Spellcaster

I sighed, looking up at the entrance to the school as we crossed the street—and spied something that effectively ended the conversation.

“Oh, yeah, I’m definitely not talking about this now,” I said, catching sight of Brendan from the back. He was standing near the bus, wearing an army-green military-style jacket that I didn’t recognize. I was surprised he was waiting outside so late—Ashley and I were cutting it close. I had two morning classes before we were due to leave for the Cloisters.

“Well, let me know if you guys decide to go to that Battle of the Bands thing,” Ashley said, calling out her goodbye as she raced into the ornate entrance of the school. The main building of Vincent Academy was an old mansion that had been converted into a school—and the marble entrance looked less like a high school, more like some posh old billionaire’s home.

I approached Brendan from behind, appreciating the way his black pants hung on him. I pinched his butt before throwing my arms around his waist in a big hug.

“Guess who?” I teased—but Brendan’s body just stiffened. He spun around with a confused expression on his face—which I then realized wasn’t Brendan’s face at all. It was Liam.

“Oh! I’m so sorry! I, um, thought you were Brendan! I mean, obviously, I just… Oh, God. I pinched your butt,” I stammered, embarrassed, to the sophomore I had just accosted in the middle of Eighty-sixth Street. I hadn’t realized that he’d started styling his black hair to resemble Brendan’s messy, very unstyled hair. If I hadn’t been so embarrassed, I’d be collapsing at the adorableness: Brendan—aloof, hotheaded Brendan—had accidentally cultivated a little mini-me.

“Oh, my God, you just startled me,” Liam gasped, his palms up.

“You and Brendan look a lot alike from the back,” I explained, positive my cheeks were about to burst into flames.

“So you were checking out my butt?” Liam said with a smirk and I smacked his arm.

“Your hair, Liam,” I repeated dryly, and he let a nervous laugh escape.

“Hey, at least I get to tell people I got to first base before lunch,” he teased before putting his hands up again in protest. “No, I won’t! I’m kidding. Oh, my God, Brendan would murder me.” His brown eyes widened in terror.

“He probably would,” I agreed, stifling a snicker at Liam’s mini-freak-out—especially since Brendan would probably find the whole thing entertaining. Still, I couldn’t believe I’d pinched his butt. Why don’t you go feel up the black-haired barista at Starbucks next, genius?

“Don’t you usually come with your cousin?” Liam asked, looking around the street.

“She went in—we’re late,” I said, pointing to my wrist as if I had a watch on.

“Oh. Yeah, I should probably get inside,” Liam said, falling into step alongside me as we entered the building. “I have to talk to Coach during my free period this afternoon.” He grimaced.

“Brendan thinks you’ll be fine—and from what I could see, it was a big nothing,” I promised him, and Liam’s worried face relaxed a little. I had to race up the stairs to my history class, with barely enough time to pull my sweatshirt off and slide into my desk before the bell rang. It wasn’t part of the school uniform—and was a surefire ticket to detention. Although you might be safer sanding the pencil grooves in detention than strolling around Manhattan, doomsday girl.

“Cutting it close, Connor,” my friend Jenn Hynes whispered, turning around in her desk in front of me to wink at me as Mrs. Urbealis walked into the room, calling the class to attention. This would be an easy class today—we were watching old news footage of U.S. protests of the Vietnam War. I tried to focus on the grainy black-and-white telecast—sticking to my earlier vow to just treat today like a normal day—but sitting there, with time to think, the spell I’d done with Angelique began rattling around in my head. Finally I resolved to tell Brendan on the bus ride to the Cloisters instead of waiting until school was over. He had a right to know.

I had math immediately after history, so I stayed in my seat and chatted with Jenn as other students filed in. Jenn was a little bleary-eyed from staying out too late last night, and was filling me in on her weekend plans—she was going to crash with her sister at the NYU dorms. Suddenly she stopped talking and grabbed my forearm, twisting around even farther in her seat.

“Call me crazy, but why does it feel like everyone’s whispering and looking at you?” she hissed, pulling her honey-brown hair in front of her face to hide what she was saying. She might as well have cupped her hands around her mouth—she was as obvious as if she’d been doing semaphore.

“Because they usually are,” I replied, nonplussed. I didn’t even bother lowering my voice; it’s not like it was a secret.

