Mary (Bloody Mary) Read online

  I could see the reflection of my sneakers in the sliding mirror doors of Jess’s closet. I averted my gaze.

  “You okay?” I asked, knowing she was upset with her mother.

  “I will be. My family’s irritating.”

  “I think all families are.”

  “Yeah, well, mine wins a prize,” she said. She thumbed through her Mary notebook, past the photocopied letter she’d pasted to the first few pages and the notes she’d taken after Mary appeared. She read a few lines, typed something into her Web browser, and began reading from her monitor. I squinted to see, but it was too far away and I was too lazy to get up to snoop.

  “I’m trying to find out about Mary Worth. Like, who she was. All the books I’ve found had mixed reports on Bloody Mary. Some say she was crazy and killed her children, some say she was a vampire. Others say she was a girl who died in front of a mirror and she got trapped inside it.”

  I’d heard these stories before and I nodded, making the stuffed pony dance at the back of Jess’s head to amuse myself. “That’s an old folklore thing. They used to cover mirrors in a house when someone was dying or dead. They thought the glass would swallow their souls,” I said.

  “Yeah, that,” Jess said, her head jerking around toward me. I dropped the pony back onto my chest. “We’d have to find out if there was a mirror nearby when she died.”

  Jess clicked a few more Internet links, and I stifled a yawn against the back of my hand, my eyes straying to her alarm clock. I may have been a little tired, but I was still wiggly and nervous over Mary. Sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon.

  “I do have to study tonight,” I said. “I have a McDuff essay on the Battle of Antietam due, so I can’t stay late.”

  “That’s fine. I’ll bring you home soonish. So what did you think of Mary?”

  I rolled onto my hip to look at her, my head perched on her mountain of pillows, my arm wrapped around the carnival pony. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did you have fun? Did you like summoning her?”

  “I don’t know if ‘like’ is the right word, but it was fun. Terrifying, but fun.” I fussed with the pony’s ears again. “I wish Kitty hadn’t scared me more than I already was.”

  Jess whirled around in her desk chair, her head falling back against the headrest of her seat. “Right? If she does it again, she’s out. I’ve got way too much invested. Like, I got the letter, I went and talked to Aunt Dell at the library. I even called this woman Cordelia Jackson, who supposedly summoned Bloody Mary a billion years ago. She didn’t want to talk to me, but that’s beside the point. I worked for this. I don’t want Kitty screwing it up for me.”

  I realized then I’d never asked Jess what would have happened if Kitty had broken the handhold. Stranger, it hadn’t occurred to Anna to ask, either. “What happens if she does?”

  Jess lifted her head to peer at me before letting out a long sigh. “Nothing confirmed, but she can scratch at people, grab them. That’s just a rumor, though! Like I said, Aunt Dell was trying to scare me when I talked to her, but obviously there was some truth to what she said if the ritual worked. Cordelia survived Bloody Mary, so—”

  “Survived?” I interrupted. That wasn’t the verb I was expecting. Summoned maybe, or encountered, but survived made it sound like our lives were in peril if we kept messing around with the ghost, and frankly, I wanted to see her, but I wasn’t willing to do it at the expense of my life.

  “Well, yeah. Cordelia’s here to talk about it, so that makes her a survivor. We’re survivors in the same way. It’s just too bad she hung up on me when I called her.” Jess leaned forward in the chair to look at me, her hands balanced on her knees. “It was just a word, Shauna. If Kitty screws up, I’ll send Mary away. I summoned her; I can dismiss her. She has to listen to my voice. That’s how it works.”

  At one in the morning, I was too tired to work on my Antietam paper and too nervous to sleep. Jess dropped me off at eight, and while I’d done all right with the Bloody Mary thing when the McAllisters were around, the moment Jess drove away I was left with the thought of those ghoulish hands, the creaks and groans of an old building, and my imagination. I jumped every time a pipe rattled or my ancient upstairs neighbors went to the bathroom.

  The post-summoning jitters afflicted everyone but Jess. Anna had glued herself to her dad’s side all night and refused to go downstairs. Kitty had brought Kong, their Doberman, inside to sleep with her.

