The Graces (3 page)

Fenrin
, I thought, as my lips kept moving.

Rustling, the sound of footsteps.

And then a sharp, angry, ‘What the hell d’you think you’re doing?’

Our chanting faltered, stumbled, and we fell over the broken words. The velvet cloth was embarrassing. The pot was ludicrous. Niral had been right – the herb bottles made it seem like we were making a stew. I looked up, cheeks blooming.

It was Thalia. Spring wet was still in the air; she was wearing brown leather boots and a long-sleeved beaded top that draped over her skin in all the right places. Her hair was knotted high on her head in a floppy bun, the ends trailing down her neck.

My relief that it wasn’t a teacher was short-lived, because Thalia looked furious.

‘Well?’ she demanded, scanning the group.

‘I’d have thought that it’s pretty obvious,’ Summer said coolly.

‘Clean this stuff up and get back into school.’

Summer didn’t move. The rest of us were caught, squirming.

‘You’re such a drama queen, Thalia,’ said Summer finally. ‘It’s just a bit of fun.’

‘That’s not what you said earlier,’ Niral interjected, her voice hot with embarrassment. ‘You said we had to put everything we had into it!’

I raised my eyes heavenward at the mistake.
God, don’t do that. Don’t try and make Summer look stupid in front of her sister. Thalia won’t like you for it, and then you’ll lose Summer, too.

Thalia’s toffee-coloured eyes narrowed at Niral. ‘Get back into school,’ she repeated. ‘I’m sure you’re missing a class. Go now or I’ll report you. Go on, all of you.’

Summer still hadn’t moved. Unsure, cheeks burning, the other girls started to get up, dust their coats off and leave the copse. No one dared take the pot or anything else.

I stayed where I was. If this was a test, I would pass with flying colours. The answer was too easy: loyalty. They had all failed it, but I would not.

Thalia was peering into the pot and wrinkling her nose. ‘Did you know you could hear it all the way back to the hard courts? You’re lucky it was me who caught you. Fen would have popped a vein.’

At the mention of his name, my heart sped up.

Summer scoffed. ‘He doesn’t care what I get up to.’

‘Please. He hates this stuff, you know that,’ Thalia snapped.

‘That’s his problem. Not ours.’

Thalia sighed, hackles lowering. ‘Look, I know. But still.’ She shifted her gaze away from the pot. ‘And
it’s not just Fen who’d lose his rag, is it? If Esther ever finds out, she’ll go completely insane.’

It took a second to work out who she meant by Esther, but then I remembered that it was their mother. Did they always call her by her first name? That was strange.

‘So don’t tell her,’ Summer said.

‘So don’t
do it.
’

‘This whole town knows about us, Thalia.’

Thalia half turned, looking distracted. ‘I’m not having this conversation yet again. Take this crap with you when you leave. Teachers will ask questions, and then we’ll all be in a world of pain.’

She whirled off.

When she had disappeared from sight, Summer let out a breath. She seemed a little twitchy. I hadn’t noticed it when Thalia was there; she was good at hiding it.

‘Are you okay?’ I said carefully, expecting her to snap at me.

‘Yeah.’

‘Will Thalia tell on you?’

‘No.’

‘How do you know? She didn’t say she wouldn’t.’

‘If I’d asked her not to, she’d have done it out of spite. This way she thinks I don’t care about it, so she won’t bother.’

Summer’s other hand uncurled as she talked, and I risked a quick look at the object she’d been clutching this whole time. It was a figurine, made of polished stone, streaked with swirling orange-brown colours and shaped like a bird. The light caught on the deeply carved ridges of its wings. I stared at it surreptitiously, wondering what it meant.

‘So the rumours are true.’ I tried a teasing tone. ‘You really are witches.’

‘Is that why you came along today?’

I tried to think of the right thing to say. ‘I guess I was curious. How come you asked me along?’

‘Same reason.’ She gave me a playful smile and then looked off into the trees. I felt safe enough to push just a little more.

