From Bad to Cursed (12 page)

Megan lifted her nose snootily. “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”

It wasn’t that I approved of the way Megan was defending Aralt. But when you loved someone—really loved them—was it really so wrong to want to give up everything for their sake?

You know, objectively speaking.

I’d never thought about it before. I studied the computer screen.

Kasey closed out of the browser. “I’m with Megan,” she said. “I think that might be enough for today.”

I was about to reply when we heard the rumbling of the garage door.

“Mom’s home!” I said. “Clear the history!”

I handed Megan her shirt, and she ran to the bathroom to change. Tashi had been right. None of my usual stain-removal methods had even come close to working.

Kasey’s fingers dashed around the keyboard. “I’m going to say I’ve been working on an English essay,” she said. “You go!”

I hurried to the living room and plunked down on the sofa seconds before Mom came in from the garage.

She reached the end of the hall and looked me up and down. “Honey, you’re not ready!”

“For what?” I asked.

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “Your interview! We really should have left already.”

Oh, right. Young Visionaries.

Megan waved good-bye and left, and I went back to my room and stared into my closet, at a total loss.

Finally, I dug out a ruffly red blouse Mom had given me for Christmas and a slim-fitting gray skirt one of her coworkers gave me (people who lose everything in a fire get a lot of hand-me-downs). I tucked the shirt in and, on impulse, wove a thin yellow belt of Megan’s through the belt loops. And I found another pair of Mrs. Wiley’s castoff shoes from the pile in the corner—dark brown leather pumps with little cutouts around the edges. I caught sight of myself in the mirror and decided the outfit was all right—but I couldn’t suppress the unease I felt about the greasy, awkward girl who was wearing it.

Did I really go around looking like this all the time? Had I only realized it by being surrounded by a mob of beautiful girls?

I went to the bathroom and brushed my hair back into a ponytail. Then I started experimenting with Kasey’s makeup. I was unfamiliar with the brushes and powders and bottles and palettes, but I bumbled my way through, trying to recall what I’d seen Megan do.

To my relief, with each stroke of the makeup brushes, my reflection became less offensive.

Mom came to the door of the bathroom and glanced at her watch in a very obvious way.

“Almost done,” I said.

“We’re already behind,” Mom said. “I’m very disappointed about this. You know how important punctuality is.”

“Can I borrow your dangly earrings with the roses?”

That caught her off-guard. “Yes—but I wish you’d hurry. Do you
really
need to wear three shades of eye shadow?”

“Mom,” I said, turning toward her. “You standing there nagging doesn’t help. Go get the earrings!”

She returned a second later and dropped them on the counter. “I’ll be in the kitchen whenever Your Highness is ready,” she said, walking away. “Something’s really gotten into you tonight, Alexis.”

You don’t know how right you are
, I thought, leaning in to blend my eye shadow.

“W
ARREN
? A
LEXIS
W
ARREN
?”

The receptionist directed me to a conference room with a long table in the center. On the far side were the five judges, including Farrin McAllister. On the near side was a single chair.

It looked like a firing squad.

I wondered if I was supposed to say hi to Farrin, or pretend we’d never met, or what. But as soon as I sat down, she spoke.

“I talked to Alexis when she dropped off her application,” she said, not looking up at me. “I was quite impressed with her work.”

I could tell that Farrin’s word carried weight among her fellow judges. A couple of them sat up straighter and looked at me almost like
I
was the one who needed to be impressed. The guy on the end even straightened his bow tie.

“So…tell us what photography means to you,” the woman in the middle said.

“What it means to me?” I repeated. Under the table, my hands fidgeted.

They waited.

What came to mind first were a bunch of bland platitudes: It means sharing my ideas with the world. It means creating a beautiful and exciting image. “I…don’t think it means anything.”

Good-bye, car, good-bye.

“I mean,” I said, and suddenly the answer sort of cobbled itself together in my head, “it’s not something I think about. I don’t do it to mean something. I just do it. It’s part of me.”

Farrin leaned closer. “What’s your favorite photograph?”

Now that I could answer without thinking. “‘Can of Peas,’ by Oscar Toller.”

“Tell us why,” she said.

“Oscar Toller was a photographer who found out he was going blind. So every day, he took a picture of something he wanted to remember. And one of his pictures was a can of peas on the kitchen counter. And the way the light hits it, it’s almost like there’s this halo.”

