From Bad to Cursed (22 page)

T
HE GARAGE DOOR GAPED OPEN
.

A bright pink envelope was wedged between the front door and the frame.

As Kasey and I stood in the driveway and stared, a car pulled up in the road behind us.

“Excuse me, girls,” the driver said through the passenger window. “Is this your house?”

We shook our heads.

He leaned across the seat and held something out. Another bright pink envelope. The words
HOMEOWNERS’ ASSOCIATION CITATION
were printed across it in bold red letters. “Would you mind slipping this next to the other one?”

Kasey took it, nodding.

The guy glanced at the open door and shook his head, his eyes narrow with contempt. “Some people have no respect, you know?”

“It’s a shame,” I said automatically.

“Absolutely,” he said, raising his hand in an affable way. “See you later.”

I wondered if he would have been so nice to me with my pink hair.

“So she’s not home,” Kasey said.

“I guess not.” I knew the door leading from the garage to the hall was locked from inside. “Come on.”

Kasey came tripping behind me through the side yard and stopped short when she saw me unlatch the window. “This is illegal!”

Amazing how low on my priority list legality had sunk. I hoisted myself inside and extended a hand to my sister, who gazed around the empty house with a look of dread on her face.

First, I hit the button on the wall to close the garage door. Then I got the pink notices from the doorway and set them on the piano bench.

It was obvious that no one was home. We started looking around, checking every room, every closet.

I was in the master bedroom when my sister yelled out for me. I raced through the house to find her standing by the kitchen counter.

“What is that?” she asked, angling her head to look at something. “Is it blood?”

I leaned down to look at puddles of congealed dark liquid.

“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

I turned to get a paper towel and noticed that there was a small pile of trash on the floor—Tashi’s crumpled football game ticket, a used-up matchbook, and the wrapper from a package of ground beef.

“Why would there be blood on the counter?” Kasey asked, on the verge of freaking out. “Did someone hurt Tashi?”

And why would there be trash on the floor?

Someone had dumped it out and taken the bag. But what would they need the bag for?

“Excuse me,” I said, weaving around her.

I opened the fridge.

One of the shelves was completely bare, except for a few puddles of dried blood. Whoever it was—Tashi?—must have stacked packages of meat on the counter and then put them in the plastic bag and taken them away.

At least it wasn’t Tashi’s blood.

But she’d been scared. Scared enough to run? To take herself, the book, Aralt, and enough meat to last a few days? But where would she go?

My heart began to thump against my chest as I made my way back down the hall and into the master bedroom, where my suspicions were confirmed.

The closet was noticeably emptier. Half the shoes and most of the clothes on hangers were gone, although the dirty laundry was still piled up in the corner.

The book was gone, too.

Then I went into the bathroom, where my eye was drawn to the cup on the counter.

What I saw there stopped me short.

Because if Tashi had really gone away…

Why hadn’t she taken her toothbrush?

W
EDNESDAY MORNING
, you could tell something was different. Even though the Club converged in the courtyard as always, it didn’t feel like a normal day.

We were scattered where we’d been a unit, distracted where we’d been focused, jumpy where we’d been as tranquil as a herd of cows. There was a spark in the air, as if lightning had struck too close.

It lasted through lunch. Paige spilled yogurt all over herself, and our usual conversation was replaced by a miniature study group. It turns out Megan wasn’t the only one bombing quizzes.

After the bell rang, a group of us went to the bathroom together to touch up our lipstick. Emily and Mimi were next to me.

“What’s wrong with your hair, Em?” Mimi asked. “The back’s all…flattish.”

Emily reached up to touch her hair and then twisted to look at it. “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s…weird.” Mimi gave it a futile fluff and then shrugged. “You should fix it.”

Gradually, everyone else trickled out, and it was just me and Emily. She was still swinging from side to side, trying to see what Mimi saw.

“Stop worrying. You look great,” I said.

She inspected herself from a few more angles, looking like she might burst into tears at any moment. “You’re so nice, Alexis. But I can’t go to class like this,” she said. “Can you help me? Do you have a curling iron?”

Um. “A curling iron…? At school? No, sorry.”

Emily glanced around frantically, like one was going to
poof
into midair.

“Maybe in the drama club supply room?” I suggested. “Or with the cheerleading stuff?”

Her eyes popped open wide. “The cheerleaders! Of course!”

“But the bell’s going to ring in, like, two minutes. We have to get to Math.”

She came up to me and pressed her hands together, like she was praying. “Can you just make up an excuse for me?”

I sighed. “I don’t know, Em…”

“Please! It’s an emergency. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just stall him.”

I finally agreed. But only because it was Emily.

All I had to say to Mr. Demarco was that Emily was dealing with “feminine issues,” and he shooed me away.