‘Why doesn’t your family like people to know?’

‘Well, let’s just say they really enjoy having their little secrets. I’m the only one who’s upfront about it. Why hide? Esther makes her living from it, after all.’

Their mother, Esther Grace, ran a health and beauty shop in town, all natural and organic products. Tinctures for headaches, salves made of plants I’d never heard of, face masks that smelled like earth and rainwater. Some of her creations got sold at the higher-end pharmacies and department stores in the city.

‘You’re telling me her face cream is magical?’ I said dubiously.

Summer laughed. ‘The price tag might make you think so.’ She got up from the ground, brushing off her slim flanks. ‘Come on. I’d better give Emily her pot back.’

I didn’t move. ‘We haven’t finished the spell. I mean, it doesn’t look like we have.’

Summer regarded me. I tried not to squirm. I had no idea what she was thinking.

‘Nope,’ she said, after a moment. ‘Want to?’

I said nothing. She dropped back to her knees and picked up the matchbook, striking one.

‘Don’t we need the chanting?’

‘A lot of energy still here,’ said Summer. ‘Especially with Thalia’s little outburst. Might still work.’

She dropped the lit match into the pot. I didn’t look. Only she knew the objects they had all thrown in. The smell of burning hair crept past us. I stared hard at the ground, pouring myself into the moment, conjuring his face as it all went up in flames.

I didn’t care if it was wrong. I couldn’t afford to, if I wanted to make him mine.

Two weeks ago, I started my own Book of Shadows.

Since I’d found out about the Graces, I’d been reading up on witchcraft. According to my research, a Book of Shadows was a diary that witches kept all their spells and knowledge and observations in, building it up into a kind of working manual. I carefully wrote down ideas from books by authors with names like Elisia Storm, books I bought with money saved up from an old weekend job I’d had doing the dishes in a dime-a-dozen burger restaurant.

I’d never owned books like these before. The only kind of magic I’d ever read about was the ‘hurling fire bolts’ kind in fantasy books. The only kind of friends I’d ever had would have thought there was something wrong with me if I’d talked about witchcraft with them. I didn’t even know there were people who had conversations about it as if it might actually exist.

I was usually cautious with money, but I wanted those books so desperately. I needed them. I knew they weren’t going to solve all my problems at once – I mean, if it were as easy as reading about it, everyone would be doing it – but maybe they could help. The rest would be up to me. That was where the Graces came in.

I didn’t want my mother to know about the books, but it didn’t matter in the end because she found them anyway. I knew she had – I’d put a circle of salt as protection round the box I kept them in under my bed. Last week, when I got home from school, a section of the circle was broken and scuffed, and they were stacked in a different order to how I’d left them.

My parents had always acted overly twitchy towards anything remotely abnormal, so it was ironic that they had birthed a kid who craved the strange like other people craved drugs. The moment I saw that my mother had been in my box, my stomach churned and turned over, and I waited for her to come storming up to me, demanding to know just what the hell I thought I was doing, just where had I got the money from, just
how
did I think being like this was going to sort out my life?

She had to know why I had those books.

She had to know that it was to try and bring Dad back.

To try to fix things.

But she hadn’t said a word. She hadn’t mentioned it to me once so far.

‘I’m the best mother anyone could ask for,’ she liked to announce decisively nowadays. ‘I let you do whatever you want. I let you be independent. Anyone else would love to have me as their mum.’

She was right. And she was wrong. If I were on fire, would she douse me with water or push past me and go down to the pub instead, leaving me to burn to the ground? Sometimes you need boundaries. Boundaries tell you that you’re loved.

We passed notes to each other in class, chatted in breaks, and she grinned at me in the corridors, but Summer hadn’t yet asked me to sit with her at lunch. Every day I hoped for it, but part of me dreaded it, too. I still hadn’t found a weekend job, so I could never afford to eat in the cafeteria. We lived in different worlds – the food I brought in would be a window into mine that I didn’t want her looking through.

