I went over and put my arms around her. Her breath still reeked of alcohol but hangovers were the least of our problems now. Tears welled up in her eyes as she stared at me.
“Please, Vi. That horrible fat one’s gone under the couch. I can’t bear it.”
I nodded—and then gripped her shoulders hard.
“You …” Just one word, just to see.
No frog. I breathed out, a great shuddery exhalation of relief.
“You just spoke and nothing came out. And so did I.”
She clapped her hands to her mouth. “So I did.”
We stared at each other, all tears and stupid grins, the toad forgotten in its hiding place.
“But why?”
I stepped back, letting my hands fall away from her shoulders. I gestured for her to speak. Better to have more diamonds than more frogs.
“You think—” A diamond fell out, and she stopped. I grabbed her hand and motioned for her to continue. “You think it’s because we were touching?”
“I think that just proved it.” Once I held her hand the diamonds had stopped, and though she’d flinched when I started speaking, no frogs had appeared either. I took a deep breath, my racing heartbeat beginning to slow at last.
She sank down onto the couch, feet curled beneath her, and buried her face in her hands. I tried to shoo the remaining frogs out the door to the patio, with only partial success. They were so tiny and hoppy. Three went outside, but two bounded off to the kitchen. Another zigged just as I zagged, and nearly got turned into frog jam. He leapt away in alarm and went to join the toad, which still lurked under the couch.
I gave up frog hunting and sat on the other end of the couch, knees drawn up. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I must be dreaming. Had we both got drunk last night? So drunk that I didn’t remember it? But I remembered everything else so clearly. Josh Johnson being all weird and creepy, Zac dancing to YMCA, then in the car with Zac …
Oh, God. Zac would never kiss me now. Not with frogs coming out of my mouth every time I opened it.
I made sure my feet were touching CJ.
“Are you okay?”
She lifted her head long enough to give me a withering look. “No, of course not. Are you? I have the world’s worst headache, my mouth tastes like the bottom of a birdcage, my ankle hurts—oh, and I have diamonds falling out of my mouth every time I speak.”
“Could be worse,” I said, stung. “You could have frogs coming out instead.”
She looked at me for a long moment, apology in her eyes. “True. Why is this happening, Vi?”
Her voice trembled like a frightened child’s.
“I don’t know. It’s not possible, is it? It’s like … it’s like magic.”
I felt like an idiot for saying it, but CJ didn’t laugh. How else could we explain this?
“If magic is real, why can’t we have three wishes or find a pot of gold or something? This is the suckiest magic in the whole history of suck! Although …” she stopped, struck by a sudden thought. “We do have diamonds …”
I looked at the sparkling stone as she held it up to the light. “Do you think it’s real?”
“How should I know? Do I look like a diamond expert? But the frogs seem pretty real.”
I had to agree with that.
“Do you think it was the absinthe?” she asked.
“The absinthe? Don’t be ridiculous. It may be freaky bad alcohol, but it doesn’t work magic. Besides, I didn’t have any, remember?”
“Well, I wasn’t sure.” She looked defensive. “I don’t remember that clearly.”
I snorted. “I’m not surprised. You were wasted. That reminds me—you’d better hose out the gutter before Mum and Dad get home and find your lovely pile of vomit from last night.”
“They won’t know it was me.”
“One look at you and I think they’ll be able to put two and two together.”
“You didn’t send Mum that photo, did you?”
“Oh, you remember that part, do you?” Funny, my sister getting drunk had seemed like such a big deal last night. Now we had much bigger problems. “No, of course not.”
“You’d better delete it.”
“Why? I thought I might put it on Facebook.”
“Don’t you dare.”
She hit me with a cushion, and I scrambled away, laughing almost hysterically, though nothing about this morning was funny. The minute I lost contact with CJ I felt the tingle again, and two more frogs bounded away across the carpet. My laugh finished up more like a sob, and CJ slid her foot over to touch my leg. We gazed at each other, panic barely suppressed.
