6
DYLAN

BRIGHT WHITE LIGHT WAS shining in Mary’s eyes, glittering from the glass spyhole set directly in the center of the white door in front of her. A pounding noise was coming from the other side of the door, shaking it visibly. Mary could feel cold brass in her right hand; she looked down and saw her own hand—a boy’s large hand—turning the knob and pulling the door open while the pounding continued. She wanted to stop herself, but she couldn’t—there just wasn’t time. Dylan’s muscles were already moving, turning the knob on the Shayne apartment’s front door and pulling it open, and Mary had something like one second to realize where, when, and who she was—and to try to stop herself—but it was too late.

The door burst open, practically knocking her backward, and then she was staring out into the fifth-floor landing, where Joon Park stood in her ruined clothes pointing a gun right at her and pulling the trigger.

The muzzle flash and blast were brilliant and loud. The gun jerked, its barrel slamming backward and forward as the cartridge was ejected and a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke filled the air. Mary was blown backward and she felt white-hot agony in her abdomen and then a blast of pain all up and down her body as the wooden floor slammed into her from behind; she was on the floor now, staring up at her apartment’s hallway ceiling, with a pool of warmth spreading behind her and her mind nearly comatose with pain and shock.

“Aaaahh!” a male voice was screaming—Dylan’s voice, echoing inside her skull.

That’s me, Mary thought. The pain was so intense that she was convinced she would go insane if it continued.

Joon came forward, into the apartment, still brandishing the smoking gun. The look in her eyes—viewed from floor level—was terrifying. Mary could hear the clatter of footsteps and a slamming door as Real Mary dashed into her bedroom and slammed and locked the door.

“There,” Joon whispered. She was looking down at Mary—at Dylan—contemptuously. “Now you’ve lost a guy you cared about, Mary—how does it feel?”

“Oh, Jesus,” Mary screamed. She couldn’t help it. “Oh, God, it fucking hurts—”

Joon had stepped over her and was heading down the corridor toward Mary’s bedroom door—Mary could hear her footsteps creaking on the floorboards.

Think, she told herself through the pain. Think—figure it out.

Ellen had said that she’d cast Horus’s vengeance curse—the Curse of 7 Souls—on Mary because Mary had “tried to kill Mom.” Mary couldn’t make heads or tails of that remark. She’d come to understand what all the others had against her—why they’d been enlisted in Ellen’s curse—but she still couldn’t figure out what Ellen, her sister, had against her.

“I’ve called the cops!”

Mom’s voice, coming through her bedroom door. Mary remembered—she’d experienced this same moment already, not that long ago, from within her own bedroom.

“Whoever you are, the cops are coming! I called nine-one-one!”

The next few minutes were hard for Mary to keep track of. She realized that she might be going into shock—she was paralyzed, staring at the ceiling, but she vividly remembered the pool of blood that was spreading on the floor around her. She tried to keep awake, to keep herself rational, but it wasn’t easy—she had a strange, hallucinogenic awareness of Joon heeding Mom’s warning and running past her, a black and silver blur, waving Mason’s gun, and then she realized that her mother was there, crouching over her, a big blur smelling of tobacco smoke and flowers, and she was crying again, staring up at her mother’s face from the floor and realizing just how close she was to death—how she’d spent what seemed like an endless amount of time in proximity to death, thanks to an ancient Egyptian sorcerer she’d never even heard of before today.

“Mommy,” she was crying. “Mommy, Mommy …” She knew that her mother saw Dylan Summer lying on the floor, not her daughter, but it didn’t seem to make any difference.

“No, no, no,” Mom murmured, stroking Dylan’s scruffy hair away from Mary’s—Dylan’s—eyes. She was still holding the handset of the cordless phone. “No, please, not again, not again …”

“Mommy … Mommy …”

The hallucinatory feeling continued as Mary lay on the floor in the pool of Dylan’s blood and heard her own bedroom door bang open, heard Real Mary come out of her bedroom and scream at the top of her lungs.

“Mommy …,” Mary moaned in agony. “Mommy, help me….”

“The ambulance is coming,” Mom told her in a soothing voice, the one Mary remembered her mother using when she was a little girl. “I’ve called nine-one-one; I told them gunshot—they’re on their way.”

Mary was fading in and out of awareness as her mother and Real Mary talked and Mom explained that she’d heard the gunshot and come out of the room. She tried to ignore the pain and focus on their voices. “Ow, ow, ow …,” she moaned. “Mommy, I’m dying; I’m really dying….” She wasn’t in control of what she was saying; the strange, dreamlike state continued as Real Mary’s BlackBerry rang and Real Mary took the call from Ellen that sent her downtown to her death. Mary tried to interfere—she grabbed her own ankle and said, “No, don’t—don’t go,” but her voice came out in a whisper and Real Mary easily pulled herself away and said something Mary couldn’t hear, and then she was gone, on her way to the Peninsula Hotel for the very last time—and Mary was alone with Mom, lying on the floor in Dylan’s dying, gut-shot body.

“Please stay awake,” Mom begged as she caressed Mary’s—Dylan’s—forehead. “Don’t pass out—stay awake. I can’t take it—I can’t take this happening again.”

That’s the second time she’s said that, Mary realized. It was hard to think with the pain flowing through her body and her ears ringing and the warm stain spreading beneath her, but she suddenly registered what her mother had said.

