Poison Princess

6

DAY 2 B.F.

I spent my free period on Friday in Eden Courtyard, sitting at the tiled cement table, licking my wounds in private.

On the verge of tears, I tried to ignore the fact that a bed of daisies had turned their faces toward me—instead of the direction of the sun.

At least the roses and ivy were still.

Last night, before I’d gone to sleep—the first time—I’d wondered, What are the odds that I’ll have a pop quiz?

I hadn’t had one today.

I’d had two. And just to add insult to injury? When we’d handed our English quizzes up the row, Jackson’s paper had all the answers, scribbled in bold handwriting.

Though I’d never before gotten below a B+ on anything, I’d accumulated two Fs this week. At the thought, my eyes welled with tears. I laid my flushed face against the cool stone, struggling not to cry.

Today when I’d asked my teachers for makeups . . .

Bitches said no.

My stomach churned. A drop in grades. I couldn’t go back to CLC, would never go back.

I had to wonder where the bottom was for this. What was that SAT word for the absolute rock bottom? The nadir. Where was my nadir?

How much more could I fail/lose/hallucinate/unravel? After last night’s date with Death, I might’ve thought that I’d get a time-out from creepy. Not so!

Once we’d finished that quiz in English, I’d fallen asleep, dreaming again of the red witch. I began sketching her now. Naturally, she’d been fresh from a kill. Her vines had been smearing the blood of her victims over her skin; she enjoyed wearing it.

I’d been able to see more of her than ever before. Her pale face was round, her skin marred only by those two shimmering tattoos running the length of her cheeks. No, not tattoos, but glyphs—like glowing green brands. Though she had girlish freckles across her nose, she looked older, maybe midtwenties? Her eyes were gleaming green, pure evil.

I’d watched as she’d advanced on a magnificent rosebush, stabbing her thorn claws into one of its stalks. Somehow she’d leeched energy from it, siphoning its life into herself as she’d thrown back her head and shrieked with pleasure.

The plant writhed, as if in death throes, but she was merciless, sucking it dry, leaving it a withered husk. She was like a parasite, enslaving the very things I loved.

When I’d jerked awake, everyone had been packing up their books—except for Jackson.

Then I’d realized he hadn’t been looking at my face, but at my hands, at my knuckles gone white as I clenched the edges of my desk. I’d released my hold at once.

“Nightmare?” he’d asked with a nod.

Had he seemed sympathetic? Unable to help myself, I asked, “Do you . . . do you have them?”

“Yeah.” He’d sounded like he was about to say more, only to remember we weren’t friends. He’d just repeated, “Yeah.”

“What do you do?”

“I sleep with one eye open.” He’d taken a pull from his flask and strode away.

I’d be happy just to sleep at all.

My phone chimed with a text from Brandon. If this was more pressure, I was going to primal-scream.

Kick-back on Sat. 4 couples. Ur friends & mine. Spence & Mel

He’d come through with Spencer? Finally something positive! I seized on this, excitedly texting: Where?

Sugar mill

I frowned. On the back, back, back forty of Haven there was a crumbling mill on the banks of the bayou. It was so old, only the brick walls and a smokestack remained. There was no glass in the porthole windows, so it kind of looked like an old Roman coliseum.

If folks thought Haven might be haunted, they were convinced the mill was. Rumors of gory deaths inside the cane crushers abounded.

But thinking of Mel, I knew I would agree to go—

“And you Sterling girls make fun of Clotile for wearing short skirts?” Jackson said, striding across the courtyard, raking his gaze over me in my cheer uniform.

I hastily closed my journal, putting it with my other books.

“Um, um, UM, Evie. Just seeing you in that getup makes me feel more . . . cheerful.”

When I’d walked into homeroom this morning, he’d taken one look at me and smirked over the rim of his flask. He’d accused me of being like a doll. As I’d gotten ready for school, putting on my bright-red skirt and V-neck vest, with an oversize hair ribbon to match, I’d kind of felt like one.

Over my shoulder, he said in a goading voice, “Je t’aime en rose.” I like you in pink. Then he sat uninvited beside me.