“What are we going to do? We can’t go round like Siamese twins for the rest of our lives!”
What a horrific thought. I loved my sister, but there were limits.
“Never mind the rest of our lives. What about school tomorrow?”
Oh, God. We only had two classes together, Maths and English, and we weren’t even allowed to choose our own seats in English. What about the rest of the day? And what the hell was I going to say to Zac?
“I’m going to Google it,” CJ said. “Maybe there’ll be something.”
Oh, sure. Even Doctor Google wouldn’t have an answer for this one.
“You get the rest of these things outside,” she ordered, disappearing upstairs to find her laptop.
Funny. I’d never realised my sister was so squeamish. Frogs didn’t bother me at all. Apart from the fact that they were falling out of my own mouth, that is. That sure as hell wasn’t right. I was still shaking. Now, if it had been spiders—well, that would have been a different story.
These little guys were cute, with their big orange eyes and delicate splayed toes. The yellow spots on their backs looked liked someone had dotted them with the world’s tiniest paintbrush. They were so small, not much bigger than a decent-sized cherry, but they could fit a lot of hop in those little legs. Catching them was quite the challenge. It took a good twenty minutes before I had them all settled among the maidenhair, and CJ was well into her Google search, though not having much luck, judging from the grim look on her face.
That just left the toad. Him I didn’t feel quite so comfortable about handling. There was just something about that big ugly warty body with its stumpy brown legs that put me off. Why did I get that one gross toad among all the cute little green frogs? Had I said something different? I tried to recall—had I sworn?
Surely that couldn’t be it—just my luck, to get a sucky magic curse that had morals. I felt a hysterical giggle threatening and sucked in a deep breath, trying to stay calm. What was a girl supposed to say when frogs started exploding out of her mouth? Gosh, what a surprise?
Only one way to find out for sure. I looked down at my froggy audience and took another deep breath.
“Shit.”
Sure enough, the drop that fell onto the pavers was a nasty brown colour. I watched the thing expand into another toad, just as ugly as the first. It gave me a mournful look.
“Ribbit,” it said, its voice much deeper than its tiny cousins’, and hopped away under the azaleas.
In the spirit of experimentation, I dropped a few more choice words, and soon had a collection of toads. I shuddered. QED: theory proved.
Then CJ noticed the toads.
“What the hell are you doing?” she shrieked.
Oh, that was fair. She could say “hell” and get a ten-carat diamond, but when I tried it I got a big fat toad. Nice one, sucky magic.
I stomped back in and leaned on her shoulder. “Any luck?”
“All I could find was this.”
She turned the laptop so I could read the screen.
“Toads and Diamonds—a fairy tale? Seriously?”
“Read it.”
She shoved the laptop at me, so I settled on the lounge with it.
There was once upon a time a widow who had two daughters …
It was pretty short. One daughter was beautiful and good, but the mo
ther didn’t like her because she was just like her father; the mother favoured the daughter who took after herself. So the good daughter has to do all the work, just like Cinderella, and one day she goes to draw water from the distant well, and an old lady asks for a drink. Naturally, it being a fairy tale, the old lady’s really a fairy in disguise, and when the girl is all sweet and helpful and gets her a drink the fairy rewards her by making flowers and jewels come out of her mouth every time she speaks. So when the mother finds out what’s happened, she sends the mean ugly sister off to the well, with instructions to be nice to any old ladies who happen to be lurking there.
I looked up at CJ. “This is such a pile of crap.”
She flapped her hands impatiently. “Read the rest of it.”
The disagreeable sister turns up, but this time there’s no old lady, but a fancy rich woman. It’s the same fairy, of course, but the mean sister is stupid as well as mean and doesn’t realise, so when the woman asks for a drink the mean sister tells her to get it herself, she’s not her servant.
