“Yeah, sure,” I said.
Chapter 19: Bee
Sarah and I were in the bathroom staring at our reflections in the mirror. “You have to think about beauty in a different way,” I said. “You have to want to be plain and dull and boring. That’s the first step.”
“I already feel dull,” said Sarah. “I still don’t understand how Claudio could believe this of me.”
I put a hand on her arm. “It’s not about you. It’s about him.”
“But Ben believes in you still. I don’t understand why him and not Claudio. That’s why I think it has to be about me.”
“Sarah, it’s not. You can’t blame yourself for other people’s weaknesses. And Ben isn’t a paragon of virtue, either. Sometimes I think the only reason he believed me is because he already knew all my failings. It’s not like I had hidden them from anyone.” I smiled wryly.
“You’re saying that because Claudio didn’t know my bad side, he accepted this?”
“Sometimes people fall in love with the ideal person. But they know it can’t be real, in the end,” I said.
“Only you and Ben didn’t fall in love with an ideal?”
“No, definitely not. That’s one advantage of us hating each other for so long. But we’ve got to focus on our faces at the moment, Sarah. Think about how badly you feel. Wallow in it a little, and try to mix it with the spell. That might help.”
“You do it first. I’ll watch you,” said Sarah.
I nodded. That was not a bad idea.
I looked at my face. At the beginning of the summer, I thought I was such a rebel, refusing to use the beauty spell. But really all I had done was annoy Leanata. I hadn’t looked like a Hero, but I hadn’t looked ordinary, either. Ben was right. I’d been walking around with certain assumptions about the world and they were wrong. Now I was going to have a chance to see what it was really like to be clanless.
“Are you afraid?” said Sarah.
“No, not at all,” I said automatically. Then I could see Sarah’s face flinch in the mirror and I realized I’d said the wrong thing. “A little,” I admitted.
“About the World Council?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“What, then?”
It was stupid. “Ben,” I said. “What if he loves me because of my face? What if he changes how he feels while I’m like this? And then when I change back, he is affectionate again?”
“Then maybe it’s not real love, after all,” said Sarah. “And you’ll be glad you found out so early.”
Glad? I sighed and shook myself. “Back to work,” I said.
I whispered the spell, twisted the words that usually made me beautiful. Instead of making my hair lighter and bouncier, they made my hair look limp and changed the color. Instead of a brilliant red, it turned into a flat brown.
I looked at my eyes as I said the next few syllables, and the bright blue turned a mixed color somewhere between brown and blue and green. My face slumped. My nose got larger, more bulbous. My lips went thick and wide. My cheekbones seemed to recede inside a fleshy exterior, and my chin hid itself in the same excesses.
I looked down and saw my breasts shrink while my stomach grew. I hadn’t actually gained weight, I didn’t think, but it was distributed differently. I felt fat. My knees seemed to droop and my hands were larger, the fingernails broken and the freckles everywhere increased.
“Oh,” said Sarah, staring at me with a faintly curled lip.
“Is it that bad?” I asked.
Sarah swallowed hard and pointed to the mirror.
I looked at myself, tilting my head this way and that. “It’s not so much bad as it is—uninteresting. Bland. Like a thousand other faces,” I said.
Sarah nodded and took a breath. “My turn now.”
“Just let your feelings flow into the spell,” I said.
She started whispering it and I could see her face grow brighter, her skin shining, her nose perkier.
“No,” I said, putting a hand on her to stop her. “Not like that. Try again.”
She stopped mid-phrase and looked at herself. “Right,” she said. “I’m so bad at this.”
“You’re so good at it you don’t know how to be bad,” I said.
It took three more tries before Sarah could make herself look the least bit worse, and even that wasn’t enough to make her unrecognizable.
“I’ll do it, if you trust me,” I said.
Sarah hesitated a moment, then said, “All right.” She closed her eyes and I said the spell. I didn’t have to feel angry or anything. I was getting used to this.