Huh? I wasn’t wearing anything pink. Nothing but my bra—

He’d been looking over my shoulder, straight down my top! Did he have no boundaries?

And I couldn’t say anything about it, or else I’d lose our battle of wills. I didn’t need this! But I refused to leave my table, to give in to this bully.

“Tell me how you learned our tongue,” he said, sounding . . . not irate.

“Once again, I don’t understand that ridiculous gibberish you keep murmuring. And more, I’m done talking about it.” I began to text my answer to Brand.

“You typing to that beau of yours?” Again Jackson got that frustrated look on his face. His moods were so changeable.

“Texting. Yes.”

“He doan want to fight me after I called you a bitch?”

Sounds goo— My thumbs paused on my keyboard.

“Of course, I said that in French,” Jackson continued. “But now I’ve had to go back and think of anything else you might’ve understood.”

I tried to keep my expression neutral. “Whatever. All I know is that Brandon won’t fight you.”

“Because he knows I’ll hand him his ass.” Jackson gave me a mean smile.

“No, because he actually has something to lose by fighting.”

Jackson didn’t like that comment at all. His gray eyes blazed.

I realized where I’d seen that color before. On my bedroom wall.

Those ominous clouds in my mural, the ones aglow with lightning . . . that gray was the color of Jackson’s eyes when he was angry.

“You think you and Radcliffe and all your stuck-up friends are so much better than everybody else.” His fists clenched, his hands swelling. Tape ripped on one, revealing a deep gash across his fingers. All around it, grisly scar tissue had formed.

Our fight forgotten, I cried, “What happened to your hand?”

With a cruel look in his eyes, he pinched my chin and eased his other fist toward my face like he was throwing a punch in slow motion. “The teeth,” he sneered, baring his own. “They cut like a saw blade.”

He’d been in so many fights, he had scars growing over scars. I jerked back from him with a gasp, and he dropped his hands, his expression suddenly unreadable.

But I’d received the message loud and clear. This boy was dangerous. I turned away, finishing my text.

Jackson snagged my sketchbook, shooting to his feet, putting distance between me and his new prize.

As I scrambled from my seat, he opened the journal, frowning as he tilted a page to a different angle.

“Give it back, Jackson!”

“Ah-ah, bébé.” He held it above my head, walking backward, taunting me with it. “Just let ole Jack see.”

“I want it back—NOW!”

Suddenly he staggered, barely righting himself before he fell. The journal flew out of his grasp, landing on the ground.

I darted forward and scooped it up. “The bigger they are!” I snapped at him.

Lucky for me he’d tripped. Maybe he’d backed over the monkey grass.

My lips parted. Strands of it were still coiled tight around his ankles, dropping to the ground one by one.

Behind him that line of green was rippling, though there was no breeze. Jackson didn’t seem to know why he’d tripped, but I did.

Those strands had shot out and bound his ankles. The plants were interacting with another person?

Plant movement had been my crazy—confined to my reactions, my confusion. I’d found it utterly terrifying to see.

But were they helping me? Like last night, when the cane had caged me in protectively?

Now the monkey grass had nearly felled my foe, saving my sketchbook.

I started to laugh. Helped a girl out, did you?

Jackson again thought I was laughing at him. A flush spread over those chiseled cheekbones of his. He straightened to his full height, gave me a threatening scowl, then stalked off.

Once he was gone, I knelt in front of the grass, wanting to fan my fingers over it, but still too scared to. I stared at the daisies, then the roses.

Because I was round the bend again, I could ask myself some truly bizarre questions.

What did the monkey grass want in return for helping me? Did the ivy have an agenda? Roses: friend or foe?

One way or another, I needed to figure out what was happening to me.

I decided that once I got home, where no one could see me, I was going to test out the cane.

When Brand dropped me off at my house after school, he parked out of view of the kitchen window. “Is everything all right, Eves?” He drummed his fingers on the stick shift. “You’ve been acting weird ever since you got back.”

“Everything’s fine,” I said, impatient to get to our field.

“Good deal,” he said simply, taking me at my word, though my demeanor screamed, Everything’s futhermucked!

