The Hex Breaker's Eyes (17 page)

“How was Tam?”
I ask.

“The same. Her
right hand and left leg have no feeling at all. The rest of her is
fine. The MRI found nothing wrong, no nerve damage or anything.
It’s nothing permanent. One doctor told her folks it might be
psychosomatic.”

“Like she’s
faking it?” Marlene asks.

“Yeah.”

“I guess he’s
right,” I say. “I mean, not really. But there’s no medical reason
she’s sick. It’s magic and magic doesn’t show up on a blood
test.”

“Her parents
are freaked,” Ryan says. “They worry that the next muscle to go
will be her heart or her lungs. I mean, if this thing shuts down
her diaphragm so she can’t breathe…”

“It’s not going
to.” I say. “I will find this thing. If the potion works, I ought
to be able to sniff out magic like a bloodhound. That talisman’s as
good as destroyed already.”

“And what if
all the potion does is make you crazy like you’re on PCP and you
end up in jail? What then?” Ryan’s head slumps and I think he’s
worried he’ll start crying.

“It won’t,” I
say. “Just watch.” I sound confident, and I almost convince myself
that I really am sure this will work. But then I picture my mother,
locked behind a heavy door because her mind wouldn’t let her live a
normal life, and I know that under my false confidence I’m
terrified.

No. Scratch
that. I’m not terrified. I won’t let myself be.

I’m fired up,
angry that this is happening to Tam, and I’m done waiting for a
solution. I’m not going to wait around until I chicken out; I’m
going to track that spell down right now. This afternoon. I stand
up, march over to the pot, pick up a mug, and dunk it in. I hold
the lip of my mug against the side of the pot so the floating
grossness doesn’t flow into the cup, only liquid.

The water has
turned dark brown, likely infused by the black root, and I get a
good amount, almost three-quarters of a mugful. “For Tam,” I say,
and lift the mug to my lips. It’s incredibly sour. The taste makes
me squeeze my eyes shut and I have to force myself to gulp it down.
I know that once I stop, and the aftertaste hits me, I’ll be so
repulsed that I won’t want to finish. So I just keep gulping away,
and swallow the entire mug of vile potion. When I finish, my mouth
is filled with a flavour like a combination of raw ginger and
vinegar. I retch, and taste bile at the back of my mouth, but I
force myself to keep it down. Ten seconds after I drank it, my
mouth still tastes disgusting, but I don’t think I’m going to puke.
(Hopefully. Yeck.)

“You didn’t say
the words,” Marlene says.

“What?”

“Right before
you drink it you’re supposed to say ‘Goddess protect me,’ to avoid
anything going wrong. You didn’t say it.”

“You didn’t
tell me to say it.”

“I tried, but
you were in such a rush to drink it you didn’t even hear me.” Ryan
nods in agreement, so I guess Marlie did try to warn me. Still,
either of them could have shouted ‘stop’ instead of just sitting at
the table and watching me drink the stuff.

“Does that mean
it won’t work?”

“I don’t know.
Do you see anything different than usual?”

I don’t. The
world of Marlene’s kitchen looks completely normal. “Nothing,” I
say. “Maybe we should take a walk?”

We leave the
pot on the stove and head outside into the freezing January air to
take a walk around the neighbourhood. I’m looking around, trying to
see if anything is different. Marlene and Ryan are looking at me,
trying to see if
I’m
different.

After a
half-hour of walking around, we head back to Marlene’s house to
clean up before her parents get back.

“Are you
stoned?” Ryan asks when we get back to the house. “Do you feel
funny?”

“I don’t know
what stoned feels like,” I say. “But I think I’m nothing.
Normal.”

“I thought that
black stuff was supposed to make you trip out. Even if we did it
wrong, drinking that stuff should make you see something.” We take
off our coats and boots and head to the kitchen.

“No, I’m fine,”
I say.

Marlene heads
to the book and looks at the instructions again. “If you’re really
feeling no effects,” she says. “Then I think we must have screwed
up the potion. We did it wrong.”

“You mean I did
it wrong,” I say. “Since I skipped the last step.”

Marlene shrugs
and closes the book. “We could go buy more stuff. Try again.”

“When?” I say,
my voice loud and angry. “Next weekend? Tam might not have that
long.”

“We’ll find a
way to save her,” Ryan says. But I know what both of them really
think. It’s the same thing I’m thinking. That I blew our only
chance of tracking down the hex.

It’s my fault
the potion didn’t work. And Tam’s the one who’ll suffer for my
mistake. Just like she’s suffering right now because Sydney blames
Tam for my meddling in her spell. I’m the one who sees the hexes,
I’m the one who broke in and stole the talisman. I’m the one who
got us all involved in this. If I had just kept Tam out of it,
she’d be fine right now. But I got her involved, and like always I
let her do the talking while I stayed quiet in the background. I
let her take the blame for my actions and my ideas. And now, when I
finally have to stand up without Tam to fight my battles for me, I
get the spell wrong.

My best friend
might die, and I’m the only person to blame.

I stick my hand
into the cold pot of slimy magic gunk, feel around the bottom and
find my ring. I pull it out, shake off some of the broth and then
stick my hand under the tap and turn it on. I try to get the nasty
stuff off both my hand and the metal, but I think I’ll have to use
some jewellery cleaner at home before I can wear it without
smelling the potion.

Going through
this cleaning routine has managed to distract me, put my mind on
something other than Tam, so that I have managed to avoid breaking
down crying.

“I’ll see ya
tomorrow,” I say one the washing is done, and head for the
door.

“I’m going to
the hospital tonight for visiting hours. Want to come?” Ryan
says.

“No,” I say,
trying not to let him see the water in my eyes, or hear the quiver
in my voice. “I can’t see her right now.”

