Vicious Little Darlings (19 page)

25

T
he table is draped in heavy white linen and covered with votive candles surrounding a centerpiece of dried flowers, berries, and gourds. Maddy did this for me. I'm kind of touched.

She points to the blackened carcass sitting on the kitchen counter, still steaming, smoking up the room. “I burned it.”

“That's okay,” I tell her.

She cracks open the kitchen window and sits down at the dining table. “Cooking is a lot trickier than I thought. The bird was all wiggly. It wouldn't cooperate.” She points her chin toward the three large bowls on the table containing cranberry sauce, stuffing, and creamed corn. “So this is dinner.”

“It looks good,” I say, trying to sound optimistic. Maddy frowns. “Really,” I insist. I look back at the counter, at the mess of empty cans and boxes. Except for the burning turkey, the scene is a lot like Thanksgiving at Nana's: just the two of us and all this prepackaged food.

I sit down and load up my plate, though the last thing I feel like doing is eating. I force down a bite of stuffing. “Pretty good,” I say, and mean it.

“Really?” A smile appears on her lips.

“Yeah.”

“We have dessert too. Pumpkin pie. Don't worry—I didn't make it.”

I laugh and continue chewing, not really tasting anything. The chewing is good, it calms me and keeps me from thinking about Reed. I chew myself into a trance and barely hear Maddy when she begins sharing the latest gossip on Justin Timberlake.

After dinner, we blow out the candles and leave the kitchen as it is: a big, black, smoky mess.

The next morning, I wake up with a sore throat. I'm hot and I'm shivering and my whole body's shaking. Unbelievable. Thanks to my incredible psychosomatic powers, I've actually given myself the flu! But I'm not going to let it get me down or use it as an excuse to spend another day wallowing over Reed. I'll take two DayQuils and be just fine.

I shower, get dressed, and go with Maddy to the Hampstead Mall, also known as the “dead mall” for its lack of people and any decent stores. We take the bus and arrive at the mall twenty minutes later. There are at least fifty cars parked in front of JCPenney alone—which is amazing for the Hampstead. We go inside. Ignoring the grabby-handed Christmas shoppers, we head straight to Friendly's and share a banana split and fries. I miss Reed so much my ribs hurt. I miss his hair, his voice, his sexy half smile, his body, his brain, even his beat-up Nissan Sentra. So I eat and eat until I feel absolutely nothing.

For dinner, we order chicken tikka masala and saag paneer from India Palace, and eat it right out of the containers. Afterward, I lie on the couch. Maddy turns on the TV and plops down on the floor.

“There's nothing to do in this town,” she complains.

“We could go to Amherst. See if there are any cute guys.”

Maddy wrinkles her nose. “We don't need boys to have fun. We can have a lot more fun by ourselves.”

“Maybe we should try to get some work done,” I say.

“Oh, don't be good. Be bad with me.”

“I thought you wanted to get serious about school.”

“I do, but it's only Friday. We still have the whole weekend.” She sits up. There's a gleam in her eye. “Have you ever played with a Ouija board?”

“No.”

“Want to try it?”

I raise an eyebrow. “You actually have one?”

“Yeah.”

“Aren't they supposed to be kind of … evil?” My Lutheran teachers successfully brainwashed me into fearing Ouija boards.

“Depends what you ask them,” she says, giggling. “Just kidding. No, they're not evil.” She turns off the TV. “Be right back.”

While she's upstairs, I tell myself I have nothing to fear.

Maddy comes back downstairs with the Ouija board and a notebook. She removes the votive candles from the dining table and takes them to the red room, where she places them on the rug in a circle, large enough to surround both of us and the Ouija board, and, one by one, she lights them. Then she gets up to close the curtains, all but one. The moon, I notice, is theatrically bright tonight, outshining our candles.

While opening the window, Maddy says, “Let me know if you get too cold, but we need to keep this open to facilitate communication with the spirits.”

I roll my eyes and sit down next to her inside the circle.

She places the Ouija board between us. “Do you have a specific question you want to ask?”

I shrug. “No.” But there
is
something I want to ask. I want to ask if Reed still loves me, but I could never say this in front of Maddy. Besides, after her ominous tarot-card reading, I could definitely use a break from her psychic interventions.

