I awoke with a start, and looked over at the window, where the wind was softly blowing the curtains into the room.  Reaching for my glasses, I glanced over at my wife, who was still sound asleep next to me.  That was just as well.  Though we were still together after all these years, it was out of habit more than anything else, and I think that while she would always care for me, she’d fallen out of love with me years ago.  We never talked about it, never acknowledged it, but it was there just the same.  It used to make me sad, but I’d long since accepted it and had moved on.  These days I preferred to be alone, anyway.

Carefully getting out of bed, I grabbed my robe from the chair next to the nightstand and put it on, the spring air feeling chilly to me even through my pajamas.  I quietly walked over to the window, opened it up the rest of the way, and stood there, letting the gentle breeze caress my face as the silvery, ancient moon bathed me in its ethereal light.

“Johnny …”

I closed my eyes tightly, a shiver passing through my body.  The wind ruffled through my thin, grey hair and I thought I heard a giggle.  Opening my eyes, I looked back at my wife, but she hadn’t stirred.

Tying my robe closed, I softly padded across the bedroom in my slippers, moving as quietly as my tired old joints would let me.  I gave my wife a kiss on the forehead, thanked her for so many years together, and then left the bedroom, carefully shutting the door behind me.

It took me a while to get out of the house, which was a nice big one that I’d had built on the edge of town, but I eventually made it out to the sprawling backyard, where the long, lush grass was waving in the wind like a field of wheat.

“Johnny …”

“I’m coming,” I whispered.  “Don’t worry.”

As I shuffled across the grass, heading for the big glider swing that sat out in the grass a distance away from the house, I thought I heard another giggle, and the wind playfully tugged at my robe.

I sat down in the glider, which was already gently rocking back and forth from the wind, and though the weathered wood was chilly from the night air, I made a soft sound of relief when I was finally able to get off my feet again.  Leaning back in the glider and staring up at the starry sky, I let my mind drift as the wind tenderly sang to me.  Bit by bit, the wind died down until the night was still and quiet, with only the sounds of crickets invading the silence.

“I missed you.”

I sat up and looked over at Mary Jane, who was sitting right next to me, looking just as she had so many decades ago.  Her gentle cerulean eyes glimmered with tremendous, playful wisdom, and when my eyes met hers, she gave me a smile of such profound knowing that it made me, with all of my advanced years of learning, feel like a punk kid who still had a lot to learn about life, the universe, and everything.  It was a feeling that had become alien to me over the years, and I welcomed it back like an old friend.

“I missed you, too.”  I reached out and took her hand, which was wonderfully warm and soothing against the night chill that was settling into my bones.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

I nodded.  “Yeah.”

“There’s no going back from this, you know.”

“I’m all set for it this time, beautiful.”

“Me too, baby.  Me too.”

Mary Jane leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, and the warmth began to spread through my body, taking away all of the old aches and pains that had become such a part of me that I barely noticed them any longer.  Instead of the heaviness that I’d become accustomed to, I felt light, light as a feather, and I laughed at how good it felt.  I was free again, broken away from the years and routine that had once been my life, but had lately become a prison.  I’d seen all that I could see and done all that I could do in my life, and while my spirit was still very willing, my flesh had grown weak and weary, trapping me within its confines.  But the wind was always as strong as it wanted to be, didn’t weigh a thing, and could never be imprisoned.

As we began to rise into the air, I looked down and saw that the years had fled me, leaving behind the young man who had an enormous amount of catching up to do with the love of his life.  I saw myself down below, leaning back in the glider, a broad smile on my wizened features, eyes closed as though I were merely sleeping instead of moving on to the next part of my life.  Bidding myself a fond goodbye, Mary Jane and I soared into night sky, dancing with the moon and stars, together again at long last.

This time, it was forever.

We’re walking in the air

We’re floating in the moonlit sky

The people far below are sleeping as we fly

I’m holding very tight

I’m riding in the midnight blue

I’m finding I can fly so high above with you

We’re walking in the air

We’re floating in the midnight sky

And everyone who sees us greets us as we fly

Howard Blake

I never really did figure out how to tell my parents about what really happened with Mary Jane, because how in the world do you explain something like that to your parents?  So I told them that Mary Jane was having a really hard time over Kristine’s death, blaming herself for it because of the argument at the party, and she’d gone back up to Terrace Green to stay with some other relatives, because staying around Norton was too hard for her at the moment.  At first, they asked a lot of questions and wanted to know how Mary Jane was doing, so I gave them vague updates now and again, subtly trying to insinuate that Mary Jane was going to stay up there and that we were losing interest in one another.  As time passed, they stopped asking, and the whole thing just faded away, as relationships sometimes did.  To keep things simple, I just told the guys and everybody else that asked the same thing.  Except for Eddie.

I didn’t go to prom.  There was no way in hell I was going to go.  So that Saturday, instead of going to prom or even any of the parties, I went over to Eddie’s house, and he and I sat up and drank all night, since his parents were at another convention.  We were conservative, though, and didn’t get stupid.  But I had enough in me that when Eddie asked if Mary Jane was doing all right in Terrace Green, I asked him if he wanted to hear one hell of a story, probably one of the wildest ones he’d hear outside of a Jack Action movie.  When he said that he did, I told him the whole story.  He was the only one that I ever told the entire tale to, because I’d held back a lot of details from Kristine’s friends, simply not wanting to share them.  But Eddie had always been different, and if I was going to tell him, I was going to go for broke.

We sat there for hours on his front porch, looking up at the moon and stars as I told him everything about what had happened between Mary Jane and I.  When I told him about Chicago and the bat-pan, he went inside and brought the formidable weapon out, checking it over meticulously, finding only a few faint stress points where the damage had once been.  He forgot all about it when he heard about the thing that had been lurking in the blizzard, and looked understandably unsettled at Blue Eyes’ first appearance.  I damned near hugged the big bastard when he steadfastly refused to believe that Mary Jane had anything to do with Kristine’s death … he never doubted her for a second, even after everything he’d heard leading up to that.

When I finally wound down the story, we sat there on the porch in silence, listening to the night sounds of the country, and after he’d smoked a couple of cigarettes, he looked at me and said, “She was something, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I said as I took a sip of my beer.  “She was the best.”

Eddie held up his bottle, and I clinked mine against it as we toasted Mary Jane under the moon and stars, while a soft breeze rustled through the trees.

*     *     *

The sage wisdom my uncle had imparted upon me when I was a kid proved to be true, because while it did indeed take forever and a day to reach 18, everything else afterwards went by at dizzying speed.

After high school graduation, I went on to the community college for a couple of years, trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life, and when it came time to go away for further schooling, I ended up choosing Western Illinois, because it was closer to home than Illinois State.  Or at least that’s what I told myself.  But when I went away to school, it turned out that I didn’t go alone.  In a move that surprised the hell out of everybody, Dusty ended up going to college, having saved up enough money working at Dink’s Auto to afford it with the help of a couple of scholarships and grants.  He and I got an apartment together and had a hell of a good time, and to this day, I’m still surprised we didn’t go to jail a few times after all the shit we pulled.  He got a degree in accounting and worked alongside his father for over a decade before his old man retired and left him the business.  He married a really nice girl, a sharp contrast to all of the nasty whores he used to chase around, had several kids, and did really well for himself.  Though he never stopped being a cantankerous old bastard.

Duane and Alicia had a couple of kids not long after high school, and Duane nearly killed himself working his ass off in factory jobs to support them for a few years until they were able to really get on their feet.  Things were pretty tight for him for a while, though, and like everybody guessed he would, he did a couple of short stays in jail for fighting and other mayhem.  But eventually, Duane got his shit together and was able to become a certified mechanic; he ended up working at Dink’s after Dusty had given him a great recommendation.  True to his bragging, he was a master mechanic, and like Dusty taking over for his dad, Duane got the garage went Dink called it a day and retired.  He never lost his mischievous streak, though, and at one point narrowly avoided a whole load of trouble when he used a tow truck he was servicing to pull down Slavedriver’s entire CB tower and somehow managed to rip down a portion of the house’s side wall along with it.

Lee and Tomomi were inseparable, and though she had to go back to Japan after the school year was up, she and Lee stayed in touch, and she came back for good a couple of years later to go to college over here.  They both became architects and made a fortune for themselves designing buildings, homes, and just about anything else anybody wanted, as the designs they created together were both extremely sturdy but very beautiful, putting them in high demand.  When they got married, they spared no expense, and even tried to track down Mary Jane, since she was the one that got them together in the first place, and they felt she belonged there.  Though I’d told them I’d fallen out of touch with her and had no idea what had become of her, they were undaunted, and searched for her anyway.  From the way they acted, I think they were hoping to reunite her with me, in addition to having her as a guest, and I thought it was very sweet of them to try as hard as they did.  Of course, they were never able to find her, and couldn’t even locate her father.  That didn’t surprise me, but it still made me sad nonetheless.  At their wedding reception, they had a toast to Mary Jane, much more lavish than the one Eddie and I had given her, and I had to excuse myself so nobody saw me tearing up like a damned fool.

Eddie worked at various jobs after high school, bouncing around trying to find something he really liked, and it turned out that he had a real skill for politics.  He ran for several different positions in both Norton itself and the county, got elected after a few tries, and did a lot of good.  People loved him because he was a common man who got everything by working hard for it and never giving up, and I’m proud to say that it was me who gave him the nickname, “The Bulldog,” during his first mayoral campaign.  He didn’t win that go-round, but like a bulldog, Eddie came back for another go, and handily won on his second attempt, becoming one of Norton’s most beloved and successful mayors.  Not bad for a guy that everybody always wrote off, huh?  They ended up renaming the fucking high school after him, for crying out loud, and just before my daughter started attending, too.

As for me, well, I did okay.  I was aimless for a while after high school, going to college and covering all of the general stuff, but not really knowing what I wanted to do with myself.  After fucking around with a couple of other majors, I wound up in journalism, and discovered I had quite a knack for it, especially when it came to editorials.  I could stir shit up like you wouldn’t believe, and I had a great time doing it.  I came back to Norton after graduating from college, giving serious thought to moving to Peoria or Chicago or somewhere else bigger, so I could get a job at a prestigious newspaper and really get going.  But, as it turned out, I took a job working for Norton’s hometown paper instead, and it was Mr. Jameson, of all people, who went to bat for me, because even though he was retired, he still held a great deal of pull at the paper.  I did well with the job and built a solid reputation with my editorials, and eventually turned enough heads that I got a nationally syndicated column, so I was able to make something of myself, but never had to leave home to do it.

I lived as a bachelor for quite a while, ending up as the last one of my friends to settle down, when everybody thought I was going to be the first.  I dated around for a while, trying to find a girl that I could connect with even remotely like I could Mary Jane, but that was a quest doomed to failure.  Shannon and I actually dated for a couple of years, but that eventually faded away, because I think in the end, we were doing it more for Kristine’s memory than for ourselves, so we softly broke it off and went our separate ways.  The girl I married was a nice one, very smart, pretty, and completely normal.  There were times she didn’t know what to do with me, especially when I was with my friends, but she hung in there, and gave me two great kids that loved going over to help Grandpa shovel snow and mow the lawn.  Though they got paid a hell of a lot more than I did, and the fact their grandfather took great delight in telling them all sorts of zany, funny tales about me, while their grandmother spoiled them unmercifully, might have had something to do with it.

My kids grew up, did really well at Eddie Senior High, as I liked to call the school, and then went on to college, got good jobs, and did me proud, while I published several books of my columns and gently grew old with my wife.  I still went out for beer with the same group of guys I’d been hanging with since before high school, even though Lee couldn’t always be there because he and Tomomi spent about half of their time in Japan with her family, and we still laughed it up and had a great time.  Life turned out pretty damned good.

Mary Jane had been right: I did just fine without her.

But …

I had to tell Mr. Carter what had happened, everything that had happened, regardless of the consequences.  As much as he loved Mary Jane and as much as he’d given for her, he had to know the truth, even if it hurt.  He didn’t deserve to be hurt, but he deserved to know what had become of his daughter.  Though I knew things had been largely out of my control, I still felt tremendous guilt for letting him down when he’d trusted me to look out for Mary Jane, and I still couldn’t escape the feeling that I could have done something else for Mary Jane, that I could have made a difference somewhere.  I’d failed him, I’d failed Mary Jane, and I’d failed myself.  It had been too much for me too handle, but what kind of a weak excuse was that?  I loved Mary Jane more than I could put into words, and I’d told Mr. Carter I’d do right by her; I should have done more.

But just what that was, I didn’t know, and maybe never would.

When I looked up towards the porch, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw Mr. Carter sitting on the steps, in the same spot he’d been when I’d first met him.  He looked like he’d been crying.

I stopped in my tracks and stared at him, suddenly terrified.  He knew.  I didn’t know how, but somehow he knew, and he was waiting here for me because he’d also known I’d come here first, even before going back home.

We gazed at one another across the concrete walkway, which was still in the shadow of the house.  The sun was up, but it was still very early in the day, and most of the town was still wrapped in the slowly dying shadows of the previous night.  Neither of us said anything for a long time, and though the twittering birds did their best to dispel the silence, even they couldn’t make a dent in it.

At last, Mr. Carter nodded at me.  “John.”

“Mr. Carter,” I said raggedly.

“She’s gone, isn’t she?”

“Yeah, yeah she is.”  I almost choked up, but forced it back down.  I wasn’t going to blubber like a baby again, not now.  When I was alone, I would, but not now.  “I’m sorry.”

I was shocked when he gave me a wan smile.  “What is there to be sorry about, John?”

The words rushed out of my mouth in one big regretful heap.  “I failed, I didn’t keep her safe, even though I promised you, and—“

He held up his hand and I immediately stopped.  Taking his glasses off, he rubbed at his eyes for a few moments.  “You made her happy.  You gave her a reason to laugh and make real friends and really enjoy herself for the first time in years.  That’s nothing to be sorry about.”  He put his glasses back on, and then patted the spot next to him.

Hesitantly, I crossed the distance to the porch and sat down next to Mr. Carter, and we looked across the street together at something neither of us could really see.  “I promised you,” I said.  “I told you I’d keep her safe and out of trouble, and I couldn’t.  I should have told you about this shit a long time ago, but I …”

He squeezed my shoulder for a moment.  “You were a young man in love, and you did what you thought was best, just like I did when it was my turn.  We both got in over our heads, and we did our best, but in the end, we were trying to fight something that was beyond us.”

“Did … did you know about all of this?” I tentatively asked, unable to look at him.  “Did you know what was happening to her?”

Sighing heavily, Mr. Carter said, “I had my suspicions.  I asked Janey about it, but she kept telling me everything was all right, and I tried to believe her, even when I heard the wind whispering in the night.  What happened with Janey’s mother … I lost more than I ever let on to either of them, and I … just didn’t have the strength to fight it again.”  He removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes once more, his movements slow and pained.  “It almost killed me when I had to put her in that asylum, and it almost killed her, too.  She wasn’t made to be caged and treated like a prisoner, and beyond that, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop her.  When it came right down to it, I’d rather lose her to …” he pointed towards the sky, “Out there than I would have her suffering in some sanitarium like an invalid or maniac.”

He took a breath and his voice trembled.  “She wasn’t a maniac.  She was my little girl, my Janey, and she didn’t … ever deserve that.”  He hung his head.  “So … heaven help me … I turned my head and pretended it was all right.  I let her kiss me on the cheek and think she had me fooled, hoping that she’d come out of it, that there was some way she could fight what it is her mother had done with her blood and lies.  But when the wind woke me this morning, I knew it was done.  My Janey was gone.”

Mr. Carter sobbed once, and then sat quietly while I struggled to keep my composure.

“If anything,” he said, “I should be apologizing to you.”

“Why?”

“For letting you try to carry that burden yourself, without telling you the truth about Janey,” he murmured.  “I was selfish.  Damned selfish, and I’m sorry.  I’d thought that maybe you could do what I couldn’t.”  He turned to me.  “You almost did it, didn’t you?”

I shook my head.  “I don’t know.”

He nodded.  “You did.  She still loved you, even at the end, didn’t she?”

“Yeah,” I croaked, remembering the feel of Mary Jane’s lips on my own as that final wind had blown past me.

“You did more than I could with her mother,” he said softly.  “Maybe if I’d just followed my heart instead of trying to beat her at her own game, none of this would ever have happened.  I’m sorry, John.  I truly, truly am.”

I wiped at my nose and blinked back my tears.  “It’s okay.”

He sighed again.  “No, it’s not.  It never will be.  But it’s the best I can offer, I’m afraid.  You deserve more, a lot more.”  Taking my hand in his, he gave it a firm shake, and I returned it as best I could.  “You’re one of the finest men I’ve ever known, and I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for loving my daughter the way you did and for being there for her when she needed you.”

“I failed her,” I protested, but he shushed me.

“You didn’t fail anybody, and don’t ever think that.  You were fighting against something you weren’t equipped to handle, which maybe nobody’s equipped to handle, but you did your best and you put your heart and soul into it.  Nobody that cares that much is ever a failure,” he said, and he put his arm around me, giving me a quick but tight hug, which I returned with shaking arms.  He then clapped me on the back like an old friend.  “Now go.  Live.  Drink.  Be merry.  And don’t let this bring you down too much.  Janey wouldn’t want that, and neither do I.  If anyone should have a happy life, it’s you.  Thank you for everything, John.”

He guided me to my feet, and I dazedly started down the walk, but stopped after a few steps and looked back at him.  “What about Mary Jane?  What’s going to happen to her?”

Mr. Carter looked up at the sky.  “She’s out there somewhere, and I think she’ll be all right.  She was something rare and special, not meant to tread among us, and she doesn’t need us anymore.  I wish she did, but that wasn’t to be.  At least we had the time with her that we did, and I know she’d want us to carry on without her.”

I looked up at the sky with him as he spoke, and when he was done, I met his eyes one last time.  “Yeah.  She would,” I said, the ache in my heart easing just a little.

Mr. Carter smiled sadly.  “Goodbye, Johnny.  And thank you.”

I returned the smile as best I could and gave him a little wave before turning and walking away.  When I reached the end of the walk, I looked back, and he was gone.  The next day, the house was empty and up for sale, as though it had all been just a dream.

I never saw him again.

*     *     *

Kristine’s funeral was held on a grey, overcast day much like one right after she’d died, and though it was gloomy, I think Kristine would have preferred it that way.  She’d always told me how much she enjoyed days like that, because she thought regular sunny days were just so “pedestrian,” which usually got a chuckle out of me.  As for myself, I was glad that it wasn’t a clear, bright day, because it would’ve been even harder burying somebody I cared about on a beautiful spring afternoon, when we should’ve been in school, waiting for classes to end and simply reveling in the fact that school was almost over for good.  Graduation was only a few weeks away, and prom was this weekend, but I didn’t want to think about any of that.  I just wanted to say good-bye to Kristine as best I could and go out for a long drive in the country by myself.

The service had been a short and simple nondenominational one, the way that everybody who’d been close to Kristine knew she would’ve wanted it, and Randy had presided over it, which would’ve delighted her to no end.  Mostly members of Kristine’s family attended the funeral, but all of her friends were there, and though we weren’t a large number, we were all people she’d genuinely been friends with.  There were no assholes attending just to get out of class or people offering false condolences here, which is the way it should’ve been.  Eddie, Duane, Dusty, Lee, Tomomi, Alicia, and myself were there, as were Shannon, Lynn, Angelene, and of course, Randy, and we all hung pretty close to one another throughout.

