Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) (11 page)

Nonny’s
face had puckered into her trademark worried frown. “Zara, you didn’t spend two hours watching the football team. And you wouldn’t have been so fascinated by them that you couldn’t text Meg.”

“Meg!” I grabbed my phone. “I have to call Meg.” I snatched up my books and bag and ran upstairs—away from
Nonny
, whose voice trailed after me, calling, “Dinner in ten minutes, Zara. I mean it.”

By the time the ten minutes were
up, I knew that Meg had, in fact, called the house looking for me. I also knew that Alvin had fixed her bike, eaten nearly an entire box of trail mix, and made a favorable impression on Mrs. O’Shaughnessy before leaving to go back to CGH and run
around the track
. “He runs,” Meg confided breathlessly. “He’s practically an athlete.”

Meg has
never had a crush on an athlete before. She tends to go for the brainy types.
Not that athletes can’t be brainy, but if a boy has both brains and brawn, he is usually a snot. This is one of nature’s unconquerable mysteries.

“Yeah, I saw him there,” I said.

“You
what?”
Meg squeaked. “You saw him running?”

“Yeah. But—“

“
You were out by the track??”

“Yeah. But, Meg—“

“
Omigod
! I wondered where you were. Why were you at the track?
Omigod
. Did you
say
anything to him?”

“Yes,” I practically shouted. “Will you focus, please? Because I’m totally in trouble and I need you.”

“What?” She sounded cross. I couldn’t blame her.

I lowered my voice to a near-whisper. “Alvi
n caught me
skatching
.”

There was a brief, stunned silence. “He
what?
”

“He saw me. It’s just the worst luck. He happened to be looking
at
exactly
the right place
, and he saw me just, you know, arrive. Meg, what’ll I do?”

“Okay. Let me think.” Her voice
had taken on the crisp, detached note of Meg in her scientist mode. “What did he see, exactly?”

“Shall I demonstrate? Where are you?”

“In my room. Why?”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes. Why?”

I
skatched
. Meg was curled up on her bedspread, phone to ear, absently working on a knot in one of her shoelaces. She nearly jumped out of her skin when I
mat
erialized at the foot of her bed
.

“See?” I said glumly. “It pretty much gives you a heart attack.” And I
skatched
back to my own room.

Interestingly, my
skatching
disrupted our phone connection. I called her back. She was still spluttering incoherently. “Don’t
do
that.”

“Sorry. You asked what he saw.
Now you know. So tell me: Is there any way you could be convinced that what
you
just saw was an illusion of some kind?”

“
No
. No
way.
”

I sighed. “I was afraid of that.”

Nonny’s
voice floated up the stairs, calling me to dinner.

“
Gotta
go,” I said quickly. “But I’ll call you back in half an hour. Think of something, Meg. I
’m counting on you
.”

But in the end, she couldn’t think of anything better than the lie I had already told, about practicing to become a magician. Especially since I’d already said it. I painted myself into a corner on that one.

“You know, that wouldn’t be a bad career choice for you,” she said. “Actually.”

It was the next day, after school. We were at Meg’s house, applying tiny daisies to
her
toenails. I looked at her in horror. “On a
stage?
Are you
insane?”

She giggled. “Okay, okay. I forgot. You’re not the exhibitionist type.”

“It would be a rough transition,” I agreed. “After spending
my whole, entire life
ke
eping
my head down.”

“What kills me,” she said, holding up one foot to admire t
he effect, “is how easy it will
be for you to make a real difference in the world. I’m going to have to study for years and years, and go into debt, and, you know,
suffer
to get through school if I want to be a doctor. You could just—” she waggled her fingers. “Boom. Cure people.”

“No, I couldn’t. My spells don’t hold. And besides, you need a license to practice medicine, so I’d have to go through school just like you.”

I was screwing the top back onto the clear nail polish so I didn’t notice for a second that Meg had gone utterly still and silent—which is so unlike her that otherwise, I would have noticed. I finally looked up at her. She had a strange expression on her face. Excited and hopeful, plus ashamed and guilty.

“What?” I said.

“You could help
me,
Zara. I would totally understand if your spell didn’t hold. And even if it didn’t
hold
, you could just, maybe, redo it.”

“Redo what?”

Her face was turning pinker by the second, but she didn’t drop her eyes. “You could make Alvin like me.”

“Oh no.” I set the little bottle down.
My mouth had suddenly gone dry with anxiety.
“
Love spells?
No.”

“Yes! You totally could.”

“Meg, it’s wrong. I’m not going to mess with people’s heads. I don’t even want to try.”

“Why not? What could it hurt?”

“Come on! How would you feel if somebody did that to you?
It’s not fair. It’s creepy. No.” Then I had an idea
. “
B
esides, maybe he likes you already. Did you ask him to Homecoming yet?”

Her face went even pinker
. “I couldn’t, Zara. I was afraid.”

