Fifth Curse Free

Every year, right before school started, my mom would drag me to this gross little flea market on the edge of town, ignoring my vehement protests. On the first day of school, while my classmates were comparing shiny new backpacks, the latest jeans, the trendy new accessory, I'd be lucky if my “new” clothes only had a couple stains. Yet every year, my mom had the audacity to act surprised to receive a call about another bullying incident. No kidding, Mom. I'd bully me too.

I trudged around the market, waiting for my mom to find me again, her arms laden with moth eaten rags. I paused at each booth, gazing at the clutter, hoping against my better judgment to find something cool. I stopped in front of an unguarded booth, rifling idly through the contents.

I picked up a goofy little ceramic frog, examining it more closely. Kinda fun, I guess. The pile of junk shifted at my touch and a small note card slipped out from under a moldy old paperback. The bold words printed at the top of the note card caught my attention.

“FIFTH CURSE FREE”

Below that, on the face of the card, were five empty lines. I picked it up, intrigued. The back was labeled “INSTRUCTIONS

Step One: On line, writing name of cursed.

Step Two: When sleeping, placing coin under pillow for results on day of waking.

Step Three: Fifth curse coming free to you.”

I rolled my eyes, not sure what was dumber, the idea of a magical curse notecard or the silly instructions that sounded like they'd been put through a bad translation app one too many times. But I didn't put the note card down. I guess it just seemed… kind of fun? I don't know. I wanted it.

I looked around, searching for the owner of the booth. No one nearby was paying any attention to the cluttered table, its contents, or me. I shrugged, slipped the card into my pocket, and strolled away quickly, keeping my steps casual. If they didn't care enough to watch their booth, that was their problem. When we finally arrived back home, a heap of gross old clothes in tow, I shoved the card in my desk, feeling a little ashamed of my impulsiveness. 

The school year started exactly as I'd predicted. On a good day I would slouch quietly from class to class, pretending I couldn't feel the disgusted glances boring into my back. Bad days… bad days were a whole different level of waking nightmare. My first truly bad day of this year was courtesy of Maddie Walsh. I had the misfortune of bumping into her while trying to navigate the crowded cafeteria. I tried to apologize and scurry away unobtrusively, but the damage was done. She spent the rest of the lunch period leading an increasingly raucous chant featuring a creative use of my name, a few choice swears, and the phrase “dirty little piggy”. She was creative, I'll grant her that. The chant echoed around the school for the rest of the day, haunting my every move. In the evening, I was slumped at my desk, trying to get the catchy, mean-spirited ear worm out of my head, when I remembered the card.

I dug it out of my drawer, feeling a little silly. But somehow, scrawling her name on the first line did make me feel a little better. That night, I felt a little ridiculous putting a nickel under my pillow, but what the heck, it couldn't hurt. In the morning, the coin was gone. I didn't have time to look for where it had rolled off to, but who needs a nickel anyway?

The first half of the school day passed relatively uneventfully, as well as I could reasonably hope for. I slunk into the cafeteria, my head low, trying not to draw any attention to myself. But when I looked up, Maddie was watching me closely, a fiendish look of glee in her eyes. Oh god. Here we go again. She grinned wolfishly at me, bringing her sandwich to her lips for a bite. As she bit into the bread, a shiny black spider scurried out, leaping onto her face. Before she could react, it delivered a vicious bite to her plump, red lower lip and another to her perfectly smooth cheek. She shrieked, slapping it away and clutching her face. The bites began to swell instantly, and she wailed piteously. By the time the ambulance arrived, her face was a swollen red mess, and the center of the bites had taken on the dark purple shade of dying flesh.

In the chaos that followed, I slipped into the background, blissfully unnoticed. For weeks, everyone was completely distracted, speculating about her fate. And when she finally returned, her face marred where the dead tissue had sloughed away, it was her turn to walk the halls with a target on her back. I had been bumped up one rung on the social ladder and I must admit, it was nice.

No good thing lasts forever, though. Eventually, I had the bad luck of being assigned to Bobby Vera's basketball team in gym class. We lost. Bobby Vera NEVER loses. I wasn't the only weak link on the team, but I was the only girl who Bobby had never drunkenly pawed at after a winning football game, so OBVIOUSLY it was all my fault. From then on, Bobby would go out of his way to find me in the halls between classes so he could shove me roughly into the lockers. 

By the time I got home, my shoulders and arms were covered in bruises and scrapes. I stalked around my bedroom, raging at the unfairness of it all, when suddenly I remembered the little card. I pulled it out, feeling vengeful but also a little embarrassed. What had happened to Maddie was a coincidence, not a curse. What kind of childish baby believes in magic? But then again, what was the harm in trying?

I wrote Bobby's name carefully and scrounged in the bottom of my backpack for some spare change. In the morning, the quarter was gone and I felt a curious mix of dread and excitement. I didn't cross paths with Bobby until after the second period. I was at my locker, trying to excavate my history homework from the pile of crumpled papers, when I looked up to see him coming up the stairs towards me, a fiendish glint in his eye. Our eyes met and I braced myself for the impending impact.

