Spells Like Teen Spirit

by Kate M. Williams

  “A professional Rollerblader?”

  “ ‘Blader,’ as he called it,” she said, shaking her head. “Honestly, and maybe this is just my ego talking, but the thing that bothers me the most about being kidnapped is that I was kidnapped by such a bunch of idiots.” She stood up from the weight bench and walked over to a large Styrofoam cooler. “Do you want anything to drink?” She opened the lid to reveal several bottles of a generic sports drink, ranging in flavor from PT Cruiser purple to the same blue as Amirah’s thrifted dress.

  “Sure,” I said, “I’ll take a purple.” She pulled it out and brought it over to me, twisting the cap off before she handed it over. I took a sip. It was cold and electrolyte-y, and it did a little bit to wash the taste of coffee grounds from the back of my throat. I took another sip. My brain was grinding as I tried to take everything in. It was a lot, the biggest being Circe. She was here, right in front of me, alive and well. I had ten million questions, but the first one came out as a statement.

  “You’re alive.”

  She sat back down and smiled. “Yes, I am.”

  “Then where the heck have you been?” My words came out a little accusatory, and I opened my mouth to backtrack, but then shut it again. I wasn’t sorry. Cassandra and Dion had grown up thinking their mother was dead.

  “Well, for the past month I’ve been in this storage unit,” she said. “Before that, I was in their garage, but then they decided to turn it into a ‘totally rocking practice space.’ Their words, not mine.” She gave a little smile. “But I’m sure you mean before that.” I took another sip of my purple drink and nodded. “How much do you know about what happened, all those years ago?”

  “On a scale of one to ten, ten being everything and one being nothing,” I said, “I’d say I’m at about a negative three.”

  Circe laughed. “I’m glad to see you have Theresa’s sense of humor,” she said. “She could always make me laugh, even in the worst of circumstances.”

  I sat up a little straighter, feeling kind of proud, as I always did, whenever anyone compared me to Mom.

  “So, Erebus was—or still is—my husband, as you know,” she said, “and he was in a band, who you’ve met. Cassandra was just a baby and Dion wasn’t much older. My Sitting days were over by then, but I was still babysitting, and watching other people’s children while I watched my own. Erebus was working at the Beanie Baby kiosk at the mall, and we were barely getting by.” She paused and looked away from me, up into a dark corner of the storage unit, and I could hear her sigh. “I’m not proud of this, but when he started dabbling in Red Magic, I looked the other way. I believed, or I wanted to believe, that he was doing it for us.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “This is where his band comes in,” she said. “He told me that everything he was doing with Red Magic was so that the band would be successful so that he could take care of our family. It seems so far-fetched and stupid now, but back then I wanted to believe. The band wasn’t the best band I’d ever heard, but it wasn’t the worst either. Erebus was a decent songwriter, and I just thought that if Frog Injection—”

  “Frog Injection?”

  “That was what they were called back then,” she said. “Have they changed their name?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “A lot. But not important. Go on.”

  “I was distracted,” she said, nodding, “with two small children, and maybe also a little willfully naive. I didn’t put it all together, and figure out that Erebus wasn’t just playing with bits of Red Magic that he found here and there, until it was too late.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Erebus had always hated his job,” she said. “I mean, it was Beanie Babies. But suddenly he was all about it. He was in Beanie forums all the time, and collectors were always calling the house. You would have thought he was trading stocks or something from how seriously he took it. I started to get suspicious. One day UPS delivered this box to our house while he was gone. I didn’t open it, but Cassandra started playing with it, and she drew all over it with marker. Just the outside. But when Erebus got home, he went ballistic. I’d never seen him so mad, and he yelled at the baby, saying she had almost ruined everything. Then I knew for sure, and when he left the house the next day, with the box, I had a friend follow him. She saw him meet Wanda in a park, and do some sort of a trade.”

  “How’d your friend know the person he was meeting was Wanda?” I asked.

