The three o’clock bell couldn’t come fast enough. I dashed home from school as fast as I could, wanting to be invisible to everyone in the town.
I tried texting Nia, but she refused to respond.
Where the heck was she anyway? Did she plan to take some time off for a vacation after leaking my private blog so she wouldn’t have to face me?
I immediately crawled into bed when I got home. My room was a safe refuge from the public, but even in private I wanted to hide from the world. I didn’t want to text, to look on social media. I didn’t want to turn on my laptop, a reminder of the troublesome blog I started.
I wouldn’t have started that blog had I not met Victoria in that fun house.
Before I met Victoria, my life was just fine. My little white lies here and there didn’t hurt anyone that much. Since she’d come into my life, I’d been on punishment, I’d had a massive blowup with my best friend, and I’d had the boneheaded idea to create a diary on the internet, of all places, where nothing was 100 percent safe, where I wrote down the truth because I couldn’t tell people what they wanted to hear, which got exposed and offended the entire town.
“My life has become a hot mess thanks to this freaking spell,” I muttered under my breath. My throat and nose felt itchy. Then the air turned hazy around me. Then the haze started to swirl, and the form of a woman’s body took shape again. There she was, tiara and all. Victoria.
“Hi,” I said, sitting up in bed. Victoria had a soft look on her face. A look of pity.
“Hi, June,” she said. “I read your column in the newspaper. That apology was really mature of you.”
I mumbled a “thanks” and turned over in bed, looking down at my feet. I still thought her spell had ruined my life. But I couldn’t blame Victoria for how this blog thing had gone down—I’d written all those words myself. And Nia had been the one to post it for everyone to see. That had nothing to do with Victoria.
“I’m sorry I blamed you for the leak,” I said with regret. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Apology accepted,” she said, waving her magic wand over me. I hoped some of that fairy dust would pick me up and take me to whatever far-off land she came from so I could hide out there until this all blew over. “Things might be a hot mess right now, but that certainly wasn’t my intention.”
“I know,” I said. “I guess I’ll never get the spell lifted now, huh?”
“You’ve certainly made it difficult,” she said. “But not impossible.”
I didn’t have anything more to tell the truth about at this point. And after the blog leak, no one wanted to be near me, much less talk to me. So if I wasn’t going to talk to people, I didn’t even have to worry about lying or telling the truth. But if I didn’t have to tell the truth, how was I going to get out from under the spell?
Victoria looked at my closet, then looked at me. “June, I think you should go on the school field trip and have heart-to-heart conversations with your friends in person. Then you can tell them all what you truly think of them.”
I could not think of a worse idea. “That’s the last thing I want to do!” I said.
“The trip would be a great opportunity for you to try to make good with people. Think about it—you’ll have an audience totally undistracted by things like cell phones and classwork. You’ve already written a very heartfelt piece about your mistake in the newspaper, so people will be more willing to hear you explain yourself in person and ask for their personal forgiveness again.”
My head hurt thinking about it. How was I supposed to talk to every person and beg them to be my friend again? I was a social outcast! They’d never want to speak to me ever again, let alone hear my apology!
“There’s no way,” I said.
Victoria sat closer to me. “June, you’ve really struggled to understand what living truthfully under my spell really means. I want you to understand, but I also want to give you the chance to earn your freedom. So I’ll give you one last task to complete in order to lift the spell.”
I looked at her. What in the world would she possibly make me do now?
“Go on the camping trip and work your hardest to ask people’s forgiveness. Apologize to every single person on the trip—adults and kids—and tell them your truth to their face. If you tell the truth and work honestly to earn their forgiveness, I’ll lift the spell as soon as you get back home.”
Finally—Victoria had given me an actual task I could complete to end the spell, instead of just some vague “live your truth and nothing but” nonsense! But even so, I couldn’t imagine sitting in the isolated woods with kids who didn’t want to speak with me. Imagine Nia, with her scowl turned up toward the sky. Or Lee—what would he say to me? Or Alvin? Olive may sit next to me out of pity because she knows what happened with the leak, but I still have to beg for her forgiveness, too.
“Remember I said the truth was your superpower?” Victoria said. “Everyone’s superpowers can go haywire at times. Think of this as regaining control over yours.”
I thought about what would happen if I didn’t go on the trip at all. Maybe everyone would talk about me behind my back. And then I’d feel like a heel if I found out all the mean things that people said about me. That would only be fair, frankly. And would make me feel even worse—especially now that I understand how hurtful it is to talk about people behind their backs. At least if I went on the trip, people would have to tell me to my face how mad they were at me.
This could also be my time to confront Nia after what happened. Okay, it was not cool for me to badmouth her behind her back. That’s like cardinal rule number one of friendship. But she still stole my private diary and posted it for the entire world to see! I mean, that’s a crime, right? Was what I did a crime? Did two bad deeds equal a right?
Maybe the only way to put this whole thing behind us was to have one big bad face-off over the whole thing, get it all out of our systems, and move on.
“All right,” I said. Victoria was right. This was the only way I could get people to hear me out and accept my apologies. I had to take the chance. They might not all forgive me, especially not right away, but I had to try.
“Shall we start packing?” Victoria asked.
