12
“Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.”
~Alexandre Dumas
“Have a cookie,” Taylin orders Derek and Madison as they walk into the auditorium before me. She holds out what looks like chocolate chip.
“Uh, no thanks. Diet,” Madison says while Derek grabs one and takes a bite.
“Yum,” he says and looks behind at me. “You should try one. They're good.” He sounds shocked. “Hey,” he looks at Taylin, “you didn't put something funny in here, did you?”
Taylin rolls her eyes. “My mom likes to bake. She's trying new recipes and I don't want them hanging around the house.” She pats her non-existent stomach. “So I'll be bringing them in.” She shoves one in Madison's hand. “Eat one, Miss Skin and Bones.”
Taylin ignores my outstretched hand and gives a cookie to two people behind me. “I'll try one,” I say, but she moves her full bag out of reach.
She lowers her voice. “Trying an experiment here. None for the Siren.”
I look at the cookies. “What's in them?” I whisper.
She flaps her hand. “This and that, nettle powder, cinnamon, and protective herbs enhanced by some spellwork.”
“You really are a witch?”
Taylin stares at me. “What do you think Maximillian was teaching us? How to serve a proper tea?” she says with a nasally hoity-toity British accent.
“So, what is it supposed to do?”
She hands out a few more cookies and shoos me ahead of her down the dim aisle. “We can't have everyone zoning out into little Siren-induced comas during the musical, or we'll never get through it.”
Relief floods me. “I hope it works.”
“It will block the effects of your voice from penetrating the parietal lobes of their brains. It will register in the temporal lobe, but the perception of the auditory stimuli will be blocked.”
I stare at Taylin, looking past the black goth eyeliner and lipstick. She must have amazing grades if she bothers to do the work. “Cool,” I murmur and drop my bag near a seat in the front row. “Does it work on Luke?”
She shrugs. “I made him eat twelve on the way to class.” She grins as if remembering the scene. “We'll see. He's planning to go to art today. If it doesn't work, we'll know soon enough.” She glances at the back doors of the auditorium where Matt stands guard. I shake my head. If they fail their senior year for ditching, it will be my fault.
“Jule,” Ms. Bishop calls, “Derek, Madison, head up there.” She takes a bite of one of Taylin's cookies. “We'll try the falling chandelier scene.” Ms. Bishop looks at Taylin. “You'll have that functioning by the end of the week, right Taylin?”
Taylin salutes Ms. Bishop and bites into a cookie. I take a deep breath and head up to the stage.
“Let's start with the song âPoint of No Return.' Derek?” Ms. Bishop cues the music. Derek starts off singing the part of the Phantom. I watch the kids in the dim audience. Several are munching on nettle cookies.
I hear the notes that lead to my part and breathe. The first bubbles of song float out on my exhale, crystals of clear, sweet sound. I try to concentrate on the faces around me, but the song takes over as I follow the rises and falls of the stanzas until I get to the part where the Phantom joins Christine. Derek's tenor harmonizes with my soprano right on cue. I realize my eyes are closed and I open them. Derek smiles at me as he belts out his lines. I glance out at the audience. Taylin nods with a smirk and crosses her arms. The nettle cookies work. People are moving. They still stare, but it's not the blank-expression stare.
Then, I notice Taylin's smirk turn into a frown, and look over to where Madison stands. Her eyes are locked, frozen with the rest of her body. I shut my lips a few lines before the end of the song, letting Derek finish it. Madison shakes her head, disoriented.
Ms. Bishop starts flapping at her. “Come on, Madame Biancaroli!” The stage manager dashes out to Madison with a script and points to her lines. Apparently, Madison never did eat the cookie.
A movement at the back of the auditorium catches my attention and my breath. But instead of a raging Luke, Matt stands in the back, his thumb raised in the universal “all's well” signal. I feel my first smile of the day work its way across my lips.
“Excellent harmony,” Ms. Bishop calls to Derek and me. She smiles broadly and nods to me. “You have a most amazing voice, Jule. We're lucky to have you.” The praise mixes with relief, and the sprouts of hope begin to grow inside me.
“Thanks,” I murmur.
