I write this from a Greyhound bus bound for Houston. It was the farthest place from Gloucester for the smallest amount of money. Even so, it took most of my cash—I’ve only got twenty-three dollars and thirty-seven cents in my pocket… what’s lest of my life savings. With that, and a small bag of clothing, and the Harris Stonghton book wrapped in a black cloth (it’s no danger to me any longer, and how could I leave such an evil book with my family?), I begin a new life.
I keep trying to tell myself that this kind of change is exactly what I need. That nothing has changed in my family for centuries and that I’m a pioneer, off to explore new worlds. I’m not really buying it, though.
It might be easier if I had some idea of where all if this would lead. But I don’t.
I guess no one ever really does.
— Sarah Curtis
“Morgan?” Mary K.’s voice echoed up the stairway. I put my book aside and stood up. I had been lying on my bed, reading my English assignment, with Dagda curled comfortably in the curve of my waist.
Mary K. called up again, with more urgency this time. “Morgan!”
“What? What is it?” I stepped out of my room and peered down the stairs. Mary K. was standing at the bottom with a huge grin. “What’s going on?”
“There’s somebody here that you might like to see.”
“Who?” I started walking down the stairs. Hunter? I thought hopefully. But no, I would have sensed his coming. Who else could she be talking about?
When I got to the bottom of the stairs, Mary K. was alone in the foyer. Was she playing a trick on me? “Well, who—”
I broke off. Alisa was sitting on the couch in the living room, looking small and pale. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, emphasizing her gaunt, delicate face. She looked up at me nervously. “Hi, Morgan.”
“Wow, Alisa.” She looked like she was still weak, but she was there,sitting in my living room, talking to me. I walked over to the couch and perched beside her. “I’m so glad you’re okay. How do you feel?”
Alisa shrugged. “Depends when you ask me, I guess.” She pulled her hands into her lap, and I could see that she was holding the red-and-white teddy bear that Mary K. had brought to her hospital room. “I still feel weak, and I still have aches and dizziness every once in a while.” She smiled a wan smile. “But I’m getting better. I’m well enough to leave my house, and that feels great.”
Mary K. perched on my dad’s armchair. “Do they know what made you sick?”
Alisa shook her head a little sadly. “Nobody seems to have any idea,” she said. “After you two left, I got really bad, and the doctors were pretty worried. They told my father to start preparing for the worst. But after a few hours I just seemed to get better. And around midnight, I woke up really thirsty and asked the nurse for a glass of juice. I mean”—she gave a little laugh—“I’d been unconscious for, like, days, and I just up and asked for some apple juice out of the blue. The nurse was in shock.”
“Wow.” Mary K. looked at me as if to say, “Isn’t that crazy?”
“I know,” Alisa went on. “The doctors say it was a really bad virus and that the worst of it just had to pass through my system before I could start getting better.” She looked at me meaningfully. “But the fact is, they don’t really know what made me sick—and now they don’t have any idea what made me better.”
The way she was staring at me made me uncomfortable, and I looked away, out the window. Did she and Mary K. think that I’d cured her? But I hadn’t. “Alisa, I—”
“Anyway,” Alisa interrupted me, “I just wanted to say thank you. For coming to visit me in the hospital, I mean.” She looked down into her lap and stroked the tiny red-and-white bear. Even though she was better, I still sensed a sadness in Alisa. I wondered about the family problems Mary K. had mentioned before.
“You’re welcome,” I said softly. I reached over to squeeze her arm. She seemed so down, and I still felt this weird protectiveness toward her. I wondered if I was starting to get maternal urges or something.
As I touched Alisa’s arm, there was a crash. Alisa jumped. We all looked up to see that a framed photo had fallen off the mantel across the room. Frowning, Mary K. jumped up and picked it off the floor. “That’s weird,” she murmured, holding up a photo of our family around the tree last Christmas. “Must have been a draft.”
I stared, frozen. There was no reason for that picture to fall off the mantel. No reason, that is, except the strange telekinetic incidents that had been following me. But that was Ciaran, I told myself. And Ciaran’s in custody. He can’t be doing this to me.
Was it possible that it was just a weird accident? Maybe I was making something out of nothing. If it had happened anytime before the past couple of weeks, I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It was just that so much had been happening lately. . anything even vaguely out of the ordinary seemed suspicious.
Mary K. gingerly picked up the broken glass that surrounded the picture. As I watched her, I had a more frightening thought: What if it wasn’t Ciaran who had been behind those incidents? What if it was someone else— someone else who was after me, and still on the loose?
“Um, I’d better get back to my homework,” I blurted, standing up. “Alisa, I’m really glad you’re feeling better. I hope I’ll see you back at school soon.”
“Thanks.”
As I left the room, my eyes fell on the photo. Mary K. had propped it, still in the broken frame, on an end table while she picked up the glass. I shuddered when I saw how it had broken. Deep cracks had formed that set Mary K., my mom, and my dad in one section. In the other section was me, alone.
I sprinted back up to my room.
But before I even had time to think about what had happened, Mom knocked on my bedroom door. “Do you have a minute?” she called.
“Sure,” I said as my mom opened the door and walked in, holding a sheaf of papers in her hand. I sighed. I could smell a lecture coming on. I knew what the papers were—it was the extra-credit assignment I’d written for Mr. Powell. He’d just handed it back that morning, with an A—that meant the full twenty points of extra credit. I’d been so excited about it that I’d left it out on the kitchen table for my mom to see, but now I remembered. She hadn’t been so thrilled that I’d chosen to write about the persecution of witches. No doubt she wanted to tell me that this wouldn’t be an appropriate application essay for Saint Anne’s.
“Morgan,” my mom said as she settled at the edge of my bed, "I like to think I’m a reasonable person.”
Usually, I said mentally. But I didn’t say anything out loud; I just nodded.
“That’s why I—” But she couldn’t finish. She just looked at the paper and shook her head.
“Look, I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said finally. “I just left it out because I thought you’d be glad that my grades are coming up.”
“I know,” my mom said slowly. “And you were right—I am glad.” She flipped through the paper. “This is very well written, Morgan. You must have done a lot of research for it.”
“A lot,” I agreed. “But it’s not hard when you’re researching something you’re really interested in.”
My mom nodded and pursed her lips. “I always told you girls that I’d never stand in the way of things you were interested in,” she said. “At the time, I thought that was such an easy promise to make.” She looked down at the paper again. “Morgan, I think your father and I made a mistake when we considered sending you to Catholic school.”