***

AN HOUR, A CLEAN SHIRT AND A PHONE CALL LATER, Hadley finds his way back to his friends.

They're in some chic boutique that sells hats and skirts and cute vintage blouses and shirts at exorbitant prices because Morgan wanted to buy something special for Rome, and once Morgan went somewhere, she dragged the rest of them behind her.

Gregory holds a shirt in his hands, looking at it this way and that, running his hand all over it like he's assessing its worth but Hadley knows he's just doing it so that he doesn't look cheap. Unlike Morgan, Sebastian or hell, even Hadley, who bought things without once glancing at the price tag because they were raised under the constant presence of money, Gregory was taught to believe that money wasn't a given. He came from what Hadley's father called 'new money' (said with a hint of derision), from a household that wasn't rich until much recently.

  If I wasn't looking, Hadley thinks, he'd put it right back onto the rack.

  Gregory holds the price tag up. "If my mother saw this, she'd have a heart attack," he mutters. Hadley isn't sure if he was meant to be heard or not.

  "Let me see," Hadley says.

  Gregory shows him. Hadley winces. Even to Hadley, it looks too overpriced.

"Jesus," says Hadley. "You're not going to buy this, are you?"

  Gregory looks relieved. "I'm not going to buy it." He puts the shirt back on the rack. "Christ, you could feed a village in India with that price."

Hadley is surprised into a laugh.

Sebastian wanders over toward them, a leather jacket slung over his shoulders and a smolder on his face. "How do I look?" he asks, and strikes a pose.

"Knockoff James Dean," says Gregory.

"The punk version of the Grinch," says Hadley.

"Fuck you both," says Sebastian, cheerily, and wanders off.

A customer strides in—a middle aged woman in a business suit—and Hadley and Gregory glance at her. She gives them a quick once-over, and purses her lips in apparent disapproval. Gregory and Hadley look away. So does she.

Except, not quite. She continues staring at Hadley in a way that makes his skin crawl. It's an echo of the man in the diner, in which she looks at Hadley like she wants to beat the shit out of him. Her heavily-lined face goes red, and as her scowl grows deeper, Hadley's reminded of bulls pawing at the ground and driving their horns into unsuspecting targets.

  Only that the bull in question is a woman who seemingly gets angrier the longer she keeps her eyes on Hadley. And the unsuspecting target is Hadley.

"Is something wrong?" Gregory asks.

  Hadley turns to look at him, says, "Nothing," and turns to look at the woman again.

She's gone.

The boy's words come ringing back to him, clear as day: You're cursed.

  Hadley knows now what he'd say to him, if he had the chance, if his tongue hadn't been so confused about what to say next. He'd say, no, I'm not. He'd say, as if the reason strangers look at me funny is because I'm fucking cursed. Don't make me laugh.

  As if.

"Greg," says Hadley, pretending to look at a paisley shirt, "what would you do if someone told you that you were cursed?"

  "What? Oh. Hm. Sorry, I'm still recovering from shock. Expensive shirt." Gregory shakes his head. "So many starving villages in India, Jimmy. You have no idea."

  "That stopped being funny two seconds ago." Hadley wrinkles his nose at the paisley shirt. If he squints at it, he can see his father wearing it. "So, answer my question. If someone told you that you were cursed—"

  "I would demand for proof. What's this about anyway? Is Philippa trying to scare you again?"

  "It's about nothing and why do you care if Philippa's bullying me? You're not my mother. Jesus Christ."

  "James Bishop Hadley, you take that back."

Morgan and Sebastian wander over to them, arm in arm, looking like the world's oddest couple. Sebastian still has that leather jacket, but he's wearing it instead of slinging it over his shoulder, and he has large sunglasses that covered up a quarter of his face, but Hadley isn't really looking at him because there's a UFO disguised as a straw hat perched on top of Morgan's golden head.

  To say that it's big is an understatement. It shades not only Morgan's head, but Sebastian's as well, with plenty of room to spare.

Both Gregory and Hadley look at the hat for a while, both for the same reasons.

  "You could put a lot of food in there," says Gregory. "Feed a lot of starving villages in India."

  "Will you let that one go already?" Hadley still can't quite believe the size of it. "Christ, Morgan. What the hell do you even need that for?"

"Italy's a sunny place."

"It's winter."

"Then I'll just save it for summer."

  Hadley and Gregory exchange a glance.

  "These plebs wouldn't know fashion," says Sebastian, pushing up his sunglasses, "if it punched them in the face."

