Prom Dates From Hell

“I don’t want to mess with the prom at all, Mom.”

  She ignored me, placidly eating popcorn, piece by piece. “Some girls in my high school class did that and had a wonderful time. They weren’t lesbians or anything. Not that it would matter if they were.”

  “That’s nice, Mom. I’m glad you’re so open-minded.” I grabbed my Coke can and the popcorn bowl and headed for the stairs, because I could go my whole life without ever hearing my mother talk about lesbians again.

  “Maybe you could take Justin to the prom,” she called after me, laughter in her voice. “He is such a hottie.”

  Shoot me now.

  I was doing the last edit of my English paper when I heard footsteps on the stairs. “Come on up.” Saving the document, I turned to greet Justin. “I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

  He climbed the last steps, looking exhausted. I wondered if he’d stayed up all night working. “Your mom was heading out. She said I could come in.”

  “Did you get your paper done?”

  “Yeah.” He fell onto the battered sofa. A burgundy slipcover hid a multitude of sins, including burnt-orange-and-brown-striped upholstery that was older than me. “Done, turned in. Now I’m free until finals.”

  “Cool.”

  He opened his own backpack and pulled out a folded sheet of paper. “I e-mailed a friend and asked him to translate the letters you drew.”

  I scooted the desk chair closer to look. “That was fast.”

  “He’s got a degree in biblical history, so he knew right where to look in the library.”

  “Not the public library, I assume.”

  “No, Henry’s in seminary, studying to be a priest.”

  My eyebrows climbed. “Really?”

  “Yeah. We went to high school together.”

  “Catholic school?”

  “Yes,” he said. My bemusement must have shown, because he asked, “Why is that surprising?”

  “It isn’t. Your love of khaki trousers and oxford shirts should have been my first clue.”

  He gestured to the paper, where he’d jotted down normal letters under the strange ones I’d sketched. “You want to see what I found out?”

  I did, but I wasn’t done with this line of inquiry just yet. “Do you still go to Mass?”

  “Sometimes.” He answered matter-of-factly, then pointed to my crucifix. “What about you?”

  “Not in a long time.” I chewed my lip, uncertainly. “Do you think it matters? I believe in God. I’m just not sure about the outward trappings, you know?”

  “I do know.” He contemplated my question. “I think that faith—in something bigger that yourself, no matter what form it takes—gives you a certain spiritual or psychic protection. If, say, the room caught on fire, it might not keep you from burning…”

  “It did for Shadrach, Meshach, and the other guy.”

  “I said it might not. Can I make my point here?”

  “Sure.”

  He seemed to reorganize his thoughts. “Bible stories aside, faith can’t keep you from burning, but it might give you calm to, say, think of a way to put the fire out or escape. If you were under spiritual attack, however…”

  “Like if a demon made me think I was on fire?”

  That earned me a suspicious look, justified, since that was one of those things I’d neglected to mention. “Exactly like that. You might be able to see through the illusion, and overcome it. So I guess it depends. Is your evil a spiritual or physical construct? Personally, I do believe in miracles. But physics is physics so I always wear my seat belt.”

  I touched the small, gold cross that had become a talisman to me. Not of a religion, but of my strengthening conviction that if there was Evil with a capital E then there must be Good with a capital G, and I wanted to be on its side.

  “Can we get back to work?” Justin asked.

  “Sure.” I took the paper from him and frowned at the letters. M A E L A Z. “I think it made more sense in Mesopotamian.”

  Justin pulled out the copied catalog page. “The problem is, the symbols go in a circle, and you can’t tell exactly where to start reading.”

  “Let’s see what happens when we Google it.” I rolled over to the desk and opened the browser. On the search engine’s main page I typed in: “maelaz.” Google helpfully asked if I meant “Maalox.”

  “I guess that’s a no.” Next I typed: “Aelazm.” The Internet netted nothing.

  Justin leaned on the back of my chair, peering over my shoulder. I was distracted for a moment by the warmth of his arm brushing mine. “Keep the first three letters together,” he suggested. “Move them all to the back.”

