Miss Fortune

by Brandi Dougherty

  “Uh, Noah? It’s Zoe.”

  “Oh, so you’re actually talking this time,” he responded sharply.

  “What do you mean?” Zoe asked, confused. “I just got your number from Tomo. I hope that’s okay,” she added quickly.

  “I know you have my number, Zoe,” Noah said. His voice was hard. “What do you want?”

  Zoe had never heard Noah speak this way. He sounded so angry it scared her.

  “Well, I just wanted to say I’m sorry about that e-mail,” Zoe explained. Her palms were sweaty, and she was trying her best to keep her voice steady. “I’m really, really sorry. I still haven’t figured out what happened, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t send it.”

  Noah laughed bitterly. “Yeah, right.”

  Tears stung Zoe’s eyes. She couldn’t believe how mean Noah was being.

  “I swear, Noah,” Zoe said. “I would never say those things….”

  “Look, just stop calling me all the time, Zoe,” he interrupted her. “You’re driving me crazy!”

  “All the time?” The question caught in Zoe’s throat.

  “You can’t keep calling me and hanging up. It’s not like I don’t know it’s you. You gave me your number at the carnival, remember?”

  “But this is the first time I-I’ve called you,” Zoe stammered. “I got your number from Tomo, like, half an hour ago!”

  “Zoe, stop lying!” Noah yelled. “You’ve called me, like, a million times since the carnival. It’s driving me insane.”

  “But I … that’s not true!” Zoe said. She felt a sob rising in her throat.

  “You already made it clear you don’t want to hang out anymore, so just leave me alone!”

  The phone went dead.

  Tears streamed silently down Zoe’s face. She was in shock. This is crazy! she thought. There’s no way I called him before today! With shaky hands she scrolled through the dialed numbers list on her cell phone. Noah’s number appeared over and over down the entire list. Some calls were only a minute apart. Zoe felt like she had a fever and chills at the same time. She threw her phone into a pile of clothes in the corner of her room. She buried her head in the arm of the stuffed bear Noah had won for her and sobbed. She could feel the pendant pressing into her chest. She pulled it out of her T-shirt and off her neck and threw it across the room. She heard it hit the floor with a thud. She rolled herself up in a cocoon of blankets and squeezed her eyes closed. This has to be a bad dream, she thought. It’s all just one big nightmare.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Zoe sprang awake to the muffled sound of her cell phone ringing. That was a terrible dream, she thought. Zoe bolted upright in bed. It was morning. She had slept through dinner and through the entire night! She couldn’t believe she’d been so exhausted. Zoe looked around her room, trying to locate her phone. She usually kept it on her nightstand, right next to the bed, but it wasn’t there. Zoe’s heart sank into her feet when she saw what was there. The necklace. The necklace she had thrown onto the floor the night before.

  The nightmare she’d had came flooding back to her like yesterday’s rainstorm. Only it wasn’t actually a nightmare — those things had really happened. She looked down at her scabby knee and her blackened toenail and thought of the accidents. She heard her cell phone again and thought about Noah and the phone calls. Finally, she scrambled over to the pile of dirty clothes in the corner and fished out her phone. Mia’s name flashed on the screen once more and then disappeared. Zoe looked at the dialed numbers list again. Two new calls to Noah’s number had been made during the night. Her stomach lurched.

  She quickly texted Mia to meet her at Tropical Sunrise — their favorite smoothie place — for breakfast. Then she spotted her canvas tote bag at the edge of the clothes pile and pulled it out. She threw in her phone, wallet, library card, and after a moment of hesitation, the necklace. She put on her flip-flops and ran down the stairs two at a time. She shouted to Conner in the kitchen that she was going to meet Mia at the library and hurried out to get her bike.

  Mia was waiting in front of Tropical Sunrise when Zoe arrived. “You look … a little disheveled,” Mia remarked. “Isn’t that the same T-shirt you wore yesterday?”

  Zoe glanced down at her shirt and groaned. “I kinda crashed last night, and when I woke up this morning, I was so confused I totally forgot to change! Ugh.”