“What do you—what do you mean ‘again’? Mom—”

“Don’t talk,” Mom urged in a weak, faint voice, and Mary realized that Dawn Shayne was on the edge of panic—and not just because of the gunshot and the blood. It was something else. “Don’t talk, or you’ll accelerate going into shock.”

“What—”

“Shhh!”

Mary’s mother was beside herself—Mary had never seen her in such a panic. She was crouched on the floor with Dylan Summer’s blood soaking into her bathrobe like scarlet paint, stroking Dylan’s hair and staring with wide eyes like her worst nightmare was coming true. “What do you mean ‘again’?” Mary rasped painfully—the effort of speaking each word made her light-headed. “If—if you tell me what you’re talking about I’ll be quiet.”

Her mother gazed down at her, tears in her eyes, her face white, and nodded. “This happened before,” she whispered finally. “Just like this. I—I lost somebody I loved. I lost somebody I really loved, the same way. He was shot to death.”

“You mean Da—you mean Mr. Shayne?”

Is that how Dad died? And nobody ever told me?

But Mom shook her head.

“I did love Mary’s father. I did, truly. But”—Mom moved her head then, turning her face to one side as if ashamed or embarrassed—“but I was in love with somebody else. His name was Lawrence—Lawrence Schwartz. And he …” Mom’s eyes focused back on Mary. “You don’t want to hear this, Dylan. It was so long ago; ten whole years ago. Nobody remembers anymore; nobody cares except me and Ellen.”

Lawrence?

Mary was stunned. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined such a thing. Mom was in love with a man named Lawrence?

But the amazing thing was, she remembered Lawrence. The name brought an image into her mind: a middle-aged man in a dark green suit with no tie.

Uncle Larry.

All at once, the complete memory was there, as if it had never faded at all. He was always hanging around Mom when the girls were young, and they were supposed to call him “Uncle Larry.”

I must have repressed it, Mary thought dazedly. Sure, I’ve repressed it, like all those shrinks on television say. Because it made me angry.

The ten-year-old anger was coming back now; the pain and dizziness were like vodka, poisoning her blood as it drained onto the floorboards, making her drunk with remembered fury, the kind of deep, unchecked rage that only a neglected child could feel, even if she didn’t understand it.

She remembered being forced to spend dismal hours with Mom and Uncle Larry and being told to keep it a secret from Daddy. Mom spent all her precious time with Uncle Larry. That was why she was always running late when she was supposed to be picking Mary up from gymnastics. Of course, she managed to pick Ellen up from school every day at three on the dot—all Ellen wanted to do was go home and read books. But once Ellen had been safely delivered back to the apartment, Mom would disappear off to Larry Land. That was where she was every day at five o’clock when Mary would sit waiting for her on the school steps, shivering in the freezing cold, her mittens tucked deep under the arms of her pea coat and her teeth chattering. Mary would convince herself that every passing cab would surely be her mother, but sometimes Mom wouldn’t come for hours. And sometimes she never came at all. Dad would show up—after Mom had called him with some lame excuse—and Mary would ride home in a taxi with her father, pressing against him, warming her hands beneath her arms and gratefully inhaling his Borkum Riff tobacco smell, telling him how much she hated Mommy for leaving her out there in the cold so often.

“Dylan?” Mom sounded even more worried. “This is upsetting you—I can tell. Should I—”

“Tell me,” Mary gasped. “Tell me what happened. Tell me who shot him. Please.”

“Mort shot him,” Mom told her. “Mary’s father shot him—shot him dead.”

What?

Mary realized she was probably hallucinating; the pain and her mother’s touch and the glare of the overhead lights and the accumulated weirdness of the six souls she’d occupied were affecting her thinking. Did Mom just say that she was having an affair with Uncle Larry and Dad shot him?

But she wasn’t hallucinating, or dreaming, and she knew it. She’d gotten over that comforting fantasy back when she was Scott Sanders. This was real, as real as it got.

“Please,” Mary whispered painfully. “Please tell me.”

“It was so long ago,” Dawn Shayne began. “Ten years ago, but I’ll never forget it. The worst day of my life … the day of our anniversary party. We don’t talk about that day. Mary acts like she doesn’t remember it.”

But I don’t! I don’t remember it!

“It was supposed to be a good day—our crystal anniversary. We had a big party, right here in this apartment. Mort and I had invited everyone. But something was wrong. From the moment I woke up, I felt … odd. Like the whole world was against me. Everything was off-kilter somehow. All of my friends—even my closest ones—were acting like they were out to get me.”

This is sounding very familiar, Mary realized as Dylan’s body began shivering.

“They all did such … such mean things to me,” Mom was saying. “All of them, all of my friends. I thought it was just in fun; just pranks you’d play on someone. I could have dealt with it if it hadn’t been for my family. When your family turns against you, Dylan, well … there’s no recovering from that. It kills something in your heart, and you just never recover.”

“You mean—you mean your husband?”

“I mean Mary.”

And here we go, Mary thought, with that same feeling of sick inevitability that she always imagined accompanied capsizing boats as they sank, airplanes that suddenly plummeted, cars that skidded out of control and slid into incoming traffic. Here we go into the abyss—into the blank spot, the missing memory, the white field of snow.

