MISCHA

California smelled different than Wisconsin. I hadn't been expecting that; the rich, earthy aroma of sea and desert flowers greeting me every morning when I left the corporate hotel where Amanda and I were staying to travel to the gym. Leaving Wisconsin had made me hyper-aware of my own ignorance of a lot of things, like the geographic location of Long Beach.  Ever since the Wisconsin Pan Am Gymnastics Finals two months ago, I'd been imagining how sweet it would be to walk up and down Hollywood Boulevard and go star-spotting at Whole Foods in Santa Monica. It turns out Long Beach is pretty far away from Los Angeles and a lot less glamorous. It also turns out that there's not really any reliable form of public transportation connecting the two cities. Since Amanda had received a car for her sixteenth birthday that we'd been sharing since I'd gotten my own license, for the first time we were both feeling like kids at school who had to walk home up the hill. Totally helpless. Not having wheels sucked.

Despite the experience being nothing like how I imagined it, I was pretty psyched to be in Long Beach. The palm trees and balmy weather were a relief from the bleak harshness of Wisconsin winter. Patches of snow still holding fast in their positions on the ground and heavy gray skies had made the trip home for my father's funeral even more devastating, especially because it was April already and the rest of the country was enjoying an early spring. Amanda and I had only been in California getting accustomed to our rigorous new practice schedule for two weeks when Mom called us with the bad news. Hearing Mom say that Dad had experienced a heart attack at the dealership in Ortonville was the hardest thing I'd ever endured, partially because I wasn't surprised. At the very center of my beating heart I'd known for weeks that the call was coming and I'd been dreading it; believing that if I just didn't think about it, perhaps it wouldn't happen.

I lay in my bed watching the dark sky through my window, trying to enjoy the fifteen minutes I had to myself before my alarm went off at 4:45. Although I'd brought a lot of stuff with me from home to cheer the place up a little, my room still felt kind of like a hospital room. On the mirror along the wall over my small desk, I'd stuck photos of me and Matt from Homecoming, pictures of me with my friends Olivia and Candace at Six Flags' Great America, and my family's Christmas photo card from last year. A pile of my stuffed animals from home topped my bed and I'm sure they annoyed the maids who came in to clean up every morning after Amanda and I left for practice. The cinnamon stick-scented plug-in air freshener did little to mask the antiseptic stench. More than once I'd considered pinning a purple sheet up over one of the nasty beige walls to make it look more like my purple bedroom at home, but that would have required me to find someone willing to drive me to Target to buy a purple sheet and thumbtacks, which was, like, basically never gonna happen.

I yawned deeply, the ache in my muscles that tormented me persistently reminding me of its presence. Amanda and I had always worked our bodies hard, but these last three weeks since we'd started training with Coach Armoudian, I felt like I'd aged fifty years. When I fell into bed at night, the full impact of the abuse I'd put my muscles through bloomed like a giant bruise covering every part of me. In the mornings, even standing up for the first time hurt so much I could barely stand it. So instead of getting up, I lingered just a little longer, allowing my mind to venture into territory I didn't explore once the sun was up.

The memory of hugging my mom tightly at the airport yesterday came back to me so strongly that my throat swelled with the urge to cry. It didn't feel good to have left her alone in Wisconsin. When we'd gotten back from the cemetery two days ago after Dad's funeral, I had ignored all of the guests who'd followed us to the house for a luncheon served by the church board of St. Monica's... even my own boyfriend, Matt, who'd come with his parents. Instead of thanking everyone for paying their respects to my dad and serving sparkling apple cider like a good little hostess, I'd marched up to my room. I'd changed out of my black dress and into pajamas and had crawled into bed and pulled my purple comforter over my head. Not an hour had passed before Amanda crept up the stairs and crawled into bed next to me.  "I don't think we should leave Mom," she had said, and I knew she was right. Our parents, unlike almost all of my friends' parents, were still happily married. My mom was too young and pretty to refer to herself as a widow. She'd joked when she and Dad had dropped us off at the airport to leave for California two weeks earlier that she wasn't ready for Empty Nest Syndrome, and now she didn't even have Dad to keep her company around the house.

But Mom had been adamant even before the wake and funeral that Amanda and I get back to our training in Long Beach. "Your father wouldn't have wanted you to get this close to achieving your dream and quit," she reasoned through her tears.

