Andromeda Klein (41 page)

Andromeda’s eyes misted slightly. Oh, Daisy. She handed the phone back with a rueful smile.

“That was fun.”

“Wow, there are pictures on here too,” Byron said, resuming his scrolling. “These are weird. They’re, like, bushes and rocks, parked cars, a trash can …”

Andromeda knew exactly what they were from the description without looking. Daisy had often used her cellphone camera to take photos of landmarks along the way in her rambling walks around Clear view and Hillmont, particularly when she was drunk, so she could follow the trail back if she ever got lost.

“Like visual digital bread crumbs,” Andromeda said. “Hansel and Gretel style. I recognize that one.” She pointed. “That’s the Water Tower Temple. We used to do a lot of magic there.”

“So maybe she did the magic you couldn’t show up for anyway?” said Byron. “Date: September twenty-ninth. The kneeling Two of Swords, baby. See what I mean?”

“Yes,” said Andromeda. She did.

“So,” said the Precious Sponge. “Wanna go?”

“I’ll get my sword,” said Andromeda Klein.

It had never been easy to reach the Water Tower Temple, but the rain made it that much more difficult. It was drizzling when they left the car in the middle school parking lot and continued up the hill on foot, and it had started to rain harder by the time they climbed to the narrow ridge above the gulley that bordered the tower’s north edge.

Andromeda couldn’t resist pausing to show him the Temple.

“So that’s where the magic happens,” he said, sticking his head through the hole and pointing to the spray-painted glyph opposite. “Nice heptangle.”

Yay
, said Huggy’s faint voice, somewhere amidst the whipping sound of the wind.
He can count to seven
. Andromeda rolled her eyes, as if to say: Is that all you got? He had really learned quite a lot in the past week, and Andromeda was realizing she was getting weary of pretending she didn’t like having him around, just a little.

They held hands the rest of the way. Andromeda had the sword in her free hand while Byron held the phone in front of them, like a lamp.

The trail of the subsequent photos was not difficult to follow, though it was quite a long hike. It led them past the water tower and farther up the hill and into the little woods beyond it and finally to a relatively clear space near the edge of the woods overlooking the golf course and the Larchmont development, largely shielded from the rain and wind by an outcropping of rock. Someone had used it as a place to dump old leftover construction materials, odd pieces of lumber, concrete blocks, heaps of gravel and debris. The pile of earth and rubbish in the final photo on Daisy’s phone hadn’t changed too much since the picture had been taken.

It didn’t take much digging to find it, not too deeply buried in the debris. A small black box, grimy and dusty, but still easily recognizable as the little box Andromeda had given Daisy to house her tarot deck: the heptangle sigil on top was still visible, though much of the gold leaf had been rubbed off or obscured by grime. The surrounding rubbish and the overhanging rock had protected it from the damp: it was still dry despite the rain. The lid had been nailed shut, and several holes had been drilled in the sides and on the top and bottom.

What sounded like several objects rattled inside when Byron shook it.

“Sounds like some, er, negative magic to me,” he said.

“Oh, Daisy,” said Andromeda.

Back in the Precious Sponge’s car, the windows fogged as the rain poured all around them, they stared at the box silently for several minutes.

“We could just not open it,” said Andromeda.

“That would probably be best,” said Byron, even as he reached for the screwdriver in the glove compartment and began to pry up the lid.

The Lovers, the missing card from Daisy’s tarot deck, was in there, torn in half and attached to the bottom of the box by a nail that had been driven through it, as well as through a small bulbous object covered with an inexpertly sewn little purple velvet covering or hood, clearly made from what had once been the Eye of Horus bag.

Byron pulled off the hood. Underneath this hood was the missing head from Daisy’s Barbie. The nail had been driven straight through the top, skewering the head and the two halves of the tarot card and pinning them to the bottom of the box.

“I think that’s supposed to be you,” said Byron with a kind of fascinated distaste. “Your head.” The hair had been colored reddish brown with a marker, and Andromeda’s trademark Egyptian eyes had been drawn on in ink.

The other objects in the box were a few animal bones and a desiccated green butterfly or moth.

“Are those really toad bones?” said Byron.

“I have no idea,” said Andromeda, not really wanting to look.

“Well, she didn’t follow the recipe very well, did she?” said the Precious Sponge, replacing the lid.

