Spring #10 — Loss
I awoke the next morning to an insistent, but relatively light pounding on my shoulder, and when I opened my eyes, I saw my younger sister standing beside my bed, contentedly beating my arm with a coat hanger through my covers.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I growled, blinking my bleary eyes.
“Ummm! You said a bad word!” she admonished, smacking my shoulder extra-hard with the wire hanger, and then dodged out of the way when I tried to grab it out of her hand and return the favor.
When I looked at the clock on my nightstand and saw that it wasn’t even eight yet, I snarled, “I’ve got a right to! What the fuck are you doing waking me up so early on a Sunday? Grandpa isn’t even gonna be here for two hours yet!”
She held up the phone and waggled the receiver at me. “Eddie’s on the phone. He interrupted me when I was reading the funnies!”
“What’s he doing calling this early?” I muttered, sitting up in bed and rubbing at my eyes. “He probably stayed out later than me. Gimme that,” I said, grabbing for the phone.
She held it away for a few seconds, and just when I was about to yell at her, she tossed it on my lap, hit me with the hanger one more time, and then ran off downstairs, safe in the knowledge that I wasn’t very fast when I first woke up. “Ha ha, retard!” she called out once she was safely out of punching range.
“I’ll get you later,” I muttered. I picked up the phone. “Hello?”
“Hey, sorry to wake you up so early, but it’s kinda important.” Indeed it was Eddie, and he sounded pretty serious. The last time he’d called this early, he’d gotten stranded outside of town when his truck had broken down on him, and had desperately needed a ride.
“Transmission fucking up again?” I asked, yawning. “Need a ride?”
“No. I wish.”
“Say what?” What the hell did that mean?
He sighed. “I guess there’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna say it, all right?”
“Uh … okay,” I said cautiously, my stomach starting to tighten.
“Kristine’s dead.”
* * *
My tires screeched against the pavement as I skidded to a halt at a stop sign, nearly blowing through it and ramming into a pickup, but I’d caught myself at the last second. Once the way was clear, I slammed the accelerator down, rubber squealing as my car launched forward, propelled by its powerful engine and my own desperation. Getting across town to Mary Jane’s house had never taken so damned long before, and I almost roared with frustration at every traffic light, stop sign, and Sunday-driving old fucker that slowed my progress.
Eddie, who often got breakfast at the 24-hour café in Danner whenever he stayed out all night, had happened to overhear a conversation between a couple of police officers who’d sat down at the table next to his. While Eddie had been scarfing down his steak and eggs, the cops had been talking about the dead girl that had been found not far from the boat docks at Norton Lake. That had been more than enough to pique Eddie’s interest, and he’d stopped eating and had started listening very carefully to what they had to say.
The two tired officers had just come from the scene, where some early-morning fisherman had found the girl floating facedown in the shallows and had called in the cops once they’d discovered the girl was stone-dead. From what the coroner had said when he’d gotten there, it looked like a simple case of drowning, and he hadn’t been able to find any signs of foul play on the girl on his preliminary examination. They were thinking she might have come from the party that was being held at the Johnson house the previous night, which one of their fellow officers had noticed while doing a routine patrol of the lake roads the night before. After they’d received their coffee and breakfasts to go, they were going to run up to the Johnson house and ask some questions, to see if anybody knew anything.
Eddie had wiped his mouth off, gotten up from his table, and had introduced himself to the officers, telling them that he’d been at the party the night before and asked them if there was anything he could do to help out. He’d always been a conscientious sort, so whenever something serious came up, he always offered his assistance; he was also damned curious as to who had died, and wanted to know, in case it was somebody he knew. When the cops had asked him to sit down and had given him the girl’s description, he’d almost puked his breakfast out all over the table before he told them everything he knew.
After Mary Jane and I had left last night, Kristine had been alternately morose and furious, though she wasn’t telling anybody what the problem was, beyond Shannon and Lynn, and then Angelene and Randy when they’d appeared. The five of them had sat out on the deck for a long time, having an intense discussion of some sort, not sharing it with anybody.