Cindy Johnson, who felt absolutely horrible about Kristine’s death, was also there, and she looked terrible.  Since it had been her party, she’d been beating herself up over it since the day Kristine had been found, even though nobody was pointing the finger at her, not even the cops, since she hadn’t provided alcohol to anybody.  Other people brought in what was at the party, which was a simple fact of life when it came to parties.  In reality, it was nobody’s fault Kristine had died.  It was just one of those sad, fucked-up situations where the wrong combination of elements had come together to make a mess of everybody’s fun.  But poor Cindy didn’t see it that way, and it tore everybody up when she stood and gave a wrenching apology to Kristine and her family, swearing she’d do everything she could to make sure nothing like that happened to another kid in town again.  The parties at her house were over forever, and instead of becoming a high-paid lawyer or something of that nature like her family expected, Cindy ended up becoming a counselor for troubled kids in the area, and even started a scholarship fund in Kristine’s name for kids who didn’t have enough money to go to college.  I like to think that wherever she is, Kristine’s proud, and I hope that Cindy was able to find some peace.  But at the time, peace was something none of us had much of.

I’d stayed home the day that Mary Jane had disappeared, taking up my parents’ offer on missing a day to cope, and when I hadn’t showed at school, Kristine’s friends had feared the worst, and had come looking for me.  Though I was annoyed at having to try to innocuously explain their frantic presence to Mom, I was touched by their concern, particularly in the weary, vulnerable state I was in.  Friends were what I needed at the moment, and I was glad to have them.  We’d all gone for a walk and I’d given them a rough outline of what had happened with Mary Jane, and answered their questions as best I could, but they understood I was hurting, and didn’t push too hard.  Mostly they’d just wanted to make sure I was safe, and since I was, they were satisfied.  Though I could tell they were relieved that Mary Jane wasn’t a danger any longer, because I could tell just from the way they reacted to some of my answers that they knew she was something they couldn’t have dealt with, they were all saddened by her disappearance.

Later on that night, before I went over to Duane’s to goof around and try to forget everything, Shannon appeared at the back door and asked to see me.  We ended up out by my car, talking for a little while, and then she tearfully gave me Kristine’s journal, which she thought that I should have.  I started to protest, not feeling right about accepting it, but Shannon wouldn’t hear of it, giving me a quick hug and hurrying off into the warm spring night.

I’d put Kristine’s journal in one of my drawers, leaving it alone for a couple of days, until last night, when I’d woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep.  Whenever that had happened over the past several months, I’d always called Kristine and talked with her for an hour or so, just babbling on about nothing and talking for the hell of it, until I’d started feeling sleepy again.  With Kristine gone, the middle of the night had seemed so lonely, and I’d started to read her journal, trying to get a little comfort out of it after everything that had happened.

Mary Jane had been right.  Kristine had been in love with me, and it hadn’t gone away when I’d started dating Mary Jane.  If anything, Kristine only wanted me more.  It should have flattered me, I guess, but as I read the words she’d written on the pages, I felt only sadness.  But Mary Jane, or Blue Eyes, had also been wrong.  Kristine hadn’t resented her, not in the least.  Her admiration for Mary Jane had been boundless, and she’d struggled a great deal with her unrequited love for me and her affection for Mary Jane, trying to take the high road and be happy for us, but at the same time desperately wishing for something she couldn’t have.  Remaining friends with me while I was with Mary Jane had been more difficult on Kristine that I’d ever imagined, or even considered, but she’d always hidden it deeply, because she cared for the both of us and didn’t want to make trouble.  Blue Eyes had also been wrong about Kristine brushing my hair just to get material for a love spell, because I didn’t find any reference to one in the journal at all.  It had been simple innocence and affection that night down by the lake, nothing more, nothing less.

When Kristine had come to suspect Mary Jane of being a reincarnation of the old witch, it had been reluctantly, with a great deal of soul-searching, and she’d come to convince herself that it was the universe’s way of bringing the two of us together.  She feared for Mary Jane’s safety, and often questioned her conclusions and suspicions, always trying to give Mary Jane the benefit of the doubt.  In the last entry before the party, she’d decided that if it would keep me safe and happy, she was willing to risk anything.

I’d sat up the rest of the night, staring out my window and clutching the journal to my chest, wondering how everything could have gone so horribly wrong for all of us.

I shook myself out of my thoughts as I looked down at the array of flowers lying on Kristine’s coffin, which was in position to be lowered once everybody had left.  She was being buried in Whitewood, not far from where her father was, and just a short distance away from Drake, where everything had all come to an end.  Randy had concluded the graveside service several minutes ago, and we’d all gone up to the coffin to pay our final respects.  Duane had surprised me when he’d tenderly patted the coffin, laid down a daffodil, and had murmured, “You were a hell of a girl.  I’m gonna miss you,” before turning away and quickly walking off, wiping at his eyes.  Alicia had hurried after him, putting an arm around his shoulders as they walked off through the grass.

“Wow,” Dusty had said, shaking his head with a faint grin.  Nothing else had needed to be said.

One by one, everybody had said their goodbyes, until only I remained.  I stared silently down at the coffin, which contained somebody that had gone from a passing acquaintance to a good friend during the course of the school year, and I didn’t know what to say.  I didn’t know if I should have apologized to her for everything, or if I should have thanked her for caring as much as she had, or if I should have told her I wished things had turned out differently between us.  I felt all of those things, and so many others that I couldn’t put into words, and I didn’t know which one was the right thing, if any of them.  It was all too much to deal with, and I was still reeling.  After some time had passed, I’d be able to develop a perspective on it all, but at the moment, it was just one big painful wound that I didn’t know how to heal.

I put my hand on the coffin and whispered the only thing I knew for sure, “I miss you.  A lot.”

A mild wind picked up, softly rustling through the trees, and gently played over the flowers we’d left for Kristine.  As I stared down at the coffin and searched for more words to express what I was feeling, I caught something out of the corner of my eye.

A small piece of paper was spiraling through the air nearby, steered by the currents of the wind, and I watched it twist and turn until it reached the coffin.  With a final twirl, the paper lodged itself amongst the flowers, and the wind stopped.  There was writing on the paper, which was plain white and nondescript.  It could have come from anywhere.

My heart starting to pound, I leaned forward to read what was on the paper, and I saw that it was only two words, written in clear, elegant cursive.

I’m sorry.

The handwriting was Mary Jane’s.

But while I was extremely cold and my mind was blurry from sleep, I didn’t have any of the usual hangover aches and pains, which I always had after getting smashed enough to pass out.  So I was pretty sure that I hadn’t gotten drunk, but that still didn’t explain why I was still in my clothes.  And why the hell was it so damned cold? It felt like the middle of the winter, and even though the weather could still get chilly at night until almost June, it never got this cold, not by the first week of May.  Even if I’d left my window all the way open when I’d gone to bed, it shouldn’t be this frigid in my room.  Was I sick?  My hands searched around for the covers again, and found them this time.  Unfortunately, from the feel of it, I was laying on top of them.  Dammit.

I was still asleep enough that I really didn’t want to move at all, but my teeth were starting to chatter, and if I got much colder, I wasn’t going to be able to fall totally back to sleep again.  So with an annoyed grunt, I sat up in bed, forcing my bleary eyes open, wondering if I could somehow manage to get under the covers without having to get off of the bed or use too much energy.  But all thoughts of going back to sleep vaporized when I saw the dark figure standing right in front of my window.

It was Mary Jane.  That was my first surprise.

The second one came when I realized that she wasn’t standing.  She was floating.  Her bare feet were hanging almost a foot off the carpet.  The steady, icy breeze was emanating from her, making her black hair slowly whirl and twist around her head like a dark halo.

I got my third surprise when I saw that the dim light in the room wasn’t coming from my window, which her softly billowing skirt was completely blocking out.  The light was coming from her eyes, which were glowing so brightly that they were acting like lamps, casting a creepy blue glow over everything.  Those eerie eyes were fixed directly on me, though when my eyes met hers, she gave no indication that she even noticed, and continued to impassively gaze at me.

Everything came rushing back, and I remembered Kristine’s death with a fresh stab of pain, as well as Mary Jane’s last call and how she’d made me fall asleep with just a few words.  Along with the ache that suddenly sliced back into my heart, I also felt the razor’s edge of fear cut into me as I stared at her silent, hovering form. Though she looked like herself, she also didn’t.  There was something different about her, something that I couldn’t put into words.  She looked even more beautiful than ever before, but she also looked unearthly, as though she wasn’t human any longer, or at least not human as I understood it.  Had she managed to perform the Ascension after all?  She hadn’t answered me before when I’d asked her, so I didn’t know if she’d been able to do it or not.  Whether it was the Ascension or not, something had happened to her.  As I looked into her immobile, blue-lit features, I had the feeling that it wasn’t something good, either.

“M-Mary Jane?” I croaked.

“Yes, it’s me, Johnny,” she said, her voice whispering directly into my ear, even though she was still on the other side of the room and her lips didn’t move at all when she spoke.  I would have felt a chill if I wasn’t already so damned cold.

“W-what’s g-going on?  Are you o-okay?”  I wrapped my arms around myself and pulled my knees up towards my chest, not only to try to stay warm, but because I was terrified.

She slowly shook her head once, her features not betraying even a trace of emotion.  “No,” her voice murmured into my ear, “I have to leave now, Johnny.  I can’t stay here any longer, I don’t have any choice.  It’s beyond my control.”

I nodded stiffly, remembering what she’d said on the phone.

“But I can’t leave you,” she continued, her lips still not moving.  “I need you, Johnny, and I can’t let you go.  I won’t.”

I swallowed with difficulty, my throat tightening with uncertainty.

When I didn’t answer, she said, “Don’t be afraid, my love.  We’ll be together forever, the way we we’re meant to be.”  My room grew colder as the light wind coming from Mary Jane increased in strength, and when I looked towards my door, I saw that it was still closed.  “I can’t be like I used to be, Johnny.  I can’t ever be a normal girl again, I’m beyond that point and I’ll never be able to go back.  But we can still be together … if you’re like me.”

“W-what?”  Fear gripped my throat even more tightly and I was barely able to get the word out.  I looked towards my door again, and I started to get up from my bed, my instincts telling me to get the hell away from Mary Jane as fast as I could.

But a powerful gust of wind pushed me back into place as the air rushing around my room began to swirl like a hurricane, pulling my posters from the wall and knocking the pictures from my dresser.  The glass covering the photo of Lee, Tomomi, Mary Jane, and myself from the Homecoming dance shattered when the frame hit the floor, but the sound was nearly swallowed up by rising howl of the wind, which was getting louder by the second.

I felt a stab of fear for my parents, wondering if they’d hear the racket and come to check on me, only to become tangled up in this madness.  But then I remembered the baffling spell Mary Jane had said prevented her father from hearing us down in the basement, and I was suddenly sure that I was all alone in this, no matter how loud it got.

“I’m even more powerful than I thought,” Mary Jane whispered, “I’m more powerful than my mother ever was.  I can do so much now, and I can change you, make you like me, so that we never have to be apart.”

“B-but I thought you d-didn’t want me to g-get into magick,” I gasped, the air so cold that I could see frost forming on my walls.  “That it was too d-dangerous.”

Her face remained an expressionless mask as her voice sounded in my ear.  “My power’s taken everything from me, my life, my home, my father, and my dreams.  But I won’t let it take you, too.  The thing that’s trying to split us up will be the thing that brings us together, for all time.”

I screamed as I felt myself rise up from my bed, floating in the air like Mary Jane.  I struggled against the invisible force lifting me, but it was like trying to fight the empty air, literally.  I couldn’t do anything but helplessly stare at the woman I loved, the deathly coldness beginning to steal the breath from my lungs.

“D-don’t!” I panted, uselessly flailing my arms and legs.  “Y-you c-can’t d-do t-this!”

“I have to,” she replied, her voice urgent.  “I love you, Johnny.  So much that it hurts.  You’ve kept me sane through all of this, and if you’re by my side when I move on, there’s nothing I won’t be able to do.  You’ll keep me together, and you’ll make sure that I don’t lose myself, that I don’t fail for the last time.”

I could barely breathe now, I was so frigid, and I could hear the air actually crackling with coldness.  “S-stop!  S-s-s-stop!” I cried, my body creaking with pain as the winds tightly grasped me and wrapped around my trembling flesh.

“It’ll be over soon, Johnny, and then we’ll be together forever,” Mary Jane whispered.  “Don’t be afraid.”

When I opened my mouth to scream, it felt like my breath was sucked right out of me, it was so cold.

“As you are now, so once was I,” Mary Jane said, her windborne voice growing louder, even as her physical body remained a hovering statue.  “As I am now, so you must be.”

I tried to fight against it, but the winds swirling over me were like invisible bonds, holding me tightly, and I could only make hoarse gasping sounds when I tried to cry out.

“As you are now, so once was I.  As I am now, so you must be.  Prepare, my love, to follow me.”  Mary Jane’s voice began to call out mysterious and arcane words, chanting them fervently, building a hysteric strength until she sounded like hellfire-and-brimstone preacher reaching the climax of a sermon.

I could do nothing but stare at her pleadingly through my fading vision, terrified to the core of my very soul.  What was she going to do to me?  How could she make me be like her?  How much worse was the pain going to get?  What if she made a mistake and killed me?  Or worse, what if she made a mistake and turned me into some sort of monster?  As much as I loved her, I didn’t want to be like her!  I didn’t want to lose my family and friends and get sucked into some fucked-up world of magick that I didn’t know anything about!  She’d always tried so hard to protect me from all of this, and now she was going to launch me into it headfirst, whether I wanted it or not!

“As you are now, so once was I!  As I am now, so you must be!” Mary Jane roared into my ear, her voice booming like that of a god as I floated in the eye of an arctic hurricane, forces I didn’t understand working themselves on me with the intent of making me into something I wasn’t.  “Prepare, my love, to follow me!”

The world began to go black around me, and Mary Jane’s frozen features blurred as my eyes lost their focus.  I couldn’t even think, I was so cold and in so much pain.

And then it stopped.

Thankfully my bed was there to cushion my sudden fall, and I lay gasping on its cold, but wonderfully soft, surface for a time, sensation achingly returning to my body as my room rapidly began to warm back up.  The gale-force winds had stopped altogether, leaving only silence in my room … and the sound of Mary Jane crying.

Despite how much I was hurting, despite how scared I was, and despite how much I just wanted to lay there until I’d recovered, that sound galvanized me, giving my aching body the strength it needed.  I pushed myself up onto my hands and knees, wobbled for a few seconds, and then fell off my bed with a heavy thud, the impact jarring my bones and making my returning vision swim, but I didn’t let it stop me.

Growling against the pain, I pushed myself up again, teetering back until I got onto my knees, my still-cold joints screeching in protest, but I ignored them.  When I tried to get to my feet, Mary Jane whispered, “I’m so sorry, baby.”

Her voice wasn’t in my ear any longer.  It was coming from in front of me, and when I looked up and forced my eyes to focus, I saw her sadly gazing at me, still floating above the floor.  There were tears in her glowing eyes, glittering like tiny jewels, and though she still looked unearthly, she no longer looked frightening.  She was a dark angel, mysterious and majestic, powerful beyond measure, but her terrifying strength was governed by a compassionate, but melancholy, heart. I dropped back down, sitting on my feet as I knelt on the floor, stunned by her otherworldly beauty.

Our eyes met, and we stared into one another’s souls, her power bridging the gap between us and letting us see each other as we really were.  In those moments, I fell in love with her all over again, truly realizing how wonderful she really was.

I felt her fear and uncertainty over the destiny her mother had threatened her with, and understood why she’d done the things she did.  I felt the exhilaration of the power she had at her fingertips, sharing the terrible temptation to misuse it and knowing how difficult it was to cope with.  I felt her terror at the constant threat of being overwhelmed by her growing power, and the deep sorrow at the things she said and did when her sheer magickal might stripped away her warmth and brightness.

I knew why she hadn’t apologized to me after the first appearance of Blue Eyes, back in Chicago: she was so ashamed by it and so scared by what it meant, that she’d been unable to even bring it up with me.  She’d felt like she’d failed me after nearly getting me killed, and the pain those feelings brought had driven her to quit school and focus entirely on her magick, trying to get it under control so that she wouldn’t ever hurt me again.  She hadn’t even cared about herself or the personal cost, she’d done it all for me and her father, wanting to reward our love and faith in her by conquering the demons that had haunted her for so long.  She’d lied to us, kept secrets from us, and had hidden so many things from us not out of malicious deceit, but because she was trying to protect us, and because she couldn’t bear the thought of failing us.

Tears streaming down my cheeks, I forgave her for everything.

I felt the enormity of the power unleashed inside of her, realizing just how difficult it was to simply be Mary Jane and keep her wits about herself, much less keep up a façade of normalcy and deal with everyday things.  I felt her jealousy of Kristine, who didn’t have such things weighing her down, and her irritation at how Kristine was basically playing with things that had become life-and-death matters for Mary Jane.  But despite how much Kristine angered her, no matter how desperately she wished that she and Kristine could have traded places, Mary Jane held no hatred towards Kristine, and genuinely liked her, even seeing Kristine as something of a misguided but well-meaning younger sister.

I was stunned to learn that Mary Jane had contingency plans in place in case her power destroyed her in the end.  In a secret spot down in her room, she had all of the things necessary to cast a love spell of her own over Kristine and myself, so that the two of us would be brought together as a result of Mary Jane’s death.  She’d wanted Kristine to be with me if anything happened to her, because she knew that Kristine would have taken a bullet for me and would have never betrayed me for any reason, love spell or not.  Kristine was Mary Jane’s backup plan for my happiness if anything happened to her, and I felt just how keenly Kristine’s death hurt Mary Jane, knowing that there was no way she had anything to do with Kristine’s death.  It had been a tragic, stupid accident, nothing more, nothing less, but Mary Jane still blamed herself for it, and it hurt her twofold, not only because she’d lost a friend, but also because Kristine wouldn’t be there for me when she was gone.

Possessed by grief and fear after her Ascension had gone wrong, Mary Jane had first tried to part with me over the phone, unable to bear the thought of facing me for the last time.  But as she’d sat and felt her body changing, coming into perfect tune with the elemental force of the wind itself, the thought of leaving the life she’d had in Norton, and me especially, had chewed at her, gnawing away at her heart.  The power within her had acted on her thoughts and despair, bringing Mary Jane to me with the intent of taking me away with her, but in the last moments before the point of no return, she couldn’t do it.

Mary Jane’s destiny was hers and hers alone, her gift and her curse, and she couldn’t bring herself to foist that burden upon anybody else, no matter how badly she wanted someone to share in it, to be there to love and hold her in the uncertain times ahead.  Though she was now something more than merely human, something beyond the mundane world, her heart hadn’t changed in the least.  She was still the girl that had laughingly kissed me on the sidewalk on that long-ago Saturday, still the girl that had held my hair for me while I was puking up tequila in Duane’s backyard, and still the girl that wanted to spend the rest of her life with me.  She’d been twisted and turned by fear, sorrow, guilt, anger, and a hundred other emotions, but she was still my Mary Jane.

And she had to leave me.

I gasped as I returned to myself, Mary Jane’s mind closed to me now, and she tearfully smiled at me.  “Goodbye, baby,” she whispered, and then faded away before my very eyes, even as I reached out for her, my hands frantically grasping at cold, empty air as she disappeared.

Fiercely wiping the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand, I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath, and ran out my door.  I wasn’t going to give up that easily.  Because I’d seen into her mind, and I knew that it wasn’t over yet.  There was still time, and in that time, maybe there was still a chance to fight this.

I ran out of my house, galloped down the walk, and leaped into my car.  Bringing it to life, I screeched it out of the driveway and tore down the silent pre-dawn street like a maniac.  After being in Mary Jane’s mind, I not only truly understood what it was she’d been through this past year, but I also knew where she was going.

