Light as a Feather, Silent as the Grave

Chapter 18

As we traveled the entire length of the train in pursuit of the vending machines, it became immediately clear that a lot more passengers had boarded since we’d disembarked in Chicago. On the car directly in front of ours, we saw Mr. Dean snoozing in a window seat, his head tilted backward and a tiny string of drool spanning the gap of his open mouth. Trey couldn’t resist looking over his shoulder at me with a wicked grin. Even if we were essentially outlaws on the run from the police making our way across the country to prevent our friend from murdering innocent gymnasts, it was ridiculously funny to see our history teacher peacefully sleeping like a baby with his hands folded on top of the abandoned hardcover copy of My Life by Bill Clinton in his lap.

The vending machine situation turned out to be far more impressive than either of us expected. I’d been expecting to find only one vending machine with the usual options of bags of miniature pretzel twists and M&M’s, but there were four vending machines all containing different things, and all of them accepted credit cards. We used Laura’s credit card to order ourselves a veritable feast of Flaming Hot Cheetos, sour cream and onion potato chips, vanilla lattes from the hot beverage machine, cans of diet soda, and questionable-looking ham sandwiches on white bread with wilted lettuce. In order to avoid a second trip through the train later if we got hungry again later, we each also got a package of powdered miniature donuts. So much for nearly a year’s effort in trying to eat healthy.

Once back in our seats, we continued our discussion about Trey’s disturbing theory about his mother.  Even though I was really famished, I was too freaked out about what we’d been discussing before we went to get food to enjoy my makeshift meal. My brain throbbed with one thought as if it were a misplaced heart beating in my skull: They don’t have a story for him. They don’t have a story for him. The day back in the fall when Mischa, Trey and I had confronted Violet on the football field after school about what she’d done to Olivia and Candace, we’d proposed the idea to her of playing the game again to try to break the curse. When it had been suggested that we play Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board with Trey in the role of the cadaver so that Violet could tell the story of his death, she had seemed supremely freaked out by that idea and had insisted the evil spirits that showed her how people would die didn’t have a story for Trey.

If his mother had something to do with initiating all of the evil curse-slinging in our town, that would have explained why the spirits that tormented Violet had refused to let her tell his story; his might very well have been a soul they didn’t want. My thoughts were spinning in so many circles that I could barely concentrate on chewing and swallowing to prevent myself from gagging on my unsavory sandwich. Laura had told us that witchcraft was rooted in equality: to create a life, you must take a life. Nature prefers to keep things in balance. Michael Simmons had two living biological children.

Two.  An even number.

But it was insane to think that Trey’s mousy mother would have tampered with witchcraft! She tiptoed around her own house as if she were afraid to hear her own footsteps. She allowed Walter to mistreat Trey his whole life. She had always struck me as the kind of woman who feared any kind of disruption in the fragile balance of the normal middle-class routine in which her family operated. In that way she was kind of like my mom, safely nestled into what she thought was a risk-free existence, but unlike Mrs. Emory, my mom was not one to shrink away from confrontation or to withhold her outrage in the face of injustice. Mrs. Emory seemed kind of like she just wanted people to look right past her without noticing any details. I couldn’t help but wonder what she must have been like before Mr. Simmons broke her heart, and what had ever made him initiate a torrid romantic affair with her in the first place.

“Violet gave me that piece of paper because she thought you might be able to use it to sue her father for part of her inheritance,” I said, wishing I had some kind of napkin on which to wipe all of the Flaming Hot red dust on my fingertips. “You know? Because it’s proof that he’s aware he’s your father.”