Page 11

“My point is, these things happen.” Austin drains his witch’s brew, a menacing neon concoction that’s mostly lime soda and sports drink, then goes for the cherry garnish resting across the rim on a toothpick.

“Or,” I counter, “it’s a pattern.”

“Or these are very normal, very regular things that happen in real life.”

“ Or her bad luck is turning into worse luck.”

Austin calmly grabs the fried pickles. “Nova, do you want it to be bad luck?”

My mouth drops open. “What? Why would I—That’s not even—Care, help a girl out?”

“I don’t know, I think I’m with Austin on this one.” She bites her lip, not looking at me. Instead, she seems transfixed by her candy corn drink. “You seem pretty convinced this is your fault.”

My toes scrunch in my Mary Janes, cheap dupes for the ones I really wanted. “I have never said—”

“We’re your best friends,” she interrupts. “We know you. It’s obvious that you’re feeling guilty. You’re doing that thing where you’re trying to act too casual and unbothered about it.”

“And your voice gets all false, and that vein in your forehead throbs,” Austin adds. “You have tells.”

“But I also do believe in bad luck,” Caroline says. “So I’m not ruling out this Kiara thing. Come on, right after Nova pretends to be the psychic and hexes Kiara, all this weird stuff starts happening? The timing is suspicious. Even you have to admit it.”

He groans.

We’re not going to agree on this, so I decide to swing the conversation to something else.

Literally anything will work: the two-page history essay Mrs. Branson assigned on our favorite festival tradition, whether anyone wants to order more food, or maybe “You know me, but I know you just as much, and I know you’re both into each other, so just it admit it already! ”

There’s no tactful way to address the unsubtle glances they keep peeking at each other, so I’m about to say it exactly how I’m thinking it when there’s a commotion behind us. Someone’s chair topples over, and everyone rushes to the pub’s open doorway.

“Is there a doctor here?” a familiar voice yells. “She’s choking!”

I startle. “Is that Radhika?”

Without waiting for an answer, I shove past the adults crowding the threshold. My friends are right behind me. The air is heavy with greasy fried food and unmistakable panic.

People have leaped away from their seating, leaving space for two girls, one choking, the other performing the Heimlich. There’s a ring of customers packed shoulder to shoulder, all frozen in place, not knowing what to do but unable to look away.

“Oh my god,” Caroline whispers behind me, so close that her breath tickles my ear. “Nova, do you think it could be—” She cuts herself off when my eyes fly to her in warning.

“Not here,” says Austin, clearly of the same mind as me. “Hey, man, could you…?” A solid head taller than us, he taps at a teenager’s shoulder to get him to budge up a bit so Caroline and I can better see what’s going on.

“Sure,” the boy says without turning. With a start, I realize it’s Devon Lake, there with his swim team buddies, only decent-human-being concerned and not that’s my girlfriend out of his mind with worry.

Kiara’s face is red, brown eyes bulging, hands clawing at her throat. If she was agitated before, it’s nothing to what she’s feeling now.

How is Devon not rushing to her side? Hell, I have no idea how to do the Heimlich, and I still want to do something. And I wasn’t the one draped all over her last night, hinting that I was her happily ever after.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” pants Tayla. Her arms are wrapped tight around Kiara’s middle, and her straight hair is slipping from its high ponytail, several strands plastered wetly to her forehead. She’s such a pale white that emotions and exertions alike have her flushing like she’s run a mile.

Everything about Tayla screams scared but determined. Credit where it’s due—I’d be too terrified of making it worse to press my fist just above Kiara’s belly button and give her abdomen swift, hard thrusts.

Kiara finally coughs up a roundish black lump coated with saliva. Looking at it makes her gag, and Radhika throws a frankly wasteful amount of paper napkins from another table onto Kiara’s hand. If it’s possible, Radhika looks even more repulsed. She turns away and grimaces into her shoulder.

Evidently made of sterner stuff, Evan rolls their eyes at Radhika and rubs soothing circles on Kiara’s back, but it must have had the opposite effect from the way she shakes them off. She gestures between the clump of napkins in her hand and the half-eaten pizza back at their booth.

