Notes on an Execution(16)

When the music started, the feeling was uncanny. Saffy was certain she’d lived this moment before, in some other life, the song reaching through her chest to touch a place she’d somehow forgotten. Ansel lay down next to her, flat on his back. His shoulder was close to Saffy’s, and when she began to see stars, Saffy realized she was holding her breath. The song swelled, the singer rasped—I put a spell on you—and Saffy wished she could stop time right there, take a still shot and save it, just to prove it back to herself.

Then it was over. The record hummed a beat of silence before the next song started. Ansel did not move, so Saffy did not either. They lay there until the record had finished, until Saffy’s spine was sore against the hard, cold floor, until the bedtime bell rang, and the other kids’ feet pounded and thunked across the ceiling. None of it touched her, because she had this. It was magic. Maybe, even, it was love. Love was a thing that could move you and change you, Saffy knew, a mysterious force that made you different and better and warmer and whole. A delicious smell. Familiar, untraceable. It made her hungry.

*

Before Saffy’s mother died, she liked to talk about love.

Saffy’s favorite nights were those she’d spent sitting cross-legged in her mother’s closet, picking through floral hippie skirts from her mother’s time in Reno, pairing them with clunky jewelry. You’ll see, Saffy girl, her mother used to say. Real love is like fire.

Is that how you loved Dad? Saffy asked, tentative. Like fire?

Let me show you something, her mother had said, and she’d reached for a shoebox on the closet’s highest shelf.

Saffy wondered often about her father. He’d left them before Saffy was born, with nothing but his last name—Singh, a name the kids on the playground mocked in an accent they’d learned from taxi drivers on television. At the grocery store, people stared, as if Saffy could not possibly belong to her own blond mother. Her dad was from a city called Jaipur, and he lived there now, a fact she used to report proudly, until she realized it meant he had not loved her enough to stay.

Inside the dusty shoebox, there was a photograph. The only evidence Saffy had seen of her father’s real, tangible existence. He sat in a library, books splayed across the table in front of him. He was smiling, his hair proudly covered in a navy turban, which her mother explained was a part of his religion. In his gaze, Saffy saw herself for the first time, squinting back like a startle in the mirror.

Why did he leave? Saffy had asked, careful, like her mother was a bird she might frighten from a branch.

His family needed him back home.

But what about us?

Listen, her mother had sighed, and Saffy knew she’d pushed too far. Do you remember why I named you Saffron?

It’s a flower.

The most rare and precious flower, her mother said. The kind of flower that could start a war.

She put the photograph back in the box, her green eyes focused somewhere else—Saffy desperately wanted to see that place. To touch it by herself. You’ll know it when you feel it, her mother said then. The right kind of love will eat you alive.

*

Ansel held both hands out, to help Saffy off the basement floor. His palms were damp, his thumbs stained with ink from writing all day in that yellow notepad—as he followed her up the stairs, Saffy was conscious of how he moved behind her. It was thrilling, Ansel’s closeness, almost frightening. She wanted that closeness in the same way she wanted to watch a scary movie, with a chattering sort of precariousness. She wanted the jump, the shiver. The unexpected bite.

By the time Saffy settled on Lila’s bottom bunk, she was breathless with the story, even more exciting in recollection. They pored eagerly over Kristen’s stolen copy of Teen magazine, huddled together, a flashlight rigged to the mattress above so Miss Gemma would not yell about bedtime. They’d practically memorized the issue, but they flipped the worn pages anyway, breezing straight past their favorite interview with John Stamos. The most important piece in the magazine was finally relevant: You’ve Snagged the Perfect Guy: Here’s How to Keep Him.

“You should go with option three,” Lila hissed through her retainer. She’d gotten the retainer before she came to Miss Gemma’s, and her teeth had since shifted, leaving blank gaps around the plastic. Lila’s fingers were always wet, hovering constantly near her mouth. On her middle finger, she wore a gigantic vintage ring, which Saffy didn’t have the guts to ask her about—it was too big for Lila’s hand, fortified with layers of Scotch tape so it didn’t fall off. The ring had a brassy gold band, studded with a massive purple gemstone. Saffy guessed it was maybe amethyst, though she once heard Lila claim purple sapphire. The gem was always shiny with Lila’s slobber, her lips caressing it obsessively. The ring was in Lila’s mouth now, and a string of drool bridging from her finger. Saffy grimaced.

“Number three,” Kristen said. “Show him how much you care.”

It was decided. Lila slumped over her pillow, already drowsy, while Saffy had never felt more disastrously awake.

The next morning, Saffy pulled a stack of construction paper from the craft box in the basement and set up on the bedroom floor. Her sixth-grade art teacher had said she had an affinity for the visual. Saffy swelled with a ruffling pride at the memory.

Hours later, the result was half poem, half comic. She and Ansel were miniature stick figures, the record player drawn in realistic detail between them—Put a Spell on You, she’d titled it. In the next frame, they held hands down by the river, a magnifying glass in Saffy’s other palm as a cheering crowd clapped in the distance. Mystery Solved, she’d called it. A coyote hung from a net, and a group of happy squirrels ran circles by her feet. Saffy drew a heart between her little pinpoint head and Ansel’s, though she crossed it out on second thought and replaced it with a fat black musical note.