This had continued for a time, until the thunder and wind had started up, at which point Kristine had very nearly gone ballistic, shouting threats at the sky and roaring that she wasn’t afraid of it. Cindy, accompanied by Eddie, who often acted as something of a deputy when it came to breaking up trouble at the parties, had checked in on the group to see if everything was okay, and Shannon had told them that it was fine, Kristine had just had a bit too much to drink. After asking them to be sure to keep it down so the neighbors didn’t complain, Cindy and Eddie had left the group out on the deck. That was the last time Eddie had seen Kristine.
Though Eddie didn’t tell the cops, he’d been sure there was more to it than what was being said, beyond Kristine’s drinking, but he had no idea what, and he didn’t know how to find out. My heart hammered in my chest and I’d nearly started to hyperventilate while hurriedly getting dressed, and he’d asked me if I had any idea what had been going on last night, because he was sure it had something to do with Kristine’s death. So was I.
I held back on the all of the details, because I wanted to get the hell out of my house and over to Mary Jane’s as soon as possible, but I’d told him that Mary Jane and Kristine had had another argument before we’d left, and that Kristine hadn’t been very happy about the outcome. Eddie had been quiet for a long time, and I was sure he was going to ask a difficult question. But instead, he’d told me that I probably ought to get hold of Mary Jane and let her know, before she found out from somebody else, because this probably wasn’t going to be easy on her, due to the argument and everything. He was sure right about that.
Fortunately, I only ran into my dad on the way out of the house, and I gave him a very rough sketch of what was going on, telling him I needed to get over to Mary Jane’s. As soon as he heard what was up, he agreed wholeheartedly and told me to do what I needed to do, and that he’d catch up on everything later. Though he’d snagged me by my shoulder when I was going out the door and told me to drive carefully, because the last thing the town needed was another dead kid. He’d given me a quick hug and told me to get back as soon as I could, and bring Mary Jane if I thought it was necessary. As I tore across town, I tried my best to drive safely, but it was damned hard, and Dad probably would have understood perfectly if he knew the things about Mary Jane that I did.
I finally got to Mary Jane’s, nearly falling as I scrambled out of my car and vaulted over the hood like Jack Action always did in the movies, and I ran across the backyard, glad that even though it had been windy and thundering out all last night, there hadn’t been any actual rain. I was running so frantically that if the grass had been slick, I’m sure I would’ve slipped and fell on my head, which was the last thing I needed at the moment. Though from the looks of it, rain wasn’t too far away, because the sky was thick with dark grey clouds, and the occasional rumble of thunder could be heard. At least the wind wasn’t blowing. Yet.
I galloped down the stairs, my heart nearly leaping out of my throat. As soon as I threw the door open, a powerful gust of wind blew out of the room and tossed me backwards against the steps, but not hard enough to hurt. What hurt was the snarled demand of, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” that followed the blast of air. It only got worse once I stood up and got a good look at what was on her bedroom floor.
Laying on the floor was a black board about three feet by three feet, with various artifacts attached to the surface, connected by an intricate series of silvery lines, and it was very similar to the casting board I’d seen in Vincent’s house. The difference here was that alongside the pieces of stone and strange gem-like items were human bones, with a discolored, ancient-looking skull at the center of it all. A deep blue stone was affixed to the center of its forehead, and the entire skull was covered with elaborate silver and red tracings that looked like circuitry from a science fiction story. I suddenly had a pretty good idea where those bones had come from, Kristine’s words from last night echoing through my head, but all I could do was point, momentarily forgetting why I’d even come here.
Mary Jane, who’d been kneeling next to the board and arranging some of the stones when I’d walked in, sprang to her feet and gave me a positively hateful look, her eyes a brilliant, blazing blue. “I said, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” she snarled, slowly moving towards me, menace hanging over her. ‘Ol Blue Eyes was back.
I unconsciously stepped back from her, nearly tripping against the stairs, and I kept pointing at the casting board, trying to somehow articulate the fear slithering through my veins.
