The Cassandra Curse

by Chantel Acevedo

  Dedication

  For Penelope, Mary-Blair, Jaina, and Vanessa.

  Thank you for being my muses.

  Epigraph

  Launch out on this story, Muse, daughter of Zeus,

  start from where you will—sing for our time, too.

  Homer’s The Odyssey, Book I

  Emily Wilson, translator

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: The Problem with Heights

  Chapter 2: The Pirate and the Snowman

  Chapter 3: I Make Things Weird

  Chapter 4: Raquel Hits a High Note

  Chapter 5: A Visit from History

  Chapter 6: A Great (and by Great I Mean Big) Bed

  Chapter 7: The Muse Squad

  Chapter 8: Bracelets and Brownies

  Chapter 9: Bestie Woes

  Chapter 10: IT Happens Again

  Chapter 11: The Rest of Them

  Chapter 12: Clio’s Tale

  Chapter 13: Assignment: Maya Rivero

  Chapter 14: Muses in Training

  Chapter 15: What Not to Do

  Chapter 16: Muse Magic Comes in Handy at Home

  Chapter 17: Bienvenido a Miami

  Chapter 18: The New Kids in School

  Chapter 19: Best (Worst). Assembly. Ever.

  Chapter 20: Sirens Underground

  Chapter 21: Toy Tragedy

  Chapter 22: Parrots and Strategies

  Chapter 23: Maya Gets a Win

  Chapter 24: An Incident at Sea-a-Rama

  Chapter 25: The Muse Council

  Chapter 26: Getting to Know Maya

  Chapter 27: Letting Go

  Chapter 28: Frosty’s Enchanted Forest

  Chapter 29: The County Science Fair at Last

  Chapter 30: The Cassandra Curse

  Chapter 31: Battle at the V and A

  Chapter 32: Mission Accomplished

  Muse Rules

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  The Problem with Heights

  “JORDAN!!”

  I shouted so loudly it felt like I’d swallowed the steel wool my mom uses to scrub the sink. Beside me, my best friend, Raquel Falcón, was red as a stop sign and screaming her head off, too.

  We couldn’t help ourselves. There, onstage and in the flesh, was superstar singer Jordan Miguel, and he had just pointed straight at us and blown us each a kiss.

  Raquel and I had won front-row tickets on Y-100’s “Guess That Sound” contest. We called in and guessed the noise correctly—restaurant chopsticks breaking apart. Now we were at the concert, and Jordan Miguel had made actual eye contact with us.

  “Raqui!” I squealed, clinging to my best friend’s arm.

  “I know!” she shouted back, her eyes locked onto Jordan Miguel as he danced up and down the stage. He sang all his hits, and we knew every word. By the time the arena lights finally came back on, we’d lost our voices. Then we went to go spend all our money on concert T-shirts.

  My phone rang while we were in line for the shirts. I dug it out of my pocket. “It’s probably my mom,” I said to Raquel before looking down.

  I must have made a face at the screen, because Raquel’s eyes widened. I mouthed the words my dad to Raquel, and she nodded.

  “Hello?” I answered the call.

  “Callie, mi niña! How was the concert?”

  “Fun,” I said. Papi lives in New York City with my stepmother, Laura.

  “Guess what?” Papi asked. It was hard to hear him over the people shouting their souvenir orders. I thrust my money into Raquel’s hands and she bought our T-shirts while I talked with my dad.

  “Guess what?” he asked again.

  “Chicken butt,” I said, rhyming with him like I always did.

  Papi laughed. “You’re going to have a baby brother or sister soon!” he announced the way the DJ said, “You’ve just won tickets to the Jordan Miguel concert!” Except it wasn’t anything like that.

  “Oh,” I replied. I curled my fingers tighter and tighter around my cell phone as he talked. “Are you happy, Callie? Aren’t you happy?” Papi asked me.

  I didn’t know if I was happy or not. I already had brothers—older twin brothers, to be specific—and they were as annoying as allergies. Why did Papi have to call now, anyway, on the best night of my life? I shouldn’t have been surprised. His timing was always bad.

