by Ariella Moon
Confusion skidded across my brain. “Zhù Wong?”
“Sí. You know him?”
“He’s a friend of a friend.” I wondered what would make Zhù miss class. Maybe she hadn’t told me the truth. Maybe he was ill.
Señora dragged her purse strap over her shoulder. “Please respect his privacy and tell no one.”
I hoped Zhù didn’t have something life-threatening. Parvani would never forgive me for keeping it from her. “I promise not to tell.”
“Bueno.”
Dismissed, I headed out the door and down the hall, no doubt frowning just like Mom. A few students had clustered under the overhang near the lockers, but everyone else seemed to be in the cafeteria already. I rounded the corner of the building and almost ran into Miss Ravenwood.
The temperature plummeted at least ten degrees. Miss Ravenwood scowled down at me and I swear I heard the witch’s theme song from The Wizard of Oz. I clutched my Spanish folder to my chest and averted my gaze. Miss Ravenwood swept past me, her disdain palpable.
I blew out a long breath. For once, I was glad I sucked at math.
Parvani and, to my surprise, Salem, were waiting for me outside Mr. Ross’s door.
“Where have you been?” Parvani asked.
“Señora Allende needed to ask…”
Mr. Ross poked his head out. “Girls? I have to take off. If you want to use the room you’ll have to come in now and lock the door.”
“May Sarah join us?” Parvani pushed her glasses higher up her nose. “We promise we won’t let anyone else in.”
Mr. Ross hesitated. His glance flicked over Salem’s eyebrow stud and makeup. Instead of her usual neo-medieval blouse, she wore a black tee shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. He probably wondered how many school supplies she would steal. I held my breath, willing him to trust our judgment.
“Okay, she can stay,” he finally said. “But no one else.” We let ourselves in while he checked his pockets for his keys. “I’ll be back soon,” he warned. The heavy door closed behind him with a click.
We threw our backpacks on the table nearest the television and scraped back three molded plastic chairs. “I was going through my parents’ old yearbooks last night,” Salem said in a conspiratorial whisper. “And I found this.” She pulled a mud-colored yearbook out of her pack. Jefferson High School, 1974 angled in pale green lettering across the front.
“My parents were eleventh graders in ‘74.” Salem opened the yearbook to a page she had marked with a hot pink sticky note. “But look at the ninth grade class.” She pointed to a flinty-eyed girl on the right hand page.
“Miss Ravenwood?” Parvani said in disbelief. “She went here?”
My parents had graduated from Jefferson, too. I did some quick subtraction on my fingers. “Wait a minute.” I glanced at the names accompanying the photos on the left hand page, and there it was, like a sucker punch, Deaman O’Reilly. Dad, fourteen years old, his hair windblown and his eyes bright with imagined adventure.
“Did you find it?” Salem asked.
“Yes.” The word came out as a croak.
Parvani leaned closer to the page. “What?”
“Evie’s mom. Her picture is here too.”
“My mother?” I scanned the rows of smiling faces. Mom’s familiar, knowing eyes snagged my attention. Olivia Portland.
“Am I right?” Salem asked.
“Yes.” I drifted back to Dad.
Parvani gasped and pointed to his picture. “There’s Evie’s father.”
Salem bent over the page. “But his byline always says Dash O’Reilly.”
“Said,” I corrected, my voice thick. “A fellow cameraman gave him the nickname because he was always dashing into danger.”
The laugh track erupted on the television.
“I bet they knew each other,” Parvani said. “Evie, you should ask your mom.”
“I will.”
“Maybe you could find her yearbook,” Parvani suggested. “See if Miss Ravenwood wrote anything in it.”
Bad blood. No wonder Mom had stiffened when she saw Miss Ravenwood in Sage Mage.
Parvani clapped her hands together. “Maybe Miss Ravenwood put a curse on you when you were born. It would explain why you can’t do math.”
“Right.” Salem rolled her eyes.
My gaze darted from Dad, to Mom, to Miss Ravenwood. The musty yearbook smell had faded, driven away by a spicy, gypsy scent. I glanced at the door, certain I heard the distant tinkle of tiny pewter bells.
