FIVE

She lasted two days.

She tried, she really did.

She fell into her old routines; she cleaned the bathroom and tossed the moldy food from the fridge. She took refuge in the backyard, tried to pull prickly weeds from the overgrown lawn—a joke, she thought, since her father kept other yards pristine. Of course their lawn would resemble a half-dead jungle.

She slept in late enough so she didn’t have to join in at any awkward morning conversations. Once she heard the distinct slam of the front door, she would venture downstairs in pajamas and robe to make breakfast for her mother. Dee knew the basics of cooking, had taught herself with her grandmother’s recipe book propped up against a can of lentil soup. It had been simple stuff at first—omelets and pancakes and French toast. But then she’d moved on from breakfast to soups and stir-fries, and by the time she left for Brannigan, she knew how to crack an egg with one hand, how to whip up a meal from nearly any kind of leftovers, and how to judge if she could cut away the mold on a piece of food or if it was a goner.

But now, no matter how she tried, she could not slip back into this old life. She was fine with short visits; she enjoyed her mother’s company and the familiarity of the house, but the prospect of living here permanently made her want to scratch at her neck until the skin was raw.

Her mother took the news of Dee’s leaving like she always did—with bright smiles, overfull eyes, and hands that trembled.

“Sorry,” Dee lied. “It’s just, this project is half our biology grade and Gremma can’t do all the work. That’s why they break us into pairs.” She insisted on making breakfast, which consisted of digging out two clean bowls and trying to determine which cereal hadn’t gone stale yet. Dee sat at the dining room table, fingers knotted in her lap, filled with a combination of pity and affection.

“At least the coffee’s still good,” said Mrs. Moreno, smiling as she set down two mugs. Dee took the nearer one and sipped.

Bitter heat flooded her mouth. She swallowed the burn of the whiskey, making an effort to keep her face normal. “I think I got your cup,” she said, and pushed it back.

The dorms were startlingly quiet. Dee liked it that way. The only person she spoke to was the dorm monitor when she lied about needing to return for a school project.

Dee sat with her secondhand laptop looking up fellowships, scholarships, jobs, anything. The problem was that while her parents weren’t wealthy like most of the students here, they also weren’t poor. They were the middlest of middle class, and thus she was disqualified for most financial aid. Her own scholarship had been merit-based.

Looking up summer jobs was next, but there weren’t any good ones—at least not for someone who wasn’t eighteen. And none of them paid a fraction of what tuition cost.

She did have a college fund—her grandmother had started it when Dee was a kid. “Always have something in the bank,” she had said, placing a hand on Dee’s tiny shoulder.

Dee had added to the fund long after her grandmother passed away. Checks from distant relatives, odd neighborhood jobs, pet-sitting for classmates—it went into the bank. After all, that was what responsible people did. The problem was, her parents were still technically the holders of that bank account. Dee couldn’t make withdrawals until she was eighteen—at the beginning of next December, long after school started up again.

She’d need her parents’ permission to access the funds.

Sadness settled heavy in her skull, made her temples ache and her head feel heavy. Her eyes stung, but she didn’t cry; she’d stopped crying years ago. Crying never solved anything. It just made her nose run.

She couldn’t go back to that house.

But it looked like she didn’t have a choice.

Dee was suddenly so tired she was in a daze, unable to do more than flop down on her bed and stay there.

She recognized the lethargy: a familiar and entirely unwelcome reminder of her old life. Small things suddenly became insurmountable: getting a new pencil off her desk, rolling over in bed, or even blinking. The air felt thicker, as if the world conspired against her every movement.

No, she thought. This wasn’t happening again. She wouldn’t let it.

She was grabbing her robe when a knock sounded at her door. Dee flinched and for a moment, her mind was overrun with irrational fear. That they’d followed her here, that she’d open her door and her family would be standing there, ready to drag her home.

She considered not opening the door, but a young, female voice said, “Hey, Gremma! You awake?”

All the tension went out of her. Shaky with relief, she crossed the room to open the door.

Dee had never been a very social person. Having a lot of friends meant needing to keep track of every half-truth, of every careful scrap of information… it was exhausting. She tried to limit her interactions. She talked with the same few lab partners, ate with a group of girls that desperately wanted Gremma to be one of them, smiled at the same people, and was polite to everyone.

