“Well, I’m sorry,” I say, feeling my teeth clench, “but guess what? I’m not some superhero; I’m a real person with real emotions and real feelings.” I take a deep breath, trying to melt away some of the tension in my chest.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Oh, no?” I ask. “Don’t you understand? Jacob is missing—”
“Not this again!” she snaps. “He’s gone, Stacey—gone . . . as in dead. When is it going to click?”
I shake my head, fighting the urge to cover my ears.
“But you’re still here,” she continues. “And so am I. And I want to help you; I want you to get through this.”
“I really don’t feel like talking right now,” I say, looking away.
“I’m sorry. I just want you to get better.”
“No,” I snap, turning back to face her. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m sorry that I came here. I’m sorry that I can’t be a hero for you, a success story for Dr. Atwood, a perfect daughter for my mother, or now, a savior for President Wallace’s daughter.”
“Stacey—”
“Just leave me alone.” I lay back down in bed, drawing the covers over my face to block her out. All I need right now is to fall back asleep—to try, once again, to find Jacob in my dreams.
I toss and turn in bed after Amber leaves, trying to fall back asleep, but I can’t. I just can’t stop thinking about everything she said—that she once thought of me as her hero, the bravest person she knew, and that I’ve suddenly been plucked from that position, whether I like it or not.
I sit up in bed, wishing I had one of my tranquilizer friends to help me get over this hump, but I don’t. And so I decide to do the one thing I have yet to embark upon since first setting foot on this campus . . . the bravest thing I can think of.
I go to class.
According to my schedule, I have forty-five minutes until Life Science. I fish a clean sweatshirt and pair of jeans from my unpacked suitcase and rush down the hallway for a shower and tooth-brushing, almost plowing down a girl who fits the description of Sage, Janie’s old roommate, along the way—a walking cliché of black clothes, black hair, pasty white skin highlighted by layers upon layers of charcoal-colored eye makeup, and lots of silver jewelry. Her stereotypical appearance makes me wonder if she’s one of those Wiccan wannabes, the kind who knows nearly nil about the Craft but decides it would be cool to practice it anyway. It also makes me wonder if there’s some truth to all those rumors.
Less than forty minutes later, I fly through the doors of the Stratcher Science Building. The classroom is packed—at least thirty students flipping back and forth through notebooks, pointing at diagrams in their textbooks, and quizzing each other with flashcards. I take one of the only two available desks toward the back of the classroom.
“What’s with the study frenzy?” I ask the girl sitting beside me.
“Are you kidding?” She raises her barbell-pierced eyebrow for emphasis. “Today’s the quiz.”
Quiz? “But this is only the third time this class has met.”
“It’s on the syllabus.”
Great. I chew at my lower lip, fighting the urge to bury my face in my hands.
Barbell-girl must notice my lip-sweat. She lets out an evil little smirk, raising her barbell up even higher.
“What’s it on?” I ask.
She flashes me an index card, where’s she got the words Unit Membrane written across the top. There’s a couple rows of circles with squiggly lines sandwiched between them, and what looks like a sideways cheeseburger in the middle.
“What is that?” I feel my mouth drop open.
“Didn’t you read the section on lipids and proteins? He’s also going to include all the nuclear envelope stuff.”
Huh? I swallow hard, feeling a sudden heaviness in my chest.
I peer up at the professor as he extracts his books and notes from a weather-beaten leather briefcase, wondering if he’ll be understanding about my recent rash of school skipping. He looks kind of young—maybe late twenties at most—so I’m thinking he’s one of those graduate student assistants you hear about. The kind that often sits in for the real professor and does all the correcting—all in exchange for a break in tuition and a reference on his résumé.
I approach his desk. “Excuse me . . . are you Professor Rosin’s assistant?”
He pauses from unpacking to look up at me, his tiny blue eyes almost lost behind a pair of square black glasses. “No.” He cracks his jaw and glances down at his watch. “Next question?”
“Professor Rosin?” I ask, positive that my lip is sweating now for sure.
“Muller,” he corrects, resuming his unpacking. “Dr. Wayne Muller—at least, last I checked.”
“Right.” I glance down at my schedule, noticing that Professor Rosin is the name of my English professor. “Well, um, my name is Stacey Brown. I was sick earlier this week . . . that’s why I wasn’t here.”
Instead of responding, Dr. Muller turns away to write something on the board.
“I understand there’s a quiz today,” I continue, my voice squeaking slightly out of nervousness.
“You understand correctly, Ms. Brown,” he says, scribbling the day’s assignment on the board.
“Well, I was just wondering if maybe I could make the quiz up at another time . . . since I was absent. I mean, I don’t even have the syllabus.”
He turns around to face me, a small menacing smile stretched across his pasty white lips. “This isn’t high school, Ms. Brown. Sink or swim.” He pulls an extra syllabus from his bag and thrusts it at me.
Huh?
“No life rafts in here.” Muller turns his back on me once again, solidifying the obvious—that I’m absolutely screwed and that I absolutely hate him.
