by Ariella Moon
Tommy Deitch and Evan MacDonald pushed past us. Tommy shoved Evan, knocking him into me. Our shoulders collided hard, like an SUV sideswiping a Mini Cooper.
“Hey!” I halted, pain shooting down my arm.
“Tommy! Evan!” Jordan yelled from what sounded like several yards behind us.
They ignored the edge in Jordan’s voice and ran for the tiny lake. The birds took flight, their snowy wings thrumming the air. Evan, his greasy red hair flying, jumped into the puddle. Icy rainwater splashed my jeans.
I loathe being cold. I especially hate being cold and wet. Ignoring the squelch of running feet behind me, I concentrated on Evan’s pale, mocking face.
“Grow up, Evan.” Then I flung a forbidden noun at him, one my mother would never, ever approve of, just as Jordan trotted up alongside me. Tommy laughed. Evan’s expression caved as if I had hurt his feelings, which kind of shocked me. Parvani gasped. I’d like to think it was from the testosterone fouling the air, or Jordan’s belated appearance, but since she was glaring at me, I guess not.
Jordan, clutching a football, raised his arm. “Go long!”
Tommy and Evan took off toward the road, where parents picked up the freshmen and sophomores who didn’t take the bus. Maybe if Jordan threw the ball hard enough, they’d both keep going—into oncoming traffic.
Jordan hustled after them, turning once to wink at me. I think my jaw dropped. I know my stomach fluttered. Jordan caught up with the Smash Heads long before the gate, and grabbed each one by the shoulder. “Be cool,” I heard him say as he herded them toward the cyclone fence.
“Sophisticated language, Evie,” Zhù said.
“Shut up.”
“Evie!” Parvani’s voice rose.
I worked my fingers across the bruise forming on my bicep and gritted my teeth against the cold seeping through my jeans. We reached the cyclone gate.
“See you Monday, Parvani.” Zhù angled his body away from me and locked his gaze on the path.
Parvani patted Zhù’s shoulder. “Bye.” She drew out the word. Sympathy tinged her voice.
Regret fireworked through my insides. “Zhù—”
He’d already slid through the gate like a wounded shadow and disappeared into the throng of kids milling about the sidewalk.
Parvani swatted my arm. “What is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry I yelled at Zhù. I’m mad at the stupid Smash Heads, not him.”
I leaped across the muddy path, squeezed through the half-open gate, and stormed up to Mom’s battered Volvo. It wasn’t too hard to spot in the line of BMWs and SUVs. All the other parents had left their cars running to keep the heat blasting. Not my mom. Not Miss Save-the-Environment. I opened the car door and hurled my backpack onto the floor mat. My breath formed a vapor cloud as I scooted in. Mom slid sideways in the driver’s seat and lowered her romance novel. “Bad day?”
“I’m drenched and freezing.”
“Oh. Bummer.”
“Hello, Ms. O’Reilly.” Parvani slipped into the back seat beside me. A small stream dribbled off her umbrella and onto my sneakers. The cold water seeped through the canvas, through my socks to my skin, and I swear it pooled around my bones.
“Hello, Parvani.” Mom faced front again and rotated the key in the ignition. Welcome heat blasted from the vents, and Chicago blared from the stereo. “Wishing you were here…”
Mom tensed and flicked off the radio. I knew the song reminded her of Dad. I held my breath, hoping she wouldn’t burst into tears. She sniffed as she eased into traffic behind a monstrous blue SUV. “How about hot cider and popcorn in front of the fire when we get home?” Her voice sounded a little strangled.
Parvani threw me a worried look. “Brilliant.”
“Yeah, good idea, Mom.”
The windshield wipers whooshed across the glass. Mom’s suggestion did sound good, especially if I could change into dry socks and sweats first. I relaxed against the gray leather seat.
The rearview mirror reflected Mom’s green cat eyes. “You girls have any special plans for tonight?”
Parvani clutched my wrist.
“Nah.” I tried to sound innocent and nonchalant despite the sudden spike in my pulse rate. “Just the same old stuff.” Witchcraft, casting spells, voodoo…
“Uh huh.” Her eyes narrowed in the mirror.
