Charlie got punished, of course. And so did Posey, for lying.
From then on, Travis knew he had the upper hand. He told their mother that she needed to set more boundaries with the kids, that their dad had let them get away with “bloody murder,” that they were sneaky, lied for attention, and stole from his wallet, and if Mom didn’t do something soon, they would never respect her, plus they’d probably wind up in prison.
When he hit Charlie, she didn’t even try to tell.
Mom was fascinated by the idea that her daughter might be a medium. She was astonished when Charlie told her facts about relatives, although they were just things she’d remembered or stories she’d overheard. Occasionally, they were straight-up lies about dead people that seemed impossible to disprove.
But even Elvira de Granada couldn’t convince Charlie’s mother that Travis was no good. Charlie’s mother decided that Elvira was bitter and distrustful on account of being tortured to death. And that’s when Charlie came up with Alonso Nieto, warlock. Unlike Elvira, he wasn’t just accused of witchcraft—he admitted to being a practitioner.
It turns out that men have more authority, even when they’re not real.
Mom loved talking to Alonso. Charlie had thought she’d been convincing when playing Elvira, but with Alonso, Mom wanted to be convinced.
Charlie knew she had to be careful, all the same. If Alonso was going to successfully persuade Mom to leave Travis, the warlock needed to give them something concrete.
It didn’t hurt that Travis’s badness was starting to leak out. When they were first married, he made a big show of telling Mom how perfect she was and how great their life was going to be, but he couldn’t keep it up. Now, when they argued, he’d start in with comments about her weight and about how she wasn’t that smart. Flowers and date nights faded away, and so did a big chunk of his contribution to their finances.
Charlie knew she had an opportunity, but she needed help. So she let her little sister in on the plan.
Posey had been confused by Elvira and Alonso, although happy someone was talking shit about the stepdad she hated. Still, it had clearly creeped her out to see her sister possessed. Now that she knew it was a game, though, everything was different.
Professional psychics usually specialize in one of two types of readings, although neither sister knew that at the time. The first kind was a cold reading, the kind that Posey would go on to do as a phone psychic, making up things on the spot, based on observations. The second kind of reading was hot.
During a cold reading, the psychic might study how often a client looked at their phone, whether their finger had a pale patch of skin from the removal of a wedding ring, the newness of their shoes, or the visibility of their tattoos. On the phone, the psychic had to rely on their word choices, their accent, and the level of agitation in their voice. A good cold reading was the convincer that allowed the client to relax and start supplying information.
A hot reading was something else. It involved doing research on a person ahead of time. Some celebrity psychics even bugged their intermission halls or sent out assistants to eavesdrop on audience members at performances.
That’s what Charlie intended to do, a hot reading.
With Posey’s help, they went through Travis’s pockets. They figured out the password on his computer and scrolled through his browser history, his emails, his Facebook messages. They located his stash of porn, which was gross, but contained nothing weird enough to sink him. It turned out that he wasn’t flirting with anyone else or embezzling money. Travis was evil, and also boring.
Though Charlie didn’t do great in school and had been long ago sorted into the group of kids who were never going to college, she read a lot and she paid attention. She was smart.
But smart kids can still be plenty stupid.
Charlie decided that since she couldn’t find anything on Travis, she’d create evidence. She made a new Facebook page with his name and picture, then started flirting with women. Soon that became texting on a burner phone. Managing being Travis part of the time and Alonso the rest of the time was exhausting. It was playing pretend on steroids.
But rather than getting tired of it, she found herself frustrated by all the time she had to spend as Charlie Hall, who was still a kid with a lot of math homework. She looked forward to improvisation, when it seemed like all the right words came out of a part of her that she didn’t even know was there.
Even though she was able to fake up evidence, she wasn’t sure it would be enough to convince her mother. She enlisted Posey to manipulate their environment. To flash lights in rooms on the other side of the apartment, turn on the stove, and leave little things where their mother could find them. To show off Alonso’s power. They reinvented the Victorian spiritualism movement from first principles.
Charlie had stumbled into one of the headiest delusions that existed—Alonso told Mom that she was important, special, chosen. He was vague on the details, but the details didn’t matter.
It wasn’t long before Mom was on the hook. In fact, sometimes it seemed to Charlie that her mother was more interested in Alonso than in her, more excited to spend time with him than with her kid. Sometimes Charlie felt like the most important thing about her was being a vessel.
After a bad night where Travis yelled at Charlie to clean up her room and, when she didn’t do it to his satisfaction, ripped her copy of Howl’s Moving Castle in half, she decided it was time. Three days later, Alonso told Mom to look in the glove compartment of Travis’s car, where Posey had already planted the burner phone.
After that, things started moving very fast.
Mom looked through the messages on the phone and saw the promises “Travis” had made to these women and the awful stuff he’d told them about her. Travis denied it all, becoming more and more furious when he wasn’t believed.
Sucks to be you, Charlie thought with satisfaction, remembering how many times her mother had believed him instead of them.
Charlie was glad when they moved out, gladder still when her mother filed for divorce, thrilled to be moving into their small new apartment, even if money was tighter than ever. But Charlie was a little afraid of what she had done. It was a heavy weight to know that she had committed a betrayal so big that if her mother found out, Charlie might never be forgiven.
And she was in no way ready for her mother to introduce Alonso to her friends. Charlie refused to go. She cried and insisted that she didn’t want to, that she didn’t like letting him talk through her anymore.
She was teetering on the cusp of adulthood. Three-quarters child, one-quarter yearning. Her dreams were confused kaleidoscopes of swanning through the sets of TV shows, drinking cocktails that looked like vodka martinis and tasted like Sprite, wearing lipstick and pumps covered in red craft glitter, and marrying someone who was half pop star and half stuffed animal.
She knew she had to stop pretending to be Alonso before she got caught, but she didn’t know how to stop without disappointing her mother.
Just let him come through. This will be the last time. I promise, honey.
Her mother convinced her to talk to the friends once, and then a second time. By the third visit, Charlie could tell that some of them had grown skeptical. Rand, a portly man with a beautifully waxed mustache, tried to trip her up with historical questions, and Charlie panicked. She talked too much. On the car ride back, she could feel her mother’s gaze on her, disheartened and on the verge of disillusionment. Charlie’s whole body felt as heavy as lead.