They were all watching me, and I wondered if I’d made a huge tactical error. “Can of Peas” wasn’t one of Oscar Toller’s more famous images.

Nobody said anything, so I faltered on. “And even though it’s just an ordinary tin can sitting on a kitchen counter, it makes me think that the real power of photography isn’t finding a new way to look at stuff, but like…showing other people how
I
see things.”

“You think the way you see the world is special?” the man in the bow tie asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably not. But even if it’s not…being able to share it with someone—that’s what’s special.”

I noticed that my portfolio was being passed down the line, and my heart fluttered. But the words kept coming, so I kept saying them. “I mean, a tin can is just a tin can to most people. But if it were the last one you’d ever see…it might be beautiful. Or sad. And you feel that when you look at that photo.”

There was a long silence. Suddenly I felt a layer of nervousness melt away. I wasn’t sorry for anything I thought about photography. I was just going to answer.

“At least, I do,” I said.

“You don’t work with digital?” one of the women asked. “Or color?”

“I had some color pictures,” I said. “But they were lost.”

She looked up, alarmed. “Losing stuff” probably wasn’t high on the list of intern qualifications.

“In a fire,” I added.

A few of the judges made sympathetic noises, and I realized that, if they were photographers, they understood what it would mean to lose everything.

“I might get a digital camera for Christmas,” I said.

“Until then, I just work in the darkroom.”

“At home?” someone asked.

“No, at Surrey Community College.” I shrugged. “I had one at home, but I lost it.”

A couple of them looked up at me and smiled, getting the joke.

“Have you taken classes?” the bow-tie man asked.

Surely one disastrous week didn’t count. “No.”

“Good for you,” one of the women muttered, and they all laughed.

“Do you think you could survive a summer making coffee and photocopies and answering phones?” someone else asked.

I looked straight into her eyes. “I’ve survived worse.”

They were quiet.

Then Farrin spoke. “One last thing.”

I looked up at her.

“Describe your work in one word,” she said.

The word slipped out of my mouth before I could stop myself: “Mine.”

* * *

As Mom and I snaked through the crowd of my competitors, I was glad I’d worn something unique—there was a punk boy with a Mohawk, a boy wearing a purple suit with a skinny tie, and a super-preppy girl who reminded me of Carter. Everybody else was dressed like they were going to a fancy dinner with their great aunts. They dissolved into the background.

Behind me, I heard the sound of the doors opening, and several sets of footsteps.

“We’ll be resuming after a five-minute break,” said the man with the bow tie, and the judges came filing out.

We’d made it out to the car when Mom remembered she’d left her book on the bench inside. She went back to get it. I stood, looking down at the recent calls list on my phone to see if Carter had tried to reach me. So I didn’t see Farrin approach.

“‘Can of Peas,’” she said. “Really?”

I nearly dropped my phone.

“You don’t like it?” I managed to ask.

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” she said, smiling like the Mona Lisa. “We asked
you
the question.”

“I love it,” I said. “I don’t know how to put it into words.”

“That’s not your job,” she said. “You’re a photographer. But yes, I love it too.”

I tried to smile back, but I’m pretty sure it came out as a lopsided smirk.

“You should wear your hair back more often,” Farrin said. “You have good facial planes.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying not to blush.

It didn’t matter, though—Farrin wasn’t looking at my face anymore.

“Let me see your hand,” she said, her voice hushed.

I lifted my right hand for inspection, thinking maybe there was some sort of ideal camera-holding bone structure.

Farrin touched my wrist and looked at me.

“I knew there was something about you,” she said. “But I would never have guessed…”

She let go of my hand, and I stuck it in my pocket.

“You don’t have a darkroom at home?” she asked.

I shook my head.

Mom was on her way back, close enough to be watching with intense curiosity.

“Please,” Farrin said. “Feel free to come here and use mine. Anytime.”

She took off, as excited as a kid getting saddled up for a pony ride, and all I could do was stand there and try to keep my jaw off the ground.

“What on earth was that all about?” Mom asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.

Either I had the best camera hands west of the Mississippi, or Farrin had been waiting a long time to find someone who liked “Can of Peas” as much as she did.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
my skin looked as splotchy as a mud-spattered car, and I could see dark circles under my eyes, no matter how much concealer I used. My face seemed wider and my features seemed flat and somehow…swinelike.

