“The legendary West High Fight Club. I heard it was coordinated by the Drama kids before it was broken up. You’re a Drama kid. Is all that true? Please say it’s true.” She said this politely, though her tone was overshadowed by Daisy’s snickering above my head.
“Those rumors were wildly exaggerated.” I grimaced, and Daisy gave my hair a little tug, which I ignored. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
“Exactly. See, I’d heard you were a militant vegan/cannibal who favored human farming over cattle husbandry,” said Jing, pausing long enough in her horror rapture to shoot me a glance. “And that was clearly bull.”
“I’ll say. If I’m a militant vegan, then I really screwed myself with those chicken wings, man.” My eyes rolled back in my head. Daisy had her own kind of sorcery, and this was it.
“Those rumors are always so vicious. God, I hate this town sometimes. We’re all so bored that we just pick at each other for entertainment, and that doesn’t do anything for me. It’s like eating bubblegum for dinner.” Yates set her phone on her lap. “And the teachers all wonder why this is such a party town. What else is there to do?”
“Suffer.” Jing slammed her hands on the floor, eyes stretched wide. “Run the other way, asshole, the other way! Jesus fucking Christ, it’s like you’re asking him to knife you. The door is on the left, the left!”
“Yates, ask my boyfriend if he misses me at college.” Daisy punctuated her sentence by tapping the crown of my head. She sounded smug. I missed the joke.
Yates put her face in her hands. “Akeem isn’t going to date you, Daze. He still thinks you’re, like, twelve.”
“He’s my true love,” said Daisy. I heard the smirk in her voice. “Only man I could ever love at all, I think.”
“He’s literally engaged, Daze.” Yates sighed, glanced at me through her fingers. “Akeem is my older brother. He’s graduating from Yale this spring.”
“Yale?” Damn. I was hoping to get into the artsy private school Julian had attended. It was nice and all, but it sure as hell wasn’t Yale.
“Yeah. It’s kind of a thing. Both my parents are alumni. If everything goes according to plan, I’ll be going, too. Akeem is a total dork and wants me to recreate all the stupid pictures he took as a freshmen.” Yates said this matter-of-factly, but a wave of palpable stress rolled off her and dissipated into the air like smoke. She waved a hand at the phone in her lap. “He and his roommate have just illegally snuck a rabbit into their strictly anti-pet apartment. He’s been asking me for ‘cool’ name suggestions. That’s the level of dork he is.”
“I voted for Abunninable,” said Jing. She leaned closer to the screen just as the slasher plunged his cleaver into a frat boy’s shoulder. “But apparently, Akeem doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
“It’s hard to say and isn’t cute.” Yates screwed her face up. “I feel like a rabbit needs a name that you can baby talk. You can’t baby talk Abunninable.”
“It’s punny.” Jing scowled. “Puns are cute.”
“You’re cute,” Daisy said.
“Fuck you,” Jing replied.
“Cute is in the eye of the beholder. I like Abunninable.” I scratched at my shins, and Daisy kneed me in the back, presumably because I kept squirming. I stilled up. “Makes it sound mysterious. Like a jackalope.”
“She gets me.” Jing jerked a thumb in my direction. “Sideways gets me.”
“I vote Bunnicula,” said Daisy.
Yates shrugged, pulled her phone up and danced her fingers over the screen. A moment later, she gave Daisy a nod. “He says that Bunnicula works.”
“See? Soulmates.”
Yates stuck out her tongue. She set her phone aside, produced a vial of nail polish from seemingly nowhere, and swished the brush over her forefinger.
I wrapped my arms around my chest. My ribs felt weirdly honeyed, and my stomach fluttered, purred with something next to happiness. This wasn’t what I thought these three were like. I didn’t think they were much like anything. In school, they were dangerous angels, sugar-coated rattlesnakes, the kind of girls who everybody adored, who sucked up said adoration without giving any in turn. The triumvirate’s power was unparalleled. Rules had exclusion clauses for them. If they wore something too short, or cut too deep, no one batted a lash. If there was an election for student council, for prom, for extracurricular leadership, they won as soon as they wrote their name on the ballot. Outside of that, though, they vanished. They had these parties, sure, but I’d never been to one before last night. In the iron-clad West High social pyramid, they were on the thrones up top and I was skulking near the bottom, lurking behind bleachers, doing magic tricks for bottles of Coke. I wasn’t supposed to fit in their paradigm. I wasn’t fit for friendship.
“So. Sideways. Where did the witch thing come from? Tell me,” Daisy commanded as she weaved the hair at the nape of my neck. I think she was going for twin braids, the style she’d been wearing the night before. That meant I had another fifteen minutes or so of paradise. I made myself comfortable. “Made a deal with the devil?”
“That sounds sick. But no.” Witchcraft questions are always locked and loaded, and I could blow myself away if I worded the answer wrong. I opted for a half-truth. Half-truths are easier to swallow. “My dads own an antique shop. Lots of weird vintage shit in there. I found a lot of occult texts and esoteric lexicons in the back room. That, and the internet.”
“Whoa, your folks own an antique shop? Which one?” Yates perked up and peered at me over her shoulder.
“Rothschild & Pike. It’s the Addams Family-looking place on Main.”
“For real? I love Rothschild & Pike! I buy all my jewelry from there. Is your dad Julian? I was just about to ask him for a job, because my mom thinks I need more work experience on my résumé. It’s a drag, but that’s fair, I guess. If I must work, I’d like it to be for him. He’s human sunshine.” Yates punctuated her sentence with a little shrug and a wink in my direction before she seized Jing’s foot by the ankle and swished a generous portion of nail polish across her big toe. Not the nail. The knuckle.
“Twat,” Jing said with a jolt.
“Yeah. Julian is my dad. One of them, anyway.” I snickered a little, rocked my head forward to make Daisy’s reach easier. The second braid was nearing the back of my neck, and I tried not to shiver when her nails brushed my spine. “Boris is the other half of it. The Rothschild half, that is. Also dad.”
Daisy’s hands were on the tips of my shoulders, and my scalp still sang under phantom fingertips. I was going to be hooked on this like nicotine, whatever this was. Affection, maybe. Wasn’t sure. “So, were you adopted?” Daisy’s voice was distant, twinged with something chilly. It sounded like a challenge, but I couldn’t fathom what that challenge could possibly be.
“Fucking obviously.” I made a sound in the back of my throat.
The silence behind me was so coarse I could feel it. It felt like steel wool shoved up against my chest. Jing and Yates looked at each other for a second, then at me, and then pointedly at the slasher flick. My throat tensed up. Dread slipped down my sternum like a dry-swallowed ice cube, and the heaven Daisy was weaving into the back of my head dissolved into nothing. She finished my braids without a word. When she tied them off, she lowered them between my shoulder blades and leaned forward, rested her elbows on either side of my neck.