Emily and the Spellstone

by Michael Rubens

In this case, Emily’s mother was right. Or sort of right. It was a bit more complicated than everyone hating Emily. It had to do with Kristy Meyer.

  Kristy Meyer hated Emily. And that was enough.

  So. Kristy Meyer.

  If you looked through last year’s yearbook from Clearview School, you’d see lots of pictures of Kristy, partially because she made sure she was on the yearbook committee. Look, there she is, smiling and waving from a family vacation at a luxury resort in the Caribbean. There she is, holding a gymnastics trophy. There she is, in very expensive English riding gear, riding a very expensive horse. And there she is, winner in not one but two superlative categories: Prettiest and Most Likely to Become President.

  Some unknown student had managed to hack into the yearbook file and alter the award categories so they read Most Likely to Be Randomly Vicious to You for Absolutely No Reason and Most Likely to Become a Horrible Dictator.

  The school had had to reprint several hundred copies of the yearbook and tried to recall the hacked versions. But there were still copies floating around, and the students at Clearview who weren’t part of Kristy’s clique would secretly pass around the original copies and giggle.

  Early on, Kristy had learned what she felt was an important lesson: One way to get friends was to be pleasant and compassionate and generally nice to everyone. But that method was a lot of work and not much fun. It was much easier—​and more fun—​to just be nice to certain people (that is, people who were as attractive and wealthy as you), while being generally dismissive of most people and really mean to some of them. That way her group of friends—​the right people, really—​always had targets to unite against. Those friends were also terrified of falling out of favor with her, because they knew that then she’d be mean to them. And the rest of the students were terrified of her as well. So people fell into line.

  But it always helped to have fresh meat. And to Kristy, Emily was the perfect target. She was new, meaning that she was defenseless. She was quiet. She had frizzy hair and seemed somewhat confused about which clothes were cool and which weren’t. And what else? Actually, the first two items—​new and defenseless—​were more than enough for Kristy.

  Emily met Kristy within the first ten minutes of the very first day of school. Kristy approached her, surrounded by her friends (all of whom, Emily noted, had their own phones and were busily texting, probably one another, Emily thought bitterly). Things Kristy did not say: “Hi! Are you new?” or “Where are you from?” or “Hi, I’m Kristy! Welcome to Clearview School!” No. The first thing she said was, “Where did you get that shirt?”

  Emily looked down at her shirt. It was a black T-shirt with a sort of skull-and-crossbones/guitar pattern on it. She liked it. She looked back up at Kristy, who was waiting expectantly, her arms crossed, chin up. Kristy was smiling. It wasn’t a nice smile.

  “Uh, hi, I’m Emily?” said Emily.

  “You’re the new girl,” said Kristy. She said it in a way that suggested that this was automatically something bad.

  “Yyyyyes,” said Emily. She examined the other girls. You had to give Kristy credit: She didn’t care about your skin color or things like that. The girls behind Kristy were an inspiringly diverse group, united by a shared belief in their own good looks, money, the right clothes, and being nasty to others.

  “Why are you wearing a boy’s shirt?” asked Kristy.

  “It’s my cousin’s. He’s a boy. I like this shirt.”

  The other girls giggled.

  “I can’t believe you’d wear a boy’s shirt,” said Kristy.

  “I guess I don’t care so much about that stuff,” said Emily. “Nice to meet you.” She turned and walked away, the other girls exchanging delighted OMG expressions and giggling more.

  Perfect, thought Kristy.

  Over the next few days, in her mysterious manner, she made it known that there was something wrong with Emily. Just a few carefully selected words here, a raised eyebrow there, a smirk at the right moment. No one knew exactly how, but it came to be understood—​in the same way that everyone understands that the sky is blue—​that there was something wrong with the new girl and she should be avoided. It’s not so much that kids actually disliked her—​how could they? No one knew her. It’s just that no one wanted to risk being the first to stand up and say, Wait a second . . .