  “Well, that friend was your mom,” Circe said with a little smile. “You were probably with her at the time.”

  “Oh,” I said, sitting there, stunned. Not from the spell, but from the first real bits of information I’d ever been given.

  “From there, it didn’t take us long to piece together what was going on,” she said. “Erebus was trading Beanie Babies for Red Magic talismans.”

  “What?” I said, not really believing that I had heard her right. “That’s insane. If Wanda wanted the Beanies so badly, why didn’t she use the Red Magic to just get them herself?”

  “The hard-core Beanie Baby enthusiasts are pretty committed,” she said, “and are not easily swayed, even by magic.”

  I sat there for a second, letting Circe’s words sink in. “What did you do?” I asked. “You and my mom?”

  “We did everything wrong,” she said. “We confronted Wanda, who denied everything and placed all the blame on Erebus, and we believed her. I sent Cassandra and Dion to stay with some family, and then prepared to confront Erebus, but that never happened.”

  “Why not?” I asked. I took another sip of purple, and swished it around in my mouth, nodding at Circe to urge her to keep going.

  “Wanda and two other members of the Synod showed up at my house, and the way Wanda was acting made me think I was going crazy. She had turned everything around and was now accusing me of practicing with my husband.” Circe stopped. “Even after your Sitter powers go away, your Sitter sense remains,” she said, “and I will never forget the feeling I got when I opened the door to find them standing there. I felt like I had been plunged into cold water. I let them in, though, and was polite and played dumb. They kept talking about how if I confessed, they’d work with me.” She shuddered. “But I knew they were lying. Why would I trust anything that Wanda said? And I knew better than to confess to something I didn’t do. So I excused myself to go to the bathroom, and I ran.”

  “You what?” I was still groggy but feeling much more awake now.

  “I ran,” she repeated. “I literally climbed out the bathroom window and ran.”

  If it hadn’t been so dark in the storage unit, she’d have been able to see how shocked I was. “But there were three members of the Synod sitting in your living room,” I said. “How come they didn’t just find you in, like, three seconds?”

  “On my way out the window, I stole Erebus’s Red Magic talismans,” she said. “By then, I knew what they were, since they were things he had traded for, and I grabbed every one I could find. I’m not proud, but they served me well. I never thought I’d be gone so long, but I have been using them ever since. At least, up until two months ago.”

  “When you got kidnapped,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said, shaking her head. Her voice sounded weary. “After I ran, Wanda blacklisted me and let it be known that if I was ever found, my memory would be stripped.” She gulped. “That would have meant I wouldn’t even remember my own children. I didn’t want that. I never went far. I wanted to be able to come back and check on my kids whenever I could, and this year, when I saw that Cassandra had been cursed, I knew I had to take the risk and intervene.”

  I wondered how Cassandra and Dion would feel if they knew that their mom had been close by this whole time, all those years when they had just assumed they were totally on their own. Relieved, maybe? Or angry? Or, most likely, a little bit of both? My
mind was starting to spin.

  “Intervene how?” I asked.

  “After I was blacklisted, your mother and I kept in touch by leaving each other messages on the bathroom wall at the Perk.”

  “You did what?” I wanted her to repeat it, and she did. The Perk’s bathroom, in keeping with its overall grimy vibe, was covered floor to ceiling with graffiti. Sometimes it seemed like poetry to me, and I’d spent many a pee searching the words for hidden meanings or important messages. Now hearing this blew my mind.

  “Theresa stole one of Wanda’s talismans, one of the most powerful ones Wanda had ever created, and planned to use it to reveal Wanda’s true nature to the Sitterhood,” Circe said. “But that never happened, and the writing on the wall stopped. I knew that Theresa would not have abandoned me, or her cause, willingly, so I wasn’t surprised when I found out she had been cursed and was now living in a facility.”

  “And Wanda was able to blame the curse on Erebus,” I said.

