Are you new here?” Piper’s holding the front door of school open for me as I hurry inside. I missed the bus this morning, and Dad was cranky that he had to drop me off. Not the best start to a Monday. And now this. Again.
“Yep. New here,” I say, catching my breath and following her inside. I push something down inside me, the something that would make it impossible to go through another conversation with Piper without crying. I just have to get through until tomorrow afternoon, when I can go to the historical society and find out how to break the jinx. The answer is there. It has to be.
“I can show you where the lockers are,” Piper offers. “Do you have your number and combo?”
“Um, yes. I have it,” I say weakly, cleaning off my steamed-up glasses as I follow her across the atrium floor. I glance toward the front office and see that the Ts aren’t sitting there. Their in-school suspension must be over.
“Where are you from?” Piper asks.
“Brooklyn,” I answer. “New York.”
“Cool!” she says, beaming. “My friend Fee is obsessed with New York.”
“It’s pretty great,” I say. “Um, this is my locker.”
“Well, see you later!”
“See you later.”
I hear Celeste before I see her. “Pipes!” she says, and I turn and see her hurrying down the hall. I catch her eye for a second and she gives me a small smile before hurrying past me and linking arms with Piper.
“Hey!” Piper says to her. “How was ice time?” Except she says it, “Yice ti-yime!” and they both laugh.
“So good,” Celeste says. “Nailed my lutz jump.”
“Which one’s that?” Piper asks. I watch as Fee pops out of the girls’ bathroom and joins them.
“Oh, it’s this one, right?” Fee asks, jumping and twirling.
Piper and Celeste applaud, and Celeste says, “I really wish you hadn’t stopped skating.”
Fee shrugs. “Wasn’t my thing.”
“Oof!” Someone bumps into me, hard, from behind. I swing around and find Teagan and Tess standing there, arms crossed over their chests. They must have stealth-walked out of the bathroom.
“What’s your deal?” Teagan asks.
“Yeah, what’s your deal?” Tess adds, earning a sharp look from Teagan.
I stifle a sigh. The few times I’ve been this close to the Ts, my heart has raced with nervousness. Now I just want to get to class.
“I don’t have a deal,” I answer.
“What’s your deal with Zooey?” Teagan asks, more slowly this time.
“What do you mean?” My heart thrums in my ears.
“Why are you guys hanging out so much?”
“We’re partners in social studies.”
“At lunch?” Tess asks cattily, as if she’s making a great point.
“Nice shirt,” Teagan cuts in. I look down at today’s cat T-shirt.
“Thanks,” I say, raising my chin.
“Tell Zooey her time’s running out,” Teagan says.
“Apparently,” I say, dropping onto a pillow in front of the Big Comfy Chair, “your time is running out.”
Zooey looks up from her book. She beat me to the chair, again. “What do you mean?”
“I mean the Ts sent me with a message,” I say solemnly. “Actually, two. First, they really like my shirt.”
“Second, your time is running out.”
“Ugh.” She rolls her eyes. “They need to give it up.”
“Give what up?”
She shakes her head like I couldn’t possibly understand.
“Fine. Don’t tell me,” I say, getting out my own book. I’m on to my reread of Tilde’s Realm #4.
“They want to be friends again,” Zooey says.
I look at her. “And you don’t?”
“You saw what they did to me. Why would I want to be friends with them?”
I shrug. “Because … they’re Totally Popular? And they want to be friends with you?”
“Yeah, but we’re not into the same things anymore.”
“What, like, making people cry?”
I was joking, mostly, but Zooey actually looks hurt. “Exactly like making people cry.”
“But you’ve always been friends with them … ” She’s giving me such a befuddled look as I ramble. “And they want to be friends with you. And why would you want to be friends with someone who didn’t want to be friends with you? That would not make sense.”
“That’s ironic,” she says drily.
“What?”
“Nothing. How was your weekend?”
I study her, trying to figure out what she means by “How was your weekend?” Is she being mean? I say, “Good. Yours?”
“Great,” she says, lifting her chin. “I saw some camp friends. And it was exactly what I needed.”
“What camp?”
“Camp Wohega.”
