Homecoming (3 page)

Maybe this wasn't a good idea.
But by the time my nerves had convinced me to go home, I was already in a line for the gate, and there were so many people pressed around me that I couldn't get out of it. A few people gave me weird looks, but it was still light outside, so sunglasses weren't totally out of the realm of possibility.

The ground smelled of dirt and sweat, and once on the inside, no one was in any hurry to get anywhere. It made navigating annoying. People kept bumping into me, some polite about it and some less so. And every time, my breath seized in my chest, and I winced so hard my eyes closed.

Here and there were scattered faces, flashes of eyes and mouths that narrowed or smirked in my direction in the past. Nerves squirmed in my stomach, and I tried to take a deep breath, but I could
feel
it, somewhere inside of me. I didn't belong here. I was an outsider. Wrong. Freak.

All the dark feelings came to a head when to my left a voice cried out in irritation. I turned my head, following the sound, and ran right into someone in front of me.

“Sorry!” I said immediately, my eyes wide. “Oh sh—”

Caleb and Kari stared back at me, her eyes a little more hostile than his, arms wrapped around each other. He pulled his arm free of her shoulder and shrugged laconically. “No big, man.”

It was a very big to Kari, though. “Are you
stalking
us? I mean, I knew you were weird, but I didn't know you were a creeper.”

“I'm not! I mean, I—I—”

“Don't be a bitch,” Caleb said, bumping into her from the side.

“If he's stalking me, I have a right to know.” she spat, taking a step forward.

I, in turn, took a step back. Pointed looks and muttering I could handle, but I wasn't prepared for a full out attack. Or her sudden smile. “But I'm not the one you're stalking,” she continued, “am I?”

I didn't know what to say to that. I shoved my hands in my pockets, feeling the garnet brushing up against my knuckles.

Kari had shifted to one side, so she could look at both Caleb and me at the same time. “He was there in the woods, spying on us. I told you to go after him, but no! You blew it off.”

“Christ,” he said, scrubbing at his hair, “you sound like my mom. Let it go!”

“It's all about Caleb, isn't it? You freak, you think he'd like—”

The garnet.
The spell.
I clenched the gemstone in my fist and squeezed. Magic trickled out of me and flowed into the stone, which started to
pulse a mirror of my heartbeat. Pulsing turned to throbbing and then the stone began to hum against my skin. Waves of something warm and smooth slid across my skin, rippling out from my hands. It was like being wrapped in something thick like honey, but not as sticky.

The hate spiraled out of Kari's eyes, her mouth lost its sneer, and the lines in her forehead melted away. It was like someone had flipped a switch and her whole personality changed. “What was I saying?” Huh, when she wasn't being a total bitch, her voice was actually pleasant. I never would have guessed that.

It worked.
I exhaled slowly, glancing fearfully toward Caleb. His transformation wasn't as drastic. He actually seemed like he was … wrestling with something, his forehead knotted up in concentration.

Whatever it was, it took him almost a minute to get it out. “Derek and I were going to hang out later, drive around, y'know. Whatever.” Caleb looked down at the ground when he spoke, hunching his shoulders. “You could hang with us if you want.”

Hang out.
My smile came unbidden, a sudden surge of heat coursing through me. Caleb wanted to hang out. With me.

“Or you could come out with me and the girls,” Kari offered in his wake, giving Caleb the side eye. Some of the snottiness returns to her voice. “They're just going to play Mailbox Derby again.”

“Mailbox Derby?” I asked, but even as I did, I knew the answer.

Caleb explained. “Someone drives down the street, and the passenger leans out the window with a bat. Every mailbox you knock down is a home run.”

Of course, they were responsible for the vandalism. “I don't think so,” I said. “Vandalism's not my thing.”

Caleb ducked his head down even more. I looked closer. Was he blushing?

“I told him it's a stupid game,” Kari said immediately, in the kind of tone the kids on TV use when they're tattling. She reached for my arm, smiling too hard and with too many teeth. I leapt backwards, on instinct. I'd never been one of those touchy-feely people. I liked space.