*     *     *

My bare feet pounded across the dew-damp grass of Whitewood cemetery as dawn kissed the horizon, faint pinkish light spilling across the rolling hills of the place where Mary Jane and I had spent so much time together.  Where yesterday had been overcast and gloomy, the sky overhead was now crystal-clear, and stars still twinkled in the east.  The cemetery gates were still locked for the night, so I’d had to leave my car outside, going the rest of the way on foot.  I slipped and slid as I ran, uncaring of the risk of falling and bashing my head open on a tombstone, and with each misstep, my determination to reach Mary Jane grew even stronger.

There still had to be a chance, and I was going to find it.  I couldn’t let go of Mary Jane, and she didn’t want to let go of me, so between us there had to be a way to beat this.  Love was more powerful than anything, wasn’t it?  Maybe it could even beat elemental magick and keep the love of my life right where we both wanted her to be.

I heard the whirling wind as I drew close to my destination, and I poured on the speed, cutting up my feet when I darted across one of the paved paths that wound through the graveyard.  I didn’t even notice.

I skidded around the trees, bringing the massive girth of Drake into my view, and I nearly fell as I brought myself to a stop, looking around for Mary Jane.  Right in front of me was the casting board I’d seen in her bedroom yesterday, laying in the middle of a large patch of dead grass that was perfectly circular in shape.  This was where she’d performed her Ascension, a place that was vibrant with fond memories, in the hopes that maybe that would be enough to see her through her desperate gambit.  It hadn’t been enough, and the Ascension had gone wrong, though even Mary Jane hadn’t had any idea where.  It hadn’t killed her, but it had done something to her nonetheless, and it was beyond her control.

I couldn’t see her at all, even though I could now feel the strong winds against me in addition to hearing their low howl, and I frantically cried out, “Mary Jane!”

“Johnny …”

My head jerked upwards at the sound of her voice, and I staggered backwards several steps before falling on my ass, gaping up in shock.

Mary Jane was floating a full 30 feet in the open air, her arms outstretched at her sides, as though she were crucified on an invisible cross.  A few leaves, twigs, and other small fragments whirled around her like debris trapped in a tornado.  She looked down at me sorrowfully, shaking her head slowly.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said, her voice sounding directly in my ear again, though this time her lips moved with her words.

“You can’t go!” I screamed as I stumbled to my feet.  “There’s got to be a way!  You’ve got so much power now, and you can fight this, Mary Jane!  You can do it!  Please don’t leave me!  You can win!”

“I can’t,” she said, her voice weak.

“You can!”

“No.”

“Yes!”

She closed her eyes and began to slowly rise higher, turning her face towards the still-velvet sky.

I shrieked, “I love you!  Stay with me, please!”

Mary Jane’s entire body shook and convulsed for several seconds, and the cyclonic winds circling her blew outwards with a tremendous whoosh as she suddenly dropped at least ten feet.  She clenched her fists and screamed at the sky, the wind blowing out from her so hard that it almost knocked me over as it roared through the trees and tore across the grass.  It was like standing in a wind tunnel, but I held my ground and kept my eyes on Mary Jane, who was twisting and fighting with everything she had.

“I won’t go!” she screamed.  “I won’t leave him!”

“You can do it!” I yelled, and I whooped in joy when she fell even further, bringing her closer to the ground.  “You’re almost there, beautiful!  You can beat this!  I know you can!  I love you!”

Mary Jane’s arms stretched out at her sides again, her hands seeming to grasp at the very air itself, and with a roar of fury, she arched her back and jerked her arms backwards, as though ripping something apart.  There was a massive crack of thunder and brilliant bolts of lightning arced across the sky, though there wasn’t a cloud to be seen.  The explosion of wind that blasted out from Mary Jane bowled me over, knocking me across the grass, but I got back up, my heart furiously pumping away as hope sang in my blood.  She could do it, I knew she could!

“No more!” she howled.  “No fucking more!  I just want to live my life!  I don’t want this, I don’t want any of this!  Fuck my mother and fuck the Elements!  I’m staying here!”

Mary Jane let fly with a jagged yell, sounding angrier than I’d ever heard her.  There was another crack of thunder and electric lances split the sky once again, so loudly that it nearly deafened me.

“Come back to me!” I shouted, reaching towards Mary Jane, who was barely more than ten feet above the ground now.  “I love you, Mary Jane!  Please come back!”

The wind knocked me down again and pinned me to the ground with its overwhelming power, but I kept calling out to Mary Jane, unable to give up.  I could hear the trees surrounding Drake creaking and groaning as they strained against the elemental might bearing down on them.  Thunder began to constantly growl overhead and the sky went wild with electrical wildfire as Mary Jane warred with the very wind in the name of love.

Just when my senses began to reel from the assault, everything suddenly went dead silent, as though some cosmic being had flipped a switch.  Mary Jane hung unsteadily in the air, looking down at me tiredly, the glow entirely gone from her eyes, which had turned back to their normal color once more.  She’d done it!  She’d won!

“Mary Jane?” I whispered after a few moments, almost afraid to break the silence.

She held her arms out towards me, closed her eyes, and said, “Catch me, Johnny!”

I scrambled to my feet, my arms automatically out, ready to break her fall, hold her close to me, and never, ever let go of her again.  “I’ve got you, beautiful!”

Grinning impishly, eyes still closed, she dropped through the air towards me, and I started to laugh in joy as I reached out for her.  If she could beat this, she could beat anything, I was sure of it, and I wanted nothing more than to hold her and kiss her and tell her how much I loved her.

But she stopped just inches above my head, and then began to slowly rise into the air again.

I squawked in surprise, and then moaned in despair, dropping to my knees as my legs gave out beneath me.  When Mary Jane’s eyes opened, they were glowing with unearthly blue light once again, and the expression on her face was one of profound sadness.

“I can’t change what I am, baby, I know that now,” she murmured in resignation.  “I thought I could, but now … now … I am what I am, for better or worse.  As you are now, so once was I.  As you are now, I … can never be.”

“Come back,” I cried, reaching out for her as I tried to stand on legs that refused to cooperate.  “Please come back!”

“I can’t.  I’m a child of the air, I’m a witch of the wind, and I’m not a part of your world any longer.  I wish I could be, but my place is out there,” she said, gesturing up at the pinkish-purple sky.

“No,” I groaned tearfully.  “Don’t leave me.  Please.  I need you!”

She smiled gently.  “Time heals all wounds, baby, and someday, you’ll find someone else to love and cherish, without me screwing things up.  You’ll do just fine without me.”

“I don’t want to be without you,” I rasped.

“I know.  Believe me, I know, baby,” she said.

“Take me with you!” I screamed in desperation, not even thinking about what I was asking.

She shook her head.  “No.  You’ve got to live your life your own way and find your own destiny.  You can do so many wonderful things and make so many people happy, just like you made me happy, and I won’t take that from you.”

The wind began to pick up again, rippling through her hair, and Mary Jane looked upwards for a few seconds, as if hearing something that I couldn’t.  When she looked back down at me, she whispered, “I’ve got to go.  I’ll never forget you, and I’ll always love you.”

“I love you, too,” I choked.  “Forever.  I’ll never, ever forget you.  Not for anybody or anything.”

Mary Jane’s smile was so bright that it rivaled her eyes.  “Thank you.”

She rose into the sky high above and began to slowly spin round and round, arms outstretched and face upwards as I mournfully watched.  The wind gathered around her, whistling through the sky, spinning her faster and faster as it built in strength, until Mary Jane was nothing more than a blur against the brightening sky.  Then everything stopped as the world seemed to hold its breath, and Mary Jane hung in the sky, completely still now, her eyes upwards.  She looked down at me for the last time.

“Goodbye,” she whispered.

She turned her eyes upwards again, and seemed to dissolve into the very air itself, like a painting dissolving in water.  A great gust of wind blew past me, and I felt soft lips against mine for just a moment, and then the world let go of the breath it had been holding.

The birds began to sing to the coming morning, and I could faintly hear the sounds of a few cars passing by outside as people headed for work.  Life went on, the world continued, and I was alone.

I fell onto the grass, hurting so badly that I couldn’t even cry.

“Yeah, no shit.  It doesn’t seem real.”  Dusty, who didn’t have even the slightest hangover despite the ungodly amounts he’d drank last night, idly toyed with a wrench as he sat in the open garage door, looking out at the darkly-overcast afternoon.  “I always figured if anybody was gonna check out early, it was gonna be you.”

Duane scowled at him.  “What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

Dusty shrugged.  “Just trying to lighten the mood, is all.  You are always getting into fucked-up messes.”

After thinking about that for a moment, Duane sighed.  “Yeah, I guess.  Makes me wanna not ever drink again, though.”  He looked over at Eddie, who was sitting in the driveway, leaning against one of the tires of his pickup.  “That’s what the cops said it was, right?  She was drinking and … well, you know.”

Taking a drag off of his cigarette, Eddie nodded.  “Yeah.  That’s what they’re thinking.  When I went in to the cop shop to give my statement about what I’d seen last night and everything, I asked ‘em about it, and from what they could find out from everybody still at Cindy’s, it sounds like she just got drunk, wandered off while she was angry, and … you know.”  He took another drag, and then looked over at me.  “How’s Mary Jane taking it?”

I was leaning against the garage doorframe a short distance from Dusty, and I shrugged.  “About at well as can be expected, I guess.  She took it kinda hard, and wanted to be alone after I talked to her for awhile, but that’s understandable, really.”

“Keep an eye on her,” said Eddie.  “This wasn’t her fault, and she shouldn’t let it eat her up or anything.”

I nodded.  “I will.”

Dusty whistled.  “Poor kid.  That’s gotta be rough.  Having a big-ass argument with somebody and then having them … pass on the next day.”  He gave me a hopeful smile.  “But Mary Jane’s smart.  She’ll come through.”

From where he was sitting against the battered old fridge in the corner of the garage closest to us, Lee offered an encouraging grunt.  “She’s tough, too.  And she’s got you to take care of her.”

A lump formed in my throat and all I could do was nod, wishing I could just tell them everything, and feeling the temptation to do so, because it was getting to be a hell of a burden to carry.  But if Mary Jane didn’t want me to tell her dad, I’m sure she wouldn’t want me to tell the guys, either.  She thought highly of all of them, despite the hateful things Blue Eyes had said earlier, but I knew she wouldn’t want that part of herself to be common knowledge.  She had a hard enough time letting me in as it was.

“Yeah, dude, make sure she doesn’t blame herself and shit,” said Duane, and I could see concern in his eyes, which made the lump in my throat even bigger.

“I will,” I croaked, and Duane nodded, looking slightly less worried.

He and Mary Jane sniped at each other constantly, and seemed to always be at odds, but I’d noticed a definite affection between them, like what existed between brother and sister.  She was able to see past all of Duane’s mischievous machismo and see the fundamentally good guy he was deep down, and even though she gleefully fucked with him, she never disrespected him and always treated him like a human being, which he’d picked up on very quickly.  Though he didn’t say it, I knew he had only the highest regard for her, and that if anybody ever gave her trouble, he’d be the first one to come running to her aid, because he genuinely cared about her.  That made Blue Eyes’ “dumbass white-trash” comment all the more searing every time I thought about it.

I was trying my hardest to think of Blue Eyes as a completely separate entity from Mary Jane, but it was difficult.  Maybe if Blue Eyes didn’t look and sound like Mary Jane, it would’ve been easier, but that was impossible, because when you got right down to the very base of it, Blue Eyes was Mary Jane.  When Blue Eyes heaped on the abuse, it was with Mary Jane’s voice, and when she lashed out, it was with Mary Jane’s fists and magick.  Even if Mary Jane could work the Ascension properly, would that really be the end of Blue Eyes?  Or what if when the Ascension was done, it was Blue Eyes that was in control, and not Mary Jane?  Or what if the two facets of her personality became fused, so Blue Eyes’ nastiness became an integral part of Mary Jane?  Mary Jane had said I’d never have a normal girlfriend, and I’d accepted that, or at least I thought I had.  I was having doubts because after this morning’s run-in with Blue Eyes, I was actually relieved to be over at Dusty’s and away from Mary Jane.

It made me wish for a more ordinary girlfriend, but if Mary Jane were just a normal girl, she wouldn’t be Mary Jane, and the whole reason I’d fallen in love with her in the first place was because she wasn’t a normal girl.  I couldn’t have normal and still have Mary Jane, and that was bothering me more than I liked.  I was worried about her, and the thought of losing her made my stomach twist, but at the same time, I dreaded the thought of calling her up or going over there, because I didn’t know if it was going to be Mary Jane or Blue Eyes waiting for me.  Even if Blue Eyes really did go away, what else was in store for me later on down the road?  What other things would test my love for Mary Jane?  Why couldn’t it just be enough that we loved each other?  Why did all of this have to keep happening?  How many more traumas and trials would we have to face before we had peace?  Would we ever have peace?

I shook my head, feeling guilty about brooding over a relationship when Kristine had just died.  She’d never be able to have a relationship, for better or worse, ever again, and that wasn’t fair.  That wasn’t fucking fair at all.  So what did I have to bitch about?  Compared to Kristine, everything was fine and dandy for me.  Just yesterday at this time, she was up and around and going through her life as usual, and now, 24 hours later, her life was over and done.  Was that Mary Jane’s fault?

To be perfectly and bluntly honest, and despite what I’d told her, I didn’t know.  What if she had done it?  What if Blue Eyes had gotten control while Mary Jane was sleeping, and she’d used her magick to dump Kristine into the lake?  I’d had a difficult enough time accepting Mary Jane killing Vincent and the others, so how would I deal with it if she really had killed Kristine?  Killing off a group of dangerous enemies was one thing, but killing a friend because you couldn’t control what was inside of you …

I looked around at my friends, thinking about how easy things were for Lee and Tomomi, Duane and Alicia, Dusty and whoever he was with on a given day, and even Eddie whenever he was laying on the charm.  They had no idea how simple things were for them.  When Duane bitched about Alicia trying to get him to act proper or dress nice, or Lee groused about Tomomi’s obsessive studying for school, they didn’t realize just how good they had it.  They never had to fear for their lives, they never had to encounter nameless horrors while trying to help their girlfriends, and right now, they weren’t wondering if their girlfriends had been the one that had killed Kristine.  Even though it was a shitty thing to feel, I felt incredible jealousy as I watched them all solemnly sitting around the garage and driveway.

What Mary Jane and I had between us was strange and beautiful, or at least it had once been, and I’d thought that all of the fucked-up stuff was worth going through because things were so good when everything was working right.  Just yesterday afternoon, when I’d gone over to Mary Jane’s to pick her up for the party, and we’d stopped to get ice cream before getting Duane and Alicia, it had been wonderful.  We’d sat on the curb next to the ice cream place and had teased and taunted each other, kissing and acting like young fools in love, with no thoughts of magick, death, or despair.  It had been a great moment, it had been so right.  I wanted that moment back so badly it hurt, deep down in the pit of my stomach.

I wanted back the Homecoming Dance, when Mary Jane had been a relentless, one-woman army determined to get Lee to dance with Tomomi and give her a kiss when the chaperones weren’t looking.

I wanted back Halloween, when Mary Jane had dressed up like the sexiest zombie cheerleader the world had ever seen and made me the most envied guy every single place we went.

I wanted back Thanksgiving, when Grandma had been clearly put off by Mary Jane’s all-black outfit, but had been completely and utterly charmed by Mary Jane before dinner had even been served.

I wanted back Christmas, when Mary Jane and Mr. Carter had come over to my house, and we’d all opened presents down in the living room, talking and laughing while we made and ate Christmas dinner, Mary Jane and her father a part of the family.

I wanted back all of those beautiful moments, as well as the moments we should’ve had, if the madness and the magick hadn’t gotten in the way.  I wanted all of the moments of the future we could’ve had, just two kids figuring out their way in the world, trusting in one another to carry on through the hardships.  I wanted my Mary Jane back, the strong, confident, loving girl that took my breath away and made me feel like the luckiest guy in the world.  I wanted a Mary Jane that I could protect and care for, one that would need me to be there for her when the going got tough, one that wouldn’t push me away because she was terrified I’d get hurt by the forces she was dabbling with.  I wanted a girl without a dark side that I was afraid of.  I just wanted a girl that I could love truly and happily.

Was that so much to ask for?  Was it really?

What about Kristine?  Mary Jane had told me Kristine had still been in love with me, despite everything Kristine had said and done to the contrary.  Was that true?  Or was it just something Blue Eyes had come up with to stick the knife in a little deeper?  Or, I wondered as my skin crawled, what if it had been something Blue Eyes had thought up to justify killing Kristine?  Just the fact that I was wondering that told me a great deal more than I wanted to know about where my heart was in all of this.

I sighed, long and hard, feeling sick to my very soul.

I looked out at the iron-grey clouds blotting out the lowering sky, which hung heavy and close over the rolling, grassy fields out here on the edge of town.  It was the darkest day I could remember seeing in a long time, both literally and figuratively, and it felt like there was a whole other world right above us, just getting ready to fall.  When thunder rumbled in the distance and a cool breeze began to blow, I felt bile rise up in the back of my throat and tears sting my eyes.

*     *     *

“You gonna be all right?” Dad asked, sticking his head in through the doorway.

I was laying on my bed and staring up at the ceiling, letting my thoughts drift wherever they wanted, in the hopes that they’d go somewhere less problematic than the here and now.  So far, it wasn’t working.

“Yeah,” I replied, glancing over at him and managing a weak grin.  “It’s just fucked up, you know?  Uh, pardon my French.”

Dad, who was known to cuss a blue streak now and again, gave me a knowing smile.  “It’s pardoned.  And yeah, it is fucked up.  Pardon my French.”

I sat up against the headboard, raising an eyebrow at him.  “I’ll let it go this time.”

“Good.”  He took a few steps into the room and leaned against the wall, as he usually did whenever we had a chat.  “Kids your age shouldn’t have to think about that kind of thing.  Mortality and all that.  Especially not now, whenever the whole world’s getting ready to open up for you.  It happens, whether you want it or not, and you just have to learn to roll with the punches, though it’s not easy.  All a part of growing up.”  He grimaced slightly.  “Though I really wish you wouldn’t have had to learn this lesson until much later in life.”

I nodded silently.

“She was a pretty good friend, wasn’t she?”

I nodded again.  After thinking about it all day, I’d realized that Kristine might’ve become more than that, given time.  That made losing her that much harder.

Dad stepped over next to my bed and put a hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze.  “Sorry, kiddo.  I wish I could make it easier for you, or flip a switch and make the universe take it back.  But I’m here if you need any help, and you know I’m always happy to run interference for you.  You hang in there, all right?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to keep my voice from going rough.

“And you be careful, you hear me?  Don’t let this pull you down into a bunch of shit.  I’ve seen it happen before, and it’s not a good thing, and it’s something I don’t want to happen to you.”  He paused, his voice getting softer.  “I know you go out and party and do all of the things that guys your age do.  I’m not gonna lie to you, I did all of that, too, and I might even have a few things on you, though I’m not gonna say what they are, because your mom would kick my head in if she thought I was giving you any ideas.”  I glanced at him and smiled, in spite of everything.  “But I kept my cool and kept my head above water, even when the going got rough, and that’s what you gotta do.  Now more than ever.  I know you can make it through, and if this starts to really get to you, let me know, okay?  I don’t want to become a grandpa right now, but later on down the road, I’d really like it if you gave me some grandkids to mow the yard and shovel the snow for me, because I sure as hell don’t want to have to do it full-time again.”

Unable to help it, I laughed for the first time that day, and it felt wonderful.  It didn’t make all of the problems and fear and hurt go away, but it took some of the edge off, and I looked up at Dad gratefully.

“Don’t worry,” I said.  “You can have ‘em after they’ve taken care of my yard and my snow.”

He chuckled and tousled my hair.  “Fair enough.”