“Larry was at the party,” Mom said. “I never looked at him—I was sure of that. But Mort knew somehow. I could just tell that he knew, and that day”—she shivered, and Mary felt the shiver through Dylan’s shoulder—“that day, he was different. He had a look in his eyes, a murderous look, that I’d never seen before. I realized he was going to do something violent, something dangerous. I knew we had to get the girls and get away, to escape. Larry had a little place north of Riverdale,” Mom continued, still stroking Dylan’s sweat-streaked forehead as the hot pool of blood spread beneath him. “A little farmhouse, about twenty minutes out of town.”

A farmhouse. A farmhouse in the snow.

Uncle Larry’s house.

Mary was listening so avidly, her only real fear was that Dylan would die of blood loss before she got to hear the end of the story. The “visions” she’d been seeing all day weren’t visions at all—they were memories. Somehow the curse had dislodged the door in her mind that had been shut for ten years, and the memory of that day had spilled out. I was seven years old, she remembered. And we fled through the snow to the farmhouse.

“We thought we’d be safe there,” Mom went on, her voice drenched in the sorrow and dread of her story. “So we got inside and lit a fire and we were safe … for about ten minutes. Morton had followed us, and he—he drove right there; he got out of the car and banged on the door like he—like a madman. There’s no other way to describe it. I begged Larry not to let him in, not to open the door, not in front of the girls, but he just went over and reached for the doorknob”—Mom was crying openly now—“and when he’d flipped the latches Mort just kicked the door open and sh-shot Larry, point-blank. The worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life … I hoped I’d never hear it again, and I never did. Until just now; until tonight.”

“What did you do?” Mary croaked.

“I screamed for the girls to follow me and I ran, out of the house, out the back door, into the snow, into the trees. I turned to look behind me and Mary was there, but I’d lost Ellen somehow, and when I turned to go back for her I fell.” Mom had lost control of her tears. She was sobbing like a child, trying to find spaces to breathe. “I fell into a ditch, some kind of hole in the ground, and I couldn’t get out.”

You fell into the ravine, Mary thought. You fell into that pit and couldn’t get out.

Just like me.

“And she could have pulled me out,” Mom said firmly, her lip trembling as she stared straight ahead, nodding.” Mary could have saved me; she was strong enough. But she just stood there on the ledge, watching me try to scratch and claw my way out. I begged her … I pleaded with her. ‘Mary, just reach down and help me,’ … but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even try—she just stared at me, watching me struggle, and then she turned around and walked off into the snow. I screamed for her to come back, that Mommy wasn’t joking, that I was trapped, but she was gone.

“I was in the hole all night long. There were snakes and worms and freezing water … I almost lost both my feet to frostbite, and I got hypothermia. The doctor said I could have died. As it is, the pneumonia ruined my lungs, and”—Mom shook her head, brushing gray hairs from her forehead, the crying apparently over—“and in the morning, when they found me, they found Larry dead from gunshot wounds, and Mort dead too, asphyxiated somehow, like the violence and the cold air had brought on some kind of toxic shock. ‘Domestic dispute,’ they said at the inquest, like it was some kind of debate or something. ‘Temporary insanity.’ But I lost everything permanently—and I never recovered. Not really. Why would she want to do that, Dylan? Why would Mary want to leave me alone in the cold? Like she wanted me to freeze to death?”

(She tried to kill my mom! Ellen had screamed.)

“But I know the answer. She didn’t love me, Dylan. Not at all. She hated me. And what just breaks my heart is that Mary hates me for being such a useless wreck … but she did it. She made me what I am, that day. They all did; everybody I loved. Everybody but Ellen.”

I ruined her life, Mary thought. It’s totally true—I’m to blame for all of it.

“You could say it’s my fault for cheating on Mort. But you have to understand, that door”—Mom cocked her gray-haloed head backward, indicating Dad’s study—“was closed all the time. He’d be in there for days, smoking his pipe, with his patient files and his dusty old books. He stopped caring about me, Dylan, but that doesn’t mean I stopped caring about him. Look, I still wear the present he gave me—the only nice thing that happened that day.” Mom was fumbling at her throat, pulling a gold chain out from beneath the frilled collar of her nightgown. “On the morning of our anniversary, he gave me this necklace. It’s Egyptian—isn’t it pretty?”

She held the necklace’s pendant out, proudly, and Mary stared as it gleamed in the overhead light: an almond-shaped, ornamental Egyptian eye, carved from burnished gold.

Another Eye of Tnahsit. Another amulet.

Mary felt a wave of numb dread flowing over her as she stared at the necklace, its curves glinting as Mom turned it over and over in her hand.

The spell! Mary was thinking furiously. She could barely focus on Mom’s voice. The Curse of 7 Souls! Dad cast it on Mom!

She put the pieces together. It was easy to understand what had happened, now. Her father, Morton Shayne, had cast the same spell—the Curse of 7 Souls—on his wife, Mary and Ellen’s mother, ten years ago. He’d done the same thing Ellen had done: given her an ornament depicting the Eye of Tnahsit. And she’d had the same experience as Mary, the same horrible day (with everyone out to get her) concluding in death and tragedy.

So who were your seven souls, Mom?

But Mary knew part of the answer.

(A giant figure, limned by moonlight, loomed over her, leaning down like a toppling granite statue—reaching for her. The huge man-shaped silhouette drew closer, its arm reaching forward, and she realized that its huge extended hand was holding something out toward her—a thin rectangle that glowed in the moonlight. A piece of paper—a note. There was writing on the note, which Mary couldn’t read in the dark, but it was like all the forces of the universe converged on that single page.)

