Black Candle

Before local news features a one-year-later interview with your mom and your aunt, both of them grey-haired, grey-faced, grey; and before the last flyer on the telephone pole by the cineplex disintegrates, leaving only a tack and half your smile and the fragment MISS-; and before Jessica starts wearing a cross and transfers to St. Margaret’s without telling us; and before Emily starts holding hands with your boyfriend because the poor guy is shattered, she says, just shattered; and before we start avoiding your street on the walk home from school; and before we walk past your house that first week and your mom’s at the window and she half stands and waves and we wave back and walk faster; and before our parents pick us up from Emily’s that morning and we turn to see your mom sagging between two police officers and our parents murmur Don’t look; and before the police arrive at Emily’s and demand to know everything we did the night before, everything, when was the last time we saw you, do you have a boyfriend, were you upset about anything, and Jessica throws up all over the rug and the sofa and herself; and before Emily’s parents fry up skillets of bacon and eggs and ask where you are, are you still asleep, and we say aren’t you down already; and before we awaken on Emily’s pink shag rug, swimming up through strange dark dreams of snarls and scraping, sulfur and smoke, to find your sleeping bag empty, singed and slashed and shedding fluff; before that, before all that, Emily lights the black candle and reaches under her bed and your face falls and you say Oh, we’re doing the Ouija again? and Jessica squawks like a chicken and we laugh. We laugh.