What the Spell Part 1 (9 page)

“Well . . .” I started, my mind suddenly going blank. I stalled as I waited for it to get up and running again, while surveying the scene in front of us. Most of the students who’d stopped to watch my ascension to the table earlier had gone back to their lunches and the conversations they’d been having with their friends. There were, however, a select few still eyeing us suspiciously, trying hard to figure out what the heck was going on.

To be honest, I was wondering that myself.

“Uh . . . Well, I have many, er, talents that I could bring to The Elite if given the chance,” I said, hoping they’d buy my vague answer in lieu of something more precise.

No such luck.

“Like?” Rhodes asked.

“Like, I’m kind of . . . stealthy?” I said finally, seeing the argument building up in my head. “I’ve been at this school for a few years now, and I was able to get around without anyone noticing me until I wanted them to.”

This was only partly a fib, since I
had
gone unnoticed for quite some time around this school. So what if the part about me
wanting
to go unnoticed was untrue? What did my favorite PR idols say? It was all about the spin.

“That’s true,” Eliza chimed in. “I had no idea Brookie existed until she got her boob job. And then she was like, bam, all up in our faces.”

“I didn’t get—”

Gigi shook her head at me from across the table, as if telling me to let it go.

“So you can blend in. How else can you be useful to us?” Camden continued.

My head was spinning as I tried to make sense of what was happening. “I’m pretty smart—well, not Rhodes smart, but I’ve never gotten below a B in any of my classes.”

This didn’t seem to impress them much, considering Gigi was an A student and Camden ran the student body. And Rhodes—well, he was in a league of his own. No way was I going to bring the intelligence factor to this group. I tried to think of something I could do that the others weren’t already contributing in their own ways.

There was the obvious, of course, but how was I supposed to express that without outing myself in the process? Yet magic was my biggest asset. I had to give it a shot.

“I have the uncanny ability to make things happen,” I said desperately.

“What do you mean?” Gigi asked curiously.

“I mean, give me a task and it
will
get done. It doesn’t matter what it is, I will succeed. That, I can promise,” I said. “I’m the person you call when you’ve tried everything else.”

The five of them looked around at each other wordlessly, as if communicating telepathically. I waited silently, willing them to say something, to give me an idea whether they were buying my story or not.

Finally, Gigi nodded. “Okay. We’re going to give you a chance to prove that what you say is true.”

“Now, we’re not
promising
anything,” Camden said, leaning back in his seat, like he was posing for a catalog. I could practically hear people taking pictures on their camera phones as he did it. “But if we’re impressed, we may just keep you around.”

My mouth dropped open. Unless I was reading into things, The Elite were giving me the chance to possibly join their group.

“What do you need me to do?” I asked when I’d regained my composure.

“Nothing big,” Gigi said, inspecting her nails critically. “I’m sure we can find a few ways to determine your loyalty, drive, and desire.”

“Okay,” I said, wondering if they weren’t being a bit melodramatic. But given their reputation, I knew they weren’t joking. They meant just what they said.

“And if you stick around, it will be like you’ve won the lottery,” she said, gesturing around the room.

“You’ll be existing among future politicians,” Camden said.

“Nobel Prize winners,” Rhodes said.

“Hollywood’s next big stars,” Eliza delivered dramatically.

“This awesome guy,” Wheatley said, pointing at himself between bites of his burger.

“And high-powered attorneys,” Gigi said evenly. “If you have what it takes and stick with us, Brooklyn, your life will change. I can guarantee it.”

I nodded to let them know that I understood what they were offering me and then waited for them to tell me what they wanted me to do next.

“Well . . .”

“What devious plans are you little Gremlins plotting today?” a voice boomed up to us from the floor, interrupting our discussion. “Getting out of your school-ordered community service because you might get your hands dirty? Intimidating others into thinking you’re special? Convincing your mommies and daddies to pay your way out of the problems you create? I can’t wait for the day you all mess up and I get to lock you up and throw away the key.”

“And you wonder why people think school’s a prison,” Wheatley said, not even bothering to turn around to look at our principal. I did, however, and was shocked to see him flanked by two security guards, both with their hands on their walkie-talkies as if they might need to use them at any moment. My heart started to race as I wondered what was about to happen and what we’d done to make the principal think he needed police assistance.

“I don’t know what you’ve been hearing about us, Frankie, but we’re just sitting here eating lunch,” said Eliza innocently. “By the way, did you get the tickets that Daddy sent you last week?”

He sneered at her. “It’s
Principal Franklin
, Miss Rivers,” he said snidely. “And I’m not a fan of basketball.”

“But they were floor seats!” Eliza said, her good-girl act dropping for a second. “I mean . . . well, Daddy has tickets to practically
every
team in LA, so if you let me know what sports you
do
like . . .”

“That won’t be necessary, Miss Rivers.”

“You seem stressed, Principal Franklin,” Gigi cooed. “Is something wrong?”

“Besides having to deal with you kids?”

“Well, I’ll be sure to bring up the topic of stress levels on campus in our next student government meeting,” Camden said. “Stress can be damaging to your health. And we wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, now, would we?”

“No.”

