From Bad to Cursed (24 page)

It’s a short-term thing. It’ll be over soon.

For a moment he glanced away, but then his expression turned hazy.

And I hope that, when it’s over, you can forgive me.

“And I hope that—” I stopped.

Those words would draw Carter back to me like a cat to a bowl of cream, have him fawning over me and following me around and carrying my bag and hanging on my every word, the perfect devoted boyfriend. All I had to do was open my mouth and speak them.

—
when it’s over, you can forgive me.

“What do you hope?” Carter asked, tracing my cheekbone with his finger.

Sure, I could get Carter back. If I swallowed my pride and recited a bunch of wimpy, lying apologies.

Was the Sunshine Club stupid? Yes. Dangerous? Yes. Was it a huge mistake? Yes. Yes to everything. Except the part where had to I play sick mind games to earn Carter’s love.

I jumped to my feet. “I have to go.”

“No, Lex, wait!” He scrambled to his feet behind me, but he headed for the bridge. I just hiked up my skirt and ran for the ditch, taking a huge leap, utterly confident that I would land neatly on the other side.

My purse made it.

But I didn’t. Halfway across, my confidence abandoned me like an octopus letting go of a fish, and I hit the edge of the far bank and splashed backward into the water, landing hard on my backside.

“Lex!” Carter called, running over.

I hauled myself onto the grass, refusing to take his hand or look up at him.

“What were you thinking?” he asked. “That’s a seven-foot jump!”

My whole body shook with anger and humiliation. I pushed my wet hair away from my eyes and realized with horror that I was crying.

He hovered over me, a helpless onlooker. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

And then the voice filled my head again.

I’m sorry I’ve been acting so strangely. I know I’m not being the girlfriend you deserve, but—

“No!” I said, turning my face and trying to rub the tearstains away. “Stop it!”

Stunned, Carter backed away.

If you just give me a chance, I’ll show you that I can be worthy of your love—

Forgetting to care about my own appearance, I stared in horror at Carter’s. And he stared back, his expression teetering on the edge of utter devastation.

There was no way to separate him from the voice. No way to be around him and turn off Aralt’s constant coaxing in my head.

The only way to keep Aralt from controlling my thoughts and feelings was to leave Carter behind.

“Please don’t,” I said. “I don’t need your pity.”

My words cut him to the quick. “Lex, I just want to help you.” He looked around helplessly. “We’re supposed to be a team.”

“No,” I said, backing away. “We’re not. We can’t—there’s no more team. There’s no ‘us.’ Stay away from me…please, just stay away from me.”

I turned around and walked away, putting one foot in front of the other, thanking God I felt too numb to feel sad or scared—to feel anything at all.

M
EGAN CAME TO THE PARK
and picked me up. She was so distracted that she didn’t even ask if I was okay. Instead I asked her if
she
was okay.

She checked her mirrors, like there might be someone tailing us. “No,” she said. “I talked to Mimi. She rear-ended some guy on the way home, and it took three girls to drag her away so she wouldn’t kill him. And Monika and Paige were standing in the hall and being super mean to all the freshman girls—calling them horrible names. Lydia tripped one girl and threatened to beat her up if she told anybody. And Tashi
quit
. You can’t just quit!”

“Tell me about it,” I said. It was all I had the energy to say. Then I noticed that she’d hung a left instead of a right. “Where are you going?”

“My house. We’re having an emergency meeting.”

Oh, for the love of God. I’d just broken up with my boyfriend. The very last thing on a list of fifty things I didn’t feel like doing would be going to a Sunshine Club meeting.

“Everyone’s going out of their minds,” Megan said. “I don’t get it. Did Tashi leave because she knew this was going to happen? Why isn’t Aralt helping us?”

She was right, of course. Everything was spiraling out of control. Somehow Aralt had packed up and left us flailing.

It had to stop soon, or someone could get seriously hurt.

Betterment was a zoo. At one point it turned into a shouting match.

I got called out eight times. Not the least of my offenses was thoughtlessly falling in a ditch before an unplanned Sunshine Club meeting. There was also my unwillingness to trust Aralt in the matter of Emily, which came from Emily herself, with her head covered in a short blond wig; the way I’d skipped Monika’s house over the weekend; the way I’d been absent from the courtyard before school; and so on…I nodded, nodded, nodded, and apologized too many times to count. We all did. We were all guilty of something.

Finally we moved on to the matter of Tashi.

Lydia got up and calmly recounted her conversation with Tashi, in which Tashi had decided that the Sunshine Club wasn’t right for her and she was going to leave town.

Could it be true? Could Tashi just decide to leave Aralt behind? Was that why she’d been scared, because he didn’t want her to go? And maybe that was what caused Aralt to start freaking out.

Part of me figured, well, if somebody wants out, the sunny thing to do would be to let them go, right?

But I was apparently alone in that line of thinking.