  Jess, however, insisted she was fine. She texted me little tidbits of information she’d found online about Bloody Mary.

  Jess: Mary 1st appeared in the US in the 1960s.

  Me: Why did she wait a hundred years?

  Jess: Dunno. Still lookin.

  I didn’t know how to respond, so I left it at a cool, all the while trying to keep my head on straight whenever Mrs. Zajac upstairs paced her way from her bedroom to the bathroom and back again.

  It still struck me as weird that Jess wasn’t the slightest bit freaked out. I finally asked her how she was so calm.

  This is science, she texted. Like an experiment.

  Not only was this not science, but real science was terrifying. Hadn’t she ever cut a cat open in Mr. Sanno’s anatomy and physiology class? That was Frankenstein-level horror, but when I said as much, Jess texted back lol.

  I forced myself into bed at half past one in the morning. Fifteen minutes later, my mother came home from her closing shift at McReady’s. The squealing door and the movement in the halls should have bothered me, but her presence quelled my nerves. She was my own fleshy night-light. I heard her pad toward my room and open my door to check on me; I closed my eyes and feigned sleep. Fleshy night-light or not, if she saw me up this late, she’d lecture me. Lucky for me, fake sleep translated to real sleep and I managed to drift off.

  When I woke to the bellowing of the alarm clock, I heard my mother rummaging around in the kitchen. I oozed out feeling like I’d been hit by a garbage truck. I must have looked that way, too. Mom gave me the hairy eyeball over the top of her newspaper.

  “You look exhausted. Are you okay?”

  “Hey.” I shuffled to the coffeemaker to get myself a cup, loading it with milk and sugar.

  She pushed a chair out with her foot. “Want some waffles? They’re frozen, but I’m a little short on time.”

  “You worked a double yesterday. I can get them myself,” I said.

  “You’re still my kid. Let me pretend I’m good at this parenting thing.” She put the newspaper aside and walked to the toaster, popping a pair of cardboard-looking waffles into the metal slots. She pressed a kiss to the top of my unshowered head as she passed me. “Why are you so tired?”

  For a moment, I thought about telling her about Bloody Mary, but I had given my word to keep silent. I didn’t have to do as Jess said, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure how Mom would take it. I’m not one of those kids who’s into darker stuff. I don’t love horror movies, I don’t talk about ghosts or aliens. I don’t even read my horoscope. If I started babbling on about ghosts in mirrors, Mom would think something was seriously off with me.

  “History paper took me longer than it should have,” I said.

  “No fun. I hope you weren’t up too late.” Her fingers drummed on the counter as she waited for the waffles to pop. The dark circles under her eyes made her look tired. Eighty-hour work weeks would do that to a woman. She was pretty in spite of it, though; prettier than me, anyway. Where I’m short, she’s tall. Where my hair goes to frizz in the rain, hers stays curly and glossy and bounces around her shoulders. She has flawless, model-like skin. I’m riddled with freckles from forehead to toes. I’m not ugly, but my mom’s in a different league.

  “A watched pot never boils,” she said under her breath, turning away from the toaster to rummage around for maple syrup, a plate, and a fork. “Oh. I’ve got tomorrow night off from McReady’s. You up for tacos and chick flicks?”

  “Sure.”

  “Awesome. There’s a
Sandra Bullock thing I’ve been meaning to see, and I can hit a drive-through on the way home.” The toaster popped. She pulled the waffles out, tossing them back and forth between her hands so she wouldn’t burn the tips of her fingers. I watched her smear them with butter and maple syrup, my stomach grumbling. She served me the plate and dropped a paper towel over my head like a hat. I grinned, not bothering to move the paper towel even when it slid down to cover half my face.

  Mom winked at me and drained her coffee cup. Her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall, a deep furrow appearing in her brow. “Shit, got to go. I should have been out of here five minutes ago. See you later tonight?” She lunged for her purse on the counter, jogging through the kitchen and living room to get to the door faster. Her hands slapped at her jacket pockets in search of her keys.

  “Bye, Mom,” I yelled after her with a mouth full of waffles. It came out more like “bah mot,” but she understood, wagging her fingers in a wave.

  “Bye!”

