Legacy (22 page)

“No,” he said. “I know you wouldn’t hurt me. It’s what it would do to you.”

“You’re not making any sense, Peter.”

“Then let it go.” He turned his back to me. “Just go home and let it go, Katy. Please.”

I wiped the tears from my face. “Is it my mother?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Because I’m not her,” I said bitterly.

He took hold of my shoulders. “Katy, it isn’t—”

I flung his hands off me. “Look, I’m going, okay? I hope you’ll feel safer now.”

“You don’t understand,” he whispered.

“No, I don’t!” I shouted.

He held me again. I tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t let go. I slapped his face. He closed his eyes to the blow, but still he held me.

I sobbed.

Slowly he pulled me to him until my face rested against his chest. His heart was thudding, pumping fast, frightened, desperate. A pain deeper than the ocean welled inside me: his pain.
Oh, Peter, why do you keep this to yourself? Let me in. Let me in.

“Leave me my secrets,” he whispered. Then he lifted my chin and kissed me softly, deeply.

He released me for a moment, just long enough to look at me. To truly look at me. I felt as if I had come home.

“I need to let you go,” he said, stroking my hair as he pressed me against him. “I need to be strong enough.”

“You don’t have to let me go,” I said. “I want to be with you. Always. Just let me into your life, Peter.”

He made a sound—half laugh, half sob—and held me at arms’ length. “Coming into my life would be the worst thing that ever happened to you, Katy. Even seeing you like this is more dangerous than I can tell you.”

I was confused. “Dangerous how? Are you still afraid for Eric?”

“Afraid for Eric,” he repeated slowly.

“Afraid that I’d hurt him,” I said. “Because I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I know a lot of people here think there’s something wrong with me just because of what my mother did, but there isn’t, Peter. We’re not our parents. You have to believe me.”

He stared at me for a moment, then turned away with a mirthless laugh. “You think you’re at fault,” he said.

“Don’t . . . don’t you?”

He pulled me to him again, running his fingers through my hair, kissing the top of my head. “You’re everything I’ve always wanted,” he said. “I can’t let you get hurt. But that’s what’s going to happen if you stay with me.”

“But why, Peter? Who’s going to hurt me?”

He wrapped his arms around me. “I am,” he said quietly.

“Peter, this isn’t—”

“A long time ago I told you that I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

I softened. “I remember,” I said. “The day you caught me falling down the stairs.”

“I remember it too. And I meant what I said. But the only way I can protect you is to keep away from you.”

“Do you expect me to just take your word for something like that? What are you trying to do to me, Peter?”

“I’m trying to save your life,” he said. He yanked me close to him. “All right, open up to me, if it’s what you want,” he rasped. “Open your senses. Feel what’s inside me.” Then he kissed me again, hard, his lips pressing on mine, his hands pulling on my hair until slowly, like a dam bursting, my fragile
emotional membrane ripped open and I was in his mind, inside his skin, burning, gasping, screaming with the horror of it, the pain,
let me go, let me go, stop, please stop stop it stop
—

I screamed. My knees buckled. Peter lowered me to the ground, then took two steps backward so I could see his face.

“That’s what it’s like to be me,” he said.

I curled into a ball on the ground.
Don’t give in to it
, Miss P had said. Control the pain. But could Peter control it? Or did he live with this every day? It was the vision I’d had of him, only from the inside. A vision of living hell.

“Who’s doing this to you?” I croaked.

“I’ll take you home,” he said.

It was the last day of school.

The seniors had already graduated, so the halls felt deserted. Still, there was a lot going on. Finals dragged on until the last hour. I got an A on my paper on magic boxes. I included a drawing of the botte I’d found at the Shaw mansion. Mrs. Thwacket asked me to stay after class to talk to her about it. When I told her that it had burned along with all the other antiques in the house, she looked as if she was going to cry, even though it was only a mechanical botte and not a magic one.

