Page 116 of Bound By Fury

I shake my head as I perch on the edge of a love seat. “I’m okay, but thank you.”

She rolls her eyes playfully, waving her hand in the air. “I’ll grab you some water.”

As she leaves the room through an archway that faces the back of the house, something tugs at my pant leg. The small, tan dog runs circles around the coffee table, its stubby little tail wagging wildly as it stares at me.

“Hey, Petunia,” I coo, scratching behind his ears and laughing under my breath as he flops onto his side, his back legs kicking as he leans further into my touch.

“Oh yeah, he loves attention. He’s such a politician.” I raise my eyebrows in question at Maureen, who’s reentered the room. “He’s a no-good dirty bastard who’s willing to do anything for a scratch in the right place.”

The familiarity of her sass brings genuine laughter bubbling out of me for the first time in what feels like weeks.

“So,” she says as she sits, placing a mug filled with water on the coffee table in front of me. She spreads out her long, violet muumuu and crosses her legs. It’s clear she already knows why I’m here. That she knows something about this agonizing, terrifying thing I’ve been going through.

She looks at me expectantly.

I clear my throat, unsure of where to start. The faint, tart smell of berry tea drifts from her mug, and in the distance a clock ticks.

“First, I guess, I’m sorry for not stopping by sooner. I know you must be hurting, and I should have checked up on you.”

“No, don’t do that. It’s okay, honey. I know you’ve been going through a lot since… well, you know.”

I’m quiet, but she doesn’t try to fill the space. If there’s one memory I wish to zap from my mind forever, it’s my sixteenth birthday.

“Finding her like that…” Maureen looks at the wall. “I can’t imagine. You are so strong, Harper. Just like she was.”

I look down at my hands.

“But that’s not why you’re here to see me,” she says quietly. “Is it?”

I meet her eyes. I’ve yet to speak most of this aloud. I worry that this mystery has been the only thing keeping me upright. Will I still be standing when this is over?

“When Harper passed, I knew to expect your visit. But I must admit that, given the circumstances, I’m finding this more difficult than I expected. You just look so much like her. I—” She touches a shaking hand to her forehead. “I’ve missed her so much.”

There’s no use in trying to stop my tears at this point. Knowing that Gigi would have expected me to come here. And I’ve been so selfish, so focused on my own problems that I needed my possessed best friend to tell me via a Ouija board?

I can’t stand the thought that I’m not making Gigi proud, wherever she is. For every bit of me that is angry with her for leaving, there’s an equal part that’s scared she’s disappointed.

Maureen lifts her teacup to her face, eyeing me over the rim. “Loosen up.” She dabs her nose with a rose-printed handkerchief. “You look like you’re sittin’ on a can of haul ass.”

I wipe my clammy palms against my jeans. “S-sorry, it’s just… I’ve got something to ask you, and I’m not too sure how to, uh, go about it.”

Her face remains neutral even though I speak slowly in the hopes of gauging her reaction. “Ever since Gigi died, I’ve been having these intense feelings. At first I thought I was crazy. I thought maybe it was all in my head, but now… now I think—I think maybe all those stories she’d tell me about magic, about the stars, all the things my mom forbade her to share with me, the things I’d slowly forgotten over time… I’m beginning to wonder if it’s all true.”

My hands are going to wring themselves into a bloody mess. “It all started with this incident at Dawson’s… I thought, like, surely… it couldn’t be, you know? But now I’ve got this—this—”

Maureen’s eyes round with sympathy. “Power.”

“Yes! Power! And at first I didn’t understand what was happening, but eventually I just kind of knew, and, well—things happen when I get upset. The weather changes. It feels like I’ve got lightning in my bones. Like I’ve got electricity thrumming under my skin, and it just builds and builds until I can’t control it anymore, until it explodes out of me.

“Sometimes I see things that are impossible. Feel and hear things that should be impossible. I’ve tried to explain it away, but it’s no use. I know what I feel is real, and I think Gigi knew it too. That she might have felt it, too.”

I’m crying harder now, the stress of the last couple months pouring out of me “I’m so scared that I can’t sleep at night. I don’t know if you can help me, but we did this séance—”

“What did you just say?” Until now she’s nodded sympathetically, but at the mention of the séance, she sits straight up in her chair.

“We did a séance, and my friend got, like, possessed? Or something? And the spirit board spelled out your name. So I need you to tell me what’s going on, because if I don’t find answers soon, I’m afraid that I—I might not—”

There’s a heavy silence between us.