“Let's take a short break,” Ms. Bishop calls, “while I work with costuming.” She pushes through the heavy curtains to where half a dozen students are holding up rich fabrics and old donated prom dresses.
“Eat this,” Taylin pushes a cookie into Madison's mouth. “You need sugar in your system.”
Madison chews the bite but doesn't look happy. She snatches the rest of the cookie away from Taylin. “I can feed myself. I just feel a little woozy.”
Taylin tsks at her. “Not enough carbs, Holla-Back Girl.” She walks away. By the end of class, the cast has all had cookies and we make it through half the songs. Matt abandons his post once it looks like the cookies will keep Luke from morphing into the Incredible Hulk.
Taylin walks out with me.
“Everyone in drama is going to gain ten pounds by the end of the semester.”
“But it worked,” she hisses and a smile transforms her usually pinched face into something close to beautiful, even with all the crap makeup.
“Way to go, Glinda.”
“Glinda?” she asks.
“You know,
Wizard of Oz
, good witch Glinda?”
Taylin laughs. “Whoever said I was the
good
witch?”
Carly meets us at my locker. No sign of Luke. “Hey, are we still headed to your house, Jule, to,” she lowers her voice, “figure out how to break the curse?”
“Yeah, my dad's visiting Mom after work again today. So we'll have the place to ourselves.”
“Like we're going to break the curse in one afternoon over cookies at Jule's house, when we haven't been able to do it over eleven lifetimes,” Taylin sneers, her old self back.
“They were short lives, from what Matt's told me,” Carly says. “Plus you didn't have the Siren with you then. Hey, where'd you get the cookies?”
Taylin holds out the bag. “Help yourself.” She smiles. Carly looks wary but takes one anyway. Taylin huffs. “They're fine. I didn't spit or sneeze on them.”
“So, where's Luke?” I wonder out loud. I want to hear it from him that Taylin's cookies worked. I shut my locker and sling my book bag over a shoulder.
“Haven't seen him,” Carly says and the three of us walk toward the parking lot. Taylin doesn't have any books with her. Probably doesn't intend to do any homework. Carly takes another cookie. “Hey, why aren't you eating any of them?” she asks Taylin, obvious suspicion in her narrowed eyes.
“They're fine,” Taylin huffs. “They just have a spell on them to make the consumer immune to Jule's tranceinducing songs.”
“Really? A spell? And they're okay to eat?” Carly breaks the chocolate chip cookie in two and sniffs it.
“They taste great,” Taylin defends. She rubs her stomach a little. “Just when Jule started singing, well, it made my stomach a little funky. Maybe because of the curse.” She shrugs. “I want to see if Matt felt anything.”
“And Luke,” I say, my gaze going to the police car in the parking lot. A group of adults and kids are standing around a smashed-up car. What looks like the bright blue, glossy surface of a car roof sits on the ground with a cop crouched before it, writing in a pocket-sized notebook.
“Bloody hell,” Taylin curses in her natural British slant. “That's Mathias's car. What the fuck happened to it?”
I spot Matt standing near the punched-out car. His hand cradles the back of his neck like he has a doozie of a headache. He shakes his head. As we crawl through the packed crowd, I can hear his voice.
“I wasn't feeling well, so I went to class late.” Quiet question from another cop, who writes in her own little notebook. “No! Why would I destroy my own car?” And with that Matt turns to look at what had been the hottest car at Cougar Creek. He splays rough fingers through his short hair.
As the crowd shifts I get a glimpse of the wreckage. The windshield is shattered, glass fragments scattered over the hood. The roof is gone. The back windshield and every side window have been punched out. But the weirdest part is the side panels. Large dents, the size of a big foot, stick out, as if someone had bent the metal by kicking it from the inside.
“Where's Luke?” I whisper.
Taylin is already shaking her head. “I'm guessing the cookies didn't work.”
“For your insurance to cover this,” the female cop says to Matt, “you need to file a police report and press charges once we identify the assailant.”
“No one saw anything,” Matt insists. He glances our way as if he, too, is looking for Luke. I shake my head.
“Weird,” the cop murmurs and scribbles more in her notebook. “The car alarm should have gone off.”