  I typed in: “Azmael.” The search engine churned for a moment and finally displayed a page of links to archaeology and anthropology sites. “Look!” I said, because I’m a dork when detective work pays off. “A site about ancient Babylon. That’s in Mesopotamia.”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t look nearly as happy.

  “How did you know to put the ‘ael’ at the end?”

  “El was the top dog god to a lot of people in the region. The ‘ael’ would mean ‘of El.’”

  I clicked on the link. The hard drive spun and clicked as the page tried to load. “It must have a lot of graphics. My computer hates bells and whistles.”

  The whirring intensified, but the browser window remained dark. I felt Justin tense behind me. “Close the window, Maggie.”

  I clicked the mouse, but nothing happened. “It’s locked up.”

  “Force quit the program.”

  The Internet had taken my computer hostage. “It’s not quitting.” I smelled ozone and burning plastic and my voice cracked in panic. “It’s not doing anything.”

  Smoke poured out of the CD slot on the front of the tower and I jerked back, thinking phantom. But no. Just plain old burn-your-house-down fire.

  “Get down.” Justin pulled me out of the chair as the monitor exploded in a shower of glass. He reached under the desk and yanked the surge protector from the wall, then scrambled back as the CPU began to melt, flames licking out of the case.

  The smoke detector went off, piercing my ears. I half-crawled into the bathroom and grabbed the little fire extinguisher from under the counter. I’d never used it before, so I struggled to read the instructions with the fire alarm turning my brain to Jell-O. Justin grabbed the extinguisher from me. He turned something, pointed the nozzle, pressed something else; frosty mist and foam shot out at the flames.

  He emptied the entire canister, continuing to spray even after the last flicker disappeared. Finally I climbed onto the chair and turned off the screaming alarm.

  My ears rang in the sudden silence. I jumped off the chair and joined him, staring at the melted hulk of the CPU. “I guess that’s what you call a physical construct.”

  “Yeah.”

  “At least we got the word figured out.” He turned to look at me, and I wondered if my expression mirrored his dazed look. I felt numb. “My mom is going to blow a gasket.”

  He slid a comforting arm around my shoulder. “It could have been worse.”

  I nodded, and rested my head against him. The desk was scorched, but otherwise the fire hadn’t gone farther than the computer. Of course, the peripherals were all shot: the printer, the scanner, and…A bone-deep chill seized me, followed by a rush of liquid-hot fury through my veins.

  “My English paper was on that computer! Ten thousand words, up in flames! That bastard!”

  “Didn’t you back it up?”

  I blistered my fingers pulling a misshapen lump of plastic from the USB port. I held up the ex–flash drive and Justin’s dark brown eyes softened with exquisite sympathy as he echoed, “That bastard.”

  25

  i woke facedown on the kitchen table, with Dad’s hand gently shaking my shoulder. “Hey, kiddo. Did you get your paper done?”

  My thoughts struggled upstream against the current of exhaustion. Rewrites. Dad’s laptop. Parental freak-out over the fire. My pa
per going up in smoke. Oh yeah. I remembered that.

  “Yeah.” I creaked upright and tried to straighten my neck. “Just need to print it out.”

  “What time did you fall asleep?”

  “More like passed out, I think.” I rubbed a desert’s worth of grit from my eyes. “Maybe four?”

  “Go take a shower. I’ll print your paper and you can do another proofread before school.”

  I dragged myself up the stairs and turned on the shower, then went to get clean clothes while the water heated up. When I came back, I was so sleepy, it took me a moment to be surprised by my name written in the fog on the mirror.

  Hello, Magdalena was what it said.

  I’ve got to remember to turn on the vent fan was the first thing that came to my mind.

  And then my brain caught up, and dread crawled over my skin. The thing knew my name. That couldn’t be good.

  Maybe I was dreaming, still lying facedown in a puddle of my own drool, having a nightmare. I closed my eyes, but it was much worse not seeing what I knew was there.