But despite her attempts to remain aloof, dorm life meant she knew people. The girls in the next room over were named Tabitha and Courtney, and they happily chatted with Gremma sometimes while Dee did homework. There were others—Julia, the local distributor of instant coffee if anyone needed a fix; Nicky, who annoyed everyone by playing her music just a little too loud; and that one girl who always wore the same shirt when she wasn’t in uniform.

The girl at the door was Coffee-Distributor Julia. “Is Gremma around?”

Dee blinked. “She’s gone for spring break.”

“Oh.” Julia’s face fell, then brightened. “Oh, well. You doing anything tonight? There’s a party in Grover. Their dorm monitor has the flu, and from the way the boys tell it, she’s so strung out on cold meds that she wouldn’t notice if we threw a rave.” She beamed. “We figure all of us left behind on spring break should at least have a little fun.”

Dee opened her mouth to decline. She didn’t do parties. But something caught in her throat. Maybe it was the scent of the unwashed sheets or stale popcorn; maybe it was simply the paralyzing knowledge that she wasn’t sure what she would do if left to her own devices.

“Sure,” she said.

 

Brannigan had three dorms: Whiteaker, where Dee lived; an all-boys building called Grover; and Moody, the other girls’ dorm. Dee never visited Grover—she had no close male friends and she didn’t date. On the outside, the boys’ dorm looked like the other two buildings, but once inside, Dee wrinkled her nose. “And I thought we were slobs,” she muttered.

“The prank wars are legendary here,” said Julia. “Even Moody gets in on it sometimes.”

“Why doesn’t that kind of thing happen in our dorm?” asked a blond girl.

Julia snorted. “Pretty sure the last time anyone tried to mess with Whiteaker, some crazy girl threw a Molotov cocktail into the idiot’s room.”

“It was a stink bomb,” said Dee, surprising herself by speaking up.

“You sure?” asked Julia.

Dee would know; it had been Gremma who’d devised the counterstrategy with stolen chemistry equipment. Their room hadn’t smelled right for a week.

The party was being held in one of the larger dorm rooms—the kind meant for four kids. Someone had pushed the bunk beds against the wall and made a diligent effort to shove the mess of dirty clothes under them. Even so, the room smelled distinctly of teenage boy and stale chips.

The dorm had been set up with twinkle lights and mirrors, and with the overhead lamp flicked off, even Dee had to admire the effect. The small room suddenly looked larger, and the small crowd was amplified by the mirrors. Dee found herself gravitating toward a corner. She could tell the party had been going on for some time; there was a sense of charged energy, of anticipation and restlessness. Already, she found herself longing for the security of her own dorm. But she knew the moment she returned, so would her depression.

Without the constant vigilance of the dorm monitor, plastic red cups were passed from hand to hand. Dee took one, accepting it the way she would a prop in her drama class. It was a thing to hold. Nothing more.

She watched the swell and tide of the small crowd, the few people who had begun dancing—but it was just an excuse to grind against someone they liked. Dee watched with half annoyance, half longing. She couldn’t imagine letting someone stroke the line of her back, to grasp her hip or press a kiss to her throat.

It wasn’t that Dee didn’t want sex or kissing or any of the other things her classmates always seemed to be doing. It was just—she was afraid. She tried to imagine speaking to a boy, flirting with him, taking her clothes off—and her mind just went blank.

She wasn’t attached to her virgin status. As far she was concerned, it was like a mole on her forearm—it was simply there, visible for all the world to see, and sure, it would be nice to be rid of it, but when was the time? Or the opportunity?

Besides, she would probably do it wrong.

Dee found herself near a desk—its contents cleared away and replaced with a hastily assembled assortment of snacks. She considered the bowl of pretzels, wondering how many people’s hands had been in that bowl, when someone joined her.

Dee sensed the girl before she saw her. She must have been someone’s friend, smuggled on campus. There were seniors who swore it was easy to sneak people in if you knew the security routes. This girl was pretty, with lush dark hair and heavily lined eyes. She was the kind of girl who wore a lot of makeup and wore it well. But that wasn’t what drew Dee’s attention.

Her red cup was held in a prosthetic hand.

Dee froze. She knew better than to assume. People lost limbs for all sorts of reasons. Maybe she’d been born that way. Maybe she was a cancer survivor. She could’ve gotten her left hand stuck in a garbage disposal for all Dee knew.

But it still didn’t stop her mind from racing. Because there was one sure way to lose a limb these days.

To trade it away for something else.

“You think the pretzels are any good?” said the girl. She spoke slowly, as if the syllables were difficult to pronounce.