  “And probably on me too,” Circe said, nodding. “For a long time, I couldn’t figure out why Wanda had cursed Theresa. Why not just accuse her of Red Magic and erase her memory? Then it hit me: Wanda needed something that only Theresa knew. Wanda never got her talisman back, and only Theresa knew where it was.” Circe paused here. “I visited Theresa a few times over the years, wanting to see if I could communicate with her, but I never had any luck. Then, when Cassandra got cursed, I was desperate, so I decided to try again. I was so distraught that I wasn’t paying attention, and when I was on my way to see her, I ran into Tom. Yada, yada, long story short, they kidnapped me, stole my talismans, and now here we are.”

  I sat there in silence. “Why did you think finding the talisman would help Cassandra?” I asked.

  “If it was a talisman created by Wanda, then it would be powerful enough to break a curse created by Wanda,” she said.

  “A curse like my mom’s,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, “a curse like your mom’s.”

  My mind started to frantically try to fit the pieces of this puzzle together. “So, with this talisman, you wouldn’t need Erebus or Wanda or any Red Magician to break the curse,” I said. “Anyone who had the talisman could do it.” Circe must have known what I was getting at, but she didn’t say anything. She just nodded.

  “And my mom stole it,” I said.

  Circe nodded again. “And hid it,” she said. “And no one has been able to find it since. Not even Wanda.”

  “I think the band is looking for it too,” I said. “I don’t know how they even know about it.”

  Circe groaned, and it seemed like she deflated a little bit. “I do,” she said. “They stole my notebook.”

  “So,” I said, “they read your diary?”

  She nodded. “They never knew what happened to Erebus,” she said. “He had convinced them all that they were going to use magic to become very successful. Then when he and I disappeared, they thought we’d sold out on them. They’ve been mad for fifteen years, and I guess this is all part of their revenge.”

  “How many talismans do they have?” I asked.

  “I was down to six,” she said. “Though, if they’re using them haphazardly, they’ll run out quickly.”

  I let this information wash over me, and it felt like waking up from a dream. For the first time, things were starting to make sense, but I was also starting to panic. I couldn’t just sit there, wasting time and waiting for someone to come save me. “Circe,” I said, “we have to get the eff out of this storage unit.”

  “You’re telling me,” she said. “It’s spelled. That door is like concrete, and I’ve screamed my head off every time there’s been anyone outside, but no one has heard a thing.”

  I was still wearing my purse, and I pulled it onto my lap and clicked it open. I gasped when I saw that they hadn’t taken my phone, but the joy was short-lived. There was no service in the storage unit. It was almost ten, which meant I’d been in there for at least an hour.

  Even if Amirah, Ji-A, and Janis were still in the throes of band euphoria, Brian would have noticed I was gone immediately, so undoubtedly he was out there looking for me. But what about Cassandra, Ruby, and Mallory? Or Adrian?

  “Ugh,” I said. “There are five other Sitters out there right now. Unfortunately, two drank the Superfüd Kool-Aid.”

  “Kool-Aid makes super-food flavors now?” Circe asked.

  “Legit question,” I said, “but no. The band is called ‘Superfüd’ now, and they spiked the punch at our school dance. Now everyone, including all my friends, think those guys are the best band in the world.”

  “Even Cassandra?” Circe asked.

  “No,” I said. “She wasn’t there. She went to look for you.” In the darkness, I could see Circe’s eyes widen, and I gave her a brief rundown of what had happened earlier in the night, omitting the fact that I couldn’t get ahold of Cassandra. I didn’t want Circe to worry any more than she already was. I took a few deep breaths, which only succeeded in sucking a few more bits of coffee grounds up into my nostrils. My head felt like the inside of a pillow, and I really needed to wake up. I wondered if it was possible to absorb caffeine through your sinuses. Or maybe I should just eat some spoonfuls?

  “Can I see the coffee? That you shoved up my nose?”

