28: how is ketchup made?

She tries to wear her lampshade shirt, but I don't let her.

"Why not?" she asks me.

"Because you look like a lampshade."

She flips me off, but disappears back up the stairs. A moment later she returns in a tastefully simple white dress that frills out a bit at the waist, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. In one sense, she really does look like Strawberry Shortcake, but in another sense, the dress has got a strange sex appeal, too. I'm beyond confused.

It must be written on my face, because Midge tips her head a bit to the side, punching me gently in the shoulder to get my attention. "Hey, stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Looking at me like that," Midge answers, then pauses a moment, picking up the skirt of her dress and turning over the fabric between her fingers. "Do you like it, or not? Be articulate for once."

I grumble, "I'm quite articulate," but then I try to express just why the dress is confusing me so much, and I realize I'm about as eloquent as a one-year-old. In the end, I just mutter under my breath, "You look nice," and drag her out the door.

I guess I should've explained the whole spelled house thing, because Midge is extremely concerned when I start speed walking through the streets like a madman. And I would—explain, I mean. I just don't have the time. Every time I stop, it feels like cement is replacing my blood ounce by ounce. I hate this spell. I do, with every fiber of my being, but I wouldn't be able to get home without it. So, really, the whole trip just ends up with me half-jogging and Midge chasing me, yelling, "Why do you always do this?"

I force myself to pause when we're at the station, watching the droves of people board the newly arrived train. I turn to Midge then, a frown on my face. She's out of breath, just the beginning of frizz at the ends of her hair. I pat it down for her before I can think not to. I see her brows twitch towards each other, but she doesn't say anything. "In case you hadn't thought it already," I tell her, "my mom's a little...unconventional."

Midge hesitates, then raises her eyebrows. "If you'd paid any attention at all, you'd know that I've seen unconventional, Grey."

I suppose she's right. Nothing about Midge is normal, and when you see where she came from, it actually makes a ton of sense.

I lower my eyes to the floor; the subway train speeds off again, blowing my hair into my face. Taking that as my signal, I start down into the tunnel, but Midge catches at my arm. "Grey," she says.

"Midge."

"You're not talking me out of this. Nothing you say is going to scare me off, okay?"

I look at her, biting my lip. "That's not what I was trying to do."

She doesn't have to speak; her rolled eyes can be seen from space. She shoots me an accusing look before hopping down from the platform, following after me as I lead us through the dark.

Sybil's moved a bit further this time, closer to Five Points. I walk with my head down, tuning out the rhythmic dripping of condensation from somewhere above my head, straying from the mucky puddles that might be water or might be something else. I've spent all this time trying to prepare Midge that I've had none to prepare myself. I mean, Jesus, the last time I saw my mom was my graduation, and that was just a brief stop before she left for Brazil.

She handed me a messily wrapped gift, which I later discovered was hand soap, and said, "You're free, prisoner. Now go do something with your life."

I lost the soap a week after I moved in next to Safiya. I'm pretty sure she stole it.

My heartbeat's going at the speed of the sound, so the door must be right next to me. I reach for it; my hand slips beyond the concrete, and the door manifests itself. I take a breath, but then I decide that hesitating is dumb and I've just got to do it. So I plant my hand on the knob and pull it open, whisking Midge in before me.

Compared to the dark, eerie quiet of the tunnel, my old house is an explosion of color and sound. I hear cackling voices and the clinking of wine glasses, and every single light is turned on, blinding my eyes with its warmth. I shudder, taking my time on my way to the kitchen.

Oddly enough, the three of them seem to be enjoying themselves, which is weird, because technically my mother screwed my dad and Sybil over and most of the time they just bicker about it. But not this time. Sybil and my mom are laughing over tall glasses of thick, red wine, and my dad's eyeing the both of them with heart eyes. The guy's a demon, yes, but he's also a hopeless romantic. It's kind of annoying, how he's in love with both of them at the same time.

Then my mom looks up.

She says, in her signature way too exuberant, probably on all sorts stimulants voice, "Grey! Oh my! You've grown so much!"

I haven't.

Really.

Maybe an inch, at most.

She sets her wine down with a clink and runs towards me, her arms thrown wide. She's wearing one of those drug rug things, red and yellow and black wool, and the stick-straight black hair she passed down to me has somehow managed to get fuzzy in a few places. I grimace as she slams into me; she barely comes up to my shoulders.

"Hey," I murmur. "Glad to see you too."

I try to make it sound convincing; I really do. Sybil and Dad are eyeing me over the top of Mom's head, both with the same look on their faces, like they'll kill me if I start any drama.

But I don't know what they're talking about. I'm the most chill person I know.

Mom steps back, commencing her usual evaluation of me. She turns my hands over and back again, rustles my hair so that it hangs halfway in my eyes, takes a look at my fangs, pokes my dimples. Finally, she orders me to twirl.

When I'm done, she nods like she's finished a project. "Look at him, all dark and mysterious. I still remember when you were in diapers—"

Like hell she does. It's not like she potty-trained me or anything; Sybil took care of that. "Mom."

