I ran to my bedroom and hopped on the bed, sending blue and green pillows tumbling. Still clutching the magazine in one hand, I clamped the other over my mouth and held down a squeal. Can this be real?
Music and the sounds of Piper’s and Barett’s giggles filtered through the bedroom wall. I unclenched my death grip and stared at Enchanted Teen. It had a picture of Hollywood’s rising teen star, Marlo Bee, plastered across the cover, and a yellow blurb that read, “Find Your Five Best Looks.”
I flipped to the index on the first page: Fashion Advice, Dating Dos and Don’ts, Hair + Skin + Makeup, Fun Stuff, Health + Fitness. One heading asked in green bubble letters, “Do You Have the Best Back-to-School Style?” The next read, “Are Your Lips Kiss-tastic?” It seemed like any other magazine until I turned the page.
Surgeon General’s Warning: This publication is potent and meant to be enjoyed like a rich dessert. Small tastes are luxuriant and rewarding, but too much in one sitting can leave you feeling nauseous. No binge browsing, please. If you experience dizziness, headache, sweating, or vomiting, close the pages immediately. If symptoms continue, drink sweet peppermint tea and read a few pages of a novel. Normalcy should return within an hour.
Hmm. Maybe this was the cost Grams had warned me about—nausea, headaches. Big whoop. All I had to do was be careful about how much I looked at the magazine. Done. Now, show me the magic!
I turned each page carefully, then stopped at a photo of a teen model done up with purple pigtails and dressed like a waitress at a fifties diner. Her name tag read “Mac” and the photo showed her roller-skating down a school hallway, getting pulled by cats. She clutched their leashes in one hand and held a sign in the other. It read: “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring—Marilyn Monroe.”
“Sure.” I grunted. “Doesn’t ridiculous equal embarrassing?”
Currents zipped up my arm. “Ouch!” I rubbed my skin. “What the— I’m just saying who wants to be ridicu—”
“Owww!” Another shock wave rippled through my arm, making me drop the magazine to the bed. My heart thudded. “Wow. Whoa.” With the caution I’d use to approach a skittish dog, I gently reached for the magazine, ripped out the picture of the model with the Marilyn quote, and tacked it to my wall. “Good?” I looked at Enchanted Teen and waited for some sort of sign.
Nothing.
I took a few breaths, working up the nerve to pick up the magazine again. “Okay,” I said in my soothing dog-whisperer voice. “Be nice, please.” With two fingers, I plucked it up. No shocks this time. I let out a breath and plopped back onto the bed, flipping pages with shaky hands. After a few more page turns, I came to another picture of the same model. This time, her eyes were painted like butterfly wings, and she was dressed in layer after layer of purple, pink, and blue sheer wispy fabric with a set of wings on her back. Her warm brown skin shimmered with glitter, and she posed like she might take off. I looked at her eyes.
And she winked.
I squinted and blinked. Was it a holograph? Could I make her wink again? I flipped the page back and forth but nothing happened.
“Okay?” I said to the picture. “You’re giving me a message. Right? With the Marilyn quote and the butterfly wings? Snow was ridiculous, but that turned out great, right?”
No response.
“Are . . . are you showing me magic?” I asked.
Again, nothing.
I ran my fingers over her fancy eye makeup. The page sparkled and glowed like I’d plugged in a string of LED lights. I pulled my hand back and the lights faded. I touched her butterfly eyes again and this time felt drawn in, like I was being sucked right into the page. My skin rippled and my vision went hazy, then purple, pink, and gold colors swirled in front of my eyes. Sounds melted away like I’d dived underwater. My finger felt glued to the picture, but when my head went dizzy, I yanked my hand back.
A clammy layer of sweat washed over my chest. Wow. Magical-ish.
But shiny lights weren’t going to help with a new school. I sighed. The sides of my head started to hurt.
Headache. Sweating. Next could be nausea. According to the Pixie General or whatever, it was time to stop looking at the magazine. I snapped the pages shut. My eyes itched. Sound resurfaced, and I realized my phone had been ringing. I looked at the caller ID and snatched it up. “Hannah!”
“What’s up, Megs?” she said.
“Magic” was on the tip of my tongue, but I had to hold it in. Hannah and I had told each other every secret we’d ever had since kindergarten. She told me about her fifty million crushes, and I told her whenever I faked sick to get out of stuff. Stuff like backing out of our sixth-grade play because after the Math Jeopardy failure I’d overheard Ronald Miller and Brooke Sutherland laughing about how dumb I sounded when I practiced my lines. Hannah said I didn’t sound dumb, but that’s what best friends are supposed to say. It was my middle school heads-up not to draw too much attention to myself.
