Poison Princess

single episode.

This made sense. After all, I hadn’t experienced my usual hallucination symptoms. Last spring, whenever I’d been vision-bound, I’d felt a bubbly sensation in my head and nose, as if I’d drunk a carbonated soda too fast—

“What the hell, Greene?” Mel charged in. “You’re scared of bees now?”

I shrugged, hating to lie to her. Would she notice my shaking?

“You have been acting so weird since you got back from Hotlanta. Even slooowwwer on the uptake than you were last spring. Nervouser, too.” Mel’s eyes widened. “Oh, I get it. Did your friends at deportment school learn you good about high-dollar drugs?”

I rolled my eyes.

“I’m serious. So help me God, if you are doing drugs”—Mel pointed to the ceiling—“without me, there will be consequences, Evie Greene!”

“I swear to you that I’m not doing illicit drugs.”

“Oh.” She backed down, appeased. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine now. I fell asleep, and when I woke up there was a bee right on my face.” The lie tasted like chalk in my mouth.

“Oh, shit! Why didn’t you say so? I was about to schedule a carefrontation with you.”

“I don’t . . . just a bee . . .” I trailed off because ivy was climbing through the raised window behind Mel. Growing before my eyes, it began to slither down the wall.

Like a long green snake—

The bell rang. The ivy retreated, taking with it a big chunk of my sanity.

“I’ll go get our things,” Mel said. “Meet you at your locker.” But at the door, she turned back. “Hey, buck up. You look like somebody died.” As I tried to move my lips in a response, she breezed out the door.

Evie Greene, version 1.0, RIP.

4

DAY 4 B.F.

As I sat waiting for Mr. Broussard’s history class to start, I sketched in my contraband drawing journal and tried to ignore Jackson, sitting a couple of rows behind me.

Easier said than done. Everything about him seemed to demand my attention. Especially since he and that boy Gaston had started talking about girls—namely Jackson’s many lady friends, his gaiennes.

So in the Basin, Jackson was a player? You’re in a different league now, Cajun.

I resumed drawing my latest nightmare. Three out of the last three nights, I’d dreamed of the red witch’s gruesome killings.

Drawing was not something I did for fun, but more a compulsion—as if I feared a bad memory had to mark a page or it would stain my brain.

As my thoughts drifted, my pencil began to move. I flicked my wrist for slashing lines, slowly shading elsewhere, and the witch’s latest victim took shape—a man hanging upside down from an oak limb, trapped in thorny vines.

Unlike the delicate, shy ivy I’d encountered in the bathroom yesterday, the ones that bound him were thicker, barbed lashes that coiled around him like an anaconda. And the witch controlled them, making them squeeze tighter each time the man released a breath.

Those thorns bit into his flesh, a thousand greedy fangs. I painstakingly carved edges as I darkened those barbs, sharpening them.

The witch forced the vines to constrict, tighter, tighter, until his bones cracked—and blood poured.

She wrung it from that man like water from a rag. . . .

Cracking, squeezing. He had no breath to scream. One of his eyeballs burst from its socket, tethered to his skull by veins. As I sketched that, I wondered if he could still see out of it.

With drawings like this, it was easy to see why my journal had been my downfall before.

When I’d first complained of tingling sensations in my head and blurred vision, Mom had taken me to a slew of doctors for CT scans and tests, all negative. Throughout it all, I’d been able to disguise from everyone how bad the hallucinations had been. Then Mom had discovered my journal.

I’d trusted her, coming clean about my apocalyptic delusions. Big mistake.

After gaping in horror at page after page—of ash and devastation, of slimy bogeymen teeming among blackened ruins—she’d begun connecting the dots. “Don’t you understand, Evie? Your hallucinations are things that your grandmother taught you when you were little. Those doomsday kooks you see on the street? She’s not much different from them! Looking back, I can see that she . . . she indoctrinated you with these beliefs. I know, because she tried to do it to me!”

I’d been sunk. You can deny being insane all you want, but when a parent has hard copies of your crazy on file—and you’ve got a family history of mental illness—you’re screwed.

Mom had yanked me out of my sophomore year a couple of weeks early, then driven me to CLC. The docs there had stuck me in the same track they used for kids rescued from cults.

My deprogramming had started with a single question: “Evie, do you understand why you must reject your grandmother’s teachings . . . ?”

I’d given that doc an answer, slurring from the mind-altering meds they’d pumped into me. But I couldn’t quite recall my reply—

Gaston distracted me again, asking Jackson about his latest doe tag. Cajun for scoring?

I sneaked a glance at Jackson over my shoulder. On his desk, he had only the history text, a few sheets of loose-leaf paper, and a single pencil clutched in his big, taped fist. His expression was smug as he replied, “Embrasser et raconter? Jamais.” Kiss and tell? Never.

I gazed heavenward with irritation, then turned back to my journal, finishing another detail on my sketch—the man’s other eyeball succumbing to the pressure, dangling beside the first.

But Gaston’s next question drew my attention once more. “T’aimes l’une de ces filles?”

Did Jackson like any of the girls here?

His deep-voiced answer: “Une fille, peut-etre.” One, maybe.

Again I felt his eyes on me. Earlier Mel had asked, “Does he really think he’s got a shot at you?”

I kind of believed he really did.

Yesterday, I’d decided to give him a wide berth. Not so easily done. Unlike most boys, Jackson returned to his locker after every class. To be fair, his stops could’ve been for flask refills.

But sometimes he would take a drink, then turn to me with his lips parted, like he was about to ask me something.

I always gave him a cool smile, then strode off. And the Cajunland player seemed surprised that I was immune to his charms. Granted, he was attractive—some girls sighed as he passed them. . . .

Acting like I was fascinated with the classroom’s many wall maps, I glanced over my shoulder to gauge his looks once more.

His gaze was already on me. As we took each other’s measure, sunlight beamed through the window, striking his handsome face, highlighting his gray eyes and chiseled features.

With those cheekbones, squared jaw, and raven-black hair, he probably had Choctaw or Houma ancestry.