Our eyes didn’t leave the board as the piece jerked back to the beginning. The piece zigzagged across the board, cutting her laughter short. When we first sat down to play, I had to resist the urge to roll my eyes at Claire’s melodramatics. “Maybe you start a forest fire and get eaten by Smokey the Bear?” Rachel laughed, briefly dissolving the panic that had slithered into my stomach. “Murder?” Claire’s voice was soaked with excitement. It semi-circled the board, sailing past A through K, and crept past L. We looked at each other as the piece moved under our hands. My calves prickled from kneeling on Rachel’s carpet for so long, and the backs of my knees felt clammy. “Remember not to push,” Claire ordered me.īut Rachel interrupted us before we could descend into bickering. Her twin missions in life were now to make me feel like the third wheel, and to torture me for my crush on her brother, Jude. Since moving here six months ago, she’d latched onto my best friend like a starving leech. Rachel squealed her assent, and I shot a dark look at Claire. “Oh! Rachel, ask it how you’re going to die.” “Actually, since it’s my birthday, I’m going first.” Rachel put her fingers on the piece. “Can I ask it for a car? Is this like a dead Santa scenario?” My cheeks flamed, but I stifled the urge to snap at her and laughed it off. “Ask whether Jude will ever like you back.”Ĭlaire’s voice was innocent, but I knew better. And at sixteen, we’re too old for this, I didn’t say. “I don’t have anything to ask dead people,” I said to her.

Rachel and I had been best friends since preschool, and where she was dark and wild, I was pale and cautious. “It’s just a game, Mara.” She smiled, her teeth looking even whiter in the dim light. Kneeling on the carpet, I passed the piece to Rachel. The Ouija board was her favorite present that night, and Claire gave it to her.

I wasn’t normally so twitchy, and hoped Rachel wouldn’t notice. When Claire pushed the heart-shaped piece into my hand, I startled. They were jumbled and indistinct, like alphabet soup. THE ORNATE SCRIPT ON THE BOARD TWISTED in the candlelight, making the letters and numbers dance in my head.

The upcoming of mara dyer