Even though I’d gotten this all from a book, and there’s no such thing as real-life death spells, and I never believed it would work, I didn’t, I swear I didn’t—when I opened my eyes, it was there. Fear. Singular and inexplicable.
I didn’t properly disassemble the circle. I jumped out instead, childishly scared, and flicked on my bedroom lights. The scene looked almost casual in the glow of the overhead lamp. As I blew out the candles, wax dripped into herbs and everything seeped into the carpet, thyme and salt and hot wax all tangled in singed plastic fibers. I kicked down the altar. Shoved everything into a black garbage bag, which I stuck under my bed and immediately tried to forget.
This sick sinking overcame me, like I’d proven to myself what Zap had already said: You are a disposable girl. Temporary. A mess of skin and lard over thinning, brittle bones.
Two hours after the dream, I’m eating cornflakes cross-legged on the couch, listening to Ma and Amy fight about Amy’s eye makeup. Just a little darker on the top lids, Ma is saying, and Amy’s saying, Do you want me to look like a slut? Mornings like these, I’m thankful that I am not Amy. Amy is Ma’s Barbie doll, a mannequin for Ma’s regret about her worry lines and all those cigarettes she smokes.
Miracle is, no matter how Ma dresses me, I’ll never look how she wants.
In fact, she has never even tried.
It has been like this for as long as I can remember: Ma sipping wine from three o’clock onwards. Me and Amy tiptoeing around upstairs, daring to come close only when Ma calls for us, a predator luring in her prey.
When we were little, it was only me. Now, reliably, it’s only me. But when Amy was in the second grade, she gained weight—the usual little-girl pudge around the middle. And for those few years, it was her, too.
It was always worse after we’d been at Lex and Lucinda’s house. The place turned Ma into a raging, spitting monster: the Hayes girls and their golden hair, the Hayes girls and their Popsicle-stick thighs, the Hayes girls and the Lysol house they inhabited, with hospital corners and dimness settings for the dining-room chandelier. Ma would pick us up, chatting amiably with Missy Hayes in the front hall as we tied our shoes. She’d bring us home—back to the kitchen floor covered in Saltine crumbs from her own midnight snack, to the triangles of hardened microwaveable pizza, to the half-full glasses of wine she’d left on the counter for days, rotting sticky. Ma would look down at us, her flabby little offspring, the both of us round and bucktoothed—even Amy, with her pretty red hair.
Ma would pour herself an afternoon glass, stewing and fuming while Amy and I huddled upstairs, awaiting the shrill screech of her call. Girls! she’d finally yell. Get down here!
One Saturday, Lex Hayes won the third-grade gymnastics tournament. The judges released the scores, and Lucinda clapped and hollered while Mrs. Hayes filmed, both of them teary when Lex came down from the podium with a heavy plastic medal around her neck. They were so proud. Amy and Lex jumped around and hugged, like winning a third-grade gymnastics tournament was equivalent to an Olympic gold.
When Ma called up the stairs that day, Amy was tense under the blankets in my bed, still wearing her expensive, rhinestoned leotard, hair pulled into a rock-solid hairspray bun. Clumpy mascara lashes. Girls! Ma shrieked.
“Stay,” I told Amy, and I locked the door behind me before easing down the stairs, a doomed boxer walking into the ring.
“Where’s your sister?” Ma asked. She’d polished off half the bottle of Barefoot Chardonnay, and she swirled the stem of the wineglass along the grainy faux-marble counter.
“Upstairs,” I said.
“Go get her.”
“She’s tired.”
When Ma stood up, I took a few criminal steps backwards. Instinct. Of course Ma noticed: she wasn’t quick, but she was strong, and since I’d locked Amy in my bedroom, there was nowhere to go. Amy’s door didn’t shut all the way, and the bathroom didn’t have a lock. So when Ma said, Stop right there, I did.
She sidled right up to me, wineglass in hand. Dragged one long plastic nail down my cheek, so hard she’d leave a scratch that would stay all night but disappear by morning. Ma pinched my chin between her thumb and her finger like a vet inspecting a sick dog’s teeth.
“Lost,” she murmured, breath foul and reeking. “You’re a lost cause.”
Ma swigged and gulped. Drained the glass.
“Your sister, though. Your sister, with that pretty red hair. Get her down here.”
“No,” I said, as I closed my eyes—
Ma socked me in the stomach so hard I doubled over, her fist a freight train. As I gasped, winded, Ma pushed past me and started up the stairs.
I don’t remember the next part. Only the aftermath: somehow, with the air knocked from my insides, I jolted after Ma up the stairs, hooked my hands onto her shirt, and yanked her backwards.
The wineglass went down first. It rolled down each carpeted step in slow motion, shattering at the foot of the stairs. A slice of glass embedded itself between my heel and the floor, but I did not have time to feel pain—only to jump aside as Ma came tumbling past me.
She looked like a rag doll, a small, shrieking bundle of thrift-store designer clothes, as she flipped, neck over head over waist over legs, all the way down the stairs.
“Stay!” I screamed to Amy, who had come running at the sound. She stood at the edge of the landing, sparkly leotard tucked up against her right butt cheek in a wedgie. “Stay right there.”
But Amy didn’t need to be cautious, or afraid: Ma was lying seven steps down, with a bruised collarbone and a broken wrist, looking up at me with shocked and furious eyes. Like I was the devil incarnate. And for the first time, I wondered if maybe I was—if maybe this was the only worldly gift I’d been given.
Now, Amy stomps in on high heels and turns on the TV. She sits in the armchair across from me and gnaws on a Pop-Tart. Crumbs of frosting stick in her lip gloss.
“The investigation continues as the sweep of the crime scene wraps up,” a shiny reporter says. “In a statement from the Broomsville police chief, we’ve learned they have substantial leads. He revealed nothing further.”
A photo of Lucinda appears. The same photo they’ve been showing since she died—the yearbook picture.
“Change it,” I say.
“No,” Amy whines.
I grab the remote, flick one channel up.
People hanging from rafters. A documentary about the Salem witch trials. It’s February 1692, and more than two hundred people have been accused of practicing the Devil’s magic.
Two more channels up, a Spanish-language soap opera. One busty woman screams at another.
“You killed her!” she shrieks. “You killed her!”
I click the TV off. A dusty quiet.
“What the hell?” Amy says. “I wanted to watch that.”
I don’t even bother bringing my backpack. I stomp out of the house and slam the front door behind me.