“No, I mean—” Jenn flipped her hair back, glanced around then pulled her curtain of hair back “—it’s different this time. It’s not the usual ‘Ooh, there goes Emma, I heard Anthony was in Monaco’ or some crap. They’re really staring and whispering.”

The serious look on Jenn’s face made me pull my eyes from her (slightly bloodshot) ones. I pretended to scratch an itch on my chin, rubbing it on my shoulder as I stole a look around the classroom.

Madison Wefald and Rebecca Curry were speaking in animated, hushed tones. Nicole McAllister leaned so far over in her desk to murmur in Paul Cuevas’s ear, she was practically lying on the top of the desk, her butt sticking in the air and giving Marcus Colby a first-class ticket to Hineytown. And they were all casting furtive glances my way.

“What did you do now?” Jenn asked, her expertly made-up eyes wide. I shrugged, slinking a little lower into my desk self-consciously.

Mr. Agneta, the math teacher, strode into the room and took one look at the chattering students. He grabbed the large wooden compass, which he used to draw arcs on the blackboard, and pressed the chalk end on the board, causing it to screech uncomfortably—and the low buzz of voices stopped. Nicole flopped in her seat, and Marcus visibly frowned at the end of his free show.

“Yes, yes, so exciting. Well, math is exciting, too,” he said, and I knew I wasn’t imagining him shifting his eyes to glance my way. And I definitely didn’t imagine hearing Marcus Colby whisper, “Salinger, really?” to Nicole before bending over in his seat to check out her butt again.

My hand twitched to pull out my cell phone and text Brendan. Immediately the spell Angelique and I did assaulted my mind. What if Brendan was the target, not me? Was he hurt? Sick?

I thought about leaving the classroom to use the bathroom and text Brendan, but the expression on Mr. Agneta’s face every time he scanned the classroom and saw me craning my head to look out the door told me that wasn’t going to fly. I don’t know what I expected to see out there—it’s not like Brendan was going to be holding up a big neon sign in the hallway spelling out what happened. But it was clear that something had happened—something big. I nervously spun the Claddagh ring Brendan had given me around my finger, my stomach twisting into knots like it was trying to win a Boy Scout badge.

At the end of the class, Mr. Agneta screeched the chalk end of the compass against the blackboard again—he just loved doing that—shouting, “Just a reminder, all art history students need to report downstairs for the trip to the Cloisters.”

And then, my fears were confirmed when he looked straight at me. “That means you, too, Miss Connor. The bus leaves in fifteen.”

I grabbed Jenn’s sleeve as I pulled my backpack on.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked her, worried.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” she promised. “Drop your books off and I’ll meet you at the bus.”

I scrambled down the stairs to my basement locker—a chill coming over me as it did every time I stepped into the room where Anthony first confronted me. As a latecomer to the school, my locker was in the highly undesirable, out-of-the-way basement. After last year’s winter formal, the school had tried to find me another locker, but considering the main building was actually an old mansion, it wasn’t exactly built with a locker room in mind. There just weren’t any free ones—even in the annex. And I was not about to take over Anthony’s now-vacant locker. I was way too much of a magical novice to tackle whatever exorcism that would entail. So Brendan let me leave whatever I wanted in his fourth-floor locker, which admittedly had become jam-packed with more and more of my stuff.

I threw my books in, grabbed a spare notebook and slung my bag on my shoulders as I raced back upstairs, finding Jenn talking to our friend Cisco Fernandez in front of the bus. And for once, Cisco wasn’t smiling. And Jenn’s eyes were open so wide I could practically see inside her skull.

“Okay, Em, what have you heard so far?” Cisco asked, his dark brows knotted in worry.

“Nothing, other than overhearing Brendan’s name. What’s going on? Is he okay?” I fretted. Cisco jerked his head toward the bus.

“Let’s get on and I’ll tell you all that I know,” he said, his voice low. I followed him onto the bus, guilt eating away my insides like I’d just drank battery acid. The spell foretold something about Brendan, not you. And you didn’t warn him. Your fault. After he begged you to always tell him if something concerns you. “Just please don’t worry so much that you don’t talk to me,” he’d said. And you didn’t talk to him. Your fault.

Cisco led me and Jenn to the highly undesirable three-seater in the back of the bus, right on top of the engine. They sat on either side of me on top of the very loud, rumbling engine that would mask what we were about to talk about.