“She can’t quit!” Mimi said. “It’s so completely disrespectful! Just take Aralt’s gifts and leave? No wonder he’s angry. You can’t blame him!”

“It’s like she knows all of our secrets,” Monika said. “She’s exploiting us. She might even be telling other people our private business!”

Even Lydia hadn’t expected such a violent response. I could tell by the way she backed out of the discussion and stood silently, looking from person to person.

Emily straightened her wig and stood up, a concerned look on her face. “I think we need to contact Tashi, reason with her. Say we want her to come back.”

Inwardly, I sighed with relief. Finally, someone was being sensible.

“And if she doesn’t want to?” Megan asked.

“What do you mean?” Emily’s soft eyes hardened. “She doesn’t have a choice.”

“Listen,” Adrienne said. “We know she’s out there. So Aralt can help us find her. And then we’ll…bring her back. And help her see the error of her ways. Her disloyalty.”

“We’ll better her,” Paige said. “We’ll better her so much she’ll never run away again.”

Emily’s mouth curled into an ugly smirk. “She’ll learn that you can’t leave Aralt.”

I raised my hand. “Why do we have to worry about Tashi?” I asked. “Why can’t we just graduate?”

Adrienne went all deer-in-the-headlights, and Lydia took over.

“We can,” she said. “Soon. But we’re just ironing out one little wrinkle.”

Everyone groaned, and Adrienne looked around anxiously. “If anyone knows of any prospective new members…”

“Are you kidding? No one wants to join
now
,” Mimi said. “Not after all the weird stuff.”

“I thought we had enough people!” Paige protested.

Lydia’s smile superglued itself to her face. “So did we,” she said.

And then it hit me:

They were counting Kasey. If we really needed twenty-two people to graduate, my sister was the wrench in the machine.

My eyes cut sharply over to meet my sister’s. Then I looked around.

From her spot on the bed, Megan was watching us both.

“So if we got Tashi back,” Monika said, “that would work?”

“I guess,” Lydia said. “But in the meantime, everyone focus on recruiting.”

“And let this be a reminder to us all,” Adrienne said. “In case anyone is ever tempted. This situation proves that you can’t just desert Aralt.”

“And if you try,” Emily said, “you can
die
, for all we care.”

“This is ridiculous,” Kasey said, following so close she was practically on top of me. “You can’t just leave me behind! I’m not a helpless little kid.”

“You don’t need to be spending any extra time around Sunshine Club members,” I said. “The last thing we need is for people to figure out that you’re a filthy traitor.”

Kasey’s mouth fell open.

“Joking,” I said.

“
Not
funny.”

“I’ll think of something funnier on the road,” I said, grabbing Mom’s car keys from the hook, “and tell it to you when I get home.”

* * *

I pounded on the door. Adrienne opened it, fully made-up and dressed to the nines.

“Alexis? What’s wrong?”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“What do you mean?”

And then I realized that this was just how she dressed now. How we all dressed now.

“Never mind. I was hoping we could talk,” I said. “About Aralt.”

Every Sunshine Club girl’s favorite topic. Her eyes lit up, and she led me over to the dinner table.

“Where did you get the book?” I asked.

The lights turned off. The glow faded. She mashed her lips together and looked away.

“Adrienne?”

She fixed her eyes on the ceiling. “Here’s the thing, Alexis. I’m really not supposed to say.”

For all I knew, she really wasn’t. Maybe that was one of Aralt’s rules.

“Can I see it?”

She shook her head furiously. “No,” she said. “I’m sorry. You can’t.”

“I won’t touch it,” I said. “I just think it’s so pretty.”

She gave me an apologetic frown. “I know,” she said. “It totally is. Except…it’s not here.”

“Where is it?”

For a moment there was a flash of distrust across her features. But then she folded her hands and looked directly at me. “It’s at Lydia’s house.”

“But why?”

“Lydia thought it would be safer there.”

“Safer from what?” I asked.

Adrienne shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s her book, so she can decide.”

“I’m sorry, wait,” I said. “Did you say it’s
Lydia’s
book? Kasey told me it was yours.”

Her eyes went wide and she clapped both hands over her mouth.

“No, it’s fine,” I said. “I won’t tell her you said anything.”

“But I promised!” Adrienne said, drooping. “She’d just be so embarrassed if she knew I told anyone.”

“What’s there to be embarrassed about?”

“I don’t know. I think because it’s about, like, being popular and pretty, and Lydia never wanted people to think she cared about those things. But we wouldn’t judge her.…” She gave me a questioning glance.

That was my cue. “No, never!”

“I tried to tell her that, but she
seriously
didn’t want people to know it was her book. She asked me to say it was mine. And what did I care, you know? I knew I was a loser. Everybody knew.”

“So she brought it to your house and asked you to lie?” I asked.

“No, not to lie,” Adrienne said, reluctant to be disloyal. “Just…not to tell the truth.”