A couple minutes later, he passes out the quiz—one long list of words I’ve never seen before: chromatin, nucleoplasm, nucleolus . . . I glance over at barbell girl, who’s obviously whipping right through—it appears as though she’s already on the second side.
I sign my name and hand in my automatic F, feeling my cheeks get hot as I walk out of the room.
The remainder of my day’s classes are equally as miserable. There was a short personal essay due in my English class—another big fat zero—and I obviously didn’t outline the first two chapters for my Intro to Holistic Health class, nor did I single-space-type-out the answers to the chapter review questions at the back of the book.
I take a deep breath, feeling my chest tighten up once again. Apparently a lot of the professors at this college abide by the sink or swim philosophy—a philosophy in which I have obviously sunk.
I beeline it back to the dorm, almost making it without having to actually talk to anyone. But then I hear my name called out, about halfway up the dormitory steps. I turn and spot him—some guy standing amongst a throng of girls, a giant grin across his face.
“You almost knocked me down,” he says, taking a step away from them.
I look at him, feeling my face scrunch up, wondering who in god’s name he is.
“Tim,” he says, reminding me.
“Right,” I say, finally putting the pieces in place—the guy from the other day, the Gap attire, the medium brown gelled-up hair, the way he pointed out the directions to Ketcher Hall using my map.
“Where are you headed?” he asks.
“My room,” I say, thinking how it must be obvious.
“How about lunch?”
“Lunch?” I repeat, like it’s as foreign of a word as chromatin or nucleoplasm. I glance toward the pack of girls he was standing with, wondering if he’s suddenly forgotten about them. One of them folds her arms in my direction, a huge scowl across her makeup-adorned face.
“Yeah,” Tim continues. “Lunch.” He smiles wider, adj
usting his cap. “Don’t you eat? I have an in with the cafeteria lady—she always saves the fresh stuff for me.”
“Sure,” I say.
“Great!”
“No. I mean, no.”
His face twists up in confusion.
“I mean, sure . . . yeah . . . I eat—all the time, actually. Just not now. I have some serious catching up to do.”
“Not on an empty stomach.”
“A girl can live on snack food alone.”
“Sounds like you speak from experience.”
“Ring Dings and Cheez Doodles—basic staples of prep school.”
“What kind of a healthy diet is that?” he asks.
“The only kind I have time for—if I want to stay in college for longer than a week, that is.”
“Well, then, can I raincheck you? Maybe we could get dinner some time? I wasn’t going to mention this,” he pauses to glance over both shoulders, “but I also have an in with Pizza Prison across the street. What do you say to Double-Bubble Criminal Crust and Garlic-Cheesy Bankrobber Bread?”
“Excuse me?” I laugh.
“I take it you haven’t been there yet.”
I shake my head.
“So what do you say?”
I pause a moment to look at him—the way he’s beaming at me, how his soft brown eyes crinkle up when he smiles, and how he’s doing this cute little back and forth shuffle with his feet. “I have a boyfriend,” I say, finally.
“Oh,” he says, taking a step back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” I say. “It’s fine. I just gotta go.”
I turn on my heel and walk away, just like that—feeling like a complete and utter jerk. It’s just . . . I don’t know—too weird, too uncomfortable . . . too familiar. And I’m nowhere near ready for familiar yet.
I climb the three floors to our room, passing by that Sage girl yet again. She’s carrying a basket of laundry. A silver pentacle dangles from a wiry rope chain around her neck, reminding me what I stand for—how it would be stupid for me to prejudge her based on clothes or rumors.
“Hi,” I venture.
She does a double take at me, as though surprised that I’m actually speaking to her. She nods me a quick hello and then continues on her way.
When I get to my room, I grab my bathing essentials—including a bottle of eucalyptus oil to help cure myself of this funk, and some apple cider vinegar for its ability to cleanse the mind—and head down the hall to the bathroom. My grandmother, who taught me most of what I know about the art of kitchen witchery, always stressed the importance of properly cleansing the body in preparation for a spell. The spell I want to do this afternoon involves restoration; I need to start rebuilding the fragments of my life.
After a walloping thirty-five minutes spent standing under the bliss of steamy water mixed in eucalyptus and apple cider fumes, I slip into my study uniform (my favorite pair of flannel pajamas) and head back to the room. Janie’s there; she’s sitting on her swirly pink bed linens, painting her toenails a coordinating shade of strawberry.
“Hi,” I say.
She forces a smile, her mood much less sticker-worthy than our last conversation. “Some girl named Drea called for you.”
“Thanks,” I say, reaching for the phone, feeling a sting of guilt that I didn’t try calling her sooner.
“She said she was going out,” Janie tells me. “She’ll call you when she gets in.”
I bite my bottom lip and return the phone to the desk, a bit disappointed—a bit lonely maybe. “How was your faith club meeting?”
She shrugs. “Okay, I guess.”
“What do you guys talk about anyway?”
“All kinds of stuff. Stuff we’re dealing with, stuff we’re going through, parents, pressures . . . God.”
“You know, witches believe in God, too.”
Janie sighs, like she doesn’t want to get into it. “Amber and I were really worried about you,” she says, changing the subject.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just have a lot to deal with right now.”