“Answer me!” Mary Jane roared, wind blasting outwards from her and pushing me against the steps, causing me to topple back onto my ass. Outside, the day grew even darker, and thunder exploded directly overhead as powerful winds blew across the backyard.
I was so scared of her in that moment that I nearly turned and ran for my life. It was nothing like the dread I’d felt last night; this was genuine fear, like what I’d felt in Vincent’s house and that hateful apartment last year. For a few seconds, I forgot that the furious woman bearing down on me with rage etched into her features was someone that I deeply loved. All I could register was terror, and I would’ve screamed if I could have found my voice.
Mary Jane stopped just inches away from me, waves of coldness radiating outwards from her, and she regarded me with those inhumanly blue eyes for a few moments, watching me with all the compassion of a snake. The corner of her mouth quirked in a frigid half-grin, and she snorted as she turned away, walking back over to the casting board. “Knock next time, asshole,” she grunted.
She knelt next to the board and went back to work on it, carefully shifting a stone to a particular position and then affixing it with a reddish substance from a bowl next to the board. Humming softly as she worked, she seemed to forget about me entirely as I sat on the steps, fighting the urge to run away as my heart threatened to leap out of my chest and leave me behind. My entire body was shaking, and I took deep breaths as I tried to avoid throwing up.
After she’d gotten the stone satisfactorily set, she stopped and gave me a dark look, as though I were an annoyance on the level of a housefly. “So did you come bursting in here for a reason, or are you just here to piss me off?” she asked, her voice snide. “Because if it’s the latter, you’re doing a great job of it, let me tell you.”
Sitting up straighter on the steps, I pointed towards the casting board with a trembling hand. “Those bones,” I croaked, “They’re from … the witch, aren’t they? The one under the stone in Whitewood.”
“What, these?” Mary Jane asked with a roll of her eyes, waving at the board. “No way. You’re seeing things.”
“Those are human bones,” I murmured, unable to take my eyes off the skull. It was one thing to see the display skeleton hanging in the biology room at school, because that may or may not have been real. It was another thing entirely to see human bones that you knew had once been part of a living, breathing person.
Mary Jane gave me a spiteful look. “Really? You think? I thought they were from an aardvark.”
I swallowed hard. “You really did dig her up.”
She chuckled. “Nope. I found them in a cereal box.”
I stared at her, trying to understand what was going on. “W-what?”
She shook her head condescendingly. “You fucking idiot, of course they’re from the witch. I wouldn’t be bothering with them if they weren’t!”
Returning her attention to the board, she started to daub some of the reddish stuff onto one of the bones, which looked like it had come from a forearm. “After everything I bothered to tell you last night, you shouldn’t have even had to ask,” she growled. “If I’m going to get my ass out of this jam, I’m gonna need some serious power when I go for the Ascension, and this evil old bitch here has got just about all I need stored in her bones. Got a bunch of wickedness in ‘em, a whole lifetime of crimes against humanity, I’d say. Plenty of power to tap into. The shit about her swallowing some of her charms before she got buried was true, too.” She tapped a couple of the dark-colored stones attached to the board. “Found these in there with her. Turns out that at least some of the legends the spook-chasing morons around this town babble on about have some truth in ‘em.”
I suddenly remembered why I’d come here in the first place, and the words caught in my throat when I tried to say them. Mary Jane glanced at me and raised an eyebrow.
“You gonna say anything intelligent, or should I even ask?”
“Kristine’s dead,” I finally managed to say, hoping that the words would have some effect on Mary Jane, bringing back her humanity.
They didn’t.
“Yeah, so?” She took a small brush and started to apply a silvery liquid from another bowl to the bone, carefully drawing a line that connected it to a glossy stone the color of a bruise. “Good riddance.”
My stomach fell out of me entirely and I made a low, wounded sound as I stared at Mary Jane. When she looked at me again, she was grinning.
“Oh gee, what’s the matter, Johnny? Disappointed she’s not gonna be following you around any more? Sad that she’s not gonna be pining away for you?” she sneered, putting the brush down. “Am I supposed to care that she’s dead?”
