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Between sips, if I angled my wrist just right, I could make my reflection glint off the surface, and warped little me could stare up from the depths of my Solo cup like an overgrown jackdaw. Which, like. Yikes.
“So. We’re playing witchcraft?” Her voice was slow, a little raw, and she looked at my seedy sigil like it was a stained-glass window. Something glinted deep in her sockets, but it was gone before I could place it. She sniffed, knotted her eyebrows. “I could fuck with that.”
Jing stood beside me and rocked back against the wall. Her hair, tousled and bleached, fell in a jagged fringe across her forehead, and the way it frayed around her collarbone was the stuff of daydreams.
“I can’t believe I’m asking this, but what did the actual spell do? Like, what were you trying to do when we were all holding hands?” Daisy was sizing up the St. Sebastian heart doodle. “Because I’ve seen The Craft like six times, and they never drew hearts on stuff.”
A horrible, tantalizing fantasy swam up in my mind’s eye: the four of us in a clique, strutting meanly in lockstep in matching jackets, our nails sharp, our lips dark, our heels clacking in tandem with our heartbeats. The unholy trinity alchemizing into a quartet. I imagined us shocking people speechless. They’d look at us like we were teenage Erinyes.
“If someone laid a single finger on you, I’ll chainsaw massacre them. I’ll carve their guts out. I’ll feed them to your dog.”
“If someone laid a single finger on you, I’ll chainsaw massacre them. I’ll carve their guts out. I’ll feed them to your dog.”
“If you did this to Yates,” Daisy said, “they won’t find your fucking body, Sideways.”
“If you did this to Yates,” Daisy said, “they won’t find your fucking body, Sideways.”
Jing moved her mouth against Yates’ temple. Her lips moved. She kept looking at me, her gaze fixed on my face. Yates shook her head. She moved her head to murmur something into Jing’s hair, then tossed her arms around Jing’s shoulders and collapsed against her. Jing pulled her tight, furrowed her brow, tore her gaze away from me. She kissed her forehead. “It wasn’t Sideways,” she said.
Yates threw herself at my chest. The impact rocked me. Her arms looped around my neck and she shuddered, heaved a ragged breath into my hair. Her cheek felt wet on my collarbone. My mouth popped open. I looked at Jing, eyes wide, but she didn’t look up to tell me how to deal with this. Her eyes were on Yates’ back. I swallowed, awkwardly placed my hand between her shoulder blades, and patted her spine.
I looked down. Yates’ eyes were enormous. They consumed my entire line of sight. Deer eyes, living deer eyes. Her lids were magenta and raw.
I looked down. Yates’ eyes were enormous. They consumed my entire line of sight. Deer eyes, living deer eyes. Her lids were magenta and raw.
“I love you guys.” A bizarre prickling sensation bubbled up in my chest, and I rubbed my thumb across my collarbone, the salty spot where she’d cried on me. Guys, plural. She didn’t know me, so she didn’t mean me, but the phrase stabbed between my fourth and fifth ribs and burrowed deep, took root. My face felt hot. I forced my gaze down, stared at the dress on the floor.
Look, I’ve seen all your stupid horror movies, and I wasn’t about last night. We’re hot girls. I’m a hot black girl. Hot girls at parties who play with ghosts end up dead in horror movies, particularly girls like me.
Look, I’ve seen all your stupid horror movies, and I wasn’t about last night. We’re hot girls. I’m a hot black girl. Hot girls at parties who play with ghosts end up dead in horror movies, particularly girls like me. Chopped into ribbons dead.
I thought you were dead, Sideways. We stepped over you.”
“I mean. Theoretically, yeah. Never tried before,” I sounded out. It was true. I hadn’t. When I had a problem with someone, I usually explained it to them with the backs of my hands.
“I mean. I want to implode his gonads,” Daisy said, “but I could settle for psychological torture, if y’all are going to be boring about it. You game, Yatesy?”
Jing leaned forward with her teeth set on edge. “No one fucks with us. The bastard who did so needs to suffer, and we’re determined to see to it.” Her voice snapped—harsh fricatives, clipped vowels, throaty slides to the tonic. I didn’t have time to be jarred. She was doing this right. She was spitting magic.
Jing slammed her brows into a V. She bristled with the sort of determination that I imagined Bonnie and Clyde had, righteously illegal and dripping with love. She rubbed her thumb over Yates’ knuckles.
this is sweet.
There was a whiteboard adhered to the closet door labeled PEOPLE I’M IN LOVE WITH, and all the entries had been scratched out save three names: Daisy, Yates, and Rico Nasty.
Yates was texting someone and elbowing Jing from time to time, but Jing didn’t seem to notice. Either that, or she was too invested in coaching the slasher victim through How Not to Be Slashed to acknowledge whatever was going on with Yates’ phone.