In a few minutes, Sarah was as plain as I was. Her golden hair had gone dull and her hips were wider. She looked shorter, but she wasn’t. It was just the effect of other changes. Narrower shoulders, a slight hump in her back. Her arms seemed skinnier and ganglier.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Wow!” said Sarah, and not in a good way.
Now was the chance I had to see for real what life had been like for my parents, outside the clan. Maybe I would have more sympathy for their insistence that I stay in Leanata’s good graces.
“Can you keep this up all day?” asked Sarah.
I hoped I could. I felt all right now, a little bit of a headache behind my eyes. I’d never done so many spells so close together. I didn’t know what the limit was, but I might be about to find out. Most Heros did the spell twice a day on themselves, not on other people. It took more out of me to do it on Sarah. This could get rough. On the other hand, probably no one would notice if I collapsed, so long as I still looked clanless.
“We have to change back now, though,” I said.
“I can do it myself,” said Sarah.
I nodded in relief.
We did the spell the regular way. That was easier. Then we stared at each other in the mirror.
“Claudio is an idiot,” I said. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah. So why do I still love him? And hate him?”
“Well, I guess we can’t always control what we feel,” I said. “But I can tell you that sometimes love and hate aren’t different feelings. They’re our hearts telling us that there is a connection, and we don’t know what to do about it.”
I caught a glimpse of Ben’s back as we walked down the stairs, and ahead of him, Claudio and Pedro.
They weren’t our real enemies, were they? That was John and Leanata and Margaret. But the fact that they didn’t know what they were doing hurt more somehow. You can count on the bad people doing bad stuff, but when the good people do bad stuff, too, what’s going to happen to the world?
There were whispers around us.
“Here we go,” I said to Sarah.
It was like stepping onto a stage. The crowd parted for us, and Sarah and I walked through with heads held high. This was the last time people would see us as ourselves for what might be a long while.
Ben was standing there, looking at us, and then Claudio and Pedro turned.
I couldn’t see Leanata or John or Margaret, but I was sure they were somewhere here, watching this unfold.
“You coward!” shouted Sarah at Claudio. She wasn’t acting, either. Her face was pale with splotches of red anger on her cheeks. It only made her more beautiful.
I could see Claudio falter for a moment. Then Pedro put a hand on his shoulder and he clenched his jaw.
“And you are spell thieves,” said Pedro calmly. “Both of you.”
“We haven’t taken anything,” I said. “And we can prove it.”
“Oh? I don’t think that you can,” said Pedro.
“Why would we take your spell, anyway?” I asked. “You think we’re that stupid? And that greedy? What does that say about you, Claudio, that you fell in love with Sarah so easily? And you, Ben? How do you stand on this? I haven’t heard a word from you. Are you going to stand up and be a man or take the easy way out?”
Ben looked at me and in that moment, I knew that he would never let me down. Even if I we
re guilty of this, I thought, he would still defend me. It frightened me a little, thinking that I held him in my hands like that. But it was also the most wonderful thing, to feel the protection of his love around me like a cloak.
“I stand with you, Beatrice,” said Ben, and he stepped away from his friends.
Now it was time for the distraction to let us disappear.
“What?” said Pedro.
“Ben,” said Claudio. “Don’t do this. We’re your friends. We’ve always been your friends.”
“Until now,” said Ben. He spread his legs apart and tightened his hands into fists. “I challenge you both. Fight me or prove you are cowards.”
Claudio shook his head. “Ben, this is ridiculous. You can’t beat me. I’m a Florentine.”
“Nonetheless,” said Ben. “I challenge you. Love against magic. My feelings against your power. I do this for Beatrice, for my love.”
“Claudio, don’t!” shouted Sarah.
I couldn’t tell, honestly, if she had planned this out or if this was in the moment.
Claudio couldn’t help but glance at her, but it was only for a moment, and then he was standing with his fists raised, his body turned to Ben.