  Papi married Laura a year ago, and six months after the wedding, they moved over a thousand miles away. We hadn’t seen him since he left. When he lived with us, Papi was always tired. I’d like to think that he wasn’t tired of us, that that’s not the reason he left. Add a new baby to the equation and, well, if the universe ever invented a better way to tire out a grown-up, I don’t know what it is.

  I try not to think about that at all.

  “I’m happy, Papi,” I said.

  “You okay?” he asked. “You sound funny.”

  “I lost my voice at the concert,” I said quickly.

  “Ah. I remember those days. Well, big sister, we’ll talk soon. Laura sends her love.”

  “Love you, Papi.”

  “Love you, kiddo,” he said.

  Just as I ended the call, Raquel appeared with T-shirts in hand, holding them up like trophies. “Jordan Migueeeeeeeel,” she said for the billionth time that night.

  Outside, my mom and Raquel’s mom were waiting for us. It had been pouring rain, but they’d stayed under an umbrella the whole concert. In the period between when the music ended and when we exited the building, Mami had texted me five times. Her last text read: Did you hear from your dad?

  I texted back Yep, and I was grateful that she left it at that.

  We rode the Metrorail back home, fighting the crowds of concertgoers to get on and find seats. It was an elevated train, and we watched through the windows as Miami zipped by. The rain had cleared up, and the city was all shiny and wet. Raquel leaned her head on my shoulder. “I’d give anything to be onstage like that,” she said, her voice scratchy.

  “Not me. Having all those eyes pinned on you? No thanks,” I said.

  Raquel laughed, and put on her concert T-shirt over her tank top. On the front, Jordan Miguel was standing in a spotlight, with giant wings sprouting from his shoulder blades like an angel. On the back, the cities and venues of his tour were listed, with Miami right at the very end.

  I slipped my shirt on over my clothes too, but Raquel had gotten me a size too small. “Sorry. They ran out of size large, so I got you a medium. It looks good,” she said.

  I smoothed the shirt down. It was too tight across my stomach. “No, it doesn’t. But I’m still wearing it,” I said. The tag on Raquel’s shirt was sticking out. Size small. I tucked it in for her and tried not to think about how well her shirt fit compared to mine.

  Raquel hummed sleepily. She was my best friend in the world and had been since the third grade, when one of our classmates, Violet Prado, had decided to play superheroes at recess. Violet claimed the role of Wonder Woman, named her best friends, Alain Riche and Max Pascal, Superman and Batman, then pointed at me and Raquel and said, “You two losers have to be civilians. We may or may not decide to save you.” Raquel and I stomped off and sat in the shade for the rest of recess.

  “They’re the worst,” I’d said.

  Raquel had agreed. “We can be better best friends than they are,” she’d said.

  “Deal,” I’d said, and we shook on it.

  The rest was bestie history.

  The train rumbled on, stopping every so often to pick up or drop off passengers. At eve
ry station, handfuls of people loaded on, while only a few got off. The train was very full. I nudged Raquel in the ribs when an elderly couple walked on and made eye contact with me. We stood and gave them our seats. The lady tried to give us strawberry candies from her purse to thank us, but we declined.

  “Please have some,” she insisted.

  “They’re delicious,” her husband added.

  “No thanks,” Raquel and I both said at the same time.

  “Don’t be shy,” the woman said, and tried putting a piece of candy in my hand. Alarmed, I jerked out of reach.

  “Honestly, no thanks,” I said, walking away.

  We took a spot near one of the doors. It was late, and the city twinkled like it was lit with a million birthday candles. Someone at the front of the car was playing a Jordan Miguel song on their phone, and Raquel and I bopped to it where we stood.

  It was the perfect night.

  That is, until we heard a loud crack and a whoosh. My hair blew into my face. The train car rattled. Raquel’s nails dug into my arm, and I heard my mother scream, “Ay!”

  The door at our backs had flown open thirty feet in the air. My stomach felt like it dropped just as far. I lost my balance and reached out to grab Raquel’s arm.