Chapter Eleven
I slunk into Algebra, the self-esteem sucking black hole, and took my seat. Mr. Bentley was scribbling on the blackboard. His military-style buzz cut glistened beneath the fluorescent lights, and the pockets of his navy slacks were streaked with chalk.
My stomach growled. In all the commotion, I had skipped lunch. Great. Now I’d be even dumber than usual. As I pulled out my homework, I wondered if Miss Ravenwood really had cursed me.
Mr. Bentley wrote:
Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium
p=the frequency of the dominant allele A
q=the frequency of the recessive allele a
The sum of the alleles must = 100%
Mr. Bentley might as well have said, “Two trains left the station at the same time. If Train A was going x miles an hour and Train B was going…” Kill me now.
The person in front of me handed back copies of a blank graph. I placed one of the graphs on top of my notebook and passed the remaining sheets to the stoner behind me. Chalk screeched against the blackboard. From beneath the sweat-stained brim of Dad’s cap, I watched Mr. Bentley write: p2 + 2pq = q2 + 1.
The little squares on the graph blurred. I planted my elbows on the desk and clutched the sides of my head. Old resentment spiraled through me. I bet Jordan already knows all this. Parvani too.
The second hand on the wall clock ticked. Twelve-fifty and one second, twelve-fifty and two seconds, twelve-fifty and three seconds…
“Quiz on Friday, ladies and gentlemen.”
A sinking, nauseous feeling slammed my insides. I hope Teen Wytche has a spell for improving your math grade.
****
I needed a boost to face Yearbook. I needed to feel like someone other than Evie O’Reilly, loser. So I ducked into the girls’ bathroom. Guilt and excitement warred within me as I fished the tube of Nearly Nude lipstick out of my backpack. I’d once heard an anchorwoman on television say you should wear lipstick the same color as your tongue. Weird, I know, but the reds made me look like Lucille Ball. The bronzes made me look ill. No way could I show up wearing one of Salem’s black-death shades.
The Nearly Nude lipstick had a faint petroleum smell and tasted a little yucky. Still, I could almost be mistaken for hot. Mom would so ground me for a month.
I’ll let Jordan see me in Biology, I decided, and then wipe off the lipstick before I cross the field. Mom would never know.
I slipped the film can necklace over my head for added confidence, and prayed I wouldn’t run into either of the Smash Heads. Hallie, my formerly ill photographer, strode up the ramp to Room 222. Relieved, I nearly kissed the plastic necklace. Maybe I had found my talisman.
“We have lots of work to do today,” Miss Roberts announced as I took my seat. “I’d like to meet with the layout artists to discuss concept ideas. Photographers…” She eyed the room. “I see Zhù isn’t here today. Hallie, grab a camera. We need more fashion photos. Evie…”
The wall phone rang. While Miss Roberts walked over to it, I glanced toward the door and willed Zhù to materialize.
Miss Roberts hung up the phone and sighed. “Evie, you are wanted in the office.”
The lipstick burned my lips. Mom knows. Had the school installed a spy camera in the bathroom? I am so dead. Then my heart splashed down somewhere in my large intestine. I’ve been called to the office once before—the day my dad had died.
I grabbed my backpack. Heat flooded my neck and face—I was sure all eyes
were on me. At least Jordan wasn’t in this class. Miss Roberts said something about caption writers. A hum like a funeral dirge swelled in my ears, drowning her words.
Outside, I pulled a tissue from the front pocket of my backpack and swiped at my lips while I walked the empty corridor between the two hundred and three hundred blocks of classrooms. The office was just beyond the bathrooms, across from Room 301 and a cluster of lockers. I swallowed hard and opened the door.
I half hoped and half dreaded Mom would be there. She wasn’t. If she didn’t know about the lipstick, then something must have happened to her or Nana…
“Evie?”
I flinched, heart in turbo-panic. “Yes?”
Mrs. Scroggins, the school secretary, stared down her bifocals. “Miss Gaya would like a word with you.”
“Miss Gaya?”
“The new counselor.” Mrs. Scroggins led me down the Employees Only hall to a back office. The door stood ajar. An air of counting-the-years-to-retirement clung to the middle-aged woman seated behind the metal desk. Seeing me, she rose from her chair.