“What?” I managed, unable to believe what I was hearing. “She was our friend!”
She rolled her eyes again. “How naïve are you? You know, for someone that’s supposed to be a genius, you’re pretty fucking stupid, Johnny. I’d like to think that you’re smarter than she was, but I’m starting to have my doubts.”
I got to my feet, faint stirrings of anger churning within the fear in my stomach. “What are you saying?” I repeated, heat coming into my voice. “What the fuck is your problem?”
She stood up as well, fixing me with those icy eyes. “Since you’re either too dumb to realize it or otherwise think I’m too dumb to have noticed it, let me lay it out for you nice and easy. That little bitch was in love with you, Johnny. She had it for you bad, and she never gave up on it.”
Though the words cut deep, I wasn’t entirely surprised by them, either. I’d often had suspicions that Kristine still had more than a friendly interest in me, but even if she had, she’d been grown-up enough to accept the way things were between Mary Jane and I. “She was my friend,” I snapped. “And she was your friend, too. She cared about us!”
“She cared about you, yeah,” she growled. “She cared all about you. Me, she would’ve just as soon seen me dead because I was in the way of her winning you over. She tried to play it up to you and me that it was all right, that she was oh-so-happy for us, and that she was just a good friend. But she hated it, and she hated me. She couldn’t stand the fact that you’d found yourself a real woman instead of some bubbleheaded little slut, and she wanted me out of the picture something fierce.”
“The fuck she did!”
“What about last night? You think she would’ve locked me up and then practically thrown herself at you like that if she didn’t want you?” Mary Jane hissed. “What about that night on the dock a couple of weeks back? You think she was brushing your hair just for kicks? She was getting your hair so she could try to cast a love spell to get you to fall in love with her instead of me, I’m sure of it!”
I stopped short. “How do you know about that?”
“Oh whoa, look, he’s all defensive now!” she crowed, leaning forward. “Hey, are you blushing? Why’s that? Did she suck your dick, too?”
“Stop it,” I snarled, clenching my fists.
“She would’ve, you know,” she sneered. “She would’ve done anything you wanted her to. All you had to do was ask.” She folded her arms over her chest and looked at me smugly. “I can go where the wind goes, and what the breeze knows, I do, too. All I have to do is concentrate, and you’d be amazed at the things I see and the conversations I get to overhear.”
I remembered how the wind had been blowing in from the lake that night Kristine and I had been hanging out at the boat dock, and my anger went up a couple of notches. “You were spying on me?”
She laughed. “No. I was actually feeling a bit lonely for you for some reason, so I thought I’d check in on you, and oh boy, did I get a nice little show. It was so cute! You all pretending you didn’t know how much she wanted you, and her trying so hard to hold back her unrequited love so she could get enough of your hair to perform one of her comically inept ‘spells.’” She spat and then snarled, “I didn’t know whether to laugh or puke, it was so pathetic.”
“Stop it!” I shouted. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What’s wrong with me?” she asked in exaggerated offense. “What’s wrong with you? Why don’t you fucking grow up and stop pissing and moaning about things that don’t matter? So what if your little shadow went and died, who cares? You’ve got lots of other friends, and even though they’re not exactly the crème de la crème, at least they’re not as pathetic as her. And while we’re at it, you’ve got me, and I’m a whole hell of a lot more than that little bitch ever could have been. Fuck her.” She stopped for a few moments, a harsh smile forming on her lips. “Bet you would’ve liked to, wouldn’t you? Just a little thrust or two, to see what life’s like on the low-rent side of the tracks, huh?”
Before I knew it, I was up in her face, staring down those frigid eyes with so much fury that it was all I could do not to smash her in the face. “Fucking. Stop. It.”
“Or what?” she purred. “Gonna hit me, Johnny-boy? Gonna put me in my place like a good ‘ol boy from Norton, Illinois? Come on,” she said, tapping herself on the chin. “Give me a good one right here. Just let me have it.” Then she added the clincher. “Do it for Kristine.”