An uneasy feeling festered in my stomach. Maybe I should have skimmed the spell book before I’d bought it. What if something goes wrong? What if we screw up and accidentally summon a demon, or burn down the house?
Or worse, what if the spell actually works?
Chapter Three
Baby, my retriever mutt, picked up her filthy tennis ball and wagged her tail when she saw us.
“How are you, Baby?” Parvani, who isn’t allowed to have pets and thus has no idea where Baby’s mouth may have been, sank to her knees and let Baby lick her face.
“No French kisses,” I admonished Baby. Then to Parvani, “Be right back.”
I grabbed a pair of flannel pants and a dry sweatshirt, and ducked into the hall bathroom. While I changed, the rose-colored toilet made an irritating running noise. Dad had always promised he’d fix it “next week.” I blinked back the sudden rush of tears and expelled a long breath. “Think about something else,” I told myself.
My gaze scuttled to the gray broken floor tile near the sink. The night before Dad’s funeral, Nana had dropped her hair dryer on it. She had flown up from Palm Springs to lend us moral support. The weird thing was Mom had seemed angry with her, as if somehow Dad’s death had been Nana’s fault. Nana may be a little airy-fairy sometimes, but she’s hardly the type to fly to a war-torn country and plant roadside bombs. Besides, she’d always liked Dad. Still, Nana had acted a little guilty, as if she had done something.
Maybe Teen Wytche has a clarity spell.
I plunged a burgundy terry cloth towel between my toes, stabbing at memories and guilt. Afterward, I pitched the towel in the hamper and shuffled back to my bedroom, where the homey smell of popcorn and cinnamon apple cider greeted me.
“Your mom brought us a snack,” Parvani called out from the rag rug in front of my desk. Baby’s head nestled against her thigh, suspiciously close to the snowman popcorn bowl perched on her lap. “I love your house.”
“You’re crazy.”
“My house is like a posh, soulless hotel.” Parvani swept her hair up into a low bun and shoved a pencil through it. “A wing for each of us so no one has to interact.”
“You can always slum with us.” I grabbed an overflowing handful of popcorn. Baby snapped to attention and hunted down the rogue kernels.
“Thank you.” Parvani glanced around. “Where’s the spell book?”
“It’s here somewhere.” Since the gypsy lady had freaked me out, I had left the grimoire in the bag and hidden it under last year’s math binder. I fished out the plastic bag and hefted it.
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s heavier than I remember.” I pulled out the book and flipped it over in my hand. The plastic bag floated like a jellyfish to the floor. “Whoa.”
Parvani sat up straighter. “What?”
“I could have sworn it was a paperback.”
“It looks like purple leather to me.”
“Plum,” I corrected, running my fingers over the raised silver lettering. “I’m sure it was a paperback.”
“Now you’re the crazy one.” Parvani wiped her hands on a paper napkin. “Let me see.”
“Take it,” I said. “It gives me the creeps.”
Parvani stood up and handed me the popcorn bowl. She cradled the book in her arms, her dark eyes sparkling behind her designer eyeglasses. She picked her way across the debris littering my floor. “Cool title. Teen Wytche.” The air whooshed out of my down comforter as Parvani belly-flopped on my bed and started flipping through the pages. “Hmmm. There are a lot of steps we have to take before we can cast a spell.”
“What’s this ‘we’
stuff? I just agreed to get the book.”
Parvani went all injured-puppy on me and pursed her lips. “You have to help with the spell.”
No, I don’t.
“Come on. Please?” Parvani furrowed her perfectly waxed and shaped brows.
What I should have said was, “Look, I’ve had a crush on Jordan since we were three and I’d rather you didn’t go after him.” Instead, I thought about how Parvani had saved my butt in math about a million times, and how she’d stood by me even after I’d dyed my hair this weird color.
I sighed. “Can’t we just skip to the magic words and wave a wand?” Then bury the book in a cemetery or something?
“Thank you!” Her gleeful expression morphed into a frown. “But I don’t think so. We have to prepare ourselves and your room.” She trailed her hand down the page. “Do you know anything about casting a magic circle?”