Kasey stopped at the bathroom door and watched me studying myself. “Lexi,” she said, her voice cautious, “what are you doing?”

I leaned in to look closer, and immediately regretted it. My pores looked as big as craters. “Did it suddenly get more humid this week?” I asked. “Do I look bloated to you?”

“No.” She stood next to me. “You look perfectly fine. Same as usual.”

“So I’m usually a troll?” I asked. “Good to know.”

Megan picked us up, as petite and perfect as ever, making me feel even worse about myself. But after we parked, she flipped her visor down and began frantically primping.

“Megan, please,” I said. She looked a million times better than I did. For her to pretend she didn’t was actually a little insulting.

“I’m a gorgon,” she answered, using her pinkie finger to touch up the gloss at the corners of her lips.

If she was a gorgon—
note to self, look up “gorgon”
—what did that make me?

When she finally felt presentable, we went inside. Walking through the halls of the school was like torture, with the sheen of the fluorescent hall lights reflecting off my bulbous nose.

I sat down next to Carter on the courtyard wall.

“I’m really sorry about yesterday,” he said. “I overreacted.”

God, that was only yesterday? I felt like I’d lived a month since then. I could hardly even remember why we’d fought. “Me too.”

“We should go out to dinner tomorrow,” he said. “I’d say tonight, but I have therapy.”

“Okay,” I said, but then I remembered—there was a club meeting every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. “Actually, I don’t think I can. I have a…thing.”

He looked up. “What kind of a thing?”

I didn’t want to say it was the Sunshine Club and ruin our delicate peace.

“A dentist appointment,” I said. “Maybe Thursday?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That should be fine.”

“How was your party?” I asked, eager to change the subject.

“Oh my God,” he said, reflexively reaching up and covering his ears. “
Shrill.
Those girls are nice, but when they get excited, they do this screaming thing.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” I said, leaning my head on his shoulder.

He laughed. “I’ll bet you are.”

And I knew we were good again.

For the rest of the day, I was so overwhelmed with relief that I couldn’t even get upset about my greasy face or my disproportionate feet or the scaly skin on the back of my hands. I sat next to Carter at lunch and focused on how good it felt to be forgiven, and how great he was for caring about me despite all of my very obvious shortcomings.

Kasey stood in my doorway, a strange look on her face. “Want to do some research?”

I sighed and sat up. “What hopeless cause are we Googling today?”

She didn’t answer. And instead of turning down the hall to our parents’ room, she went back to hers. I followed her.

“Kasey?” I asked. “What are you doing? Did you bring Mom’s computer in here?”

Kasey sat on the floor. “No,” she said. “We’re not using the computer.”

She reached under the dust ruffle and pulled out a Ouija board.

“We’re asking Elspeth.”

“What?” I asked. “No way! Where did you even get that thing?”

“Lexi, she knew about the
libris exanimus
. She might know more. She tried to warn us—she wants to help.”

“But she could be lying, for all we know!”

“We’re just looking for information,” Kasey said. “We don’t have to do what she says.” She pointed to a spot on the carpet. “Sit.”

Despite my reservations, the idea of maybe getting some real answers was tempting. So I sat and let my fingers rest on the planchette next to Kasey’s.

She looked at me. “What do we say? I’ve never done this before.”

I leaned over. “Um…hello? We’re looking for Elspeth?” I looked up at Kasey, who shrugged. “It’s Alexis and Kasey Warren from Surrey, California?”

Kasey sighed. “Somehow I don’t think that’s going to work.”

“Maybe there are multiple Elspeths,” I said. “Maybe one lives in Lydia’s board and one lives in this one.”

Kasey shook her head. “Don’t make jokes.”

My fingers lurched.

Kasey and I looked at each other as the pointer began to move across the board.

“For the record, I really don’t like doing this,” I said. “And I don’t like you doing it. I think we should find another way.”

“Stay,” Kasey said, her voice shaking.

“What?”

“That’s what she just spelled—
stay
.”

My stomach churned. We already had one supernatural problem. Wouldn’t inviting Elspeth back potentially make things twice as bad?

We still had two options: stay, or leave. I was leaning heavily toward
leave
, but Kasey swallowed hard and charged ahead.

