Maria’s attention snapped back to her friend, and she realized that he wasn’t just angry — he was furious.
“What are you talking about?” Maria said. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.” Her voice was so confident in this deception, it made her a little queasy.
“It’s the ring. Somehow you used that ring and you made that happen. Your eyes were totally black and you were — you were whispering. Talking to them.”
“Come on, Derek. You don’t really believe that.”
“You’re right,” he said icily. “I can’t believe you just dragged me all the way here so I could watch you ruin someone’s party. And I can’t believe that now you’re trying to lie to me about it.”
Maria felt tears collecting at the corners of her eyes. Derek had never talked to her this way, and it made all the bad things that had happened in the past week even worse. Or maybe it was just that all the hurt of the week hadn’t fully caught up to her yet, but the shock of her best friend yelling at her made the reality impossible to ignore.
“No, Derek, listen —” she said, but he’d already turned around.
“Find your own way home,” he said, stomping away. “Maybe your spiders will help you.”
The spiders are your friends. Do not abuse their friendship.
Tonight, the spiders weren’t the only ones whose friendship Maria had abused. She hadn’t meant to let things get this far. Or, no, she had meant to — she’d just wanted a happier outcome.
Go away, she thought, seeing that a number of the spiders, her spiders, still lingered around Claire and the cake. Now.
She waited behind the pool house long enough to see that they obeyed her, and to see that Claire was waking up. Instantly, people crowded around her to ask if she was okay. Maria couldn’t believe it: Even her humiliation was a cause for sympathy, another reason to worship her. If Maria had passed out at her own birthday party, people would be laughing behind her back — and to her face — for weeks.
Before anyone could see her, Maria hurried back down the gravel path through the woods. She didn’t need the spiders to tell her where to go, but they appeared to lead the way anyway, scurrying in and out of her feet as she ran. She made sure not to step on any of them, even though it would have been so easy to. They were what Maria deserved. They were her only friends now.
Maria was so distracted staring at her feet, she didn’t notice the man in the black silk suit until she ran right into him.
She landed on her back. Quickly, she scrambled backward on the palms of her hands and tried to get a good look at the man in front of her.
With trembling lips and a face like a frightened rabbit’s, he seemed to be even more surprised than she was.
Maria realized that she had seen this man before, at her grandmother’s funeral. He’d been the one who’d disappeared in a cloud of shadow. There in one blink, gone the next.
He did it again now — poof, like magic — and the shock was so great it left Maria stunned. She had no idea how this man kept vanishing, but she was starting to have a pretty good idea of who he might be.
Getting to her feet, she brushed herself off. Her mom would be worried when Maria got back so late, but without a phone, she didn’t really have a choice.
She put one foot in front of the other, and began the long walk home.
The spiders watched her as she went.
As long as the walk was, Maria would have done it all over again, right now, with her eyes closed, if it meant she didn’t have to open the front door. But her legs ached and her eyes stung. If she wanted to get to her bedroom, she had to pass through the living room first. Maria took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Where in the world have you been, young lady?” her mother shouted, jumping up from the couch as if she’d been shot out of a cannon. She was fully dressed, even down to her hiking boots. Normally she’d be in sweatpants and a T-shirt by now.
“I had to walk all the way home from Claire’s party. Maybe if I had a cell phone —”
“Oh, no, you are not blaming this on me. You were supposed to be at the store, and then you were supposed to come home. Derek’s dad called me in a fit at seven because you two were supposed to have walked straight to their house. And then, he called me to say that Derek showed up with no idea where you were.”
“That’s because he left me,” Maria said quietly.
“Left you where?”
“I told you, at Claire’s party.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Maria! I know for a fact you were not at Claire’s party. I had to go pick up your brother from her house after there was some kind of accident. He’s back in his room now, and if you’d like to bring him out here and ask him whether you and Derek were at that party, be my guest.”
“What, so you and Rafi can gang up on me, like always?” Maria said, her voice rising in a shrill crescendo. She felt ridiculous now in her black party dress, torn and dirty from her trek through the woods. It suddenly seemed like she was playing pretend, wearing the costume of an older girl from one of her stories. Right at this moment, she felt like she was eight years old.
“This has nothing to do with your brother,” her mother said. “This has to do with you not being where you were supposed to be and not telling anyone where you were.”
“You have no idea where Rafi is half the time! ‘He’s just over at Rob’s house,’ or ‘Oh, he’s outside, playing in the park,’ which could mean anywhere. You’re just mad at me because you think I’m weird, just like you thought Grandma Esme was weird. You think if I’m gone, I must be up to something bad.”
Her mother sighed and slumped back down onto the couch. She rubbed her temples like Maria was giving her a headache. Finally, in a voice that was quiet but no less severe, she said, “Go to your room. You are grounded until I say otherwise.”
“Good!” Maria shouted, now trying to sound unhinged on purpose. “I love being grounded!”
She stormed down the hallway, stopping when she found Rafi peeking his head out of his room. He looked scared.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“What do you care?” Maria snapped. She threw open her door and slammed it behind her. She paced back and forth in front of her bed, which usually calmed her down but now only worked her into more of a rage. She came to a halt in front of her mirror and glared at her reflection. She cut quite a frightening figure in her ragged black dress. There was a smudge on her face that looked like ash.
She wasn’t playing dress-up. She really was the shadow queen, evil powers and all. And shadow queens didn’t let mothers or brothers tell them what to do. What did Mom and Rafi know about being an outcast? What did they know about being abandoned by their friends?
Maria’s thoughts continued down this spiral until her exhaustion finally caught up with her. She lay down on top of her comforter and fell into a sleep riddled with nightmares. Over her head, the spiders kept spinning, adding rows and layers to their web, unnoticed.
The whispers in her head finally woke Maria up, rising and rattling over one another like distant rain. She’d gone to sleep wearing the ring again. The correlation seemed obvious. If she took off the ring now, she would stop hearing the spider voices.