CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

If my life were a poem, it'd be a sonnet on sorrow. It'd start by posing a question, dwelling in worry and anxiety, wondering and whining. In the first octave, it'd be drowning in anaphora, the same concerns, the same events, repeating themselves over and over. It'd have a harsh, trochaic metre that jars the teeth as it leaves the mouth.

And then, quite suddenly, it would turn. The octave would dissolve into a sestet, filled with answers, conundrums solved and concluded. It'd be overflowing with polysyndeton, the conjunctions making it run inexorably towards it's final line, final word, final breath.

If my life were a poem, I'd be at the turning point. I've been floating in repetition for longer that I can remember, forced back to the beginning again and again and again. Then I dreamt, I remembered, and now everything is picking up speed, about to launch forward.

I'm thinking this as the English teacher talks, drones like an audio recording, on poetry. I'm thinking this and boiling with frustration, the heat of it spilling from my mouth and nose every time I exhale. The world has picked up pace again, cleared itself of sluggishness and started sprinting – and I've been chained to the start line.

When I regained consciousness after last night's events, I was at home, lying on my bed. Patrick and Kalea's battered house were a blurry memory hovering at the edge of my mind.

Sitting up I found Katherine leaning against the wall, eyes closed. It was the same wall that had once worn a word in blood, but was now smudged and stained brown, the letters scrubbed off. "What happened?" I asked into the quiet.

Katherine's eyes blinked open. She regarded me coolly. "I don't have the full story, but from what I've gathered, this is what happened: Patrick knocked me unconscious, Kalea either fled or was captured, and you were either knocked out or passed out. When I recovered, Patrick was gone and you were lying sprawled in the doorway. I took us home. Mind filling in the gaps?"

I rubbed my eyes wearily with one hand. "I..." The memory of last night rose up foggy in my brain. "I told Kalea to run before Patrick could get to her. She – went someplace hidden, I think. I hope. Then–" Then I tired from using my powers and fell into unconsciousness. "Then Patrick got to me and knocked me out when I wouldn't tell him where she went." I paused. "He must have left after that."

"He just got up and walked out?" Katherine's eyes brimmed with confusion – and hope. "With the two of us lying there?"

He could have killed us, but he didn't. He could have captured us, but he didn't. He probably should have done one or the other, but he did neither. I recalled the Patrick from my most recent memory, the one who cared for my father and his family. Could that same empathy still be there, buried deep down?

"Listen," I said. "Things have changed. I saw another one of my memories while I slept last night."

"What of?"

"The Curse. The creation of the Limit."

Katherine frowned as she approached and sat down on the end of the bed. "You were there?"

"I was more than just there. I was part of it."

She shook her head. No way, she was saying. "How? You were barely four years old."

"Michael cast it in our backyard on the farm. You weren't home. Keon turned up halfway through – he'd been tipped off by Patrick – and while the both of them had been distracted, I'd completed the curse."

"Melissa, to complete a curse, you need hex manipulation. You don't have that ability."

"As far as we know."

Katherine exhaled and tipped back her head as it all sunk in, all the various puzzle pieces she'd gathered over the years falling into place with a sole revelation. "This all explains a lot," she admitted. "I'd always thought it strange that we hadn't packed up and left before the fight started. It was like Michael has some inside knowledge he wasn't telling me about. When the battle everyone had been preparing for never happened, well, I guess I'd chalked it up to luck. And then when Michael started–" When he started to lose his mind. "It was an effect of maintaining the Curse. One that size, I'm surprised you didn't go crazy as well. Do you have any side-effects at all?"

"That's what I've been meaning to tell you. Or, I suppose, what I've been avoiding. Recently I've started tiring every time I use my powers. It's actually getting kind of bad." I laughed. Everything seemed so much each easier to deal with when it made sense.

Katherine was stoic. "You shouldn't be laughing. This is serious. We have to come up with a solution so this curse doesn't kill you."

"Easy. We break it."

"Melissa."

"Michael used some sort of stone to create it, I'm pretty sure. And he buried it in the backyard. All we have to do is head there and dig it up."

"Melissa, we're not breaking it."

"But shouldn't we at least get the stone? Make sure Keon doesn't get it?"

"He could do nothing with it. A curse, when bound through an object, must be broken by the person who bound it. Which is either you or Michael. And since Michael is dead..."

"...There's only me." I paused. "But what are we going to do about Caden? What about the note Keon left me?"

"We'll figure something out."

I stood up. "You always say that but you never do anything! The council is hopeless."

"Melissa, you know that's not true. They're deliberate. They're careful – something you're not."

"They're ineffective. They save lives by letting others die."