“Thanks, Dad.  I’ll be okay, I think.  Just need some time, is all.”  I finally had to wipe at my eyes, which Dad pretended he didn’t see.

“Good man,” he said, thumping me on the shoulder.  “I figured you’d do okay, but I just wanted to remind you that you’ve always got me and your mom in your corner if you need us.  You might not need any help, but sometimes it’s just good to know that it’s there if you do need it.”

“Definitely.”

He started to walk out of my room, and then stopped and turned around in the doorway.  “You gonna feel up to going to school tomorrow?  If you don’t, just let me know, okay?  Your mom and I talked about it, and if you want to miss a day or two to just unwind or think or whatever you need to do, we figured it wouldn’t hurt.  The year’s almost over and your grades are perfect, so what the hell, huh?”

I thought about it for a moment, and then said, “I’ll probably just go anyway, but thanks.  It might be best to just keep busy instead of sitting around thinking about it all the time.”

He nodded.  “You’re probably right.  But you do what you gotta do, and we’re here for you, if you need anything.”

“Thanks.  Really,” I said, meaning it.

“Gotta keep my favorite yard-ape happy, so I don’t have to do all the chores around here,” he said, giving me a little salute before heading off down the hall.

“Wiseass,” I said, raising my voice slightly.

“I heard that!”

*     *     *

After staring at the phone for almost ten minutes, I picked it up off my bed and set it on the floor, unable to bring myself to dial Mary Jane’s number.  I really wanted to know how she was doing and what was going on, but at the same time, I was afraid of what the answer might be.  I was also afraid of who might answer.  I didn’t know if I could take another confrontation with Blue Eyes today, even if it was only over the phone.

As I lay back down on my bed, I put my hands over my eyes and sighed heavily.  I didn’t know if I could take another confrontation with Blue Eyes period.  I couldn’t get the last one out of my mind no matter how hard I tried, and all of the hateful things she’d said and done kept echoing through my brain, still slicing deeply even after endless repetition.  I felt sick and weary of it all, and wished it would all go away.

I wanted to close my eyes and wake up to find myself on the morning of the day that Abigail first appeared, so that whenever she showed up, I could help hold her down while Mary Jane slit her throat.  Abigail ended up dying anyway, and if she would’ve died back then instead of later, Kristine would still be alive right now.  Abigail’s life for Kristine’s.  That was a more than fair trade, as far as I was concerned.  As terrible as that sounded, as much as it went against the things that my parents had taught me, that’s what I wanted.  A whole lot of pain and suffering could have been saved, as well as the life of someone who deserved to be able to keep on living instead of being taken away so early in the game.

My eyes popped open as I remembered what Mary Jane had said before, about never having read anything that said she couldn’t raise the dead.  Could she really have that kind of power?  I sat up on my bed, my heart starting to race.  That was crazy!

Any crazier than having power over the winds and the air itself?  Any crazier than being able to solidly lock a car shut and make the glass unbreakable with just a few words?  Any crazier that any of the other stuff I’d seen with her?  She’d said that she could make everything all right again, and that she could make it even better; had that just been wishful thinking or a stab at real possibilities?  After all, she knew more about magick than I did, so if anybody was able to guess at what they could and couldn’t do, it was her!  Maybe she really could make things all right again, maybe she could take it all back if she got her powers under control!  Maybe … maybe she’d become powerful enough that we could be happy again.

I reached down for the phone, and just before my hand came in contact with it, it rang, scaring the shit out of me.

Almost falling off my bed, I snapped the phone up off the floor and breathlessly answered it.  “Hello?  Mary Jane?  Is that you?”  If it wasn’t her, I was going to throw the phone against the fucking wall, because I was most definitely not in the mood to be fucked with by wrong numbers and calls for other people.

“Hey baby,” was the weak reply.  Just from hearing the tone of her voice, my heart fell.

“Are you okay?” I asked, my stomach tying itself into a double-knot.

“No.  I’m sorry, baby.”

“What is it?  What’s the matter?” I murmured, though I didn’t want to hear the answer, because I already knew it.

“I tried everything I could, I used everything I knew, and … it wasn’t enough.”

“The Ascension?”

“I’m so sorry, baby.  For everything.”

“It’s okay, beautiful.  What about—?”

“No, it’s not okay.  It would’ve been okay if I would’ve just stayed out of your life, if I would’ve just accepted what I was, instead of trying to be something I wasn’t.  I fucked everything up for you, and … Kristine.”  She choked back a sob, sounding like she was in agony.  “I still don’t know if I did it, Johnny.  I really don’t.”

“You didn’t do it,” I said, forcing myself not to cry.  “You didn’t fucking do it.”

“Does it matter, baby?  Does it really matter?  Even if I didn’t push her into the lake, she still ended up in there because she was so upset with me, after I pushed her around and was so awful to her.  If it weren’t for me, that party would’ve gone down like any other, and …”  She started to cry, and I rapidly blinked my eyes as my vision became smeared with tears.  “And it would all be okay.  I ruined it for you, for Kristine, and for everybody.”

“The party doesn’t matter,” I said through gritted teeth, desperately trying to keep my voice from hitching.  I heard a soft sound by my door, and when I jerked around in sudden fright, I saw that it was just Dad quickly pulling my door closed to give me some privacy, acting like he didn’t see how close to bawling I was.  That simple, loving act in and of itself almost put me over the edge, my heart was so painfully twisted.

“It’s not the party.  It’s everything.  All of it.  Every part of your life and everybody else’s that I’ve fucked up because of who and what I am.  I shouldn’t have ever gotten into your life, because you, all of you, would’ve been better off without me.”

“That’s not true!  Stop saying that shit!”  The sorrow and pain in her voice were so crushing that I almost wished that I was talking to Blue Eyes instead of Mary Jane, because hearing her like this, so utterly defeated, was almost worse than Blue Eyes railing at me.  “It’s not true and you know it.”

She laughed sadly.  “You’re so good to me.  You always have been.  If anybody could have saved me, it was you.  You almost did.  But I’ve got too much of my mother in me, and I made too much of a mess of my life and myself for even someone like you to be able to fix it all.  All you ever did was try to love me, try to keep me on the straight and narrow, and baby, I almost made it.  I thought I had made it a few times.  But in the end, I failed.  I failed myself, I failed you, I failed Daddy, and I failed everyone who believed in me and thought I was a good person.  It’s nobody’s fault but mine, and it’s time to get the hell out before I wreck anything else, before somebody else …”  She trailed off, unable to speak through her sobs.

My blood was frigid as I remembered how she’d once said that she’d kill herself if she ever caused anything bad to happen to me.  “What … what do you mean, ‘get the hell out?’  You’re not going to …”

“No, no, not that, baby,” she said, taking a deep breath and steadying her voice.  “I’m just going to go away.  Like I should have done in the first place.”

“But what about me?  I love you, dammit!” I protested.  “What about everybody that cares about you?  You can’t just … just … go away!”

“You’re all better off without me.  Trust me.”

“Bullshit!  We’ll work through this!”

“We can’t.  This isn’t something you work through.  If I stay, I’m only going to make things worse.”

“We can try!”

“At what cost?  How much more suffering, how many more losses, before we finally call it quits?  This is what I have to do, Johnny.  This is the only way I can stop anything else from happening.”

“You don’t know that, Mary Jane,” I said, angrily rubbing at my tears.  “You don’t fucking know that.”

“Yes, I do.  More clearly than you can imagine.”

“How?” I growled.  “How can you know?  Your magick can’t tell you everything.”

“It can tell me enough, and I don’t need magick to see how things are, to see how the world works.  You don’t understand that yet, and I hope you never have to, baby.”

“And how do you know that?  How do you know I haven’t learned that since I met you?”

“Because I’ve made sure you didn’t.  Because I wouldn’t let myself put you through that, no matter how badly I fucked things up.”

“You don’t know,” I said, faltering.  “You don’t know.”

“I do.  As you are now, so once was I.  As you are now … I wish I could be,” she whispered.  “More than anything.”

“Don’t go,” I rasped, my voice breaking up.  “Please don’t go.  I love you.  I need you.”

“No, you don’t, baby,” murmured Mary Jane.  “You don’t need the kind of trouble I’ll bring you.  You need to just forget about me and find yourself a nice girl who can love you the way you deserve to be loved, who can give herself to you without bringing ruin with her.  You’ll find her someday.  You might have even found her sooner, if it weren’t for me, and for that, I’m so sorry I can’t even tell you.  You’ll be the sun in someone else’s sky, just like you were in mine.  Thank you, baby.”

I broke down completely, barely even able to speak, and all I could manage was, “Don’t go!  Please don’t go!  I love you!”

“I love you, too.  Forever and ever, until the stars begin to fall … and beyond.  Now sleep, baby.”  She murmured a few nonsensical syllables into the phone and I immediately felt so heavy that I could hardly move.

“No,” I groaned as I started to tilt backwards, falling towards my pillow.  “No!”

“Goodbye, Johnny,” was the last thing I heard before the phone fell from my hand and the world turned to black.

“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.

Mary Jane shook her head.  “No, baby.  I just need to be alone for a while.  I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”

We stood by the steps leading down to Mary Jane’s bedroom, still holding onto one another even though we’d probably been standing out here in near-silence for over a half-hour now.  Mary Jane kept saying that she needed to go in, but at the same time, she seemed unwilling to leave me.  I just stayed where I was, determined to be there for her if she needed me, despite how conflicted I felt.

The way she’d slapped me and then blew me across the porch still bothered me, and in all honesty, it scared me, too.  From watching the way that Mary Jane handled herself in Chicago and against the likes of Abigail, I’d known she was formidable as hell for a long time, but I’d never really given thought to just how formidable she was.  Taking her magick into consideration, she could do considerable harm to somebody; hell, she could kill somebody.  What if something went horribly wrong and the power she wielded got turned on me?

It was a selfish thing to think about, particularly when Mary Jane was clearly having such a hard time, but it was difficult to shake the disconcerting notion that my girlfriend was capable of killing with the power she had in her grasp.  Doubly so when she was having a tough time controlling it.  What if she completely lost control?  What if the blue-eyed Mary Jane went on a tear and wouldn’t go away?  What the hell could I do to protect myself against that?  Kristine and the others had been out of their depth with Mary Jane, and though Randy and Angelene were older and more knowledgeable about things, I was sure that they’d been similarly overwhelmed.  Or maybe “outgunned” would have been a better term.

I wanted to ask her about it, but I was hesitant.  She already felt bad enough without me making it worse by pointing out what she’d done earlier.  Also, just like I had on the ride back from Chicago, I was wary of hitting the wrong nerve and bringing “Blue Eyes” out to play again.

I wasn’t even really sure what to ask her, either.  What was wrong with her, exactly?  From what she’d said back on Cindy’s porch, it sounded like she was losing control of her magick, but how was that possible?  Magick was something that you deliberately practiced and had to consciously employ, wasn’t it?  I’d always thought of it as being similar to working on a car, but I was starting to wonder if there was more to it than that.  Both on the porch and several days ago, I’d noticed that Mary Jane hadn’t visibly or audibly done anything to create the winds that had blasted us, they’d just come into being, as though she’d conjured them up from sheer force of will.  Or maybe sheer force of anger.  I almost shivered at the thought.

If she really could just whip up gale-force winds, float, and maybe even pass through small spaces, such as the holiday room window, like air itself, what else was she capable of?  Did she even need to be capable of anything else to be a tremendous danger to everybody around her if she couldn’t control what she already had?  I felt like an asshole standing there and holding onto her to comfort her, but at the same time feeling a growing fear of what could happen if she lost control.  The way she’d kept trying to get me to stay at Cindy’s with Kristine, telling me that I’d be better off because she didn’t know if she could manage this, whatever “this” was, didn’t bode well, either.  This wasn’t a matter of her breaking the promise she’d made to me that she’d never dabble in magick again, because as far as I could tell, she wasn’t trying to get tangled up in it.  It was like the magick was coming to find her, and that worried the hell out of me.  At Cindy’s, she’d said that she was “a child of the air, a witch of the wind,” and that had stuck in my head ever since, adding to my trepidation.

I didn’t want to be afraid of Mary Jane, my beautiful Mary Jane, but I couldn’t help it.  Not only was I scared for her, I was scared of her.  But I wouldn’t leave her.  I couldn’t.  She meant too much to me, and we’d been through too much together.  There had to be a way around this, a solution to the problem, but I didn’t have the slightest idea of where to start looking for it.  Only Mary Jane could know that, and I was pretty sure that she didn’t know what to do about this, either.

I kissed her on the forehead.  “You can do it,” I whispered.

She barely held in a sob, squeezing me tightly as the wind blew around us for a few seconds and then fell away.

“What’s happening to you?” I asked softly.  “What is all this?  Even if you don’t know exactly what it is, could you at least try to tell me?”

Silently taking my hand, Mary Jane led me over to the big tree in her backyard, and we sat down underneath it like we had countless times before.  Except that this time, there wasn’t anything lighthearted about it.  There was almost a … finality to it, and as I leaned back against the tree and Mary Jane put her arms around me, I felt a deep sadness weighing heavily on my heart.  I wanted to know what was wrong, but at the same time, I didn’t.

“I told you that my mother ran out on my dad and I when I was just a few years old,” Mary Jane said softly, “But that’s not strictly true.  Daddy made her leave.”

“Why?” I had a hard time picturing Mr. Carter, who was always so nice and proper, kicking his wife and Mary Jane’s mother out of the house.

“Because he was afraid I’d turn out like her.”

“A witch?” I asked gently.

She sniffled and nodded.  “Yeah,” she replied, her voice breaking a little.  “She was a hellion, and though he shouldn’t have, Daddy fell in love with her anyway.  He once told me that he saw the good in her, and that she had a truly beautiful soul beneath all of the layers of trouble and the demons she carried around inside her.  He courted her, and I think he nearly lost his life a few times, but he didn’t give up, and he ultimately won her, taking her away from the magick and the mayhem, trying to help her find peace.  They both found it for a little while, and that’s where I came from.  I can still remember little bits of the way things were when it was all three of us, and it … I’d give anything to have that again.  Me, Daddy, and Mom.  But …”

“It couldn’t last,” I murmured.

“No.  My mother just wasn’t cut out for that kind of life, I guess.  Daddy says that she tried her hardest to make it work, and that it just ate her alive.  She couldn’t take it.  She couldn’t deny who she was any longer, and she had to be a witch again, she had to be a part of the world that most people don’t see or know about.  And she wanted to take me with her,” she said.  “But Daddy didn’t want me to grow up into that.  My mother was a witch of the wind, a practitioner of elemental magick, and it’s the hardest, most danger-filled path of the four elements.  Even fire doesn’t carry the power that wind does.  She told Daddy that he couldn’t stop me from becoming like her, because it was in my blood, which he took as bullshit.  Bullshit or not, I ended up like her anyway.  I tried to avoid it, but I fell into all of the traps regardless.”  She held up her hand in front of her face and slowly wiggled her fingers.  “I can’t deny what I am, no matter how hard Daddy tried to keep me away from it, and no matter how much I don’t want to be what I am.”

“Is that how you can … create wind, without saying any spells or doing anything else?”

A breeze spun around us for a few moments, and then blew away.  Mary Jane gave me a sad smile.

“Yup,” she murmured.

“What is it that’s so bad about it?”

“It’s not inherently bad,” Mary Jane answered, “But it’s just too much for most people to deal with.”

“Isn’t it what you were born to do, though, since it’s in your blood, like your mom said?  Like your destiny, maybe?” I asked, trying to be encouraging.

But she just laughed bitterly.  “The only destiny that most wind witches find is either madness, ruin, or both, because they simply can’t cope with all of the power they’ve got in them.  Even the ones that are just normal people beforehand, without any in-born abilities, usually can’t handle it, and often end up destroying themselves, either by accident or design.  The main reason I got involved with magick in the first place was so I could figure out a way to control what I had inside of me, once I’d found out about just what kind of heritage I had.”

“Your dad told you?”

She shook her head.  “No.  Daddy didn’t tell me a thing about it, because he didn’t believe my mother when she’d told him that it was inevitable that I was going to go down the same path she did.  From what he’s told me about her, and from what I can remember, she got pretty unhinged during her last few months with us.  He figured she was trying to trick him into letting her take me with her by telling him he wouldn’t be able to raise me because of my heritage.”

“Couldn’t she have just taken you, with all of the power she had?”

This time when Mary Jane laughed, it was genuine, and she actually smiled.  “Daddy’s about as far from stupid as you can get, and though I don’t know what it was he did, exactly, he found some way to thwart her.  If she wanted me, she had to go through him, and she simply couldn’t do it.”

“If he didn’t tell you anything about the magick side of things, how do you know all of this?”

Mary Jane snorted.  “Because Mommy Dearest, the cold bitch that she is, decided to write me a nice letter and tell me all about what I was.  It was basically a petty little ‘you’re fucked and there’s nothing you can do about it, because your father wouldn’t let me take you away from him’ mind-fuck rant that wasn’t meant to help me in any way, but to start me down a path of ruination and make me hate Daddy since he wouldn’t let my mother have her way.  She wanted to wreck us both because we were able to carry on just fine without her.”

“Geez, that’s fucked.”  I couldn’t even imagine my mom doing something like that to my dad and I.  No wonder Mary Jane had been so condemning of the woman the first time I’d asked about her.

“All it did was make me love Daddy even more for everything he’d done for me, since I’m sure he risked his life keeping me away from that psycho bitch.  It would’ve been so much easier for him to just back down and let her take me, but he took the hard road because he cared enough to fight for me.”

“I always figured your dad was a hell of a guy,” I said with a grin.

“He’s the best,” she said, giving me a hug.  “He thinks you’re pretty great, too.”

“I do my best.  After hearing that he stood up to your mom like that, I really don’t want to cross him now.”

Mary Jane laughed, her eyes sparkling in that old familiar way again.  But it was short-lived.  The gleam slowly going out of her eyes, she continued.

“If it weren’t for that letter and the fear it kicked up in me, I would’ve never gotten involved with magick in the first place.  I would’ve been too absorbed with history and psychology in school for that.  I just recently discovered information that indicated if a born wind witch doesn’t actively do something to awaken their powers, they’ll probably never know they’ve got them in the first place, and will just go on and live like a normal person,” she said remorsefully.  “But I didn’t know that then, and in the letter, my mother said that I was locked into my destiny as a wind witch, and that there was nothing I could do about it.  I’ve never been one to just take things lying down, so I started hunting around the used-book stores and other places, trying to figure out how to control what my mother said I wouldn’t be able to.”

“And that’s how you got tangled up with the likes of Vincent, Abigail, and the rest,” I grunted, wishing there was some way I could go back through time and run all of them over with my Chevy before they’d ever met Mary Jane.  “Bunch of fuckers.”

“Yeah, they were.  But I figured that was my best opportunity to learn what I needed, so I stuck with them, regardless of how bad it got.  I thought I had it under control, because even though I’ve been learning to use my in-born powers since then, I’ve kept it at a minimum, and mostly stayed with spoken-word spells, drawing power from items I collected, utilizing angles, and that sort of thing.  I only really used my own powers a few times before we went up to Chicago, and even then it was in a limited way.  Once a wind witch goes past a certain point, it triggers something within them, and when that happens, nothing can stop it.  I fought the temptation for years, and kept it under control.  If I would’ve kept my head on straight, didn’t buy my mother’s bullshit, and stayed away from assholes like Vincent and Abigail, I think I would’ve been just fine.”  She put her face in her hands and sighed desolately.  “But I kept fucking up, and painted myself into a corner, until I didn’t have a choice but to cross the line.  If I hadn’t let go of my control when I was up against that thing, the both of us would be dead right now, or maybe even worse.  I saved us, but in doing so, I went past the point of no return.”