  Her feet pounded down the steps of our apartment building a minute later. A door slammed and a car engine roared to life. When I looked back down at my waffles, I realized my appetite had left with my mother. I pulled the paper towel from my head and went back to my room to get ready for school.

  The morning was one boring class bleeding into the next. I turned in my homework, bombed a math quiz because simple addition was beyond my tired brain, and shuffled to the cafeteria like a zombie. By the time I found my usual lunch seat, Jess was already waiting for me, Marc at her side and Bronx at Marc’s other side.

  Marc Costner was everything Jess ought to be dating—popular, arrogant, athletic. She was also smarter than him, which worked out well. I couldn’t see her with someone smart enough to tell her to shut up when she ran her mouth. Jess was a pretty girl, and pretty girls were supposed to date cute guys like Marc. Sandy brown hair, green eyes, and a broad, square jaw.

  Bronx wasn’t quite that good-looking, but he wasn’t unattractive by any stretch. He had black hair that curled around his ears and golden tan skin. His eyes were the color of good fudge. He was stockier than Marc, but not fat. He was the star football player on our team. When he hit other guys, they fell over, and when other guys hit him…well, they fell over. Bronx was a big dude.

  Anna and Kitty weren’t there yet, which was probably good. Kitty was going to lose her mind when she saw Bronx, and I hadn’t had enough caffeine to deal with her drama yet. I grunted my hellos at Jess and the boys before dropping my bag onto the floor and lurching to the lunch line.

  Once I had my food, I could see Kitty and Anna in the doorway of the caf, looking at our table as if sitting there would give them Ebola. They spotted me and I lifted my fingers in a feeble wave. Anna darted toward me, Kitty dragging behind her.

  “Are we not supposed to sit with you?” Anna said in greeting. Despite her own sleepless Bloody Mary night, she’d been perfectly pleasant to me in the two classes we’d shared this morning. But seeing Bronx and Marc at our table now, all that pleasantness was gone. She looked like she could breathe fire.

  “You can sit wherever you want,” I said, dropping my gaze forlornly to my pizza. Hopefully she’d let me eat it before it got cold. The way she ground her jaw, I wasn’t sure that was going to happen. The sad part was, I hadn’t gotten that caffeine yet, either, so I was operating on two and a half exhausted brain cells screaming for a can of Coke.

  “Well, it upsets Kitty. Jess is making problems,” Anna said.

  “Is she? Jess is allowed to sit with her boyfriend at lunch. We’re fully capable of finding another table.” I glanced over at Kitty. She looked like a deer about to be flattened by a bus. “I’ll move my stuff and the three of us can sit together somewhere else. I’m sure Jess will understand.”

  Kitty took a moment to think the option over. While I waited, I finagled the cafeteria tray into the crook of my elbow so I could shove my pizza slice into my mouth. I loved the girl, but some things had to come first. Not dying of starvation was one of those things.

  “We can sit there,” Kitty said after a minute, her chin notching up. She wanted to look tough, like she could handle the situation, but the effect was ruined by the slight twitch in her cheek.

  “Are you sure?” Anna pressed.

  “Yes. I can’t avoid him f-forever.” Kitty tugged her arm away from Anna and went to make her usual salad. Anna followed her, and I took the opportunity to flee back to my seat. I positioned myself opposite of Jess so Anna and Kitty could sit on my right. This way, Jess and I acted as a Mason-Dixon Line where the northern boys and the southern girls never had to meet. They could stare at one another if they wanted to—I wasn’t the eyeball police.

  “Hey, Shauna. How you doing?” Bronx asked, smiling at me over his carton of milk. He had four empty ones on the table in front of him, and I glanced at my crappy sugar cola with guilt. He got vitamin D. I got stuff that would take the rust off of a car fender.

  “Good. Tired.”

  “Oh? You out late last night?”

  “Not really, just studying.”

  “I did that once. It hurt my brain,” Marc said. He slung his arm over Jess’s shoulder and made kissy faces at her until she gave him one of her fries. He bit her finger, and they shared a nauseating giggle.