  The rivulets of condensation that dripped from the letters reminded me of too many horror movies. Steeling myself, I wiped away the fog. Acid yellow eyes stared at me, and I flinched back, but didn’t scream.

  The black smoke drifted in the mirror like a negative reflection of the steam in the bathroom. I cast no reflection, but the sulfur-colored orbs floated where my head would be. Fear skittered over my nerve endings, but I was also pissed at the whole Peeping Tom routine, not to mention the destruction of my Senior Theme.

  “How do you know my name, you smoky bastard?” I growled at it without expecting an answer, like you growl at the car when it won’t start. So my heart lurched against my ribs when a reply appeared in the quickly refogging mirror: Summoner knows.

  The summoner knew my name. Super.

  “Then what the”—I edited myself under the circumstances—“heck are you doing here? What do you want?”

  See you.

  “Great. Just what I always wanted. A stalker.” A semiliterate one at that.

  You see me. The words appeared above the first ones. I saw the demon, so Old Smokey wanted to see me. I got it. It was scary how I got it.

  “Well, I don’t want to see you, so bug off.”

  In a new patch of fog appeared: Soon you’ll fear.

  “Why not now?” Stupid question. I was pretty darned scared, at the moment.

  Not allowed.

  Everything has rules, Dr. Smyth had said. You just have to know what they are.

  Soon, it wrote. Magdalena.

  There was a huge power in a name. I wasn’t simply scared that it knew mine. I was sickened. I wanted to curl into a ball and just give up. Soon, it said. The taunting and toying would end, and I would be dead or wish I was.

  Soon, but not yet. The mirror was like the dream, I realized. A spiritual construct. I took a deep breath of the steamy air and let the panic run out of me, leaving space for rational thought.

  What came instead was an irrational idea. I put my own finger to the fog and wrote: “Azmael.” The eyes recoiled. “Get out of my bathroom, you stinky son of a bitch.”

  The blackness in the mirror twisted and contorted in fury, and then turned in on itself and disappeared, leaving the word Soon superimposed on my pallid reflection.

  I called Justin from the car on the way to school, waking him up. “It’s the name.”

  “What?” he asked groggily.

  “It’s the thing’s name. I think I may have banished it.” I explained what had happened with the mirror. By the time I was finished, he sounded completely awake.

  “I don’t think you banished it completely,” he said. “But you found a way to control its spiritual presence.”

  “What do you think it means that it can’t get at me now, but soon it will?”

  “I think it’s what you said. The demon is getting stronger with each victim. The last one might not only make him solid, but also free him from constraint.”

  “Yikes,” I said.

  “That would be bad,” he agreed.

  “How do we know the magic number?”

  “We don’t know. When he finishes the list maybe. Or perhaps there’s a numerology thing. I’ll read up on it.”

  “I’m having Lisa over to my house this afternoon since she couldn’t come yesterday. Can you be there?”

  “Sure. No point in studying for finals on Monday when the town might be invaded by a demon before then.”

  “I like your sense of perspective.” I pulled into the parking lot. “See you then.” I grabbed my backpack and made it inside with little time to spare. It was amazing how bandying words with the Hell-spawn could eat into your morning.

  I told Ms. Vincent about the fire, and asked her if I could have until the afternoon to proofread the paper one more time. She replied coldly, “You shouldn’t have waited to the last minute, then.”

  A thousand arguments sprang to my tongue, but I’d already dealt with one demon today, so I simply laid the paper on her desk and took my seat.

  Lisa watched me drop into the seat beside her. “You look like crap.”

  “Thanks. Battling the forces of darkness will do that to you.”

  “If you mean Vincent, I agree.”

  We settled in. I wondered if Vincent was going to actually teach for once. I could use a nap.

  “Hey, Lisa,” I said. “Are you going to the prom?”

  “Yeah. Tessa and Katie and I are going stag. We didn’t ask you to join us, because we knew you’d rather die.”

  “I wonder if Stanley ever got a date.”