"Right, right!" she says, clapping her hands together so that the many rings across her fingers jingle like mini tambourines. Then, like I knew they would eventually, her narrow, single-lidded eyes fix on Midge. Then, like I knew it would eventually, surprise lights up her face. "Wouldn't want to embarrass you in front of your friend, right?"

"Friend," I cough, and Midge looks at me strangely. "Yes."

Mom extends her hand towards Midge, and she takes it, offering a smile that's so genuine it hurts. How does she do that? I'm awful at first impressions, but Midge can make like fifty friends by just blinking. She just makes everything look so easy.

"What's your name, hmm?" asks Mom.

"I'm Midge," she introduces, "Osborne. Grey and I've been...friends for a few weeks now. It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Ms. Meesang—"

"Please," Mom says with a chuckle. "Call me Corinne."

Now it's Midge's turn to look surprised. She recovers a moment later with a hesitant nod. "Uh, sure. It's nice to meet you, Corinne."

"Now, now, Cory, if we wait a minute longer, the food's going to get cold," Dad points out, then nods briefly towards Sybil, who disappears into the dining room with a crockpot in hand. Dad's gaze shifts towards me. "Go help Sybil with the table, Grey."

I do as he says, but once again I get that look from him: Screw this up and I'll unleash my demonic wrath. Well, really, he'd be saying in his scary demon voice, so it's more like: SCREW THIS UP AND I'LL UNLEASH MY DEMONIC WRATH.

I'm pretty much right, because the second Sybil and I are in the dining room, she catches me by my arm and draws me close enough that I can smell the lingering Chanel perfume she probably spritzed on two days ago. "Listen, boy," she hisses with gritted teeth, and I look at her swinging earrings instead of at her face. "If you say anything remotely sassy to your mother, I will—"

"I'm well aware of what you'll do, Sybil, thanks," I say, brushing her hand away and laying the plates out, like I actually came in here to do. "I promise it's all going to be fine. I don't know why everyone thinks I'm so damn unstable."

"Maybe because you are."

"God," I mutter, "with you and Safiya, it's like I never get a break."

"Safiya?" Sybil repeats, then pauses, one hand on her hip. A Henna tattoo climbs up her russet arm, dark enough that she probably did it just yesterday. That's Sybil's secondary thing. Besides spells and all the potion-making, she also does Henna tattoos for cash. When I still lived here, she'd practice her designs on me; we'd kneel on the carpet of the living room, and I would watch her attentively as she worked.

"Oh, her!" exclaims Sybil a moment later. "I don't know what you're talking about. I liked that one."

"Of course you did."

Sybil glares at me like she didn't like that tone, which I guess makes sense, because it was blatantly snarky. She doesn't get the chance to verbally (or physically) reprimand me, because then Dad and my mom come walking in to the dining room, trailed by a very bashful Midge. She walks in with her head down and her shoulders practically up to her ears, and I reach out and yank her towards me. I whisper to her, "What's the deal? You look terrified."

Her shoulders slump as she leans toward my ear. "You left me alone in there. I didn't know what do with myself."

"Just be normal."

"I've never been normal before."

I stop to think about it. "Touche."

"Jesus, Grey," she exhales, sitting down in the chair as I pull it out for her. She brushes her hair back from her face, gnawing at her bottom lip. "You're supposed to be making me feel better."

"I'm not good at comforting people," I tell her, sliding into the seat beside her.

Quietly so that only I hear it, she says just a few words, yet they make my face flush: "That's a lie."

My eyes shoot towards hers, but I don't get to say anything, because soon the babble has died down and the food's being passed around. When everyone's plates are made—home fries, steak, mashed potatoes and wilted spinach—Dad is the first to speak.

He sits up straight, and I can't help but notice how...prim he looks. He's gelled his hair back and shaved his face, and it even looks like he polished his horns for once. I can't emphasize how important it is to polish your horns, if you have them. A dull set of horns is pretty much the equivalent of a unibrow.

His pitch black eyes are even a little more shiny, but that's just because Mom is here. Like I said, he fell in love with her, and I don't think he ever fell out of love with her. Which is sort of a bad thing if you're Sybil. "So, Cory," he says, and I wince. He still calls her that, Cory, like they're teenagers or something. "Why don't you tell us about your travels?"

A marvelous question. Who could've thought of anything else to ask?

No, really.

Like, anything else.

Mom launches into a very long and involved story about Machu Picchu and the llamas that tried to eat her dress there, about Morocco and devouring too much street food, about Egypt and the pyramids and the tombs. It's all very interesting, sure, if you haven't heard all of it before. It's the same every time. She comes for dinner, tells a bunch of stories. She'll ask how I am, and I'll be like "cool," and then she'll give me gifts and run off to catch her next flight.

Everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, though. Even Midge is listening with wide eyes, her fork paused halfway to her mouth. I listen, I do, but I tune it out after a while.

Then it comes.

"Ah, I digress!" yelps Mom with a sigh, flailing her arms. She blinks at me. "I want to hear about my boy. Oh, who am I kidding, my man, since you're so big now. How's it been back here?"