  So when Emily said, “Everyone here hates me,” she was wrong. It had nothing to do with her specifically. Everyone was just afraid to be her friend.

  Her mother’s strategy of volunteering her for the talent show might have helped. That is, if Kristy Meyer wasn’t also in the talent show.

  The rehearsals were every day after school for almost a week. When Emily showed up for the first day, she thought, Oh, no . . .

  Kristy was there, smirking at her. “You’re doing the talent show?” she said to Emily. “How . . . great.”

  Mr. Petersen oversaw the rehearsals. To Emily he seemed like a very nice and well-intentioned man, but also the sort who, if you were building a set, would accidentally drop a hammer onto his foot and stumble into a bucket of paint and staple-gun his sleeve to a wall. All of which he did during the rehearsals.

  He said to Emily, “And what sort of act would you like to do?”

  “Um . . . nothing?” suggested Emily.

  “How about a magic trick?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Wonderful!”

  And so it was decided that she would do a magic trick. He gave her a black velvet bag. It had a secret compartment.

  “You put something in it,” he said enthusiastically, putting an apple into the bag, “and when you take it out, behold! It’s . . . different!”

  Emily looked at the orange Mr. Petersen was now holding.

  “Amazing, right?” he said.

  “Amazing,” she said, to be polite.

  “Wonderful. Here, take it. I have to work on the lighting and music cues for Kristy’s act—​it’s gonna be another spectacular one.”

  Kristy smirked at Emily again.

  And that’s how the week went. Kristy did not have to say a further word to Emily. But she was an expert smirker. A surgical smirker. Emily came to almost respect the skill of that smirk. Kristy was also brilliant at innocently whispering or exchanging glances or texting with other girls, while somehow making it clear to Emily that the whispers and glances and texts were about her.

  At rehearsal, each kid would dutifully present an act—​songs, a monologue or two, other magic tricks. Kristy’s act involved simultaneously spinning several batons while doing complicated acrobatics. When Mr. Petersen coached everyone, he would say things like “Smile more!” and “Engage the audience!” and especially “Watch how Kristy does it!”

  During the day, Emily went from class to class, the other students treating her as if she didn’t exist. Very soon she’d be wishing they were still ignoring her. But she didn’t know that.

  At dinner one night, Mrs. Edelman said, “How are rehearsals going? Are you getting to know the other kids?”

  “I sure am,” said Emily.

  “Great!” said her mother. “We’re all so excited to see it this Thursday! Right, kids?”

  “So excited,” said Hilary, with an evil grin.

  And so the stage was set for Thursday, the evening of the performance, raising the curtain on what could be the dramatic final act for Emily.

  In hindsight, Emily realized her big mistake was deciding not to just stick with an apple and an orange for her trick, the way Mr. Petersen had. No, she just had to use the stone.

  The morning of the performance, just before leaving for school, her eyes had fallen upon the stone sitting on her windowsill.

  Use me, it had said.

  “What?” Emily said.

  She hadn’t heard anything, exactly. But it was like that day on the beach, the strange sense that the stone was somehow reaching out to her.

  Use me.

  Emily shook her head. She was im
agining it. But now that you mentioned it, why not use the stone? Instead of changing an apple into an orange—​booooring—​why not change the stone, she thought, into an actual phone? Stone to phone. Phone stone. Stone phone.

  Her father had a shoebox of old, broken phones that he had never bothered to dispose of and that had somehow survived the move. Emily had played with them when she was younger. Dougie still did. She could use one of them: Behold this ancient stone. I put it in this bag, and when I take it out, Zowie McWowie! It’s turned into a real mobile phone!

  So that’s what she had with her right now as she stood offstage in the wings, gnawing her nails with anxiety: the velvet bag, an old cell phone, and the stone. Onstage a boy named Lewis was doing violence to a Beatles song. In the audience, parents smiled indulgent if rather rigid smiles. Younger siblings squirmed. Older siblings yawned. Emily knew that her family was out there, even though she had begged them not to come.