I head out into
the cold afternoon, alone, and finally let my tears leak out.

Alone in my
room, chewing a mouthful of mint gum after brushing my teeth three
times, I wonder what I did so wrong. We used the ingredients, we
said the spell, and we got the sequence right. Marlene said I
failed to ask for protection, but that doesn’t mean we didn’t brew
the potion correctly. So how did we get it wrong?

I remember my
early theory that Ryan was the person who hexed Tamara, and
suddenly my already sick stomach feels even more nauseous. Ryan’s
back in Tam and her family’s good graces because of this. He gets
to spend every night with Tam, even after she dumped him. He’s
skipping basketball for her now, just like she wanted him to. Maybe
Ryan really is the person I should be investigating. After all, we
kept the potion ingredients stashed in Ryan’s basement after he
drove us home from the magic shop. What if he sabotaged us? Swapped
out the mushroom for a more common variety, or the powder for some
spice mix from his pantry?

I spend the
entire night going over the spell in my mind.
Sight beyond
sight
. Marlene read the words, I repeated the response. I added
the ingredients in the right order, and we said the words. Yet I
feel nothing, see nothing. The potion didn’t do anything. How is
that possible?

By the time
morning comes around, after a night where I didn’t sleep for even a
minute, I’m convinced. Ryan must have sabotaged the spell. Marlene
and I have to try it again, and without Ryan knowing.

But first, I’ll
have to spend a day of school with him and not let him realize I’m
suspicious.

My dad just
dropped me off outside the school, and I’m not even inside before I
see Ryan climbing out of his mom’s BMW. I ignore him and slip
inside, since I’m pretty sure he hasn’t seen me yet. I quickly
abandon my books into my locker, knowing that I’m going to be
lectured in every class today since I didn’t do any of my weekend
homework. Before Marlene or Ryan can find me, I head straight to
class. Everyone always waits for the bell before going to class, so
when I get there the only person in the room is my teacher, Miss
Walchuk. I sit down at my normal desk without saying anything, and
the young teacher looks up from her lesson plan and makes a
confused face at me.

“Good morning,
Mindee,” she says.

“Morning,” I
manage to mutter. So tired.

“What brings
you in so early?” she sounds peppy and friendly as always, and I
wonder how people can be so happy in the morning.

“My best
friend’s in the hospital so it’s not like there’s anyone to talk to
at my locker.”

“That’s tough.
Who’s in the hospital?”

“Tamara. You
know her?”

“Sure I do. She
was in here last semester. Lot of energy. Is it anything
serious?”

“Nobody knows,”
I say. Inside, I’m screaming because I
do
know what it is.
It’s very serious. It will likely kill her.

“Well let me
know how she’s doing. It’s always tough when you go through
something like that.”

I lay my head
down and close my eyes until the bell rings and summons the other
students. Miss Walchuk doesn’t ask when I fail to hand in my
report, and I promise myself that I’ll make up all that work once I
can be sure that Tam’s OK.

After first
period, I head straight to French, where I normally sit with Tam. I
have the binder for it in my bag already, so I can avoid my locker
and any potential Ryan sightings between classes. Sitting beside an
empty chair, I continue to oscillate between blaming myself for
getting the spell wrong and blaming Ryan for somehow, maybe,
sabotaging it.

I almost cry
when the teacher starts getting people to go through their French
conversations, since my partner was Tam. I explain to Mme. St.
Pierre that my partner is in the hospital, but she just says that I
should have prepared my half of the conversation, and then says
that I should be able to converse with her taking Tam’s role. I
refuse to do it, and end up with a zero on the assignment. Behind
me, the loudmouth known as Ashley Horton whispers insults that
since Tam’s voice isn’t broken I should have studied. Ashley is one
of the people who taunted me in grade eight about how hilarious it
was that my mom died. When I turn around to tell her to shut her
mouth about Tam, Mme. St. Pierre scolds me for disrupting other
kids’ presentations.

Throughout all
of this, the world
looks
normal. Without Tam around, I can
see no hexes. Sydney is suspended for fighting Dina, so I can’t go
look at her and try to see if there’s any magical aura around her
that the potion might have revealed to me. For all that
shopkeeper’s talk about the dangers of black root, I haven’t even
seen so much as a funny glow in the last day.

When class lets
out I’m the first out the door, even though I sit near the back.
I’m halfway down the hall before I hear Ashley laughing in the
doorway behind me. Third period means lunchtime, and I finally head
over to my locker again, hoping that Ryan will stay in class and
that I won’t have to see him. I get my books put away and start
heading for the cafeteria when Marlene catches up to me.

“Where were you
this morning?”

“I went to
class early,” I say. “It just sucks not having Tam around.

“We were
looking for you,” she says. “After you left yesterday, Ryan and I
read through the spellbook again and we think it should have
worked. We did everything right except for the prayer for
protection from the Goddess, and that’s not required to actually
create the potion.

I had already
thought the same thing, but obviously Marlene hadn’t considered
that it’s possible the ingredients were tampered with. I decide to
keep my suspicions secret since Marlene has no poker face. If she
saw Ryan, he’d know right away that I was worried about him.

“Well I haven’t
seen a single hint that it worked. If there’s any magic in this
town at all, I think that potion should have shown it to me, and it
didn’t. So what do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know,”
she says. “I just don’t want you to think that you screwed up.
Don’t blame yourself. You weren’t the one who did anything wrong.
I’m the one who convinced you this potion would work, and if I was
wrong that’s my fault.” Marlene sounds completely depressed, and
that’s when I realize that I’ve been just as sad and mopey. I
shouldn’t be focused on self-pity. I should be focused on getting
some answers.