So yesterday, two days after we left Dad's casket in the mausoleum in the St. Monica's cemetery, Mom drove me and Amanda back to Green Bay for our return flight to Long Beach. Tzara Armoudian, our coach's spray-tanned wife, met us in Long Beach and drove us back to the Courtyard Hilton where Amanda and I shared an apartment suite down the hall from several of Coach Armoudian's other gymnasts who were training for the Olympic trials. When Amanda had turned on the lights in our cramped, stale suite that still gave off the odors of new construction—drywall and new carpeting—it felt kind of like we'd stepped back onto our spaceship bound for Mars.

Early mornings were the only time of day when I was truly alone and dared to consider what had become of my life since January. I had eight more minutes before my alarm went off, and even if I tapped snooze, Amanda's alarm would be going off in unison on the other side of the wall. I'd never yet dared to sleep in, but even if I did, I knew she'd bang on my door until I got up. Although we were both excited beyond belief to be competing in the Olympic trials in June, there was a tiny part of both of us that still longed to rebel. At the Austin Straubel airport yesterday our eyes had wandered around greedily, both of us eyeballing the candy bar assortment at the gift shop and suppressing the urge to reach into our purses for loose change. It would have been understandable—perfectly normal, in fact—for me to have refused to get up that morning and get back into the practice routine I'd fallen out of for the last five days.

But I knew I would get up when the alarm went off, drink a glass of juice, and follow Amanda down to the lobby where Coach Armoudian and Tzara would be waiting in their idling van. That was what a girl who was serious about becoming an Olympic medalist would do, even if her father had passed away suddenly less than a week ago. Even if she, herself, was responsible for his death.

One minute 4:43. Two more minutes of dark privacy before I had to fight against my stiff muscles to sit upright and tug on socks. Just as I was about to close my eyes and try to get the most relaxation out of my last two minutes of peace for the day, I noticed a faint glimmer of light in my window. A flash of dread seized me. At first I hoped I was imagining things; surely they couldn't be back so soon, making demands on me after their recent punishment. That wasn't even fair! I hadn't had time to grieve the loss of my father. But when I blinked and looked closely, I knew my dread was justified. The glimmer grew more profound, and when it took its final familiar shape as a bright orb of light, it split as it always did into five smaller orbs that spread out in a horizontal line across the window.

So, they were indeed back. The orbs of light only appeared when they wanted something, I'd learned in the two short months that they'd been a part of my life. I wondered often if they had appeared to Violet in the same way back when they were her problem to deal with. The last time they'd appeared to me was almost two weeks ago, not long after we'd arrived in Long Beach. That time, I'd made the profound mistake of telling them no. I'd known as the word left my mouth that there would be a steep price for my refusal. But I'd been dumb enough to think that whatever evil force powered those orbs of light would actually have mercy on me and understand that my focus had to be on my training. As if evil gave a crap about the Olympics. Maybe the power the lights had given me had enabled me to make it this far in my training by clearing the path, but the time had come for me to stop playing silly fortune-telling games with other gymnasts and focus on getting stronger. Unfortunately, they hadn't seen it that way.

The five small orbs danced in place on the glass of my window pane for a few seconds, before they slowly reorganized themselves into two medium orbs. Two. Two. The same order they'd given me before they'd made good on their threat to kill my dad. Rage burned so brightly in my chest that I felt like I had heartburn. They wanted me to go out and play the game twice, bring them two souls. For them, this was just business as usual. It was as if nothing at all had changed since the last time they'd issued this order. As if killing my dad to punish me meant nothing to them at all.

Two. The orbs remained steadfast on my window, as I knew they would, until I uttered the word, "two" at them to confirm that I understood their order. But I couldn't bring myself to say the word just yet. I wondered if this is how they had communicated their order to Violet when they'd requested Olivia's soul. Candace's. Mine. I wondered if they'd requested three or four, and if it had been four, she'd been terrified the morning after Olivia's birthday party that she'd failed to successfully tell a story about McKenna Brady. Knowing now what Violet's life had been like for the last two years, I would have been terrified if I were her and had failed to deliver a fourth.

Only, now I knew what happened when I refused. Violet had never dare to challenge them the way I had. Both of her parents were healthy and safe back at home in Weeping Willow.

"Two," I finally said moments before my alarm clock went off. Satisfied with my response, the orbs disappeared abruptly in the window just as my alarm sounded.