  Raquel cried out and her knees buckled. She didn’t do heights. Even climbing the stairs at school she held on to the handrail harder than she had to.

  “Callie, move, move, move,” Raquel shouted, pushing hard toward the center of the train, but we couldn’t get very far from the open door. One shove in the other direction and we would go flying.

  Our moms were on their feet, trying to reach us, but the crowds were thick and everybody was panicking, including me. US 1 rushed by beneath us. Did this train always go this fast?

  “Oh no, oh no,” Raquel kept saying every time someone pushed us closer to the door. I couldn’t catch my breath. When I looked at my mom, her face was frozen in a way I had seen once before—the day my tia Annie died. Her funeral had been the first one I’d ever been to. Walking up to her coffin was the scariest thing I’d done. Later, Raquel told me it was the bravest. But on the train, I didn’t feel very brave at all, with the roar of the traffic below and the rush of air at my neck.

  My hands started tingling so hard they went numb, and tears blurred my vision. Raquel had wrapped both arms around my chest, making it hard for me to breathe.

  “Callie, make it stop,” she kept saying hoarsely.

  I reached out to try to push the door back in place, my hand feeling like it was being jabbed by a million pins for some reason, but Raquel grabbed my arm and yelped in my ear. “You’ll fall!” she shouted, pulling me as far as she could into the train.

  “Make up your mind!” I said. The truth was, I was terrified, too. The car gave a great jolt, and a few people toppled over, pushing us closer to the open door. I heard a baby crying somewhere inside the car, and tears sprang to my own eyes. Raquel and I weren’t the only ones in danger. All these people were.

  The top of my head started to buzz, as if a swarm of bees had decided to build their hive in my hair. “What the—” I started to say, but was choked off when Raquel squeezed me even tighter. I felt funny. Off. Like when a cold is coming on, or a sneeze, or like the seconds between when the lights went off at the concert and Jordan Miguel appeared onstage.

  It felt like I was on the edge of something happening.

  A murmur grew around us, as suddenly people in the car stopped shouting and started planning. Just then, the adults standing near us began linking arms, anchoring one another, as if they’d all had the same idea at once. “Cuidado,” one man called. “We’ve got this!” a woman yelled. A man in nurse scrubs, secured by a chain of people behind him, reached out and grabbed the edge of the door, sliding it closed at last. The whoosh of outside air died immediately.

  For a moment, there was silence. The feeling came back to my hands and the top of my head.

  Then everyone in the train car cheered, just as we pulled into the next station.

  “¡Afuera!” my mom shouted, and we left the train and waited for the following one. On the next train, we took seats as far as we could from the doors.

  “I’m sorry I was such a chicken,” Raquel finally said when we got off the train.

  “You weren’t!” I said.

  “Heights freak me out,” Raquel said, her voice catching a little.

  “It really was scary. All those people, though. A train full of heroes. Who would have ever guessed?” I said.

  “Right? That part was cool.” She was quiet for a moment, then her eyes came to rest on my too-tight T-shirt. “Jordan Miguel, Callie! How awesome was that?”

  I squealed. “I’ll never forget it. Ever,” I said. Then we hugged goodbye.

  Chapter 2

  The Pirate and the Snowman

  My mom kept kissing the top of my head as we made our way into the house, and I know what she was worrying over—that I could have ended up somewhere on US 1, flat as a pancake. I wasn’t thinking about it on the train, but now, with my feet on firm ground, I couldn’t stop imagining myself in free fall.

  “I’m okay, Mami,” I lied. I couldn’t stop trembling.

  “I know,” she said, but she understood the truth. She looked at me for a little longer than necessary. “Bueno. Go to sleep. Have sweet dreams, mi amor,” she said at last.

  Not gonna lie, my legs were shaking as I pulled on my pajamas. The twins were awake and softly talking in the bedroom next door. Mami wanted me to go to sleep, but I knew I couldn’t just yet. The boys would distract me from what had happened, probably by irritating me. That would help get my mind off things.