Ben was going to be absolutely murdered, I thought. His face would be so broken by this that I wouldn’t need to put a reverse beauty spell on him for him to be unrecognizable. But I couldn’t worry about that. Sarah and I had to be ready to disappear.
“When was the last time you actually had to use your muscles instead of just puffing them up and making them look good?” Ben taunted Claudio. “Maybe your spell is really more of a Hero spell. Maybe you’re in the wrong clan, Claudio. Is that why you thought you were in love with Hero? Because you two have so much alike?”
Claudio answered Ben with a punch to the jaw. The sound of the impact made me gasp and Sarah had to put a hand on me to help me stay upright.
But we had to go.
Ben swung back at Claudio, but he didn’t even seem to feel it.
I have to say, it’s not one of my favorite experiences in life to see my boyfriend get beat up. Especially when he started the fight to save me.
“Sarah,” I said.
No one was watching us. We slipped away back into the bathrooms, and I tried not to pay attention to the sounds of the fighting behind us. I knew it wasn’t going to end well for Ben, but I had to trust him, right? He knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t take this too far.
I whispered the spell, changed myself, and then helped Sarah.
We checked ourselves in the mirror and then headed out again. I almost forgot that I still had my backpack with me. I didn’t know if it was distinctive or not, but I couldn’t take the chance. I went back and left it behind. If someone found it, that would only make it more obvious that I had disappeared from school.
We went back out just in time to see the end of the fight. Ben was on the ground, blood dripping down his mouth. He was still shouting smart, taunting things at Claudio and Pedro.
It looked like Pedro had decided to get into the fight a little, but it was Claudio who had done most of the work.
My poor Ben, I thought. But we had to ignore them and pretend we were clanless, invisible people no one would ever notice.
It wasn’t that hard, actually. Once we looked this way, no one saw us at all. Even Ben didn’t look up and catch my eye as the principal came in and took Ben and Claudio and Pedro all to the nurse, and then to detention.
I did see John then. He was looking around frantically. For me and Sarah, I presume.
Margaret came up and put a hand on him. I could see him look up at her with a strange shadow of the feelings I had for Ben. It made me a little sick, but I guess even people like that can fall in love. But that didn’t mean they were going to win.
Chapter 20: Ben
There is something satisfying about punching your best friend. I know it sounds crazy, but I was so tired of defending Claudio and Pedro to Bee and Sarah. It was like I’d stored up a week of dark energy and it was coming out in each swing. Not that I thought I had any chance to win.
Claudio is bigger than I am, and even if he seems like a softie, he knows how to fight. I had the first punch on him, and then I was mincemeat. He worked his way down from my face to my shoulders to my stomach and then my legs. He’s thorough that way, making sure that there wasn’t any part of me that was without pain.
I felt like a pincushion when he was finished, but I didn’t know if Sarah and Bee had gotten away, so I had to keep going. I couldn’t exactly look around to find them, and I didn’t have any extra energy anyway. Pedro let Claudio take control of the fight, but he didn’t let me off. Now and then, he’d step in, get me in the ear or the kidneys, just to show that he was laser accurate, even if he wasn’t as much of a bear as Claudio.
When the principal arrived with the bull horn, I felt relief more than fear about consequences. I had to keep up a show, and I aimed a punch a little wide on purpose, so it would land on the principal’s back. I didn’t want to hurt him, just make sure that he had good reason not to be forgiving about the whole thing.
Finally, the vice principal was standing between me and Claudio and the principal was holding one of Pedro’s arms, and we were gradually led away to the nurse.
It wasn’t until then that I even noticed the blood all over the floor in the commons area. They’d have to get that cleaned up or people might slip and fall. On the other hand, it looked kind of cool to me, like a mini graphic of the whole fight. I bet if I had time, I could catalog every punch and cross reference the blood tracks it left.