“She liked to make things up as she went along.”

“Here’s how I would choose to look at it,” said the Precious Sponge after a lengthy silence. “Daisy’s last act before dying was to attempt a final spell directed at you, meant to cure you of your bone disease.”

She shook her head.

“Maybe on Right Ring Days,” said Andromeda Klein.

One thing led to another. And then that thing led to one more. Andromeda’s previous making-out experiences, in cars and out, had been, she had to admit, rather less interesting than this one. It was a floaty feeling, similar to magic. Then, just when it was getting good, there was a sharp, biting pain in her arm where the Precious Sponge had been holding her down by the wrist.

“I think you just broke my arm,” she said.

Byron recoiled, aghast, unable to say anything, apparently, beyond “Oh my god.”

“No, it’s okay,” said Andromeda. “This happens. Welcome to the wonderful world of
osteogenesis imperfecta
. You can go ahead and finish up. But then you need to take me to the hospital.”

But Byron was already fumbling for his keys. His vocabulary had expanded to include “Oh my god I’m so sorry.”

It hurt like a motherfucker, but she also felt pretty badass, with such an extreme make-out injury.

The Precious Sponge picked up on it.

“You’re like Clint Eastwood or somebody,” he said, driving.

It wasn’t a break but rather merely a sprain. The emergency-room doctor put it in a brace and gave her a prescription for pain medicine. But now that she realized it wasn’t broken, it didn’t hurt nearly as much and didn’t feel nearly as cool.

The doctor was Dr. Hu, a fact that would really make this a good anecdote to tell one day.

“Barbados patootie Polaroid pennies,” said Dr. Hu.

“What?” said Andromeda, pulling hood and hair back and turning her better ear toward the doctor.

“Heavy jawbone with your earring?”

“What? Oh, trouble with my hearing. Sorry, yes.” She explained about her brittle bones and the disorganized collagen in her ears.

Dr. Hu gave her an unreadable, brow-furrowed look.

“Have you ever been told by a doctor you had
osteogenesis imperfecta?”
he said, slowly and loudly, peering into Andromeda’s left ear with a lighted instrument.

“Yes,” she said. “I mean, they told my mom.”

“I see,” said Dr. Hu, switching to the other ear. “And how long has it been since you were examined by a medical doctor?”

That was a tough one. Not since she was very small, not since the Gnome School.

“Well, you’ve got quite a bit of crud in there. I think we can take care of some of that hearing problem right now.”

A suddenly action-populated Andromeda struggled for words, at a loss.

“Wait,” she finally said. “Are you saying I don’t have OI? What are you saying? That I just have plugged-up ears?”

“No, you may well have it,” said Dr. Hu, “but at least some of your hearing trouble seems to be caused by massive obstructions in your ears that I’m going to remove in a moment.”

Dr. Hu left the room and returned with a plastic tub and a huge syringe.

“I’m going to take a wild guess: you’ve never had your ears cleaned before.”

It was incredibly uncomfortable and gross. Dr. Hu said the wax and other matter had formed a kind of shellac or varnish on her eardrums over the years and would be very difficult to remove. He used a chemical to dissolve it, and a metal instrument to scrape at it, and the syringe to shoot warm water into her ears to wash it out. It was amazing how much gunk there can be in one tiny ear. And it was amazing how your head feels when the obstruction is finally removed.

Most amazing of all, though, was what the world is like with superpower hearing. A deafening ripping, clattering sound behind her turned out to be the sound of the doctor’s sleeve rubbing against the side of her coat. The shimmery clappy echo was the sound of her own shoes on the linoleum.

“You’ll be hyperaware of sounds for a little while here, but your ears will adjust very shortly,” said Dr. Hu. “And you should see a regular doctor about your other issues. It may be time for a re-diagnosis.”

On her way back out to the hospital lobby, Andromeda allowed herself to indulge in an absurd thought: that Byron had been right about Daisy’s last ritual after all. That it had been an attempt to cure Andromeda of her bone disease and that retrieving the box had finally set the spell in motion, resulting in a sudden, miraculous reorganization of her collagen. But that, of course, is not the way magic works. At least, that’s not the way it ever worked when it came to Andromeda Klein. She had, she supposed, merely been mistaken about the cause of her hearing trouble, that’s all.