Spell Check (8 page)

“It must be difficult for you and your mother.”

“We’re managing.” Sort of. “Mom joined a widows’ support group.”

“Excellent. And are you still seeing a grief counselor?”

“Nah.” Do you have any idea how much therapy costs? How much groceries and gas cost? “Mom wanted me to keep going, but I told her I was fine.”

Miss Gaya tapped her pen against a folder on her desk. I got the feeling she believed me about as much as Mom had. “You have a strong circle of friends, Evie. They’ll help you if you let them. And I’m here, too, if you ever need me.”

What circle of friends? I wondered. Who besides Parvani? I stumbled to my feet. “Thank you, Miss Gaya. I should get back to Yearbook. Our first deadline is in eight days.”

“Of course. Remember, my door is always open.”

I swiveled and faced the closed door. Right.

When I returned to class, Miss Roberts was shoulder-deep in noisy layout artists. I tiptoed over to the computer and booted up the program for working with digital photos. Surely by now, Zhù had arrived and was off taking pictures. Unless he does have a dread disease.

I glanced up at the wall clock. If I kept low for fifteen more minutes, then I could escape to Biology and sit behind Jordan and daydream.

Chapter Twelve

Jordan’s hair kind of waved in the back. The ends curled, just skimming his shoulder. I wondered what he’d do if I reached out and wrapped one of the curls around my finger…

“Miss O’Reilly!”

I snapped my gaze from the back of Jordan’s head to the front of the classroom. Mr. Esenberg glared at me, a stub of white chalk clutched between his thumb and forefinger. He was well over six feet tall and as wiry as a chenille pipe cleaner.

I sat up straighter, heat flooding my neck. “Yes, sir?”

“Switch seats with Mr. Kent, please.”

My heart bungee-jumped to my feet. I closed my biology notebook, horrified to find I had doodled hearts around the binder ring holes. A jock two rows over laughed and said, “What did you do now, Kent?”

Jordan kept his mouth shut, closed his biology book, and whisked it up with his notebook.

I reached down for my backpack. The pencil I had stuck above my ear and forgotten about clattered onto the scuffed linoleum. It rolled under Jordan’s chair. He retrieved it, rose, and with his back to Mr. Esenberg, winked as he handed it to me.

“Sorry,” I mouthed. I slid into Jordan’s seat, quaking under Mr. Esenberg’s watchful eyes. Jordan’s body heat still clung to the wood. A fresh blush flamed toward my eyebrows as his warmth seeped through my jeans. I heard the soft thud of Jordan’s textbook landing on the desk behind me. My former chair creaked, and then I heard Jordan’s sneaker-shod feet slide toward me.

“Perhaps you can see the board better now, Miss O’Reilly.” Mr. Esenberg almost kept the snarkiness out of his voice.

I nodded, afraid to speak. The doomed feeling I get in math class oozed into me. I slumped low in my chair and glanced at the clock. Twenty-five minutes left. No way would I make it. My scalp prickled. I sensed Jordan’s stare and regretted not getting up early enough to wash my hair.

Mr. Esenberg wrote on the chalkboard. Independent and Dependent Variables. It sounded like math. I tapped my pencil against my desk.

Mr. Esenberg spun around and glared. My pencil stilled. Trapped in the second row, I caught a faint whiff of the salami Mr. Esenberg must have eaten for lunch.

Somewhere off to the right, a cell phone beeped.

“When we are given an equation for exponential population growth, there are several variables,” Mr. Esenberg explained. “We must distinguish between them in order to interpret the equation and graph it. Miss O’Reilly, given this equation” —he wrote G = rN on the board— “where G represents the growth of a population, N is the initial population size, and r is the intrinsic rate of increase, what do you predict the growth of the population will be when the intrinsic rate of increase is a large number as opposed to a smaller number?”

My heart jackhammered and my eyes felt like overheated flashbulbs. Mind blank, I cleared my throat. “The population will increase more,” I ventured in a decibel barely audible to humans.

“Ah. Class, please take a moment to write down your own predictions. Then we shall see if Miss O’Reilly’s prediction comes true.”

The sounds of twenty-five pencils scratching across notebook paper filled the room, punctuated by the slow tick of the wall clock.

“Well, class. I believe we have identified the correct answer. Can anyone guess what the definition of an independent and dependent variable is, and identify them in this equation?”

My heart galloped. I thought a moment, then wrote in my notebook.