  They weren’t identical twins. Mario had brown, wavy hair, like mine. But he was skinny, and his eyes weren’t dark brown. They were green like the ocean on a stormy day. Fernando looked more like me—with baby fat around the middle and big brown eyes that Mami called “color café.” All three of us had inherited our mother’s nose, which had a little bump in the middle, the inability to touch our toes without lots of stretching first, and a tiny mole just above the knuckle of our left pinkie finger.

  Gently, I pushed the door to their room open. Half the room was painted yellow, and in one corner was a huge, rusty anchor. That was Fernando’s side. He liked trolling the junkyard and bringing home the weirdest things he could find. His treasures, he called them. When Fernando was younger, he used to say he wanted to be a pirate when he grew up.

  The other side of the room was painted sky blue. There were pictures of snowcapped mountains on the walls, a beat-up pair of skis over the closet (another of Fernando’s junkyard finds), and bookshelves that were neat and dust-free. Mario’s side. Even though we’d never seen snow, when he was little Mario used to say he wanted to be a snowman.

  An actual snowman.

  It was ridiculous, even for a little kid, and we still teased him about it.

  They’d just turned sixteen that September and they hadn’t talked about pirates and snowmen in a long time. I wondered what they whispered about now, always a little jealous that I wasn’t in on the conversation.

  They were sitting on their beds (yellow bedspread for Fernando, blue for Mario), and chucking balled-up pieces of paper at one another as they chatted. I felt left out at the sight. They always had each other. Meanwhile, I was all alone next door. “Hey,” I said, interrupting. They both turned at once and each threw a ball of paper at me.

  “Nope. Out of our room,” Mario said.

  “What he said,” Fernando added.

  “Come on, guys. I almost died tonight,” I said. Fernando laughed and waved me off. Mario narrowed his eyes at me. “Really. Ask Mami. One of the Metrorail doors opened up and Raquel and I nearly fell out.”

  “Seriously?” Mario asked.

  “Come here,” Fernando said, and scooted over to make room for me. He slung a heavy arm around my shoulders and dumped a couple of paper balls in my lap. “Aim for his nose. He hates that,” he said.


  “At least she can throw,” Mario taunted.

  “A compliment?” I asked in surprise. “I should almost fall to my death more often.” Then Fernando pushed me clean off the bed. I dropped like a sack of rocks.

  “Better?” he asked.

  Laughing, I kicked at his shins, but he dodged my feet.

  “Shh, Mami thinks we’re asleep,” Mario said, and we quieted down.

  It was good to be in their room, even if I’d just been dumped onto the floor. At least it wasn’t lonely. My legs had stopped shaking, but something else was bugging me.

  “Did you talk to Papi?” I asked quietly.

  My brothers nodded. Fernando swiped at his nose. Mario started to scan his bookshelves, as if he were going to pull a book down and start reading right then.

  “What a mess,” Fernando said at last.

  “Nothing’s been right since Tia Annie died,” I said.

  “I think we’re supposed to be happy about the baby,” Mario said.

  “I’m not,” Fernando mumbled.

  “Me neither,” I said.

  Mario sighed. He always seemed older to me, though Fernando would point out that Mario was actually ten minutes younger than him.

  “I’m not mad. Just surprised is all,” Mario said.

  “Yeah,” Fernando and I both said at once.

  We were all quiet for a moment. Then the paper ball war started again, the three of us getting louder and louder until Mami pounded on the door.

  “Calliope Maria! Fernando Luis! Mario Ignacio! GO TO SLEEP!”

  We stopped and fell silent. “Dang,” Fernando whispered. “She used all our names.”

  “You’d better go,” Mario said.

  I got to my feet, gave my brothers a wave, and wandered into the hallway. My room was dark, but my mom had turned down my bed and set a glass of water on my nightstand. The events of the night seemed very far away now. Papi, the Metrorail, even Jordan Miguel, were all starting to feel like a dream.

  I rubbed my hands together. That numb sensation had gone away. I touched my head. Not tingling anymore. It had been the strangest feeling, almost like I was coming down with a flu or something. Then it had stopped as soon as we were safe.