The vision wasn’t a vision—it was a memory. And as she recalled it all again, it was like a photograph coming into focus; the shadowed figure was suddenly illuminated as he toppled toward her. The dark man was her father, Morton Shayne, standing over her in the snow that covered the Riverside Park playground where he’d brought her, looming over her tiny seven-year-old figure like a giant. And the piece of paper he was giving her was clear; she could read it now.

WHOM DO YOU HATE THE MOST?
WHAT WOULD YOU DO ABOUT IT IF YOU COULD?
TODAY IS THE DAY.

He picked me, Mary realized. He knew how much I resented her—all that time waiting for Mom out in the cold. I complained to him, so he picked me as one of his seven. And, under the spell, I got my revenge—I left her in the snow to die.

It wasn’t me. It was the spell.

“That’s why I can’t remember,” Mary croaked. Her head was spinning like she’d had six shots of vodka—she could barely make her mouth form the words. “That’s—that’s what the book said.”

“Oh my God, Dylan, you’re delirious—”

“No! I understand it now,” Mary insisted, rallying her strength to raise Dylan’s scruffy head off of the floorboards. “You forget it when it’s all over. That’s why Dylan couldn’t remember anything, in the car. That’s why I’ve never been able to remember that day! And Ellen doesn’t know that.”

“Dylan—”

“Ellen thinks it was me. She thinks I left you there—and it wasn’t me! It was the fucking curse … and I can explain it.” With a supreme burst of effort, ignoring the agony in her—Dylan’s—abdomen, Mary rose on her elbows, getting ready to stand. “If I tell her, she’ll forgive me,” she panted, her vision doubling with the renewed pain. “She’ll forgive me. And she won’t go through with it—she’ll stop—she’ll stop the curse.”

“Dylan Summer, you lie back down this instant!” Mom cried.

“I can’t.” As Mary’s vision doubled, cleared and doubled again, she saw the page from Horus’s book on the floor next to her—the page Dylan had accidentally torn out.

(the Minions will forget all that they have done in Service of the Curse)

“What are you doing?” Mom asked, alarmed, as Mary groped on the floor with Dylan’s numb, bloodied hands. “Stay right where you are! You can’t go anywhere!”

Yes I can, Mary thought grimly, struggling not to pass out as she pressed on the floor and raised Dylan’s body to a sitting position. Her fingers were trembling as she reached for the stray page and shoved it into Dylan’s pocket. Yes I can—I have to.

(Jesus, this is wrong. Ellen needs to see this—)

“I have to go,” Mary rasped, coughing as bubbles blood of spurted from her lips. Entire new galaxies of pain were sweeping through her as she moved, but she had no choice. She realized she was rambling, deliriously. “I have to show her… have to show Ellen what the spell says. Minions can’t remember … not my fault …”

Her mother was staring at her, white-faced. Mary could only imagine what Dylan’s blood-soaked, wild-eyed body looked like, but, judging by Mom’s facial expression, it must have been pretty bad. She tried to force herself to speak clearly.

“She didn’t—Mary didn’t do it—on purpose,” Mary managed to tell her mother. “She loves you very much—she always did. She’s”—Mary could barely speak from the pain of wrenching herself upright and lurching toward the apartment’s front door—“she’s sorry for what she did. She’s very, very sorry.”

MARY WAS DRENCHED WITH sweat, leaning on the edge of a No Parking sign in the dark shadows of Columbus Avenue, spitting up blood. There was a spattered, wet-blood trail behind her, leading out of her apartment building.

Incredibly, miraculously, she had made it to the street. Her vision was fading in and out as she slipped against the cold, rain-slicked metal sign and staggered forward, splashing her sneakers in a wide puddle as she reeled from the pain. She turned away from the howling wind, looking up at the dark shadows of the surrounding buildings.

Taxi, she thought desperately. I’ve got to get a taxi.

Mary clutched her bleeding abdomen and stared down the deserted avenue, her vision doubling. She could see the red embers of the traffic lights change to green and she could hear the rumble of approaching, southbound traffic, but she couldn’t make out the details—she extended her arm, hoping that one of the oncoming cars was a cab and would see her.

“Taxi!” Mary wailed. “Taxi!”

A rumbling, sliding yellow phantom had appeared beside her, its cold steel surfaces still beaded with rain. Mary grappled with the door handle, watching Dylan’s fingers smear blood across the door before she managed to wrench it open and tumble inside. Fresh pain lashed out at her from her abdomen, as if someone had just kicked her there, and she clenched her teeth against the agony and leaned over, mustering the herculean strength necessary to heave the cab door shut.

(heaved the cab door shut)

“The Peninsula Hotel,” Mary shouted. She could only see a blur; she hoped the cabdriver had heard her. He must have heard something, because the cab started moving. She stared at the roof of the car, hoping she wouldn’t throw up, hoping that Dylan’s body wouldn’t die before she got where she was going … and recalling the memory—Dylan’s memory—that had just sprung to mind.

(heaved the cab door shut)

SHE’LL COME HOME WITH you tonight.

She’ll come home with you if you ask.