“Miss O’Reilly. Since you seem to be on a roll today, please read your prediction to the class.”

His voice sounded neutral, but I sensed a trap. The room grew so quiet I could hear the ends of my hair split. “The r is independent, and the G is dependent?”

“Ah.” Mr. Esenberg’s tall, wiry frame bent into a question mark. “Would you mind telling us why?”

“Because depending on how we define r, G changes?” I ventured.

The desk behind me squeaked. “Way to go,” Jordan whispered.

I exhaled. I glowed. Relief and happiness radiated from my every pore.

Then Mr. Esenberg started talking about graphing our observations on an X-Y plane. Surely my fresh waves of despair were obvious to the entire class. Those aware of my math disability could predict I would now flunk Biology as well as math. Jordan knows.

Mr. Esenberg dragged a flip chart from the corner of the room to a spot near the table. “We have lots of experiments coming up, class, so you’ll each work with a partner.” Squeals and moans bounced between the students. Mr. Esenberg flipped back the top sheet. “Read them and weep.”

I scanned the list. For the most part, Mr. Esenberg had assigned pairs according to the alphabet. Realization tiptoed down the back of my neck. There it was in bold blue sharpie: Kent/O’Reilly.

My heart toggled between excitement and hope, and then freefell into dread. Today was a fluke. I lucked out with my answers. But Jordan knows I can’t do this stuff. He’d never want to work with me. The bell rang, jerking me from my seat. I shoved my science stuff into my backpack and rushed out the door. No way will I stick around while he asks for a better lab partner.

As I shouldered my way into the crowd heading for the football field, I prayed Parvani’s mom would be on time for once and waiting for us in the carpool lane.

Chapter Thirteen

By the time Mrs. Hyde-Smith drove up to the curb, the parking lot had emptied, the yellow schools buses had long since lurched off, and the football field was deserted. I could have spent all that time in the office trying to talk the registrar into switching me out of Biology. I glanced down at Parvani’s watch. School had ended twenty minutes ago. Mom must be ballistic by now.

“Gee, Mother. Thanks for showing up.” Parvani hurled her backpack on the floor of the Jag, then scooted across the leather seat. She stabbed her seatbelt buckle into its receptacle like she was loading a gun. Terribly un-Zen.

“Sorry. I was running errands.” Mrs. Hyde-Smith checked her flawless lipstick in the rearview mirror.

Parvani crossed her arms over her chest. I knew she was imagining how many Nordstrom bags were hidden in the trunk. I wondered where the Terrors were—maybe locked up next to the shopping bags.

Mom opened the door as we purred into the driveway. “Sorry!” Mrs. Hyde-Smith called out through the rolled-down window. Mom dismissed her with a curt wave.

“You’re not in your studio,” I said as she closed the door behind us.

“I’m ironing.” I could tell by her tone she’d been worried. “Would you like a snack?” Mom asked.

“No thanks. I’ll just get my homework out of the way.”

Mom shot me her when-did-aliens-take-over-your-mind look. I pretended not to notice and headed for my room. My heart beat way too fast, as if I had chugged caffeinated soda on an empty stomach.

“I seriously need help with Algebra and Biology,” I told Baby as she followed me into my room. I knelt by the green beanbag chair and picked up Teen Wytche. Maybe it contained a spell, or talisman, or something to keep me from flunking.

Goosebumps sprouted on my arms as I opened the cover. The pages were no longer paper. The text was no longer machine printed. The words flowed in a spidery scrawl across ancient vellum. Ink smudged the goatskin, or whatever it was, as if the writer had hurried to get her thoughts down.

I dropped the book and threw the beanbag chair on top of it. For a second, I only heard the thudding of my heart. Then the beans in the beanbag started to rattle. I backed up and grabbed a huge stuffed rabbit and hugged it to my chest, peeking over its long, floppy ears.

Something fluttered in my peripheral vision. A Shay Stewart photo floated to the floor. Then another one detached from the wall and freefell.

The beans stopped rattling. A sudden chill enveloped the room. The windows were closed—no breeze. The fine hairs on my arm stood on end. In a fit of madness or misguided courage, I placed the bunny on the floor and lifted the beanbag chair.

The grimoire had grown to the size of a photo album. It flew open, and the pages riffled as though stirred by a strong wind. I dropped the beanbag on the rag rug, grabbed a chocolate-stained skirt from the floor, and hid my face behind it.

So much for courage.