  Zoe loosened her messy braid and tried to comb through her gnarled hair with her fingers. Then she coaxed it into a ponytail. She decided to wait until they had their smoothies before she told Mia about the phone call to Noah. Mia ordered her usual Berry Blast and Zoe got her Peach Breeze. They sat down at an outside table and adjusted the umbrella to shade them from the morning sun.

  “Are you ready for the latest installment of My So-Cursed Life?” Zoe asked glumly.

  “Oh no, Zoe,” Mia gasped. “There can’t be more!”

  “Oh, but there is,” Zoe said. “And this is the worst thing so far.” Zoe couldn’t tell if she might burst out laughing or crying again. Zoe told Mia the story of her horrible phone call with Noah.

  “But I still don’t get it,” Mia said when Zoe reached the end of the gruesome tale.

  Zoe took a deep breath and reached into her bag. “After he yelled at me again and hung up, I looked at my numbers-dialed list.” She handed Mia her phone.

  Mia’s jaw dropped as she scrolled through the list. “Zoe!” was all she could say.

  “It’s impossible, Mia,” Zoe said, her head in her hands. “I mean, how could this happen?”

  Mia stood up and threw her empty smoothie cup in the trash. “We have to get to the library,” she said forcefully. “It has to have something to do with Serafina. We have to figure out what’s happening and how we can fix it.”

  All Zoe could do was nod in agreement.

  The girls biked to the Belmont Library as fast as they could. They locked their bikes in the rack and hurried into the computer station to look up fortune-telling, bad luck, magic, and anything else they could think of. They ended up with a stack of eight big books and sat down at a table to look them over.

  A couple of hours into their search, Zoe picked up a book about curses and talismans. She had flipped through a few chapters and was about to put it down when her eyes fell on a section in the “Power Curses” chapter called the “Snake Eye Curse.” She quickly scanned the pages.

  “Mia, I think I found something!” she whispered. “Look at this.” She pushed the book closer to Mia and pointed to the page. “Remember how Serafina said she was ‘bestowing the power of the snake eye’ on me?”

  Zoe quietly read the page out loud.

  “‘The Snake Eye is one of the most powerful curses in history. It is known to cause serious harm and injury, and can be stored in a talisman for centuries. This intense curse has the ability to choose its own victims.’”

  “Oh my gosh!” Mia exclaimed, covering her mouth after she realized how loud she had been. The librarian gave her a stern look.

  Zoe continued reading, “‘The Snake Eye has been known to build in power as tragic things happen to the cursed individual. The Snake Eye also tends to create a strong hold over the unlucky soul to whom it is given.’”

  She sank down in her chair. Things were going to get even worse! And this explained why she hadn’t wanted to take the necklace off. It was all part of the curse.

  Mia pulled the book closer and read the next section. “‘The Snake Eye can lie dormant with an individual who has the ability to pass the curse on — especially someone with great telepathic or psychic energy.’”

  “Serafina,” Zoe whispered.

  Mia continued to read aloud. “‘But even these cosmically connected individuals are not immune to its power. Without warning, the Snake Eye can control even its strongest subjects with a trancelike state, allowing its power to be forced upon new victims.’”

  Zoe gasped. “That totally explains Serafina’s behavior. Her eyes got all weird and glassy at the end of my fortune!
”

  “Look, Zoe.” Mia pointed excitedly to the next page and read, “‘There is only one spell that can break the Snake Eye Curse. It is the most potent spell of its kind: the Incantata Zifiri.’”

  Zoe perked up. “Okay, so what is it?”

  “What?”

  “The Incan Ziff-whatever,” Zoe said eagerly. “How do we do it?”

  “It doesn’t say.” Mia flipped ahead, intensely studying the pages. “It just goes on to describe a new curse after that. It doesn’t say how to perform the spell.”

  Zoe plunked her head down on the table.

  “Come on, let’s go look on the shelves again — maybe there’s a book on spells we missed,” Mia suggested, her voice rising with anticipation. This time she elicited a “shush!” from the librarian.

  Mia dragged Zoe back into the stacks and combed the shelves for a spell book. Zoe slumped against the bookcase and shook her head.