I leaned back against the pillow, suddenly breathing raggedly from the early morning anxiety. Two. Two souls. This was not going to be a simple task, and I'd never yet been able to figure out if there was a time limit on these orders. The first time the lights had appeared to me had been when I was hiding out at Bachitar Preet's yoga retreat in downtown Chicago. I hadn't really understood what the lights were implying, but had only a general sense that they wanted three of something from me. Their appearance had coincided with my sudden revelation that when I was playing cards in silence with the other women staying at the retreat, I always knew which cards they were holding. If I focused on any of their cards in particular, I could levitate the card with my thoughts. With practice, I could split a stack mid-air with my thoughts.

And most excitingly, when I looked into a woman's eyes, without even exchanging a word with her, I could envision with crystal clarity exactly how she would one day die.

I didn't realize the first couple of times I told fortunes for the women and revealed their deaths to them that I was actually enabling the death that the lights had assigned to them. Most of those women had taken a vow of silence for the duration of their stay at Preet's Wellness, so they listened with round eyes and smiled appreciatively at the stories I would tell. It was a week after I left the center and returned to my parents' house before I realized what I had done. My mother had left the television on in the living room and I just happened to pass by when a story came on about a woman in Chicago who was pushed out of the window of her high-rise apartment building. The details of the broadcast were so similar to what I had envisioned in my head for one of the women at Preet Wellness that I stopped breathing. The woman had come home late from work and surprised a burglar who had broken into her apartment posing as a repairman. He'd pushed her through a large window during their struggle.

Then, the newscaster revealed a corporate portrait of the woman who had died, and I recognized her instantly as one of the women who had been at Preet at the same time as me. She was an attractive middle-aged woman who had taken a leave of absence from her career in finance to find balance with Bachitar.

Then, everything fell into place in my head. The full picture of what the lights had done and how I'd followed their command. I wasn't sure if the woman's destiny had always been to die accidentally during a home break-in and perhaps by playing Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board with her using a deck of cards, I'd hastened it... or if maybe she was really supposed to have lived until old age, and the death she suffered had been assigned to her by the five orbs of light, and manifested by my stupid game.

My spine creaked in protest as I sat up and slapped off my alarm. Two. Where was I going to find two willing game players now that I was back in Long Beach? I couldn't keep playing fortune-telling games with other gymnasts. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that something was very, very wrong if all of the Portnoy sisters' competition for the trials began dying off before June. Amanda and I had limited access to other people; we spent thirteen hours a day training at the gym, ate dinner at the Armoudians' house with the four other gymnasts working with our coach, and then were dropped off at our hotel at eight o'clock at night. Most of the time I spent an hour barely able to keep my eyes open while I did homework, and spoke with Matt on Skype for about five minutes before I went to bed. It wasn't like I had an entire high school full of gullible fools at my disposal, like Violet had. It also wasn't like I could just set up a card table at the mall offering to tell fortunes to absolute strangers if I got really desperate; there were absolutely no gaps of time in my schedule when I could have slipped away from Tzara.

Two souls were going to be difficult to procure.

And now I knew that if I didn't do whatever the orbs of light wanted, something would happen to my mom just as bad as what had happened to my dad. Then Amanda and I would be orphans. Then I'd have to live with the burden of knowing I'd killed both of my parents by getting myself involved in a deeply evil curse simply by playing a stupid, stupid game with a dumb bitch at a sleepover party.

With searing pain, I leaned over to retrieve my balled-up socks from the floor, and crossed my right leg over my knee to put one of the socks on. Hatred for Violet Simmons surged in every single cell of my body. I hated that girl for entering our lives. Six months earlier, all I ever wanted in life was to make that girl pay for what she'd done to me and my best friends. Now that she'd somehow cruelly transferred her curse to me, finding a way to get rid of it had to take priority over ruining her life.

The timing is just bad, I kept reassuring myself. I have to just keep doing what they want until I can figure out way to end this.  The only problem was that I wasn't going to have time to figure out how to end things until after the Olympic trials in June, and if I actually made the team, probably not until the end of the summer. It was selfish, I knew, to prioritize my own success as a gymnast over the lives of others. But it sure didn't feel like I had much of a choice other than to keep going, especially after watching my mother's body shake with sobs as my father's casket was carried out of St. Monica's by his brothers and his college roommate.