I can’t hear her over the claps and shouts of praise, but from the patchy red of her cheeks and the angry jut of her finger and the way her mouth forms the same handful of words over and over, she seems insistent and angry. I told you, I told you, I told you.

Following her finger, I get a good look at the pizza for the first time.

There’s only a couple of slices left, but it’s unmistakably the Cauldron’s specialty: spiderweb pizza.

The Romano-Parmesan-mozzarella cheese blend decoration is deli-cate enough for the webbing, but not so thin as to burn in the pizza oven.

The usual black-olive spider with slivers for legs is noticeably absent.

“I’m so sorry,” the manager says, wringing her hands. “Our olives are all pitted. I don’t know what happened. The machine must have missed punching this one out. Of course, we’ll comp your bill.”

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” says Kiara. Her voice is a hoarse croak. “Accidents happen.”

The manager looks even more distressed.

As I watch, Kiara blinks back her watery eyes and summons up a yearbook smile. “Really, don’t worry about it.” She puts a hand on the manager’s arm, sweet and placating. “It wasn’t your fault.”

The chatter all around me turns into white noise, a faint drone of nothingness that makes it all too easy to zero in on Kiara’s face.

It’s been minutes, and her cheeks are still a stark, vivid pink against the fairness of her skin.

Her eyes are impossibly large, her smile false, like she wants to give the impression she’s okay.

And I’d maybe buy it if her hands weren’t in fists at her side, her shoulders hunched up to her ears.

It’s the worst posture she’s ever exhibited in front of me.

She’s never appeared this horribly vulnerable, not even when she so earnestly wanted to hear something good about her future and I didn’t give it to her.

A terrible pressure builds in the back of my throat. I glance once more to the abandoned pizza.

“Let’s go.” Caroline tugs my hand when the crowd starts to dissipate back to their tables, crisis averted. Kiara keeps assuring the manager there’s no harm done. “Kiara doesn’t need us gawking at her.”

“ We aren’t the ones gawking,” says Austin. Despite the fact that everything’s fine and no one’s dead, his body is rigid and tense next to mine. He nods toward Kiara’s exes.

Evan, Radhika, and Tayla have me in their sights: brown eyes, brown eyes, blue eyes.

Evan’s expression betrays nothing when their eyes slide away from mine. Unease strikes me hard and fast. My belly squirms. Evan’s never avoided me before.

Radhika watches me with a disquieting, probing intensity. She scrunches up her whole face like she’s trying to remember my name, which is just plain insulting, then whispers something to the redhead at her side.

To my surprise, Tayla isn’t preening under the glowing attention of saving her best friend’s life.

While the whole crowd is looking at her, commending her quick action, her eyes skewer me.

It’s rather disconcerting, considering she’s looked at me more tonight than she has all year so far.

She reaches back to tighten her ponytail and brush some stragglers away from her temples.

Without breaking eye contact, she says something in that usual dispassionate way she has that makes Radhika nod.

Both girls look determined.

Foreboding wiggles its way between my shoulder blades, sharp and prickling.

Caroline slips her hand into mind and holds tight. “Tree house?”

Relief whooshes through me. I nod, tearing my gaze away from the trio of exes. “Tree house.”

“I’ll grab our food,” says Austin. In a low voice, he asks me, “What’s up with Tayla?”

“You mean Darth Barbie? She’s been giving me the creeps all night.”

Without meaning to, my eyes flick to Kiara. She’s repeated she’s okay a dozen times by now, and yet all I want is to hear her say it again for nothing more than my own peace of mind.

She catches me looking. She tilts her head, almost like she’s waiting for me to go over and say something.

Me, not Devon. The boy sitting at a table with his friends, laughing and stuffing his face with jalapeno poppers.

He doesn’t spare Kiara a glance or vice versa.

I don’t get it; how has their whole relationship changed so drastically in one day?

I swallow. To be fair, all it takes is one sentence to change a life. I should know.

A waitress is cleaning Kiara’s booth, whisking away all evidence of the pizza. Suddenly, I realize Kiara is still holding the clump of napkins and the almost fatal olive pit. My stomach twists.

When Caroline pulls me away, I force my feet to move in the opposite direction of where I really want to be.

I don’t look back.