And abracadabra, this sister gets the gift of snakes and toads instead of diamonds. When the mother finds out what’s happened, she blames the pretty girl and drives her away. The girl hides in the forest, where the king’s son finds her. Having his eye on the money, he promptly “falls in love” with this jewel-making machine, and marries her. Yeah, right. Pretty convenient romance. No chance at all that he only loves her for the money. And in true fairytale fashion, the toad sister dies alone and miserable, having been abandoned because of all the grossness coming out of her mouth.
I snapped the laptop shut and glared at my sister. “And your point is …? Be pretty and get rewarded for it? I think we already learned that lesson. Being your twin is just one long lesson in the benefits of being beautiful. Are you saying I’m the ugly sister? That I’m so mean and stupid and vile I deserve to be spitting amphibians for the rest of my life?”
“No, of course not. The point is it’s a fairy tale.”
I was too angry to listen. Of course my beautiful sister got the diamonds. When did anything ever go wrong in her perfect life? “And who was the one who got drunk and disgusting last night? Who was the good sister then, huh? Where would you have ended up if I hadn’t dragged you away from that sleaze who was trying to get into your pants? You didn’t earn those diamonds, sweetheart. You should be the one spitting toads.”
“Vi! Calm down. Don’t take it so personally.”
“Don’t take it personally? How am I not supposed to take it personally?” I dropped the laptop on the carpet, surprising a croak out of the toad still lurking under the couch.
“Because it doesn’t matter who got what.”
“Easy for you to say.”
She stared at me intently. “What matters is that it’s a fairy tale come to life. Doesn’t that remind you of anything?”
“What do you—? Oh. Snow White.”
The girl in the glass coffin. The clearing in the bush that never existed before, the one that looked more like it belonged in a European forest—or a fairy tale—than in the Australian bushland.
Smart girl, my sister. Sometimes she surprised me.
“You think this is like that? How is that possible?”
She let her head fall back against the cushions with a groan. “I don’t know what to think. The Snow White thing seemed like some kind of weird prank—but it looks pretty suspicious now, doesn’t it? That girl won’t wake up, and they don’t know why. Wanna bet if they find some prince to kiss her she’ll be jumping out of her skin?”
“But … fairy tales aren’t real.”
She removed her foot from my leg. “Ya think?”
She spat a diamond into her hand and threw it at me. Yeah, it was kind of hard to argue with that. I turned it over in my hand, thinking. I should be working on my Ancient History essay. Or writing up that Physics experiment. That was real. This stuff was just crazy.
Yet, unless we were both suffering from the same weird hallucination, I had to accept that this was real too. And this diamond was no hallucination, hard and cold in my hand. I just had to adjust my expectations of reality to allow for some new and unusual manifestations.
I heard the car before really registering what it was. CJ leapt up, panic all over her face.
“Oh, my God, Mum and Dad are home!”
The noise of the automatic garage door grinding open came next, and we both stared at the door leading from the kitchen into the garage with horror. The car drove in, the engine stopped, and the outside door started up again, while we stood there, frozen.
Then I shoved her back onto the couch and scooped up the diamonds she’d scattered. The TV was still on.
“Sit down! Look like you’re watching TV.”
She sat bolt upright in the corner of the couch. I stretched out and put my feet in her lap.
“Relax! Look natural.”
She shot me a panicked look, but slouched a bit just as the door opened.
Dad breezed in. “Hi, girls! Did you miss me?”
“Hi, Dad.”
He came over and gave us both a kiss.
“You two look cozy there,” Mum said, coming in behind him.
“How was work?” I asked.
“Busy,” she said. “Don’t I get a hug?”
I held my arms out. “Don’t make me walk all the way over there.”
She shook her head and muttered something uncomplimentary about teenagers, but came over to give us both a hug. While she was bent over CJ the toad decided to add to the moment by croaking loudly.
“What was that?”
“I think the springs might be going,” I said, bouncing violently to produce a few squeaks from the couch.