I didn’t say anything as I realized just why she’d been so sad when she’d left me behind in the car that night.  She’d known that even if she won that battle, she could very well be losing the war.  I hugged her tightly and said the only thing I could to someone that had made such a sacrifice for me.  “I love you.”

“I love you, too, baby.  Always and forever,” she said with a sniffle and stifled sob.  “At first I thought I was all right.  Once I’d defeated that thing, I told myself that was it.  No more.  I burnt all of my magick stuff, and had every intention of being a normal girl.  But I could feel something building up in me, something I had no idea how to deal with.  Everything I’d learned over the years hadn’t prepared me for it, and I didn’t have any choice but to throw myself back into it, so I could try to control myself.”

Mary Jane held her hands up in front of herself, staring at them.  “It’s harder than I ever thought it would be.  When the power rises up in me, when I give in to it, it feels like I’m so powerful that I don’t have to answer to anybody or anything.  It turns me into somebody I don’t like, and it scares the hell out of me.”

“That’s when your eyes turn blue, isn’t it?”

She nodded, looking down at the ground.  “Yeah,” she said in a small voice.  “When a wind witch uses their powers beyond a particular level, their eyes go blue like that.  I used to be able to stay myself when I got into that state, when I was learning my way around my abilities, but after I let go up in Chicago, it’s become something else entirely.  It’s no longer just me using the power within, it’s the power itself influencing me, changing me, and drawing out the worst aspects of who I am.”

She put her hand on mine and looked at me earnestly.  “I’m so sorry for what I did to you tonight, baby.  I didn’t mean to hit you, and I didn’t mean to fling you like that, either.  Once I saw what I’d done, I got so scared that I came right out of it, thank the stars.  I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I’d hurt you.  I was just … I wasn’t myself.  I know that sounds so stupid and clichéd, but it’s true.  It’s why I have to find some way to control this, before it eats me alive and I become like that all the time.”

I kissed her on the cheek.  “It’s okay.  It surprised me more than anything else, and wasn’t really worse than wrestling around with Duane.  I’m a lot more worried about your problems than I am some bumps and bruises of my own.”

“Bumps and bruises I put there, when I shouldn’t have.”

“Forget about it.  It’s water under the bridge.”  I patted her on the back, trying to keep my tone light, trying not to remember those few seconds of utter helplessness I’d felt when she’d blown me clear off my feet.

“I wish I could forget it,” she said.  “But it scares me.  If I can go that far with you before I can rein myself back in, what would I do to somebody else?”  She put her hand over her eyes and shivered.  “I could’ve killed Kristine, Johnny.”

“You would’ve stopped yourself in time.”

She turned to me with tears in her eyes.  “I don’t know if I could have.  I hated her right then, I just wanted to kill her!”

“For locking you up in the holiday room?” I asked, a cold shot of worry for Kristine passing through me.

She started to say something, stopped, and then slowly nodded.  “Yeah.  For tricking me like that, for putting me in a situation where I had to use my powers to get out.  I was mad at her, and having all of that power running through me just made it worse.”

“So if your eyes are blue, I ought to be careful?”

“Yeah.  Right now, it’s only when the power’s really flowing through me, but eventually, my eyes will be like that permanently.”

“Like Abigail’s?”

She grunted.  “Not exactly.  She and the others didn’t have it in their blood like I do.  But early on, they knew I was inherently a lot more powerful than they were, and bit by bit, they figured out what I was, and they started studying elemental wind magick on the side, wanting to have access to the power that I was born to.  They made decent progress, but couldn’t come anywhere close to my level, and when I gave up on figuring out the mysteries of that book last fall, I figured they’d never learn enough to become a threat.  Stupid me.  They went all-out trying to learn as much as possible, and they ended up making a lot more progress than I would’ve given them credit for.  When Abigail found me and I saw that her eyes had permanently become blue because of the changes the magick had made in her, I realized that things were a lot more serious than I realized.  Even in her changed state, she was no match for me, but her and the others together could’ve been a real threat to not only me, but to you and Daddy as well.  I had to do something.  They wouldn’t have been like that and wouldn’t have been threatening you and Daddy if it weren’t for me, so I tried to clean up my mess as best I could by allegedly helping them achieve the Ascension, while planning on sabotaging them the entire time.  And you know how that worked out.”

“I should’ve just let you kill her back there, that first night.  If I hadn’t stopped you …  Fuck!”  I slammed my fist against the ground in frustration.  Just great.  I go and play the boy-scout to save the life of a bitch that didn’t deserve to keep on breathing, and in doing so, I probably doomed Mary Jane.  Way to go, Johnny, you dumb fuck.

“Hindsight’s 20/20, baby,” Mary Jane said quietly, putting a hand on my shoulder and squeezing it.  “Don’t you even think about blaming yourself for this big jumble I’ve made for myself.  You did what your heart believed was right, and if I hadn’t kept dropping the ball like I did, things would’ve been fine.”  She leaned back against the tree and gazed up at the sky.  “Lately, I’ve been wondering if I didn’t somehow make all of those mistakes subconsciously, so I eventually wouldn’t have any choice but to give in to myself and let the chips fall where they would.  The temptation of that power’s so terrible, I can’t even begin to describe it.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

“The Ascension.  That might be my only hope at this point.”

“You never did explain that one to me.  What is the Ascension?”  Any pretense of maintaining the promise of not discussing magick until the night of our tenth wedding anniversary was long gone by now, so I was going to try to learn as much as possible, whether it did me any good or not.

“The Ascension’s a way to gain a large measure of control over yourself and your inherent abilities, regardless of what they are, and enhance the power you can successfully wield,” answered Mary Jane.  “It’s difficult to explain the process, and in all honestly, I haven’t totally figured it out yet and I’m still trying to solve the last few parts of it.  I was pretty close when Abigail found me, and I faked it well enough that she thought we really had solved it, even though I was actually jamming a knife into the backs of her and the Circle.  I was close enough that I’m almost sure that thing went through the Ascension process due to its strange nature, even though the backlash killed the Circle.  Though that may have simply been yet another mistake on my part,” she said wearily.  “I’ve been trying to definitively solve the Ascension process so that I can put myself through it and beat this before it beats me.  I’ve been focusing everything on it, and I even …”  She looked down again.

“What?” I asked nervously.  “Even what?”

“Quit school,” she murmured.  “I only went for a few weeks and then dropped out to work on this.  I’m sorry, baby.”

The revelation hit me harder than it should have, I couldn’t understand why I felt so hurt about it until I realized just what it meant.  All of the “school projects” she’d been working on, all of the late hours, all of the supposed trips to the library, had all been lies.  She’d been feeding me a line of bull for months now, and had lied to my face countless times.

“Oh,” was all I could say.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.  “I tried to do both, but I couldn’t.  In the long run, this was more important than getting my college credits.  I can always go back and get those later, but I have to do this now, because if I don’t, I may not have a later.”

“You … could’ve told me,” I said stiffly, trying not to show how betrayed I felt.  Quitting school was one thing, lying to me so much was another thing entirely!  “What about all of that stuff about how Kristine and the others were trying to drag you back into magick, when you’d never even gotten out of it in the first place?”

“That too,” she said after a pause, and I shook my head in disgust.

“Not all of it was an act, I really was upset with them, because they kept bringing the subject up, and I didn’t want to discuss it at all around you, so it wouldn’t even cross your mind.  I didn’t want you to know how deeply I was still into it, and I just didn’t want you to be disappointed in me,” she said.  “I promised you no more magick, and I tried, but I failed.  I couldn’t get away from it.  It wouldn’t let me go, baby.”  She blinked back tears.  “I just wanted to be a good girl for you and let you have a normal girlfriend, like everybody else.  You deserve that much.  You deserve even more than that, after all I’ve put you through.  I just want you to be happy.”

The utter sincerity in her voice got me way down deep.  I probably shouldn’t have believed her after what she’d just admitted to, but I did.

“Just, please … please don’t lie to me anymore,” I said.  “I’d rather you tell me the truth and have it piss me off than for you to lie to me to try to make a pretty picture out of everything.”

“I won’t do it again,” she said solemnly.  “I just didn’t know what else to do.”

“Tell me the truth, okay?”

“I will.”

I gently kissed her on the lips.  “I forgive you, beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she said gratefully.  “When all of this is done, I’ll make all of this up to you.  If I can work the Ascension properly, things will be a lot better.”

“So if you can do it, you’ll be all right?” I asked.

“Not totally, but I’ll be much better off than I am now, where it’s only a matter of time before my own power overwhelms me.  The Ascension will take the immediate heat off, but I’ll still be fighting the temptation of the power within me and trying to truly master it for years to come.”  She rubbed at her eyes.  “Even if I make it through this, you’re never gonna have a normal girlfriend, Johnny-boy.  The magick’ll never go away, and you’ll be stuck dealing with it on a regular basis, along with who knows what else.  In all honesty,” she whispered, “You’d be better off without me.”

I took both her hands in mine.  “Fuck that.  I’m not going anywhere.  I’ve hung around this long, haven’t I?  What’s a little more hot water?”

“You shouldn’t have to put up with this,” she replied, her voice a little stronger.  “You didn’t sign up for all of this when you and I first got together.”

“From the sounds of it, your dad did pretty well, and I’d like to think that I can at least try to be as strong as he was,” I said, the rational part of my mind gibbering at the thought of potentially having many more “Chicago incidents” to deal with in the years to come.  But my heart wouldn’t let me back away, no matter how much my more sensible inclinations screeched about it.  “Your mom also didn’t sound like she was going to try to get herself under control like you are.  She didn’t have an Ascension to try for.  I’m pretty damned sure that you’re a better woman than your mom ever was, and if anybody can pull this off, it’s you.”

She gazed at me for a long time, deep gratitude in her eyes, and then she burst into tears, heaving great sobs as she grabbed hold of me and cried into my chest.  I held her and whispered soothing nothings to her until she fell asleep against me, exhausted.  Though I still had quite a few questions that I wanted answers to, she’d had enough for tonight, and I think I had, too.  We’d continue it tomorrow, and I’d help her any way that I could.

I picked her up and carefully carried her across the yard and down the stairs to her bedroom, managing not to drop her as I quietly unlocked the door.  Once inside, I gently set her down on her bed and pulled the sheet up around her, causing her to softly sigh and curl up on her side, looking peaceful.  I kissed her on the cheek, whispered that I loved her, and from somewhere in the depths of her slumber, she managed to slurringly reciprocate.

“You’re cute when you’re incoherent,” I said, feeling a strong, simple affection that was untouched by worries about magick, Ascensions, or the often-tragic destinies of wind witches.  I gave her one more kiss, and she sleepily muttered something I couldn’t catch.

I aimlessly drove around for an hour or so after I left, wondering what the future had in store for us, and wondering whether I was an idiot or a saint for standing by Mary Jane, ignoring my common sense.  I was in love, so I was quite possibly a bit of both.

When the thunder began to rumble overhead and the wind began to blow, fear zipped up my spine like a lightning bolt, and, trying not to think about it, I hurried home and went to bed, though it took me hours before I finally fell asleep.

The wind mournfully howled all night long.

When I pulled my car up to the top of the winding gravel driveway and found a place to park in the grass of the side yard, Duane, who was sitting in the back with Alicia, asked, “So you think she’s still gonna be throwing parties here after she graduates?  Or think this’ll be the end of it?”

I put the Chevy into park and turned the key, pondering the question, which hadn’t occurred to me.  Prom was next weekend, with graduation only two weeks afterwards, and that was going to be the end of high school for all of us, except for Lee, who had one more year to go.  Cindy was graduating in our class, and it was no secret that she was going to go away to college somewhere in California, where rich girls went, and if she wasn’t here in town, she certainly wouldn’t be having any more parties, regardless of whether her parents were in town or not.  No more high school, no more big parties at Cindy Johnson’s house.

I gazed up at the huge, well-lit house, which was already populated with a good number of people from Norton High, along with some beyond that, like Dusty, and most likely a few had brought along brothers or sisters in junior high, to show them what “big kids’” parties were like.  Damn, it was a weird thought that this might be the last party at Cindy Johnson’s house, and one that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around, or maybe I just didn’t really want to.  Those parties had practically become an institution since the first one Cindy threw a couple of weeks into our freshman year, and the end of those parties was just one more unwelcome reminder that a chapter of our lives was coming to an end.  I knew there’d be other parties, if not here, at someone else’s, but even then, it wouldn’t be quite the same.

Dusty, in a rare philosophical moment, had said as much last fall when we’d been hanging out on the elevated deck on the side of the house.  He’d said that after graduation, he still did a lot of the same things he did when he was in high school, but it felt different than it had used to, and that while he was still having fun, he felt a little disoriented at the same time, like the rules had subtly changed when he wasn’t looking.  He was sure that he’d get used to it, and probably figure out how to have even more fun, but at the time, he knew things were never going to be the way they’d been while he was in high school.

It seemed unreal that prom and graduation were within the next few weeks, and that a month from this moment, I’d be done with high school and figuring out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.  It was a disconcerting thought.  There was a crackle of excitement to it, but it was still unsettling all the same.

“I dunno,” I said in response to Duane’s question.  “Be kinda sad if this really was the last one, huh?”

“Fuck yeah.  I don’t know anybody else that’s got a fuckin’ hot tub.  That’d suck if I couldn’t get into it again.”

Mary Jane snickered and swished her hand over the top of her head; once again, Duane had missed the point.

“They’ve got a hot tub at the YMCA,” Alicia said.  “We could go in that.”

“The Y?!” screeched Duane.  “Do you know how many dirties probably soak in that thing?  It’s open to the public, so they let just everybody in there to fuck their shit up!  And, and, I heard queers get in there sometimes, too.”

“Oh geez,” I muttered, opening my door as Mary Jane and Alicia laughed at my friend’s homophobia.

“What?”  Duane clambered out of the car after me, shutting the door behind himself.  “You think I’m gonna get in a hot tub where I might get groped by some queer when I’m not looking?  Fuck that!”

“Hmm.  I’m sure you’re the first one they’d go after, too,” said Mary Jane sardonically.  “You’re just irresistible to the homosexuals, aren’t you?”

Duane, dressed in a ragged old t-shirt, black swim trunks, and ratty sneakers, with his battered beach towel draped over his shoulder, held out his arms.  “Fuck yeah!  Some old queer would kill to get hold of a young guy like me!  He’d probably grab my dick and everything!”

Alicia covered her face and shook her head, while Mary Jane folded her arms over her chest and raised an eyebrow at Duane, as she so often did when he was running his mouth.  “And you know why they’d go after you, Duane?”

“Because queers like young guys.”

“No, because they can home in on your latent homosexuality.”

Duane frowned.  “Huh?”

“She said you’re a closet case, dude,” I said, while Mary Jane nodded.

“Say what?!”

“Totally,” Mary Jane added, twisting the knife.  “Anybody as afraid of homos as you are has got to have a few uncomfortable tendencies that he’s trying to overcompensate for.”

“Bullshit!” Duane sputtered.  “You take that back!”

“You can’t take back the truth.”

“The fuck you can’t!”  Duane yanked his towel off his shoulder and snapped it at Mary Jane, who narrowly dodged it while pointing and laughing at him.

When he snapped the towel again, she took off running for the house, cackling like crazy while shouting, “Duane’s a latent homo!  Duane’s a latent homo!”

“Shut the fuck up!  You’re gonna ruin my rep!”  He took off in pursuit, and chased her right up the big flight of wooden steps leading up to the house, then straight through the front door.

“I don’t think we can top that entrance,” I said to Alicia with a shrug.

She stared at the door where Mary Jane and Duane had disappeared, looking horrified.  “I can’t believe him sometimes!” she moaned.  “Everybody’s gonna be wanting to know what that was all about, and he’s going to try to hump my leg and everything else to prove he’s not gay all damned night.  I could kill him.”

“You’ve known him almost all of your life, and you’re still surprised at the shit he pulls?” I asked with a laugh.

“It doesn’t surprise me, but it bugs the shit out of me.  Sometimes whenever nobody else is around, he’s so sweet and nice,” Alicia said, “And just when I start to think he’s really human, he goes and does something like that, or claims he didn’t know he was supposed to go to prom in a tuxedo!”

“Ah, you know you love him,” I said teasingly.

“Yeah, I do,” she replied, totally serious.  Then she gave me a crooked grin.  “That’s the really fucked up part about it.”

I blinked a couple times as I took that in, and then finally just shrugged.  “Okay, then.  Shall we go on in?”

“Yeah.  I’d better get him settled down before she riles him up even more.”

*     *     *

“Hey, have you seen Mary Jane?”

Dusty glanced around the mostly empty deck, and then finished off his beer, tossing the plastic cup down when he was done.  “Not lately.  Last I saw, she was with you.  She take off?”

“Sort of,” I replied.  “We were down in the basement hanging out with Eddie, Lee, and a few others, and she said that she needed to go outside for some air.  That was like almost 45 minutes ago, so I figured I’d go see if she was feeling all right.  She looked a little off when she left.”

“As in sick?” Dusty asked, leaning back against the wooden railing and looking up at the starry sky.  Behind and below him were the woods, which started up at the bottom of the slope the deck’s support posts were embedded in, and they went from there all the way around the backyard and beyond, since a lot of the area out by Norton Lake hadn’t been developed yet.  I could see the dense trees slowly swaying back and forth in the soft breeze, and when a sudden gust kicked up and blew through them with more strength than before, I felt a vague uneasiness rise up in me.

“No,” I said after a few moments, my eyes still on the trees.  “Not really sick.  Like maybe something was bothering her, I don’t know …”

He burped and then shrugged.  “Maybe she wanted to go talk to Kristine and her bunch again, straighten shit out.  She was kinda cold to ‘em when they tried to apologize earlier, so maybe she started feeling bad about it.  Chicks are weird like that.”

I nodded, knowing he had a point about girls being weird, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure if that was it, exactly.  Then again, maybe that’s exactly what it was.

After studiously avoiding the both of us for the rest of the week following Mary Jane’s outburst, Kristine, Shannon, and Lynn had come up to us a couple of hours ago and apologized for bothering her and making a big deal out of things when they shouldn’t have.  I’d thought it was a pretty cool thing for them to do, and had gladly accepted their apologies, because I knew that even if they were ditzy at times, they didn’t have bad hearts and had only been doing what they’d thought was right.

Mary Jane had also accepted their apologies, but very quietly and in a chilly sort of way, as though still harboring some resentment.  That was probably the case, truth be told, considering Mary Jane’s personal history.  After the trio had left, I’d pulled Mary Jane aside and asked her if everything was cool now, and she’d replied that she “supposed so,” which wasn’t all that encouraging, but I hadn’t pushed her on it, either.  She’d probably come around in time, since no harm had really been done, and I’d let the matter drop, especially since she hadn’t seemed to be brooding about it afterwards.

But down in the basement, I’d noticed that Mary Jane, while sitting on the couch right next to me, had seemed to drift a million miles away, like her thoughts were somewhere else entirely.  She’d also looked a bit jumpy, shifting around on the couch, like she had an itch or some other irritation and couldn’t get comfortable.  Finally, she’d hopped up from the couch as though she’d been zapped and told me that she needed to get some air.  I’d asked her if she was all right, but she’d said she was fine, telling me not to worry and that she’d be back soon.  After giving me a quick kiss, she’d hurried off across the crowded basement and had disappeared.

I hadn’t seen her since, and couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right, especially as time had passed and she hadn’t returned.  I felt as though I needed to be with her, like she needed protection.  But protected from what?  She’d proved on more than one occasion, especially up in Chicago, that she could take care of herself and anything that got in her way.  Maybe I was just being paranoid, because other than the blow-up with Kristine, things had been going great with Mary Jane and she hadn’t given me reason to doubt that she was having problems of any kind.

