Super Freak (7 page)

“Someone set us up. And when I find out who, I’m going to tear their hair out by the roots,” she hissed.

I slouched into the chair, glad that we thought the same thing. “Do you have any ideas?”

“No. But I know it couldn’t have been us. We were together until we went home. I don’t know anyone who knew where we were. And I don’t know how they connected us to the paint.”

I sighed, my breath fuzzing the line. “It’s the same color I painted my room, and the can of touchup paint is missing. But I don’t have a clue how it got there. I didn’t take it out.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Really?”

Anger sprang to life. “Are you saying I did it?”

“No! That’s stupid. I know you didn’t. But how do you know no one got in?”

I started to tell her about the “alarms” my parents always put up, but I stopped. I didn’t know for sure those were in place. For all I knew, they hadn’t gotten them done yet. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I didn’t see anyone. And no one has mentioned anything looking broken. But they had to have gotten in somehow. Unless Ms. Widdershins set us up herself.”

“That’s what I think. But I don’t understand why. I mean, she doesn’t know you that well, she loves Leo’s brother, and I’m fabulous. Why would she want to do that to us?”

I shrugged, and then realized she couldn’t see me. “Who knows? Have you talked to Leo?”

“No. I can’t get him to answer his phone. But I know the kinds of punishments they’ve gotten before. His dad’s going to make sure he never even looks sideways at a can of paint again. Guaranteed.”

I thought I heard the creak of the steps, and I started to panic a little. “I gotta go. I think the parents are coming up.”

“Right. See you tomorrow. Bye.”

I snapped the phone closed and shoved it in a drawer just before my bedroom door opened. I looked up from where I scribbled some numbers onto my math homework, trying not to look guilty. I hadn’t broken any rules. They hadn’t taken the phone away, after all.

Mom appeared in the doorway. “You should finish up what you’re doing and then shower and get to bed. You’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”

“Mom, I know you don’t believe me, but I really didn’t do what they say. I swear. I know I can be overly curious, and I take things too far sometimes, but I wouldn’t deliberately be mean and destroy property.”

She paused in the doorway, her hand opening and closing on the doorknob. “I want to believe you, Caroline, but this time, I have to believe what I see. And if that ever changes, your father and I will be first ones to apologize to you.” She stepped back into the hallway with a pointed look at my paper. “Right now, you’re grounded and I’m very disappointed in you. Finish up.”

Sometimes I couldn’t win for losing.

I finished my math and, knowing tomorrow would be a long day, grabbed my clothes and headed toward the bathroom. As I left, I dropped my shorts. Bending down to pick them up, I noticed a small gargoyle face in the wood vine carvings around my doorway. It looked so much like the banister knob I stepped back inside, closed the door and crouched down on my hands and knees to get a better look.

It was a little more flat and without glass eyes. I ran my fingers over the plaster carefully, excitement fluttering in my gut. They weren’t just similar. The two scrunched faces were exact replicas. No secret switches or hidden holes appeared, and I sat back, discouraged. There had to be something.

I ran my fingers over it again, and when nothing appeared, I bent down, lying flat on the floor and got so close I might have been kissing the aging little face. Then I noticed a faint line running around the edge of the carving. I debated for a moment whether trying to pry it off would be a bad idea. After being accused of vandalism once already, I didn’t want to get caught ripping up my walls.

Muttering a prayer, I got up, hunted through the desk until I came up with a cheap plastic letter opener. I wiggled the edge into the crack next to the gargoyle’s ear. For a few seconds, I didn’t think anything would happen. But as I jammed it in farther, the crack widened. I pulled out the blade and moved to the other side, working it back and forth until the face finally popped out of the wall and into my hand.

Behind it, a shallow compartment was filled with a few yellowing papers and something wrapped in a small piece of green velvet. The fabric was faded and worn, and when I picked it up, it crumbled into chunks in my palm, revealing a round silver locket. It had beautiful etchings of a bird on the casing. A swallow, I thought. When I pried it open with one fingernail, I was disappointed to find the picture had been damaged. On the other side, a tiny curl was tied with a piece of string and clipped in.

