The poor boy had no idea she was using him.
She needed a reason to be at Olivia’s. He was her cover. What other choice did she have?
He passed her the bottle, gave her a nervous smile. She smiled back, turned away quickly.
“What’s the verdict, Lucifer?” Jack asked. “Lucy?”
She barely registered hearing her name, barely registered raising the bottle to her lips.
Was it time yet?
She looked around.
No.
“You like the wine?” he asked.
Jack was staring at her, waiting for her to say something.
“You can really taste all those bees’ hard work,” she said finally, although she hadn’t remembered tasting it at all.
“Yeah, it’s like bee sweat,” B said.
Jack made a mock hurt face. Everyone laughed.
Lucy passed the bottle to Pete, who was sitting behind her, Liza’s feet in his lap.
“Thanks, gorgeous,” he said. He tipped the bottle toward her before he took a drink. The green glass glinted in the fading sun.
Now was it time?
Lucy looked around her, at Olivia and Gil who both smiled at her when they caught her eye, at Jack and B, whose effortless cool didn’t intimidate her the way they once had, at the ivy climbing the walls of the gazebo, at the sunlight filtering through, and realized in a funny way she was going to miss all this.
She couldn’t think about this now. She reached into her pocket and squeezed that key.
Pete started telling a story about a recent trip he’d taken back home to visit his parents’ farm in England. “My father talks to the goats,” Pete said. “When he thinks no one can hear him, he actually bleats at them.” And everyone was laughing, settling into the giant silk pillows that Olivia had tossed around the gazebo, settling into each other. Even nervous Colin, who had been sitting next to her, basically mute the entire time, seemed to be relaxing. His arm brushed against her arm.
Now was it time?
The bright sun was dragged down by its own weight; the ground rose up to meet it.
She turned toward Colin who was staring at her, a slightly bewildered expression on his sweet face. He was blushing a little as he moved his hand so that one of his fingers was touching one of hers. He left it there.
It was time.
Lucy stood. “I’m going inside for a minute.” She twisted her face into a slight grimace and placed her hand on her stomach. “I’m suddenly not feeling so great.”
“I followed the instructions from the website perfectly,” said Jack. “There’s nothing wrong with my mead!”
“Of course not,” Lucy said. She forced a smirk. “I’m sure I’m supposed to feel like this.”
Colin was staring up at her. He brushed his fingers against her ankle, tentatively, like he was scared to but could not resist. He left his fingers there, barely touching her. “Do you want me to come with you?”
Lucy smiled, shook her head. “I’ll only be a minute,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lucy walked into the house, through the giant ballroom, to that big creaky staircase. She breathed in. Felt the house breathe around her.
Up the stairs she went.
She walked into the giant lavish bathroom and turned on the light and the faucet. Then, quickly, quickly, she walked back out into the hall, to the room with the wrought-iron doorknob, holding the key Liza said she’d never have the balls to steal. Well, she had them now.
Her heart was pounding. The thump thumpthump of it, so loud she was sure someone would be able to hear it all the way downstairs, all the way outside.
Amazing how loud a broken heart can beat.
She slipped the key into the lock. And with a swift turn the door opened.
Yes.
The room was lit only by the light coming in from the hallway. Lucy tried to find a switch but couldn’t.
In the dim light she could see that the walls were lined with shelves on which were rows and rows of little jars containing what exactly Lucy had no idea. She silently begged the universe to lead her to the right charm or pill or potion. And then she grabbed a few jars—she would look at them later. She turned to go. She reached out her arm and felt not cool wall but warm flesh.
A hand closed over her mouth before she could scream.
“It’s okay,” a voice whispered. “It’s just me.”
Gil. She let go of Lucy’s mouth.
“I . . .” Lucy started to say. She stood there, staring at the outline of Gil standing in the doorway, but her memory filled in what she couldn’t see—Gil’s sweet face, her big trusting eyes. The lies Lucy could have told swirled in her mouth and lay there behind her lips, bubbling. “I . . .” Lucy looked down at the floor. “Should probably try to come up with a good excuse for why I’m here. But I can’t.”
Gil walked forward into the room and shut the door behind her. Lucy heard her moving along the wall. A moment later a warm red light filled the room. Gil looked up at Lucy and smiled.
“I believe in love, Lu” Gil said. “I’ve never regretted my choice to become what I am now, and in many ways I’m grateful to Will for breaking my heart so I could make it. But still, despite all that, I believe in it.” Her eyes locked on Lucy’s. “Real love, the pure and true kind that comes along so rarely, is the greatest magic there is. It is the art and the drug and the story.” Gil paused. “I know what you’ve been trying to do. I figured it out.”
Lucy raised her hand to her lips.
“I didn’t come here to stop you. I came here to help.” She pointed to the three glass jars Lucy held. “But those won’t do anything. There’s no magic in them,” Gil said. “That’s just the base—art supplies, herbs, perfume from faraway places. You’re taking bio, right? The trick is adding the catalyst. Tears are the active ingredient that gets it all going. And we don’t add those until the last minute. The magic is strong, but tears are unstable. We keep them locked in here.”