“Cisco, what is going on? Please tell me,” I implored, grabbing his hand.

“Okay, so I was in chem this morning, and I got there early because it was Brendan’s turn to do the lab report and I needed to copy it.” Cisco and Brendan were lab partners and had worked out a little schedule where they alternated doing homework. It was brilliantly sneaky and meant they each did half the work. “He gets there early, he’s his usual self—I mean, he’s fine, Emma. He’s not acting sneaky or weird about anything.”

“Sneaky? Why would he act sneaky?” I asked, confused.

“Let me finish. Mr. D walks in, class begins, the usual.” And then Cisco frowned.

“And then what?”

“About twenty minutes into class, Principal Casey comes storming in, interrupting Mr. D’s lecture, and says, ‘Brendan Salinger, come with me immediately.’” I groaned internally as Cisco mimicked our principal’s aggressive swagger. Casey, with her orange lipstick and “power suits” was about as cuddly as a rusty chainsaw.

“What did he do this time?” I asked, my thoughts running to a basketball team prank on a rival school to a saucy remark in class to countless uniform violations. All had landed Brendan in Casey’s crosshairs before.

“I don’t know. I didn’t think anything. He looked surprised, to be honest. He even pointed at himself and went, ‘Me? You sure?’ And here’s where it gets weird,” Cisco added, leaning forward, his fingers nervously curling around the base of his black tie.

“Brendan stands up to get his bag, and Casey tells him to leave it. Brendan says, ‘All my stuff is in there.’ And she sends a cop in to take his bag and they escort him out.”

I gasped, almost choking on my own breath.

“A cop? What the… Why would they even… I don’t even…” I stammered, not sure what to say.

Jenn popped her head up, checking out the students who were sitting around us. I didn’t have to look to know they were all probably gawking at us as if we were giant talking chickens. I was suddenly glad for the loud engine, even if it did reek of diesel fuel. “They would only have cops there if they thought Brendan did something illegal.” She paused. “Did he?”

“Like what?” I asked. Apart from some minor trespassing and graffiti offenses, and a few fistfights, Brendan wasn’t really bad. Okay, maybe he is a little bad.

“Let me finish,” Cisco continued, running his hands through his dark brown hair. “Brendan just looks at me and shrugs in this, ‘Well, this should be interesting’ kind of way. I mean, he didn’t look nervous or worried or anything, Emma. He didn’t do anything, that I’m sure of,” he added reassuringly.

“I know he didn’t,” I said loyally. However, you didn’t do anything to protect him. You should have told him…should have said something…’cause he’s so clearly being set up by someone.

“Anyway, I go to my next class, and it’s Latin, which I have with Frank, who had a free period that morning.” Cisco stopped, his head snapping up as Dr. McNelly came around to take attendance.

“Everyone’s accounted for,” she announced. Everyone except Brendan. And it’s your fault.

The bus kicked into gear as McNelly began her lecture on what we were going to see at the museum.

“So anyway,” Cisco continued, “Frank says—”

“Everyone needs to listen,” Dr. McNelly announced loudly, steadying herself by holding on to the backs of the red pleather seats as she walked closer to the rear. “And that includes the back of the bus.”

I fidgeted as we sat there with our mouths shut, my stomach twisting and turning like double Dutch jump rope as she droned on and on about the key pieces we would see, including the famed Unicorn Tapestries. Originally I had been excited to see them: maybe it was because a unicorn had been the centerpiece of the silver medallion I used to wear. Or maybe it was because, hey, I’m a girl. I’m genetically hardwired to like unicorns and kittens and hearts and all that crap. But right now, all I could think about was that Brendan was in trouble and getting farther and farther away from me with each spin of the bus’s wheels.

Finally, after what seemed like a millennium, McNelly’s lecture ended, and Cisco jumped right back into the story.

“So Frank had a free first period, and he asks me what happened in chem that morning. I tell him, and he tells me he got to school late, and when he went to his locker, there were two cops standing with Brendan by his locker, going through it with rubber gloves and everything.”

“What the hell did they think he had in there, some kind of super-flu?” I asked, and then it dawned on me. They thought he had drugs in his locker. And the school had a zero-tolerance policy.

“Emma, does he…?” Jenn asked, trailing off.