  “It’s hopeless,” she groaned. “I’m doomed. Noah is never going to speak to me again. I’m cursed! Forever! “

  Mia jumped down from her step stool and shook Zoe’s shoulders. “You’re not doomed. We already identified the curse and the spell that can break it,” she said encouragingly. “All we have to do now is find out how to do the spell!”

  “This is your last warning, young lady,” a firm voice at the end of the row cautioned.

  “Okay, sorry,” Mia yelled back. “I mean, sorry,” she whispered.

  The girls spent another half hour searching the catalog and the shelves for the Incantata Zifiri spell, but came up empty-handed. Then they waited for a computer to open up to get online. They spent another hour doing Google searches. They found several mentions of the spell on various sites and a few more facts about the snake eye curse, but nothing detailing how the spell was performed. One site even said: “Good luck finding the actual spell. I’ve spent years searching for it.”

  After they walked outside, Zoe called her dad out on his landscaping job to check in.

  “Hey, Zozo. How’s my girl?”

  “Daaad.”

  “What, I can’t call you ‘my girl’ anymore?” Zoe’s dad laughed. “Seriously, Zoe, are you feeling okay? I tried to wake you for dinner last night, but you were dead to the world, so I just let you sleep.”

  “I’m fine, I guess.” Zoe hesitated, thinking about all of the crazy stuff that had been happening. “I was just really tired. I’m with Mia at the library now, and we’re going to her house to hang out.”

  “Okay, no problem,” her dad replied.

  “So I was wondering if I could just spend the night there tonight.”

  “Well, I’m probably going to be here a little late again tonight,” her dad replied. “Maybe it would be good for you to stay at Mia’s, as long as it’s okay with her folks.”

  “Yup, they’re fine with it,” Zoe replied. “Thanks, Dad.”

  “Have fun, honey, and call if you need anything.”

  “Okay, bye!”

  Zoe and Mia biked back to Zoe’s house to grab her things and then headed to Mia’s for the night.

  After the girls had spent some mandatory playtime with Annabel, Mia’s dad grilled up some hamburgers for dinner. Once they had eaten, Zoe and Mia finally had a chance to retreat to Mia’s room — alone.

  “What are we going to do?” Zoe finally asked. They hadn’t talked about the necklace or the snake eye curse since the library. “What if we can’t find the spell?”

  “Where’s the necklace now?” Mia asked tentatively.

  Zoe stared intently at her toes. “Um, well …” she started. Zoe decided to just retrieve the necklace from her bag rather than try to explain.

  “Zoe!” Mia gasped, her voice tight and scared. “Why are you still carrying that thing around? You have to get rid of it!”

  “You read that book, Mia,” Zoe argued. “It said the snake eye has a strong hold over the cursed person. There’s no other way to explain it. That has to be why I didn’t want to take it off! I just can’t let myself get rid of it.”

  Mia sighed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

  “I’m a little relieved, actually,” Zoe said quietly. “I couldn’t figure out why I was so drawn to this stupid necklace.”

  “It’s just all so freaky.” Mia shuddered.

  Zoe shook her head. “I can’t believe that woman did this to me. Why didn’t the necklace send her into a trance to give the curse to someone else? Why me? I can still hear that awful robot voice of hers in my head. ‘Good luck,’” Zoe mimicked in monotone.

  “Well, you did kind of make fun of the whole fortune-telling thing,” Mia gently reminded her.

  Zoe sighed. “I know. It just all seemed so fake to me — all those bottles and vials and her accent and everything. I thought it was all an act.”

  “Maybe Serafina sensed that or something,” Mia speculated. “Maybe the snake eye wanted to teach you a lesson that it wasn’t fake.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson all right,” Zoe said, her voice rising with panic. “Never make fun of something you don’t understand!”

  “Well, now we have to do something about it,” Mia commanded. “We can’t let this thing run our lives anymore!” She pounded her fist into the carpet. “Let’s smash the stone or something.”

  Zoe turned the necklace over and over in her palm. The menacing stone continued to glow a hot and angry-looking red. Zoe swore she could even feel the heat of it deep within her hand.

  “I don’t think we should destroy it,” she said quietly. For some unexplainable reason, she sensed that trying to smash the stone wouldn’t work. Besides, what if it just made things worse?

  “What if we bury it?” Mia suggested.