Gil knelt down and moved a panel of wood revealing a safe locked with a big metal lock. Then she reached in her back pocket and pulled out what looked like two bent hairpins. She stuck one into the keyhole of the lock and held it there, then poked around with the other one. “My grandfather on my mother’s side, the one who taught me to pick pockets, he also taught me some other things about the, um”—she was squinting at the lock, the tip of her tongue was poking out of the side of her mouth—“criminal arts. He always said I was sort of . . .” The lock popped. “A natural.”
Gil smiled as she opened the safe.
Inside were dozens and dozens of amber glass vials. Each one was labeled with a name.
Gil plucked a vial from the pile. On the label was printed: ETHAN SLOANE/WRIGLEY. “I’m not that powerful, not yet anyway. The charms and potions I can make myself now just reveal things. They can’t change things so much as help the truth come out, and help you see it. I’ll do what I can.”
“Won’t you get in trouble?”
“Maybe,” she said. “But some things are worth getting in trouble for.”
Ten minutes later, Lucy and Gil were heading back down the long staircase together, two tiny packages hidden inside Lucy’s pocket. “Oh, Lu,” Gil said loudly. “I guess mead doesn’t agree with some people.” She leaned forward, and whispered so quietly that Lucy could barely hear her. “Sometimes you find magic,” Gil said, “and sometimes magic finds you.”
“Th—” Lucy started to say.
“Don’t,” Gil whispered. She shook her head. “You don’t need to thank me. This is the right thing to do.” She stopped on the stairs, turned toward Lucy. “But tomorrow’s the seventh day. Which means . . .”
Lucy nodded.
“Whatever happens”—Gil reached out and pulled Lucy close—“just know I already considered you my sister.”
Chapter Thirty
On the seventh day of her sophomore year, Lucy Wrenn stood out in front of her school leaning coolly again
st a fence, a little shard of hard pink sugar dissolving slowly behind her gloss-slicked lips. It had only been seven days since the last time she’d stood there waiting for Alex but much had changed. The entire world had changed, or at least her understanding of it.
On the outside, things were very different. Gone were her loose denim shorts, pink tank top, yellow flip-flops, toast brown hair pulled back into a low ponytail.
Now she was all jangly Chinese bangles, and an Indian print scarf flecked with gold hummingbird feathers dangling from each ear. She was wearing a sleeveless white cotton dress, turquoise thong sandals. She’d dabbed jasmine behind both her ears and ginger on her wrists, and rubbed a vanilla bean down over her heart. She was wearing the gold tear-catcher vial around her neck because it was beautiful, not because she actually planned to use it. She wore a dot of liquid gold on the outside corners of each of her eyes. Her dark hair hung loose.
But underneath, inside, there were some things that were not so different. Lucy was still a sack of blood and liver and bladder and gallbladder. Appendix. Pancreas. Stomach. Her heart still pounded painfully. Her lungs still caught breath when she saw Alex walking up toward school looking exactly like he always had, looking like nothing had changed at all.
Her week had been a lifetime. His was just seven days.
She watched him walk and imagined the old Lucy watching the new Lucy watch him now. She was not hopping up and down or waving wildly. She was just leaning, coolly, face calm.
And when their eyes finally met, she allowed the corners of her lips to curl up to the tiniest hint of a feline smile as the last bit of the It’s In His Kiss drop dissolved against her tongue.
“Hey, stranger,” Lucy said.
He smiled. His eyes were heavy with an emotion she could not place.
She walked closer, closer, until she could smell the warm scent of him. It’s now or never. TICK TICKTICK.
She slipped her hands onto the back of his neck and leaned in. Her heart was pounding as her body pressed against his. Their lips touched.
And the ticking finally stopped.
She melted against him and sighed into his mouth. And then she waited, for that tingle of hot spicy cinnamon that Gil said she’d taste and feel if he loved her. She waited. She waited.
But she did not feel it. And she did not taste it.
Instead, she tasted vinegar and salt, the chips he sometimes ate for breakfast.
She felt the tears coming.
Well, screw the stupid candy.
It was just wrong then, it had to be. Love was the strongest magic there was and she could feel him loving her. Or at the very least she could feel herself loving him. And that was enough, wasn’t it? She loved him enough for both of them.
She pulled him more tightly to her.
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but this. This moment in which she would have been happy living the entire rest of her life.
But he was pushing against her. He was pushing her away.
Lucy stumbled backwards.
“What the hell? STOP IT! I BROKE UP WITH YOU!”
What happened next? Well, of course, the tears came. She could have stopped them but why even bother? She knew it didn’t matter if she held it together or not, because this time Alex did not even wait to watch her walk away.
Drippity drippity drip, down her face they went. She thought about erosion, how over time water cuts through stone and steel. She thought about the twin tear tracks that she’d soon have carved into her cheeks.
Alex did not love her. He never had and he never would. She knew that now with a gut-socking certainty.
Alex broke up with her because he did not want to be with her. It was not a fluke. It was not a mistake. It was quite simple, really. She knew all she needed to know now.
But she felt the Fantasy Lens bulging in her pocket and she knew Alex was behind her, walking away forever. And she just could not resist. She held it up to her eye and turned around.