In Existentialism in Fiction, we had a choice of essays. I picked “Perception vs. Reality,” which was kind of a crock, because perception pretty much
is
reality, especially for witches, who perceive a lot. I got an A in that, too, even though it was very hard to concentrate with Peter in the room. Every time I looked up, I saw him looking back at me, or looking away, pretending that he hadn’t been looking at me, which was what I was doing, too.

Ever since Beltane, he’d taken pains to stay as far away from me as possible. It must be getting easier for him, I thought bitterly.

How could I tell him that I didn’t want to stay away from him, whether it was for my own good or not? In the middle of my Perception vs. Reality essay, I wrote this:
How can you explain when bad is somehow good? When bad is somehow the best thing that ever happened
?

After I wrote it, I practically wore out my eraser trying to get rid of it. What was I thinking? Then I started writing like crazy just to cover it up.

But it was true. Being in Peter Shaw’s arms was the best thing that had ever happened in my life, and I didn’t care what happened next. I wanted to help him stop hurting, but if I couldn’t, as he insisted I couldn’t, then I wanted to hurt with him. I couldn’t stand for him to be alone while whatever demons he faced were eating him alive.

I wanted to help him,
needed
to help, but I just didn’t know how. Who could I even trust enough to tell what I knew? Certainly not Agnes or Gram. Like most of the witches in Whitfield, they hated Jeremiah Shaw, and distrusted anyone related to him. Even though Peter was as different from his great-uncle as day from night, they could never see that. And Miss P . . . well, she was sympathetic and open-minded, but frankly, I didn’t think she knew much about love. Especially not the kind of love that I was feeling for Peter.

It wasn’t enough for me anymore just to be Peter’s friend. I wanted to touch him, to have him touch me. I wanted to feel his mouth on mine again, his lips opening me up like a flower. If the pain hadn’t knocked me to the ground, I would have stayed there with him forever.

That’s how much I wanted him. How much I loved him. Miss P would never understand that.

But Peter did. He understood exactly what I would do, and he wouldn’t allow it.

He’d never moved back into his dorm. Whenever I called Hattie’s new house, I’d get the answering machine. When he didn’t ask me to Spring Fling, the end-of-year dance, I actually went by myself, thinking I might run into him, but he never showed up.

It was humiliating, especially the phone calls, because Hattie wasn’t talking to me, either. She couldn’t still be angry about the fire at the Shaw house. That was months ago, and besides, she knew we’d been telling the truth. Things must have been very serious with Eric.

Peter had as much as told me, and there were rumors all over Old Town that Eric was dying. No one said anything around Peter, of course, but every witch in Whitfield was waiting for the news that Agatha Ainsworth had finally accomplished what she’d set out to do ten years before. Aunt Agnes warned me outright not to go into any dark alleys.

“Not that the Families will attack you,” she said, trying not to worry me.

“But if someone else does, the Families wouldn’t help me.”

She didn’t answer, but I knew that was exactly what she meant. Gram wanted me to move back into her house, but I was probably safer at school than I would be in town, even though the girls in my dorm all seemed to have stopped speaking to me.

Collective memory. Whitfield had a long collective memory.

“Coming to the beach, Katy?” Verity asked after the shouting following the final bell had died down.

“No, I . . .”

“It’s a tradition,” she said. “Right after the picnic. You knew about that, didn’t you?”

The picnic was something I did know about, since it was a school function. Big tables were set up outside of Briggs Chapel, where the final assembly would take place.

Like everything else at Ainsworth, the assembly was a tradition-laden affair consisting mainly of an interminable procession of the faculty, resplendent in a variety of stoles, robes, and headgear, preceded by flag bearers who looked like heralds from the Middle Ages and followed by the Chancel Choir, which sang the school Alma mater while the big pipe organ boomed.

Big chapel assemblies like this were where you could really see the demarcation between the Muffies and the witches. The Muffy girls, seated through no conscious decision on the right side of the chapel, were dressed in Lilly Pulitzer sundresses and strappy high-heeled sandals, while on the other side the witches’ clothing ran the gamut from graveyard black to neon colors, from designers like Betsey Johnson or Anna Sui to original designs—kimono wraps or African tops over jeans and boots.