And then he was gone. There was a sickening crunch as he landed on the concrete below, followed by the dull thud of the crumbling concrete landing on and around him. 

The incident was the talk of the school for months. All anyone could talk about was “How's Bobby doing? When will he be back? How lucky was it that not one else was in that stairwell?”

Bobby did come back eventually, but as his motorized wheelchair whirled down the hallways, he was haunted by pitying looks and hushed whispers of his lost football scholarship. Another bump up the social ladder for me! My day-to-day life was almost pleasant. I even made a friend! A boy in my art class, who had sat silently next to me all year, started up a conversation one day and then we just…kept talking. I would sit, watching his dark eyes light up as he raved about a band we both liked or explained, in painstaking detail, the plot of his favorite movie that he wanted to show me. OK, OK, I'll admit it, I was hoping for a little bit more than friendship here! 

Could you really blame me for being less than pleased when Chloe Rosen, with her perky pigtails and her perkier… personality… started hanging around constantly, giggling at his lamest jokes, and yapping on about God knows what? I could feel myself gradually being pushed out of the picture as she wormed her way into his life like some skanky leech. Every time I heard her syrupy giggle I boiled with rage. I just couldn’t take it anymore!

My pen cut into the notecard with the force of scribbling her name. For Chloe, I had even gone to the trouble of getting a dollar coin. I hoped that a bigger coin would mean a worse curse, something truly awful that would wipe that cute little smile off her face. I guess I’ll never know though, because I never saw Chloe again. No one knew for sure what happened to her, but I heard whispers from people who lived near her about a cacophony of sirens in the middle of the night, followed by the loud rattle of one of those emergency helicopters. She never came back to school and her family moved away not long after that, their house solemnly empty until it was sold months later.

I did feel a little guilty, especially because I hated to see Adam so sad all the time. But… on the plus side… I got to be there to comfort him. He needed me! And if getting rid of Chloe was what it took to help him see that… was that really so wrong? If I had stopped myself there… I might have even been happy. 

The day that I fucked it all up was a beautiful day, one of those early spring days where you can feel the sun soaking into the cold earth and reviving it. We were chilling on the far edge of one of the empty sports fields, listening to music and enjoying the afternoon. After an extended silence, I impulsively blurted out a question that had been on the tip of my tongue for months. 

“Will you go to prom with me?!”

He looked up at me, a deer in the headlights.

“Oh. Uh..”

He stammered, blushing and not meeting my eyes. My heart sank heavily, and I didn’t give him a chance to crush my hopes any further. I leapt up, sprinting away, not stopping until I had reached my house. I spent the whole evening reviewing the interaction in agonizing detail. Why hadn’t I kept my stupid mouth shut? The look in his eyes… had it been pity? Disgust? Shock and horror at the prospect of dancing with a loser like me? All this time… I had thought that there was something growing between us. But he was just like the rest of them. I bet he was laughing at me behind my back, mocking me for daring to believe I’d made a friend. 

Gradually my sorrow transformed into bitter, spiteful. How dare he make me feel like this? It should be him suffering this pain, not me. I scratched his name into the card, placed a penny under my pillow, and fell asleep basking in the warm glow of revenge. The next day, I felt a twinge of guilt seeing the coin gone. But… small coin… small curse, right? Hopefully? 

He tried to intercept me in the hallway several times over the course of the morning, but I managed to avoid him, slipping down hallways and into bathrooms at opportune moments. But there was no getting past our adjacent assigned seats in art class. I hunched over my drawing, pretending to be so completely absorbed in my almost finished still life that I didn’t even register his presence. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him glance my way. 

“You know, you really should sign up for track.”

I squinted harder at my paper, not letting myself be charmed by the familiar joking tone. He cleared his throat awkwardly before continuing. 

“You caught me off guard yesterday… I… uh… I was trying to work up the courage to ask you, but I guess you beat me to it…”

I looked up at him in surprise, my heart hammering in my chest as I met his hopeful gaze. Before I could answer, before I could even really process what was happening, a bright red drop of blood fell from his nose, splattering his nearly finished drawing. As we both looked down at his ruined art, another drop fell, splashing into his upturned palm. He stood up, a desperate panicked look in his eyes, managing a few steps towards the door before he collapsed to the floor, his body spasming as blood flowed from him. 

I don’t remember too much after that. The only thing I remember is the vivid, inescapable image of his body on the floor, his pale bloodless face framed by a spreading halo of crimson. And the screaming. I remember the screaming. My screaming, I think. 

It was weeks before the haze of grief and regret lifted enough that I could even bring myself to think of that damn card. When I finally thought of it again, I tore through my room to find it, determined to destroy it like it had destroyed me. I was about to light it on fire when I realized, with a wave of horror, that a name had been neatly inscribed on the last line. My name. The fifth curse… My curse. Whatever it is, it can’t come soon enough.