“Uh-uh.”

“Your health is
so
important to us.”

I sat there, completely silent, just listening to the exchange. I’d never actually interacted with Principal Franklin before, so hearing the way he was talking to The Elite was a bit of a shock. Weren’t adults supposed to be nice to kids? Or at the very least lead by example? Principal Franklin was just being . . . nasty.

Not that my new friends were being entirely respectful either, but what did he expect after everything he was saying? I was completely dumbfounded by the whole situation and sat there praying I wouldn’t be dragged into it.

Too late.

“New minion?” he asked, nodding at me. “How’d you
pull her into your web of evil?” I was too shocked by what he was saying to respond, so I just stared at him instead. I’d never had any interaction with the guy before, so why was he picking on me?

“Of course. You’ve found one that’s to be seen and not heard,” he continued, sighing.

“She speaks,” Wheatley said out of nowhere. “Maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to
you
.”

The principal flinched. I looked back and forth between the two, still unable to make my lips move.

“You’re skating on thin ice, Mr. Thomas,” Principal Franklin warned. When Wheatley didn’t respond again, the principal attempted to intimidate us with a glare and then harrumphed and stormed off.

“What a tool,” Camden said when he was out of earshot.

“Are we even sure he finished college? What person in his right mind would allow
him
to work with kids?” Rhodes asked.

“What was with the backup?” I asked, still thoroughly confused by the whole thing.

Eliza waved this off. “They go everywhere with him,” she said. “He thinks he’s the president and needs Secret Service with him at all times.”

“Either that or he’s scared of what Wheatley will do if he gets mad,” Camden said, snickering.

Wheatley just snorted in response.

“Now that
that’s
over, I think there’s something you
can
do for us,” Gigi said, looking at me with one of her eyebrows raised. I waited for her to continue. “How do you feel about TP’ing Principal Franklin’s house?”

I nearly laughed at the request. “You want me to toilet paper the principal’s house?” I asked, incredulously. When
they nodded at me seriously, I realized they weren’t joking. I didn’t think people still did stuff like that . . . after the age of twelve, at least. “You want me to TP the principal’s house,” I repeated, this time matter-of-fact.

“Yep. You can show us that you’re serious about all of this
and
get back at Principal Franklin at the same time. It’s a win-win.”

Except for Principal Franklin, of course.

I bit my lower lip and thought about what they were asking me to do. I know I’d said that I could do any task they threw my way, but I hadn’t counted on it being so . . . vengeful. And potentially dangerous. And now that I’d seen how vindictive and horrible Principal Franklin could be, I didn’t want to do anything to make him my enemy. In this case, having a target on my back was a whole lot worse than being invisible.

“He’s just so unfair and treats all the students like they’re slugs on the bottom of his shoe,” Gigi continued, sensing my hesitation. “It’s time he saw that there are consequences to his actions.”

That’s what I was worried about.

But in a way, she was right. Principal Franklin
had
been awful, and everybody TP’d a house at one point or another, right? I mean, I never had, but there was a first time for everything. And besides, toilet paper eventually disintegrated, which meant it was sort of a crimeless crime.

And if I didn’t accept the challenge, I knew that would be the end of my chance to become one of The Elite. And that wasn’t an option. It was the whole reason I’d done the makeover. I’d come this far, there was no going back now. And if I was being honest, I didn’t even want to.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

After I agreed to the terms and conditions The Elite had laid out for me, they let me in on a few other useful bits of information that made it clear that passing their challenge was going to be more difficult than I’d originally anticipated. The first being that Principal Franklin’s house was on a rather busy street in town, and it was going to be difficult to pull things off without someone seeing me do it.

And The Elite had made it clear that if I was caught, they didn’t know me. Meaning I would be on my own in the blame department.

On top of that, the house itself was supposed to be somewhat of a fortress. Separated from the street by an electric gate that you could only get through via a pass code, Principal Franklin’s place also had motion detectors located strategically around the grounds. With heavy gear like that, he was either hiding top-secret experiments inside or was extremely paranoid about trespassers.

Considering what I was planning, maybe he wasn’t so paranoid after all.

We’d decided that I should do the job right away—as in, that night. Without the Elite having to say so, I could tell it was to let Principal Franklin know that the toilet paper was payback for his little witch hunt earlier. No time to waste, as they say. So the plan was that I would head to the store after school and pick up no less than twenty-four rolls of toilet paper plus whatever else I needed to get the job done. Then, around 8 p.m., Gigi and the others would meet at the Burger Barn, where they’d stay until I joined them after I was finished. This would ensure that they had a public alibi in the event that Principal Franklin accused them of the TP’ing (and they insisted that he would). They all figured that no one would suspect me, still being relatively unknown and all, so it wouldn’t matter if I hadn’t been there with them the whole time. When people thought back to that night, they’d either assume I was there the whole time or not have noticed that I was missing.

After I bought the supplies, I was to sneak over to the principal’s house around 9 p.m. and wait for him to go to bed before sneaking inside the grounds and making it rain with tissue. When I was done, I had to take pictures of my work as proof that I’d carried out the plan and then rendezvous with the others as soon as I could.