Darleny looks at me like I spit in her cachupa when she answers the door.
Nat smiles at her. “How you doing, D?”
Darleny doesn’t smile back. “What the hell are you two doing here? I distinctly remember telling Mili to stay away.”
In the past when Mom would freak out, I’d watch Papa as he spoke to her, his lips moving slow, telling her to calm down, to relax. I’d ask if he used his magic on her, and he’d tell me no. Now that I’ve done it myself, I know it’s exactly what he was doing. Right now, I could use it to ask about the crystal. If Darleny were anyone else, I might be able to talk her into anything at all, whisper like a vampire, watch her eyes change. But she knows I practice. She wouldn’t let me get close.
“We’re making a shrine for Jasmine for graduation,” Nat says. “We wanted to see if we could get a couple of her things.”
Darleny rolls her eyes. “You’re with Mili. Just do what she does, and creep in to take whatever you like.” With that, she turns and goes upstairs, leaving the door open for us.
Their mom isn’t home, but the kitchen smells good. I look under the tinfoiled plate on the stove, and there are plenty of pastel for the taking, but Darleny mutters something under her breath and walks off to her room.
“Guess we don’t have to worry about her watching us search, thanks to you,” Nat says.
Jas wouldn’t care, but it feels inappropriate to search inside her drawers, touch her panties and bras, when she’s not here. I’m happy her mom still hasn’t bagged her stuff up, though. My mom was quick to start disposing of Papa’s things, but she never finished. Now, his room sits off-limits, like it’s not part of the house. It’s tangible evidence of letting go and holding on, half of Papa but not him at all. When Jasmine comes back, she’ll want her room the way it was. My stomach dips as, suddenly, I wonder how it’ll play out with their parents when Jas is half herself and half Darleny. Will she still have a room here? Will her parents find out what happened and call it dark magic, or think Darleny needs help and send her to Butler?
“You gonna help me find the necklace or nah?” Natalie asks, snapping me out of it, making me grateful. I can’t think about logistics right now. Or feel guilt.
We don’t find the necklace. I’m sure it doesn’t exist. But we do find old pictures under a calendar in Jasmine’s desk. We sit on her rug and go through them: the freshman ski trip, Sophomore Spring Fling, Spirit Week, Inez and Jasmine sharing a blunt at the back of the school. “I hated when they’d come in fourth period, smelling like weed, and sit real close to me,” Natalie says. “Mrs. Banano’s nosy self would always walk by and look at me funny.”
We keep flipping through pictures, and Nat says, “Oh. Oh, wow. Look. There it is. Jasmine’s wearing it.” I lean over. It looks exactly how Inez described. The cage, the shape, the colors. Nat hands me the picture. “I’m upset this thing is real. It’s so damn creepy.”
“It is,” I say. “Except that’s Darleny wearing it, not Jasmine.”
Natalie lets out a breath. “Wow. Why didn’t I realize?”
“How could you? They look just alike here.”
“But you noticed,” she says, lips curving in a smile.
What I don’t say: Only because I’ve felt those lips, touched that skin. I know there’s a scar right on Jas’s collarbone that’s absent in this picture. “I wonder where Darleny keeps it,” I say.
Nat’s eyebrows scrunch together. “How important is this thing? Did we have to prove it existed? Or do we need it for something? I doubt Darleny’s going to willingly give it up.”
I give her a pointed look.
“We can’t steal it,” she warns.
“We can borrow it, though.”
She sighs. “Let’s get this over with.”
I call Darleny into the room to ask her what she feels like we can take for the shrine and what she doesn’t want to give up while Natalie slips off to the “bathroom.” At first, Darleny doesn’t seem to want any part of it, but then she sits on the carpet beside me. To lessen suspicion, Nat and I had collected beads, an old deck of tarot cards, a T-shirt Jasmine liked to wear. Darleny sighs while looking through the pictures. “She was always making that face.”