“Elspeth, we need your help,” she said. “Can you tell us about Aralt?”

For a long, tense minute, there was no response.

This is useless.

But then the pointer began to move. We awkwardly tried to keep our fingers steady.

Utterly pointless. A waste of time.

I looked up at Kasey, her eyes wide and afraid, stretching her upper body to allow the planchette to travel across the board.

What kind of fool would think you could solve a ghost problem with another ghost?

T-R-Y

The movement was agonizingly slow, like watching a little old lady cross the street on the “Don’t Walk” signal. My frustration grew until I was on the verge of pulling my fingers away and telling Kasey I was done.

Without warning, the pointer jerked out from under our hands.

It moved fine—better, actually—without our help. I huddled close to my sister, gripping her elbow.

A-G-A-N

“Try what again?” I said, slumping back. I didn’t
want
to try again. I wanted to stop this, opening doors we didn’t know how to shut. Inviting trouble for ourselves.

She could be dangerous. We have no reason to trust her.

N-O-J-U-S-T-T-E-A-S-I-N-G

“See?” I said aloud, even though I hadn’t actually voiced any of my doubts.

“No, just teasing,” Kasey read. She sat back on her heels. “So…
don’t
try again?”

“Wow, Elspeth, how incredibly helpful,” I said, patting the pointer as if it were a dog.

Kasey slapped my hand. “Be nice!”

“I don’t want to be nice,” I said, feeling my face begin to flush. “She’s messing with us, Kasey!”

“I’m sure she can explain,” Kasey said, shifting her body slightly away from me. “Elspeth, please tell us something so we’ll know you’re on our side.”

“Like she couldn’t just lie,” I sniffed, crossing my arms and turning away.

But as she began spelling again, I turned back.

A-B-A-N

Staring down at it, I realized that I was holding my breath, bracing for some sort of impact. And then, before I could stop myself, all of that energy focused into a little bomb of anger, and I brought my fist down on top of the pointer.

Kasey gasped. “Why’d you do that, Lexi?”

Her eyes were wide, wary.

“I don’t know,” I said. Another flush was spreading through my cheeks, but this one was embarrassment. Avoiding my sister’s eyes, I focused on collecting dust bunnies from the edge of her bed skirt. “I guess I’m tired of being yanked around.”

“She wasn’t yanking us around—she was giving us answers! To questions we asked! And now she’s gone.”

Kasey flopped sideways onto the carpet. I turned away, just in time to hear her inhale sharply. “
Lexi,
what’s going on with the board?”

I looked down at it. Seeping out of its seams, almost like an oozing wound, was a thick black goo, chalky and opaque.

“What is that?” Kasey asked. She started to reach her hand toward it, but I grabbed her arm.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But don’t touch it.”

As the black stuff reached the edge of the planchette, the little wooden piece gave a startled jolt and tried to move away. It struggled to get across the board, but with a sizzling sound, the substance bubbled up and covered it completely. It was like one of those nature shows where the crocodile grabs a zebra at the watering hole. Kasey and I watched breathlessly as all of the blackness on the board converged on the big blob in the center. It pulsed lightly, like it was breathing, and then made another furious bubbling sound and evaporated, revealing the undamaged pointer.

Kasey reached down and touched it timidly. “Elspeth?”

She tried a few more times, but Elspeth was gone.

“What was that?” Kasey asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. But there
was
something familiar about it. The way it absorbed light absolutely, without any luminance of its own. The creature in Lakewood had been that same kind of shadowy black. I almost said something, but Kasey spoke first.

“I hope she’s okay.” Kasey stared down at the lifeless planchette. “That kind of looked like it hurt.”

I was relieved when she began to box up the Ouija board.

Elspeth wasn’t helpful, anyway—
another gut feeling.

“I’m not sure if it’s worth it, to be honest,” I said. “She was just joking around! She even said so. And we don’t want to know what happens if more of that black stuff shows up.”

Kasey shook her head slowly. “No,” she said. “I guess not.” She carried the box to her closet and buried it under a pile of clutter.

My childish anger had melted away, leaving me feeling slightly guilty. “Anything else you want to try?”

She shook her head and looked up from behind her hair. “I think I’m done for the day.”

My heart began to flutter in my chest. “That’s too bad,” I said.

But it was a lie.

Because something inside of me was glad.