The hair was a little weird. I knew some people saved it. But with magic, if you believed in it enough, leaving a bit of yourself could be dangerous. My parents didn’t believe in such things, but some of their friends did. One wizard had even been so paranoid that he shaved his own head and regularly burned his hair and fingernail clippings, so no one could use them against him.

I never really saw the point of that. But then, I never had the problem of someone trying to steal my magic either.

I shoved the gargoyle back into his hole as best I could. I’d have to borrow Dad’s hammer later and tap it all the way back in, but, for now, it worked.

I took everything to my desk, put the locket inside an envelope and tucked it under the letter I already had. Then, I carefully unfolded the papers and flipped through. None of them followed the last line of the letter in the desk. It was the same careful handwriting, but the three pages just held mundane lists of counting sheets and linens and making a trip into town to go to the library and visit friends. The author listed names, but none of the names meant anything to me. Except one. She said she’d gone in and spoken with Annabeth Sanderston about the next meeting. But she didn’t elaborate.

Leo’s mother couldn’t be Annabeth, could she? I mean, his parents were old. But how could I find out if she had met my mystery writer? I couldn’t exactly walk up and ask what she’d been up to about a century ago. There wasn’t even a name with all these pages to ask her about.

I started to put everything in the drawer, but I stopped, looking back at the gargoyle face. Someone had already been in the house once before. I didn’t want them to find any of this. Carefully, I folded up the papers and put everything in the secret compartment. It barely fit. If I found anything else, I’d have to come up with a new hiding spot.

Now that I knew what to look for, I would definitely find something else. In a house as heavily decorated as this, I’d bet there were lots more replicas of my gargoyle. I just had to find them.

***

The next morning, my parents dropped me off at Ms. Widdershins’ house, stopping briefly to offer sincere apologies and assure her they would be back promptly at five. Unless I decided to cause problems, and then they said they’d be back as soon as they could get there.

Leo and Diana arrived shortly after with similar parental concerns. Diana’s father, a tall, whip thin man with glasses and longish hair, gave us all a once over before getting back in his car and driving home. I didn’t think he was impressed by us.

“I can’t believe you would be involved in such a thing. You all seemed like such nice students,” Ms. Widdershins said, dressed in a billowing summer dress with daisies all over it. Her eyes were misty, as if she couldn’t fathom what we’d done.

It was an act, and I wasn’t buying it. But I kept my lips pressed together. Speaking would only make everything worse, and we didn’t need that.

“Come along then. You’ll start by scrubbing down the siding and then you’ll paint the entire house again.”

She led the way along the front of the house, opposite the window we had been looking in, and we turned the corner. There, scrawled over the siding in lavender paint, were several curse words and a crude picture of Ms. Widdershins dancing on a hill. As she stood there, her bottom lip quivering, I couldn’t keep my words to myself.

“Ms. Widdershins, I want you to know, we did sneak up here yesterday, but we were just goofing around. We didn’t do this.”

Her lip stiffened, and the look she sent me could have stripped paint. “Don’t try to get out of your punishment now, Caroline Bennings. I could have pressed charges. Be grateful I didn’t.”

“Ms. Widdershins, we couldn’t have done this,” I insisted.

She huffed and fisted her hands on her hips. “And why not?”

I held my arm over my head and stood next to the house. My fingertips grazed the bottom of the top line of words. “We’re not tall enough. Not even Diana is tall enough to write these.”

Doubt crept into her gaze. She compared my hand to the letters, her eyes searching the soft mulch at my feet. I suppose she was looking for ladder marks or something. I didn’t wait for her to make up her mind. “We’ll still clean it up because we shouldn’t have been on your property anyway, but we would never do this.”

Diana nodded and added, “You’ve known Leo and me our entire lives. We’ve never done anything remotely like this.”

Ms. Widdershins looked between us and finally nodded once. “You all have a point. And I must admit I couldn’t quite believe it when I got the phone call yesterday. I’ll speak to your parents, but it doesn’t excuse you from today. You have no business creeping around someone’s house and playing Peeping Tom!”

Her words were punctuated with sharp hand gestures.

“Ms. Widdershins, who called and told you we did this?” Leo asked.

