There was Pierce, leaning toward Gabby for a kiss. And Gabby reaching her arms toward his chest, as though she wanted to pull him closer. . . .
Skylar was about to burst into the room—she couldn’t control herself—but then she saw that Gabby wasn’t pulling Pierce in, she was pushing him away. She stopped herself just in time to watch Gabby say, “No, I’m sorry. Pierce, I just don’t like you that way.”
She scurried away before either of them could see her. Blinded by disappointment, she stumbled down the stairs. Of course Pierce liked Gabby. Could anything be more obvious? She had to get out of here, but she didn’t know how she would get home. She couldn’t walk—it was at least five miles from Gabby’s house to hers, it was already after ten o’clock, and she was dressed in her ridiculous pajamas. Calling her aunt would be humiliating. She thought about calling Meg; she was certain that Meg wouldn’t judge her, no matter how stupid she felt.
As if on cue, her phone beeped from the tiny pocket in her shorts. It was a text from Meg: Hope ur having fun taking over Ascension’s social scene! Just remember—if they can have it all, so can u!
It reminded Skylar of what they’d talked about on that first day, in the ice cream shop.
I’d do anything to be one of them, Skylar had said.
Anything. And so she took a deep breath; planted a brave, giant, pageant-style smile on her face; and stayed.
CHAPTER NINE
As she left Gabby’s pajama party Em wrapped her silk robe tighter around her. The heat must have been cranked in there; the cold air was a shock. She felt bad taking off, but she was feeling too restless to enjoy it.
As she pulled up to her house, she glanced next door out of habit. JD’s Volvo was in his driveway, parked next to the Mustang, which had a tarp pulled over it. His metal toolbox was sitting out in the open. She shook her head. It wasn’t like JD to leave things lying around.
Upstairs, she put her long hair into a braid and sat down at her desk, which she was finally using for its assigned purpose, and not just for clothing storage. She looked for the millionth time toward JD’s window. The window where they’d once hung a string across to her window to transmit messages. The window where his blinds had been down for three weeks. Where his light was glowing warmly from behind the shade. She wanted to reach out and touch the glass.
The week had been quiet—no creepy messages left on her windshield, no deadly icicles launched by unseen demons. She’d spent much of the week driving around with Drea, listening to what Drea called “math rock”—long, intricate songs that switched gears frequently, never able to settle on one theme or rhythm—and waiting for the Furies to appear. But nothing happened. Em was starting to wonder if she could make the Furies disappear simply by the force of her will.
She surveyed the piles of books and photocopies and maps that she’d borrowed from Drea—their collection of disparate and confusing anecdotes. How was it possible to have so much information but so few answers?
She started flipping through the journal, rereading some old entries. A few days ago she’d made a list of everything she knew about the Furies. She was tracing the chain of events, to figure out when, and why, the Furies had suddenly appeared. This week Em had gone to the local library and tried to find evidence of the story Skylar had told—the one about three sisters burning in the Haunted Woods. On ancient microfiche, she’d found a mention of a fire in the early 1700s, set by townspeople, in which three “disreputable” local women died. She wondered if she should talk to Skylar’s aunt and try to find out more about this piece of Ascension’s history. But she was wary of digging deeper. The slightest slip could enrage the Furies even further. When she’d almost blurted out something to JD about what had happened that night at the Behemoth, the Furies had come back with a vengeance to torture her. She couldn’t put anyone else at risk. She had to do this herself.
Of course, in their most recent incarnation, the Furies seemed to have been drawn to Ascension to punish Chase. But was he the first? And why had they been drawn to punish him? Surely there’d been other sinners in Ascension before him. Em knew that the gap in her knowledge about the Furies spanned centuries between the goddesses’ origin and their current presence in town. Why had they come back now? On whose order? And what would it take to make them leave?
With a groan, she leaned forward in her chair, resting her head in her arms on the desk. She was tired, but she didn’t feel like sleeping. So she sat up, grabbed her journal and a pen, and started writing.
The poem came quickly. Images and sensations—snow, skin, the light in JD’s window, the words scrawled on her car, the feeling of being trapped in a cycle that was cruel and unfair—swirled together and landed on the page. She could tell this one was good.