Max needed alone time before the pep rally. The word pep, a mood that felt far away and uninhabitable. Pompoms would fly. The cheerleaders had memorized a dance that ended with one of them tossed into the air spinning. They would perform it for the boys to bolster them with luck and confidence. God’s Way did not have a marching band, but music with trumpets and cymbals would crash from the gymnasium speakers while Max stood arm to arm with the boys on his team, his inherited family, even though he’d known them for just a short time.
He needed a run. He needed to find a dead yellowhammer. Max pushed through the glass doors at the back of the hallway. Sun filled his lungs. Outside, relief. End-of-summer smells. Cut grass and clover. Dirt scattered by the wind. Heat hit his face. At the far part of the field, a playground. Wood chips scattered in clumps below a long stretch of monkey bars.
Taking a break? I get it.
Max startled to see Glory in her pants and polo sitting on the sidewalk. She fiddled with a pink quartz at the end of a golden chain that hung from her neck. A spread of playing cards fanned out in front of her.
Max had seen Glory around school, but they hadn’t talked since that first time, when she had appeared before him, evaluated him, and then left him to the boys.
Why aren’t you in the gym for pep rally? asked Max.
I think that question is better served to you, said Glory. People won’t miss me but they sure as heck are going to notice your absence.
I go soon, said Max. Just fresh air for a moment.
Uh-huh, she said. Take your time. I’m not here to judge. I’m just saying.
Max waited for her to ask him if he was excited about the first game, but she didn’t.
Want me to pull a card for you? she asked.
A card? asked Max.
A tarot card. You ask me a question, I’ll ask the cards. They’ll divine an answer.
No thank you, said Max. But the cards drew his gaze down. Their paper looked worn thin. The plaid pattern on the back flaked off in patches.
These were my grandmother’s, said Glory. She taught me to read them.
And all I ask is one question, said Max. He couldn’t help himself.
If you want. Or I can just pull a card of the day and you can use it as a guide.
Later perhaps, said Max.
Whatever you want, said Glory. She shuffled the cards. They purred.
I should go in, he said. Before it’s later.
He turned to open the door and then paused.
Remember when you said I can ask you things and you have the answers, said Max.
I do indeed, said Glory. She stopped shuffling and spread ten cards facedown in front of her crossed legs. She bent over them. She arranged them in a curious pattern.
I can now ask something? he said.
That’s right.
To you and not to the cards, said Max.
Sure. Whatever you want, said Glory.
What do you know about, um, rat magic?
Glory stopped arranging her cards. Her hand hovered over one. She remained still and didn’t speak.
I don’t know much about it except that it’s crazy, she said. And a rumor.
A what?
It’s like a rumor people made up about drinking poison. If you drink rat poison and it doesn’t kill you, then you got the soul of Jesus in you or something. The nickname for the poison is rat magic. Like a pet term. People in the country used to drink it and then they all died. People still talk about it to sound radical, but no one is dumb enough to do it.
The Judge he has done it, said Max.
Nah, she said. Nah. He hasn’t. That man’s just real good at storytelling.
Okay, thank you for so much information, said Max.
He pulled the door open to a blast of cool air. Goose bumps jumped onto his arms. Before he went inside, he looked down at Glory’s cards. She turned one over. A woman tied and blindfolded. Ropes encircled her torso and bound her arms to her sides. Surrounding her were eight swords. They sung up from the ground and closed her in, trapping her, it seemed. Behind her, far away, a castle looked on.
AFTER THE PEP RALLY the players headed to the field for practice.
Davis said, Get a load of Graham. The boy’s a freaking nutball.
Max was only half paying attention as they walked through the parking lot. He was thinking about the last text Pan had sent him: a black heart. A heart. It wasn’t until they reached Graham, the beefy defensive lineman with a nose so smashed you could practically look into his brain, that he realized what Graham was doing. Graham held a dead squirrel and was skewering it, mouth first, through the radio antenna on his truck.
Max wanted to reach out and wrench the squirrel from Graham’s hands, but he cast his eyes to his cleats. His thighs were not thick, and they trembled, tender and sore, under his padded football tights. Davis began to chuckle, low and mean, then it pitched higher and turned inviting—a big, whooping laugh. How Graham got the squirrel, Max didn’t know. Found it dead or made it dead, did it matter?
Pan tore across the blacktop with a black cape bellowing behind him, cinched at the neck above his God’s Way polo. He let out a howl that mimicked how the inside of Max felt. The girls who had gathered around Graham’s truck, smacking gum in cheerleading skirts, also howled, but theirs was the howl of girls mesmerized by the meanness of their boys.
Jesus, said Davis. Here comes the High Priestess of Weird to rain on our parade.
Graham cocked his hip to the side, so comfortable in his body. The squirrel was fully impaled now. The antenna protruded from its butthole.
Little Miss Crybaby, said Graham. What do you want?
Pan was out of air and shaky.
Don’t cry, crybaby, said Graham. I’ll give you the squirrel when I’m done with it, and you can use it for one of your little voo-doo-doo’s.
You can go all The Craft with it or raise it from the fucking dead.
You’re not worth the shit in your asshole, Pan said.
Graham smirked. He approved of the insult.
You’re a bunch of soulless cowboys, said Pan. He swirled to take them in, as if he were tallying them, counting roll. Max closed his eyes, hoping Pan wouldn’t see him and think he’d been involved.
A violent mob, Pan muttered.
The whole scene reminded Max of something he’d recently witnessed on another of the school’s playing fields after a practice. A bunch of senior boys had lured a swallow into the batting cage and swung their clubs at it. They had stomped their feet and climbed up the sides of the cage. They had stuck their hands through the links and shaken the fencing, trying to scare the swallow closer to the ground so they could beat its body to death.
Max had stood with the players from the football team as they held their helmets in their hands and watched. They had jumped a little. One of the football boys had chucked his helmet toward the cage and made a woop noise, edging them on. Their bodies had tensed, and their knuckles struck the air like Get it dead. Max’s lips had widened until his mouth was a perfect oh. Oh, as in Oh shit or Oh no or Oh dear. Max’s Literature teacher, a man with a concerned acne-riddled face, had come running out of the school and yelled at the seniors torturing the bird.
He said, YOU ARE PSYCHOTIC. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you serial killers?
This made them double over with laugher. Hahaha. They had to hold their guts in their hands. The laughing did not relent. Their laughing made Max laugh, too. It got its claws in him.
Now, Graham’s mob of boys disbanded, leaving the squirrel bayoneted, and Pan defeated at its feet. And Max, now one of them, left, too. On the field, the boys ran into one another at high speeds. They ran faster, energized, maybe, by the spectacle they made of the squirrel. Max couldn’t concentrate. He kept thinking: violent mob. The squirrel flashed in his mind: dead, dead, dead.