He gained some brownie points. I wanted to know, but I’d done enough talking already.

She turned. “I don’t know. I didn’t think to get his name. It doesn’t matter. I’ll report this to the police and we will see what they can find out.”

She went back into the house. Diana threw her arms around me and squeezed.

“You are brilliant, Caroline! I didn’t even think about not being able to reach.”

Leo nodded behind her. “Yeah. Now maybe I’ll only be grounded for a couple centuries instead of all eternity.”

I laughed. “Really? That’s what your dad told you?”

Leo shook his head. “No. Dad is still deciding on his punishment. Mom grounded me. Part of Dad’s punishments is the waiting to find out what the punishment is.”

I patted his shoulder. “Sounds like a mind game to me.”

“It is,” Leo said, very matter-of-fact. “He’s a master at that.”

Diana moved over to the group of buckets and sponges resting on the concrete, filling them with the hose. Ms. Widdershins brought a couple of wooden crates and a stepstool for us, and then retreated back inside. We each grabbed one and started scrubbing at the paint on the siding. The work was hot and sweaty, but I felt lighter. At least Ms. Widdershins knew it wasn’t our fault. Until we arrived, I hadn’t realized how much it bothered me that everyone believed we’d done it. That she thought we hated her so much that we’d write all over her house.

I scrubbed a little harder. Not that I wanted to admit her approval mattered, but it certainly made life easier. And whoever did this would pay for dragging us into this.

“Caroline?”

Leo’s voice was soft. Diana and I stopped to look at him. He squeezed his sponge with more force than necessary.

“What?”

“Is this what it’s like for you all the time?”

“What what’s like?”

He rubbed his nose. “Life. We’ve seen people bugging you. I know Diana said something to some people, and so have I. But is getting blamed for stuff and all this what it’s like to be normal?”

“You guys have been telling people to leave me alone?”

Diana looked away then grinned at me. “You’re my friend. I wasn’t going to let them keep on pestering you.”

“Yeah,” Leo agreed.

I scrubbed at the wall slowly. “No, my life isn’t always like this.” I hunted for words. I wanted everyone to think that none of it bothered me. And mostly, it didn’t. I didn’t see how magic really made things all that better. They missed out on things like Life Science and art because their parents insisted that Advanced Casting and History of Magic were more important.

But sometimes, if I was really honest, I kind of wished I had a little magic. Just to see what it was like.

“People are mean still. They play pranks. Last week Fred Alloy turned my nose brown in Mr. Darcy’s class. It’s a pain. But you get used to it.”

Leo shook his head. “It’s just mean.”

I nodded. “It is. But I can’t exactly run and tell on them. That only makes it worse.”

Diana attacked the siding with vigor. “Well, we’re watching your back now.” She smiled. “Friends stick together.”

I smiled. “Thanks.” I started to say they should stop, that I could handle it.

Instead, I looked at the siding and my wrinkling fingers and stayed quiet.

We worked until Ms. Widdershins came out with a tray holding a huge pitcher of iced tea and three glasses, along with three peanut butter sandwiches. She set them on one of the buckets and waved us over.

“Take a break, it’s lunchtime. I’ve been thinking about what you said, you may not have done this, but I think you know why they did.”

She pinned me with a stare I couldn’t avoid. “Caroline, they stole the paint from your house. I think you should start talking.”

I took a huge swallow of tea, grateful for the cool liquid. It gave me a minute to think. Diana and Leo just sat and watched me; Diana twisted her fingers together. How much should I tell her? I looked her straight in the eye, rolling the glass of tea between my palms. My lie, however, is not what emerged.

“We followed you home after we went to the library. We saw you leave and figured you had the reference books we needed.” I clapped my hands over my mouth, but my lips seemed to have a life of their own. Beside me, Diana hissed my name, her eyes like saucers. “But you weren’t here. We left and went to Leo’s house. We saw you leaving, and you had a book that looked like one of the ones we wanted. Then we went home.”

I bit my lip, the urge to speak fading. Unbelievable. My Paranormal Ethics teacher had just fed me a glass of tea with a Truth spell built in. Too bad we’d already finished the “magic for personal gain” unit in her class. I’d have a lot to say about it now.