CHAPTER TWENTY–FOUR PRESENT DAY #2
And Jesse refuses. He’s just passing through, after all. A relationship, an attachment, would just be a chain around his boot.
“Forget Alex,” Jesse says. “Do you believe you’ll survive this curse?”
Ah, there it is. The real question at last, yanked bloody from the heart of Jesse Talbot.
The least I can do is reach into my own and extract the same. The horrid truth, as terrible to his ears as it is bitter to mine.
“I’m sorry, Jesse.”
Jesse twists the steering wheel. The truck skids to the left, missing the turn onto our street.
We speed onto the one-way lane leading into the forest around Ward’s border.
In a single move, the truck fishtails off the road and onto an empty dirt trail.
I grab the car handle above me as I swing from side to side.
As soon as the tires stop, I unbuckle my seat belt and slam out of the truck. “What the hell was that?” I holler.
“My bad, I thought you weren’t scared of dying anymore!” Jesse rounds the truck, heedless of the mud soaking into his boots.
My flinch gets to him, wiping the sneer off his face. “So that’s it? All this progress we’ve made, all the work we put in, and you’re ready to let the curse win?”
I laugh, wild abandon careening through me. “What progress? You saw my mom’s journal. Nobody has been able to break the curse! Not my mother’s family, not the other families she was tracking. This curse is ancient.”
The rest comes pouring out of me. “Besides, how would it be fair if I survived while the children they sacrificed didn’t?
How is it fair that my mother can wreck an entire community and expect not to answer for it?
” I spread my arms. “I’m the consequence, Jesse.
I’m fate finally catching up to what they’ve done. ”
The clouds writhe, streaks of white promising a storm to shake every window in Ward. The forest unravels in every direction around us. Long shadows shiver under the roiling clouds, shifting beneath the howling gale. If the storm grows, we’ll have a bona fide Ward Wailer on our hands.
Jesse seems to realize the danger at the same time. “Get in the truck. We’ll talk about this at my place.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
Jesse responds, a short and sharp statement, but I don’t hear it. I don’t hear the wind howling or the metallic rattle of the rain hitting the truck.
A woman watches us from between the trees. Warm brown eyes catch mine, and a wide smile spreads over her angular face. She wears jeans we thrifted in San Francisco on my seventh birthday, the words Sugar High bedazzled in red across each of the pockets. Her hair hangs loose by her shoulders.
It’s the hair that convinces me. Not a drop of rain touches her; not a single strand sticks to her face or neck.
Mama beckons me.
Without taking my eyes off her, I ask, “Do you have the journal with you, Jesse?”
“Yeah, it’s in the back. What—”
“Don’t follow me.”
Mama slips into the gloom of trees, and I break into a run.
It takes twenty minutes after I run out of the woods to realize the shadow is leading me back home. I lost sight of it a couple of blocks ago, but its path is unmistakable.
I stop to catch my breath and push the sweat-soaked hair from my forehead. I briefly entertain the notion of texting Jesse, but there’s no point. As soon as he finishes searching in the woods, he’ll head straight to my house. If I call him now, he’ll demand I wait.
But we’re out of time. The answer to how to break the curse might be in my mother’s journal, and we won’t know if I don’t look into the shadow and unlock another entry.
There is a bitter irony in finding myself chasing Mama’s shadow yet again.
I spent years wondering what happened to her.
Looking out into the audience after a dance competition and scanning for her face like a broken reflex.
Wishing I could hear her voice in the morning, feel the soft press of her palm against my forehead when I’m sick, lay my head on her lap when my heart weighs me down.
Which version of my mother was true? Which Nadine am I chasing?
By the time I reach my house, every inch of my body aches. I ease open the front door. “Baba?”
No answer. I figured as much. His car isn’t out front, but sometimes he parks in the garage when it storms. I toe off my shoes and shake the rain from my coat. The house lies dark, and the shadows stay still when my gaze glides over them. It’s here—I can feel it. But which one is it?
After a minute of waiting, I flip on the lamp by the couch. If it wants to play coy, fine. I’m not going anywhere.
I draw my phone from my pocket and plug it into the charger. The battery died shortly after Jesse’s confrontation with Alex, and I gape at the texts lighting up my screen.
Lucia:
AIDA OVERHEARD MISS DIAZ TALKING ON THE PHONE
MINA
YOU GOT IT YOU GOT IT YOU GOT IT
Rainie:
congrats you lil nerd!! classic
I scroll through my notifications, stopping at an email from Principal Bellis at the bottom. My hands shake as I thumb it open.
I got it.
I got it?
I GOT IT.
They want me to speak at graduation. Me, Mina Mansour, will stand behind a podium and address hundreds of parents, students, and teachers on one of the most memorable days of our lives.
I find a pad of blue sticky notes on the mantel and hunt for a pen.
Baba will be upset if I tell him the goods news late, but I can’t exactly share it in person.
Leaving it in a note seems more personal than a text message.
Baba always goes straight for the kitchen when he gets home, so I’ll put the note on the fridge.
Between one blink and the next, everything goes black.
Power outage. Crap. I figured we’d get one with the Ward Wailer, but it got here faster than I expected.
Oh no. What if Jesse is still in the woods? He must be on his way back by now, right?
I stumble in the general direction of my phone, relieved I remembered to plug it in.
It should have just enough battery for me to use the flashlight to rummage around for the storm kit in the garage and call Jesse.
Assuming they haven’t been moved because Baba decided to add new shelves at three in the morning while listening to his old lectures.
The man brings nocturnal productivity to a whole other level.
I step in a patch of wetness and wince. Great. A leak must’ve sprung earlier.
Making a mental note about the spot, I pat the entryway table until I find my phone. The screen flashes open. Twelve percent. Not good.
I press the flashlight on, the stream of yellow knifing through the dark. The light sweeps over the floor as I pivot toward the garage. It crosses the wet patch I’d stepped in.
A streak of red stops me in my tracks.
“What the …” I move closer to the carpet and glance at the ceiling. Why did the water look … rusty?
I fish a tissue out of my pocket and pat the ground.
When I turn the tissue over, I nearly vomit.
Blood.
My heartbeat slows. I can hear each individual beat, pounding against my ears.
“You’re home.”
The flashlight swings up, illuminating two figures in the living room.
One is Baba. Slumped on the ground, his body propped against the other side of the couch. Blood blooms from three tears in his sweater vest, and a sticky red wound seeps at his temple.
“You were very rude, Mina,” a chillingly familiar voice says. “Why did you leave without saying goodbye?”
From the couch, Khalto Safa smiles at me with bright orange eyes.