“Well, think about it,” Maddy says. “I'll start.”

Suddenly I remember my teachers saying that disturbed people tend to attract disturbed spirits. With all the weird energy Maddy has, I can't help but worry about the kinds of spirits she'd attract. Bipolar spirits? Pathologically lying spirits? Are there such things? If so, Maddy would attract the craziest of them all.

“I'm going to make you a believer.” She puts her fingertips on the indicator and tells me to do the same. “Very lightly now, you barely want to touch it. Close your eyes and concentrate.”

I close my eyes and try to concentrate, not sure what I'm supposed to be concentrating on. After a few minutes, I still don't feel anything.

“I don't think I'm doing it right,” I tell her.

“It's not rocket science, Sarah. Relax.”

I take a deep breath and exhale.

“Okay, open your eyes. Let us begin. Spirit, tell us your name.”

Nothing happens. A minute passes. I yawn. Maddy keeps staring at the board.

And then, suddenly, the indicator moves. I can't believe it. It's actually moving! My hands tremble. Is Maddy guiding it? It doesn't feel like she is, but I can't really tell. All I know is that I'm not; I'm barely touching the thing.

The indicator moves to the letter K. Then A. And then X. Maddy writes the letters down in her notebook.

“Kax,” Maddy says. “That's a funny name. How old were you when you died, Kax?”

The indicator moves around in small, seemingly aimless circles, then stops on the number five. I still can't believe this is happening.

“Five? That's so sad. I'm sorry, Kax. How did you die?”

The indicator spells KAX again, then moves to I, D, E, N, and stops on T. Kaxident? Sounds like a brand of pain reliever or denture cleanser. Not so scary after all.

“Kaxident. Kaxident?” Maddy says, staring at the board. “What does that mean?”

She looks at me and I shrug.

“Wait. Ka axident.
Car accident.
Could that be it? Maybe she has a Boston accent,” Maddy says, her eyes glowing. “Kax died when she was five. That's why she can't spell. Is that right, Kax?”

The indicator moves to YES. I don't know what to feel, think, say. This is impossible. We can't actually be communicating with the spirit of a dead child. Yet it appears that we are. I feel a chill between my shoulder blades.

“Okay,” Maddy says quietly, “Sarah, you can ask a question now.”

A gust of wind blows through the window and half of the candles go out. My heart pounds. Maddy gets up to close the window, and I don't know why I do it, but I relight the candles. I'm scared shitless. I have the urge to run upstairs and dive under my covers. But I don't move.

Maddy comes back and puts her fingertips on the indicator. “Okay, go.”

I decide to test Maddy, to ask a trick question—a question that only
I
would know the answer to—so that I can find out if she's controlling the indicator. I place my fingertips on the indicator and say, “Kax, how old was I when I had the chicken pox?”

“You can't ask that kind of question,” says Maddy, looking a little nervous.

“Why not?”

“You're supposed to ask about the future, not the past.”

“Who says? I should be able to ask whatever I want. Kax, how old was I when I had the chicken pox?”

The indicator starts to move. It goes from N to V to R. NVR.

“Never,” Maddy says. “Is that true? You've never had the chicken pox?”

I nod, speechless. There's no way Maddy could have guessed the answer. Either she's truly psychic, or Kax is real. Could Kax be real?

“Now, for a serious question,” Maddy says. “Kax, when will I die?”

“Don't ask that.” I try to pull Maddy's hands off the board, but she pushes me away.

“I need to know. Tell me, Kax, when will I die?”

The indicator moves around quickly in wild circles. Only Maddy's fingers are touching the indicator now.

The indicator spells DI. My heart quickens.

“When?” Maddy repeats.

The indicator spells DI, again and again.

My whole body shakes. “Maddy, stop!”

“When, Kax?
When?
”

The indicator spells SUNE.

Soon?

Maddy doesn't move. Her whole body is still except for her eyes, which are shifting wildly across the board.

I jump up and flip on the lights. Maddy hugs her chest. With her back to me, she looks small and fragile. She's crying. I steel myself and walk toward her. I kneel down and gently rub her back.