  “He’s going with Suzie Miller. You know from the play?”

  “Really?” I was stunned. Suzie was so cute, and riding her five minutes of fame. She was going to the prom with Stanley?

  When the bell rang, Vincent rose and came to the front of the room, straightening her cardigan—apple red with school buses for the pockets. No lie. “Today,” she said, “we start your last novel of the year. Fittingly, as you end one segment of your life and begin a new one, we will read Brave New World.”

  She paused, as if for applause. At the smattering of murmurs and groans, she set her mouth in a thin line and went to the shelves to hand out books.

  “Have you read Brave New World?” Lisa asked me.

  “Doesn’t the future world kind of…suck?” “I think that sums it up pretty well.”

  At lunch, I had a table to myself, which was not that unusual, but everyone kept staring at me, which…well, was becoming more common.

  Halfway through my doughy burrito, a girl I’d never met plopped into the seat across from me. I actually did a double-take, because this—the jet-black hair with pale roots, the black nail polish—was Lisa’s old look before she’d given up monochrome as a lifestyle choice.

  This girl had a pentagram hanging from a leather strap around her neck. She set her elbows on the table and asked avidly, “Is it true you’re a witch?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They’re saying you cursed the Jocks and Jessicas. Is it true?” I stared at her stupidly. “If it is, you can tell me. I won’t hold it against you. I mean, those stuck-up posers…”

  “You should be careful.” Another girl stood beside me. Unlike her dark counterpart, she was dressed in a flowing pastel blouse over jeans and flip-flops. She looked like a hippie and smelled of incense. “You know the Wicca Rede.”

  “The what now?” My fork full of burrito hung midair. From my hand, I mean. Not levitating. Considering the company, maybe I should make that clear.

  “The first rule of the White Path: ‘An’ it harm none…’”

  “What’s that in English?”

  “Do what you want, as long as it harms no one.” Flowers-and-Light Girl sat down beside me, but not before shooting Pentagram Poser a glare. “Whenever you cast a spell to do harm to someone, it will come back on you, three times as bad.”

  “Yeah, well.” I dropped my f
ork onto my tray. “That sucks for someone, but not for me. I didn’t do anything to anyone.”

  Wicca girl put her hand on my arm. “I sense a terrible darkness around you.”

  That shook me slightly, but then I realized…duh. “Yeah, they call it high school.”

  Her mouth detoured into a sulking frown before she rerouted it into a smile. “When you are ready to admit your wrongdoing, my friends and I can help you. We can cleanse your aura and help you remove the negative energy…”

  “Well,” said Goth girl across the table, “if you’re ready to rock and roll, my friends and I are down with that.”

  “Thank you both.” I climbed over the bench and grabbed my tray. “I’ll look for you where the freaks come out at night.”

  “Blessed be!” Hippie chick called after me.

  I started to say something rude but then figured, what the heck. I needed all the blessings I could get.

  Heading out of the cafeteria and into the courtyard, I ran into Stanley. Only as I stumbled back and muttered automatic apologies, it took me a moment to recognize him.

  I’d been thinking a lot about Stanley over the last few days but I hadn’t actually seen him since Friday. I stared, trying to figure out what he’d changed. And then I realized, nothing much. He’d gotten some clothes that fit—that was the biggest difference. Other than that: skinny, pale, insanely tall, drab, colorless hair. Check. No briefcase, but otherwise, that was Dozer.

  But looking at him was like watching a DVD when you’ve been used to VHS. He looked sharper, more alive. I couldn’t explain it better than that. His shoulders were back, his head was up. And he was smirking at me.

  “Meet some new friends, Maggie?”

  “Don’t even go there. I had to rewrite my entire English paper last night because of you.”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “Because of me?”

  “Yeah.” I forgot I wasn’t supposed to antagonize him. “You look good, Stanley. Walking around with five less bullies on your case must agree with you.”

  His eyes narrowed. “It would agree with anyone. Maybe I should thank you for casting that magic spell everyone is talking about.”