Dee shrugged. “I don’t think you can get food poisoning from a pretzel.” Her eyes were fastened to the girl’s sleeve, to the place where the metal and plastic prosthetic disappeared.

The girl cleared her throat, and Dee’s gaze snapped to hers.

The girl smiled—half defiant, half mocking. “See something you like?”

Dee’s eyes fell to the table and she shook her head. “Ah, no. Sorry. I mean—I shouldn’t have stared. Sorry.”

This was why she hated parties; inevitably, she would do or say the wrong thing and the memory would haunt her for weeks to come.

The girl’s face softened. “No problem.” She dug into the pretzel bowl and offered Dee a handful.

Dee took them, if only so she’d have an excuse not to talk. For a moment, the silence hung between them. Dee considered moving away, finding Coffee-Distributor Julia or making an excuse about going to the bathroom, but then the girl spoke.

“I’m used to people staring,” she said. Her breath smelled like sugar and vodka. “It’s the first thing most people see. So long as it’s not the only thing they see, I’m fine with it.”

“Ah.” Dee had no idea what to say. She felt as if she stood upon a minefield, and one wrong word might destroy her.

The girl gave Dee a shrewd look. “Are you drunk?”

“No,” said Dee honestly.

The girl laughed and her cheeks colored. “You’re the only sober person here. I like you.”

“I get that a lot,” said Dee. “The sober part, not the people-liking-me part.”

That made the girl laugh again, and she put her drink down so it wouldn’t spill. “You come to a lot of parties, then?”

“No,” said Dee truthfully.

The girl beamed at Dee, as if they floated together on some sea of alcohol-fueled goodwill. “You want to know, don’t you?” She traced her fingers down the metal of her left hand.

“No,” said Dee. Too quickly.

The girl smirked. “It’s not just you. Everyone wants to know. I usually tell them I was in an accident.” She leaned in closer, and Dee knew how drunk the girl must have been—drunk enough to let slip truths she would have otherwise held close. “People get really judgey when they know you’ve done a deal.”

Dee inhaled sharply. “So you did… uh…?” She gestured vaguely at the girl’s left arm. “I thought—well, I thought people under eighteen couldn’t…”

“Demons don’t make covenants with anyone under sixteen,” the girl said, picking up her drink again and taking a swig. “I was seventeen. Last year.”

Dee bit the tip of her tongue, trying to hold the words in. Her resistance lasted only a few seconds. “But what—I mean, if you don’t mind me asking. What did you…?”

“Ask for?” The girl flashed her a bright smile. “It’s nothing scandalous. I didn’t ask for bigger boobs or a perfect memory. Which, looking back on it, might have been more useful.”

Dee waited, and sure enough, the girl shrugged. As if this was just another drunken confession.

“I wanted my parents together,” she said. She wobbled on her high heels and she gripped the side of the desk. “But demons can’t make people love you. That’s part of their thing, right? They can’t affect emotion… and they won’t kill people. Not can’t, but won’t. My demon, she said that it’s too much trouble for what they get out of it.” The girl laughed.

“So I asked for my parents not to divorce,” she continued. “And guess what happened—there was a loophole found in my granddad’s will. Turns out that my dad only inherited if he was married… to one woman. No second marriages for my dear old granddad.” She laughed again, and it sounded as if it stuck in her throat. “It was so stupid. Like something out of a romantic comedy. I don’t know how the demon did it, but that will made sure my parents never divorced. They’d have to give up over a million dollars to do it.

“The demon kept her word,” she said, smiling so that her eyes crinkled at the edges. It was a hard, determinedly happy face. “My parents are together. But they still hate each other, you know?”

“Do I ever,” said Dee. Her heart was beating too quickly, and she found herself almost wishing to take a drink from her red cup, if only to settle her nerves. Demons. Demons were supposed to be nearly invincible, capable of granting the most impossible of wishes. People joked about making deals the way they joked about winning the lottery. It was idle fantasy to imagine what a supernatural creature might grant you. She’d never really considered making a deal; she was rather attached to her limbs.

Dee tried to keep her voice steady. “But—was it worth it?”

The girl swayed. “People always warn you about demons, tell you it’s wrong and dangerous. And yeah, that’s true, but that’s not the worst part. The worst part. You know what the worst part is?”

“No,” said Dee.

The girl smiled harder. “You get what you ask for,” she said.

It would have been quite the philosophical note to end on, had the girl not leaned over and thrown up in someone’s hamper.