Devilish (11 page)

“I need your help,” she said. “I need you to talk to her for me.”

“Talk to
who
?” I said, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Her.”

“Her who?”

“The demon,” she said matter-of-factly.

All of my personal trauma dissipated, and I stood very still. Things had just changed. They had gone in a very unexpected direction, one that I immediately knew we wouldn’t be returning from for a long time.

All I could think to reply was, “The demon is a her?” Not, “What the hell are you talking about?” or, “What size rubber sack do you think they’ll put you in?”

“She is right now.”

“And she’s … nearby?” I asked.

“She’s at our school.”

“Right,” I said.

“I traded my soul, Jane,” she said.

“Right.”

“I did. This is not a joke.”

“I’m not laughing.”

“I signed a contract,” she went on. “I was desperate. But there’s still time if you talk to her …”

I’d read somewhere that there is really no such thing as “crazy,” that we all slide along a scale of acceptable behavior and thought. But when someone starts telling you that they’ve been talking to demons—this is a sign that they’ve gone down the slippery slope to the far end of the scale. You are supposed to take them by the hand and escort them back to their seat in reality or find someone who can.

“I know you don’t believe me,” she said. “I was afraid of this.”

She pulled a small medicine bottle out of her purse.

“I took these from my mom’s bathroom cabinet this morning,” she said. “I don’t want to … but I have to take them.”

“What are they?” I asked.

“Penicillin.”

This would have little impact on most people, but it meant a lot to me. Allison was allergic to penicillin. One pill could probably do her serious harm. More than one would kill her for sure.

This is one of those moments in life that I feel like certain “very special episodes” of television shows and well-meaning school counselors try to prepare you for, but nothing can get you ready for an actual emergency. These moments aren’t backed up by musical sound tracks and careful camera angles. This was just me, in a Boston bathroom, my best friend holding a bottle full of a substance that was incredibly toxic to her.

“Allison,” I said, “give those to me. Put them in my hand.”

I held out my hand as far as I could without moving from my spot and spooking her.

“She doesn’t believe me,” Allison said quietly to the void. “If Jane won’t listen, no one will listen.”

“Come on,” I said again. “Give those to me.”

She popped the top off the bottle.

“Don’t come any closer,” she said. “Go.”

I had twelve thoughts at once. I would call 911. I
would my dad. I would call Lanalee. Strangely, it flashed through my mind to call Owen since he was clearly waiting to hear from me. I would bound across the room and snatch the bottle and take them myself. The ceiling would fall down, knocking them from her hand.

“Go,” she said. “I don’t want you to watch.”

“I’m not going.”

“Okay.” She dropped three of them into her palm. I could see she was shaking now. “I’ll take them if you
don’t
go. I shouldn’t have told you. I shouldn’t have gotten you involved. Just
get out
.”

She held the pill an inch from her bottom lip and glared at me through watery eyes. I had no choice now. I bolted out the door and into the food court. I skidded back to our table, where Elton was scowling at my clam roll.

“Get up!” I said. “It’s an emergency!”

“What?”

“Allison’s threatening to kill herself.”

“
Kill
herself?” he repeated. He looked around the food court, obviously thinking what I would have thought—people don’t threaten to kill themselves in places like these. They get cheese fries instead and opt to do it more slowly, on a thirty-year plan.

“She’s got a bottle of penicillin,” I said. “That’s why she brought us here. She’s threatening to take them.”

He needed no further explanation. He was up in a shot.

We arrived in the bathroom to find that Allison was standing in front of the mirror, twisting up a lipstick.

“Al,” I said, immediately quieting down. “It’s okay. We’re both here now. Tell me you didn’t take them.”

“Take what?”

“Those penicillin.”

“I can’t take penicillin,” she said. “It would kill me.”

Elton threw me a baffled look.

Was my mind playing tricks on me? Her eye makeup was a bit smudged and her eyes were red, but otherwise, she was totally calm. Maybe this is what suicidal people were like—switching moods on a dime.