My nose twitched at the faint incense smell rising from the grimoire. A framed photo of Parvani and me, taken from arm’s length with my old 35mm camera, dove off my desk and thudded onto a pile of dirty jeans.

“Stop that!” I threw down the skirt. I gave my desk and the Shay Stewart shrine a quick glance. No more jumpers. Narrowing my eyes to slits, I glanced down. The book had fallen open to a page marked Correspondences. The word wisdom leaped out at me. My fingertip rasped against the paper as I skimmed across the list. Yellow. Sage. Sunflower.

A wisdom spell? It involved something about days of the week and planetary hours. The latter involved math, so I ignored it, hoping it wasn’t too important. I rose to my feet and jogged down the hall. Baby scurried behind me, her toenails clicking across the tile in the entry.

A few minutes later, I dumped a handful of stuff on the rag rug, then shooed Baby into the hall. She whimpered as I locked my bedroom door.

The red needle on the compass Dad had given me back when I’d been a Girl Scout wobbled toward north. I dragged out the river rocks and placed them at each compass point. “Okay, Quarter Guardians.” Parvani must have highlighted a paragraph or two about them. I should have looked it up, but decided I didn’t have time. Mom could appear at any moment to check on me.

The river rocks established the parameters for my invisible circle. In the center, I placed a yellow plate with an orange poppy design. Squatting, I slathered slippery sunflower oil onto a birthday candle. Once coated, the yellow candle glistened. I sprinkled it with sage from the spice drawer. The effect wasn’t pretty, but then neither are math or science. Since the candle was too small for a candleholder, I pressed a glob of silly putty onto the plate and impaled it with the candle.

What else had been on Parvani’s list? The pentacle. After wiping my oil-slick hands on a tissue, I dug out Salem’s necklace and put it on. We hadn’t found god and goddess figures yet, so I plucked a rainbow haired troll doll from my wicker hutch and placed it next to the plate. A dusty rhinestone tiara from a long-ago princess party sat in for the goddess.

I wrote the words math, science, graphs, and Hardy-Weinberg on a piece of binder paper along with help and good grades. Praying I wouldn’t set off the smoke detector—or worse, burn down the house—I struck a wooden kitchen match, recoiling a bit when the sulfur burned a path up my nose. The candlewick flared. I blew out the match, almost extinguishing the candle as well, which probably would have jinxed the whole thing.

Weren’t spells supposed to rhyme? If so, I was hosed, because I doubted anything would rhyme with Weinberg or science. Finally, figuring spells were just prayers with props, I sat down on the rag rug and prayed for wisdom. And clarity. And help. And not to look stupid in front of Jordan. Then, not wanting to appear greedy, I added, Please just help me through Friday so I can pass the algebra quiz.

Behind me, the doorknob rattled. “Evie? Why is your door locked?”

“Just a sec, Mom.” I licked my fingers and extinguished the candle.

I cracked open the door. “Yes?”

Mom’s nose crinkled. “Have you been lighting matches?”

Unable to come up with a plausible lie, I resorted to the truth. “I lit a candle.”

Mom sniffed again. The lines that had become embedded in her forehead since Dad’s death grew deeper.

“I’m trying to study,” I reminded her.

“All right.” She drew out the words as if weighing whether to believe me. “How does pasta at six-thirty sound?”

“Fine.”

Mom narrowed her eyes. For a second I feared she’d push the door open. She didn’t. Maybe the Quarter Guardians had kept her out. “Later, alligator.” Mom headed for the studio she and Dad had built over the garage.

I glanced back at my circle. The rainbow-haired troll appeared amused. Maybe because of the candle stuck in the silly putty. Then I noticed Jordan’s photo, the one I had hidden among the belts, had fallen off the shelf again and landed face up in the circle next to the candle.

My jaw dropped. “No,” I told the grimoire. “This can’t be. Stop throwing us together.”

I heard a soft puff of air, as if someone were blowing bubbles through a wand. Pink vapor rose from the open spell book, and the scent of summer roses perfumed the air.

“You didn’t say anything about roses and wisdom.”

I could have sworn the book uttered an exasperated sigh before it slammed shut.

My heart constricted. I gave Jordan’s photo one last look before I hid it under my mattress. The troll doll beamed wide-eyed approval as I shoved the Quarter Guardians back into Baby’s unused poop bag. “Stop looking so happy,” I warned the troll. Realizing I sounded crazy, I shoved Teen Wytche under a pile of dirty clothes and headed to the bathroom for a hot, cleansing shower.