“That’s a shame. I thought we might get a few more years out of it yet.”
Mum headed upstairs to unpack.
“Fancy a cup of tea, love?” Dad called after her. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
Behind his back, the toad emerged from under the couch and hopped across to the round table where we ate our meals.
“I’ll do it!” I said brightly. “You go upstairs and help Mum.”
I rushed into the kitchen, willing him to go away before the damn toad moved again.
“Thanks, sweetheart.” He smiled at me, then looked at CJ. “You’re very quiet this morning. Feeling all right?”
She nodded.
“Cat got your tongue?” he teased.
She jumped up and came into the kitchen to help. Out of sight behind the bench she stretched her foot out to touch mine as she got two cups out of the cupboard.
“Just a bit tired,” she said.
He frowned. “Are you limping?”
“She’s fine.” Go away, Dad. I didn’t dare look at the toad. “Just slipped on the stairs last night.
“I’ll see if I can find a bandage. You should be resting it if it’s that sore.”
“I’m okay, Dad, honest. Don’t fuss.”
He smiled. “Well, look at you two—so domesticated. I’ll just duck upstairs for a minute and then you can tell me all about your weekend.”
“Sure.” I kept the grin plastered on my face until he disappeared around the bend in the stairs. Then CJ let her head drop on to the bench with a thump and I dived under the table.
I had to get rid of that toad.
CHAPTER SIX
I spent the rest of the day on the internet, reading all I could about magic. Maybe I could find someone who actually knew enough about this crap to help us, though most of the “magicians” I found were the kind who did children’s parties. I didn’t give up looking, though; I had to find some way to lift this curse. In the Toads and Diamonds fairy tale the fairy had called it a gift, but maybe fairies had a different definition of that word than the rest of us mere mortals. It certainly didn’t feel like a gift to me. Even CJ’s diamonds, now I’d had a chance to calm down, were no picnic. How could we have any kind of normal life like this?
The only peopl
e I found who seemed to be able to do “real” magic were illusionists like David Copperfield. I’d never believed it was real before, but maybe it was time to be a little more open-minded. Wouldn’t it be cool if their tricks were all true? What else might they be able to do? Most of the famous ones were running shows in places like Las Vegas. How were two seventeen-year-old girls supposed to get themselves halfway around the world to meet someone like that?
We played the antisocial teenager card and hid from Mum and Dad in our rooms, only emerging for dinner, and then it was easy enough to make sure our feet touched under the table. I’m not sure Mum and Dad would have noticed if one of us had slipped up, to be honest. Mum looked exhausted, and they both seemed preoccupied. They left for work so early on Monday morning neither of us was even out of bed.
“So far, so good,” I said to CJ as we left the house. I had my hand on her shoulder as she locked the front door behind us. “But how are we going to handle school?”
Our new school had a draconian roll call system—students’ names were checked off at the beginning of every lesson, and parents were contacted the minute someone didn’t show up for school—so hanging out at home all day wasn’t an option.
“Well, we can sit together for Maths and English,” she said, as if that answered the question.
“No, we can’t. Maths maybe, but Mrs Harcourt won’t let us change seats in English. You know she insists on splitting up the boys and making them all sit with girls. Besides, we couldn’t talk in two classes and refuse to speak in all the others. How would we get away with that?”
The bus stop was just around the corner from our house. We stopped on the footpath and looked at each other.
“We’ll just have to keep quiet all day, then.”
I laughed. “You? Not speak? What if a teacher asks us a question? You can’t not answer.”
“We’ll tell them our throats are sore. Well, not tell them, obviously. Mime it or something. We can pretend we’ve got laryngitis.”
I’d been hoping she’d come up with something brilliant, but laryngitis looked like the only answer—apart from convincing our parents we were both deathly ill, which had been my preferred option, only they’d left home so early I hadn’t been able to put that plan into action.
The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) Page 5