What the Spell Part 1 (2 page)

And the alternative was worse as far as I was concerned. Other wannabes tried to force themselves into the circles of popular kids at our school, and it was like watching a train wreck. They tried too hard, offering to do the bidding of those with a higher social standing in the hopes that they’d edge their way in. But all they did was embarrass themselves as the popular kids treated them like slaves and then laughed at them behind their backs.

So, in a way, I guess there
was
a fate worse than invisibility.

I paid for my shake and then began to walk back across the cafeteria, taking a huge slurp of my Monkey Business. My eyes gravitated toward The Elite. Eliza was cutting an apple into smaller and smaller halves, and Gigi was sipping her Diet Coke out of a straw. I bet neither of them had ever had a shake in their lives.

How sad is that?

I was so focused on The Elite that I wasn’t paying attention to where I was walking, and before I knew it I was falling. Moments like this always seemed to happen in slow motion in movies, but for me, it all happened incredibly fast. I let go of my Monkey Business and reached out in front of me. A
second before my hands hit the floor, the shake made impact and exploded. All over me. It was like a chocolate tsunami and there were no survivors.

As I attempted to lift my upper body from the linoleum, I could hear people laughing around me. Without opening my eyes, I knew that they were probably pointing, cell phones out, ready to capture the moment and then post it on the web later.

“Omigod, who is that?” someone asked not so quietly.

“Hard to tell now,” another responded.

“What a loser.”

The conversation grew around me and I wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear. If there was ever a time when I’d welcome invisibility, this would be it.

I pushed myself up onto my knees and wiped at my eyes. Monkey Business dripped off my lashes and onto my lap. I looked around to see that everyone was still staring, some in horror and others with amusement.

I had to get out of there.

Leaving the remaining contents of my shake on the caf floor, I grabbed my bag and ran out the door as people began to clap behind me.

I went back and forth between walking fast and jogging, not wanting to get stopped along the way by any teachers before I reached my safe haven. In less than a minute, I burst through the guidance counselor’s door and tossed my bag onto a nearby chair before sitting down in the other.

“Oh. My. God,” Ms. Zia said as she hopped up out of her chair and reached for the box of tissues on the edge of her desk. She took a few out and handed them to me.

“Thanks,” I said grudgingly. There was chocolate everywhere. In my hair, my ears, down the front of my shirt—I’d be cleaning it off me for the rest of the day. Starting with my face,
I sopped up the brown liquid the best I could and then looked at her miserably.

“Who did this to you?” Ms. Z. asked, handing me a few more tissues. I placed the used ones in a pile on the corner of her desk.

“Me,” I said. “
I
did this to me. My clumsiness struck again.”

She looked at me sympathetically. “Oh, Brooklyn. What happened?”

“I wasn’t watching where I was going and tripped over something. Maybe a chair, or it’s possible it was over my own feet. Lord knows that happens often enough.” This was just one more way that I seemed to be socially cursed.

Ms. Zia leaned forward and wiped a bit of banana off my cheek. “And this is . . . ?”

“Monkey Business.”

“Oh.” Ms. Zia handed me the box and then went back behind her desk and sat down. “Sounds like you’re having a rough day.”

“Aren’t I always?” I grumbled, taking off my stained shirt to reveal a significantly drier tank top underneath. Reaching into my backpack, I grabbed the clean tee I kept in there for emergencies—believe it or not, spilling on myself happened more frequently than I’d like to admit—and pulled it over my head. I used the ruined shirt to soak up the rest of the milk shake from my hair before twisting it into a messy bun.

“I’m guessing this was just the tip of the iceberg, then?” Ms. Zia asked.

She pulled out a Tupperware container full of what I knew without looking was some sort of elaborate, healthy salad. I’d never seen her eat anything
but
a salad for lunch. Sometimes it had walnuts and fruit in it, other times it was heavy on the veggies. But it was always a salad. I looked down at my own sack
lunch, which contained a PB&J and chips. It wasn’t exactly the lunch of champions, but Ms. Zia never judged. That’s why I always spent my lunch hour in her office. That and the fact that she was my only friend at Clearview High. Lame, I know, having a teacher for a friend, but Ms. Zia was actually really cool. Unlike the rest of the student body, I felt like she really got me.

She was like the older sister I never had.

“Brad Pinkerton practically tackled me in the hallway, and it was like he didn’t even
feel
it. I swear, it’s like I’m—”

“You’re not invisible, Brooklyn,” Ms. Zia said firmly.

“How can you be sure?”

“Um, because I can see you.”

“Yeah, but how do you know that you don’t just have special powers that let you see invisible people like me? Or maybe I’m a ghost and you’re the whisperer. I bet this place is full of them. Kids are probably dying of boredom all the time,” I said.

“Ha, ha,” Ms. Zia said sarcastically, placing her salad container on the desktop. “Look, we’ve talked about this. High school isn’t really
reality
. All the people who are popular now and all the things that seem important won’t be when you leave this place. I know you think life would be better if you had different friends—”

“If I had
any
friends.”

“—but none of that’s going to matter once you graduate and go out into the
real
world. I’ve told you what happened to me,” she said, lowering her voice a bit. “Please just trust me. Popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and in the end, nobody’s going to care
who
you were in high school. And by this time tomorrow, everyone will have forgotten about your milk shake mishap.”