  “Bury it?” Zoe asked, incredulous. “Where?”

  “In my backyard,” Mia said with a shrug. “We’ll put it in a box and bury it. Maybe that will end the curse. We just need to get it away from you!”

  “I don’t know,” Zoe started. “I mean, we just don’t know enough about it yet.”

  “Zoe, you can’t let this thing keep a hold on you.” Mia was up on her feet. She charged over to her closet and started digging around. “We have to try something! We need a box.”

  “Here, this will do.” Mia emerged from the closet and held up an old ballet-slipper box. She pushed it forward, waiting for Zoe to put in the necklace.

  Zoe stared down at her palm. She had forgotten she was still holding the fiery red pendant. With a start, she realized she had been mechanically rubbing the stone between her fingers.

  “Zoe!” Mia snapped her fingers in front of Zoe’s face, making Zoe jump. “The necklace.”

  Zoe exhaled and slowly placed the necklace in the shoe box. She took the piece of tissue paper at the bottom of the box and gently folded it on top of the necklace like a blanket.

  “We’re not putting your favorite Barbie to bed,” Mia commented wryly.

  “I know. Thanks, Wang,” Zoe half laughed. “I just … I don’t know. Let’s get this over with.”

  Mia and Zoe went out to Mia’s garage and found a couple of gardening trowels and a flashlight.

  “What’s going on, girls?” Mia’s mom peeked her head into the garage.

  “Nothing, Mom,” Mia answered quickly. “We’re just rehearsing a scene for Zoe’s next movie. We’re going to be in the backyard for a bit.”

  “Okay, be sure to … Annabel, don’t touch that!” Mrs. Wang turned back to the kitchen.

  “Do you think we should tell your mom what’s been going on?” Zoe asked tentatively. Maybe Mia’s mom would know what to do.

  “No way!” Mia replied instantly. “You know how distracted my mom always is. Can you imagine trying to explain this to her?”

  Zoe nervously twisted her ponytail around her finger. “I guess you’re right.”

  “Let’s just try this first,” Mia suggested.

  “Okay,” Zoe agreed as she gathered up the tools and followed Mia out to the corner of the lawn.
Mia knelt down in the grass while Zoe stood over her, holding the flashlight and the shoe box.

  “This spot should be good,” Mia said as she purposefully speared the dirt with her gardening tool.

  Zoe heard a noise in the tree above her head and peered up into the darkness. “Did you hear that?” she asked, her voice unsteady.

  “Hear what?” Mia was distracted by digging the tiny grave.

  Zoe shined the flashlight into the tree above her.

  “Hey!” Mia protested. “I need that light.”

  Zoe heard the rustling again and moved the beam toward the noise. It was the raven! Her insides turned to ice.

  “Um, Mia, you might want to hurry up,” Zoe whispered. It wasn’t even cold, but Zoe couldn’t seem to stop her teeth from chattering with fear.

  “Well, I can’t hurry if I don’t have any light,” Mia reminded Zoe. “Why?”

  Suddenly, the raven swooped down from the tree branch and dove toward Zoe. It was going straight for the box in her hand! Zoe screeched and ducked down next to Mia, tucking the box close to her body. The raven let out a loud caw as it flew back to its post.

  “Was that … the raven?” Mia asked. Now her voice was shaking, too.

  “Yes!” Zoe cried. “Hurry!”

  Zoe dropped to her knees and grabbed the other trowel. Both girls dug furiously in the dirt. Mia snatched the box from Zoe’s protective grasp and flung it into the hole. Zoe pushed piles of dirt on top, and Mia patted them down with the back of her trowel. They stood up and quickly stamped down the dirt as they heard the raven caw.

  “Run!” Mia shouted as they dashed for the garage and the raven swooped again. Zoe slammed the door shut and locked it, just to be safe.

  Mia’s mom opened the kitchen door again. “Everything okay?” she asked. “I heard screaming.”

  “It was part of the scene we were practicing, Mom,” Mia fibbed, trying to catch her breath.

  “Well, I think you girls should be done with your movie for the night. And I just got out bowls for ice cream.”

  “Yes, we are definitely done for the night,” Zoe assured her. “Thanks, Mrs. Wang.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”