“Afraid
?” Nothing scares Meg. I reached over and g
ave her shoulder a friendly shove
. “Aw,
Meggie
. Get re
a
l. You don’t need me to run interference
.”

“Yes, I do.” Her chin was taking on a stubborn tilt. “You know I’ve never asked you for anything like this before. But just this once, I’m asking you. Help me, Zara.
I know you can do it, and it just
… just…
kills
me to think how easy it would be for you, when it’s so hard for me.”

I bit my lip, feeling guilty. She was right, of course.
An
d naturally I wanted to help my
bestie
—
how could I not?
But what she was asking me to do was wrong. I knew it in my bones.

“What, exactly, do you want to happen?” I asked carefully.

She leaned forward, her eyes alight with hope. “Make Alvin ask me to Homecoming.”

“I thought you were asking him?”

“If he asks me, I won’t have to.”

Well, duh. I flopped backwards on the bed, groaning and covering my eyes.

“Come on, Zara. Please? For me?
I would
do it for you. You know I would.
”

She probably would
.

I did not uncover my eyes. “Okay,” I said at last. Mentally, I was hedging. “I’ll help.”

I did not say I was going to use the Power. But Meg was
squeeing
and bouncing around the room, too thrilled to notice.

“But you have to help, too,” I warned her. “No more of this girl-scientist stuff. I mean, of course you can
be
a girl scientist. Just stop looking like one.”

She stopped bouncing. “What do you mean?”

I’d been thinking about this for a while, actually, so I was glad the moment had finally arrived when I could say it.

“You know how you’re always moaning about how gorgeous Bridget is, and saying you’ll never be pretty like her? Well, she’s your sister. Guess what? You look like her.”

Bridget was off at college, so I was
perched on he
r bed. I reached over to the nightstand, picked up her senior portrait (which was
sitting
there, framed), and waved it at Meg. “See? What does she have that you don’t have?”

“Boobs,” said Meg promptly. “And no glasses. And
auburn
hair.
Also she’s taller.
”

I could tell she was going to go on, so I waved my hand dismissively, interrupting. “What she has is confidence. It’s all in the packaging, Meg. You aren’t playing up your assets.”

Meg looked glum. “I’m not allowed to. No contact lenses, remember? No high heels, no push-up bras, no decent clothes—by which I mean, no
in
decent clothes. My mother thinks I’m a child.”

“Okay, let’s
work within those parameters. We’ll
start with
the hair, i
f that’s all we’re
permitted
to touch.
”

Megan does not have bad hair. She has great hair
—a mop of dense curls that most straight-haired girls would kill for
. But she hates it. So I knew that if she made a change, she’d feel prettier—and that would make her, in fact, prettier.

And maybe I wouldn’t have to put the whammy on Alvin.

And meanwhile, all this girl-talky stuff distracted her from asking about Lance.

I really, really didn’t want to talk about Lance. Because I knew exactly what Meg thought of him, and what she would say if she found out
I’d spent yesterday afternoon
with him.
Worse: E
ven when I wasn’t with him,
now,
I was thinking about him. So I just didn’t want our conversation to go there. Ever.

Spellspinners
don’t need much sleep. Maybe we don’t, technically, need sleep at all. I love to sleep, but if I don’t sleep, I don’t fall apart the way sticks do. So if I want to see Lance—and for some perverse reason, I do—I don’t have to do it in
broad daylight.

School
had been
in session for
less than
a week, and already I was
planning
to live a double life. By day,
I’d be
a high school junior and Megan O’Shaughnessy’s best friend.

But my nights
I
w
ould give
to Lance.

And Meg and
Nonny
need never
know.

Now all I had to do was
tell
Lance.

I got my chance sooner than I thought I would.
I was
on my way home,
just
gliding around
the turn onto Chapman Road
,
when I heard the distant thrum of a motorcycle. It could have been anybody, but I knew it was Lance.
And I knew he was looking for me.

My heart rate accelerated. I was almost home. There was really nowhere to go. Our house, and the nursery, are the only things on Chapman Road that don’t belong to the
Chapmans
.
But I couldn’t go to either place, because
Nonny
would
have my hide for bringing Lance onto her property
.
If I
sailed on
past
the house and nursery
, Lance would follow—but what if
Nonny
or
Tres
looked up at the wrong moment and saw me heading, inexplicably, to the Chapman place? Or, m
ore likely, looked up to see what idiot
was coming to
a
nursery on a motorcycle, and saw Lance.

Nowhere to hide, as usual.
This
was
not the first time I have wished we lived in the city. Any city.

Mutterin
g under my breath, I
swerved
my bicycle onto the narrow foot path that runs through the field to the creek
—
the only possible stopping point
before coming within sight of the house
. With luck, the tall grass would provide some cover.
I skidded to a halt,
tapped
the kickstand
down,
and walked back to the edge of the path, where I could watch Chapman Road.