The thought hit Dylan suddenly as he heaved the cab door shut. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew something about Ellen was different tonight. He could feel it in the way she’d stepped into the cab as he held the door for her. Usually, she ducked past him and shuffled herself along the black vinyl seat until she was pressed up against the opposite window, but tonight she grabbed onto the lapels of his gray overcoat, looked him right in the eyes and backed herself in. She planted herself dead center, leaving only a third of the seat for him as he climbed in after her, and she let her entire leg press against his without the slightest hesitation. She even pushed her fragile shoulder against his, as if a third person had piled into the backseat with them, crushing them against the window like lovers.

Like lovers. Finally like lovers, Dylan thought, even if only for the few seconds it took her to realize she was sitting too close.

“We’ll be making two stops,” Dylan told the driver, as he always did after their Saturday-night Chinese dinners at Empire Szechuan Palace. “We’re going to drop her home at Ninety-second and Amsterdam, and then I’m going up to One Twenty-fourth and Morningside Drive.”

But he secretly prayed for Ellen to correct him. He imagined her telling the driver to forget that first stop and just take her straight to Dylan’s apartment. He imagined her falling into his lap and staring up at him for as long as he could resist leaning down to kiss her.

A first kiss. Right here, right now. It didn’t have to be in some gondola in Venice, or trapped at the top of some cutesy malfunctioning Ferris wheel on Mott Street; it could just happen in the back of a cramped New York taxicab, surrounded by half-ripped Urban Underground stickers, and the babbling ABC news anchors on Taxi TV, and the overpowering odor of the coconut air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. They could race up the empty highway, buried so deep in their first kiss that they’d barely notice the Hudson River rolling by, or the George Washington Bridge lit up like a giant prehistoric bird in the black sky. They’d sprint up the dusty stairs of Dylan’s third-floor walk-up and crash against the door to his apartment—kissing so passionately after a year of pent-up anticipation that the loose change would be raining from his pockets as he dug blindly for his keys. They’d burst through the door, and he’d scoop her wispy frame up off the floor as she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, and glide her down the hall to his bedroom, where they’d fall onto his creaky twin mattress with their arms and lips entangled, never even bothering to turn on the lights….

“Dylan?”

“Huh?”

Ellen’s voice snapped Dylan back to the quiet reality of the taxicab.

“Where were you just now?”

“I was right here,” he said.

“Hmmm.” She smiled dubiously out of the corner of her mouth, and then she leaned her head on his shoulder, clasping her hands tightly around his arm. She had never done this before. Maybe they locked arms when they came out of a movie, but this was different; this was more.

He could smell the faint traces of rose water in her short, tousled hair and a hint of Ivory soap on her face. Her black hooded sweatshirt was buried under her black parka, but the hood had gotten caught on his shoulder, stretching her collar out to expose the long, graceful neck that she always tried to hide. The collar was actually stretched far enough to expose a patch of her vanilla skin, running from the base of her neck to the beginning of a beautifully naked clavicle bone. He wanted so badly to follow the entire line of that clavicle, but it disappeared back under her sweatshirt—back under her thick black armor.

That, he supposed, was why he was so in love with Ellen. Because he could never see all of her, no matter how hard he tried. There was always more to uncover, more to figure out, more to learn, just like all those ancient languages that obsessed him. He hated obvious girls with obvious beauty—girls like Ellen’s sister, Mary. Mary was just another one of those porcelain-doll girls who bounced around the Meatpacking District on Friday nights, screaming for love and attention with every skintight outfit, every overbearing splash of designer perfume, every studied feminine pose. Everyone seemed to think that Mary was the Pretty One, but they had no idea what they were talking about. Dylan had the Pretty One right here in the cab with him, resting comfortably on his shoulder, holding his arm just as tightly as she held that beat-up Paddington Bear in all her childhood pictures. He wanted them to stay this close for the rest of the night, and on through the next day, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. How many more times could he ask? Her answer was always the same and her reason was always the same.

Instead, he asked one of those half-assed leading questions. “Are you tired …?”

“No,” she said. “Not at all.”

Ellen looked genuinely surprised by her own answer. She began to smile, as if she’d just discovered something truly remarkable. She leaned her head back against the seat, breathed in deeply and let out the longest, most luxuriant sigh. “I am not tired at all,” she marveled. “I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t tired. I feel … awake. I think I feel good.”

“Something’s different with you tonight,” Dylan said. “What’s going on?”

Ellen turned to him, still reveling in her unexpectedly euphoric moment. “It’s Mary,” she said simply. “She’s taking care of Mom tonight.”

“No.” Dylan shook his head refusing to believe it. “No, there’s absolutely no way.”

“I know.” Ellen’s eyes widened with amazement. “I couldn’t believe it either. I ask her every time we go to dinner, Dylan. I ask her to watch Mom for a few hours after eight—just give her the meds and watch a little Forensic Files or something. They wouldn’t even have to talk. I don’t know why I keep asking—she always says no. But tonight, I asked her again … and she said yes.” Ellen grinned wider than before—wider than Dylan had probably ever seen her smile. “She said yes, Dylan. That means we’ve got, like, three extra hours to hang out. Maybe even four …”

She leaned abruptly onto Dylan’s lap and gripped his thighs with her long fingers. His pulse doubled as her face grew closer to his—so close that she became a blur. But he realized she was only leaning over to open the window as far as it would go.

The icy wind rushed into the cab with a deafening rumble, slamming against their faces and blowing back their hair. Keeping her hands anchored on his lap, Ellen stuck her head out the window and breathed in the night air like a German shepherd in the front seat of a pickup.