I make a note to check it out when I get home.
“And,” Zooey says, raising a foot, “I got new boots.” They are a pretty royal blue, with laces all the way up her calf.
“I think the Ts are going to like those as much as they like my cat shirt,” I say, and she smiles.
“If it isn’t my women-in-colonial-times enthusiasts!” Maude says from behind the big green desk the next afternoon.
“Just wondering”—I have to push my voice out, I’m so afraid of Maude’s answer—“if you’ve found something else about the jinx.”
Maude is slunk down so low that her elbows resting on the sides of her chair have sent her shoulders up to her ears, making her neck disappear. She wears a black T-shirt that reads I AM SHER LOCKED, and purple leggings that seem to be covered in muppet fur. She doesn’t answer me; she just swivels her chair from side to side, staring at us.
“What are you doing?” Zooey asks her.
“Swiveling,” Maude says. “It helps me think.” With one final swivel that sends her around in a full circle, she plants her motorcycle boots with a heavy thud onto the wood floor to stop the rotation. “I did just so happen to find something about the jinx.”
“Oh my God,” I say, my voice quivering. “Really? About how to break it?”
“Did you not just hear her call us Colonial Women Enthusiasts?” Zooey asks. “We have a title now; we can’t just change our project.”
“Just curious,” I murmur, watching as Maude slips a thin volume from one of the cavernous drawers in the desk and hands it to me.
As she hands me the book, I look at her questioningly, too nervous to open it.
“You take the rectangular object,” Maude says slowly, “and you open it up … and look!” Her voice rises in faux excitement. “This page is called the table of contents. Isn’t it cute!”
Despite my anticipation, I manage to shoot her a smirk as I open to the table of contents.
It lists first an introduction, and then chapters on the history of Trepan’s Grove. And then, halfway down the page, Chapter Six: Poem: The Harvest Jinx . . . . . 43. I flip through the book with shaking fingers, page 41, 42, 45.
“Where is it?” I whisper, flipping back. It’s then that I see the torn half page and the words at the top. My eyes scan the words, once, twice, three times, trying to understand what I’m reading:
Every year at Harvesttime is the moment to remind
That what you say and what you mean should have nothing in between.
All twenty-four hours of Festival Day,
Be aware of what you say,
For make a promise before you think,
And you could get a Harvest Jinx.
A jinx will last ’til the New Year dawns
One minute past midnight, and it will be gone.
And there the poem gets cut off, the bottom of the page ripped off.
“Wait,” I say desperately, flipping the page over, hoping maybe there will be more of the poem on the back, even if the bottom half of the page is gone. But the back of the page is blank, and the next page starts a new chapter on the food served at the bicentennial celebration.
My stomach drops. “That’s it? Someone ripped out the page?”
“People are the worst,” Maude announces.
I make a sound like “GAH!” and read the poem again.
“Dude, you have to relax,” Zooey says. “We found more of the poem than anyone’s seen in a long time. We can still find a way to include it in our paper, okay?”
I don’t respond but ask Maude, “There has to be another copy of this book, though, right? One that has the whole poem?” The thought of over two more months of living under the jinx is more than I can bear. “Can we look it up? We have the title.”
“Oh, I looked it up,” Maude says, “and this is the only copy. Someone made it for the historical society, as a gift after the bicentennial. But it’s interesting, yes? Now we know how long this mythical jinx business is supposed to last. Just until New Year’s Eve.”
“But … ”
“Sorry, kid,” Maude says, her voice sounding far away as I slowly turn and walk toward the stairs.
Zooey sounds practically underwater when she calls sarcastically, “Guess I’ll just keep on working! Thanks for your help!”
I’m a zombie through dinner. Mom feels my head. Dad makes me stick out my tongue. They send me to bed early and I don’t even object. I slump up the stairs to my room and stare at the calendar on my wall.
I fill the rest of the year with J’s. Rows and rows of them. I press so hard, the soft tip of the red marker flattens and splits, so the last J’s, in December, are huge, sloppy shapes. Then I take a black marker and cross out the days that have already passed since I was first jinxed. I’ll do this every day, until all the days are X’d out, until I’m free.