“My mom croaked, too. She’s under that smug angel in the boneyard on Hickory Street. The one with all the garlands and Annabel Lee.” Her voice was hushed, just loud enough that I’d hear her. There was a crookedness in her tone, something sharp and red and raw. I recognized that tone of voice. It sounded a lot like mine. My mouth twisted upward. It wasn’t out of mirth. “We should start a club.”
She reached her hands into the racks and dragged her fingertips across the surface of every single package, touching everything, coffin nails warping the plastic wrap as she dragged them along. It was a motion I associated with selecting tarot cards, but on Daisy, the typical tarot introspection was replaced with something ravenous and canine.
The lights dropped, and the screen lit up. And they say there’s no such thing as love at first sight.
Down again and sigils dripped down walls, up again and deer were dead in the swimming pool.
“Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here. It’s a prayer, really. Or a spell. She’s invoking magic to fill her and make her something other than what she is. Girls are supposed to be nice. Nice and soft and nurturing. She couldn’t stay that way if she was going to get what she wanted. She needed to be genderless and limitless.”
“I guess my point is that teenage girls aren’t supposed to be powerful, you know? Everybody hates teenage girls. They hate our bodies and hate us if we want to change them. They hate the things we’re supposed to like but hate it when we like other things even more, because that means we’re ruining their things. We’re somehow this great corrupting influence, even though we’ve barely got legal agency of our own. But the three of us—the four of us, counting you—we’re powerful. Maybe not in the ways that people are supposed to be, maybe in ways that people think are scary or hard to understand,
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I’m ambiguous, I wanted to say. I’m like you. Am I allowed to be like you?
“Don’t do that. Never do that. Don’t ever say you’re not beautiful, not ever, okay? Girls are just beautiful. That’s the way they are.”
Loud, brassy voices that sitcoms assign to happy, boring bodies in picnics and tennis practices, not to the bodies of boys who dragged girls into cars. Perhaps these weren’t separate categories.
The phone beeped insistently in my ear and my chin trembled. 911. That was a number! But it was a cop number. No fucking thanks! Boris raised me better than that.
Magic’s in the invocation, yeah? Well, really cool candles fucking help.
my dads once went to an auction where the only things on the block were “experimental taxidermy art.” Most of that auction was apparently too esoteric even for Boris, but they did settle on a Rat King, which now proudly sits atop a refrigerator circa 1952. (The fridge doesn’t work, so Boris gutted it and filled it with a stack of retro skin mags that I maybe borrow sometimes.)
But there was something in the look on Jing’s face. There was a sharpness, a nastiness that I admired. Something relatable. She looked feral, just like me. Well, not just like me. I’m an ugly, awful, nasty-looking hatchet-faced bruiser, and Jing could be Helen of Troy. But even so, her face felt like a mirror, and I saw myself more clearly than I ever had with glass. Her expression was brittle, jagged, practically begging to snap in half and cut someone.
Daisy could murder someone with a glance. Holy hell, I wanted that. I wanted to be gorgeous and reckless and legendary, or at least somebody people liked. I wanted the privilege of being mistaken for someone like her. I wanted to be her. No, I didn’t. I wanted to be the leather in her jacket. We could be despicable together.
He was habitually concerned for my well-being, which was both very sweet and massively inconvenient.
Fucking Christ, I was supposed to be Sideways the spooky lesbian weirdo. I had a fucking reputation to maintain, and it would not withstand a nickname like Lamby. Lamby. Goddamn it.
“You’re fucking flying, Daisy,” Jing continued. “We’re watching you fly. What a fucking story to tell. Behold Daisy Brink, who broke the law of gravity.” Yates’ chin trembled, but she shook herself off. Blinked a few times and said, “You’ve always been our flyer, Daisy. This is the highest you’ve gone yet. We’ve seen you fly at football games, at the top of a girl pyramid, where you belong. We’ve seen you fly before. But this? This is impressive, even for you. I’ve never seen you so close to the sun before.”
Some girls, like Yates over here”—I paused to jerk my chin at her and smirk—“like to send little hearts with simple messages. It’s like: are you gay or friendly?” “She could be gay and friendly,” Yates protested, and I snorted.
“Scapegracers,” I repeated. “It’s a bit archaic, I know. Means you’ve escaped the grace of God. It was up there with rascal for a while. Implied a particularly nasty kid. I like it.”
“Why the fuck would we call ourselves The Dental Damned?” I looked at her with bewilderment. “Wait. Seriously, Jing? Like. Google dental dam.” Sure enough, she pulled out her phone and typed away. Her face turned slightly red. Slowly, she closed her browser and slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Sideways. I need training on how to be gay. I’m missing key details.”
Damn, did hubris taste nice against my tongue.
Inside my head, Mr. Scratch said, I wanted to eat him alive.
There was ink in the grooves of my lungs, and it was acrid and harsh, but it kept them beating in time. Slow and easy, in and out. Breathe like a prizefighter. Broken ribs, but standing.
