Forbidden Fruit Read Free

if he still wants to date me, he shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a spooky surprise in this box. I mean, the package was wrapped appropriately, after all.
    “There’s a reason you can’t remember,” my mom tells me.
    Well, duh. Sadly, this is the most civil exchange I’ve had with her in years. Most of our discussions ended with me screaming you don’t understand anything and slamming into my room. In life, my mother was a pearl-clutching Southern belle, and I suspect she used to prowl our house, searching for proof that I’m a changeling. So in that respect, death eased the tension between us—yep, oblivion’s the ultimate icebreaker.
    “I was hoping you could clue me in.”
    “The pain you experience when you try to remember is a clue, Shannon. You can’t circumvent a spell before its time through sheer willpower or mental force. There could be…repercussions.”
    A spell? So somebody made me forget? What the hell. There are so many questions I should ask, but my energy is limited. The power to communicate with her is pulled directly from me in the form of life energy, and I suspect if I stretch my reserves too far, it might be lethal. Tonight’s not the time to find out.
    So I settle on asking, “Do you know who did this to me? Or why?”
    But the radio crackles, and I feel woozy. My mom’s gone. I desperately need a sugar rush or I’ll pass out. On hands and knees, I crawl over to the crate I keep stuffed full of chocolate. I’m pretty sure Maria thinks I’m bulimic. With trembling hands, I tear open a candy bar and cram it in my face. In a few minutes, I feel better. The black spots are gone, and my hands aren’t shaking anymore. Five years down the road, I’ll have rotten teeth and probably diabetes as well. They don’t warn you about this shit when you first start talking to dead people.
    I try to picture what it’s like on the other side; I’ve never queried a spirit on how it feels when I summon them. Is it a painful tug or more of a warm, delicious rush? I highly suspect I’m feeding them. Ew. I close my eyes for a few seconds, then turn off my radio, killing the chaotic snake hiss.
    The conversation with my mother told me enough to get started. If it’s a spell, it can be broken, right? Magick wears off on its own, unless it’s powered by some natural source, a ley line for instance. But I’m not attached to anything like that. Time will probably dissipate it, but I need to recover the missing pieces of my life; the hole’s bothering me, as if I’ve forgotten something super important.
    The room is still freezing when Maria comes home a little later. She pops her head in and shivers. “Did you leave the window open?”
    “Just closed it.” The lie seems better than an actual explanation.
    “Fresh air is good if it doesn’t kill you,” she says dubiously.
    She’s a nice girl, two years older than me, but sometimes I feel ancient by comparison. So far as I can tell, despite having an oddball family, she’s totally normal. Maria works at a jewelry store and goes to night school, learning to do hair. Which is cool and she’s good at it. She’s already volunteered to help me freshen up the blue streaks in mine; I have to do that often or the vivid color dies away to a sickly mermaid seafoam. She looks somewhat like Chuch, Jesse’s family friend, but not enough to be alarming in a girl. I just mean she has dark hair and eyes, plus a stocky build.
    “That’s pretty much the way I feel.”
    We make a little more awkward small talk because we’re roomies, not friends. She tells me about her date and the movie she saw. I joke about the kid who makes paper pirate hats in the food court. She seems to think this suffices for polite interaction and says something about a shower. I’m relieved, as I don’t know anything about dealing with regular people. I’m like one of those kids from Hogwarts, dodging through the train station and muttering, “Muggles.”
    Once Maria