“Right, totally stupid,” Caleb agreed. I did a double take.
What?
“We won't do it anymore.”

My skin broke out in goose bumps. This wasn't … he didn't change his mind just because...oh crap.

“You're sure?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he insisted. “You're right. Vandalism's bad. We won't do that anymore, I promise.”

The bad feeling got significantly worse. This wasn't the kind of charisma I'd been looking for. John was going to
kill
me. I could already hear the lecture about messing with people's minds. That was dark magic, bad magic, and he'd be more than pissed.

“What should we do instead?” he asked, his face still reddened.

Kari scoffed, rolling her eyes.

Across the field, I saw Derek huddled up with a group of other kids I'd seen Caleb hanging around before. “I think you should go hang out with your friends,” I gasped, pushing my way through the crowd, and away from the two of them.

It's okay, I can still fix this.
There was no reason for the dread lining my stomach.

I grabbed at the garnet in my pocket, willing it to cool down. That wasn't how things were supposed to go. Just the
idea
that Caleb and Kari would do things just because I told them to freaked me out. I didn't want that kind of power. It took a few minutes, during which I didn't make eye contact with
anyone
, but eventually the stone started to cool in my hands. Once it was settled, I could breathe again.

Everything's going to be fine.

¤ ¤ ¤

“Everything's going to be fine,” I panted mockingly to myself, ducking underneath a tree branch as I ran. “What an idiot!”

It had been fine, at first. The game had started, and unsure about what I should be doing, or where I should sit, I'd stayed near the fence, far from where I'd left Caleb and Kari, watching the game while conversations flew left and right around me.

“ … gonna be something … ”

“ … thinks she deserves … ”

The first half of the game, I tried to pay attention, to enthusiastically pretend that I knew what was going on. It took the whole of the first quarter before I realized which side of the scoreboard was Home and which was the Away team. Not entirely my fault: they should have labeled them. Even something as simple as an “H” or an “A.”

I'd noticed a few whispers at first, a few stares. I didn't think anything of it.

By the second quarter, I couldn't turn in any direction without seeing someone staring at me. When they saw me looking, they always turned away. My skin started to crawl. Whispers had gotten louder, conversations that tickled at the edges of my perception.

At halftime, during the Homecoming ceremony where a bunch of girls in gowns, football players in full gear, and guys dressed in button downs despite the heat, things changed. I thought I was imagining it at first—that all the eyes of the Homecoming court were on me. I caught a glimpse of Caleb at a distance, now dressed in a striped blue shirt and a pooka shell necklace that even
I
knew wasn't cool anymore. His eyes were definitely on me. And he looked … caught off guard. Entranced. And then my heart plummeted.

He looked
spelled
. The spell was still working. And worse, it looked like it was getting stronger!

When I tried to push my way through the crowd, there was resistance. People started reaching out, grabbing at me. There were declarations of surprise, and outbursts, and even a few catcalls.

In my pocket, the garnet burned.

Somehow, I made it to one of the gates and away from the field. I hadn't expected to be chased. And I definitely hadn't expected to be chased by the Homecoming Court, but all ten of them were scrambling their way off the field and heading in my direction. Running stopped being optional.

Two city blocks, an elementary school, the back lot of a grocery store, and then a stretch of woods later, they were still chasing after me.

There should have been a warning label. “Caution: Girls in high heels may be faster than they appear.” Or that they were more aggressive than their dresses would suggest.

Kari led the charge, her face screwed up in determination. She seemed to have forgotten that her hair was being held in place with nothing more than a few pins and hair spray. Tight pin curls weren't so tight anymore, and her “updo” was becoming more of a “meh” do.

I was so stupid. All I wanted was to be something other than the town weirdo for one night. And now I was even more of one.