“Don't leave me, Sarah,” she says. “Please don't leave me.”

“I'm not going anywhere. It was a stupid game. You can't take it seriously,” I say, though I'm not convinced.

“Spirits are real. They know things. Kax said ‘Soon.' I'm going to die soon.” She covers her face with her hands. “All this time I hoped my intuition was wrong. But I
am
going to die. You saw it—
die, die, die
.”

“We're all going to die someday,” I say weakly. “That's probably what she meant, not that you're going to die young.”

“She said soon.”

“Maddy, listen to me. You're going to have a long, healthy life. You are. You just have to believe it.”

“Do
you
believe it?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, do you believe in Ouija boards,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper.

“I don't know,” I mumble. “Maybe. I mean, I've never experienced anything like that before. We couldn't have imagined it, right? But maybe it's not what we think it is. Maybe we wanted so badly to see something that we made it happen.”

“Don't rationalize, Sarah. You saw what I saw. It was real.” She wipes her eyes on her sleeve. “There's something I have to tell you. It's something I've never told anyone, not even Agnes, and I'm only sharing it with you because I know I can trust you.” She meets my gaze; her eyes are solemn. “But first, you have to promise never to tell anyone.
Ever.
And you have to promise you won't think I'm crazy after I tell you.”

But I already think she's crazy. Would it be disingenuous of me to make a promise I've already broken?

“I promise,” I say.

Her jaw relaxes. “Remember when Agnes and I went to Vermont?”

I nod, and wonder if she's finally going to tell me about the Gypsy.

“Well, something strange happened on that trip, while we were in New York.” She looks away, then back. “I met a Gypsy lady in Chinatown. It was at night, right after dinner. Agnes and I were looking for a cab to take us back to the hotel, and I accidentally bumped into this Gypsy and knocked her bag off her shoulder.”

Yup, I know where this is going.

Maddy then repeats the story Agnes told me back in September. When she gets to the part about the reading, my ears perk up.

She lowers her voice. “The Gypsy took us back to her apartment and made me a cup of tea. I followed her into the den while Agnes waited for me in the living room. The den was dark and smelled like patchouli oil. After we sat down, she asked me to hold the cup in my hands and concentrate. Then she told me to drink the tea, leaving a few drops behind. When I was finished, she took the cup from me and swirled it around three times. I watched her dump the leaves into a saucer and study the remaining leaves that were stuck to the cup. She said she saw some unlucky things in my life, but that my parents were fine. They miss me, but I don't need to worry about them.”

“Did she tell you where they are?” I ask, feeling goose pimply all over.

Maddy considers this. “No. But she said they were in a safe place, and they were watching over me. Then she told me something really strange. She said the number twenty-one was a bad number for me. She said she saw a circle, which meant I was coming to the end of a cycle. And there was another circle, she said, a smaller one, which represented a circle of friends. One friend was new and the other was old.”

“She actually said that?”

“Yes.” Maddy pauses. “And then she warned me that one of my friends was insanely jealous, and one day she would turn against me.”

I cover my mouth.

“I know. It's crazy. I was totally shocked. I asked the Gypsy if there was anything I could do to prevent that friend from betraying me. She said no, that it was meant to happen. But she told me to be cautious anyway, to protect myself, and to ask my other friend for help. That's you, Sarah … get it? Agnes is going to turn against me and you're my only ally.”

“But Agnes would never betray you. You're all she cares about.”

“That's the problem! She cares too much. Her intensity is frightening. Who knows what she'd do if she were pushed to the edge.”

I rub my temple. “You really believe Agnes would betray you?”

“If I ever got closer to someone else,” Maddy says. “Agnes hated Sebastian. And she's always reminding me that
she's
my best friend, not you. She's so jealous of you. Anyway, there's more.” She exhales. “At the end of the reading, the Gypsy said I could ask her one question. So I asked her if I was going to die young. She got this pained look on her face, but she wouldn't answer me. She said she didn't know anything, but that even if she did, it was against the rules to say. But her expression said it all. Plus, she didn't tell me the opposite … She didn't tell me I was going to live to be ninety, which is what most fortune-tellers do, at least that's what I've heard. So, to me, that's just like saying yes.”