“Hell, no!” I practically cried, and a few people turned their heads. I didn’t care if they heard me.

“Brendan’s not like that,” I stated emphatically. A few of the other students at Vince A, well that was another story. Some of my classmates had blown through more powder than the Olympic skiing team, but Brendan was clean.

“Sorry,” Jenn said guiltily. “I mean, he’s a DJ, he hangs in clubs…how would I know?”

“Anyway,” Cisco interrupted, getting back to the story, “Frank couldn’t see what was going on, just that when they were leaving, Casey was hauling Brendan out of the hallway by the back of his collar and down the stairs. I guess to Casey’s office.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“Then Frank had to go to class,” Cisco said. “I just don’t get it—why they would think Brendan, of all people, was on drugs? I mean, the guy looks as healthy as they come.”

“That’s one way to put it,” Jenn murmured, more to herself than me. Incredulous, I elbowed her, and Jenn blushed. “Yeah, sorry. I mean, he doesn’t look cracked out or anything.”

“That’s because he’s not,” I insisted. I pulled my phone out of my backpack to text Brendan. If he even has his phone with him. I didn’t know what else to do. I felt powerless.

“This really sucks,” I moaned, dropping against the uncomfortable, upright back of the seat. I kept the phone in my hand, ready to open it as soon as it vibrated.

“I’m sure it’s fine, and it’s just Casey taking full advantage of the whole zero-tolerance policy. Besides, I bet she’d love for you or Brendan to look a little at fault after the whole Anthony thing gave the school’s image such a black eye,” Cisco mused, and Jenn nodded in agreement.

“Look, there’s nothing you can do now,” Cisco advised me. “Just put it out of your mind until you talk to him, and maybe you guys can laugh about this later when you’re at his house, counting his mother’s diamonds or, I don’t know, planning a trip to Bulgaria or whatever it is that you do when you’re at his megapalace downtown,” he teased.

“I don’t think they do much talking,” Jenn said, combing her fingers through her hair as her eyes drifted off to the ceiling of the bus. “I wouldn’t.”

I smiled—even in light of Jenn’s blatant fantasies about my boyfriend—and threw my arms around both of them.

“Thanks, guys,” I whispered. They continued to reassure me that this was just a prank—or revenge. Jenn even theorized that it was an attempt from a rival school to take the star basketball player out of commission, but my thoughts kept going back to the spell with Angelique.

It’s got more hate than you two have love.

This seemed pretty hateful to me.

We arrived at the Cloisters, and I kept surreptitiously checking my phone, waiting for Brendan to text me…once they gave him back his bag and cell phone, that is. If they gave it back to him. All I could think about was that he was going to get kicked out…suspended…arrested. The words kept ringing in my ears, louder than anything McNelly said: It’s got more hate than you two have love.

And that hate was directed at Brendan, not me.

As we walked through the halls, I ran my fingers along the stone architecture, a brief thought flitting through my mind that I might have walked through these very halls in a past life. The Cloisters were the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval branch, with parts of the structure actually dating as far back as the twelfth century. I scribbled meticulous notes, trying to keep track of what she was saying to share with Brendan later, for the inevitable test that he might fail since he missed the trip. That is, if he’s still a student at Vince A.

I was surprised that my number-one nemesis at school, Kristin Thorn, and her little horde of hangers-on stayed as far away from me as possible—I had imagined myself being tripped down one of the several uneven, stone staircases in the Cloisters. Then I noticed that Kristin had her phone’s browser open to the Cloisters webpage, and periodically brought up points as if they were her own. No wonder she’s avoiding you—she doesn’t want you to witness her shameless kiss-assery.

I should have known she wouldn’t keep her distance for long—Brendan’s little scandal provided her with the fodder she needed to jab at me. Just as we were breaking for lunch, I fell behind Cisco and Jenn, kneeling down to fix the twisted strap on my Mary Janes when Kristin sidled up to me. She stomped her red-soled Christian Louboutin heel an inch from my right pinky.

“Watch it!” I gave her a dirty look, snapping my hand back and briefly wondering if she’d missed her intended target. I bet she had planned to impale my finger with her heel like a shish kebab. I wouldn’t put it past her.