  Then, they saunter off, arm in arm. Hadley nearly forgets about his hypothetical curse.

  "About this curse," he says.

"Yes, this curse." Gregory lets out one of his signature sighs. "Jimmy, I'll ask again. What's this about?"

  Hadley stands at a crossroads. On one path, Hadley tells everything to Gregory, about the boy, the binoculars and how he suspects it's all an elaborate ruse (for what, exactly, he doesn't know. Yet.) If Hadley does tell him, there's always the risk that Hadley's wrong and Hadley gets embarrassed. It isn't Gregory's wrath he fears—he can't be afraid of something that doesn't exist—but rather, Gregory's disapproval, that almost matronly look he gets in his eyes whenever he's let down. It makes even Morgan feel ashamed.

("It's not like he was going to shut up if I told him to."

"But you didn't have to punch him.")

And there's the other path, where Hadley doesn't tell him.

"I'll tell you later," says Hadley.

Gregory sighs again.

"But, just think. Take this seriously. If some random bozo walked up to you and told you that you were cursed what would you do?"

  Gregory answers without blinking. "Ask for proof."

  "He cites an earlier incident as proof. What then?"

Gregory's mouth quirks up into a smile. "The milkshake."

  "It's a hypothetical situation, Greg. Focus."

The smile doesn't go anywhere. "Ah, sure. A hypothetical situation." He shakes his head. "Jimmy, this is what I'd do if I were you: forget about it."

Hadley opens his mouth to say something but Gregory cuts him off.

"Everyone has little accidents happen to them. It's called bad luck, Jimmy." He holds up a finger and points it at Hadley. "Not a curse. You should get that random bozo out of your head."

"Hey, I never said this was about me."

"You're as subtle as a gun. You don't need to tell me."

"And here I was, thinking I could avoid your disapproval."

Gregory puts a hand over his heart, with mock emotion. "I'm touched, just touched, that you would take my feelings into consideration. But look at me, do I look disapproving?"

Three girls walk into the store, bringing in the strong scent of female adolescence—vanilla, cherry, Chanel no.5—and their noise along with them. They're somehow managing to laugh and talk at the same time. Hadley doesn't really pay them any attention, not until all three of them stop laughing once they're ten yards away from Gregory and eleven yards from Hadley, stop dead in their tracks and stare, all three of them, past the back of Gregory's head and straight at—no, into—Hadley.

It's an unnervingly heated stare, with nothing but hatred behind it. Not a mind, not a girl, not even the suggestion of a person behind it. If they stare hard enough, maybe Hadley will burst into flames. It certainly feels that way.

One girl twists her face. The other two follow suit. They're side-by-side reflections of each other, eerie and terrifying, mimicking every twitch and contortion in perfect synchronization. They open their mouth at the same time and bare their perfect pearly teeth at Hadley like they're going to rip his throat out.

No, not like. It's not a metaphor because that's not what it sort of looks like, but because it's exactly what it looks like. They're going to rip his throat out and Hadley's going to fucking get murdered by a teenage girls in the middle of some little chic shop and he's going to have teeth in his throat and—

Gregory turns his head to look at the girls.

The girls are normal teenage girls, laughing and talking, playfully teasing each other.

Hadley can hear the tail-ends of a conversation as they walk past Gregory and Hadley.

"—and she told me that I'd have to go back home because my shoes weren't 'appropriate for school'! Like, can you believe—"

They move too far away for Hadley to hear the rest of it.

He touches his throat.

"Like I was saying before you got distracted by girls—which is so James of you—don't let this curse thing get the better of you. It's all bunk."

Three girls who looked at Hadley's throat and bared their teeth and were going to sink them into his neck.

"Bad luck," says Hadley, not quite believing the words as he's saying it. "Not a curse."

"Exactly." Gregory looks almost smug. "Not a curse. Whatever random bozo told you that you were cursed was probably one of those two-dollar psychics you keep seeing around downtown. Trying to scam you out of your money. You know the type. Cleanse your house, burn incense, put sigils on your walls all for sixty damn dollars. Con-men, all of them, but not like we can do anything, right?"

"No," says Hadley. His voice feels too thick for his own throat. "Not like we can do anything."