I had tried. But it didn’t matter. After the first month of sixth grade, the judgy looks had spread like a pandemic, and somehow every student had earned an unofficial label—the athletes, the computer whizzes, the choir kids, and the dorkjobs. Hannah had become popular, and no matter what anyone said, she’d made sure I was included in stuff with her. Whenever I snort-laughed, she’d laugh harder. Whenever I acted like a dorkjob in front of a group and then apologized, assuming I’d embarrassed her, Hannah would put an arm over my shoulder and tell me she wasn’t embarrassed, not even a little bit.
Now I had the biggest good news of my life: I’d found a magical wishing clock, I was going to reinvent myself, I was going to be impressive—at least I hoped I would. But I couldn’t tell Hannah a thing. I’d given my word to Grams.
The magazine lit up and flopped. I smacked a shaky hand on the cover and held it down till it stopped moving.
Hannah continued talking a million miles a minute, telling me about her day and asking about Saguaro Prep and the people I’d met.
“Can you believe I’ve already made a few friends, sort of?”
“Yes,” she said, as in duhhh. “You were the only one who worried you couldn’t do it. Are you using that three-step plan of yours? What was it? Be friendly, make ’em laugh, be impressive?”
“Yep.” It had actually turned into “lie if you need to” and “get yourself into a big jam.” Ugh. Hannah never minded when I dorked out. But she hated—hated—when I lied.
I went on telling her about Saguaro Prep and Arizona. “And of course, Piper already brought home a new friend.”
“That’s good. I still don’t think you need that checklist.” Hannah rambled off her usual comments about being myself. “Hey, my mom told me your grandmother is on another one of her adventures.”
Hannah’s mom was Grams’s travel agent.
“Yep,” I said. “Paris this time.”
“I wish that were us. I hear tomorrow she flies to Avignon for a bike tour called Seniors in Provence. How about Teens in Provence? Wouldn’t that be fun?”
“Bike tour?” A wave of panic swam over me. What if I needed to ask questions? “You think she’ll turn off her phone?”
“I don’t—”
“Oh, geez. I hope it’s not going to be like when she went to Machu Picchu. Phones still work in Provence, right?”
“Probably. Why?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “You know, this move and all. I’ll want to talk to her.”
Hannah and I chatted for a little longer until I could hear her mom calling her in the background. “Gotta go, M. Love you.”
“Love you, too.” When I clicked end, a group text popped up from a number with an Arizona area code.
Pizza and study party, tomorrow nite 6:30 pm 4142 e. becker lane. xoxo Rhena
An invitation! From Rhena? She must’ve gotten my phone number from the student office helper. Still, that didn’t make sense. Rhena was annoyed with me about the zap. Now she was inviting me to her house?
Maybe I didn’t just get a magazine; maybe magic had helped me land this invitation, too.
There was a knock at my door. I yanked out homework papers from my backpack and threw them on top of the magazine. “Come in.”
Piper sprang into my room. “Hey, I’m going—whoa. How did you do that?”
“Huh?”
“Your makeup. It’s awesome. Look, Barett.”
Barett poked her head in the doorway. “Wow! Will you do me up like that one day?”
“Yeah. Both of us,” Piper said.
“Ummm.” I’d barely worn anything, a little pinkish-gold shadow on my lids. The rest of my makeup was in an unpacked box in my closet—new and still in its packaging. I scratched at my eyebrow.
“Ack! Don’t mess it up,” Piper said.
I stopped mid-scratch. Why was she being so weird?
“So listen. I called Dad and he said it was okay that I go to Barett’s house for dinner. Unless you want me to stay?”
“That’s okay. Thanks, though.”
“All right. Later,” Piper said. “But will you make sure Dad has something healthy to eat?”
“I always do.”
“Later,” Barett said.
The door closed and I went straight to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom I shared with Piper. “Aieeeeeeee!” I screamed at my reflection. “What the what?” I leaned close and touched my face. Somehow my makeup was identical to the model’s in the magazine. Smoky eyes and then shades of purple, blue, green, brown, and gold dotted and lined my face from cheekbone to eyebrows.
Science could explain man-made snow, and there could be a rational explanation for the delivery girl finding me and giving me a package addressed in my name. But nothing in real life could explain how I suddenly had runway-esque butterfly eyes drawn on my face.
I was dealing with real magic. And that meant anything was possible.