Mads, my Mads, who once upon a time when we were eight and taping knockout-pink Barbie Band-Aids over skinned knees, looked at me and told me the name she wasn’t and said, I’m Madalena, and I said, Good.
“Jade,” says Jenny—
“Jade,” says Summer—
“Jade,” says Mads—
—and it’s magic, dark magic. A spell from my three witch-sisters.
“Find them,” I say, and I close my eyes because I can still feel it, almost, the poison the dazzle-smiled boy put in my drink last night so the world turned flashbulb bright but slow, so slow, until I couldn’t fight anymore, and when I tried to scream they smashed their hands over my mouth and I bit and bit and my fangs drew blood and they said, God damn, she’s feisty.
I open my eyes—now, this morning, here in my coven with Jenny and Summer and Mads—and they’ve done magic again. There on the screen Summer’s holding, I see the boys we’re going to ruin.
Summer prints it in color on the purring sleek printer my parents bought me to make sure I get into Stanford. They want me to be a doctor. I want to be the queen.
The paper looks like those WANTED lists in the post office, but instead at the top it says St Andrew’s Preparatory School Varsity Boys’ Lacrosse. One smug smile after another. Secrets you can feel even on paper.
Mads finds a scarlet lip liner in her purse. I point at pictures and she paints bold circles onto the page:
Duncan.
Duffy.
Connor.
Banks.
Four boys from the room with the white sheets and the spinning lights, and four red circles in front of us now.
“We can kill them,” says Mads, quiet, and she means it.
I look at Jenny in her baby-pink lace; Summer in her silky black shirt with the deadly plunging neckline; Mads with gold rings in her ears and fists ready to fight.
They are mine and I am theirs.
My nails are long and silver. Ten little daggers, sharp enough to tear throats open.
“Killing hurts worse if somebody you love is holding the knife,” I say.
“So make one of them do it?” Summer asks. She’s looking at the boys, the ones we haven’t circled yet. She’s hungry.
I nod.
Jenny smiles her pink-heart smile and says:
Fair is foul, and foul is fair
—another spell.
Mads hands me her lip liner. I look at every boy, one by one. Remember them from the party at Duncan’s house, locking girls against the wall in the living room and pouring shots in the kitchen and smirking sidelong while I drank poison.
Today I choose who dies and I choose who kills.
There’s one boy who wasn’t at the party. Right in the middle of the page. Earnest eyes that trust too much. Innocent, he thinks, and he thinks he isn’t one of them. He thinks he isn’t lying when he says his prayers at night.
I carve a bloodred X across his face:
Mack.
Confession
Summer says I have to tell my parents.
“No,” I say, frostbite-cold.
“I’m not saying don’t do the rest.” Her eyes flick down to the paper in her hands. “But what if you want to do something about them, later, and you need proof—”
And Jenny says, “Killing them isn’t enough for you? Damn, Summer.”
And I say, “Thank you.”
Summer looks at Jenny the way she always does. The way everybody except Jenny can see. “I’m not saying cops. Or lawyers. Not yet.”
And Jenny narrows her eyes and says, in her cotton-candy bubblegum voice, “Not ever,” because Jenny’s father is the sort of slick-haired lawyer who smiles at boys like Duncan and Duffy and Connor and Banks and tells them he doesn’t want to know if they did it, he just wants to know who can stand up and put one hand on the Bible and swear that he’s a fine young man, and then he takes their fathers’ checks and those boys walk out of court free, grinning guilt all over their faces.
“I’m just saying, the hospital,” Summer says.
I say it again: “No. Hell no.”
So Summer says, “But what if—”
And I say, “Are you really going to tell me I can’t say no?”
The words hang in the air and Jenny’s eyes flicker bigger.
Then Mads says, “Jade.”
She’s still standing by the window, light slivering past the curtains and sparking off her earrings and her shimmering dark skin. Immovable.
“We’re going to kill them,” says Mads. “We’re going to do exactly what you tell us, until it’s done.”
And Jenny says, singsong, “Until the battle’s lost and won.”
And Mads says, “But this is insurance. You never know what you’ll need later.”
And Summer takes my hand in hers and looks into my eyes and says, “Please, Jade, for us.” It’s so perfectly, perfectly Summer—her pool-blue gaze and her beach hair and that voice people would murder their mothers for—that I laugh, because if anyone knows exactly how to do what I need to do, it’s her.
“I’ll tell,” I say. “But you have to do the rest.” I nod at the boys in Summer’s hands. “Find out everything. I need to know everything.”
“Done,” she says, with her megawatt smile. “Before sunset.”
They watch me. Sisters, by something more than blood.
And Mads says, “Good.”
They leave, because in the end this is all mine, and I put Summer’s list under my pillow and brush my hair. Stare into the mirror until all that’s left is the cold hard glint in my eyes. Dangerous eyes for a dangerous girl.
Then I go downstairs.
And here I am, standing in front of the fireplace we never use. Standing with my hands folded together in front of me, facing my parents.
“I’m going to tell you something,” I say.
They wait. The silence hums loud in my ears.
“Don’t be upset,” I tell them.
“What is it?” my father asks. I can read it on his face: poor grades, he’s thinking, cheating on a test. He’s in his golf clothes, because plastic surgeons aren’t the kind of doctors who work Saturdays. She won’t get into Stanford, he’s thinking. She’s ruined her chances.
“I’ll handle everything,” I tell them.
“What is it?” my mother asks. She’s in a brunch dress; perfect hair; fresh Botox. She’s thinking a boy, but not in the way that’s true. Thinking heartbreak, thinking about the boy she loved back when she was my age, the one her parents decided wasn’t good enough for her. She loves my father. They’re exactly right together: the goddamn American dream. But she still has a picture of the boy, the one who stayed out too late and called when she was studying. The one she left behind in Torrance when she packed her things for college, the way her parents said she should.
I hold my shoulders square. They see the little baby version of me: eyes too big for my face, tiny gold earrings, too much laughing. As soon as I speak they’ll never see that same girl anymore, and knowing that makes my fingernails bite into my skin because I want it so hard, to rip those boys’ faces open. Tear their hearts out and hold them, still beating, in my hands.