“Skylar . . . ” Em started to say. But Lucy began talking again.
“The mouth . . . of the albino,” she said, clearly finding it increasingly difficult to catch her breath. “It’s the only way . . . to undo it.”
Undo it. It couldn’t be. . . . Did Lucy know something about the Furies? Was she one of the unlucky “patients” whom Em had read about, whose damaged minds made them susceptible to the Furies’ evil ramblings?
“Undo what?” Em said. She moved into a squat. Skylar glared at her, clearly wanting the interrogation to end, but Em ignored her. Her heart was beating very fast. “What do you mean, the albino?”
“It’s purity,” Lucy said. “Clean slate. Purity. Clean slate. Purity. Clean—” The words gave Em goose bumps from her scalp to her legs.
“Okay, we hear you, Luce,” Skylar said. Her eyes were wide with anguish.
“She knows about the Furies,” Em said aloud. “She hears them.”
“Ever since the accident, she gets riled up and I can’t calm her down.” Skylar shook her head, on the verge of tears. “You’re right. She somehow knows about them. Will ramble about them for hours, then just stop. Like a switch has been flipped in her brain. But nothing she says makes any sense. You have to believe me. I didn’t mean—I didn’t want this to happen.”
“I believe you,” Em said quietly.
So the Furies brought this on too, Em thought. Em remembered the passage in her book about how sometimes the brain was damaged in such a way as to make patients “open” to the voices of the Furies. They hear the Furies’ chatter, but they cannot channel it. Unlike prophets, these troubled souls have no direct links to the Furies’ energy. They are merely exposed to it and tormented by it. Em had wondered many times whether this was her punishment, her terrible fate: to be driven mad by the Furies. But now she knew that her punishment would be even worse.
The albino—what did that mean? Who was she referring to? Em’s breath came tight and fast. Whiteness. Purity. A clean slate, as Lucy had said. She tried to stay calm, even as a soaring sensation of hope fluttered through her chest.
Nora had said there might be a way to reverse it. A way to banish them. Something about purity.
Was there really some way to make the Furies think that their job here was done?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The early morning light shone hazily on the AHS athletic field, where the girls’ field hockey team was warming up on Sunday morning. JD made his way toward the bleachers, expecting to see Walt Feiffer’s pinched face staring back at him from the metal seats. As he climbed up the steps, he took in the expansive field, the smell of freshly cut grass and dew, and the sound of wooden sticks clacking against each other.
JD settled into a spot near the announcer’s booth, where he could see both entrances and wait for Walt to arrive. He had a view of the school, up on a small hill just to the east of the field.
It felt surreal that this could be JD’s life. It was like a film he’d once loved as a kid, but as he watched it now, everything felt forced—the script, the dialogue, the settings. As if everything he’d understood about the film no longer connected to the person he now was. Sitting there, feeling the cold metal through his jeans and overlooking the whole of his high school campus, JD thought about Chase and Zach, and how jealous he had been of that whole crowd. Of their clichéd high school experience, of the effortlessness with which it all came. He used to think he’d have to do something really freaking amazing in order to win Em’s heart. To stand out amid all that perfect normalcy.
But now, here he was—waiting to meet Walt Feiffer, who still hadn’t showed. And he was doing it for Em. To save her. All that crap from before . . . how he’d felt passed over. It was meaningless now. He could barely remember what it felt like to be that guy.
He rubbed his arms against his thick canvas jacket and checked his phone. 8:20. Drea’s dad was twenty minutes late. There was no answer when JD tried calling the Feiffers’ landline.
A whistle blast pierced the air and the field hockey girls moved from warm-ups into drills. The sun rose higher in the sky and JD stood up, craning his neck and wondering if he should go back out to the parking lot to look for Walt. Had he misunderstood their plan?
Mr. Feiffer had been drunk at both the funeral and his house. Had he drunk too much last night and passed out? There was a decent chance he had forgotten all about their meeting.