“I used to draw circles on the driveway with chalk.” With Jordan.
Parvani glared over her black frames.
I faked nonchalance. “Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”
“Hmm.” Parvani wrinkled her nose and kept reading.
I sank into the beanbag chair. This could take a while. There’s a reason Parvani was in Honors Geometry and I wasn’t. She never skips a step. She also reads much more slowly than I do, so I knew better than to try and read over her shoulder. Instead, I rooted through my desk for a highlighter. I know Parvani. She loves to highlight.
“Thanks.” Parvani took the yellow marker and pushed up into a sitting position. She immediately popped the top off and highlighted a sentence. “We have a problem.”
“What?” I asked.
“You have to be calm and focused to perform magic.”
“Okay. So what’s the problem?”
“Evie, you are the jumpiest person I know.”
“So not true.” I hunkered into the beanbag, rustling invisible beans.
Parvani flung me a look.
Okay, maybe I have become a little edgy since Dad died. I popped another handful of popcorn into my mouth and ground the kernels between my teeth. Dad had no right chasing photos or destiny or whatever in such a dangerous place. Maybe if he had loved Mom and me more—
“We need a serene setting.” Parvani glanced at the piles of old school papers, magazines, and books on my desk. Her gaze darted to my unmade bed, and then swept over the wet sneakers, rank sweatshirts, CDs, and a nest of discarded belts heaped on the floor. “Your room could use a bit of feng shui.” She pulled a Teen People from a pile at the foot of my bed and held it up. It featured Jessica Simpson wearing an I heart Nick tee shirt.
“Okay, that can be recycled. But you’re the one who wants to do magic. Let’s go to your house.” I could just imagine her horror if I drew a chalk circle on her celadon silk carpet.
“My brothers would never leave us alone. It has to be here.”
The Terrors, her younger twin brothers, would be harder to get rid of than my piles of junk. “Okay. I’ll pick up while you figure out what to do.”
Parvani’s smile crinkled her eyes. “You’re the best.” She straightened into a lotus position, her perfect posture reflecting the years of ballet she had taken before a stress fracture forced her to quit. Highlighter fumes fouled the air.
I clattered together a mountain of dusty CDs and slid them into a metal holder. Parvani winced at the scraping noise, so I switched to gathering up clothes. Hopefully, she didn’t notice the underwear from the discount department store nosedive when I threw the heap into the hamper. I shoved the tangle of belts into my white wicker hutch. A wallet-sized photo fell out through one of the cracks on the side. The handwritten caption on the back read: Jordan, Age six, First Grade. I turned it over and stared at his gap-toothed grin.
Behind me, the highlighter screeched across the page. I stashed the picture under the belts, then cleared the floor and the spare bed, tossing most of the stuff in the closet. The phone rang in Mom’s room and the kitchen, its insistent buzz cut short after the second ring.
Parvani was still reading, so I picked up my copy of Kiss and flipped to the article on the Goddess. Look inward and awaken your inner Goddess.
“The editor from The Times is on the phone,” Mom said from the doorway.
I gripped the magazine so tightly it crackled and bent. “Tell her I can’t talk right now.”
“She wants to know if you’re ready to start taking photos again for the school section. There’s a game this weekend at Campo. What should I tell her?”
“Tell her no. I’m not ready.”
Mom ground her teeth. I knew what she wanted to say. I needed to get back on the horse. Or we needed the money, since Dad had never been able to get life insurance. Or I needed to move on, so she could, too.
Well, I can’t.
Parvani kept her head down and scribbled notes on binder paper. Mom sighed and left. I flipped back to the goddess article. Envision what you’d like to experience. Seeing Dad again? Making peace with Jordan? My heart tightened. Taking photos…?
“Don’t you have one of the goths in your English class?” Parvani asked.
I lowered the magazine. An image of a short girl, whose oversized black tee shirts hung on her thin frame, leapt to mind. “You mean Salem?”
Parvani blinked twice.
“It’s what everyone calls her since she crossed out ‘Remember The Alamo’ on Tommy Deitch’s notebook and scrawled ‘Remember Salem’.”
