From Bad to Cursed

I tried to get the curling iron out of her hands, but she yanked it away, ripping a whole section of hair out of her head. I pulled the cord from the outlet.

“Hey!” she protested.

Up close, her head was a mess of dark red welts. She gave off the sick, rancid smell of burning hair. My stomach shifted dangerously.

Her face crumpled. “I’m ugly,” she sobbed, holding the curling iron up against her cheek.

“Quit it!” I shrieked, snatching it from her hand and throwing it across the room. “Come on, you need to get to the hospital.”

“No!” she said, swinging her arms at me. “No, I can’t go out like this. I look terrible. Everyone will see.”

I couldn’t drag her. And I couldn’t leave her alone.

I thought about calling for help, but what would I say? How could I explain?

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Megan’s number. “Please pick up,” I mumbled. “Please.”

She did. “Lex, you know I’m in class, right?”

“I need you. In the four-hundred wing bathroom.”

She hesitated.

“Just get here,” I said. “No questions.”

While I was on the phone, Emily had started crawling across the floor, going after the curling iron again. I raced her to it and grabbed the metal end with my left hand just as she was grabbing the handle.

It took my brain a moment to feel the heat, and by then, my fingers had instinctively released it, splaying out like a spider having a seizure.

“Why did you do that?” Emily asked, cradling the curling iron and turning away from me. “I need this. I need to be beautiful. I’m not good enough.”

For a few long seconds, we stared at each other. She wouldn’t give it up without a fight. And I didn’t particularly feel like wrenching it out of her hands and getting burned again.

“Alexis? What are you doing?” Megan appeared in the doorway. She looked past me and saw Emily on the floor.

Megan switched into student-coach mode without missing a beat. She turned on one of the faucets. “Help me get her over here.”

As long as we didn’t try to take her precious curling iron, Emily didn’t mind being moved. She let us herd her to the sink, where we started scooping handfuls of cool water over the iron and her scalp.

“We need to get her out to my car,” Megan said. “I can drop her off at home.”

“At home?” I asked. “She needs to go to the hospital!”

“That’s not realistic, and we both know it,” Megan said. “Besides, Aralt will help her.”

As I was scooping, I rammed my injured hand into the faucet and gasped in pain.

Emily looked up at me. “Oh, no, Alexis…you burned your hand,” she said, her voice sorrowful. “That’s really going to hurt.”

Then she slowly lifted her eyes from the curling iron to her own reflection in the mirror.

And reached a hand up to her raw, burned scalp.

And screamed—

And screamed, and screamed.

This wasn’t the full-throated screeching of horror-movie victims; it was an endless wail of agony, thin and panicked, broken into shrieking yips like the cries of a wounded animal. It made your chest hurt all the way through to your spine just to listen to it.

Emily let the curling iron drop to the floor and went into a fit, ru

I went closer, to calm her down, but she lashed out at me.

“Emily,” Megan ordered, “sit still! And don’t touch my clothes—you’re filthy!”

Finally Emily’s wailing tapered off into a long whimper. Megan made a few phone calls, and within two minutes, Lydia, Kendra, and Paige had joined us.

“We need to get her out to Megan’s car,” Lydia said. “How can we do that without attracting attention?”

Emily, clearly in shock, sat perfectly still on the floor, like she was a polite stranger we’d brought in from the street, watching all of this happen to somebody else.

“Pull up as close to the exit as you can,” Paige said. “I’ll put my sweater on her head.”

I winced at the thought of anything touching that raw scalp. But everyone else was all for it. So a minute later, we were walking through the hallway, guiding Emily, who had a sweater wrapped around her in a vague imitation of a head scarf.

When Megan pulled up, we stuck Emily in the front seat. I reached across her and fastened her seat belt. “Are you sure you won’t take her to the hospital, Megan?” I asked.

Megan gave me a disapproving look. “Chill, Lex. We know she’ll heal.”

I backed away and closed the door, wishing I’d just yelled for help and let the teachers deal with it. But then the Sunshine Club girls would have known something was wrong—maybe even suspected that I wasn’t fully committed anymore.

Because we took care of our own business. That was just the way it worked.

After Megan had pulled away, Paige came up next to me. “You should go back to class. I brought your stuff.” She held out my purse but grabbed it back before I could take it. “Oh, you’re hurt!”

As soon as she pointed it out, the skin on my palm began to ache in a painful, torn-up way, like when you accidentally scratch a sunburn.

“I guess so,” I said. It hardly seemed like anything compared to Emily’s burns.

“Oh, well,” Paige said, hooking the bag over the upturned palm, “it’ll heal.”

As I walked back to my classroom, the security guard stopped me. “Did you hear any strange noises around here a few minutes ago?” he asked. “Would you duck into the ladies’ room and tell me if everything’s okay?”

I popped my head in and then forced my brightest smile. “It’s fine. Everything is perfectly fine.”

It was a short and relatively subdued Sunshine Club meeting that day; nobody stood up for Betterment.

When Adrie

I held my tongue, wanting to give things a chance to play out before attracting attention to myself.

Nobody asked how Emily was doing, but everybody knew she’d had to leave school. Nobody let on that anything was wrong. But we all knew something was.

In spite of the weirdness, Adrie

“You guys, I have wonderful news!” she said. “As of today, we’ll have twenty-two members…which means…we can graduate!”

Then the door opened and Paige escorted in the new member, presenting her to me like a 1950s housewife bringing out the Thanksgiving turkey:

Zoe.

As she took the oath, she was so eager, so guileless, I wondered how I could have ever been threatened by her. Everything about her shouted Love me love me love me!

“Anyone have anything to say before we wrap up?” Adrie

“Um,” Monika said, her hand half raised. “Where’s Tashi?”

Adrie

“All right,” Lydia said. “Here’s the thing. Tashi was starting to feel like the club was too much for her.”

There was a room-wide intake of air, the first half of a gasp.

“So…she quit.”

The silence was peppered with offended whispers; I distinctly heard Kendra say, “But Aralt gives us strength!”

“Listen,” Lydia said. “It’s not a big deal. It’s a shame, but it’s her choice. It doesn’t affect our graduation. And of course we wish her the best…right?”

A reluctant chorus of agreement rumbled up in answer.

“All right, everyone,” Adrie

Afterward, I went home and got ready for my final Young Visionaries interview. My hand was no less tender, so I put some aloe on it, to help Aralt along. When Mom asked what happened, I told her I’d burned it doing my hair.

“Ah, vanity,” she said. “It can be a dangerous thing.”