frost in her eyes could revive the polar ice caps. “Is she bringing the brat?”
Khalto Safa laughs. “Hatem’s brat? Of course not. When are you going to realize your precious Nadine is gone? Whoever drives through those gates is an imposter. I’m the only daughter you have left.”
“Quiet,” the woman—my grandmother—orders.
“You still don’t understand why it favors Nadine over you.
Why Nadine’s offerings were always accepted.
Nadine sees everything, Safa. She sees the hearts that hurt from beating, the hands tired of lifting.
The cleanest path to every end. She is meticulous.
Crafty. You’re a worthy attack dog, darling, but Nadine?
” She smiles, the kind of smile a war commander wields over a battlefield littered with his fallen foes. “Nadine has always been a hunter.”
Below, the gates creak open. Khalto Safa furiously stubs her cigarette on the ledge. “Your hunter has returned at last. Let’s not keep her waiting.”
Khalto Safa walks straight through my grandmother.
A shadow attaches itself to Khalto Safa’s heels, trailing her as she ventures into the house.
The camera pans to the villa’s entryway. I ignore my friends’ outstretched hands as I lift myself from the chair. My mother is at the Haikal villa. My mother, who supposedly died in a car wreck in Tanta during this visit.
The woman stepping onto the Haikal property grounds resembles my mother in appearance alone. There’s a hardness to her, a detachment, as though someone chiseled life into a statute. Her heels click against the granite steps, echoing between the peeling pillars.
At the top, she halts. A cold finger of dread traces along my neck.
“Bad girl.” My mother tsks, her back to me. “You cheated.”
Slowly, Nadine Mansour turns around. Except she’s not Nadine Mansour. She’s Nadine Haikal, a stranger.
And her eyes are a bright, glowing orange.
I trip over the chair, a cry tearing free from my frozen mouth. My mother watches me from the screen, head tilted in idle curiosity. Rot burns my nose, strong, so strong. How hadn’t I noticed the scent growing?
It was toying with me. Distracting me while it gathered strength.
A shadow slinks across the grass, gliding over the lawn chairs.
“You don’t belong here, little one,” Nadine says. “Bad things happen to little ones here.”
Ignoring the shouts, I break into a run. A crunch draws my gaze to the ground, and bile sticks in my throat at the sight of stark white bones protruding from the grass. Small, bloated gray hands jut from the dirt, scratching at my ankles.
The other shadow. It caught me.
Before I can reach the attendant’s booth, the ground disappears under me. I plunge into the duck pond, water rushing into my mouth as I gasp.
Black sludge bubbles to the surface of the pond, bursting like pus from an open sore. I roll out of the pond, crying out when one of the small gray hands snags a lock of my hair.
“Yasmina, little Mina.” Nadine’s taunting voice follows me as I run, a childlike singsong ringing in the night. “Mama’s waiting for you to run back home.”