  “This is gonna be awful,” whispered Hilary now.

  “Shh!” said their mother.

  Backstage, the other performers milled about. Kristy Meyer had on a red, white, and blue outfit covered with glittering sequins. Emily watched her rehearse a front flip, land it perfectly, and manage a 10.0 smirk at Emily at the same time.

  Onstage, Lewis’s voice cracked in a particularly penetrating manner.

  Emily decided to go to the soundproof rehearsal room.

  The room was right off the backstage area. It was big enough for a small band to practice in, the walls lined with black acoustic insulation that had the bumpy pattern of egg cartons.

  Once inside, Emily closed the heavy door, thankful that it blocked out Lewis’s caterwauling. She laid out the phone, the stone, and the black velvet bag on a small table. She didn’t really feel like practicing, but at least it might help distract her from her nervousness. So she picked up the velvet bag and put the real cell phone into the secret compartment.

  “Behold this simple bag,” she said to her invisible audience. “Note that there is nothing inside it.”

  She held the bag open and swung it back and forth to display its apparent lack of contents.

  “And now behold this simple stone,” she said, raising it in one hand. “I shall now perform an amazing act of transformation. I will place the stone in this empty bag, and, activating the ancient occult powers granted me by my inalienable birthright as a Stonemaster—”

  At this point Emily paused and raised her eyebrows, surprised and rather impressed by her last sentence, which had just sort of appeared in her mind.

  “—​and exercising that birthright, I hereby initiate and awaken this stone!”

  She hadn’t prepared that, either, but she had to admit that it sounded pretty good. With a flourish, she placed the stone into the bag and closed it.

  “And . . . behold!” she said, plunging her hand back into the bag and triumphantly removing the real cell phone, feeling a much greater thrill than she had expected.

  Oh, that was a surprise. The phone was switched on, the screen glowing. Maybe it wasn’t broken after all. Well, that would certainly make the trick better if—​wait a second.

  “What the . . . ?” said Emily.

  She scrunched and unscrunched her eyes in case they were playing tricks on her. She held the phone closer to her face and then farther away. She tilted her hand back and forth and did more eye scrunching and shook her head.

  None of that helped.

  No matter what she did, it wasn’t the phone she was holding. It was the stone. But one surface was now alive and glowing, very much like the screen on a phone, except this seemed to have much more depth to it, as if she were peering through a window into an infinite pale blue void that was gently churning and changing. Once again she had the mysterious sensation she had felt on the beach, that of great power.

  “Wha . . . ?”

  As she stared at the glowing rectangle in wonder, a series of objects began to materialize and drift around within it.

  “I cannot believe this,” Emily breathed.

  The objects were similar to what you would see on any mobile smartphone: icons and little images for different apps. But these floating images gave a sense of realness, of incredible detail and three dimensions, as if Emily could reach into the glowing screen and pick up one of the little moving objects and roll it around between her thumb and forefinger. There were all sorts of items: things that looked like miniature but very alive versions of mythical beasts; tiny castles; a tree that appeared to be absolutely real; an ancient-looking parchment map; a full moon that slowly rotated in the upper right-hand corner of the screen . . .

  Emily didn’t feel afraid. She felt mesmerized. And also as if she were trying to recall something very important that hovered just at the edge of her memory. As for the talent show, she had completely forgotten about that.

  Moving in dreamlike slow motion, she reached out a finger to touch the tiny objects that hovered in front of her. But as she did so, something came zooming up from the far distance, growing rapidly in size until it filled the screen, crowding out everything else.

  It appeared to be a stone urn—​ancient, roughly made. Symbols were carved onto the sides—​runes, maybe?

  For the first time, Emily felt a low hum of fear.

  As though there was something dangerous about the urn. The runes themselves were unpleasant—​something spidery and threatening about them. And as she looked at them, they rearranged themselves into a single word:

  FREE

  Somehow Emily knew that the runes hadn’t done any rearranging—​her brain had done the rearranging, translating the runes for her.