That was easy for her to say. She had no idea what high school was like for me.

Ms. Zia picked up her lunch again and took a dainty green bite. Silently, I unwrapped my sandwich. I knew this topic was a personal one for her, since she’d experienced it herself. Only, she’d
been
popular growing up. Quite possibly the most popular girl in her school. With gorgeous dark hair and a figure to die for, Katerina Zia turned heads everywhere she went. She’d been the homecoming queen, had the athletic boyfriend, dictated what was cool, and pretty much ran her school.

And then she graduated.

When she got to college, nobody cared who Katerina Zia was. Suddenly, her good looks weren’t enough to let her continue coasting through life, and people no longer focused on a social hierarchy in which she was at the top. After a tough transition freshman year, Katerina decided to study education and psychology and eventually became a guidance counselor. Now, as Ms. Zia, she’s come to look at high school differently.

And she was constantly trying to get me to do the same. Sometimes she took the older sister thing a little too far and I couldn’t help but get annoyed. But in the end, I knew she did it because she cared. And the thing we argued about most often? My school situation. She thought she knew better because she’d lived the life I wanted.

But I wanted the chance to be popular on my own terms.

“It matters to me,” I said quietly. “You of all people should understand.”

Ms. Zia remained silent as my statement hung in the air. Both of us—one a has-been and the other a wannabe—were haunted by our teenage selves. It was sort of tragically poetic when you thought about it.

I stole a glance at her and once again marveled at how beautiful she was. She was older than me, of course, maybe in her mid- to late-twenties, but she still looked young enough to be
a college student, with skin like porcelain and thick brows like you saw on runway models these days. Gorgeous didn’t even begin to describe her, yet I wondered if she even knew it.

Though
Beauty and the Beast
was exaggerating a bit, I knew that my looks paled in comparison to hers. My hair hung just past my shoulders and was a blah brown color that neither shone in the light nor did anything for my skin. My cheekbones were prominent, but not quite in the right way, and my face was bumpy to the touch thanks to a mild case of keratosis pilaris, a fun little skin condition that ensured I’d never have smooth, model-like skin. I was skinny, but tomboy skinny, and longed for some of the curves that my classmates had. Bottom line: it wasn’t like I was ugly, but I wasn’t really anyone’s idea of pretty, either.

“Well, I hope you get everything you want,” Ms. Zia said, sounding like she meant it. Suddenly, she reached down underneath her desk. “And to help those wishes come true, and to make up for what should have been a much better day, I’ve got a little something for you.”

After some shuffling, she popped back up, this time holding a single cupcake with a candle on top.

“Ms. Z.—you didn’t have to do that!” I squealed, grateful that no one else was around to hear how excited I was over getting baked goods.

“Happy birthday, Brooklyn,” she said with a big smile. I blew out the flame and watched as the smoke swirled up into the air, making designs as it lifted and then disappeared. Ms. Zia took out a plastic knife and cut the cupcake in half, letting me choose my piece first. I reached out and grabbed the chunk closest to me, shoving half of it in my mouth at once. It was chocolate with a peanut butter filling and buttercream frosting. I nearly fainted with delight as I licked the leftovers from my fingers.

Ms. Zia delicately pulled a piece off her own section and popped it into her mouth. How did she manage to make everything look effortless? I made a note to try to be more like her when I was eating.

“So, any plans for the big day?” she asked, changing the subject. “You having a party or just taking a spin now that you’re officially a licensed driver?”

“Nah, we’re not really doing anything big,” I said, waving off the idea.

My parents actually
had
offered to throw me a big party in honor of the occasion, but then I would’ve had to invite people. And when nobody showed, my parents would’ve found out that I didn’t have any friends, and that was a conversation I really didn’t want to have. So I’d said that I just wanted to spend the night with them. They didn’t question me about it, since they knew they couldn’t give me my birthday present when people were around anyway.

“Do you think there’s a set of keys in your future?” Ms. Zia asked, suddenly sounding like a giddy teenager. “Man, when my parents gave me my first car, it was like love at first sight.”

I laughed as she got a dreamy look in her eyes. “They might let me take the old Ford around the block once or twice,” I said.

“I’m telling you, Brooklyn, you’re going to enjoy your freedom,” she said. “It’s going to change your life.”

I nodded, because it was true. My life
was
about to change—but not for the reasons Ms. Z. was thinking.

The truth was, I came from a family of witches, and up until now, I hadn’t been allowed to use my powers. But my parents had promised to unbind my gifts the day I turned sixteen. I knew through witching chat rooms that most magically inclined kids learned how to cast around the same time they
learned how to walk. My parents, however, were beyond strict about magic. Their reasoning behind binding my powers was that they thought I should be mature enough to handle the responsibility it took to do magic safely. I think that, to them, magic equals freedom and my parents just weren’t ready to let go. They probably still weren’t ready, but they’d promised me that tonight was the night I would come into my heritage. After so many years of wishing I could use magic, I was itching to take my powers out for a test run.

And I already knew what my first spell was going to be.

“I think you’re right, Ms. Z.,” I said. “I have a feeling things are about to change around here.”