I almost did it. I was so angry I didn’t care about her magick, our relationship, or anything else between us. Someone that I cared about, someone that had cared about me, was dead, and all Mary Jane could do was mock her and piss all over her memory. That wasn’t right, and it didn’t mean shit to me that she was probably partly out of her mind because of everything that was happening to her. She didn’t have any reason to do this, and all I wanted to do was wipe that arrogant smirk off her face. I even started to raise my fist to do it. But in the end, I couldn’t.
I put my fist down and shook my head. “Fuck you,” I growled. “You’re not worth it.”
“You fucking pussy,” she hissed, and I heard the door slam shut behind me. Then I was suddenly blown off my feet and rammed against the door hard enough to make me see stars. When I hit the floor, I thought everything was going to be okay, because this was what had shaken Mary Jane out of it last night. Things had gotten worse since then.
Thunder roared outside and powerful winds rattled the basement windows as Mary Jane advanced on me, her eyes glowing in the sudden darkness of the basement. “Not worth it, huh? You’re awfully conceited for somebody that can’t even work the basest of spells!” She chuckled as she looked down at me. “Of course, you could probably still do better than Kristine. Can you believe she actually thought that the curse on Julia and Marcus was her doing? And how about that bullshit where she thought she was the one that got Alicia and Duane together? That was just dumbass white-trash love right there, no magick involved. But Kristine thought it was her making all of that happen, which was just oh-so-cute and oh-so-pitiful. Her parents would’ve done her a favor if they would’ve just drowned her at birth instead of waiting for her to take care of it on her own.”
Mary Jane’s words cut into me, and I remembered why I’d come here in such a panic in the first place. “How did you know she drowned?” I rasped, trying to get my eyes to focus properly again after the hit my head had taken against the thick door.
“Like I said, what the wind knows, I know,” she replied, though she hesitated just a little before answering, as though uncertain.
“Did you do it?” I asked, pushing against the door until I’d gotten myself into a crouching position.
She hesitated again. “Why would I have to? She was stupid enough that she probably got drunk and fell into the lake all by herself. You could smell the alcohol on her breath last night, she was practically toasted as it was.”
“Did you do it?” I demanded, anger and fear clearing my head as my eyes bored into hers. “Tell me!”
Mary Jane looked away. “I don’t know,” she answered, her voice softer than it had been the entire time I’d been here.
“What?!”
She turned back towards me, and I thought I saw fear in her eyes. “I don’t know!”
I gaped at her, incredulous. “What do you mean, you don’t know? How could you not know?!”
“Because I can’t remember what I did last night!” she screeched, the color draining out of her face as her eyes actually flickered between blue and brown. She stood up and started jerking her head around this way and that, as though she were confused and didn’t know where she was. “I don’t know if I did it or not!”
She turned and ran towards her bed, tripping over the casting board and sending it flipping through the air. It landed with a loud clatter on the floor, bones and stones coming loose and flying in all directions. Mary Jane fell against the heavy wooden frame of the foot of her bed, crying out in pain before crumpling against the floor, her breath sputtering out in agonized sobs.
Taking care not to step on any of the scattered items from the casting board, I cautiously walked across the room and knelt down next to her, putting my hand on her trembling shoulder. “Hey, you all right?” I asked softly, glancing up towards the stairs, wondering where Mr. Carter was. Certainly he could’ve heard all of the chaos going on down here!
“I cast a baffling spell on my room,” said Mary Jane between shuddering sobs as she struggled to sit back up. “It blocks all outgoing sounds, so nobody outside of it can hear anything that goes on in here. Daddy’s probably still asleep upstairs, so don’t worry.”
I smiled in spite of the situation. “You always could read my mind,” I murmured.
She tried to laugh, but it was lost when her throat hitched from another sob, and she simply put her face into her hands and moaned, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t mean any of that, it’s just …” Her words trailed off as she cried, and I squeezed her shoulder and ran a hand through her hair, simply glad that Blue Eyes was gone and my Mary Jane was back.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Just take it easy.”