The fact that Uncle John was right, and attending the football game had been a bad idea, didn't make me feel much better. In fact, it was a lead weight in my stomach.
When's he going to notice I'm gone? What's he going to do when he finds me?
I was half tempted to let the girls catch me. Anything they came up with would surely be better than the irritable uncle in my future. Unless, of course, the spell had turned the girls into cannibals. Then maybe I'd take the grounding. This wasn't really a “deserves to be chewed apart” kind of offense.

I hurtled past a giant trash container, scrambling for something that would help. Anything. I couldn't
focus.
There were any number of spells that would have been useful. Magic was simple. Shiny lights or balls of string, anything that would have distracted them. A little bit of power, twisted and given a form. I could have done this in my sleep.

I could not, however, do this while running for my life. Panic had replaced adrenaline, and my mind was blank. I couldn't have lit a match at this point.

A graveyard was coming up on my left, open and inviting. I leapt over the first row of headstones; rushed past rows and columns of the dead who couldn't have cared less that I was in hysterics. My breath echoed in the wind, caught and flung back at me every time a gasp struck stone. Just a little faster. Over the fence and through the woods and then I'd be at the convenience store.

From there, it was a straight shot home.

“There he is!” squealed Alissa, the blond Cali-girl wannabe that Derek thought was a shoe-in for Homecoming Queen. I
had only figured that out because Kari kept snarling her name every time Alissa tried to pass her.

In the ultimate example of “things that aren't fair in life,” not one of the girls was winded, and none of them were slowing down. Who knew that you had to be on the track team to get in the running for Homecoming Queen?

I could already hear John's lecture in my head.
See what happens when you think you know better than me? See what happens?
A lecture I'd heard every few weeks since I'd learned how to levitate things.

“Almost … ” Kari's voice swarmed right behind me, but I didn't dare turn back around. I felt fingers snatching at my shirt, and terror pushed me forward, my legs pumping faster than I even knew they could.

“Must. Start. Cardio.” I huffed, my lungs burning.

“Stop, baby. We don't even know your name!” It was the dark-haired girl, the one that always wore her shirts a few sizes too small.

Freedom was just a dozen feet in front of me. I could hear the rush of traffic pass nearby. Maybe they ended the game early, like a mistrial.
Called on account of widespread hysteria.
Or maybe they'd just blame it on a gas leak, or something in the water. Once I made it to the convenience store, it was as good as being home.

Against my better judgment, I swiveled around just enough to check how far they were behind me. The girls were gaining even faster now—bobbing and weaving through the graveyard hadn't slowed them at all. I whipped around just in time to have the air knocked out of me. My head flew back, and my sunglasses flew forward, ripped right from my head.

Oh crap
. A sickening lurch of anticipation filled my stomach.

The Fourth of July caught fire in my head. Light exploded into a flurry of color and shock. Reds and blues collided, layers spilling on top of each other, turning everything in front of me into mesmerizing shades of purple.

Black iron burning writhing against the throat and threats that explode like gunpowder your noses and look the other way because the moon stars night creep on fallow lies on the ground and do not disturb your dreams of a better world is on fire and no one cares Momma got left behind twixt this life and death crumble of flowers nothing here burns like sapphires.

Visions and songs and words hammered against me, each one faster and more violent than the one before. The force of the visions hit me full in the face, a physical blow that threw my head back and made my back arch and my body contort. Fire greedily slithered its way up my spine and into my brain, tendrils pulsing and burning as it crossed hemispheres.

The next thing I knew, the three girls had split into nearly a dozen, and none of them had the decency to stand still. Stars swam in the air like tadpoles in a pond.

Then I saw the Johns, hundreds of them who slowly merged together like simplified fractions. The girls had stopped moving at the periphery as my eyes struggled to regain focus, but the Johns kept coming closer, merging until there was only one real, tangible uncle in front of me. But even that one was too many. Around him was
a halo of
sick green and yellow warmth owls in their warning state the obvious.
The visions—images and snapshots—slid right through me, barely making any sense at all.