“God!” she shouted into the wind. “This must be what it feels like when you get out of prison! I’m out! I’m out!”

She ducked back into the cab, her jet-black hair blown in all directions and her cheeks flushed a bright and lively pink. Dylan had never seen her look so beautiful. Usually, she looked so much older than her age. He had always assumed that was because of her intelligence, but now he could see … it was just the burden. It was the burden of being a mother to her own mother night in and night out. Mary had agreed to babysit their mother for this one Saturday night, and so, for this one Saturday night, Ellen could be what she actually was: a young and adorable sixteen-year-old girl. The strange thing was, with her gorgeous face so flushed and alive and free, she actually looked more like Mary than herself. Dylan hated himself for even thinking it.

Ellen stretched herself to the opposite window and slid it wide open too. Now it was cold enough to see her short, excited breaths puffing from her mouth. Her eyes lit up with inspiration as she grabbed hold of his arm.

“Let’s go somewhere,” she said.

“Anywhere you want. We could go for coffee or—”

“Morocco. Let’s go to Morocco. No, Egypt. Let’s go to Egypt. My dad was totally obsessed with Egypt, and I’ve never been there. You could teach me the language, Dylan—you could teach me everything you know. You should have seen your eyes light up at dinner when you talked about all the uncovered Sanskrit in the Middle East. We could go to Egypt and study Sanskrit! Let’s go, Dyl. Let’s go tonight.”

“I’m not sure we could pull that off in three hours—”

“Well, let’s pretend we can.” She squeezed the life out of his arm, and when he looked into her eyes, he realized that she meant it. She honestly wanted to pretend they were crossing an ocean tonight. A pretend escape was better than no escape at all. “Please. Can’t we just drive to the airport?”

“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “We probably can’t get a flight out tonight, but we could head out to JFK really early in the morning … and you could stay over tonight.”

Her misty breaths seemed to cease altogether. It was as if the ice-cold wind in the cab had actually frozen her solid. Dylan was holding his breath too, waiting on her next word. But she didn’t seem to have one. He instantly regretted asking. He was such a hopelessly impulsive idiot. “I mean, if you wanted to,” he added, making it worse. “You could take the whole night off. You could tell your Mom you were sleeping over at a friend’s house, and …” He wondered how much deeper he could dig this hole.

“Actually, you’re kind of my only friend,” Ellen said. “I mean, not really, but … you know what I mean. I think Mom would figure out where I was staying pretty quick.”

“Right,” he murmured, feeling his chest deflate under his thick coat. “Good point.”

“But … I think she’d probably be half-asleep when I told her….”

Dylan studied Ellen’s barely blinking eyes, trying to see if she was saying what he thought she was saying. She looked painfully nervous all of a sudden—frightened, even. But she wasn’t backing away. She let her face linger next to his, and he could feel her warm breath on his neck, cutting straight through the cold. He let himself lean the slightest bit closer, watching her breaths quicken and become shallow. But she still didn’t back away. Finally, in that last fraction of space left between their lips, he felt something give. Something changed in the air between them. If she had wanted to push him back, she would have done it by now. So he leaned forward the rest of the way. She let his lips touch hers so lightly that it was hardly a kiss.

And then her cell phone rang. It screamed out from the pocket of her black parka. The piercing ring cut through the moment with such laser precision that it carved out a foot of space between them.

“It might be Mom,” Ellen mumbled, totally disoriented by the almost-kiss. “No, it’s Mary,” she said, glimpsing the caller ID. She flipped open her phone and plugged her other ear with her index finger. “Hey, is everything okay? Did you give Mom her—”

She was immediately interrupted by her sister. Dylan could just make out the unbearably singsong sound of Mary’s voice on the other end of the line.

“No, wait,” Ellen said. “No, you can’t just … Mary, you can’t just leave.” Ellen was trying to get a word in, but Mary wasn’t giving her a chance. “No, that doesn’t matter, Mare, you still have to stay there, or she could … I know that, but … Oh, come on, doesn’t Jamie own the club? He’ll have, like, ten more openings before the real opening…. Well, he can get them to play another show there—they’re like his best friends, they’ll do whatever he—Yes, I’m done with dinner, but I was going to sleep over at a fr—No, I know … I know …”

Dylan watched Ellen transform with every additional word out of Mary’s mouth. He watched her shoulders slump and her neck sink further into her black sweatshirt. He watched a deep, fleeting sadness pass over her eyes, replaced with a heartbreaking sort of dead-eyed numbness. “No, you’re right,” she said in a near monotone. “You should go. You should definitely go. I’ll come back home. Yeah, I’m coming back now. No, it’s fine. Really, I promise. It’s fine. Right … a goddess, I know.”

Ellen clapped her phone shut and slid away from Dylan, pressing herself against the opposite door. She rolled the window up and leaned her head against it like a rag doll. She came back to life for just a split second, and pounded her fist so hard against the cab’s partition that she actually frightened Dylan.

“Hey!” the driver hollered. “What the hell are you doing to my cab? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“I’m sorry,” she called back in a weak voice. “I’m sorry about that, it was an accident.” Her face returned to its expressionless state, and she let her head fall back against the window again. “I’m sorry,” she said more quietly to Dylan.

“It’s all right,” Dylan assured her. “It’s okay.” The streetlights were flashing across her face, but he was sure he caught a glimpse of a tear rolling down her cheek and landing on her waterproof parka.