“You must hate me,” she murmured, wiping tears away from her big brown eyes.
“I don’t hate you.”
“How could you not?” she asked dejectedly. “I hate myself for all of the things I say and do when I’m like that.”
“I could never hate you,” I said, sitting down next to her. After wavering a moment, I carefully said, “I hate what you become, when you’re like that, but I know it’s not really you.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “How do you know that’s not the real me coming through?”
“I know it’s not,” I said, putting an arm around her. “I’m sure of it.”
She sighed. “I’m glad you are, because I’ve really got my doubts. When I’m like that, it’s like nothing matters but me and my power, and everybody else is beneath me. It’s so easy to be like that, Johnny. You don’t understand what it’s like to have that kind of power in your hands, and I hope you never do. It’s awful, but it’s also … incredible. I feel so free and strong, and it doesn’t matter what I do or say, because nobody can stand in my way, not even … oh no. Oh no.” She started to cry again, and she looked at me helplessly. “Baby, I can’t remember what I did last night. I really can’t. What if I did it? I knew she drowned, but I don’t know how I knew! What if I killed her, Johnny? What if I fucking killed somebody?!”
I tried to keep her in place, wanting to keep her from getting hysterical, but it was no use. She got to her feet and started aimlessly pacing around, arms tightly wrapped around herself.
“I can’t remember anything after sitting with you under the tree,” she said, tears freely streaming down her face. “The next thing I can remember is waking up on the floor a few hours ago, still dressed, and there’s just a big gap there! What if I killed her? What if I did it?! What if I’m a fucking murderer?!” She suddenly stopped her pacing, threw back her head, and screamed as hard as she could, a ragged, shredded howl that was sheer pain transformed into sound.
I was fleetingly grateful of the baffling spell she’d cast, because even if he hadn’t heard anything else, Mr. Carter would’ve heard that, and I had no idea how I could explain this to him. What would he think if he knew any of this? But then I thought about running upstairs and telling him everything, because if he’d been able to stand up to Mary Jane’s mom, maybe he could’ve done something about this. He could probably do more than I could, because I was at a loss here, and I was scared as hell, watching Mary Jane fall to her knees and scream again. I got even more scared when I could feel the air in the room start to swirl and shift around me in little eddies and currents. The sudden increase in thunder and wind outside just added to it.
As I watched Mary Jane wail on the floor, I wanted to run. I didn’t know what to do here any more. Had she killed Kristine? What if she really had? Even if it was an accident, how could I ever forgive that? Kristine, despite her flaws, had been a good person and had meant well, and I’d cared about her. She’d been there for me when I’d needed a friend, and before all of the crap about the witch in Whitewood had started, she’d been somebody that I could really talk to, somebody that I was really comfortable with, and somebody that I knew genuinely gave a damn about me. Had she still been in love with me? Had what Mary Jane said about the love spell been true? Did it really matter? If it did, it didn’t anymore, because Kristine was dead and there was nothing I could do about it.
I suddenly remembered something Mary Jane had said back on that long-ago Saturday, after she’d had her first confrontation with Julia: I could make her go away forever. Her eyes hadn’t been blue, then. She hadn’t been under the influence of anything on that day, had she? How much of Blue Eyes was just Mary Jane stripped of her inhibitions and basic decency? As I looked down at Mary Jane sobbing on her knees, I felt like crying myself, because I didn’t fucking know any longer.
Feeling weak in the knees, I rasped, “Maybe … maybe we should tell your dad.”
Mary Jane’s head jerked up, her eyes enormous. “NO!” she shrieked, looking horrified. “It would kill him to know what I’ve become, what I’m becoming, what I’ve done! He can’t know!” She leaped to her feet and rushed at me, grabbing my shoulders. “After everything he’s done, after all he’s sacrificed for me, he can’t see that I’m such a fuckup and a failure! I won’t hurt him like that, not Daddy! He’s given everything for me, and I can’t repay him with … with … this! Never never NEVER!”
“Then what do we do?” I weakly asked.
