Frail hope gets me to school in the morning, hope that my friends will act like everything’s fine and hope that Rachel will have a gigantic zit.
My friends aren’t gathered under the covered area. Hope number one shattered. Where could they be? We’ve gathered there every morning since September. Since it’s now May, I’d say the change in location was planned. I think maybe I’m going to cry again but no! I refuse to give them the satisfaction. What a fickle bunch of pukes. How dare they?
Just wait until one of them needs to know the latest on hair conditioners. Or where to find their next purse. Or which band is the coolest new thing. I keep on top of that stuff. It’s almost spooky how tuned in I am. It’s as if I get messages from space. None of them comes close to me on knowing what trend is hot and what’s not. They’ll come crawling.
I hold my head high and stroll into the school. Home room happens with the blah, blah, blah announcements. It’s all normal. I’m good. I check my nails and they’re perfect. Next stop, English. Haley’s in that class, but I just breeze in and take my seat. I don’t even look at Haley. I open my books and listen to the teacher. I have no idea what the teacher says, but I listen. Really, I just appear to be listening, but that’s good enough.
It’s all about appearances.
I can feel Haley looking at me sometimes, actually feel it, but I don’t turn toward her. Not once. They think they can freeze me out? Ha. I’m the queen of freeze.
When lunch hour comes, I don’t go to the covered area. I go hunting for Rachel. I don’t make the hunt obvious. I walk briskly, like I have some place important to be. I wave and smile at those people I see who aren’t in the group but are still okay. Like Mandy, my lab partner.
They wave back. I’m good. I can do this. And then I see someone coming toward me. This person is wearing a lime green hat, the type only grannies wear. What’s a granny doing in school? Worse, why is she coming straight at me? And then the granny grins and exposes a mouthful of metal. It’s Stella. When she gets closer, she starts to squint. Her face scrunches up, and I think, what? She’s going to sneeze on me?
She gets right up in my face and stares.
I back up a step and say, “Uh, what are you doing?”
“Just checking,” she says.
“For what?” I ask.
“That girl, Rachel. I don’t know her, but I just saw some girls in the washroom all huddled around this one called Rachel. There was some sort of crisis. And then I got a glimpse of Rachel, and she has this huge zit on her forehead. The other girls were trying to help her cover it up with makeup. And then I got a little worried about you.”
My grin is probably ten times bigger than the one Stella had. “Are you kidding me?” I squeal.
“Oh no!” Stella says.
“What?”
She frowns and gets in my face again. “You didn’t, did you?”
I back away and say, “Would you stop that? And what didn’t I do?”
“You didn’t cast a spell to give her a zit, did you?” Stella asks.
“So what if I did?” I shake my head. “I really didn’t think it would work. But it must have! Do you have any idea how amazing this is? Which bathroom were they in? I’ve got to see this.”
Stella takes a deep breath and says, “I think there’s something else you’ve got to see.”
“Oh no,” I say. “Nothing will beat the zit. It’s prime.” And then I notice a faint pulsing in my forehead. What is that? I put my hand over it and rub, and the skin hurts. “Ow! What the heck?”
“Hurry,” Stella whispers. “We’ve got to go for cover.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Stella grabs hold of my arm and tugs. “Come on, Lizzie.” She glances at my forehead and her eyes widen. “Let’s go!” And then she pulls me down the hall, practically galloping in her big brown shoes.
“Jeez,” I complain. “Slow down. Where’s the fire?” But as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know where the fire is. It’s on my forehead. And it’s getting hotter every second.
We burst into the first bathroom we find. A couple of girls are combing their hair at the mirror, and Stella yells, “Clear out! She’s going to be sick!”
The girls grab their purses and run. They don’t look back.
“I’ll hold the door,” Stella says. “You, uh, better check the mirror.”
I’m afraid to look. I have to look. And when I do...“OH MY GOD!”
It’s unbelievable. It’s grotesque. They’re grotesque. Blossoming on my forehead are not one but three enormous zits. I grab hold of a sink to keep myself from collapsing. I’ve never seen anything like it. I swear the zits are growing before my eyes. “This...I...you...”
The ability to form words leaves me. Until now, I was one of the chosen few who never got zits. Never. My skin has remained smooth and pure as a baby’s. It’s as gorgeous as my hair.
“I told you, Lizzie,” Stella whispers. “The Law of Three. Remember?”
Into the fog of my mind comes a memory. Something about magick coming back threefold. I’d completely forgotten that. “It’s a law?”
Stella nods. “Big time.”
I feel myself blinking but not to stop tears. It’s more like I’m in shock. Yes, I’m in shock, like someone who’s just been in a car accident. I can’t think, I can only blink. And then a thought does come. It’s this. RUN! I look around. Way up high on the cement wall is a tiny window.
“Quick,” I say, “come and stand by this wall.”
“Why?” Stella asks.
“So I can get on your shoulders and reach the window.”
“I don’t think so.” Stella shakes her head. “These windows don’t open.”
“How do you know?” I ask.
She shrugs. “I’ve tried them.”
She tried them? Just how weird is this kid? There’s no time to worry about that now. Instead I ask, “Couldn’t you just, you know, make a spell to open it?”
“No.” Stella laughs. Actually laughs. “I don’t have that kind of power. My gift is more about finding the talent in others. Like you. Only I didn’t expect quite this much from you.” She laughs again.
I put my hands on my hips. “This is not funny. You got me into this mess. Now how am I going to get out?”
“I got you into this?” she asks.
“Yes! You taught me that stupid spell, didn’t you?”
She shrugs. “True. But I also told you magick isn’t a game, and I warned you about how it comes back threefold.”
She’s right. She did tell me that. But that’s beside the point. I still need to escape—unseen. “You wouldn’t by any chance have a spell to make me invisible, would you?”
“Sorry. Can’t do that either. But I can do something.” She takes the hideous green granny hat off her head and sticks it on mine. “There. Look at that. If you pull it low over your forehead, no one will see the zits. Poof! They’re invisible.”
I stare at her. She has seriously bad hat hair. It’s flat on top and then all those frizzy curls form a right angle at her ears and totally go their own way. I might feel sorry for her if I didn’t have bigger problems.
Slowly, I turn and look into the mirror. And it’s really, really weird because the hat actually looks sort of okay. Maybe even better than okay. It might even look good. “Wow,” I murmur, “this is my kind of magick.”
“Isn’t it great?” Stella smiles. “It’s my baba’s. She loaned it to me.”
Her baba’s? As in the old-school witch? I’m not going there. I can’t. I just nod and say, “I guess it’s better than nothing.”
I look at her and am shocked again by her hair. “Do you have a hairbrush?”
She digs in her backpack and comes up with a ratty old red brush. She holds it out toward me and says, “Here you go.”
“Um. Thanks. But I was just noticing you have, like, total hat hair.”
“Really?” Stella glances in the mirror, then starts yanking the brush through her hair. The flattened area revives and blends with the mass. “Thanks for telling me, Lizzie. I never would have noticed.”
The bell sounds and we both startle. I look in the mirror to double-check that the zits are covered. They are. I can still feel them, but so long as they’re hidden, it’s okay. I tilt my head and ask, “This hat doesn’t make me look gangsta, does it?”
“Oh no,” Stella says. “My baba would never go for that. She’s really cute.”
Some people have no idea. Note to self: Do not trust Stella’s opinions on cuteness. “Okay, I guess we’re good to go. I’ll go first.”
“What do you mean?” Stella asks.
I take hold of the door handle, “Uh, we can’t be seen leaving together, can we?”
Stella gets a funny look, but that’s just her, the way she is, right?