The rule at Surrey High was that phones had to be on silent or vibrate during class, and they could only be used between class periods. So when my phone lit up against the lining of my purse, I almost ignored it. But then I flipped it on its side and read the screen. It was a text from Emily.

NEED U GIRLS BTHROM

I rolled my eyes. Calling me out of class to help fix her flat hair? But when I thought about ignoring it, I felt the tiniest pressure in my temple. It didn’t let up until I got up and went to Mr. Demarco’s desk.

“Emily needs me,” I said.

“Go, just go,” he said. “No details.”

When I got into the bathroom, the first thing I did was instinctively check the mirror.

Still good.

Then I saw Emily.

She was crouching in the corner, her legs tucked under her, a curling iron in her hand.

Half her hair was burned off. There was a bright pink, shiny, painful-looking patch of skin just above her forehead. Onyx-colored tears streamed down her face, spreading onto her shirt in dark clouds.

She raised the curling iron again.

“Why isn’t it working, Alexis?” she snuffled, reaching up and wrapping a thin strand of hair around it, then bringing the whole thing down against her scalp. “I don’t understand.”

“Oh my God, stop!” I cried, rushing over to her.

“It’s not working!” she said. “It’s flat! You have to help me. I’m not good enough!”

I tried to get the curling iron out of her hands, but she yanked it away, ripping a whole section of hair out of her head. I pulled the cord from the outlet.

“Hey!” she protested.

Up close, her head was a mess of dark red welts. She gave off the sick, rancid smell of burning hair. My stomach shifted dangerously.

Her face crumpled. “I’m ugly,” she sobbed, holding the curling iron up against her cheek.

“Quit it!” I shrieked, snatching it from her hand and throwing it across the room. “Come on, you need to get to the hospital.”

“No!” she said, swinging her arms at me. “No, I can’t go out like this. I look terrible. Everyone will see.”

I couldn’t drag her. And I couldn’t leave her alone.

I thought about calling for help, but what would I say? How could I explain?

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Megan’s number. “Please pick up,” I mumbled. “Please.”

She did. “Lex, you know I’m in class, right?”

“I need you. In the four-hundred wing bathroom.”

She hesitated.

“Just get here,” I said. “No questions.”

While I was on the phone, Emily had started crawling across the floor, going after the curling iron again. I raced her to it and grabbed the metal end with my left hand just as she was grabbing the handle.

It took my brain a moment to feel the heat, and by then, my fingers had instinctively released it, splaying out like a spider having a seizure.

“Why did you do that?” Emily asked, cradling the curling iron and turning away from me. “I
need
this. I need to be beautiful. I’m not good enough.”

For a few long seconds, we stared at each other. She wouldn’t give it up without a fight. And I didn’t particularly feel like wrenching it out of her hands and getting burned again.

“Alexis? What are you doing?” Megan appeared in the doorway. She looked past me and saw Emily on the floor.

Megan switched into student-coach mode without missing a beat. She turned on one of the faucets. “Help me get her over here.”

As long as we didn’t try to take her precious curling iron, Emily didn’t mind being moved. She let us herd her to the sink, where we started scooping handfuls of cool water over the iron and her scalp.

“We need to get her out to my car,” Megan said. “I can drop her off at home.”

“At
home
?” I asked. “She needs to go to the hospital!”

“That’s not realistic, and we both know it,” Megan said. “Besides, Aralt will help her.”

As I was scooping, I rammed my injured hand into the faucet and gasped in pain.

Emily looked up at me. “Oh, no, Alexis…you burned your hand,” she said, her voice sorrowful. “That’s really going to hurt.”

Then she slowly lifted her eyes from the curling iron to her own reflection in the mirror.

And reached a hand up to her raw, burned scalp.

And screamed—

And screamed, and screamed.

This wasn’t the full-throated screeching of horror-movie victims; it was an endless wail of agony, thin and panicked, broken into shrieking yips like the cries of a wounded animal. It made your chest hurt all the way through to your spine just to listen to it.

Emily let the curling iron drop to the floor and went into a fit, running away from us, trying to climb up the walls, her hands clawing the smooth tiles.

I went closer, to calm her down, but she lashed out at me.

“Emily,” Megan ordered, “
sit still!
And don’t touch my clothes—you’re filthy!”

Finally Emily’s wailing tapered off into a long whimper. Megan made a few phone calls, and within two minutes, Lydia, Kendra, and Paige had joined us.

“We need to get her out to Megan’s car,” Lydia said. “How can we do that without attracting attention?”

Emily, clearly in shock, sat perfectly still on the floor, like she was a polite stranger we’d brought in from the street, watching all of this happen to somebody else.

“Pull up as close to the exit as you can,” Paige said. “I’ll put my sweater on her head.”

I winced at the thought of anything touching that raw scalp. But everyone else was all for it. So a minute later, we were walking through the hallway, guiding Emily, who had a sweater wrapped around her in a vague imitation of a head scarf.