Cool. That's all I have to say, and she'll leave me alone.

But it's not cool. It's not cool at all.

"Wish I could say it was just peachy," I say, dropping my fork with a clang against my plate. I'm rewarded when I see everyone jump. "But it's not. Where the hell should I start, huh? The city's falling apart and I don't know why. My best friend's missing. Maybe dead. A dragon burnt my apartment to cinders, so I'm technically homeless. And now I have to sit here and listen to how much my mom's loving a life without me in it."

Under the table, Midge's hand slides over my own. She looks at me worriedly, and even that's annoying, how I say all this and all I get is pity. "Grey," she says.

Sybil has her face in her palms. Dad looks like he wants to break something, something that has twenty-three of his chromosomes. And Mom's just staring at me.

Oh. Looks I've just disappointed even more people.

I grumble, "I'm sorry," and then I leave.

Considering it's a house smack dab in the wall of a subway tunnel, it doesn't have a porch, or a balcony. There's nowhere for me to escape, to breathe some fresh air and clear my head. The closest I can get to anything fresh is the living room, which at least has a spelled window that offers a view of the stars I'd see if I were above ground.

That's where I go. I lay down on the rug instead of on the couch, mostly because I feel like it. And I stay there and I watch the ceiling and I try to calm down.

I just wish it weren't like this. It'd be so much easier if my mom hadn't given me up, if she'd raised me in a normal house in a normal neighborhood. If she'd been here for everything: my first words, my first steps, even that dumb spelling bee I won in fifth grade that I was so excited about. No, she just comes once every year or so, and every time, she acts like everything's okay, even when it's not.

For the past twenty years, Sybil's been fifty times of a mom than my own birth mother has, and I just don't know how to deal with it.

I let out a groan, rubbing my eyes. "Get yourself together, Grey," I tell myself. "Get yourself together."

"Hey," says a voice I do not need to hear right now, "that's my line."

When I lower my hands, my mom's standing over me, a half-smile on her subtly tanned face. She holds a dinner plate in one hand, and the other's on her hip.

I roll away. "Leave me alone."

She doesn't leave me alone. I hear a soft rustle as she settles beside me, a clink as she sets the plate down. "You didn't even eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"Lies. You're always hungry."

I hesitate. "Maybe, but how—how would you even know that, Mom? How would you know anything if you're rarely here?"

Mom heaves a long sigh. "You're not gonna believe me, but I do care about you. I carried you for nine months. You grow an attachment when you spend that much time with people. But I just—I just had a different life in mind for myself, Grey. I wanted to be free, to feel things, to experience things. That's why I made the deal with Sybil. I knew she and Allie would take care of you."

I bite my lip. I want to believe her; I do. But after all this time, after all the years spent convincing myself I just wasn't worth it in her book, it's kind of hard to suddenly flip the switch.

"My tapes," I say.

"Your tapes?"

"The ones I sent you when I was younger; you sent them back. Did you even listen to them? Any of them?"

Mom just sits a moment in the dark, and I sit up, looking at her. She's beautiful, I think; it makes sense Dad would be so head over heels for her. I'm not sure what it is—maybe it's the graceful slope of her profile, or the carefree spirit, or the wandering energy that seems to emanate from her every pore.

I love her. I love her, and that's why everything hurts so much.

She says, "Every one."

Something within me jolts. I look sideways at her, sure I must have heard wrong. Maybe she didn't say anything at all, but she definitely didn't say what I think she said.

"What?"

"Every one, Grey," she says with an exhale, raking a frizzy strand of hair behind her ear. "Every single tape. You can't imagine how disappointed I was when you stopped sending them."

She waits a moment, then looks at me, her eyebrows furrowed. "Why did you stop sending them?"

I avert my eyes. "I thought you stopped caring."

Her arm slides around my shoulder, and even though I'm trying to retain whatever is left of my dignity, I lean into her. In a sense, it's what I've always wanted: a hug from her. Just a sign that she's really there, that she really does care.

"Never," she assures me. "Maybe I wasn't always there, but I was always thinking about you. My little boy."

I let out a groan. "Mom, please—"

"Now, about the tail thing, I never would have made you tuck it—I would have kicked those kids in the balls—"

"Mom!" I yelp, and then the two of us are laughing, actually laughing, and for once I feel my frustration ebb away, even if it's just a little bit. It'll be a while until a relationship between us is built, but for the first time, there's a minuscule foundation where there wasn't anything before.

We're still goofing off when Midge bursts in, shouting my name.

Both Mom and I turn and look over our shoulders, alarmed.

I get to my feet. "Midge?" I say. "What's wrong?"

"It—I—I don't know, it just came in the mail, but—"

"What? What came in the mail?" I demand. It's a wonder we get mail at this house at all. It's all funneled through—you guessed it—a spell.

Midge doesn't say anything else, just approaches me, thrusting an old Walkman into my hands. I'm confused until I see the label on the tape recorder within it:

For Grey.

It's bloodstained, and it's written in Rocco's handwriting.