“Thank you, Mrs. Scroggins.” Miss Gaya’s layered, filmy green dress swayed as she leaned across the desk and shook my hand. “You must be Evie O’Reilly.”
“Yes, I am. Is my mother all right?”
“Please be seated. Your mother is fine. I just called her.”
I sank into the blue plastic chair.
Miss Gaya closed the door then returned to her seat. Her gaze jumped to my film can necklace then back up to my eyes.
“I understand you weren’t well in Yearbook yesterday. How are you feeling today?”
I forced a smile. “Well, thank you.”
“Good.” Miss Gaya pushed up her sleeves and gave me a long look. I got the distinct feeling she didn’t believe me. I shifted in my seat and wished the old school counselor wasn’t on maternity leave.
“Your friends are worried about you, Evie. So I wanted to introduce myself and see if I can help you in any way.”
Yeah, like you’d know anything about solving my problems.
Miss Gaya clasped her hands together and hunched forward. “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
Several things flashed through my mind—the love spell, Jordan and Parvani, Dad, Mom, and Miss Ravenwood, getting out of Biology, and again, the love spell.
“No,” I said.
She nodded and leaned back in her chair. The small office grew quiet. My stomach growled. Out in the hall, the copy machine hummed to life. Miss Gaya picked up a pen and held it between her fingers like a cigarette. “It’s been almost two years since your father died?”
A lump rose in my throat. “Yes.”
“It must be difficult for you and your mother.”
“We’re managing.” Sort of. “Mom joined a widows’ support group.”
“Excellent. And are you still seeing a grief counselor?”
“Nah.” Do you have any idea how much therapy costs? How much groceries and gas cost? “Mom wanted me to keep going, but I told her I was fine.”
Miss Gaya tapped her pen against a folder on her desk. I got the feeling she believed me about as much as Mom had. “You have a strong circle of friends, Evie. They’ll help you if you let them. And I’m here, too, if you ever need me.”
What circle of friends? I wondered. Who besides Parvani? I stumbled to my feet. “Thank you, Miss Gaya. I should get back to Yearbook. Our first deadline is in eight days.”
“Of course. Remember, my door is always open.”
I swiveled and faced the closed door. Right.
When I returned to class, Miss Roberts was shoulder-deep in noisy layout artists. I tiptoed over to the computer and booted up the program for working with digital photos. Surely by now, Zhù had arrived and was off taking pictures. Unless he does have a dread disease.
I glanced up at the wall clock. If I kept low for fifteen more minutes, then I could escape to Biology and sit behind Jordan and daydream.
Chapter Twelve
Jordan’s hair kind of waved in the back. The ends curled, just skimming his shoulder. I wondered what he’d do if I reached out and wrapped one of the curls around my finger…
“Miss O’Reilly!”
I snapped my gaze from the back of Jordan’s head to the front of the classroom. Mr. Esenberg glared at me, a stub of white chalk clutched between his thumb and forefinger. He was well over six feet tall and as wiry as a chenille pipe cleaner.
I sat up straighter, heat flooding my neck. “Yes, sir?”
“Switch seats with Mr. Kent, please.”
My heart bungee-jumped to my feet. I closed my biology notebook, horrified to find I had doodled hearts around the binder ring holes. A jock two rows over laughed and said, “What did you do now, Kent?”
Jordan kept his mouth shut, closed his biology book, and whisked it up with his notebook.
I reached down for my backpack. The pencil I had stuck above my ear and forgotten about clattered onto the scuffed linoleum. It rolled under Jordan’s chair. He retrieved it, rose, and with his back to Mr. Esenberg, winked as he handed it to me.
“Sorry,” I mouthed. I slid into Jordan’s seat, quaking under Mr. Esenberg’s watchful eyes. Jordan’s body heat still clung to the wood. A fresh blush flamed toward my eyebrows as his warmth seeped through my jeans. I heard the soft thud of Jordan’s textbook landing on the desk behind me. My former chair creaked, and then I heard Jordan’s sneaker-shod feet slide toward me.
“Perhaps you can see the board better now, Miss O’Reilly.” Mr. Esenberg almost kept the snarkiness out of his voice.