When Megan pulled up, we stuck Emily in the front seat. I reached across her and fastened her seat belt. “Are you sure you won’t take her to the hospital, Megan?” I asked.

Megan gave me a disapproving look. “
Chill
, Lex. We know she’ll heal.”

I backed away and closed the door, wishing I’d just yelled for help and let the teachers deal with it. But then the Sunshine Club girls would have known something was wrong—maybe even suspected that I wasn’t fully committed anymore.

Because we took care of our own business. That was just the way it worked.

After Megan had pulled away, Paige came up next to me. “You should go back to class. I brought your stuff.” She held out my purse but grabbed it back before I could take it. “Oh, you’re hurt!”

As soon as she pointed it out, the skin on my palm began to ache in a painful, torn-up way, like when you accidentally scratch a sunburn.

“I guess so,” I said. It hardly seemed like anything compared to Emily’s burns.

“Oh, well,” Paige said, hooking the bag over the upturned palm, “it’ll heal.”

As I walked back to my classroom, the security guard stopped me. “Did you hear any strange noises around here a few minutes ago?” he asked. “Would you duck into the ladies’ room and tell me if everything’s okay?”

I popped my head in and then forced my brightest smile. “It’s fine. Everything is perfectly fine.”

It was a short and relatively subdued Sunshine Club meeting that day; nobody stood up for Betterment.

When Adrienne brought out the book, I looked around for Tashi, but she didn’t show. No one but her, Kasey, and me knew that the book was actually kept at Tashi’s house; so how had Adrienne gotten hold of it?

I held my tongue, wanting to give things a chance to play out before attracting attention to myself.

Nobody asked how Emily was doing, but everybody knew she’d had to leave school. Nobody let on that anything was wrong. But we all knew something was.

In spite of the weirdness, Adrienne was eager, excited as she made the opening announcements.

“You guys, I have wonderful news!” she said. “As of today, we’ll have twenty-two members…which means…we can graduate!”

Then the door opened and Paige escorted in the new member, presenting her to me like a 1950s housewife bringing out the Thanksgiving turkey:

Zoe.

As she took the oath, she was so eager, so guileless, I wondered how I could have ever been threatened by her. Everything about her shouted
Love me love me love me!

“Anyone have anything to say before we wrap up?” Adrienne asked.

“Um,” Monika said, her hand half raised. “Where’s Tashi?”

Adrienne and Lydia exchanged a troubled glance, and I felt the breath catch in my lungs.

“All right,” Lydia said. “Here’s the thing. Tashi was starting to feel like the club was too much for her.”

There was a room-wide intake of air, the first half of a gasp.

“So…she quit.”

The silence was peppered with offended whispers; I distinctly heard Kendra say, “But Aralt
gives
us strength!”

“Listen,” Lydia said. “It’s not a big deal. It’s a shame, but it’s her choice. It doesn’t affect our graduation. And of course we wish her the best…right?”

A reluctant chorus of agreement rumbled up in answer.

“All right, everyone,” Adrienne said, her usually chipper mood downcast. “Stay sunny.”

Afterward, I went home and got ready for my final Young Visionaries interview. My hand was no less tender, so I put some aloe on it, to help Aralt along. When Mom asked what happened, I told her I’d burned it doing my hair.

“Ah, vanity,” she said. “It can be a dangerous thing.”

Yeah, whatever.

The judges stood when I came into the room.

I handed over an envelope containing my four new photos—the prints of me and Megan and two from the football game—Pepper Laird in midleap, all vivid color against the black night sky. You could see shards of wet grass flying off her shoes, a bead of sweat about to drip from her knee. And Carter, looking like a cross between a movie star and a preacher at a revival meeting, golden and tall and surrounded by a halo of light.

The judges murmured over the photos.

“Very nice,” the bow-tie man said. “I’ve been consistently impressed by your work.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“There’s a degree of…maturity,” said one of the women, Mrs. Liu. “Your choices are quite unexpected, from a person your age.”

“The only thing…” The other man’s brow furrowed as he held up the photo of Carter. “The eyes bother me in this picture. They’re almost…empty.”

I sat back.

Farrin held up the Pepper picture. “You could do sports photography,” she said. “The more I look at this, the more I like it.”

“Are you thinking about exploring digital?” Mrs. Liu asked.

Even though I wasn’t fully committed to Aralt, there was still that thread of trust inside me, that I could come up with the right answer. I waited for him to feed me my lines.

But nothing came. Like a trapeze artist who looks down and sees that they forgot to put up the net, the words flashed in my head:
You’re on your own.

“Alexis?” Farrin prompted.

I couldn’t stall any longer. “Yes. Digital is good,” I said. “Actually, I just got one. A digital camera. I’ve played with it a little.”