"It may seem that way from an outsider's perspective, but they do a lot of good work you don't see."

I crossed my arms. "Uh-huh. Like what?"

Katherine looked at me, pursing her lips, considering. After a good minute, she conceded. "We'll go to the farm tomorrow for the stone. Just us. No council involved." I opened my mouth to thank her but she held up a hand. "But, only if you allow me to hold onto it until I can figure out what to do. We can't break that curse. I need you to promise me you won't try to."

My relief and gratefulness sank back down, melting away. "If I don't break it then what's the point of getting the stone? Caden still dies. Sarah's still trapped. I'm still going to die or go crazy with the weight of the Curse. If anything, it makes things that much more painful."

"If we have the stone, we have options. We can transfer the Curse to someone else. We can alter it and trick the Anarkks into thinking its broken – long enough to save both Sarah and Caden." She nodded to herself, a plan forming in her mind. "The stone is our best shot. What do you say? Can you promise not to break it?"

I uncrossed my arms and wrapped them around my waist instead. I took a breath. Then I made a fateful decision and prayed to God it was the right one.

"I promise."

And so, of course, after I provided Katherine with the information she needed, she stuck me in school and went out to gather the stone on her own. Once a council member, always a council member.

-:-:-:-:-

I get a call around lunch.

"I can't find it." Katherine's voice comes through the speakers with magnified mechanical distress.

"The stone?"

"The house. I'm at the right spot, I'm sure of it. But it's not here."

"Maybe if you had another set of eyes you'd be able to find it. Come pick me up?"

"Nice try. I'm going to stay a while longer, do some more looking. Probably I just don't remember the area as well as I thought." She hangs up.

I slap my phone into my lap, frustrated. Sitting next to me at the lunch table, Roma asks, "What was that about?"

"Nothing," I say. When that doesn't visibly satisfy her curiosity, I add, "My mother."

Like the words hold some secret meaning, she replies, "Ah. Gotcha." Then a moment later around a mouthful of food, she continues, "You know, you don't talk about your family much. You really don't talk about much of anything. I feel like I barely know you."

I shrug. "I've only been at this school for a couple weeks."

"A couple weeks is a long time. Tell me something."

With a sigh, I turn to her. "What do you want to know?"

"Well, gosh. I don't know. What do you like to do? You do like doing stuff right? Like you have hobbies? Or is that not encouraged when you're home-schooled?"

"Of course I have hobbies. I like reading, I guess. It takes your mind off things."

"Not a party girl?"

"Not a party girl," I confirm.

"And what are your parents like?"

Which ones? I think bitterly. "My mum's cool. Frustrating as hell, but not controlling. My dad, well..." I laugh humourlessly. "He died."

Roma looks stricken. "God, I'm so sorry."

"It's fine. I didn't know him."

"He died before you were born?"

I'm looking right at her. "Yeah," I lie.

After a second, she announces overly cheerily, probably to compensate for the sudden decline in positive atmosphere, "Okay. Next question. What did you do over the summer? Do you go on infuriatingly boring family trips like I do with mine?"

What do I do over the summer? I've never had a summer that wasn't cut short by my disease. "You know," I say, "the usual things. The beach. Overseas holidays. Movies."

"You don't have many friends do you?" And then, realising how her question sounded, hurries on. "Not that I think you're a loner or anything. I just mean because of the whole home-school thing. Like you don't meet many people from within the walls of your home. Or maybe you do. Shit, sorry. I really shouldn't assume."

I laugh at her distress. "No, I don't have many friends. Just a few. But its alright."

"I'm really sorry."

"It's fine. Seriously. But to make it up to me, you could always tell me something about yourself. What's Romania like?"

Her eyes light up. "It's lovely. Honestly. The scenery is so, so gorgeous and the culture is so rich and–"

"Hey, Dracula," a boy sniggers as he walks past.

"Piss off, Luke," she replies, giving him the finger without even a glance in his direction.

I raise an eyebrow. "What was that about?"

"Oh, you know, just my sadistic ex." She rolls her eyes. "He thinks he's being original."

"Why Dracula?"

"He started spreading rumours that I'm the spawn of Dracula after we broke up. Because I was born near Transylvania," she clarifies. "As if people haven't used that before."

"Dracula died in the book, didn't he though? Even if he weren't fictional, he couldn't possibly have had a child in the twenty-first century."

Roma stares at me for a good two seconds before bursting out into laughter. "I'm sorry," she says, recovering. "It's just you're so serious about it. It's a joke, dude. Lighten up." She returns to her food, signalling that question time is over.

Lighten up. If only it were that easy.