In form room one morning, a neatly folded note landed on my desk. We could use mobiles until the first class, but the Graces, unbelievably, didn’t even own phones.

The paper had that off-white, rough, recycled thickness to it that made me feel more special just touching it. I wished I could buy some, in a beautifully bound notebook, and write my Book of Shadows on that paper, but I had to make do with
a set of lined ones with shiny black covers from the pound shop.

I opened up the note.

Is it working yet? any tingles? – S

She meant the spell. And no. But then again, I hadn’t even seen Fenrin since we’d done it. I had been half hoping he’d come over to me the next day, mumbling something about not being able to help himself, he just
had
to know if I was free that evening. But that only happened in films. I was glad it hadn’t happened that way. It would have felt fake, and I wanted real – so real it was painful.

I got out my thin purple nib pen, the one that made my writing look delicate and creatively loopy, and scribbled back.

I don’t think so. Maybe it takes some time?

She was five desks away from me on the diagonal, but people always passed her notes along without opening them. I watched her read it and then scribble something back in tiny letters at the bottom.

Lunch?

My heart leapt. I’d just eat my fish fingers during afternoon break instead, and if she commented on my lack of food, I’d say I’d had too much breakfast. But when we both came out of physics, and she glanced at me in the hallway to
make sure I was following, we didn’t go to the cafeteria. We went back to the copse.

It wasn’t raining, but the wind still had an edge to it, and I wished I’d brought my striped scarf. It made me look five, but it was the only thick one I had. We traipsed across the field in silence. Summer never seemed to expect me to ask questions. I guess no one ever did, they just followed her around. Did I want to be one of those, too? Or should I try to impress her by challenging her?

We reached the copse clearing and sat down. Summer still hadn’t looked at me. She rooted in her bag – a hippy patchwork thing, totally at odds with the rest of her style – and pulled out a massive Tupperware box. I watched her, safe for a few seconds to stare. Her legs were so willowy. I’d have killed for legs like that.

‘Where’s your lunch?’ she said as she opened up her box. It was full to the brim with colourful-looking food.

I thought of my sad little bundle of fish fingers wrapped up in foil and a plastic bag at the bottom of my rucksack. ‘I didn’t bring any.’

‘Huh? Why not?’ Summer’s mouth twisted. ‘You’re not one of those who’re always on some diet, are you?’

Judgement oozed from every syllable. Summer could get very impatient with anything she deemed
stupid, which crossed a pretty wide range of behaviour. I needed to remind her of the reason she’d taken an interest in me, that I wasn’t like other girls – but not everyone was as naturally slim and beautiful and well off and lucky as her.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t do diets. I’m just not very hungry, that’s all.’

‘You want to try this?’ she said, offering me her box. ‘It’s pretty good. Esther is actually a great cook.’

‘Um, I’m not going to eat your lunch,’ I said, still stung. Did I really look that pathetically starved?

Summer was taken aback. ‘Wow. I’m not diseased.’

‘No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just … I’m a really fussy eater.’

‘Just try it. If you don’t like it, don’t eat it. Simple as that.’

I peered into the box.

‘It’s just meatballs with a lentil and vegetable salad. But she does have a wicked way with spices,’ Summer commented.

I picked up a meatball with my fingers and tasted it gingerly.

It was good.

It was
so
good. Springy meat edged with something sharp, like lemon, with onion and garlic and something else I didn’t know, something wild and
fruity. I ate three of them before I even realised what I was doing.

‘Sorry,’ I said, pulling my fingers back. ‘Christ, I’m shovelling your lunch in like a hog.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Summer said with a shrug, and she tossed me a fork wrapped carefully in a roll of cloth. The salad was even better. Lentils were something I boiled until they were this bitter slushy mush, and then I threw a couple of sausages in to make a greasy kind of stew. They’d always been cheap, stodgy winter filler. Never these little buttons of crunchy spice.

‘Your mum is a genius,’ I said, my mouth full.