He rested his hand on my thigh, high enough to make me frown up at him. He had a smile on his face, but it was strained. He traced circles above my knee.

“So have you thought about us going to Spencer’s next weekend?”

“Probably not as much as you have.”

“My brain’s on shuffle,” he said, tapping his temple. “Evie, football, Evie, football.”

“At least I come first.”

“Always,” he said easily, flashing me his movie-star grin.

“I’ll tell you my answer sometime this weekend, I promise.” Giving myself less than forty-eight hours to decide?

Once he’d driven off to get ready for the game tonight, I headed toward the cane before I lost my nerve. I was determined to get to the bottom of this. Two equally catastrophic results awaited me. Either I was delusional. Or . . .

I didn’t even want to go there.

Squaring my shoulders, I swallowed, and reached for the cane.

And damn if it didn’t reach back.

I staggered away a few steps. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. You’re focused. Centered.

I forced myself to reach for it again. Once more, it stretched toward my hand. This time it gently closed around my palm.

That curling leaf hadn’t already been curved. It was moving. Like an infant grasping a parent’s finger.

Oh, shit.

I hadn’t experienced that tingly feeling in my head during any of the plant interactions because I hadn’t been hallucinating. This was no vision—no delusion; this was real.

Right?

Straightening my shoulders, I stepped into the field, among all the cane. At once, the crop seemed to sigh, the leaves whispering around me.

I followed a row, deeper and deeper, those leaves ghosting over my face. My lids went heavy, as if a friend were brushing my hair.

The cane arched and danced toward me, and I went dizzy from pleasure, from the staggering sense of unity.

If they truly were my soldiers at attention, then I had the largest army in the world—six million stalks strong.

I could picture them moving in certain ways, and immediately they would respond. Bend, shimmy, sway. Left, right, up, back. Because we were utterly connected.

Among this number, I was safe, a chessboard queen surrounded by her pawns. And with this easing of tension, memories started trickling over the mental levee that CLC had helped me construct. I recalled more snippets of stuff my grandmother had told me.

On that last day I’d spent with her, as she’d driven us out on the big highway toward Texas, she’d said, “I’m a Tarasova, Evie, a chronicler of the Tarot. I know things that nobody else on earth knows. And you’re the Empress. Just like the card in my deck. One day, you’ll control all things that root or bloom.”

I’d been barely listening, dreaming about the ice cream she’d promised me.

Empress? Was that why I loved plants so much? Was that why they sighed to be near me? Both Death and the cryptic boy had called me Empress as well.

How insane all of this sounded! What was more likely? Plants moving on command? Or a teenage girl—with a history of mental illness—experiencing a delusion?

I slowed my steps, doubts arising. Hadn’t I had nightmares about the red witch controlling plants, hurting them? Was all this connected in my overwrought brain?

Maybe none of this was real. Maybe I was getting worse because Gran had spread her crazy to me—and I wasn’t fighting hard enough for the life I desperately wanted back.

Evie, do you understand why you must reject your grandmother’s teachings . . . ?

I gazed at the stalks swaying. I could be hallucinating—right at this moment.

I turned toward the house in a daze. On the front porch, I readied to face my mother. Easier said than done.

Mom really could be fierce. A regular Frau Badass. Which was great in some instances, such as when she’d taken over the farm from Gran and grown it into the parish’s largest in less than a decade.

Not so great in others—such as when she’d resolved to get me well.

At the front door, I took thirty seconds to compose myself. I need to learn how to whistle. My roommate at the center had taught me that trick. Parents never suspected their children were unhappy/delusional/high when the kid was whistling. Their minds just couldn’t reconcile it.

As I slipped inside, I puckered my lips, blowing soundless air. Whistling sucked.

I heard my mom on the phone in the kitchen. Was she upset? I froze. She had to be talking to Gran. Every now and then, my grandmother managed to elude the orderlies and ring home.

“I will fight this tooth and nail. Don’t you dare try to contact her!” Mom said, then paused for long moments. “You won’t convince me of this!” Silence. “Just listen to yourself! You hurt my little girl—there is no forgiveness! Cry all you like, this number will be changed tomorrow!”