Parents were invited, but usually only the cowen attended. The magical families were all getting ready for the holiday festival that evening in the Meadow. It was Litha, the festival of Midsummer celebrating the summer solstice. The witches in school made jokes about how the last day of school (which always occurred on Litha) really
was
the longest day of the year.

I didn’t feel bad that my father wouldn’t be around for the
school ceremony, although he could have at least answered the invitation. I mean,
he
didn’t know that only the cowen parents took part. He didn’t even know what cowen were.

I tried to put it out of my mind. It wasn’t a big deal. In the first place, the main point of a Last Day of School celebration was so that parents who’d come a long distance to move their kids out of the dorms would have something to do. The local families—meaning the magical ones—usually waited for the cowen to clear out before tackling their kids’ rooms. I’d already asked Jonathan Carr to help me move my stuff in his truck, but he wouldn’t be able to make it until after work.

In chapel, fortunately, I ended up with the magical students. We sat by ourselves in the back like adults. It felt good being part of the cool group for once, even though I had to sit next to Becca Fowler, who spent the whole assembly whispering to everyone around her. Except me, of course, but I didn’t mind because Peter was on the other side of me.

I don’t know how that happened. I was walking into the pew, and he was just there. I think I froze when I saw him, because Becca started poking me and hissing at me to get moving, and then Peter smiled as if he were both embarrassed and pleased to see me.

I knew he wouldn’t hold my hand or anything like that in chapel. He’d said he didn’t want me in his life, and though I didn’t believe that, it would take more than the seating arrangement during assembly to change his mind. But just being near him, touching his clothes, smelling him, was enough. Almost enough.

I didn’t even register what anyone was saying. I just tried to be there with Peter, breathing the same air, feeling him being
next to me. It was over too soon. He looked at me once more before he left. He wasn’t smiling this time, and neither was I. It was just another good-bye.

Afterward, at the end-of-year picnic, everyone was given a styrofoam box containing a chicken salad sandwich and a little bag of chips, plus a cookie.

“So are you coming?” Verity asked.

“Coming where?”

She rolled her eyes. “To the beach. With Cheswick and me.” The two of them, like many of the local kids, had arranged to clear out their rooms after the Muffies had vacated. Some of the students were already packed and ready to roll right after chapel. Belinda Freeman, a Muffy and the heiress to the Freeman Jewelry fortune, was on her way to Ecuador, where she would be spending the summer working in the Doctors Without Borders program. Whitney Shannon was going to spend the summer working in a taffy shop on the Maryland shore. Her parents owned a house there, and a bunch of her friends were going to room together. Kendall Ames was going to spend two days in transit to meet his parents, who were both biologists, in Antarctica, where he’d help them tag seals.

It seemed like everyone had interesting things to do. Even Verity and Cheswick got jobs as tour guides at Disney World. I would have to line up something. I could cook, after all, but I knew that wherever I worked, it wouldn’t be anything like Hattie’s Kitchen. I missed it. Every time I walked past the Meadow, I felt my heart breaking a little more.

“Peter’s going,” Verity cajoled.

“Huh?”

“To Whitfield Bay. With us. Now.”

I looked up. Peter was standing beside Verity. I don’t know how long we stood there staring at each other.

I finally spoke. “Are you?” I asked slowly.

His eyes never leaving mine, he answered, “Yes.”

“Ouch,” Verity said, slipping out from between us. “Too hot for me here.”

We barely noticed her leaving. In that expanse of lawn, with people milling around everywhere, there was somehow just the two of us. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed.

“I didn’t take you to the dance,” he said.

“I know,” I answered.

“I wanted to.”

“But you didn’t want to touch me.”

He swallowed. “You know that’s not true,” he said at last, turning away. Breaking the spell.

“Then why do you want to see me now?”

“I want to see you every minute of every day,” he whispered, his face so close to mine that I could feel the heat from it. “But it’ll be safe to be with you now.” He smiled sadly. “At least in a crowd, I’d get to look at you.” He reached out to touch my hair, then thought better of it and pulled his hand back slowly.