Summer’s lips, stained with a deep plum colour, curled up at the edges in a cold smile. ‘No, she’s not.’

‘Well, my mum’s idea of cooking is to collect takeaway menus and decorate the kitchen with them, so in comparison …’

Summer didn’t respond. Mothers seemed like a sore subject for her, and I wouldn’t push any more, but I found myself wondering if I’d ever get to meet fearsome matriarch Esther Grace.

I tried to change the subject. ‘Why aren’t you eating in the cafeteria today?’

‘Didn’t feel like the crowds.’

‘But you always meet at least Lou and Gemma in there on Tuesdays,’ I said, and then stopped, annoyed
at my slip-up. Around her, my guard came down too easily.

Summer didn’t seem to notice that I’d just confessed to semi-stalking her. ‘Ditched ’em,’ she said, looking up at the treetops.

I ducked my head down to hide the grin I could feel threatening to break out.

She’d ditched them to have lunch with me. On our own.

The hour we spent together that day was the first time I ever really talked to Summer properly. I was half afraid she’d ask me about my house, or my family, or my life before this town, like everyone else had, as if existence could only ever be about those things and nothing more.

Instead we talked about dreams we’d had, the ones that felt more real than being awake; we talked about reincarnation and ghosts and whether we’d try to kill Hitler if time travel was real; about how intoxicating it was to lose yourself in another world so completely that you forgot your own reality. It was books for me. Music for her.

I’d never met anyone who wound her way through conversations like this, as naturally as dancing, as if there were no other way to talk. She told me that for her music was the closest to the concept of the divine
as she’d ever get. I told her that the music she liked sounded more like demons mating in hell, and she roared with laughter, obviously pleased.

I was sitting next to a wild creature, sharing my innermost thoughts with a Grace who had turned her attention to me; it was terrifying and a thrill. It was the start of something.

We had lunch like that together three times before I finally worked out that Summer was feeding me on purpose. I didn’t understand why at first. But then I remembered Fenrin seeing my slimy beans and cheese on toast, and for days afterwards I could only feel the hot flash of shame whenever she was near.

If she noticed, she never said anything.

My name changed the next week.

I’d never told anyone my secret name before. I’d written it in my Book of Shadows on the inside cover.

It had always been River, my secret name, as long as I could remember. That was how I knew it was the right one. It had unfurled itself in my mind, grown its
roots right down into my spine. I couldn’t be anything else, ever. Page because turning over to a blank page always gave me a sickly sweet feeling in my guts. Blank pages could be transformed. They were new lives, over and over.

But I’d never told anyone about that name, and I thought I never would.

‘I don’t really like my name,’ I said to Summer one lunchtime. We were sitting in the cafeteria – the rain was pelting outside. She’d given me her lunch as usual, after having two bites and declaring herself full.

Instead of churning out the usual platitudes people liked to do, like one of her other friends would to her, Summer said, ‘Of course not. It’s a boring name.’

I liked her for that. But it still stung, until she followed it up with, ‘It doesn’t suit you. It’s not your real name, is it?’

I got exactly what she meant. And she said it because she knew that I would. And in that moment we connected, hard, and I felt something grateful and happy and fierce stirring inside me. My coal-black insides flared in recognition of a soul like mine.

‘Nope,’ I said. ‘Not even close.’

‘So what is your real name?’

I didn’t even think about it. I should have, but I didn’t. Lou and Gemma were sitting with us, but they
were screeching at each other about some TV show and paying no attention to our conversation.

‘River,’ I said. ‘River Page.’

‘Way better,’ she commented, and that was that. ‘I’m going to call you River from now on.’

No big deal. Done.

‘So what are you doing this weekend?’ she said to me.

‘Summer,’ Lou murmured urgently, before I could reply. Her eyes were fixed across the room. ‘Look. He’s totally
stalking
her.’

I followed her gaze. Thalia had entered the cafeteria and was joining the queue for food. As I watched, Marcus detached himself from the wall he’d been leaning against and slipped in behind her.