“Yeah, it’s probably just a chick thing,” I said to Dusty, liking the sound of it.  It was a logical, reasonable assumption.  If I hadn’t been so naïve, I would’ve realized just how dumb and blind that assumption was.

“Get used to it, they do stuff like that all—“  Dusty cut himself off to puke over the deck railing.  There was a squawk from down below; the slope beneath the deck was a popular place for couples to make out, among other things, in privacy.  Not that Dusty cared.  “The time,” he finished after the vomiting had run its course, as though puking was no big deal.  Then again, it wasn’t to him.  He was like a dog when it came to throwing up: he did it, it didn’t bother him, and he was good to go again immediately afterwards.

He spat a few times over the railing, and then peered over at the angry voices rising up from below.  “Hey, I didn’t get it on you, did I?  It was a near-miss, so fuckin’ stop bitching.”  Pulling away from the railing, he muttered, “Fucking babies.”

I’d seen variations on this scene countless times in the past, but I still had to chuckle every time; it was just funny.  As long as he wasn’t doing it inside of my car.

“C’mon.  Let’s go back inside and find a bottle to kill or something,” Dusty said, scratching himself and shambling off towards the house.  Still chuckling, I followed after him.

We’d barely gotten back inside, though, when Shannon came up to me, tugged on the sleeve of my t-shirt, and said, “Kristine wants to talk to you.”

Dusty hadn’t noticed her appearance, and was continuing to make his way across the crowded living room, in search of something to drink.  I figured he’d keep just fine for the moment, so I stopped and turned to Shannon.  “What’s she want?” I asked, and then remembered what Dusty had said about girls being weird.  “Everything’s cool, if she’s worried about that.”

“No, it’s not that,” Shannon said, biting at her lip and glancing around.  She looked a little nervous, I thought.  “It is kind of important, though.”

“Okay.  Where is she?”

She tugged on my sleeve again.  “Come on, I’ll take you to her.”

I frowned, thinking that this seemed a little cloak-and-dagger.  “What is it?”

“She’ll tell you, don’t worry.”

I shook my head, but followed along anyway.

We passed out of the living room, down a couple hallways, and then across the upstairs recreation room where Cindy had put dance music on the big stereo system and cleared out the center of the room, turning it into an impromptu dancefloor.  She waved at me as we passed by, and I grinned and waved back.  Though her parents were one of the most well-to-do families in town, she’d always been a very down-to-earth gal and very easy to get along with.  She was one of the most popular girls in school, but thankfully, she wasn’t a jerk like most of them, and was very democratic with whom she invited to parties: as long as you were cool and didn’t cause problems, you were welcome to come.  Only assholes and people who’d fuck with others weren’t allowed, so she always had a very diverse mix of people at her parties, ensuring that they were always interesting and fun.  I was gonna miss these parties after I graduated, and wanted to enjoy this one as much as possible while it lasted.

“Have you seen Mary Jane around, by any chance?” I asked Shannon as we headed down the stairs to the ground floor, stepping around the chattering people camped on the steps.  “I thought maybe she might’ve been with you guys, talking things over and stuff.”

Shannon stiffened a little at the question and hesitated a long time before answering.  Glancing back at me, but not meeting my eyes, she said, “I—haven’t seen her.  Sorry.”

I was naïve, yeah, but I wasn’t totally stupid.  Something was definitely up.

But before I could push her further, we’d crossed through the spacious kitchen and Shannon was leading me through the door to the back porch.  To my surprise, nobody was out here, even though the back porch, with its view of the woods and the enormous backyard, was a pretty popular place to hang out.  Even the porch lights were out, leaving everything in shadow.  Then I saw that it wasn’t completely vacant: Kristine was out here, leaning against one of the porch pillars, drinking something, probably beer, out of a plastic cup like the one Dusty had tossed aside a few minutes before.

When she saw me, she set the cup on the porch railing and hurried over, her feet thumping softly on the wooden floor.  She and Shannon exchanged glances, and then without another word, Shannon disappeared through the door.  I thought I heard the lock click behind her.

Disconcerted, I started to turn towards the door, but Kristine caught my shoulder and pulled me close enough that I felt awkward.  “Johnny, I really need to talk to you,” she said, and I could catch a faint whiff of beer on her breath.

“So I heard,” I replied, moving back a step.  That didn’t seem to make a difference to her, and she closed the gap, slipping an arm around my waist and pulling me towards her again.  I almost groaned aloud.  Was this supposed to be some kind of clumsy attempt at semi-drunken seduction?  Why here and why now, especially since she’d made peace with Mary Jane only a few hours ago?

If only it had been that simple.

Gently sliding out of her hold, I again stepped away.  “What’s this all about?  Shannon wouldn’t tell me what you wanted, and I was kind of looking for Mary Jane at the time …”  It seemed like as good a time as any to remind Kristine that I had a girlfriend, and when she didn’t advance on me again, I felt relief.  It was short-lived.

Instead of coming after me, Kristine sighed heavily and sat down on one of the many plastic chairs scattered around the porch.  “This is about Mary Jane, actually,” she said slowly, almost reluctantly.

“I thought you guys patched everything up earlier.”

She gave me a rueful smile.  “It’s not that simple, Johnny.”

I despised it when people said that, because every time they did, something fucked-up came into play, and this time was no different.

Trying to deflect the inevitable bullshit that always followed that phrase, I said, “Seemed pretty simple to me.  You guys butted heads, things were said, things were yelled, a few days passed by in which everybody cooled off, and you and your friends were cool enough to take the initiative and bury the hatchet earlier.  Time for everybody to get on with their lives, huh?”

I moved towards the door, intent on checking to see if Shannon actually had locked it, but I was stopped by the sudden sharpness in Kristine’s voice.  “Johnny.  This is fucking serious, okay?”

I turned back towards her, and she was leaning forward in her chair, her eyes fixed on me, looking like she’d meant it.  “Look,” she said, “I know you think me and my friends are flighty and that we’re a bunch of screwballs when we get started in on the magick stuff, but this is no joke, all right?”

I felt the skin of my face reddening a little in embarrassment.  “I don’t think that you’re like, flighty, and—“

“You do,” she said.  “You always have.  But that’s okay.  You never held it against us and didn’t treat us like shit like some people in this town do.  You and your friends have always been cool to us, even if you think we’re fucked up.”  She smiled.  “In fact, I think it’s really cool that even though you think we’re twits, you’re still nice to us.  That says a lot about you guys, and you in particular.  I always really liked how I could tell you about spells, magick items, and things like that without you making fun of me, even before you met Mary Jane.”

“Well, I guess if you put it that way, that’s uh, good, I suppose,” I said, verbally treading water, not sure where this was going.

Her smile disappeared and her expression and voice became grave once more.  “But this time, you’re going to have to listen to what I’ve got to say, because it’s real and it’s important.”  She got up out the chair, and for a second I thought she was going to come after me again, but instead she started to slowly pace, glancing towards the door every few seconds.  “I know that you know about magick.  Mary Jane knows way too much about it for you to have not picked up a few things, at least, and because you take her seriously, you know that magick is a real thing and not just storybook crap, even if you don’t seem to be involved in it.”

When she looked to me for an answer, I squirmed where I stood, wishing I wasn’t having this conversation.  “I guess, maybe.  She knows a lot about it, yeah, but I never really saw … much.  She’s out of it now, though.  She lost interest and doesn’t have the time for it.”

Kristine shook her head.  “That’s what she wants you to think.  That’s what she wants all of us to think.”

Her words grabbed hold of the deep-seated suspicions I already had and gave them a good shake, stirring them up.  “What … are you talking about?  Have you seen something?”  I remembered what Julia had said about people saying they’d seen Mary Jane wandering around “graveyards and other weird places” at night.

She nodded.  “Remember when she got upset with us a few days ago, and how windy it got all of a sudden?  How the wind kept coming and going all strangely?  She created that wind, I’m sure of it.”

My heart skipped a beat.  Shit.

Kristine must’ve seen something in my face.  “You know it, too, don’t you?”

I was still so surprised that I couldn’t think straight enough to confirm or deny it.

Moving close to me again, Kristine said, “Shannon, Lynn, Angelene, Randy, and me have all been talking about this, and we think that Mary Jane’s the reincarnation of the witch from beneath the stone in Whitewood.”

“Huh?”

“Think about it, Johnny!” Kristine urged, taking my hand in both of hers and squeezing it insistently.  “It all makes sense!”

“I … don’t understand,” I stammered, unsure whether to take her seriously or not.

“Why do you think she didn’t want to have anything to do with the Witch Stone in Whitewood when it got dug up?  Why do you think she suddenly, supposedly lost all interest in magick just a month or two before it got dug up?  Or when I asked her how she could be so sure that there wasn’t any witch, she started to answer, and then caught herself before she said anything incriminating?  She was the one that dug up the stone and took the bones and anything else that might have been buried with the witch!  Remember what Shannon’s cousin’s friend said about the officer seeing a woman on the scene; that woman was Mary Jane,” Kristine said, her voice and tone so urgent and earnest that I found myself involuntarily following her chain of reasoning for a few moments, before I remembered that I knew a lot more about Mary Jane than she did.

“But … if she was the witch,” I asked, “Why would she have dug up her own bones?  What use would she have for them, if she was reincarnated and everything?”

“Power!” hissed Kristine, squeezing my hand even more tightly.  “There’s power in old bones and arcane items, and she’s probably reached a point where she needs to regain the rest of her old knowledge and power from her previous life!  Before she was buried alive, she might have swallowed any number of magickal items, to keep them out of the hands of her executioners, and now that she’s alive again, she needs to get them back!”

Once again, I found myself finding odd sense in what she was saying, and I didn’t like it one bit.  Her line about there being power in old bones and arcane items especially rang true, considering what Mary Jane had told me countless times in the past, and I wondered if Kristine might have actually been on to something.  She may not have been as clueless as Mary Jane thought.

Pushing to gain even more ground now that she saw she’d gotten me thinking, Kristine said, “That’s why she came here from Terrace Green, not because her dad got transferred, but because she arranged for it, she made it happen through her use of magick!  She might not have known why she did it, because she probably didn’t have all of the memories of her old life back yet, but she instinctively brought her spirit back to the place where she’d died so long ago, and sometime within the last couple of months, her old spirit woke up and realized what was going on!  That’s why she stopped talking to us about magick and pretended she didn’t care about it any more, and why she wouldn’t come with us to check out the Witch Stone when it was dug up: she didn’t want to return to the scene of the crime.”  She leaned closer, her voice a sharp whisper now.  “We’re all in danger from her.  Randy once heard that the town fathers were barely able to bring her down as it was, which is why they didn’t kill her before they buried her: they couldn’t kill her, they had to trick her into a trap in Whitewood, burying her alive in the process.  Now that she’s reawakened within Mary Jane, she’s going to want revenge on this town and everybody in it, and I bet she’s going to start with us, because we know more about her than anybody.”

“She wouldn’t hurt me,” I said, the only thing that I was absolutely sure of at the moment.  Even if everything else was in doubt, I knew that Mary Jane really did love me, despite the oddities and the dark secrets.  “She wouldn’t ever hurt me.”

Kristine shook her head, looking sad.  “Maybe before all of this, but everything’s different now that she’s woke up.  As time goes on, she’s going to lose more and more of her Mary Jane personality and become more and more like the witch of old.  It’s already started, and you’re in terrible danger, Johnny.”

I pulled my hand away from Kristine’s, stepping across the porch and putting my hands on the railing, gazing out over the massive backyard, which was faintly lit with starlight.  “This is fucked, Kristine,” I said.  “This is … crazy.”

A few moments later, she was right next to me, her hand resting on mine.  “I wish it was, but it’s real.  There’s too much evidence to back up our suspicions, and Shannon, Lynn, Randy, and Angelene all say they can see a dark aura coming from her now, where there wasn’t one before.”

“If this is all so serious,” I said, “Then why did you guys all make peace with her when we got here?”

“To throw her off,” Kristine answered.  “To make her think we weren’t suspicious of her.”

“Oh good grief,” I muttered.  “There’s got to be some kind of mistake in all of this.  There’s a simple explanation in here, and everybody’s getting everything blown out of proportion.”

Kristine grabbed my arm in a steely grip and yanked so hard that she spun me around to face her, and then practically screamed, “She was floating three feet off the ground, Johnny!  I saw her!”

I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say, and Kristine plowed right on ahead, her eyes big and fearful.

“We were all keeping tabs on her during the party, just in case she tried anything funny, and when she left you behind in the basement and went outside, I followed her at a distance.  She went across the backyard and then went right into the woods.  She was practically running and she didn’t even notice me.  I stayed behind, following her through the woods, and when she reached a clearing, she looked up at the sky and closed her eyes, holding her fists at her sides,” Kristine said, her voice starting to shake just a little.  “The wind started to blow, spinning leaves and twigs and other stuff all around her like a tornado, and she started to float.”

I started to say something, but Kristine cut me off.  “I’m not lying, and I hadn’t had anything to drink before I saw this, and I swear on my grandmother’s grave that I really saw it,” she said, her voice thick with conviction.  “She rose up into the air about three feet and just hovered there, everything spinning around, and the wind got so strong that it started to blow through the woods and shake all the trees.  I was so scared, I thought she was going to know I was there and take me out, but she was so caught up in floating that she didn’t notice me, and I slipped away as quickly as I could, getting back to the house to tell the others what I’d seen.”

“That can’t be right,” I said, shaking my head and stepping away from the railing.  “She can’t float.  She’s never said anything about that, and I’ve never seen—“  I stopped, realizing I was about to say too much.  “That can’t be right,” I gamely repeated, my heart starting to pound in my chest.

“I saw it,” Kristine said.  “I’d never lie to you, Johnny.  I care about you way too much to ever, ever do that.”

I looked back at Kristine, and while she may have been many things, she’d never been anything but totally sincere with me.  “You swear you saw it?” I rasped.

She put her hand over her heart.  “On my grandmother’s grave, like I said.  On my own grave, even.  Whatever it takes.”

I looked down at the wooden porch floor.  “Fuck.  This isn’t good.”  Even if all of the other crap about Mary Jane being a reincarnated witch wasn’t true, the fact that she’d gone out to the woods to float, or whatever that was, didn’t bode well.

“I know, and I’m sorry.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and I know how much Mary Jane means to you, but I couldn’t stand by and watch you possibly get hurt, or worse, because of what she’s becoming,” Kristine said.  “When I got back here and told the others, we put a plan together.  We waited around until she returned, and then Lynn told Mary Jane that you wanted to meet her down in the holiday room in a little while.  She got all excited and hurried on downstairs.  Once she was in, we shut the door and wedged it closed, and even put a locking spell on it for good measure, keeping her trapped in there so I could talk to you in private, without her knowing anything about it.”

I felt a sinking feeling as Kristine told me all of this, and when she was done, I felt positively nauseous.  “You trapped her in the holiday room?”

The holiday room, which was in the very back of the basement, behind the laundry room and storeroom, was a beloved make-out spot for people who knew about it.  Not everybody did, since it was in a part of the basement most people never gave a second thought about, and the little room, which was where the Johnsons stored their holiday decorations, was the site of countless liaisons during Cindy’s parties.  Mary Jane and I had logged in several visits there ourselves.  And now she was locked in there …

“We had to do it, Johnny,” Kristine said.  “We had to make sure she didn’t walk in on us when I was warning you about all of this.  We’ll let her out in a little bit, and tell her that we goofed up and got our signals crossed, and you can back us up on that, which should smooth everything over.  She can’t know that you know, because that could be really bad news for all of us, and—“

There was a clicking from the porch door, and we both jumped, spinning towards the sound.  I was sure it was Mary Jane, and judging from the blanched look on Kristine’s, she thought the same thing.  But when the door swung open, it was Lynn, and if anything, she looked even more frightened than Kristine.

“She’s gone!” she screeched, grabbing hold of Kristine.  “She escaped!”

“What?!  How?!”

Lynn shook her head over and over again as she stumbled through her words, nearly hyperventilating.  “She waited around in there for a few minutes, humming to herself and stuff, and then she tried the door, but couldn’t get it open, so she started banging on it.  I didn’t move a muscle or say a thing, since she thought I’d left, and after she’d yelled for somebody to let her out a few times, she went all quiet again.  I thought everything was cool, and then all this air shot out from under and around the door, like, like … I don’t know, like she had a tornado in there or something!  I heard a creaking sound like a window opening, and then nothing.  I peeked through the little space between the door and the frame and couldn’t see her in there, and then I looked under the door, and still couldn’t see her!  When I looked between the door and frame again, I looked up and saw that the window was open, and it wasn’t before, so I cracked open the door and looked, and she was gone!”

“Maybe she was hiding,” Kristine offered, though all three of us knew that wasn’t possible.  The holiday decorations that gave the room its name were all tightly packed into several extremely heavy footlocker-sized cardboard boxes pushed up against one of the walls, and beyond a spare mattress on the floor, there was nothing else in the room.

Lynn looked terrified.  “She wasn’t hiding, and nothing was moved around.  I think she went out the window.  You said she could float.  I bet that rush of air was her rising up to the window and getting out.”

“Impossible,” I grunted.  The window in question was a little two feet by one foot job just below the room’s ceiling, putting it at right around seven feet off the floor.  Not only was it hard to reach without something to stand on, there was no way that Mary Jane, with all of her buxom curves, could ever fit through it.  “Nobody but a circus freak or a little kid could go through that thing.”

“She wasn’t in there,” Lynn said, starting to shake.  “I only opened the door a crack to look, and then wedged it shut again, just in case.  She couldn’t have gotten out unless she went through the window.”

“Then where is she?  Where the fuck is my girlfriend?!” I asked, my nerves starting to fray.

They were almost completely shredded when there was a sudden gust of wind from the front of the porch, followed by Mary Jane’s calm answer of, “Right here.”

Kristine looked so scared that I thought she was going to cry, and Lynn didn’t look any better.  For that matter, I probably wasn’t far from that point, either.  But what I’d told Kristine earlier was still in my mind: Mary Jane would never hurt me, no matter what was going on.

I turned towards her, trying to smile disarmingly, Kristine’s warning still fresh, but any attempt at joviality fell away like a lead weight when I caught sight of Mary Jane, who was standing on the top porch step, her arms folded over her chest and a darkly bemused expression on her face.

Her eyes were such an intense shade of blue that I could see them faintly glowing in the dimness.

“I got tired of waiting around, so I thought I’d come find you,” she said conversationally.  “But it seemed as though somebody blocked the door up, so I couldn’t get out.  At least, they thought I couldn’t get out.”

“It … it was a mistake,” Kristine stammered, visibly shaking as she faced Mary Jane.  “We were uh, going to sur—“

“Kristine, sweetie,” Mary Jane purred, her voice as icy as her eyes, “Shut the fuck up before you say something that really pisses me off, you ignorant little cunt.”

Trembling, Kristine stumbled back a step.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t …”

“Here’s a piece of advice for you,” added Mary Jane, smirking at her.  “When you’re planning on trapping somebody in a room, be sure that you inscribe the locking glyphs on the door with something besides baking powder.  Not only does that look amateurish, it just doesn’t work.”  She stepped forward, and I swear the temperature literally dropped by several degrees.  “Blood works a lot better.”

Lynn made a strangled noise of fear and escaped back into the house, but Kristine held her ground, moving close to me again.

“You … you d-don’t scare me,” she stammered, holding her hands up in front of herself, like a sorcerer from an old movie getting ready to cast a spell.

Mary Jane laughed.  “Oh, I scare you plenty.  I can see it in your eyes.  I can taste it in the air.  Speaking of which …”

Frigid wind suddenly blasted the porch like a full-force hurricane had landed in the backyard, and it was strong enough that I stumbled backwards.  But it seemed to focus in on Kristine, hitting her a lot harder, and she ended up slamming into the house hard enough to knock the air out of her.  She gasped and struggled against the ferocious wind pinning her to the house while Mary Jane slowly walked towards her, a wicked grin on her face.