There, hovering above him in the air, was a hazy scene: Alex and a girl on what looked like a boat, a pirate ship actually. He was wearing a pirate shirt and leather pants. A sword was strapped around his waist. And she was all dressed up like a pirate wench, long hair a-flowing, heaving bodice barely contained in a white off-the-shoulder top, long rust-colored dress and leather waist-cincher. Her feet were bare and she was wearing an anklet made of flat, circular beads covered in ancient-looking carvings. Her back was pressed up against the mast of the boat and they were kissing passionately while being sprayed with the sea.
This was his deepest fantasy.
If Lucy weren’t so horrified, she might have laughed at the sheer corniness of it. Laughed at the fact that the deepest fantasy of someone who prided himself on being so worldly and unique and artistic was a scene out of a PG romance novel set at Disney World.
But there was something about this pirate wench that was familiar. Not the long hair, streaked by the sun, the surfer body. But that anklet—the flat, circular beads, the ancient-looking carvings. Lucy had seen that anklet before.
And she knew exactly where.
Lucy felt a hand on her shoulder. “I just wanted to see how everything was going but . . .” It was Gil.
Lucy turned, a fresh batch of tears ready to fall.
“Oh, sweetie.” Gil shook her head. She reached out and hugged Lucy close. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not me that he wants,” said Lucy.
“Who is it then?”
“I’m not sure,” said Lucy. “But I’m about to go find out.”
The darkroom was empty when Lucy reached it. She flung open the gray portfolio closet filled with its photo-chemical smells, and went inside. She looked through the stacks of student folders until she found the one with Alex’s name on it written in his giant messy print. She opened the folder, grabbed all the photographs he’d developed so far this year, the paper slick under her thumbs. She flipped through them, her stomach turning. There was that lake, that canoe, those legs around a campfire. And then . . . there was the girl the anklet belonged to.
That girl, long hair, streaked, wide face, her wrists wrapped in thick string bracelets, her body tan and strong looking, bare feet with short little toenails, and the anklet. That anklet.
Lucy wanted to stop moving. She wanted to run. She wanted to stop looking.
But she couldn’t stop.
And there she was in picture after picture. The girl on a horse. The girl in a canoe. The girl at night carrying an armful of sticks to a campfire. It was like a magazine spread about rustic summer activities with this girl as the only model. But there was something in the way the girl looked at the camera, as though she knew things about the person behind it.
Still, a fantasy didn’t mean anything. A fantasy was only thoughts. . . .
But then Lucy got to the next picture. Printed perfectly. It felt hot in her hand.
A big bed, this girl in it, thin, white sheet barely covering her chest, bare shoulders, tangled hair.
She was laughing, holding one hand out toward the camera as if to say, Don’t take a picture of me, but her big smile and the look in her eyes say, Do. Alex loved her—Lucy knew that now. It wasn’t magic that told her that, no, it was the photo. This was maybe the only really truly good picture Alex had ever taken.
And suddenly Lucy realized something: when she’d told Alex she was ready for them to lose their virginities together and he’d told her “I can’t.” It was because he no longer had his to lose.
Because he already lost it to her.
While Lucy was thinking of him every second all summer long, imagining him imagining her, he’d been busy having sex with this girl.
The sudden intensity of that thought slammed Lucy like a brick between the eyes.
Her brain stopped. Her heart stopped. Fury poured out of every organ in her body. When she’d asked him why he was dumping her, he said he couldn’t explain it. But he could have. He just didn’t want to.
&n
bsp; All summer long she’d sent him those letters, the emails, the presents. Why did he let her go on with it? Why hadn’t he stopped her? Had he and this girl laughed at Lucy? Or even worse, felt sorry for her? For the pathetic little girl back home who didn’t realize that while she was embroidering eyes onto a sock for the person she thought was her boyfriend, he was having ACTUAL SEX with someone else entirely?
She’d written a goddamn hangman game on her own goddamn stomach for him!
Lucy realized in that moment standing there in the photo lab, she’d solved her own puzzle wrong, her own puzzle on her own stomach wrong not once, but twice.
She’d thought the answer was I’m ready.
And that was wrong.
And she’d thought the answer was I = Idiot.
And that was wrong too.
No, what should have filled those seven spaces on Lucy’s belly, the message she should have given Alex six days ago?
F
U
C
K
Y
O
U
“Fuck you,” she whispered.
In her entire life, it was the very first time she’d said those words out loud.
She did not yell, she did not shout, she simply whispered, “Fuck you, Alex,” as she shoved his photos in his portfolio, as she took out the photo of the girl and then tossed the portfolio back on the shelf, as she walked out into the hall.
“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you . . .”
Her fingers tingled; her scalp tingled. Her soul tingled with a fierce and sudden longing for what she should have wanted all along. Not Alex. Not love. But the chance to be free of all of this. To join a sisterhood. To be a Heartbreaker.
She wanted that more than she’d ever wanted anything before, more than she’d even known it was possible to want.
But wasn’t it too late now? She had had her chance, and wasted it all on Alex. Wasted everything on someone who deserved nothing.