Signal to Noise(82)

“Don’t exaggerate. Look, Meche—”

“You’re going to regret this,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes for a second, feeling like they were standing at the edge of a cliff and were about to fall.

“Can we pause and rewind?”

“No.”

She shoved him away, her elbow hitting his ribs, and then she was gone.

Twin desires, to seek her forgiveness and to ignore her, warred with each other. His pride was hurt by the angry slap. He did not want to acknowledge he had done any wrong. To do so would be to admit she had been right and, once again, his pride would be stomped over.

He would talk to her later. Give her a day or two to cool down. Seek Daniela’s intercession if necessary.

But why the hell did he feel like they’d already hit the ground and shattered?





DANIELA WRUNG HER hands and pushed the cupcake moulds into the Easy-Bake oven, trying to focus on her cooking. But Meche would not stop. She had been going on about it for nearly an hour and Daniela knew this was not a storm which would subside. This was a hurricane, gaining speed, preparing to rip the ground apart. Daniela did not know what to do. She did not know how to stop it. She felt that with every passing minute she was being engulfed by Meche’s nervous energy, dragged along, small satellite that she was.

“I said, will you help me hex him?”

There. The question. Point-blank. Daniela squeezed her eyes shut.

“I need to finish baking.”

“Quit playing silly games,” Meche said, crouching down and looking straight at Daniela’s face. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“What you want to do... it’s mean,” Daniela whispered.

“You think what he did to me is right? You think stealing is nice?”

“No.”

“And ruining my parents’ marriage?”

“No.”

“And getting together with her, with Isadora, that is nice? How many times has she made fun of us at recess and suddenly she’s all over him? And he likes it?”

“I know, it’s just—”

“It’ll only be a little tumble from the motorcycle. A few scrapes. He can take it.”

Daniela shook her head and closed the oven door. She set the timer and rubbed her hands against her skirt.

“He’ll ache for a couple of days and then he will be fine.”

“You should talk to him,” Daniela said. “You should talk it out.”

“I’ll talk to him after we are even.”

“Why not talk to him now?”

“There is nothing to talk about.”

Meche stood up and walked to the other side of the room, standing before Daniela’s shelves and looking at her dolls and toys. She grabbed a stuffed bunny and squeezed it between her hands. It was pointless, once Meche had boiled herself up to this state, to expect her to cool down. Daniela knew it. There had been other fights, other times when she had been called on to act as conspirator and ally of one of her friends—mostly Meche. However, this time it felt different. More dangerous. It was not a childish prank, not about cutting holes into Sebastian’s t-shirt. This was about inflicting actual physical pain.

“I thought you cared about Sebastian. Loved him. When you love someone—”

“What?”

Meche’s quick turn of the head and the way she spit out the words, as though she had just swallowed sour milk, made Daniela realize she had misspoken. She blinked and scrambled to correct herself.

“I... I meant...”

“What did you say?” Meche asked, frowning.

“Nothing. I... we can cast the hex,” Daniela said, wishing only to avert Meche’s wrath, to make those dark eyes turn away from her.

Her acceptance had the expected effect. Meche smiled, looking smug, and tossed the bunny away.

“We should head to the factory,” she said.

Every crack on the pavement spoke words of warning to Daniela as she rushed behind Meche, towards the old, abandoned building. But there was nothing to do now. She was a coward and would obey, bend the knee. She always did.





“ARE YOU READY?” she asked.

“Meche, you can’t,” Daniela whispered.

The factory was cold. Shadows gathered at the corners of the window. The distant moon turned its face away from them, hiding behind a cloud.

Meche knew they shouldn’t do it. She could feel it in every fibre of her being, feel it from the tips of her toes to the top of her head, but she did not care. She would have her revenge. She would have her hex.

“It’s Sebastian.”

“I know exactly who he is,” Meche said.

She held the needle above the groove. There was only one song for such a spell, only one song for this kind of hex and she had known it from the moment her hand had found the record—guided by some unknown force, just like it had been guided in the record shop to find A Whiter Shade of Pale—waiting on the third bin to the left, near the Jimi Hendrix poster.

It was In the Court of the Crimson King. Recorded in 1969, it was the debut album by the British rock group King Crimson. Although it contained five tracks she knew which one she needed. Side two. Fifth song.

It was a track to bring down houses and topple monarchs and surely it would teach a lesson to a teenage boy. A lesson he would not be likely to forget.