What the Spell Part 1 (4 page)

Even so, by the time she dropped me off at school, I had to admit, I was beginning to believe her. There was a little extra pep in my step, and a tingling feeling in my fingers that wouldn’t go away, sort of like when your arm goes to sleep, only pleasant, not painful. Colors seemed brighter and I could swear that the noise around me was louder. Before long, I began to wonder whether other people could see the change in me too.

My pulse sped up as I caught sight of The Elite heading in my direction. Rhodes and Wheatley were goofing off per usual
and Eliza was fully engrossed in something on her phone. Gigi and Camden were walking hand in hand down the hall.

The sensation in my fingertips increased, and instead of letting my head drop to stare at the ground, I straightened my back and continued to walk straight toward them. This would be the moment of truth. If anything had changed at all in me, The Elite would surely notice.

They had to.

I sucked in a breath and held it as we got within feet of each other. I forced my legs to continue into The Elite’s path instead of walking around them like I typically would, and I began to panic. What if they didn’t notice me and we collided? Or worse, what if they noticed me and decided that I was that weird girl who wouldn’t get out of their way? What would that do to my chances of infiltrating the group? And worst of all, what if they recognized me from my milk shake humiliation the day before?

And then it was too late to reconsider. I was practically face-to-face with the most popular kids in school and I had no idea how to handle it. Just when I thought I might faint from whatever was about to happen, Gigi’s and Camden’s hands separated and the two parted like the Red Sea so I could pass between them. I thought I might have caught a flash of Gigi’s eyes looking at me as she passed, but it was all over so quickly that it was quite possible I’d imagined the whole thing.

As soon as I was on the other side of them, I stopped in my tracks and turned around. I couldn’t help but stare behind me as they left, and noticed that they didn’t bother to do the same. They continued on down the hallway, Clearview’s power couple linking back up after a few feet.

I felt myself slowly deflate as I watched them disappear.

Nothing was different. I may have been a year older and,
now, a witch, but anything that I thought I’d felt was clearly perceptible only to me.

Once again I was the only one who knew I existed.

Feeling a whole new level of defeat, I dragged myself over to my locker and leaned into it, touching my forehead against the cool metal door. For a brief moment, I considered banging my head against it. How could I have let myself think things would be different? Instead, I closed my eyes and took a minute to collect myself.

“Do you two want to be left alone?”

I assumed the comment was meant for someone else and ignored it. When it was repeated, my curiosity got the better of me and I cracked one of my eyes open.

What I saw startled me. Just a few feet away, two gorgeous eyes stared back. They crinkled at the sides as if they were smiling at me. And as I looked at the rest of his dark caramel-colored face, I saw that his lips were smiling too.

Keeping my forehead on the locker, I turned my head slightly the other way to see whether he was talking to someone behind me, but to my surprise, there was no one there. I pushed myself slowly away from the locker and looked back at him, almost expecting him to have disappeared.

But he was still there, leaning lazily against the lockers, hands resting in the pockets of his jeans. His smile had changed to a slight smirk as he waited for me to respond.

“Um, yeah. No. I mean . . . what?” I said, totally caught off guard.

He didn’t move toward me or away from me, just stared at me curiously. “I had a locker like that once. We were hot and heavy for a while, but then she dumped me for the janitor’s closet. And, well, how could I compete with that?”

When I didn’t answer right away, he chuckled to himself
and then ran his hand through his jet-black faux-hawk.

“Okay. So, nice talk,” he said, and slowly began to move away. “Maybe next time we’ll get to the part where you say something back? We’ll make it a whole conversation thing.”

All I could do was nod as I watched Asher Astley, the boy I’d had a crush on since the beginning of school, walk away from me. After a few feet, he turned his head and threw another glance my way. I felt the tingling start up. It was like my whole body was buzzing.

Were hallucinations a side effect of coming into my powers or had Asher just noticed me? Maybe something had changed after all.

I had trouble concentrating the rest of the day, so by the time the last bell rang, I practically ran all the way home. Between what had happened with Asher and The Elite, I was more than a little overwhelmed. And it wasn’t like I was cutting into any of my other plans, since heading home right after school was part of my normal routine. But today, all I wanted to do was escape to my room and spend some quality time alone with my spell book.

Well, it wasn’t so much a book as a notebook that I’d collected spells in ever since I’d started trolling the witchboards. I’d met so many witches online who were from different covens all over the world and got to hear all about what it was like to cast spells. It had opened my eyes to all the possibilities that magic could bring.

And the spells. Oh, the spells! There were
millions
of them. And so many different variations, too. It was sort of like how a cooking site might have twenty different recipes for meat loaf. So if I wanted to perform a levitation spell, there were dozens of ways to make it happen. Certain words would make an object take to the air with more force, while
others were weaker. I’d cataloged as many as I could over the years and planned to use each and every one if it was possible.

My makeshift spell book sort of acted as a diary, too. I could tell how old I was at the time of each entry by the type and quality of the spell in the book. For instance, at the beginning of the notebook, most of the pages included spells like ones that changed vegetables into candy or gave people hives (I’d wanted to use this one on a kid who’d made fun of me at school). The most recent entries included changing the faces of people in pictures and making objects fly.