‘Jesus, that’s creepy,’ said Gemma.

I watched him tap her on the shoulder, and her face drop like a stone when she saw who it was. They exchanged a few words, but it was clear she wanted nothing more than to get away from him.

Sweet, friendly Gemma was full of fascinated disdain. ‘Why is he even in here? He never comes to the cafeteria.’

‘What’s the deal with him and Thalia?’ I dared to ask.

Lou shrugged. ‘Marcus is totally obsessed with
Thalia, ever since forever. It’s kind of sad, really. I mean, she’d obviously never go near him. But he just doesn’t get it. He needs professional help.’

I glanced at Summer. She was silent, watching them across the cafeteria.

‘I’m going to go and rescue her,’ Gemma said.

Summer snorted. ‘She doesn’t need rescuing.’

Gemma obediently relaxed back down.

‘She should get a restraining order,’ muttered Lou.

‘They used to be friends, didn’t they?’ said Gemma.

‘Yeah, but not any more. Anyway, you can’t be friends with someone like that.’

‘Someone like what?’ I asked.

Lou tossed me an appraising glance. I was too new. I didn’t get to have an opinion. I tried my hardest to look bland.

‘Someone with mental problems,’ said Lou shortly.

Gemma nudged her. ‘He’s gone.’

‘Thank the lord.’

I glanced at Summer. She was toying with her necklace, turning the little piece of curved jet over and over in her fingers, and appeared not to be listening.

Fenrin’s glaring match with Marcus made more sense now – Fenrin had a problem with him because of Thalia, and everyone knew about it. I’d seen Marcus interact with precisely no one around school. He was a
pariah because that was what happened to people who messed with the Graces.

He was a lesson for me.

‘Sum, stop playing with your jewellery and eat some food,’ said a voice.

Summer smiled sweetly. ‘That’s rich, bitch.’

Thalia shot her a look and slid into the free seat next to me, her hips curling forward to slip into the gap without moving the chair out. She had two thin scarves looped around her neck, long dangling feather earrings, and a deep pine-needle-green top that wrapped around her tiny torso and had ties that circled her waist twice, the ends trailing down one thigh. The caramel-coloured hair wrap dangled loose from her topknot, resting against her shoulder. Summer had told me that the wrap was made from the hair of a mustang tail.

It was impossible not to stare. I tried my best. Thalia was only two years older than us, but in every other way she seemed miles ahead. It was curious how close the Graces were to each other because I knew it wasn’t done for older people to hang out with younger people, especially if they were related. But the Graces gave no sign they’d ever noticed that rule.

‘Hey, are you okay?’ said Gemma, her voice carefully concerned. ‘What did he say to you?’

Thalia paused. ‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’ She started rearranging the objects on her tray with quick, precise movements, bracelets jangling and dangling off her wrists.

Lou shook her head. ‘What a prick.’

Thalia’s shoulders were stiff. Couldn’t they see how much she hated them right now for bringing it up?

‘Boring,’ said Summer loudly. ‘You’d be far more interested in the conversation we’ve just been having.’ She nodded to me.

‘Why, what was it about?’

‘People’s real names,’ said Summer. ‘Sometimes, you know, you get given the wrong one.’

Thalia raised a brow, leaning her chin on her hand in rapt attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lou start talking quietly into Gemma’s ear.

‘And,’ Summer continued, ‘sometimes you just know what the right one is.’

I listened in sinking horror. Was she really going to tell her sister, the sun goddess, about it?

‘So,’ concluded Summer. ‘Her real name, we’ve ascertained, is River.’

‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I mean, we were just messing about.’

Thalia shrugged. ‘If it’s your real name, you should go by it, right?’

I swallowed, trying not to think about the fact that Thalia Grace was talking to me, casually, as if we did this every day.

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘but I can’t just … change my name.’

‘Of course you can. Your name is simply what everyone collectively chooses to call you. So we’ll just call you River.’