Cursed Waters

9

It was 3 A.M., and Millie hadn't been asleep yet.

Sitting in the middle of a swirl of blankets on her bed, she stared bleary-eyed at the pages of her mother's diary in her lap. She'd started with the first one, when her mom was fifteen. It was the age that Millie's mom, Lola, had first discovered that she was the next bearer of the curse.

I can't believe this. I don't UNDERSTAND. Drew keeps saying he's sorry, but what is he sorry for? We knew this would happen. There are only 2 of us, and I'm the girl. Obviously, I'm meant to die, just like my fucking mother.

I'm not going to be like them. I'm not going to be selfish. I'm not going to die.

A sick, heavy feeling settled over Millie as she paged through the diary. Her mom was bitter, angry, depressed: she was just like Millie. It made her stomach sour and curdle, reading her mother's familiar words.

She'd never bothered with the diary before. She'd never wanted to remember her mom like this. She wanted to remember soothing words, hands on her cheeks, and lullabies about the beautiful ocean. She wanted to remember her mom as her mom, not as a woman that was cursed to die and hadn't been able to save herself, or the love of her life.

And, anyway, Millie had always figured that she'd either beat the curse (which had always been a long-shot) or she'd die, inevitably. She'd never considered that she'd be taking someone down with her, though, and Sam being in the car the other night...

He was fine, for now. But Millie feared what would happen to him now that the curse had apparently sprung to life without warning. She was worried that it was different this time, not born out of love, but something entirely different. She was worried that she'd set something off she wasn't supposed to.

Reading about her mom's anger with the curse wasn't nearly as bad about reading where her mother fell in love with her father.

It was like watching a tragic movie from end to beginning, knowing that the two lovers would meet a terrible end, but not being able to look away.

I don't love him, that's for sure. He's so weird and happy. Who can be that happy, so much of the time? If I'm being honest, I kind of want to slap that smile off his face. If he wants to be that excited about life, he should take it somewhere else, to a girl that isn't supposed to die when she falls in love.

I keep trying to make him go away, but he doesn't listen. It's like he literally can't hear me telling him to GET LOST. I'd never admit this, to anyone or to Drew or even to Kyle, but I think I'm... Happy? At least when Kyle is around.

Millie didn't think anymore parallels could be drawn from her life to her mothers. It was almost eerie, but Millie figured "eerie" was on par with the rest of her life.

And then there was all the reading about how people treated her mom.

I was in the grocery store the other day with Drew and Mrs. D asked me to not get so close to her kids. I don't get it. Why do normal people even believe in this stuff? And what does it matter if I'M cursed? I could see that Mrs. D's daughter (she's dating Bobby White, I think) was horrified, but when I passed her, she took a step back and almost knocked over all the grape jelly jars.

If her deduction skills were right, Millie figured that this entry was about Sam's mom and grandma, which was kind of horrifying in many different ways. Millie had seen the current Mrs. White, Sam's mom, step away from Millie and her sisters countless times.