“I want you to give me the bottle,” I said. “Come on now. You know we care about you.”

“What bottle?”

“You know what bottle.”

Elton was glancing between us, deciding which story seemed more plausible.

“There is no bottle,” she said. “If you don’t believe me, here.”

She held out the tiny Coach bag. Elton stepped forward and took it. He pulled out the cell phone, a small wallet, some keys, and an eyeliner. He turned it upside down and shook it and then carefully replaced everything.

“They could be anywhere,” I said. “They could be in the trash.”

“There are no pills,” Allison said. “Jane, why are you saying this?”

Elton had made up his mind.

“I’m going,” he said firmly. “I’ll meet you out there, Al.”

She nodded, still looking adorably confused by the whole thing.

“What are you
doing
?” I said.

“Jane,” she said, her face falling. “Just forget everything I said, okay? And what I did.”

“What do you mean,
forget
it?”

“Don’t get involved. I don’t need you to. I don’t want you to. I want you to go. Just go. I promise I won’t hurt myself, but go.”

So I did.

Elton was waiting just outside the door, holding my bag.

“That was not okay,” he said, passing it to me. He wouldn’t even look at me. “If this was some kind of trick to get us back together or something, then it was sick and it didn’t work. I think you should leave.”

Both of them were telling me to go, and both seemed to mean it. So I put my bag over my shoulder and left.

Here is a simple psychological trick that I first developed when trying to get over my fear of getting blood drawn. It works when you are confronted by anything horrible.

First, when the horrible thing or idea comes near you, force your mind to go blank. Turn out all the lights. Try to tell yourself not to think about anything. Your brain hates total darkness and silence—it won’t let this go on for more than a second or two before it starts rummaging around in the closet and throws the first thing it gets its hands on at you.

Try it now. You’ll see.

When I first developed this, the thing it threw at me was the theme song to
Friends
, which I happen to hate for its relentless cheerfulness and organized hand-clapping. But that’s what I got. And when you get this random offering from your brain, accept it. It is your mantra now.

So, something horrible happens, like when I have to get my blood drawn, I take my mind to the quiet, dark
place and play the
Friends
theme at top volume. I give it all my concentration. I crank it up if I start becoming aware of the rubber tourniquet that they tie at the top of your arm or the nurse poking around my antecubital space. (This is the technical name for the underside of your elbow, where they usually get the blood from; knowledge is also a great defense against illogical fear.) I’m surprised they can’t hear it. Sometimes, I think I even mouth the words, and one time, I know for certain I tapped out the claps with my free hand.

I dont’t remember getting on the T. I just kept walking until I must have come to a station, found a token, and gotten on. Before I knew it, I was stumbling out at the Harvard Square stop, into a mass of people and a hard and kicking fall wind.

I felt what seemed to be a twelve-inch split open up in the middle of my chest. I wrapped my arms around myself and pushed through the crowd, who were behaving as consistently as the blowing leaves—oblivious to everything because they were talking on their phones and their scarves were whipping up over their eyes. They were wandering into traffic at the wrong times, even though they give you about fifteen minutes to cross the street in Boston and have a countdown timer to guide you. There was just general confusion in the air, and I was cutting through it, forcing control into my every step. I had thick Frye boots on, and they crunched hard on the leaves and struck solidly on the brick.

“Think,” I told myself out loud. “Think.”

The bracing wind cleared my mind a bit and took away some of the nervous burning in my skin and stomach—a bit. Harvard was a good place to make yourself think. The heavy iron gates and the brickety-brickness of it all … it reassured me that world was solid and stable, and Ally was just ill, and there were cures for illness. I would just tell someone, and they would get her the right pills.

I turned sharply into one of the Harvard courtyards, where space is a bit more free and people usually run into you while jogging, or their dogs leap into you Superman style as they try to catch Frisbees. The square was almost empty. Behind me, I heard the faint tickity-tickity-tickity noise of a bike.

I stopped cold and turned on the heel of my boot.

