Our Crooked Hearts(27)

* * *



It was past two when we let ourselves into Billy’s place. The front hall smelled like pasta sauce and hewn wood and dog fur, but in a good, comforting way. Gremlin surged around our legs as we crept over the creaky floor, both of us laughing at nothing.

“Bill?” His dad’s voice came down from the dark.

Shit, Billy mouthed, and guided me gently into the kitchen. We stopped against the wall, looking up, his hands still on my shoulders. “Hey, Dad,” he called. His breath was sweet with cheap sugar.

“You’ve been out on the porch all this time?”

“Couldn’t sleep.” He didn’t quite lie, I noted. “I’ll be quiet.”

“All right.” A pause, then his dad started walking down the stairs. We widened our eyes at each other but Mr. Paxton stopped halfway, feet creaking at the level of our heads. “Don’t wake your sister when you come up. And try to go to bed a little earlier, this is getting ridiculous.”

“Okay,” Billy said. “Good night.”

We stood there for another small eternity, until we heard his dad’s door close. Billy took my hand and pressed it to his heart, so I could feel it racing. “Close,” he whispered.

We were standing face-to-face, the air snapping giddy between us. I felt this welling in my chest, like laughter but bigger, more painful. It felt momentous just lifting my eyes to meet his. Like an act of bravery. But I did it.

He hesitated, his saturated eyes on mine. Then he said my name.

And when he did it I got this flash. It was as swift and disorienting as the vision I’d had in my parents’ closet. In my ears his voice became two voices—one his own, one high and rough, a little boy’s; and his face was two faces—the one in front of me, and the one he’d worn when he was younger. The feeling it gave me was sweet and sharp and terrible and I jerked back, hitting the wall.

“What is it?” he said. Not bothering now to whisper.

“Nothing.”

“You just jumped a mile.”

I was frantic suddenly to be alone, to think. “Yeah, no. I’m fine. I just. I’ve gotta go.”

He was on some precipice. I could see it. “Ivy,” he said again, so soft. “Please don’t do this.”

“Do what?” For no reason his words sent an ice cube down my spine. “What are you talking about? Why are you being weird?”

He stepped away from me, his face shocked clean. “Why am I being weird. Wow. That’s messed up. Actually, all of this is messed up. Why did I even try?”

Panic made me speak too sharply. “Is this still about me turning you down in junior high?”

“Turning me down,” Billy said, voice rising. “Is that how you’d describe it?”

Then he checked himself, glancing at the ceiling. “Look,” he said quietly. “I know we were kids. I know I should be over it. I am. But pretending none of it ever happened? That’s just so mean.”

I gaped at him. “Are you talking about the— Are you still talking about the—”

Billy glared at me, jaw ticked forward like he was trying not to cry. “You broke my heart, Ivy. You broke my fucking heart. And the worst part is you made your mom do it for you.”

The tile floor was dropping away from me. Smoky bites were being taken from the edges of my sight. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “No.”

He pressed his hands to his eyes, like he couldn’t stand to look at me. “Please just go. Okay? Just go.”





CHAPTER FIFTEEN



The city

Back then

Summer came and school let out and the city was our candy box. We bought mangoes on Devon and ate them by the lake. We swam in deep water off the ledge at Ohio Street, our mouths all sticky with coconut paletas. We went to so many shows our ears never had time to stop humming, so we walked around all the time in a mellow cocoon of damage.

And all that long, heat-sick season, we were magic.

When I remembered that summer later it was bright and dark, all my memories sun-drenched or cast in hard shadow. I was in love, with Fee and Marion and our city and the possibilities that hissed under our hands every time we gathered in a circle of three.

But in the other half of my life was my dad. His spine a column of crumbling discs, his bedside table a cache of orange pill bottles. By summer’s end I’d understand he was never going to be okay again. I think I knew I’d be an orphan soon. The knowledge was the black-eyed dog that followed me, nipping at my bike tires and curling up in the corners of my room. Magic was joy and power and control. It was the thunderclap that chased away, at least for a little while, that slinking dog.

Through everything Fee and I kept telling ourselves it was all just fun. Even as the spells we worked stained steadily darker. Even as the riskier magic we found in the occultist’s book—spells to distract, to mislead, to punish—rebounded on us with strobing headaches and a wrung-out famishment, and Fee started brewing a fermented tea that helped with the pain of blowback. Even then we told ourselves this drug we were living on, whose costs we couldn’t begin to reckon, was within our control.

Not Marion. She was a liar, but she didn’t lie to herself. From the very start she came to magic as an acolyte. Of the book, of the craft, and, most of all, of the dead occultist whose book it had been. Her name was Astrid Washington, and Marion talked about her like a girl with a crush.