They took Claudio and Pedro into the nurse’s office, but since Claudio kept shouting insults at me and lunging toward me, they kept me outside and sent the nurse to me. I guess everyone had decided that I was in the worst shape. The pain caught up with me suddenly, so I slipped down to the couch by the counselor’s office.
The nurse made a sound of dismay. I tried to reassure him that I wasn’t going to faint or anything, but it turned out he was more worried about the couch than about me. As soon as he had thrown a blanket over the couch, he let me sink back onto it.
Then he started making a list of injuries. Right eye blackened. Broken nose. Jaw possibly dislocated. Torn rotator cuff. Bruised rib, possibly broken. Some swelling in the abdomen to be watched in case my liver was lacerated. Left leg slashed open. I think that was Claudio’s backpack. He had his keychain on there and it must have caught me at just the right spot.
“I’m calling an ambulance,” the nurse announced to me. “This is more than I can handle here. You might need surgery. You are certainly going to want some medication for the pain.”
“I feel fine,” I said slowly, though my mouth wouldn’t cooperate with me. What I wanted to know was if the reverse beauty spell on Sarah and Bee had worked well enough for them to pass as claness. They hadn’t given me a chance to see them in disguise, and I was worried. What if they hadn’t gone far enough? What if someone recognized them?
“If you feel fine, then there is something even more wrong with you than I thought. Have you ever been diagnosed as lacking pain receptors?” asked the nurse.
“No,” I said.
And then, just to be sure, he leaned on my bruised ribs.
“Ow!” I shouted.
“Oh, good,” he said. “One less thing for me to worry about.” He brought me some ice to put on my eye, and some to put on my ribs. Then he smeared some antibiotic ointment on my cut leg. “Feel any better?” he asked.
“Worse,” I said. Poking at pain never helped it, as far as I could tell.
“Good.”
“Because that means I’m normal?” I asked.
“No, because that means you’re getting what you deserve, and any kid who ruins my day like you have deserves a lot worse than that.” The nurse said all this with a smile on his face. I wasn’t afraid he would do anything on purpose to hurt me, but I was also pretty sure he wasn’t going to try to make it feel all
better, either. I guess that’s what happens when you have a male nurse?
I took the ice off my eye for a second because it was getting too cold.
“No,” he said, and pushed it back into place. “Keep it there.”
“But—” I said.
“I said, keep it there. Do you want me to give you something to knock you out so you can’t argue with me anymore?”
I mumbled something about letting Claudio finish the job.
“Yeah. What were you thinking, a Paduan attacking a Florentine? And an Arragon. Both at the same time.” He shook his head. “Some people don’t have the brains they were born with.”
I sighed.
“You planning to apply to college?” asked the nurse.
“I was,” I said. “Is this going on my permanent record?” I figured he was telling me I should lower my expectations of getting in. No college would want a trouble maker.
“Definitely,” he said cheerily. “But my real concern is the kind of stupidity you have just demonstrated. All the SAT scores in the world can’t make a dent in something like that. I mean, I’ve seen smart people and I’ve seen dumb people, but there are different kinds of dumb. And yours, my friend, is the fatal kind.”
“Thanks,” I said, and closed my eyes.
He went away for a few minutes, and when he came back, he told me that the ambulances would be here soon.
“How are Claudio and Pedro doing?” I asked.
“Want to know if you gave as good as you got?” he asked.
“No. I’m worried about them. If there are two ambulances, doesn’t that mean they’re both going to the hospital, too?”
“Yes, they are going to the hospital.” The nurse squinted at me. “You’re not going to try to make trouble there, are you? Because I’d hate to have to tell one of the ambulances to go to the hospital in the next county. You’d end up on bumpy roads for two hours. It would be very unpleasant going.”
“They’re my friends,” I said. “I want to know if they’re OK.”
“You mean they were your friends. What happened, anyway? Wait a minute, let me guess. This is over a girl, isn’t it?” asked the nurse.
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