“I’m so sorry all this is happening to you,” she said.
“Ain’t no thing,” I said, but we both knew that itwasa thing, and that it was a thing that really sucked.
“I know why you came here,” Vira said.
“Because I love you and I missed you and I wanted to spend time with someone who doesn’t think I did something to Annabella?”
“Nope. Because you want to solve a murder and you know the best way to start—”
“Oh no.”
“—is by contacting the spirit world and giving them a quickhello, how do you do?”
I groaned. Vira slid off the bed and crossed the room to her closet, standing on tiptoes to pull something down from the top shelf.
Vira’s Ouija board was made of wood the color of stained tea, and it saidTalking Boardacross the top in curved letters. The wordyeswas written in the top left corner, the wordnowas written in the top right. At the bottom:Good-bye. The middle of the board held the alphabet and the numbers, zero through ten. The planchette was cool when Vira placed it into my hands. She set the board on the bed and arranged it just so between us. Then she sat down again and looked at me expectantly.
“You know how I feel about this,” I said.
How I felt about it: very creepy.
I wasn’t entirely convinced that the spirit world was so easily accessible that an old wooden board would suffice to serve as mediator between this plane of existence and theirs, but if thatwerethe case, I also wasn’t entirely convinced that was a good thing to play around with. And I didn’t know what sort of spirits would be so eager to talk to two teenaged girls sitting on a flooded island in the middle of a rainstorm, anyway, but I couldn’t imagine it would be the good ones.
“What do you intend to accomplish here?” she asked,even though technically this wasn’t even my idea. But I knew intentions were important. Especially when it came to creepy things like Ouija boards. Intentions were everything.
“I want to ask about Annabella’s killer,” I said. “Who killed Annabella? And where was my sister the night it happened?”
She took my hand and maneuvered it and the planchette onto the board.
I suddenly didn’t feel well; my belly ached with some vague discomfort and my palms felt a little sweaty.
“Vira?”
“I’m concentrating.”
The room felt suddenly warmer, like the candles were throwing off more heat than their tiny flames would suggest.
“Vira, is something happening?”
“Who killed Annabella?” Vira said, but she wasn’t talking to me, she was directing her words toward the board between us. We both had the tips of our fingers on the planchette and the absolute scariest part of how it jumped into motion is that I knew Vira would never, ever push it. She took this shit way too seriously.
“That’s not me, that’s not me,” I said.
“I know, shush,” Vira said. She looked positively radiant, alive with excitement.
The planchette moved to point at the letterE.
The planchette moved to point at the letterV.
I wished desperately that it would spell out something non-sinister and light, like how about:E-V-entually the rain will stop and Annabella’s death was just a joke, she’s actually fine and well and also you guys are totally safe and everything is great!!!!!!
The planchette moved to point at the letterI.
The planchette moved to point at the letterL.
Evil.
Of course the planchette spelled out the wordevil, because life could never be calm and easy, life always had to be scary and dangerous and mean. The planchette kept moving.