She stopped short for a couple of seconds, and then her eyes took on an intensity that had nothing to do with magick. “I’ll make things right,” she said. “I’ve got to! If I can get myself under control, everything else will fall in place, I know it will! I’ll have so much power at my command, but I’ll be in control of it instead of losing myself to it, and I could do so many good things with it! I could make up for all of this! I could … maybe I could even … make things right with Kristine.”
I stared at her. “But … she’s … dead,” I stammered. “What can you do to … ?”
Her eyes bright with manic energy, Mary Jane said, “I’ve never read anything that said I couldn’t raise the dead, Johnny. Maybe … with all of the power I’d have, and a little bit of luck …”
I was at a loss for words.
“I have to do something!” she said, “I have to try! If I don’t do something, things could just get worse, and nobody’s ever going to get hurt because of me again! I won’t let it happen!”
“But you don’t know if you … killed her,” I said.
“I knew she died by drowning,” replied Mary Jane, her voice growing soft. “That’s enough evidence to damn me, isn’t it?”
“You said before that what the wind knows, you know. You might’ve just picked up on it, from the breezes around the lake, maybe. That’s probably it, anyway.” Or so I hoped, at least.
“Can I take that chance?” she demanded. “Can I take the chance that I killed her, Johnny? She may have pissed me off at times, but she didn’t deserve that. I can’t just let that go. I’ve got to do something! I’ve almost got it totally figured out, and I’ll work on this night and day, just focus everything on it, and I know I can perform the Ascension on myself and get under control! I’ve been fucking everything up, but I can make it all right again! I can make it all even better!”
As she spoke, she began pacing around the room again, her movements rapid and agitated, her eyes gleaming with a bright enthusiasm that made me feel ill at ease when it should have been reassuring. But what could I do? What could I say? She wanted to try to make amends, make things better, even, and wasn’t that preferable to wallowing in defeat and misery? Or worse, simply letting Blue Eyes have the run of the place. I didn’t know how to deal with this, and nobody else I knew did, with the possible exception of Mr. Carter, but Mary Jane was terrified of letting him know. Was I doing the right thing by abiding by her wishes? Then again, what if she really was getting a handle on all of this, and Mr. Carter flipped out when I told him, and in trying to help her, he ended up accidentally making things worse? Dammit. So I said the only thing I could think of.
“Just be careful, please,” I said, reaching out and taking her hand as she passed by. She stopped her pacing but couldn’t hold still as I squeezed her hand, and she was all smiles, her bright mood a startling counterpoint to all of her earlier behavior. “You don’t know for sure you had anything to do with … Kristine. For what it’s worth, I don’t think you could’ve done it, even as nasty as you can get when you’re … you know. Don’t blame yourself for it, and please, don’t destroy yourself trying to find a solution. Just do what you gotta do, and be careful.”
She put her hand on my cheek and gave me a dazzling grin. “Don’t worry about me, baby. I’ll get this all fixed up, you’ll see. I’m close, so close I can taste it, and it’s only a matter of time until I get to the top of the mountain and plant my victory flag. I’ll make it all right, Johnny-boy. Trust me.”
Just from her sprightly tone, I knew that while she wanted to comfort me, she was set on her course to find the solution to this problem, damn the dangers, and nothing I said was going to stop her or make a difference. All I could do was hope for the best.
“I don’t wanna lose you,” I said, and she kissed me on the cheek.
“You’re not gonna lose me, baby, because I don’t ever, ever want to be without you. The way you’re standing by me and believing in me when anybody else would’ve had me committed to a loony bin, it’s just …” She grabbed me in a tight hug and giggled. “I just love the hell out of you. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I’m happy to have you. As long as I’ve got you, I can do anything, I know I can.”
As I hugged her back, I tried not to think about the ‘loony bin’ remark, and also tried not to remember how she’d tried to get me to leave her behind last night, and how much better off I’d be if I did. This was all getting to be too much, and though I was trying my best, I wasn’t sure how much more I could withstand before it overwhelmed me. As it turned out, I didn’t have to keep it up much longer.