“Mary’s got to go to a club opening tonight.” There was no emotion left in Ellen’s voice. “She’s going to do Mom tomorrow.” Dylan wondered how many times he’d heard that before. “I can’t come over,” Ellen continued. “Not tonight. Mom’s going to need her meds and someone’s got to keep her company when she … It was a bad idea anyway. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can’t … I mean …”

“It’s okay,” Dylan said. “Don’t worry about it. Another time.”

But he knew there wouldn’t be another time. That one half of a kiss was as close as they’d ever come. She wouldn’t be coming home with him tonight or any other night. Because Mary made sure of that.

The Pretty One. What a joke. He couldn’t imagine anything uglier than Mary Shayne. He pictured her throwing on another one of her obvious party dresses, puckering in the mirror and racing out the door without a care in the world. A cheap imitation of a supermodel in a bad perfume ad. She wouldn’t have a second thought about leaving Ellen alone to rock their mother to sleep again; she’d be too busy clinking glasses of free Cristal in the VIP lounge with some spoiled asshole named Jamie whose daddy had bought him a nightclub. She’d sure as hell never think about how she was slowly but surely ruining Dylan’s life. He wasn’t even sure she knew his name.

Now he wanted to punch something too. Not something—someone. He wanted to punch Mary really, really hard. Maybe that was something she’d actually notice.

IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT they did to me, Mary thought dazedly. Dylan’s memory—the strength of his feelings for Ellen and the callous way Mary had kept ruining their romantic ambitions—was no less sickening than any of the other memories, the other grievances she’d experienced since she died. It doesn’t matter how they ganged up on me, because I deserved it.

I deserved all of their rage; I brought it all on myself.

Did it mean that she deserved to die? Should she stop what she was doing and just expire, right here, in the back of this taxicab, in Dylan Summer’s body?

I can’t. Mary was pretty sure that there was no way. It’s not over yet.

“Peninsula Hotel,” the driver called out. His voice was so distant, it was like he was in a different city. “Nine fifty-eight.”

“Just a second …” Mary was struggling to pull Dylan’s wallet from his pants pocket. It was an exercise in pain and blood. She managed to pay the driver and drag herself out of the cab, but she could barely stand. It was like she was falling, even when she was standing still—she was teetering on the edge and she knew it.

(on the edge)

She felt like she could almost count the breaths she had left, before she fell.

(on the edge)

“THERE’S ONE MORE THING,” Ellen said, pointing at Dylan. “Stick around—I’ve got to talk to you. Everyone else, it’s showtime—let’s get moving.”

Dylan stood on the rooftop of the Chadwick School, hands in pockets, the wind ruffling his hair around his face as he watched the Chadwickites—Patrick and Joon and Amy—move single file through the battered metal door that led back downstairs, into the school. They were following orders, he noted with some satisfaction … just like he was. Ellen had told them to go, and had told him to stay, and there was something about obeying her that was profoundly satisfying. It was odd, but it was true.

Dylan had felt strange since awakening that morning—but it wasn’t anything he could complain about. It wasn’t like waking up with a hangover; if anything, it was the opposite of a hangover. He felt alert, and refreshed, and exuberant, and alive. More than anything else, he felt like he had a purpose, something crucial to do that day.

That great feeling—the one that was filling him with adrenaline and excitement right now, as the door clanged shut and he was alone on the roof with Ellen—had come to a head, had reached a kind of glorious harmonic crescendo less than an hour ago, when Ellen had handed him that wonderful square of paper with the beautiful moving, shifting symbol and the three lines of writing that were, possibly, the most impressive, the most correct and succinct thing he’d ever read. WHOM DO YOU HATE THE MOST? The question echoed in his head like a beautiful melody you couldn’t get rid of and didn’t want to. Of course he knew the answer to that question—everybody did. The five of them had stood together on this rooftop beneath the overcast sky and discussed their plan—Ellen’s plan—for ruining, destroying, humiliating, punishing Mary Shayne, and it was like he’d found a new purpose in life; there was just no feeling on earth that could compare to the satisfaction of the day they were about to spend.

“Dyl,” Ellen said, coming closer to him, her hands sunk into the pockets of her orange hoodie, in a pose he liked very much, “I’ve got history class in just a few minutes, but I need to talk to you first.”

“Okay,” Dylan said, and when the wind blew the scent of her Neutrogena shampoo over him, he felt a tingling up and down his legs that made him want to sing, that made him want to rush forward and grab Ellen and kiss her like he should have done that evening in the taxicab, before her hateful harpy of a sister had ruined it. “What do you want to talk about?”

“I have to tell you something,” Ellen said, walking closer across the tar paper. “I mean, I want to tell you something. I’m going to tell you a secret.”

“Okay,” Dylan said. He had no idea what she was going to say. He had some delightful theories, each more enticing than the last, but he really didn’t know what came next. If she was going to tell him what to do—give him more of the incredibly clever, incredibly correct directions she’d been dispensing—he wouldn’t hesitate to do whatever she said.

“You know how sometimes you’ve got a secret and you just have to tell it to somebody else … once you’ve found the right person to tell it to?”

“Sure,” Dylan said. He knew exactly what she meant.

“Well, this is one of those times,” Ellen said, taking Dylan’s hands. The overcast light was glinting off distant windows and Dylan thought he’d never felt so content, so happy. TODAY IS THE DAY, Ellen’s note had told him—and he agreed completely. “So I’m going to tell my secret to you.”