I flipped to a random page in the middle and sat down cross-legged on my bed. No one was home, so I knew I wasn’t going to be interrupted. The last thing I needed was for my parents to walk in on me performing my first spell. It was embarrassing enough that I was getting such a late start. No, this was something I wanted complete privacy for.

Closing my eyes, I began to breathe in deeply. One of the things I’d learned on the witchboards was that you needed to be as still as possible when casting. Many people suggested learning how to meditate, because it helped you tap in to your powers more quickly. After hearing that, I’d begun studying ways to calm my mind and body, and even started practicing on a daily basis. I figured it would be one less thing I had to worry about when I finally got control of my powers.

Today I began by picturing the ocean, waves crashing against the shore. As each one rolled in, I noticed how it was unique to all the others and followed it until it disappeared into the frothy foam that spread across the beach. The visualization became methodical, and after a few minutes my body had relaxed to the point where I could feel my heartbeat pulsing through it.

I slowly opened my eyes and looked down at the page in
front of me. I read its contents and then thought through what I was about to do. I visualized what I wanted to accomplish and, once I was ready, turned my gaze to the lamp that was illuminated in the corner of the room. The house was completely silent as I took my first step.

Narrowing my eyes and concentrating, I said the words that were written in my notebook with as much force as I could muster.

“Electro-reducto!”

I felt a buzzing sensation move from my toes, up to my torso, through my upper body, and then explode out my fingers. I didn’t see the magic burst out of me, but almost immediately the light began to dim. It happened slowly at first, but as seconds passed it seemed to pick up speed. Before it could go out completely, I pulled back on the magic and then closed my hand and drew it in toward my body as if I were reining in a horse.

Blinking through the dim light, I leaned back carefully onto my bed, worried that if I moved too quickly, the spell’s effects would be broken. When the light remained low, I decided to give it another try.

On the same page was another enchantment, which I’d memorized earlier. With the same amount of concentration, but this time while lying back against my cushy pillows, I summoned my magic again.

“Electro-lumino!” I said, pointing at the lamp. Just like before, the power of my magic flowed through my body and out my fingertips.

The light began to brighten again, and before I knew it, every corner of my room was glowing unnaturally. Shielding my eyes, I brought the glow back down to normal and then collapsed onto my bed, giddy and satisfied with having cast my first spell.

My thoughts immediately flew to what I was going to perform next. I didn’t even stop to think about whether I should be casting more or not, I just kept going. Page after page, I tested out the spells, building up from the easy ones to the more difficult. I moved a piece of paper from one end of the room to the other. I turned the radio on and off. I made an apple materialize in front of me—and then changed it into a peach. I made my nails turn a deep shade of red without having to go through the tedious process of painting them.

Over an hour later, when I felt as if I’d had enough practice, I turned to the last page in my notebook and studied it. At first glance, it looked sort of like I’d created a Frankenstein in Photoshop. One model’s head was on top of another’s body, with the hair of my favorite star topping it all off. I’d taken all the best parts of some of the most beautiful women in the world and created one person. Though my arts-and-crafts project left much to be desired, what I did have was a blueprint for beauty.

And a wish list for the ultimate makeover.

I bit my lip as I studied the individual pictures in front of me and thought about what it would be like to be
that
gorgeous. Certainly people would notice me then, right? I mean, how could they not, with hair like that and a body that would put a Victoria’s Secret model to shame?

“I’ll just start out small,” I said out loud, as if I was warning the universe what I was about to do. But the reality was that people changed their appearances all the time. Cosmetics were a multibillion-dollar industry, after all.

What I wanted to do required a little more magic than could be found in the aisles of my local drugstore.

Before I could feel weird about what I was doing, I performed the spell that would change my boring brown eyes to
a gorgeous sea-green color. It was over so quickly that I had to look in the mirror to see if it had even worked. Studying my new eyes, I was amazed by how much of a difference it made. I almost couldn’t stop staring at them. I clapped my hands together in excitement, then set to work on all the other parts of me that I felt needed an upgrade.

I lightened my mousy brown hair to a golden blond, which gave me the appearance that I’d spent most of my life on a beach somewhere tropical. My strands grew about five more inches in length, and the ends took on a natural curl they’d only ever had when I spent hours curling them.

Next I focused on clearing up my skin; the tiny bumps that had plagued almost every part of my body disappeared within minutes. Every surface became smooth, and for the first time I loved the feel of my hand on my cheek. My lips took on a pucker that was just slightly bigger than usual and my brows arched into a sassy angle that I’d never been able to achieve through plucking.

I moved on and gave my height a boost without the need of heels. And just to ensure that no one would consider my body boyish anymore, my butt and hips swelled just the tiniest bit, to give me that little oomph I’d always wanted. I wouldn’t be mistaken for Kim Kardashian anytime soon, but there was a curve to me now that hadn’t been there before. And because I wanted that sun-kissed glow without a side of melanoma, I threw in a little bronzed sheen for good measure.

Feeling like I was getting a bit carried away, I stepped away from my spell book and walked carefully over to the mirror. Still looking at the ground, I took a few moments to remember what I’d looked like before. I couldn’t help but feel like I was on one of those extreme makeover shows and was about to be unveiled to the waiting audience. When I felt like I was finally
ready to see the results, I lifted my eyes to my reflection.