“Couldn’t do it the easy way, could you?” she hissed as Kristine fought to get free.  “I tried to get you to leave me alone, but you couldn’t, could you?  Had to keep sticking your fucking nose in where it didn’t belong, huh?  Stupid little bitch, I’ll show you what real magick is.”

As she strode past me, purposefully heading towards Kristine, I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the wind whipping around the porch: this was the same Mary Jane that had unsettled me so badly on the way back from Chicago.  This wasn’t the enchanting, wacky, clever girl that I’d fallen in love with.  This was someone dark, dangerous, and cold, literally and figuratively.

But I knew that it was Mary Jane just the same, another version of her, a different facet of her brought to light, and I fleetingly wondered if this was what she would have become if her dad hadn’t gotten her away from those assholes she used to run with.  But why was this Mary Jane here now?  Was it because she was angry at Kristine, or was it something else, something that I didn’t or couldn’t understand?  More importantly: was my Mary Jane still in there?

Biting back my fear, I grabbed her shoulder and squeezed hard.  “That’s enough,” I said with as much strength as I could muster.

“Fuck off,” she snarled, jerking her shoulder away and continuing towards Kristine.  The wind increased in power even more, its sharp howl rising ever higher.  Above the din, I could hear Kristine moan.

I dug my fingers into Mary Jane’s shoulder and jerked her towards me.  “I said that’s enough!” I roared, suddenly furious with her.

Her eyes blazed brightly as her face twisted in a ferocious scowl, and she growled, “And I said fuck off!”

She tried to pull away, but I grabbed her other shoulder and held her in place, shaking her hard.  “Quit it!  Leave her the fuck alone!”

“Fuck you.”  My head snapped around as Mary Jane slapped me hard enough to make me see stars.  It hurt, a lot, and more than just physically.  But she didn’t stop there.

The wind slammed into me, lifting me off the floor and tossing me backwards across the porch, where I collided with one of the chairs and flipped over it, taking it with me.  I crashed into the unyielding wooden floor hard enough to make me cry out in pain, and then I yelped again when the heavy plastic chair fell on me.  As I lay panting on the floor, my body a mass of minor aches and my mind a mess of hurt feelings, I realized that the wind had stopped entirely, its howl replaced with a high keening sound.

Shoving the chair off, I pushed myself back up to my knees, and I saw that the keening sound was coming from Mary Jane, who had her hands bunched up against her chest like a frightened child, her face a mask of anguish.  Her head jerked back and forth between me and Kristine, who had fallen to the floor when the wind had ceased and lay slumped against the house, looking too terrified to move.

“No,” Mary Jane whimpered, shaking her head frantically.  “No.”

Shoving my wounded emotions aside, I shakily got to my feet and staggered towards her, one of my legs still aching from the impact with the porch.  I probably should have just turned and ran after what had just happened, but seeing her like this was causing my protectiveness to override my common sense.  She was clearly hurting and I wouldn’t leave her like that, no matter the circumstances.  “Mary Jane?”

She skittered away from me when I reached out for her, and then she murmured, “Are you okay?”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on hers, which were their usual warm brown again.  “Yeah.  I’m fine.”

“What about Kristine?  I didn’t hurt her, did I?”

I turned around and stepped over to Kristine, who was still frozen in place, her eyes fixed on Mary Jane.  “Hey, you okay?” I asked, kneeling down and putting my hand on her shoulder.

Kristine jumped when I touched her, and then looked at me fearfully.  “She could’ve killed us,” she whispered, and I believed her.  We both turned towards Mary Jane, and she looked positively stricken.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said plaintively.  “I’m trying to control it, but it’s so hard … I’d never hurt you, either of you!”

“What … what are you trying to control?” I asked.

“The witch,” said Kristine, starting to get back to her feet.

Mary Jane shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes.  She put her hand to her chest and looked at us sadly.  “There’s no witch, just … me.  And I don’t … know if I can do it.”  She hung her head.  “I’ve got to go.  I can’t stay here.  Not like this.”

“I’ll take you home,” I said, letting go of Kristine and taking a step towards Mary Jane.

“No!” Kristine hissed, jerking me backwards.  “You can’t!  She’s too dangerous!”

“She won’t hurt me,” I said, pulling away.

“She almost did, just now.”  Kristine was watching Mary Jane warily now, and I saw a sharpness in her eyes that I’d never seen before.  She wasn’t looking at Mary Jane as a friend any more: she was sizing up her enemy.  “You can’t go with her.”

“That was a mistake,” I said, stepping over to Mary Jane, who regarded me with tear-filled eyes.  “She won’t do it again.”

“She’s right, baby,” said Mary Jane miserably.  “I almost fucked up, again.  You should just stay here, with her.”

“I’m not leaving you to walk all the way back into town on your own,” I said.

“What if she pulls that shit again?” Kristine asked.  “You can’t risk it!  If the witch reasserts herself, there’s no telling what might happen!”

“There’s no reincarnation of anybody in me,” said Mary Jane tiredly.  “It’s just me, and only me.  It’s who I am, and it’s something I can’t escape, no matter how much I wish I could.”

“You’ll make it,” I said, carefully putting my arm around her shoulders.  She didn’t lean against me like she normally did, but she didn’t pull away, either.  “You can do it.  I believe in you.”

“She’s lying,” growled Kristine, carefully moving towards the door.  “She’s just trying to act harmless to get your guard down.”

“Go with her, baby,” Mary Jane whispered, lifting my arm off her shoulders.  “Just go.  You’ll be better off.  I don’t know if I can do this.  I really don’t.”

“You can do it,” I said, putting my arm back on her shoulders and pulling her to me.  “I’m here for you.  I love you, Mary Jane, and I’m not leaving you.  Let me help.”

“She’s a witch!” Kristine snarled.  “Don’t let her trick you!”

“The fuck she is,” I retorted.  “Knock it off, huh?”

“She’s right,” said Mary Jane.  “I’m a child of the air, I’m a witch of the wind … just like my mother before me.”

Before I could ask anything else, Lynn and Shannon came bursting through the door, looking scared but ready to fight if they had to.  “I brought help!” exclaimed Lynn.

“We called up Randy’s house, and he and Angelene are on their way here, too!” said Shannon.  “She’s not gonna get past us!”

Now that she had backup, with more on the way, Kristine was emboldened, and she took a step towards us, flanked by her friends.  “Get away from him,” she growled, pointing at Mary Jane.

To my complete surprise, she complied, pulling away from me and stepping back.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, unable to believe it.  I’d never seen her just do what she was told.

“Doing what’s best.”

“Oh, fuck that.  That’s bullshit.  Let’s go home.”

“Stay here, Johnny.  Just let her go,” said Kristine.  “You’ll be a lot safer that way.  Everybody will.”

“She’s right,” said Mary Jane.

“Fuck that.”  I took Mary Jane’s hand in mine, and turned towards Kristine and her friends, who were watching Mary Jane like she was a bomb that could blow up at any second.  “Look, I know you guys mean well,” I said, “And I’m grateful for that, I really am.  But to be completely honest, I’ve seen a whole lot of shit that you haven’t, and I know things about her that you don’t.  She’s risked her life for me, and I’m pretty damned sure she’s saved my life on at least one occasion, and probably more than that, truth be told.  I don’t know the whole story here, but I know more than you do, and I’m not just gonna walk out on somebody I love because she fucked up and she’s having problems.  That’s not what you do when you love someone.”

“She’s dangerous,” hissed Kristine.

“Yeah, she probably is,” I said.  “I’ve seen what she’s capable of.  But that doesn’t change anything.  She’s going home with me, and nothing anybody says is gonna change that.”

Kristine looked almost desperate.  “Don’t, Johnny.  Please.  Stay here.  Stay with me.  I’ll protect you from her.”

“Baby, stay with her,” Mary Jane pleaded.  “You’ll be okay.”

“Stop it!” I yelled, stomping my foot hard enough to make the floor shudder.  “I don’t know much about magick, but I’m not stupid and I’m not helpless, so stop trying to tell me what to do!  The both of you!  Fuck!”

Silence fell over the porch, and I could hear the sounds of the party going full-swing within the house.  Between the loud music and the racket of happy partygoers, I doubt anybody inside had heard anything out here.

“Now,” I continued, “I’m going to take you home, Mary Jane.  Whatever’s going on, we’ll work through it and get it taken care of, no matter how long it takes or how hard it is.  Kristine, thanks for looking out for me, but I’m okay here.  I can handle this.  Let’s just all go our own ways tonight, and we can start to get this all figured out after the weekend, okay?”

Mary Jane, looking exhausted, simply nodded.

Kristine, however, looked torn between anger and fear.

“You’re making a big mistake, Johnny,” she said.  “What happened here is just the beginning.  Once the witch reasserts her—“

“That’s enough!” I harshly snapped.  “Cut it out with that shit!  Give it a fucking rest, huh?”

She looked hurt at my words, as though I’d slapped her, and she drew back a little.  I instantly regretted it, but at the moment, I was more worried about Mary Jane than Kristine’s hurt feelings.  I’d smooth things over with her later, once I knew exactly what was going on with Mary Jane.  One problem at a time.

“Let’s just keep quiet about this, think things over, and talk about it in a few days,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.

“All right,” Kristine said quietly, her eyes on me.  Shannon and Lynn nodded in agreement with her.

“We’ll talk to you later.”  I led Mary Jane down the steps of the porch and across the grass.  I was in no mood to go back into the house and possibly get tangled up in any number of conversations or party antics, so I figured the safest route was go out alongside the house and reach the driveway that way.

“Be careful, Johnny.  Please be careful,” Kristine murmured after us.

Tired of the whole ordeal, I didn’t bother to acknowledge her.

*     *     *

We’d taken our leave of the party, telling Duane and Alicia that Mary Jane wasn’t feeling well and that I wanted to get her home.  The both of them were understanding (probably because they had the hot tub to themselves for the moment), and said they’d just catch a ride back with Eddie or Lee later on.  If only all problems were so easily solved.

Mary Jane was as quiet as a grave as I drove down the winding lake road, heading out towards the highway leading back into town.

“You okay?” I asked, looking at her in concern.

“Yeah,” she replied, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the seat.  “I guess.  Just kinda … confused, overwhelmed, maybe.  I don’t know.  This is just so hard, and I’m not sure if I’m up to it.”

“What is it, exactly?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

She sighed.  “I wish I could.  I’m still trying to figure it all out myself.”  She put her hand on my leg and turned her head, opening her eyes to look at me.  “But thanks for believing in me, baby.  That means more to me than I can ever tell you.”

I patted her hand and gave her a smile.  “I wouldn’t do it for just anybody.”

Though it was faint, she returned the smile, and it warmed my heart to see it.  “I know.  I just … never mind.”

“What?”

Shaking her head slightly, she said, “Nothing.  I was just being melodramatic.”  She sighed again.  “I’m just hoping that I’ll be worthy of your faith in me, and that you won’t regret it.”

“I won’t.  You’ll make it.”

She didn’t say anything, but leaned over and laid her head against my shoulder, so I put my arm around her and held her tight.

We’d just finished eating dinner at one of the little eateries on the town square and were idly wandering around as the sun slowly set, killing time until the movie theatre opened for the evening.  After talking about plans for prom, which was closing in fast, conversation had turned towards Kristine and her bunch, who’d been hounding Mary Jane for days now, wanting to get her involved in the whole deal they’d built around the dug-up Witch Stone.  They were convinced that they were the only ones that could save the town from some impending, witch-oriented danger, and were working overtime, in a figurative sense, to find a way to stop it.  Mary Jane kept trying to diplomatically put them off, but they weren’t taking no for an answer, and continued coming back for more.

I put an arm around her and squeezed.  “I know it’s nutty now, but they’re gonna forget all about it sooner or later.  They’ll move on to something else, or otherwise decide that the ‘witch’ decided not to mess with the town after all.  I’ve seen this kind of thing out of them before, and it always blows over.  The town’s already got the hole in the cemetery filled back up, and Eddie said he heard they were pouring a new sidewalk early next week, so by next weekend, everything will be back to normal in Whitewood.  Even more so, since the Witch Stone won’t be around anymore.  Trust me, they’ll get tired of this soon enough, so just ride it out and you’ll be fine.”

“I know,” she said, kicking at the sidewalk with her boot as we walked along.  “It’s just frustrating.  I wish they’d leave that shit alone and leave me alone.”

“Give it some time.  They’ll move on.”

“They’d better.”

Unfortunately, they didn’t.  At least not soon enough.

*     *     *

“But you have to go with us!  We need you and your experience!” Kristine said, her voice shot through with distress, unable to believe that Mary Jane had just flatly turned them down yet again.

I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, wishing that we would’ve just drove to Duane’s house instead of deciding to walk there from Mary Jane’s.  If we would’ve taken my car as opposed to trying to enjoy the mellow twilight, we never would have ran into Kristine, Shannon, and Lynn, who were on their way to Angelene’s house.  But we’d taken to walking around more often as the weather became nicer, and also because Mary Jane was having to stay in almost every night because of her increasing workload at school.  Walking gave us more time together to just talk and enjoy each other, so we did it whenever possible.  However, there were certain merits to cars, it seemed …

“What part of ‘no’ don’t you understand?” Mary Jane snapped, her arms folded over her chest and a stormy expression on her face as a slowly rising wind began to twirl her hair around.  “I told you I wasn’t getting involved in this, and I meant it.”

Kristine nodded.  “I know, I know, but you’ve got to understand, we wouldn’t be asking you if this wasn’t important.  You know more about magick than the rest of us put together, and if we’re going to cast a spell of protection and push the witch out of town, we’re going to need a heavy hitter, like you.”

“You don’t need to cast jack shit.  If somebody knocks over a tombstone in the cemetery, you guys don’t do anything about it, do you?”  When nobody answered, Mary Jane prodded, “Do you?”  She snorted.  “I didn’t think so.  This isn’t any different.  It’s just bullshit vandalism and you’re getting all worked up over because you don’t have anything better to do.”

Kristine looked to me for help, but all I could do was offer a wan shrug.  On one hand, I knew they meant well, regardless of how misguided they might have been, but on the other, I really wished they’d just leave Mary Jane the hell alone.  I could tell from the glint in her eyes and the tenor of her voice that she was getting seriously pissed off, and I knew that if this kept up, things were going to get ugly.

I was kind of surprised that things hadn’t gotten ugly yet, because the Spook Squad, as Mary Jane had taken to calling them whenever they weren’t around, had been absolutely relentless in seeking an audience with Mary Jane concerning the ‘witch.’  They pestered us every time Mary Jane came to lunch at school, bugged us after school, and Kristine and Shannon both had been trying to get Mary Jane’s number from me at school and over the phone.  This had been going on for over a week now, and it was getting to the point where even I was having a hard time not lashing out at them in annoyance, and I’d taken to avoiding them as much as possible.

Mary Jane had been so diplomatic in how she’d brushed them off time and time again that I doubted anybody from the U.N. could have done a better job, but it was wearing on her, terribly.  From what she was telling me, she was under a lot of pressure putting papers and projects together for college, and this wasn’t helping, because the more they bothered her, the harder it was for her to keep magick out of her mind.  She was considering just skipping out on meeting me for lunch and after school on the days she didn’t have to be in class, so that she could more easily avoid Kristine and her bunch, and I thought it was ridiculous she’d have to go to such lengths.  It was absurd how obsessed the ‘Spook Squad’ was with this witch thing, and it was really starting to wear thin.

Mary Jane grabbed my hand and started to walk around the group of three girls standing in the middle of the sidewalk, but Kristine reached out and grabbed her arm.

“This is serious!” Kristine protested when Mary Jane yanked her arm back.

“We’ve got to stop the witch!” added Shannon.  “I can feel an evil presence hanging over the town!”

“Evil?”  Mary Jane threw back her head and laughed, and it wasn’t a happy sound.  She fixed the trio of girls with a steely glare and growled, “You don’t know the first thing about evil.”

“We know more than you might think,” replied Lynn, a tall redheaded girl.  “We’ve dealt with it before.  Just not like this.”

Mary Jane took a deep breath, and the wind suddenly roared up the street like it had the night when Abigail first appeared, icy and powerful. I first felt fear, and then anger.  The wind wasn’t a natural occurrence.  I knew exactly what was causing it, and I didn’t like it one fucking bit.

I sharply turned towards Mary Jane even as she turned towards me, and when our eyes met, the wind instantly died down.  She nodded curtly, touching my hand for just a second, and I knew that was as close to an apology as I was going to get at the moment.  It was good enough.  When we turned back towards the three girls, we were united in our mutual irritation at how far this had gone.

“Fine,” Mary Jane said, clearly trying to keep her voice even.  “You’ve dealt with evil before.  Bully for you.  Deal with this on your own, because I don’t play those games any more.  I’ve got better things to do with my life.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “She’s got a lot of shit to take care of for college and everything else, and she doesn’t need this right now.”

“But the witch—“

“There isn’t any fucking witch!” my girlfriend roared, and the wind rose up again with such a fury that it staggered everybody, save for Mary Jane.  She jabbed her finger at them and snarled, “Somebody rips up a fucking sidewalk and you idiots think you’re in the plot of some Vincent Price movie!  Ooo, gotta save the town from the big scary witch from under the sidewalk!  Creepy!  Spooky!  Fuck that!”

She took a step towards them while the wind blew past us with such force that everybody’s hair was standing nearly straight out.  The trio shrank back from Mary Jane, suddenly looking fearful, and she advanced on them another step.

“I’ve told you I don’t know how many times that I’m done with this shit, I don’t do the magick thing anymore, and I’ve been really fucking nice about it, but you won’t get the hint!  Leave me the FUCK alone!  You keep pushing me, you’re all gonna have something to be really afraid of!”  The wind was getting even stronger now, and when I put my hand on Mary Jane’s shoulder, she viciously shook it off, her features twisted with rage.

“You don’t understand,” Kristine said, her voice trembling a little.  “We’ve felt the witch’s presence!  There’s something evil rising in town, and if we don’t do something about it, everybody’s—“

“How fucking stupid are you?  How fucking stupid are all of you?!”  Mary Jane was screaming now, her eyes wild.  “I told you, there isn’t any fucking witch!”

“How do you know?” whispered Kristine.

“How do I know?  Because I—“  Mary Jane suddenly cut herself off and jerked around as if she’d been slapped.  She bent over a little and barked out harsh laughter as the wind died out.  “Fuck,” she growled.  “Fuck!”

Kristine and her friends exchanged glances, looking terrified.  As for me, I just felt like puking.

“Uh … maybe you guys should go.  This isn’t a good time for her, she’s going through a lot with her life right now.  She’s … touchy,” I said, sounding lame even to myself.

Mary Jane, now bent over to her knees, laughed again, her fists clenched in front of her face as though she were trying not to lose control.  “I … I don’t know how much longer … I can do this …” she softly moaned.  Her entire body shook as the wind sputtered around us, coming in fits and starts, as though it were coming from a massive, dying electric fan.

Kristine and the others stared at Mary Jane for a few moments, but instead of taking the hint, Kristine started to reach out for my girlfriend.  “You need help,” she whispered, her voice shaky.  “I think the witch has—“

“Just leave her alone!” I bellowed, the sight of Mary Jane in such distress pushing my strained temper over the edge.  “How many times does she have to ask you?  For fuck’s sake, just leave her the hell alone!”

Kristine’s eyes jerked away from Mary Jane and settled on me, stricken.  “Oh no,” she stammered, looking as though she were near tears.  “Johnny, I didn’t mean … I … it’s just—“

“Go away!” I roared.  “Just stop fucking with her!  She doesn’t want to get into any of your bullshit!  Don’t you have any respect at all?!”