When she hung up, I joined her in the kitchen. “Gran?”

Mom smoothed her hair. “It was.”

I opened my mouth to ask how she was doing, but Mom said, “Anything you’d like to tell me, Evangeline Greene?”

I hated it when she asked me that. I liked that question as much as I liked self-incrimination.

Where to begin?

Grades, schmades, bitches, think I’ll just flunk this year. For the first time in months, I’ve been having delusions. Or else I can make plants do tricks. Can’t decide which scenario I’m hoping for. I’m tempted to play my V card defensively, just to get this gorgeous, usually wonderful senior to back—the hell—off.

Instead, I told her, “Um, no?”

“You haven’t spoken to your grandmother?”

“Not at all.” Not since I was a little girl, and Mom had dispatched her to a home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Or at least, the court had, in a plea deal.

I remembered Mom had once tried to reassure me, calling it “the place to send relatives with dementia.” I’d gaped in horror.

Even if Gran had managed to call my cell phone, I would never have answered. My own release from CLC was conditional on two things: medication compliance and zero communication with her.

I’d agreed to both. Readily. By the end of my stay at CLC, my deprogramming had worked; I’d been convinced that Gran was merely disturbed.

Instead of prophetic.

Now I was questioning everything. “I haven’t spoken to her in eight years.”

Mom relaxed a shade. “She’s a very sick woman, Evie.”

Then she needs to be home with us, I almost said. No, two years and out. “I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. She’s very convincing. She’s got an answer for everything. Hell, she could get anyone spooked about this drought, connecting it to her crazy doomsday scenarios.”

“What did she say?” I asked quickly.

Mom narrowed her gaze, blue eyes flashing. “Wrong question. We are not concerned with what she says.” She pointed a finger at me. “She forfeited any consideration from us the day she tried to . . . kidnap you.”

I glanced away, part of me wanting to dredge up memories of that day, part of me fearing to. “I know, Mom.”

“She got you to the Texas state line before the cops pulled her over. God knows where she was taking you. Do you remember any of that?”

“I remember the arrest.” To her credit, Gran had gone with the officers peacefully, her expression satisfied. In a serene voice, she’d murmured, “I’ve told you all you need to know, Evie. You’ll do just fine. Everything will be just fine.”

But I had been hysterical. When they’d cuffed her, I’d kicked the men, screaming.

I glanced up at Mom. “I don’t remember much of the drive, though.” I didn’t remember all I needed to know. If I believed in Gran, then that meant I wouldn’t do just fine.

Nothing would be just fine. Unless I remembered. But no pressure, Evie.

“I’m sure she was filling your head with nonsense.”

Yes, of course. Nonsense. The docs had told me that I’d internalized some of the things she’d said. That sounded about right. Maybe?

“Her mother was sick before her, my great-grandmother too.”

I hated being reminded of that. I snapped, “I filled out the CLC family history, Mom.” I already knew I was the latest generation in a bloodline that had been boiling with madness for ages.

“Evie, listen, we’re on the right track. We can make this work. You’ve just got to trust me.”

A breeze blew, ruffling my cane. “And what about the farm? What happens if we don’t get rain?”

“What happens is that your mother will figure something out. You don’t worry about anything except school.”

School. Studying. The idea of cracking a book left me nauseated. “But, Mom—”

“I will figure something out.” Her shoulders went back, chin up, eyes bright with determination—a force of nature. Frau Badass.

I could almost feel sorry for the drought.

A family friend had once told me that when my dad disappeared during a fishing trip in the Basin, Mom had taken up the search herself. She’d journeyed deep into the million-acre swamp, determined to scour every inch for her husband, a kindhearted, jovial man she’d adored.

To no avail. He’d vanished without a trace. I’d been only two years old.

Though Karen Greene had a genteel facade, with her flawless hair and manners, I could easily imagine her in waders steering a johnboat, staring down alligators.

And to think I’d once shown signs of being just like her. I’d wanted so badly to make her proud. Until my platform-dive fall from grace.

Now I was just the latest crazy girl to live in Haven House.