  Despite her growing sense of unease, she found herself reaching out to touch the floating urn. She gasped. It was real. She picked it up. It was about the size of a bottle of nail polish. It had weight.

  It was then that she noticed another word. Written under “FREE” in much smaller runes was

  ME

  “‘Free me’?” she said.

  Part of her, some deep-down part, was screaming, Replace the urn! Put it back! Don’t touch it! The same way you wouldn’t click on a link in a suspicious email that promised you millions of dollars. And most of all, said her mind, do not read out loud what the urn says on the back!

  Still moving as if in a dream, Emily turned the urn around and saw more runes, runes that again she was somehow able to read.

  “Abra . . .” she said, “ka . . . donkulous?”

  Then it seemed as if the urn was exploding in flames and the whole room was filled with darkness and smoke and she fell backwards and when she opened her eyes it was worse because there was a giant creature in front of her, a demon, she thought, a demon, and the demon grinned with his mouth full of gleaming predatory teeth and bellowed, “I AM GOING TO EAT YOU!!”

  Emily screamed.

  Chapter

  Three

  The thing about soundproof rooms is, they’re soundproof. Especially when there is, say, music thumping loudly outside. And there was. Kristy Meyer had just taken the stage to the music she had selected, strutting out from the wings with perfect poise and grace, twirling her batons so fast they were humming blurs. She did a double pirouette. The audience oohed. She did a no-handed walkover. The audience aahed.

  “Wow—​she’s really something, isn’t she?” said Mrs. Edelman to Mr. Edelman.

  In the wings, Mr. Petersen was smiling proudly as Kristy hurled her batons into the air, did a backflip, and caught them both.

  Aaahh, said everyone again, and applauded.

  Mr. Petersen looked around to make sure Emily was ready to go on. Poor kid, he thought. She’s going to have to follow this stellar act. Now, where is she?

  Where she was: cowering in abject terror in a corner of the soundproof rehearsal room, a gigantic man-shaped demon or demon-shaped man advancing upon her.

  “I AM GOING TO EAT YOU!” he thundered again, his third thundering of that phrase, and the single thing he had th
undered so far. Emily screamed again, the only sound she had managed to make.

  He was nearly as tall as the room, wider than the door. His muscular body was grayish green and covered with spikes and bumps like you’d find on a desert lizard. He was wearing some sort of pants that were shredded below his knees. His eyes were burning yellow. His hands ended in wickedly curved talons. And his teeth . . .

  And then there was the fire. Little spurts of flame kept erupting here and there on his body as if he were volcanically active. When he roared, flames jetted from his mouth. There were flames coming from his armpits, for goodness’ sake.

  “HA HA HA!” he flame-laughed. “I AM GOING TO EAT YOU!” And he stooped and reached out to seize her.

  Just as she felt his claws on her skin, she screamed, “WAIT!”

  He froze, leaning forward, the claw still entrapping her.

  He didn’t move.

  Emily didn’t move.

  Her heart pounded so hard she thought surely she would die.

  He still didn’t move.

  And did some more not moving.

  Then she saw his eyes dart to the side for a moment, then back to her.

  “Uh . . .” he said. “Now what?”

  “EEEEEEEEEE!!!” Emily screamed. The demon jumped.

  “HELP ME!” screamed Emily. “Heeeelp! HEEEEELP!”

  The demon was holding his massive hands over his pointed ears.

  “HEEEEELP!!!”

  “Hold on!” he said. “How? What do you want?”

  “Help!”

  “I know! I know! How!? How am I supposed to help you?”

  “HEEEELLLL—​what?” said Emily.

  “You said, ‘Help.’ How. Do. You. Want. Me. To. Help. You?”

  Emily stared at him, shaking. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps.

  “What are you talking about?” she finally said. “Why did you keep saying you were going to eat me?”

  “I couldn’t think of anything else to say! I’ve been imprisoned in that stone for an eternity, and suddenly I’m out, and it was the first thing that popped into my head!”