I took Mary Jane’s hand and she fervently latched onto me like a desperate child.  The wind finally died away completely.  Giving the trio a final glare, I stomped past them, Mary Jane clinging to me, ignoring Kristine when she called out after us.

*     *     *

“I’m so glad you were there, baby,” Mary Jane said, kissing me again and hugging me so tightly she was practically squeezing the air out of my lungs.  “I don’t know what would have happened if it weren’t for you.  I love you, I love you, I love you!”

While I loved all of the affection she’d been heaping on me, I didn’t like the implications of ‘I don’t what would have happened if it weren’t for you.’  That just didn’t sit well with me, not when I knew what kind of messed-up shit Mary Jane could get herself into.  A knot was threatening to tie itself within my stomach again.

“The feeling’s mutual, beautiful,” I grunted, returning the hug and kisses.

We’d skipped past Duane’s house and had trekked along the shadowy railroad tracks while Mary Jane calmed down, stopping and sitting once we’d reached the train bridge spanning the creek that quietly gurgled far below our dangling feet.  The twilight was gone by now, and the crescent moon was beginning to rise behind us, its ancient silvery light glittering in the splashing water of the creek.  Overhead, only a few scattered clouds could be seen in the star-shot celestial velvet.

“My hero,” Mary Jane purred, comfortably leaning against me as she squeezed my hand.

Off in the distance, beyond the curving road that ran over the top of the creek, I could see the Charles Park playground, including the swings that we’d rode on that magickal first day we were together.  Though maybe that wasn’t quite the right term, since nowadays, I was a great deal more wary of anything referred to as ‘magickal.’  But even so, magick had been a part of that wonderful day, hadn’t it?  I pushed that fact out of my head, not wanting to deal with it.

After arguing with myself for a few minutes, I carefully asked, “What do you think would have happened if I hadn’t been there?”

I could feel Mary Jane stiffen up the slightest bit, and then she sighed.  “Like I said, I don’t know.  Hopefully nothing.  But …”

When she didn’t continue, I prodded.  “But … ?”

She sighed again as she slumped down.  “I’m under a lot of pressure right now, and they’d been bothering me for quite a while, so … I don’t know … I would’ve been tempted, maybe …”  She stammered a few more things, sounding evasive, before ending with, “Maybe I would’ve done something … scary.  I don’t know.”

“Was that wind … yours?”

Another sigh.  “Yeah,” she replied in a tiny voice after a long hesitation.  “I lost control a little …  I’m sorry.”

I tightened my arm around her shoulders and kissed her hair.  “You can’t do that.  Not any more.  You promised.”

“I know,” she said.  “I’m trying.  It’s just so hard at times, and right now even more so, and …”  She sat up straight again and gazed off into the distance.  “It’s … complicated.”

“What’s so complicated about it?  It doesn’t cause anything but trouble.  You said so yourself, and you’ve told Kristine that a lot lately.  You let it go, remember?”

“It’s not that easy,” she whispered, and I could sense the calm around her dissipating.  But I forged on ahead regardless, wanting to resolve things there and then.  This wasn’t going to go any farther, not if I had anything to say about it.  I wasn’t gonna go through all of that shit again, no way.

“Why not?” I asked.  “You can just walk away from it if you’re strong.  It’s not like alcohol or cigarettes, which are everywhere.  It’s not something that’s unavoidable in everyday life.”

She winced, and I thought I’d made a solid point there.  As it turned out, that wasn’t quite the case, but I didn’t know that until later, so on I went.

I squeezed her hand.  “You can do it, I know you can.  I believe in you, and I’m gonna be here with you the whole time.  Don’t let Kristine and them get to you, you’re better than that.  They’re just kids that don’t know what they’re talking about compared to you.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, sounding miserable.  “But—“

“Uh uh.  None of that.  You can do it.”

“Johnny, it’s not—“

“’It’s not nothing.  No bullshit.  You’re strong enough and you can let all of that crap go.  Remember when we got back from Chicago, after we burnt all of your stuff and buried the rest?  Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.  This is your new life, and you’re a good girl now.”  I paused.  “Well, maybe not in the conventional sense, but you know what I mean,” I added, trying to add levity to things.  “We weren’t gonna talk about magick again until the night of our tenth wedding anniversary, remember?”

I turned towards her, and she’d squeezed her eyes shut, looking like she was about to cry.  When I kissed her on the cheek she made a sound like a choked sob and flinched like she was about to pull away from me.

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she murmured, rubbing at her eyes.  When she looked at me, her eyes glistened in the faint moonlight.  “I’m trying, baby.  I really, really am.  I can’t even tell you how hard I’m trying.  There’s so many things you don’t know about this, and—“

I put my finger on her lips and stopped her.  “I don’t want to know.  I shouldn’t know, as a matter of fact.  You told me yourself that the less I knew about all of this, the better.”

“Johnny, baby, please just listen to me.  There’s so much to—“

“No.  It’s for the best.  You can do this.  I’m not gonna stand by and let you backslide into trouble again.  We’re in this together, and I know you’d do the same for me if our positions were reversed.”

“It’s not that easy,” she whispered.  “I wish it was, but it’s not.”

“I know it’s not.  But I’m here for you, beautiful.  I love you.”

“I l-love you, t-too,” she whispered.  “I’m s-so fucking s-sorry, Johnny.”

“Don’t be sorry.  Just do what you have to do to stay with me, because I want to live the rest of my life with you right by my side.”

She made a strangled, pained sound and grabbed hold of me as tightly as she could, crying her eyes out, and we sat on the tracks and rocked back and forth for a long time, while the moon rose in the sky above us and the creek splashed below us.

*     *     *

“Feeling better?” I asked as we walked back down the tracks, hand-in-hand.

“Much,” Mary Jane replied, leaning over and kissing me.  “I feel a lot lighter now.  I think I needed to get a lot of that junk out of my system.  Things haven’t been easy lately.”

I nodded.  “They’ll get better.  Summer’s coming up soon, and you’ll be all finished with school, and so will I, and we’ll be able to go do whatever we want whenever we want.  Prom’s coming up, too, and I know you’re looking forward to that.”

“Yeah,” she said.  “Just a couple of weeks away now.  I’m glad Alicia and I got our dresses and everything when we did, so we’re not going to have to scramble, and—  Wait a second.  What about you?”

Uh oh.

“What about me?” I asked nonchalantly, knowing what she was going for.  I could feel her eyes on me, but I gazed off into the distance as we walked, looking at the thick, shadow-laden trees on either side of the tracks.

“Alicia, Tomomi, and I all have our dresses now, but I haven’t heard any of you guys say a single thing about having your outfits ready for prom,” Mary Jane said, nudging me with her shoulder.  “I’m about as easygoing as a girl can get, but you are not wearing a t-shirt and jeans to prom, mister.”

“Well, I was thinking I’d just get a cape, an old suit, and maybe a Phantom of the Opera mask, and—“

“What?! No fucking way!”

“But I know where I can get those things cheap!”

“That’s what Eddie wore for Halloween!  And they’re all torn up from him climbing that tree and jumping out at kids about a million times!”

I grinned at her.  “So if I found a Phantom of the Opera costume that wasn’t torn up, I could wear it?”

“No!”

“But you were implying—“

“I’m gonna imply you in the head here in a second.  Johnny, prom’s less than two weeks away!  You gotta get a tuxedo or a nice suit or something before they’re all gone!  This is prom season for all the schools in the area, and those things are gonna be scarce really soon, if not already!”

I laughed and pointed at her.  “Ha, you sound like my mom!”

I stopped laughing, and also stopped in my tracks, when she grabbed my manhood through my jeans and squeezed tightly.  Though I wasn’t grinning any longer, Mary Jane sure was.  “I bet your mom doesn’t threaten you like this.”

“No,” I squeaked.

She leaned close, the tip of her nose touching mine.  “So are you gonna see about at least renting a tuxedo?”

“Sure.”

Squeezing a little tighter, she asked, “Is that a fact?”

“Yup.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“After school?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll make a trip out of it, then.  I can take a break from school stuff long enough for that.  I’ll ride over to Peoria with you, and we can go out to eat somewhere and maybe see a movie or something.”

“Cool.”

She lessened the pressure and then moved her hand in a much friendlier manner, though I was still too concerned about my safety to really get into it.  “That’s good.  I’d hate to have to cripple you and rely on my washing machine’s spin cycle for my jollies.”  She gave me a kiss on my nose and then let go.  “Think Alicia will be over at Duane’s?”

“Probably,” I said, shifting around a little on my feet to make sure no damage had been done.  “Duane says she’s over there most nights now.”

“Oh, goody!”  Mary Jane clapped her hands together happily.  “Let’s go see what she says when I ask her if Duane’s got something to wear for prom yet.”

She held out her hand, I cautiously took it, and we set off down the tracks, on our way to go make Duane’s life miserable for a while.  Granted, that wasn’t the coolest thing to do to a friend, but better his dick in the grinder than mine.

*     *     *

We got a tuxedo all reserved and ready the next day, and Mary Jane even managed to locate a cummerbund that perfectly complimented her sleekly elegant black and blue dress.  She was so happy with how our search turned out that she insisted on throwing in a big chunk of money for dinner, and we ended up eating at one of the best steakhouses in Peoria.  Though our decidedly casual clothes got us a lot of funny looks from the well-dressed patrons and staff, we had money and didn’t act like barbarians, so they didn’t throw us out, and we had a ball.  Afterwards, we lucked out and found a little independent theatre that was running classic action movies all month, and they just happened to be showing the timeless classic, Jack Action Versus The Nazi Dinosaurs, so Mary Jane was properly initiated into the world of the greatest action hero of all time.  She loved it.

The rest of the week passed by quickly, Mary Jane and I spending time together whenever we could, and though she was still harried and busy, she seemed more at ease now, and we had a wonderful time over the course of those few days.  Some of my fondest memories of her come from that all-too-short span of time, when it seemed like we had nowhere to go but up.  I’m glad we had those days and had the chance for one last beautiful hurrah, because just a week later, Mary Jane was gone.

“You’d never guess what I heard from Jerry this morning,” Mr. Zeitel boomed from within the teachers’ lounge, his voice carrying out into the hallway where I was parked over the fountain, trying to get a good drink from the miserly thing.

“Jerry?” Mrs. Keeler, who was a really nice lady but a monster of a taskmaster in her classes, asked.  “Don’t think I know him.”

“Oh, he’s that cop buddy of mine.  You know, the guy that comes in every spring and gives the kids in the health classes the drug talks and all that.”

“Okay.  I do know him.  Officer McGruber.”  Mrs. Keeler’s softer voice was a sharp contrast to Mr. Zeitel’s thunderous register, and I smirked at how much noisier he sounded just by talking with her.

“Yeah, that’s Jerry.  Good guy.  Anyway, he was working the late shift last night, and the dispatcher sent him out to Whitewood to check out a call after the rain had finally stopped.  Some old lady living nearby had called up and said there as a bunch of racket and bashing going on, like someone had gotten some construction equipment in there.  He figured it sounded like crap, but you know how it is when you’re a cop.  Protect, serve, and check out crackpot calls just in case.”

I finished my drink and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, listening more closely to the conversation in the lounge, filtering out the racket from the busy hall all around me.  Whitewood?  Cool.  My next class was just down the hall, so I still had plenty of time to make it, and I leaned over the fountain and started taking another drink, which got my head closer to the teachers’ lounge door.

“It wasn’t a crackpot call, I assume.  Or if it was, there was something interesting behind it.  Otherwise you wouldn’t be telling me,” Mrs. Keeler said.  She had a legendarily sharp mind, which was murder to deal with when you were writing essays for her.  She’d nearly been the death of me last year, ugh.  But beyond that kind of thing, she was really nice lady.

“Yes!  You assume right!” Mr. Zeitel boomed.  “So Jerry heads on in to check things out, just on foot with his flashlight, figuring it was either nothing or a couple of the local beanbags jerking around in there.  The thing is, though, after he’s gotten inside Whitewood a ways, he can start to hear whatever it was that old lady said she heard.  He told me it sounded like someone was ripping up the ground and breaking up big rocks, but he didn’t hear the sound of any engines, either.  Something was up, and it was something that probably didn’t involve construction equipment.”

“So what was it?”

“That’s the funny thing.  Jerry said he got close to where this was all going on, and the racket was huge, and then it just stopped.  He got the rest of the way over there, and it was a big mess.  Dirt and stones everywhere.  He saw a shadow poking around in some of stones, and when he told them to hold it right there, like all cops do, the shadow took off running and disappeared into well … the other shadows.  Gone just like that.  Poof!” he bellowed loudly enough to make me jump.

“Were they tearing up the tombstones and monuments?” Mrs. Keeler asked, sounding disgusted.

“No, actually they weren’t.  After Jerry had a chance to look everything over, he saw the idiot or idiots in question were tearing up one of the sidewalks.”

“A sidewalk?  What for?”

Mr. Zeitel snorted.  “You know the brain-donors in this town.  Why do they do anything they do?  They tore up a stretch of sidewalk, threw a bunch of dirt around, and dug a pretty good-sized hole.  Probably thought there was some hidden pirate booty in there, arrr!  Ha ha ha!  Arrr!”

I snickered at Mr. Zeitel’s extremely loud pirate impression, which was even noisier now that the hallway was almost deserted.  I glanced up at the clock on the wall and saw that I had about thirty seconds left to get to my next class.

“So what was making all the racket that the old woman and Officer McGruber heard?” Mrs. Keeler asked, just as I started to step away from the fountain.  Despite my hurry, I stopped in my tracks, impatiently bouncing on one foot as I tried to hear everything.

“Jerry didn’t say, actually.  They’re still trying to figure that one out.  Everybody’s guessing the jackasses probably got a Bobcat or a little tractor inside and were tearing the sidewalk up just for the hell of it, and then they took off in it just before Jerry showed up.  Something small like that wouldn’t have put off much of an engine noise, but could’ve—“

I didn’t hear what Mr. Zeitel said next because the bell signaling the start of the next class period rang.

“Fuck!” I hissed, and took off down the hall.

“Hey!” boomed Mr. Zeitel from behind me.

I skidded to a stop and spun around, and saw him standing out in the hallway in front of the lounge.  “You’re not supposed to be running in the halls, beanbag!” he said, pointing at me authoritatively but with a grin.  I’d had him for several classes in the past and had always gotten along well with him.

“I’m late!” I explained.

“Outstanding!  Good hustle on you!  Now you’re even later, ha ha ha!” he exclaimed.  “Carry on, carry on!  As you were!”

I gave him a goofy little salute like I always did and then took off down the hall again.

*     *     *

The next day at lunch, we were in our usual spot behind the gas station when Kristine, accompanied by her friends Shannon and Lynn, came hurrying up and asked Mary Jane if she’d heard about what had happened at Whitewood.  Mary Jane and I exchanged glances, wondering if her little theory was correct.

Last night I’d told Mary Jane what I’d overheard when she’d noticed a one-paragraph write-up on the cemetery vandalism in the paper and had asked me about it.  Though the write-up of the vandalism hadn’t said exactly where it had taken place in Whitewood, Mary Jane was sure that it was the Witch Stone that had been dug up, which hadn’t even occurred to me.  She’d shrugged and said that was the most likely place, since there probably weren’t any other notable bits of sidewalk in the cemetery, and why else would somebody want to dig up a cemetery sidewalk unless they were sure there was something interesting underneath?  She’d half-seriously asked me if I’d happened to overhear anything that Kristine or her friends might have said, because she wouldn’t have put it past them to actually go and try to dig the Witch Stone up, possibly with a stolen tractor or something similar.  I wasn’t so sure about that, because from what I’d been able to tell from past conversations, Kristine and her friends were convinced that digging up the Stone was a bad idea, as doing so could unleash an evil spirit or some other bad thing.

“Did you hear anything about it?” Kristine asked, leaning close and keeping her voice quiet, though nobody else was really paying any attention.  Alicia was with us for lunch today, so even Duane was carefully pretending Kristine didn’t exist.

“I saw it in the paper last night,” Mary Jane answered.  “Not much detail, though.”

Kristine leaned even closer, her eyes big and worried.  “It’s not good.”

“What’s not good?  That some assholes would vandalize the cemetery?” Mary Jane asked.  “That’s very not good, actually, because that’s gonna mean the cops are gonna be keeping a closer eye on it, making it a lot harder to slip into at night.”

“You don’t wanna slip into it at night, not now,” Kristine said ominously.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because the witch is out!” Kristine exclaimed as quietly as she could.  Behind her, Shannon and Lynn both nodded in agreement, looking nervous and uneasy.

“The witch?” asked Mary Jane.

“The one under the Witch Stone!  The one that had been trapped there for so long!” said Kristine.  “That wasn’t people trying to get in the other night, that was the witch trying to get out, and she did!  That was the shadow the cop saw running away!  It was the witch!”

“I don’t know about all that—“ Mary Jane began, but Kristine excitedly cut her off.

“It’s true!  Shannon’s cousin has a friend that works at the police department, and he said that he heard that the officer on the scene said that the shadow that ran away was a woman.  It was the witch!”

Taking a breath, Mary Jane patiently said, “That’s kind of far-fetched, I think.  I’ll admit that when I checked the Stone out last year, there was something a little odd about it, something a bit off, but you don’t seriously think that there was something alive under there, do you?  According to legend, the witch was buried under there over a hundred years ago!”

“Not alive, but not dead, either,” Kristine replied, dead serious.  “Just waiting.”

“Oh geez,” Mary Jane said, rubbing at the bridge of her nose.  “Even if you could get it to work right, a suspended animation spell wouldn’t—aw, dammit!”  She shook her head, looking irritated.  “No, no, I’m not getting into this.”

“We’re gonna skip school and head out to the cemetery and check it out,” Kristine said, Shannon and Lynn nodding again.  “You want to go with us?  You’ve got a lot of experience with the supernatural, more than us, and it’d be a big help if—“

“I already said I’m not getting into this,” Mary Jane replied, her voice momentarily sharp.  It softened again, and she said, “Look, it was probably just some stupid local fucks digging around in there, thinking they were gonna find the old bones and show ‘em to their friends.  There isn’t any damned witch running around.  Just forget about it.”

Kristine, Shannon, and Lynn all looked terribly disappointed.  After a few moments, Kristine said, “Don’t underestimate the witch.  It may not seem like anything right now, but it could end up being something really bad if we don’t catch it early.”  She looked up at the bright early afternoon sky overhead, and then back down at us.  “We’re gonna go check things out while it’s still daylight, when the witch’s powers are at their weakest.  Don’t worry, we’ll be fine.  You’re probably just skeptical because you haven’t lived here all your life and haven’t heard all the legends like we have.”

“Undoubtedly,” Mary Jane snorted.

Kristine gestured to her friends, and they all started off across the parking lot, heading in the direction of the cemetery across town.  Kristine waved to us and said, “We’ll let you know once we know more.”

“Hooray,” my girlfriend grunted, giving a half-hearted wave to them.

“So much for your theory,” I said.

“You’re no help.”  Once Kristine and her friends were across the parking lot, Mary Jane turned and started softly banging her head against the wall of the gas station.

I gave her a bemused look.  “Feel good?”

“Feels better than the pain in the head they gave me.”

“What was that all about?” Eddie asked, scratching his head as he watched the trio disappear around the corner of the nearby supermarket.

“They think a witch escaped from under the Witch Stone in Whitewood cemetery,” I said, while Mary Jane continued to quietly bang her head.

“Oh, that?  I heard it was a couple of guys with a backhoe that dug up the sidewalk,” said Eddie.

“Who knows?”  I shrugged.

“Maybe it was a witch with a backhoe.”

“Shut up, Eddie,” grunted Mary Jane.