  Her eyes got wide with concern, and she got up, grabbed a canister, and passed it to me. “It’s not burning, is it?” she said.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” I assured her. I twisted the lid and took a deep inhale. Then I squinted at it, so that I could make out what the label said. This was instant coffee, the kind that was supposed to dissolve in hot water. Normally the worst kind, but right now the best.

  I was quiet as I picked up my bottle of purple sports drink and held it between my knees.

  “Esme? Esme?” I looked up to see Circe staring at me, a look of concern on her face. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, refocusing my attention on the task at hand. “Circe,” I said, “don’t judge. These are desperate times and they call for desperate measures.” I tipped the canister and dumped a whole bunch of instant coffee crystals into the purple drink. Then I screwed the lid back onto the bottle and gave it a long, hard shake. I held the bottle up to the light from the lava lamp, and could see that only about half of the coffee had dissolved. There was a layer of brown sludge on the bottom, but the sports drink itself was now the color of a muddy river. It would have to do. I unscrewed the cap, tipped it to my lips, and gulped down the mud.

  Circe had been watching me, silently, the entire time. “I worked in coffee shops for years, and I never…,” she started, then trailed off. “Well, how’s it taste?”

  “Disgusting.” I grimaced as I finished it.

  “Esme, has it ever occurred to you that you might have a caffeine problem?” she asked.

  “I really don’t consider it a problem,” I said, standing up and popping my knuckles. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  I was worried that Cassandra might be in trouble, which seemed silly, considering that being kidnapped and dumped into a storage unit might make some people think that I was the one in trouble. I guess we were both in trouble, which was nothing new, but normally we were in trouble together.

  I pulled out my phone and looked at it again, trying to will it into service. Still nothing. I walked over until I was standing a few feet from the door. I held up my hands, then tried to push the door with my kinesis, but my powers hit the door and died. Then, in the silence, I heard a dog bark.

  I strained to listen. I could hear the sounds of the traffic nearby, the whoosh and rhythmic thud of cars. I strained for something else but got nothing. The sound of the cars told me we were by the highway, probably in a strip of town that was home to storage units, tire shops, and not much else. Not exactly the kind of place where someone would take their dog o
ut for a walk at ten p.m. on a Saturday night. I was about to turn back toward Circe when I heard it again, and closer this time.

  A dog barking. Not just any dog but Pig. Pig rarely barked, but when she did, it was like something out of a cartoon—“ra-rar-rar-ra-ra”—like she was a crooner in the moonlight, belting out love songs over red roses and ravioli. I’d recognize that bark anywhere, and it was here now.

  “What is it?” Circe asked.

  “I think they’re here,” I said.

  “The band?” she said. We were both whispering, even though we knew no one could hear us.

  “No,” I said, “my friends. My friends are here.” And then I heard a car door slam. It was hard to hear through the storage unit’s metal door, but it seemed like the car wasn’t that far away. Not right outside, but no more than a few doors down. Circe raised her eyebrows, and wordlessly walked over to stand next to me.

  Silence, and we waited. Then we heard it. People. Specifically, Janis and Brian, arguing. And someone—it sounded like Ji-A—still singing about camping. Janis and Brian appeared to be arguing about an after-party, one that Janis thought Brian was trying to keep her from attending.

  “It’s not fair that Esme gets to hang out with them just because she’s a Sitter and I’m not,” she was saying. “It was my idea to book them for the dance in the first place.”

  “Jackson,” Brian said, “if I could assign detention simply because a student annoyed me, you would never see the light of the lunchroom again.”

  “Coach,” Janis interrupted, “you really need to get a new threat. Detention’s kind of tired. Nobody’s scared of detention these days.” I couldn’t see him at that moment, but I imagined Brian rolling his eyes.

  “Like I said, Esme is not hanging out with Superfüd. They kidnapped her, and we need to find her. We are here to try to find her.” The singing was still going on in the background. “Ji-A, Amirah,” Brian said, “get over here. One of these units belongs to Superfüd. See if you can figure out which one.”