  Bronx smirked and shook his head. From the corner of my eye, I saw him glance behind, his eyes locking on Kitty. His face hardened and then fell before he leaned across the table to half whisper, half yell to me. He didn’t want everyone to hear him, but the din of the cafeteria was so loud, it was hard to be inconspicuous.

  “She doing okay?” Bronx asked. “Jess said she’s had a bad couple weeks. I wasn’t trying to…you know. I feel bad.”

  Jess eyed him and then me. I peeked past Jess’s shoulder and saw Kitty coming our way, Anna at her elbow. This wasn’t the time to talk about this, though I did want to know why a seemingly decent guy would dump his girlfriend with no warning. Maybe if he explained himself, Kitty could wrap her mind around it more. It’d give her closure or something.

  “Not now. Text or call me later,” I said.

  “What?” he asked, the cafeteria suddenly noisy.

  “Text or call me later,” I repeated. Only I said it too loud and Kitty was close enough to hear. She looked between me and Bronx, and I knew something terrible had just happened.

  “It’s not like that,” I said to Kitty, and she nodded, but she wouldn’t look at me. All evidence that she was going to be brave about Bronx was gone as she scampered to the seat farthest away from him. Anna cast me a look, but it wasn’t unfriendly. It was pity. Kitty knew me better than to think bad stuff about me, but when it came to Bronx, Kitty wasn’t thinking straight. All Kitty knew was I’d been friendly with Bronx because he was her boyfriend, but there was no Bronx-and-Shauna dynamic. Now there suddenly was, and it scared her.

  It was Jess who broke the uncomfortable silence—and managed to make the situation more awkward. I hadn’t thought that it was possible, but Jess shouldn’t be underestimated. “Oh, come on,” she snapped, rolling her eyes at Kitty and then over at Bronx. “Like Shauna would do that to you. I can get your being upset, but do you think she’s going to hop on Bronx’s junk the moment you’re off it?”

  While I appreciated that Jess was defending my honor, I wanted to hide under the table for the rest of my life. The urge to crawl into a hole wasn’t made any better when Marc whispered to Bronx, Bronx nodded, and they vacated the table.

  “Jess, don’t,” Anna snapped.

  “Don’t what? Point out that Shauna would never do that to Kitty? Ever? Come on. You know she wouldn’t,” Jess said.

  I felt that I should speak up, maybe assure Kitty that it was okay, but Anna picked up a piece of broccoli and flung it across the table at Jess. It hit her forehead and tumbled down into a puddle of ketchup. “Yes, I know she wouldn’t. And Kitty knows she wouldn’t, but it’s still too raw. Don’t be a bitch.”

  “It’s been three weeks. Thr
ee weeks!” Jess got up from her seat to sit down across from Kitty. “We love you—I love you—but this has got to give. If you’re so crazy upset that you can’t deal with Bronx talking to your friends, or him being around or whatever…I don’t even know. I’ll start sitting with Marc at lunch and the four of us can hang out after school. But I’m not going to watch you psycho yourself into thinking Shauna’s out to get you. Okay?”

  Kitty nodded, but still she said nothing. Anna glared daggers at Jess, and Jess arched an eyebrow. There was no other way to interpret that gesture. It was an invitation to escalate this into an argument. Jess and Anna normally poked each other like sisters, but with all the weirdness at the table, it couldn’t go anywhere good.

  “Enough,” I said. I’d been toying with my cookie, but I put it on the corner of my tray so I could address them with my serious face. “I would never hurt you, Kitty. If I talk to Bronx, it’s to find out what’s up—that’s it.” I glanced at the other side of the table. “And Anna, Jess—it’s over. Let it be over. We’ve got plans later. I think we’re all tired and a little on edge, yeah? So let it go.”

  Anna gave a curt nod. Jess shrugged and retrieved her book bag from the floor. Her expression was flat and irritated. For all that she’d bull-in-a-china-shopped that conversation with Kitty, she was making an effort to rein in her temper. Jess grabbed her tray and walked off to go sit with Marc and Bronx, abandoning the three of us to a quiet, joyless lunch.

  I was staring out the window at the empty football field for most of my last class and missed the assignment my English teacher had given. At the last bell, I darted for the door. Yes, I’m a good student, but there are days I need to get away from school and give my brain a break.