“Where’s your boyfriend, Emma? Did he have a bad day? I mean, a worse day than usual. Since he’s wasting his time with you, I figure his days usually suck,” she cooed in a baby voice that dropped with false concern. Her fake tan had persisted through the winter—the girl looked like a grilled cheese sandwich in a push-up bra.

I usually try my best to ignore Kristin—going back at her only made things worse. The school’s resident rich bitch had had it in for me since the second I started school. She’d had a thing for Anthony, and it had been Kristin who had facilitated Anthony’s attack on me last December. Her little role in the ordeal had earned her a week’s suspension. I had thought (hoped?) that Anthony’s brutal treatment of her would soften her cruel streak—and it did, for a little while. But recently, she’d started up with me again. I guess somehow, in her overprivileged, spoiled little brain, she had managed to twist things around to the point of where it was my fault that she had gotten in trouble. That I was the reason Anthony was a psycho. In the past few weeks, her cutthroat behavior was worse than ever—and, of course, her sycophants followed suit. Her much unrequited crush on Brendan just fueled her attacks, even though he’d done everything short of doing an interview in the Vincent Academy Observer proclaiming how uninterested in her he was. I used to wonder why she hadn’t gotten expelled, but realized all too soon that her lax punishment coincided with the purchase of twenty new laptops for the library. Whatever daddy’s little girl wanted, she got—except for Brendan.

I continued ignoring Kristin as I followed Jenn and Cisco out of the museum—we’d decided to eat lunch in Fort Tryon Park since it was nice out—but she wouldn’t let up.

“So, the cops came, right? I guess hanging out with your low-class ass is finally rubbing off on him,” she snapped, her overly made-up-for-school-are-you-kidding-me-with-those-false-eyelashes eyes narrowing as she looked me up and down. And then we walked right past Kendall, one of Brendan’s discouragingly pretty, strawberry-blonde ex-flings. Oh, joy.

“So what’s the story with Brendan, Emma?” Kendall asked, lounging against the banister and crossing her legs—legs so long only the ground stopped them from going on forever. I ignored her and quickened my walk.

“I know how to make him feel better—better than you could, at least,” Kendall purred as I hurried past. “He had a lot of fun last time,” she called after me, Kristin joining in on her cackling as I tried to push the mental picture of Brendan kissing Kendall, holding her close as those mile-long legs wrapped around him—No!—out of my mind, but it was like an alien invaded my head and was forcing me to think of different scenarios with them. Unrealistic scenarios, too. No one is that bendy.

I kept my pace level and my head high, not wanting the Bitch Twins to see that they’d gotten to me. After what felt like an eternity, I finally met up with Jenn and Cisco where they had set up camp on a low stone wall that had dried enough from the previous night’s storm.

“You look pissed,” Cisco observed, unwrapping a massive pastrami sandwich.

“Kristin.” I just had to growl the one word, and both Jenn and Cisco wore identical expressions of sympathy as I pulled my sandwich out of my bag.

“If you make it through this year without punching that girl in the face, you owe me five bucks—or maybe even a pony,” Cisco said as I squirted a packet of mayo onto my turkey-and-cheese hero. I bit into the sandwich angrily, even though guilt, worry and plain old annoyance had vanquished my appetite.

“It will never stop amazing me how Kristin was in a few commercials as a kid, so now she thinks she’s better than everyone.” Jenn frowned, glancing over to where Kristin was lounging on a bench with Kendall, who effortlessly looked glamorous. Hell, even Kristin managed to look effortlessly chic.

“So, any word from Brendan?” Cisco asked, and I pulled my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket to check it for the billionth time that afternoon.

“Nothing.” I shook my head bitterly as a fresh new wave of guilt slammed into me. “So, Jenn, what’s up with Austin? You guys haven’t seemed…friendly…lately,” I said, changing the subject without any tact or grace. But Jenn’s on-and-off romance with the very enthusiastic junior Student Council rep had always been a source of amusement for Cisco and me.

“He kept trying to force me to try out for the spring choral performance,” she snorted, picking apart her BLT and flinging an anemic-looking T into a garbage can.

“Do you even sing?” I asked, and she emphatically shook her head. Austin took his role in student government way too seriously. The guy lived and breathed for Vince A. He probably wept every time there was a snow day, drying his tears with the school handbook.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Austin was going to get a tramp stamp of the school insignia,” Cisco cracked, and I nearly choked on my sandwich, laughing.