“Iâ¦I guess I didn't lock it,” Matt says. “It was my own stupid fault. So I'm not pressing charges.”
“Your parents may disagree with your last statement,” she adds and signals to a policeman with a camera, who snaps pictures.
“There's some vomit in the passenger's seat,” the photographer says.
Matt rolls his eyes, his mouth open. He releases a long sigh. “That's mine. Iâ¦ate too much for breakfast this morning. It didn't want to stay down. I just haven't had a chance to clean it.”
“Is that right?” the female cop pinches her mouth into a lopsided line. She writes more in her notebook.
After a few minutes Matt walks over to us. “I'll be a little late.”
“I'll wait and give you a ride,” Carly volunteers. “Do you think it wasâ?”
“Shut it,” Taylin hisses.
I look at the crowd, silent, listening. Matt looks to me. “Be careful,” is all he says and turns. Carly follows him like a puppy. To his credit, he slows to match her pace.
Taylin gives me a ride home. Five minutes of thick silence swells through the small hatchback before I crack and tap her radio on. I expect heavy metal, ridiculously loud and angry, but anything is better than thinking. Instead, a classical station fills the car with a rapid and emotion-packed performance on a piano. I look sideways at Taylin, who frowns despite a soft blush and punches the off button. Okayâno radio.
“So, you think it was Luke who trashed Matt's car?” I say.
“Not too many people can punch windows out and rip a car roof off.”
I tug at my bottom lip with my teeth. “Are you all that strong, you and Matt?”
She laughs. “I wish. No, Luke's so strong because the curse is growing stronger in him.”
My stomach tightens. “So if he loses control, he'll be able to kill me easily.”
Taylin doesn't answer. She pulls into my driveway and parks next to my mom's car. Taylin and I walk in. Mica jumps around me and Taylin scratches her head. “I used to love animals,” she says as she smiles at Mica.
“And now you don't.”
“It's weird. They still look cute or beautiful, but I don't have the need to touch them, for me, anyway. I still do, though, for them.”
“Soâ¦you play your part for animals but not your parents.” I can't help but feel sorry for the two who got stuck with her.
Taylin straightens slowly, her fierce frown back in place. “I've seen enough therapists to have any type of psychological discussion you'd like to have. But right now, we're trying to save
your
life, not fail at fixing mine.”
“Right,” I point my finger at her, thumb up like a pistol, “sorry.” I pour a glass of apple juice for me. “Want a drink?”
“Got any Glenburgie single malt Scotch Whisky?” She pauses, then chuckles. “Water's fine.”
I hand her a tall glass. “You were born two hundred years ago?”
Taylin nods and guzzles the cold water. “We didn't have water like this back in 1800.”
“Was it warm and dirty back then?” I pull two apples out of the fridge and wash them.
She laughs. “In cities like Paris, but in the highland mountains we lived on sparkling, fresh spring water.” She stares down into the empty glass. “Not a chlorine molecule to be found. Don't think I'll ever taste that again.”
“You could go back to Scotland,” I suggest as I fight the urge to defend my water. She's probably right, of course, but Taylin has a way of twisting everything just a bit to piss people off. “If you take care of yourself and graduate, you could go back there and drink all the water or whisky you want.”
She huffs. “Haven't you ever heard the phrase, âthere's no going back'? We've spent a few lives in Britain, but modern civilization has polluted most places.”
“Do you all meet up once you become teenagers?” I ask and sit down.
She nods and bites into the apple. “Sooner, usually. Never this late before. Mathias and I were worried that something had happened to Lucas.”
“How did you die in the last life?” I wonder if it's rude to ask someone how they died. Like it's personal, or something.
She lets out a tired sigh. “I had leukemia. Definitely not my preferred way to go.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty-two.”
“I'm sorry.” She shrugs. “Were you the first last time, you know, to die?”
She shakes her head. “Lucas was the first to die last time.”
Just the thought of Luke dying tightens my stomach. I set my apple down, no longer hungry. “How?” I whisper.
“Sniper, I think,” she says between munches. “His dad was military, so Luke joined the Navy Seals, some elite group. Kept him away and in the action most of the time. Perfect for someone who has no reason to live, someone who craves respect and wants to make something of his torturous life.”