“Amber told me.” She dabs one of her toenail screw-ups with a cotton ball of nail polish remover.
“About Jacob?”
She pauses from dabbing to look at me. “Is that okay?”
I nod and look away—into my stash of spell supplies.
“Well, if you ever need to talk about it, I’m a great listener. My friends tell me so all the time.”
More nodding, imagining myself opening up to Miss Sticker Album herself. I glance above her head at the collage she’s made—a zillion magazine cutouts of cats, with a bright pink sign that says “Cat-cha Later.” But then I feel a pang of guilt. She’s obviously just trying to be nice.
“So glad to see you bathed,” she adds, with a smile. “It was starting to smell like sweaty socks in here.”
Maybe nice isn’t the right word. I muster a smirk, remembering how Amber said my stench was making Janie’s head ache. Maybe I should burn a little fish oil—give her head something to really ache about. I take a deep breath, reminding myself about the rule of three—how whatever I send out into the universe will come back to me three times. The last thing I need to deal with right now is a whopper of a headache on top of everything else.
I remove some spell supplies from my suitcase—including a plastic food tray, a box of self-hardening clay, a pen and paper, a sponge, and a jar of moon-bathed rainwater—and position the family scrapbook on the floor by my side. Big and bulky, with yellowing pages and hardened candle wax droplets in the corners, the scrapbook has been passed down in my family for generations. It was given to me by my grandmother just before she passed away. It’s basically this big jumble of stuff—spells, home remedies, favorite lines of poetry, and passed-down holiday recipes—all written by people in my family before me, those who, like me, had the gift of insight.
I flip the book open to a spell written by Kayleigh, my great-great grandmother’s first cousin, and then I set the tray down, spreading the supplies on it, and remove the wad of clay from the box.
“Is that some art project?” Janie asks.
“Not exactly.”
“Wait,” Janie says, capping her bottle of nail polish. “You’re not doing that witch stuff in here, are you? I mean, it’s bad enough that you do it at all.”
“I practice magic,” I say, lighting a stick of incense and setting it down in its holder. “The real kind, not the Charmed kind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I use my magic in a positive way—to gain insight, to help others. No one gets hurt and I don’t desecrate gravesites—that includes stealing their plot flowers.”
She folds her arms and looks away, like the mere image of me and my spells will turn her to stone. “I just don’t believe in that stuff.”
“Well, whether you believe it or not, it exists.”
“No, I mean, it’s against my beliefs.”
“Look.” I sigh. “I’d do my spell outside, but it’s thirty below—at least it feels that way—and there’s really no place else.” I run my makeshift pottery tools—a plastic fork, a wooden spoon, and one-half of a broken CD cover—through the incense smoke to charge them. Then I pluck my crystal cluster rock from my night table and grip it in my palm.
“I live here, too, you know,” she snaps.
“Janie,” I say, “it’s not what you’re thinking. You’d be surprised; we probably have a lot more in common than you think, belief-wise.”
“I doubt it.” She averts her gaze and fishes though her smiling-watermelon-sticker-covered purse for a cell phone. “I’m leaving,” she huffs. She dials her way out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.
A major plus, especially since negativity like t
hat is bound to screw up my spell. I let out a cleansing breath before taking the smoking incense and rotating it three times over my spread of supplies, in an effort to clear the air and create a sacred space. The puffy gray smoke hovers over the area, filling the room with a lemongrass scent, reminding me right away of Jacob. I gaze down at the crystal in my hand, remembering how he gave it to me for protection—how he promised me we’d always be together. And yet I feel so all alone.
I glance over at the scrapbook, noting how Kayleigh suggests picturing your problem like the mound of clay and working it down pancake-thin, until you have complete control over it. I place the crystal to the side and dip my sponge in the rainwater, wetting the clay block down until it’s fully saturated. The moistness helps to soften the clay, enabling me to round out the edges and work at the center. After several minutes spent pushing and kneading, the cool gray mass is supple under my touch and I’m able to flatten it out.
Except I know full well it’s going to take a lot more than breaking down a wad of clay to solve my problem. I close my eyes, feeling the hot-wax tears drip down the creases of my face and spatter my pancake of clay. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get on with my life. But, like Amber said, I owe it to myself to try. I need to rebuild the walls of my world before the foundation cracks and there’s nothing left.
With a deep, inhaling breath, I gather a wad of clay and roll it out between both palms to create a coil. I add it to the foundation and create more coils, building up the walls to create a bowl-like structure. “Save these walls from warp and wilt,” I whisper. “With newfound strength, my world rebuilt. I know not how I shall be strong, but I must remember my life goes on. Blessed be the way.”
I run the incense smoke over the bowl, concentrating on the idea of rebuilding my life. Then I grab the pen and paper and write my question across it: WHAT DO I NEED TO DO TO GET ON WITH MY LIFE? I fold the paper up and place it into the bowl, hoping that my dream tonight will bring me the answer.
Shell wakes up with a gasp and sits up in bed, his heart pounding hard. Brick and the others are still asleep. He looks at the clock—5 AM; he still has another hour before he has to get up. But how is he supposed to fall back asleep when he can’t stop shaking?