“We need to text her. Where’s your Jefferson phone book?”
Doing spells in the privacy of my own room was one thing, but texting a goth? My voice cracked. “I don’t even know her real name. She’s Sarah something.”
Parvani stood and plucked a bright green booklet from the wreckage on top of my dresser. “We’ll find every Sarah in the ninth grade. You must have heard her last name when Mrs. Knapp called roll. We just need to jog your memory.”
“I’d rather jog in a hurricane without my sweatshirt. Didn’t you hear? In the fifth grade, Salem put a hex on Britney Bauer, and Brit broke out in hives the next day.”
Parvani lowered the directory. “Total coincidence.”
“No it wasn’t. Even the Smash Heads are afraid of her. Why do we need to text her?”
“We need lots of props to cast a spell, and I don’t know where to buy them.”
Sheesh. Judging from the pentacles and other exotic stuff Salem wore, she would be the best person to ask.
Parvani skipped through the pages of the school directory. “Sara Douglas?”
I shook my head.
“Sarah Grimes?”
“No.”
“Johansen? Mackenzie? Miller?”
I drew in a quick breath. A shiver shimmied down my spine.
Parvani’s stare bored into me. “Miller? She lives on Lucas. Is she just down the street?”
I felt as though the warden had given me truth serum. Against my will, my head bobbed up and down.
“Let’s go see if we can spot her,” Parvani suggested in her most reasonable, don’t-worry-this-won’t-hurt-a-bit voice.
I glanced out the window. “Are you insane? It’s raining.”
“Then text her.”
I began to reconsider Parvani as my best friend.
“Come on,” she pleaded. “Baby would love to go for a walk.”
Upon hearing the W-word, Baby bounded across the room, stopped at the threshold, and glanced back at us with an excited expression. Now I had to go. “All right. But it will be dark soon, so we’d better hurry.”
Wild-eyed, Parvani grabbed her umbrella and gray sweatshirt. “Where is your leash, Baby?” The L-word sent Baby racing toward the front door. Parvani sprinted after her.
“If we don’t see Salem on the street, we turn back,” I insisted.
Parvani already stood outside, her umbrella up, the amazing patchwork scarf she had designed herself wrapped around her neck. She did a grand jeté over the primroses while Baby, a q
uick shadow behind her, zigzagged after a scent.
Mom met me at the door. “Where are you going?”
“Parvani said the W-word in front of Baby. So we’re going to walk around the block, maybe go as far as Lucas.” You know, pay the neighborhood goth a little visit.
The wind stirred Mom’s auburn hair. “Okay. Just be back before dark.”
“No problem.”
Baby barked at me from the end of the drive. I lifted her leash from the wooden peg. Then, before my better sense could stop me, I walked out the door, cold rain stinging my face.
I could almost feel the hex hives erupting.
Chapter Four
Baby, happy and stinking of wet dog, pulled me eastward toward Lucas Drive. Parvani bumped alongside me in a valiant effort to hold the wind-battered umbrella over our heads.
“No way will Salem be out in this.”
“She’s a goth,” Parvani replied. “She probably thrives in miserable weather. You know, the sky is filled with angst…”
Yeah, right. A rain-heavy willow grabbed at the umbrella as we rounded the corner. Plaid nylon dipped in front of my face, blocking my view of the street. A foot in front of me, Baby stopped and tensed. Please don’t let it be Salem.
An unholy yapping broke the silence, followed by a somewhat familiar voice yelling, “Einstein, shut up!”
Parvani tilted back the umbrella, affording me a clear view of a tiny, black-clad, windswept figure. Salem. I’d know those scary kohl-lined eyes and short black-and-purple hair anywhere. My heart sank to my Perfectly Plum toenails.
“Hey!” Parvani waved and shouted up the street.
Salem’s cockapoo yapped louder, a feat I would have thought impossible, and strained to break free of its leash. Salem squinted at us like a bounty hunter in a futuristic movie. The question “Friend or foe?” was etched on her pale face, which, I noticed for the first time, looked kind of delicate and pretty beneath all the goth makeup and the I-can-kill-you-with-a-curse attitude.