I lean over, nod. “Yeah, and the one with the—”
“Tongue between her teeth,” Darleny finishes. We both laugh, and soon, like something has eased between us, we start passing pictures back and forth. She tells me stories about Jasmine. She mimics her manners. When she tilts her head back and chuckles, she sounds just like her. Even the silence becomes comfortable between us. She looks at my face when she passes me a picture and says, “Guess which one of us is which?”
I stare down. In it, they’re both around five years old, wearing matching outfits. In it, I can’t tell who is who. “Wow, this is tough. I’ll have to take a wild guess.”
“Do it,” she insists, and I look up at her face. It’s soft and close, and I wish her eyes were brown instead of green. And suddenly, they are. My heart thrums, my fingers grip the picture, and I want to lean closer so I can—
“You good?” Darleny cuts off my thoughts. I watch as she blinks back to green eyes.
I shake my head. Swallow. Close my own eyes to stop from crying. “You must miss her.”
“Of course I do,” she says, her voice sharp now. She snatches the picture from my hand, puts it back into the box. “I don’t know why I’m bothering speaking to you.” She stands up. “You think because we weren’t as close when she died, you knew her better than I did.”
I throw my hands up. “I never said I did. I wouldn’t.”
Darleny puts one hand on the dresser, steadying herself. “But it’s what you think every time you look at me.”
“I wasn’t trying to offend you. I don’t feel that way. I promise.”
She watches me stand. “I don’t care what you think. Not after what you did to her.”
“Darleny, I’m really sorry. But you don’t even know what happened between us that night. I didn’t do anything to her.” I walk closer. There are only a couple of steps between us now. “I was hurt, and I left. I never thought she’d try to follow me. I wanted to be alone.”
Darleny’s eyes widen, and tears start to escape. “She was out of her mind. We were driving around for hours, looking for you. You wanted to be alone? Well, how does it feel?”
My voice trembles some when I say, “I was in the woods. I…”
That night, I took the bus from Jasmine’s to Uni Park to sit in the grass like Papa and I used to, trying to center myself, trying even harder not to freak out, imagining how much might change because I’d told Jas I wanted to be with her and she didn’t feel the same.
“It doesn’t matter,” Darleny says. “None of it matters now.”
Her words hit me. It has to matter.
Darleny shakes off a sob. I get close to her. Today is the first time I’ve felt her pain. I’ve been too focused on my own, but I feel it now: deep, a cut that won’t heal with some sand and pretty words. She misses her sister and might always blame me for what happened.
I feel guilty for what I have to do to her, but then realize the ritual is for her too. If we put Jas in Darleny’s body, they can be together. A stitch on the wound.
Darleny backs up again and turns for the door. If I can’t keep her here, she’ll find Natalie.
“Darleny, please wait,” I say, and she turns back to me. “Just calm down.”
Her face is hard at first, but I say it again, softer, and let the power swell inside me. “Calm down,” Darleny repeats, and repeats it again. Soon her eyes are unblinking, her shoulders relax. Guilt makes me feel heavy, but my adrenaline starts to spike with it working.
Then she blinks and steps back so fast she hits the wall.
“What are you doing? What did you do to me? Stay away from me, you freak.” She turns around and grabs the door handle and collides right into Natalie. She doesn’t say sorry, just disappears down the hall.
Natalie gives me a wide-eyed look and mouths, Let’s go.
Nat doesn’t feel comfortable holding the crystal after stealing it so I don’t even have to ask for it. Inez was right. It’s a black obsidian, with a sharp edge pointing downward in the cage. On the bus, I separate the coils of the cage and take out the crystal. It feels weighty in my palm. I want to concentrate on it, but Darleny’s green eyes burn in my mind. For a second, I made them brown. For a second, she was Jasmine. I place the crystal back in its cage, put it around my neck. It settles nicely there. It feels cool against my chest. Darleny will notice it’s missing soon, but I can’t care right now. If Jasmine wants us to have it, we must need it for something.