There, in front of me at about twenty paces, was Owen. He was leading his bike and coming in my direction. He looked blown by the wind. His pale, high-boned cheeks were worn red. He rolled the bike closer and came up to me. I set my lips and looked up at him, and he seemed to understand that this time, it was not okay. This face-off continued in silence for a good minute while the one dog on the common made a beeline for us.

I was about to shout at him, to tell him to go away, but he spoke first.

“Is Allison talking about demons?” he said.

A few minutes later, we were sitting in one of Harvard’s countless coffee shops. I don’t remember which one. My
freshman stalker and I had two hot chocolates in front of us. I watched a mountain of whipped cream melt and sink into a chocolate sea, then I turned my attention out the window, to the rush of Harvard students blowing past.

“How did you know?” I finally asked.

“I know lots of things,” he said. “If you’d called, I could have told you.”

“Or you could have just told me.”

“If you had called.”

“Enough!” I held up my hand. “What do you know?”

There was a black pointy hat perched on a pumpkin in the shop window. Owen pointed at it.

“That’s where it starts, really,” he said.

“With a hat?”

“With witchcraft. Or with something that happened right around here, maybe four hundred years ago, involving witches …”

“The Salem witch trials?” I put my head in my hands. “Don’t mess with my brain today, Owen. Seriously.”

“Hear me out,” he said. “It will all make sense. Do you know what happened at Salem?”

“Of course I do. If you grow up anywhere near Boston, you
will
be taken to Salem for a field trip. It’s the law. You
will
go to the Salem Witch Museum. You
will
buy obligatory souvenirs from the local witch shops. You
will
come home either wearing a pointy hat or a pentacle. I have both. Get to your point.”

“I am. Just listen. So, what happened at Salem? Tell me.”

“A bunch of girls started freaking out,” I said. “The residents thought there were witches in the town, possessing them with devils. They started accusing people of witchcraft. There were trials. A whole bunch of innocent people died.”

“Right,” he said. “And do you know why all of that happened?”

“There are a few theories,” I said. “Some people think the whole thing was caused by some poisonous mold—something that makes people hallucinate. Most people think that those girls were bored, they were messing around, and they started something they couldn’t stop. It was the power of suggestion. But that was in 1692. They believed in devils then. They had manuals on how to get ghosts out of your house.”

“Yeah, but the power of suggestion doesn’t change,” he said. “It’s used all the time. Advertisers use it. We see commercials all the time and we think they do nothing—but then we find ourselves wanting the stuff in them. Stage magicians. Cults. Government agencies. They all use suggestion. The mind is powerful. People can lift cars when they have to. Monks in Tibet can perform almost superhuman feats through the power of concentration.”

I chewed on the fringe of my scarf.

“So what
exactly
are you telling me, Owen?” I asked. “This is 1692 all over again and some insane Tibetan monks have infiltrated our ranks?”

“No,” he said. “I’m saying that what happened at Salem isn’t actually that hard to re-create. Go back. When did all of this stuff with Allison start?”

“It was around Big-Little, after Al threw up.”

“Why did she throw up?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Heat. Eating too fast …”

“Eating what?”

“A cupcake.”

A tiny bulb in my head went
boink
and suddenly, there was illumination. It was faint, but it was there. A cupcake.

“Easiest thing in the world to make someone throw up,” he said. “Ever hear of syrup of ipecac?”

“We used to keep it around our house. My sister used to eat the air fresheners sometimes. Instant vomiting. But why would someone do that? Who would do that?”

“Why … because you end up with someone who’s truly sad and desperate. And then you play with them. Who … someone rich. Someone bored. Someone smart.”

It suddenly smacked me right on the forehead.

“Lanalee,” I heard myself saying. “She came into the bathroom. Right after it happened. And she took Ally as her big. She seemed so nice.”

He fixed me with a steady stare.

“Did she do this before?” I asked. “At Bobbin?”

“Yeah, she’s done it before. That’s the basic plan. She more or less ruins someone’s life. And then she walks in and says, I can help.”