I don’t approach Cameron. Instead, I sit under the tree in the courtyard, tracing a smelly chemical Sharpie over my tattoo. A dragon with a spiky tail and swirls of fire.
Chapter Two of Modern Witchcraft is all about signs from the dead. You get three signs if someone is contacting you from the afterlife: the Image, the Dream, and the Token.
A man in Oklahoma lost his wife to a serial killer. She sent him these three signs, over and over again, which he recorded carefully on his blog: the Image, the Dream, the Token. The Image, the Dream, the Token. Signs from the dead, he blogged, are really just signs from your own mind. It isn’t possible. They continued, in sets of three, until the man in Oklahoma finally called the cops. Surely someone was fucking with him.
The cops found him hanging from the ceiling fan, one of his wife’s old-lady nightgowns wrapped around his neck. From the placement of the noose, they confirmed it was not a suicide. But all the doors to the house were locked from the inside.
When I first read this chapter I was sitting in my bed, on top of a mountain of dirty T-shirts, reading by the light of my chamomile candle. Everything in my bedroom was suddenly a sign: My moon charts. Troll dolls with wiry pink hair. My obituary collection. My collection of rocks that look like other things (hearts, dogs, Jesus). The Image, the Dream, the Token. The Image: a visual representation of the deceased. The Dream: just as it sounds. And the Token: something of yours that the deceased has claimed for themselves. How can you be sure to recognize a sign when it comes? A fist knotted in my chest—a silly, paranoid fear.
My only reprieve: I’d never known someone who died.
The first magic spell I did was on Amy. I wanted her home from school so Ma wouldn’t notice if I cut class, so I mixed a bag of herbs and hid it in Amy’s laundry, just like Modern Witchcraft said to do. The next day, she woke up with a fever. I promised never to practice magic again. Of course, that only lasted so long.
The warning bell rings, and I leave the second half of my peanut-butter sandwich under the courtyard tree so the birds can pick at the remains. On my way out, I consider going over to Cameron’s table, playing out this unlikely scenario I’ve imagined. But real life doesn’t swell like that, in waves you can predict as they roll, as they peak. Neither does love. I don’t know how love goes, but my guess? Something else altogether. Avalanche.
Everyone talks about Zap too, of course. But by default, he isn’t as suspicious as Cameron—Zap is not awkward or greasy or small. No, Zap shines too bright for that sort of public contempt. In a year and a half, we’ll all be graduated, and Zap will be at some big college, playing soccer. Though I’ve vowed not to think about college until next year, when I have to—writing scholarships are hard to get, and Terry doesn’t make enough money to send me anywhere good—I find some relief in this image. We’ll all be in dorm rooms, drinking cheap beer, with shiny new lives. Maybe in the muddle of distance and time, everyone will remember Zap for who he really is.
I have witnessed Zap’s truest cruelty. I’ve seen the slate gray of him.
I’ve seen hatred in Zap Arnaud’s eyes—and I’ve deserved it all.
WHAT YOU WANT TO SAY BUT CAN’T WITHOUT BEING A DICK
A Screenplay by Jade Dixon-Burns
INT. JEFFERSON HIGH SCHOOL—MUSIC WING—AFTERNOON
Celly sits on a piano bench in the corner of the practice room, instruments strewn around the space. BOY (17, lanky and handsome) wipes the mouthpiece of his shiny trombone with a clean white rag.
Celly watches him.
CELLY
Remember when we were little, and heartbreak was something reserved for pop songs and dead pets?
Boy doesn’t react.
CELLY (CONT’D)
When we were so young and stupid, when we could spend all day exploring a patch of grass in an open field, digging for bugs—
BOY
I remember.
Celly waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t. Instead, Boy packs his trombone in its case, locking it away.
CELLY
You recognize me, don’t you? We’re still those kids. Sure, we do fewer whipped-cream-eating contests. Less whispering in each other’s ears. But it’s still us.
Boy looks back at her before he walks out of the room.
CELLY (CONT’D)
It will always be us.
Zap and Lucinda ended just before Christmas. Two months ago. At least, that was the word around school. They’d never been official—just rumors here and there—but Zap was free now. The girls talked about it in the locker room after gym class. I stayed in the corner, fighting to get my jeans over my legs, which were still damp from the shower. Heard she dumped him, someone said. She wouldn’t even tell him why.
Zap’s last class of the day was band. He plays the trombone. This is a new addition, a school requirement I think he secretly enjoys. Once, I saw sheet music sticking out of his backpack: a cover of a pop song for trombone. I imagined Zap sitting in his bedroom with a foldable music stand, lips vibrating against a frigid mouthpiece.
That day, I lingered in the music hallway, a textbook in my arms, neck craned like I was searching for someone. I wasn’t. Through the window of the practice room, Zap disassembled the trombone into a long, padded case, wiping out the mouthpiece with a clean white rag. I took a few deep breaths and clicked open the door, holding the textbook in front of me like an excuse.
“Hey,” I said. “You seen Emma?”
“Emma?” Zap asked. He folded the rag into the bell of his instrument. My heart, a tambourine.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Emma Kazinsky? Nah. She doesn’t have class here.”
“Oh.” I held the book up like an answer. It didn’t matter. Zap clipped his sheet music into a binder and picked up his trombone case by the handle, making for the door on the other side of the room. I sat timidly on the edge of a piano bench, the book limp next to my leg. The practice room smelled like brass and polish.
“How’ve you been?” I asked. The words came out too fast.
“Fine. You?”
It was so stupid, this half-formed plan I’d concocted.
“I heard what happened,” I said.
Zap already had one hand on the door, twenty feet away from me.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re okay,” I said.
He tilted his head to the side and squinted a little. He did this when he was angry and trying not to show it.
“Thanks,” he said.
He pushed open the door.
“Have a good one,” Zap said, like a host at a restaurant.
The bell of his trombone case banged against the wall as he left.
Don’t you remember! I wanted to call after him. Don’t you remember before we were old! The practice room was massive, empty but for the drums lined up against the wall, covered in tarps to keep the dust away. I ran my fingers over the ivory piano keys—too filled with shame, explosive and familiar, to make any sort of noise.