Dylan was all ears.

“Can you feel it?” Ellen said, moving closer to him. Now she was so close that he could taste her breath, and his head was swimming with the sensation of being so close. “Can you feel … today? Can you feel how special today is?”

“Yeah,” Dylan said, his breath catching in his throat. “Yeah, I can.”

“Tomorrow will be different,” Ellen said. Her eyes were shining, glinting like gems. “I wasn’t even sure that … that it would work, but it did, it has worked … it is working….”

“What?” Dylan asked. “What’s working?”

Ellen shook her head impatiently. “It’s all about today, Dylan. Today is … is everything. It’s our one chance.”

“Ell, you’re not making sense.”

“No, I am making sense! For the first time, we’re all making sense. We’re finally saying what we really think of her, and we’re finally doing something. And doesn’t it make a difference? Doesn’t everything just feel so much better? So much realer?”

“Yeah.” He could never, in a million years of studying every language known to humanity, have come up with a more fitting, a more appropriate sentiment. Ellen had hit the nail on the head. “Yeah, you’re right. It all feels realer.”

“So I can do this,” Ellen said, tilting her head upward and forward and kissing him, her lips brushing his gently, briefly, before she pulled away, and it was the most exquisite feeling he’d ever felt. It was like being drunk, but, again, it was the opposite of drunkenness; it was clarity, purity, truth. “And we can do what we’re meant to do today. We can … we can take it all the way.”

“What do you mean?” Dylan’s lips were tingling and he wanted her to kiss him again—the entire lower half of his body felt like it was on fire, about to explode—but more than another kiss, he wanted Ellen to finish speaking. “What are you saying, Ellen?”

“We have to leave it loaded,” Ellen murmured, moving her lips to brush his ear. “We have to leave the bullets in the gun.”

“But—” It was like a shadow had passed over the sun; for the briefest of moments Dylan’s euphoria faded, and the cold wind penetrated his clothes like a frozen river. “But wait. You’re saying—”

“I’m saying that the prank isn’t enough. I’m saying it’s enough for them, because they don’t really know her; they don’t know what she’s capable of. They don’t know what she did to me and my family. But she knows, Dylan. Some part of her knows what she did, even if she wants to pretend she can’t remember. That’s what this whole day is for. That’s the point. I’m going to make her remember that day—I’m going to dredge up all her memories till she can’t deny them anymore, because I know some part of her knows what she did, I know it. And she hates herself for it. I’m telling you, if I write her one of the notes and I give her the gun, she will pull the trigger. She’ll do it. And then it’ll be done. It won’t matter how we feel tomorrow. It won’t even matter if we remember any of it, because she’ll be gone. She’ll finally be gone. Don’t you want that as much as I do?”

Dylan wasn’t sure how to answer that. Of course she was right … and he did want it as much as she did … didn’t he?

“So you understand,” Ellen said, squeezing his hand, reaching behind his head to tousle his hair. “You understand, when you pick her up at the farmhouse and bring her back, it won’t be a prank anymore. You’ll be driving her toward a loaded gun. And I need to know you can live with that. Can you do it? Can you do it with me?”

He stared into Ellen’s eyes and the bright sky found the specks of silver there, and it was like the sunlight had returned to his heart and he realized he felt nothing but relief. Mary would be gone and Ellen and Dylan could finally have the life they wanted.

“Yeah,” he told her, and meant it. “Yeah. I can do it.”

Then their faces drifted together, like opposite poles of a magnet, and they almost kissed again, a second glorious kiss, of many to come—but then they both jumped as the metal door crashed open, and they pulled away from each other in alarm.

“Oh, thank God!” Mary yelled, vaulting onto the roof and bearing down on Ellen. “I can’t believe you’re up here—” She ran forward and wrapped her arms tightly around her sister, and Dylan stared at her and thought about the loaded gun and realized he was counting the minutes until he could bring her to her dark destiny.

THE TAXICAB WAS PULLING away as Mary staggered to the curb and stared up at the ornate Romanesque facade of the Peninsula Hotel, all lit up with blazing yellow floodlights like an opera stage.

Her hands and feet—Dylan’s hands and feet—were twitching. Mary was graying out, as she walked—the streetlights were like globes of golden mist, amber halos that shimmered in her blurring vision, doubling and fading as she forced herself forward, step by painful step.

Dylan knew, Mary thought. He was the only one who knew where it was going—who knew I was supposed to die.

And Mary realized something else, as she stared up at the blurring stonework, Dylan’s sneakers splashing water from the sidewalk’s wide puddles. That’s what broke the spell, she realized. He shook it off, because he couldn’t do it.

He was driving me to the hotel—to my death—and the spell wore off.

Mary wondered if it had made any difference—if Dylan’s sudden attack of conscience had gotten him anything but a bullet in the gut. Maybe it had all been for nothing; Dylan’s sacrifices and her own had failed to change anything.

No.

Mary stared up at the lights that festooned the hotel, her eyes swimming and blurring with pain and fatigue as the lights seemed to grow into big, gaseous globes, miniature suns casting their rays down on her face.

No, I can’t give up. I won’t.

Mary’s thoughts melted together as the lights got brighter, overexposed lamps burning the film; candles luring moths to their brilliant deaths; the light of the world, growing in its brilliance until nothing was left but light.