I nodded, afraid to speak. The doomed feeling I get in math class oozed into me. I slumped low in my chair and glanced at the clock. Twenty-five minutes left. No way would I make it. My scalp prickled. I sensed Jordan’s stare and regretted not getting up early enough to wash my hair.
Mr. Esenberg wrote on the chalkboard. Independent and Dependent Variables. It sounded like math. I tapped my pencil against my desk.
Mr. Esenberg spun around and glared. My pencil stilled. Trapped in the second row, I caught a faint whiff of the salami Mr. Esenberg must have eaten for lunch.
Somewhere off to the right, a cell phone beeped.
“When we are given an equation for exponential population growth, there are several variables,” Mr. Esenberg explained. “We must distinguish between them in order to interpret the equation and graph it. Miss O’Reilly, given this equation” —he wrote G = rN on the board— “where G represents the growth of a population, N is the initial population size, and r is the intrinsic rate of increase, what do you predict the growth of the population will be when the intrinsic rate of increase is a large number as opposed to a smaller number?”
My heart jackhammered and my eyes felt like overheated flashbulbs. Mind blank, I cleared my throat. “The population will increase more,” I ventured in a decibel barely audible to humans.
“Ah. Class, please take a moment to write down your own predictions. Then we shall see if Miss O’Reilly’s prediction comes true.”
The sounds of twenty-five pencils scratching across notebook paper filled the room, punctuated by the slow tick of the wall clock.
“Well, class. I believe we have identified the correct answer. Can anyone guess what the definition of an independent and dependent variable is, and identify them in this equation?”
My heart galloped. I thought a moment, then wrote in my notebook.
“Miss O’Reilly. Since you seem to be on a roll today, please read your prediction to the class.”
His voice sounded neutral, but I sensed a trap. The room grew so quiet I could hear the ends of my hair split. “The r is independent, and the G is dependent?”
“Ah.” Mr. Esenberg’s tall, wiry frame bent into a question mark. “Would you mind telling us why?”
“Because depending on how we define r, G changes?” I ventured.
The desk behind me squeaked. “Way to go,” Jordan whispered.
I exhaled. I glowed. Relief and happiness radiated from my every pore.
Then Mr. Esenberg started talking about graphing our observations on an X-Y plane. Surely my fresh waves of despair were obvious to the entire class. Those aware of my math disability could predict I would now flunk Biology as well as math. Jordan knows.
Mr. Esenberg dragged a flip chart from the corner of the room to a spot near the table. “We have lots of experiments coming up, class, so you’ll each work with a partner.” Squeals and moans bounced between the students. Mr. Esenberg flipped back the top sheet. “Read them and weep.”
I scanned the list. For the most part, Mr. Esenberg had assigned pairs according to the alphabet. Realization tiptoed down the back of my neck. There it was in bold blue sharpie: Kent/O’Reilly.
My heart toggled between excitement and hope, and then freefell into dread. Today was a fluke. I lucked out with my answers. But Jordan knows I can’t do this stuff. He’d never want to work with me. The bell rang, jerking me from my seat. I shoved my science stuff into my backpack and rushed out the door. No way will I stick around while he asks for a better lab partner.
As I shouldered my way into the crowd heading for the football field, I prayed Parvani’s mom would be on time for once and waiting for us in the carpool lane.
Chapter Thirteen
By the time Mrs. Hyde-Smith drove up to the curb, the parking lot had emptied, the yellow schools buses had long since lurched off, and the football field was deserted. I could have spent all that time in the office trying to talk the registrar into switching me out of Biology. I glanced down at Parvani’s watch. School had ended twenty minutes ago. Mom must be ballistic by now.
“Gee, Mother. Thanks for showing up.” Parvani hurled her backpack on the floor of the Jag, then scooted across the leather seat. She stabbed her seatbelt buckle into its receptacle like she was loading a gun. Terribly un-Zen.
“Sorry. I was running errands.” Mrs. Hyde-Smith checked her flawless lipstick in the rearview mirror.
Parvani crossed her arms over her chest. I knew she was imagining how many Nordstrom bags were hidden in the trunk. I wondered where the Terrors were—maybe locked up next to the shopping bags.