“But she didn’t think it would be safe here?” I took a chance. “Didn’t Tashi have it for a while? And she was a total stranger.”

“Tashi wasn’t a stranger to Lydia,” Adrienne said. She gave me a worried look. “Tashi was Lydia’s friend. They met at…” The worry in her eye sharpened to mild suspicion. “Why do you want to know any of this?”

“I want to know as much about Aralt as possible,” I said. “I don’t care how Lydia and Tashi met. I care about making sure the book is safe.”

“Of course,” Adrienne said. “I understand.”

I dialed it back and spent a few more minutes making polite small talk. But my body practically quivered with impatience to leave. Adrienne was no longer any use to me.

I had bigger fish to fry.

The Smalls’ house wasn’t just a little house in a shabby neighborhood. It was sloppy. There was something distasteful about the little signs of neglect—junk mail scattered on the porch. A trash bag leaning against the steps, waiting for who-knows-how-long to be taken all the way out.

I rang the doorbell, and a man answered it—Mr. Small. He wore a pair of jeans and a wrinkled plaid button-down shirt that looked like it had been caught in a dust storm.

“Hello,” he said, polite but baffled.

“Is Lydia home?” I asked.

He turned and stared at the empty room behind him. “She ran out.…Was she expecting you?”

“No,” I said. “I guess not.”

“Well, come on in. She just went to the store. She should be back soon.” He glanced at the clock. “I told her I’d need the car at nine thirty, so it shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes.”

He pointed me toward the tiny living room, where a huge, modern sofa was stuffed awkwardly against the wall. I recognized it from back when Lydia and I would watch TV and talk about how much we hated everyone. It was totally out of place in the new house.

“Can I get you a glass of water?” Mr. Small asked.

“No, thank you.” Noticing the way he kept glancing at the stairs, I said, “Don’t let me keep you. I’ll be fine waiting here.”

He hovered in the doorway. “Oh, well…if you don’t mind…”

“Please,” I said.

He smiled and went around a corner, and I heard thumping footfalls on the staircase.

All of a sudden, the silence was broken by a shock of loud music—a weird smooth jazzy sound, mixed with awkward melodic riffs—coming from a keyboard, by the sound of it.

The song went on and on. I couldn’t help but compare it to Tashi’s playing, so heartfelt, so passionate, with so much subtlety and emotion behind it. Mr. Small seemed to be banging the keys randomly with boxing gloves.

A few minutes later, the front door opened with a creak, and a disheveled Lydia came in, arms loaded up with bulging grocery bags. She stopped just inside the door and looked up at the ceiling, taking in the music.

“Oh,
come on
,” she muttered.

Then she noticed me.

Her face turned bright pink, like I’d been digging through her underwear drawer. She dropped her bags and raced out of the room. The keyboard playing stopped abruptly, and the sound of Lydia’s outraged voice blasted down from upstairs.

A minute later, she returned, trying incredibly hard to stay in control.

“So sorry about that.…Give me one sec to put this stuff away.” The whites of her eyes showed over the tops of her irises, making her look completely rabid-chipmunk insane. She half-carried, half-dragged the bags out of sight, and after a fair amount of clanking and thumping, she came back and sat, her hands folded in her lap. “Now. How can I help you?”

I noticed a thick layer of concealer under her eyes. And her lipstick leached away from her mouth in tiny red rivers. She was tired.

“Something’s going on, Lyd,” I said. “This whole Tashi thing is messed up.”

“What are we supposed to do about it?” she asked. “Honestly, Alexis. Face reality. I don’t like it either, but she’s gone.”

“Yes, but where did she go? Didn’t she say anything to you?”

“When would she have done that?”

“When she told you she was leaving. When she gave you the book.”

She looked at me blankly.

“I know it’s here, okay?”

She sighed and leaned back. “Tashi wasn’t who she claimed to be. She was totally using us. She walked up to me at the mall one day, all talky-talky-let’s-be-friends. We were hanging out, and she mentioned this book she had. She acted like it was something she’d picked up at a garage sale. She was lying, obviously.”

“But
you
brought her to the party,” I said. “
You
gave the book to Adrienne. And you took the oath.”

“I told you before,” she said, glaring, “I did it as a joke, okay? I was going to make fun of them for being naive. How was I supposed to know Aralt was so amazing?”

“Why did you tell Adrienne to pretend it wasn’t yours?”

“I never said that,” she said, shaking her head. “I asked her to say it was hers, not that it
wasn’t
mine. It’s not mine. It never was. It’s Tashi’s.”

“But now she’s gone, and she just left it here?”

There were footsteps on the stairs, and Mr. Small appeared. Over his clothes, he wore a black apron with
SCHNELKER’S HARDWARE
embroidered on the front.

“Going out tonight, Lyddie?” he asked, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “I’m working stock. Home before sunrise.”