  ***

After Morgan bought the ridiculously large straw hat—despite Hadley and Gregory's protests—and after she bought a much more reasonable pastel pink blouse, and after they went for drive-thru Starbucks and every one of them played rock-paper-scissors to decide who would be paying for the bill (Morgan, as usual), and after they drove around town listening to Sebastian's awful 4 hour Celtic Music Mix ("It's music!") and after Hadley somewhat forgot about the three girls and their teeth glowing in the harsh fluorescent lighting and after Gregory dropped off Morgan and Sebastian and it was just the two of them, just Hadley and Gregory and the silence was almost a heavy and tangible thing because there was no Sebastian nor Morgan to fill it, Hadley thinks, this is what I'll miss. He'll miss Morgan and Sebastian bickering in the back seat of the car, he'll even miss this easy and comfortable silence, no matter how heavy it feels. He'll miss them.

  It's only a week, he reminds himself. Get a grip, Hadley.

  "You okay?" asks Gregory, not looking away from the road before him.

  "I'm fine," replies Hadley. "Why?"

  "You seemed a little—" Gregory tilts his head—"off today. Ever since you left the diner."

   Hadley's breath nearly catches in his throat. "I was afraid that Dad was going to rip me a new one if he saw my shirt."

  Gregory lets out a little hum. "Sure. Totally."

  "I wasn't going to go around with a milkshake on my shirt. I don't need any boys in my yard."

  "Jimmy, no."

   Hadley hums to the tune of the song the rest of the drive. Gregory looks close to tears.

When Gregory pulls up to Hadley's driveway, Gregory has his shoulders hunched up to block his ears, and Hadley's considering whether to drop humming all together and start belting out the lyrics instead.

It's an internal discussion that's cut short when Gregory says, "Get out, please, for the love of God."

"Come on, it's not that bad of a song."

"You might as well be singing Nicki Minaj for all I care."

"Hey, Nicki Minaj isn't bad either."

"Oh my god, just get out before I put my foot to your ass."

  Hadley laughs and opens the door and says, "Take care."

"You too," says Gregory. Before Hadley completely gets out of the car, Gregory adds, "And James, about that curse?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't let it get to you."

Mouths pulled back, teeth glinting, your blood on their tongues—

Hadley bites the inside of his cheek, hard. "Sure thing."

He gets out of the car, waves at Gregory before walking towards the house. He doesn't look back to see if Gregory waves back. It occurs to Hadley that the only thing that protects him from whatever the hell's happening to him is the presence of his friends. His friends who are all going to leave for exotic destinations in three days, leaving Hadley all alone to this thing.

Thing? he thinks. More like paranoia, letting some fucking pervert's half-baked lie get to him just because a bunch of people looked at him like he was a piece of meat. Big deal. It's happened, before. He's used to it.

Right, but did those people look at you like you were some little rich boy?

No.

Then how did they look at you?

Like they wanted to devour me.

Hadley screws his eyes shut, trying to think of Gregory and Sebastian and Morgan and her stupid fucking straw hat but all that he sees is his own lifeless body being ripped to pieces by three fucking teenage girls, who gobble up his larynx and giggle and tease each other while clawing at what remains of his throat.

"Jesus fucking Christ," he breathes out. He presses the hollow of his own throat, making sure it's still there.

He rings the doorbell. Marzia opens it.

"James!" she says, like she always does, with a smile and more warmth than his own mother could ever muster.

"Hey, Marzia," says Hadley, trying to put on a smile for her sake. He bends down to give her a kiss on the cheek, which she accepts graciously.

  A shadow of concern passes through her sweet brown face, and she asks, "What happened to you?"

"What do you mean?"

"You look like death."

An image of his corpse flashes through his mind.

Hadley clenches his jaw. "I'm fine, actually," he says, through gritted teeth.

"Are you sure?"

"Marzia, I'm okay. Seriously." He smiles again, though it feels so forced even Marzia must see it, but she—dear, sweet lovely Marzia, who one day Hadley will take around the world and feed her the finest of foods and lay her on the softest of beds—doesn't say anything. Only looks at him with a scowl and a tightening of her lips.

She turns on her heel and walks deeper into the house, and Hadley follows her.

The card in his pocket doesn't feel like an anchor anymore. A premonition, maybe. It feels more like a promise, a choice that Hadley had already taken since he touched it.

You're cursed.

I think I might believe you.

***

[a/n]: what the fuck is quality

  Also this was so long...good lord!! (but is it obvious who's my fav? i feel like it is) (also im entering this crockpot into wattys2016 not because i want 2 win but because I Need Attention To Thrive. Its all a gambit for exposure. Don't judge)

AND ALSO THANK YOU FOR READIN!!!!!! I APPRECIATE!!! THANK YOU!!!! SERIOUSLY!!! IF YOURE READING THIS THERES A CHANCE I WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND