I’d have to check how long laryngitis lasted. There was only a week left until the holidays, so if we could stretch it to three days, we’d only have to skip the last two days of term. Hopefully we could convince Mum and Dad we were sick. Then there was just the little matter of finding a way to get rid of this curse … So far my research hadn’t turned up anything useful, but that was a problem for the holidays. We could go check out that mysterious clearing in the Blue Mountains, see if there were any clues that might help us. But first we had to make it through the last week of school.
Ashleigh and the girls crowded around CJ with their usual exuberance at the bus stop. They were like a litter of puppies, falling over each other and wagging hysterically. All they could talk about was the party, but they soon ran up against CJ’s silence.
“What’s wrong?” Ashleigh asked, her last question hanging in the air while they all waited for CJ to answer. “Can’t you talk?”
CJ patted her neck and mouthed the words sore throat until they got the message.
“You’ve got a sore throat? Have you lost your voice?”
CJ nodded violently.
“Oh, you poor thing! When did this happen?”
Ashleigh looked at me for the answer, so I had to go through the same patting and mouthing routine. Her eyebrows drew together in a suspicious frown.
“You’ve both lost your voices? Really?”
More violent nodding from both of us, but I could see she wasn’t a hundred per cent sure we weren’t pulling her leg. Which we kind of were, I guess.
On the bus I was fine until Sona got on. Despite convincing her I couldn’t talk, she insisted on firing off questions about the party.
“So how was it?”
I held my hand out flat, then wobbled it from side to side.
“Only so-so?” Her eyebrows flew up. “I stayed at home and studied algebra! You get to go to the biggest party of the term—of the year, maybe—and you think it was only so-so? What a waste! Did you dance?”
I nodded.
“Who with?”
I pointed to myself. Even if I could have found a way to tell her I’d danced with Zac, I didn’t want to say anything until I saw him again. Maybe that moment in the car hadn’t meant what I’d thought it did. Better to play it cool.
“By yourself? Well, you’re no fun. Couldn’t you find a nice boy to dance with? Wait—did you kiss anyone?”
I rolled my eyes. God, don’t blush now, you idiot!
“Oh, this is too frustrating. Zac!”
Zac had just got on. He lurched down the aisle as the bus set off again and took the seat in front of us. He was even cuter in the flesh than I’d remembered, and his dark eyes were warm as they smiled at me.
“Hey. How was the rest of your weekend?”
“Tell me about the party,” Sona demanded. “Vi’s lost her voice, and I want to know everything.”
Thank God she’d saved me from going through the whole miming a sore throat thing again.
He was still smiling at me, and I couldn’t help smiling back.
“It was good,” he said.
She waited, but there was nothing more.
“Oh, come on, Zac. Details, man, details!”
He shrugged. “It was just a normal party. Lots of music, dancing—”
“Did you dance?”
“A little.”
I grinned and started forming the letters Y-M-C-A with my arms.
He laughed. “Hey, I said I couldn’t dance.”
“Did he really have a keg there? Did you drink?”
“I didn’t. I was driving. I’m a responsible Boy Scout. A few other people did, though.” He looked at me. “How’s your sister?”
I gave him the thumbs-up, but Sona was staring in shock.
“Did CJ get drunk?” she hissed.
I mimed throwing up and her dark eyes grew so huge she looked like an Indian Bratz doll.
“Wow. I wish I’d been there.”
“You probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it,” Zac said. “A lot of idiots got drunk and made a lot of noise. I spent most of the night talking to the guys from the robotics club.” That was all true, but it wasn’t the whole story. Guess the rest of it was our little secret. “You would have been bored.”
She gave him a pitying look. “I don’t think so.”
We got off the bus and Zac walked with me to our lockers. An awkward silence stretched between us without Sona to fill every moment with chatter. Stupid bloody frogs. If only I could speak to him!
I sneaked a glance up at his face and found him looking down at me.
“So,” he said, “I was wondering … if you wanted to meet up after school.”
Oh, no. Of course I wanted to meet up with him, but …
I grimaced and patted my throat, trying to ignore the blush I could feel creeping up my cheeks.
“Oh. Right. Maybe when your throat’s better.”
I nodded vigorously. I didn’t want him to think I was trying to give him the flick. Then I opened my locker and hid my hot face inside. He opened his too, and I could hear him rummaging around inside.
“Damn! Where the hell is it?”
I peeked around my locker door.
“Can’t find my calculator,” he said, “and I’ve got a maths test in period 2.”
Wordlessly I took mine out and offered it to him. His face lit up.
“Thanks! I’ll get it back to you at lunch.”
The bell rang and we split up. First period for me was English with Mrs Harcourt. I used to like English at my old school, but Mrs Harcourt was quickly changing my mind. We were studying A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but so far her idea of studying it was to have us read the whole thing aloud in class. Given that some of the Einsteins in our English class seemed to have a reading age of two, it was pretty slow going.
Today she chose people for the parts and the torture resumed as normal.
“Tarry, rash wanton—am I not thy lord?” Rob Burke read, stumbling over every word longer than one syllable. “What’s a wanton, miss? Aren’t they those Chinese things like spring rolls?”
At least Bottom wasn’t in this scene. Every time he appeared most of the boys collapsed in helpless sniggers. Apparently body parts were just as funny at seventeen as they’d been at three. And the fact it was all about fairies with stupid names like Puck and Peasblossom —well, the laughs just never stopped.
Julie Lee was his Titania today. She read well, but in such a tiny little voice that Mrs Harcourt kept bellowing at her to speak up, which only made her more mouselike.
I was bored, but congratulating myself on having made it through, when Mrs Harcourt stopped the readers.
“Thank you, everyone. Okay, now we’ll have Violet as Titania and Eric as Oberon. Rob, you read Puck.”
I shook my head, but she ignored me. Eric read his lines and then it was my turn. Titania had an enormous speech. Mrs Harcourt waited, giving me the evil eye.
“Well, Violet? From These are the forgeries of jealousy, please.”
I patted my throat and pulled faces of terrible pain. A couple of the boys laughed.
“I think she’s got laryngitis, miss,” someone said.
Her overplucked eyebrows disappeared into her fringe. “Is that true, Crystal?”
CJ pointed to her own throat as more of the class started laughing.
“She’s got it too, miss!”
“I see. I assume you have a note from your parents explaining this sad state of affairs.”
Damn. Should have thought of that. I could have forged one before school. Too late now. I had to shake my head.
“In that case, you can both spend lunch in detention.” She fixed me with an icy stare. “Unless you feel a miraculous recovery coming on, Violet? No? Very well, report to E23 at the start of lunch, please.”
She picked someone else to read and the class settled down. CJ shot me a disgusted look, as if it were all somehow my fault. Hey, at least it solved the problem
of lunch time. No one was allowed to talk in detention anyway. Maybe we should just aim for detention all week.
It wasn’t a good start, though. First period and already teachers were suspicious. How long could we get away with this laryngitis thing? If only we could hide in the girls’ bathroom all day. But Mrs Harcourt would notice if we didn’t show up for detention. And then there was that stupid mark-the-roll-in-every-period thing.
Next period was Maths. I kept my head down and the class passed without any unpleasantness. In Physics Mr Dunkley talked about force and vectors of acceleration in his usual dry way. I could see people’s eyes glazing over.
“And who remembers the unit of measurement for force?” he asked brightly.
Silence. My arm twitched, but I remembered in time that I couldn’t speak.
“Violet?” he asked.
Even in the short time I’d been in his class he’d discovered he could usually rely on me to know the answer. This one was so easy I hated to look like an idiot, but I shook my head and he moved on. Nevertheless I was glad when the bell went for the end of the period.
I grabbed my books and hopped down off the lab stool—and walked straight into the corner of the bench.
“Ow!”
Oh, hell. A little green frog puffed into being on the benchtop, his orange toes spread out like fingers. I looked around, but everyone was busy shoving to be first out the door to recess. Mr Dunkley had his back to the room, cleaning formulae off the board. No one noticed my frog.
I hesitated. Should I take it outside and sneak it into the garden?
“You coming, Vi?” my lab partner called from the door.
Hastily I shielded the frog from view with my body, but she was already turning away. Sorry, little guy. It was too risky. I didn’t want anyone catching me with him. If someone saw him here they’d probably assume he’d escaped from a biology class. That mightn’t end well for the frog, but what could I do? I hurried after her, leaving the frog to his fate.
***
Of all the days to have double English, it had to be today—the one day in a fortnight of timetabling. Last period saw us back in Mrs Harcourt’s class for more interminable reading. Fairies had never been so dull. If Mrs Harcourt was trying to instil a lifelong hatred of Shakespeare in her class she was doing a fantastic job.
I knew I was in trouble the minute we opened our copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and her eyes fell on me.
“This time I think we shall hear from Violet as Helena, and you can read Hermia, Crystal.”
“But they’ve got laryngitis, miss,” said some helpful soul.
“I don’t think so. It’s time to stop this stupidity, girls. Isn’t one detention enough for you?”
CJ stared at her desk. I looked at Mrs Harcourt, trying to appear innocent, but she was in no mood to be fooled.
“Begin reading, please, Violet.”
I looked down at my book, but said nothing. The room was still, as everyone waited for the explosion. Watching someone else get into trouble is always entertaining.
Mrs Harcourt slammed her book down on her desk, making everyone jump. “Right! I’ve had enough. You can take yourself off to the principal and explain this stupid prank to her.”
I stood, my chair shrieking across the wooden floor, and walked down the aisle between the desks. Just as I passed, that moron Rob Burke stuck his foot out and I tripped and staggered, nearly ending up flat on my face.
“You jerk!”
Oh, no! I clapped my hand to my mouth, but it was too late. The whole class was staring straight at me, and they all saw two green drops fly out and turn into two little frogs sitting all innocent on Rob’s desk.
Rob, who’d been swinging his chair on its two back legs, nearly fell off in his scramble to get away. There were squeals of horror from every girl in the immediate vicinity.
“Miss!” Rob’s voice was hoarse with shock. “Vi’s got frogs in her mouth.”
The screaming rose to new heights.
“Ewww, gross!”
“That’s disgusting!”
Half the class were scrambling onto their chairs, craning their necks to see the frogs. Mrs Harcourt yelled for silence but no one was listening.
One of the frogs hopped onto the next desk, which happened to be Julie Lee’s. That quiet little Chinese girl, who rarely spoke above a whisper, let out the loudest scream I’ve ever heard—and that was it. The room descended into complete chaos.
Three boys leapt up to try to catch the frogs. Every girl in the room—including CJ—was either standing on a chair squealing, or pushing towards the door. I stood in the middle of it all and glared at Rob Burke. Jerk face. This was all his fault.
One poor frog, probably terrified out of its froggy wits, hopped my way, trying to evade the frog hunters, whose numbers had grown. One of the more enthusiastic hunters ploughed straight into me and sent me flying.
“Watch what you’re bloody doing!” I snarled, sprawled among the overturned furniture.
Oh, dammit. When would I learn? Three more frogs and a dirty big toad joined the mayhem. I should have just stayed in bed this morning. How could this day get any worse?
Silly question. As soon as I looked up I knew how. At least three iPhones were trained on me, capturing every last damned frog that spewed out of my mouth, ready to be uploaded to someone’s YouTube channel.
“Vi! Are you all right?”
CJ was down off her chair, pushing her way through to me. Her sisterly concern was touching, but OMG did she have to pick that moment? Couldn’t she see people were recording this whole disaster?
I lunged for her hand.
“Shut up,” I yelled, but it was too late.
Rob Jerk-Face Burke scrabbled on the floor at her feet, and came up with a look of mingled awe and greed on his face.
“Look at this!” He held something sparkly up to the class. “It’s a diamond!”
The stampede to the door reversed itself, and thundered back our way. We backed up against the wall, ignored by our classmates while they pushed and shoved to be first to find a diamond. Some found frogs instead, and the crowd rippled and eddied around those spots like some great heaving screaming animal. Mrs Harcourt roared for silence the whole time, but no one paid the slightest attention until a deep male voice bellowed from the doorway.
“WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?”
It was the English head teacher, whose office was next door. He waded into the room, manhandling boys up off the floor, pushing bodies back into seats, until some semblance of order was restored. Then he stood at the front of the room with a face like thunder, letting the silence stretch to ominous lengths.
“I would expect a display like that from Year 9, perhaps, but not from Year 11. You are supposed to be setting the standards of behaviour for the rest of the school, not acting like a pack of wild animals. My dog is better behaved than you.”
No one laughed. No one dared.
“But, sir, there were frogs—” Jerk Face didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.
“Silence!” Mr Ormond shot Jerk Face a glare so icy he was lucky not to get frostbite. “When I want to hear from you I will rattle the pig bucket. Mrs Harcourt, I assume I will be seeing some of these boys in my office shortly?”
Boys always got the blame. Of course, that was because ninety-nine per cent of the time they deserved it.
Mrs Harcourt gave me a chilly glare. It needed work; it was nowhere near the standard of the English head teacher’s. “Actually, Mr Ormond, it’s Violet and Crystal Reilly who are the troublemakers here.”
The toad hopped out from under her desk. All the girls in the front row squealed. Mr Ormond recoiled from the ugly thing.
“What is that doing in here?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Violet about that,” said Mrs Harcourt. “I believe it belongs to her.”
A scream and a sudden relocation of students down the back of the room revealed three of the toad’s more attractiv
e friends.
Mr Ormond turned that cold stare on me. “How many of these things are there?”
How should I know? I was too busy bashing elbows and knees on the furniture at the time to do a headcount. I returned his stare in silence.
“You boys!” He picked the two nearest. “Collect those poor creatures and take them outside before all this screaming bursts their eardrums. And you two—” CJ and I got the death stare. “You come with me.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I caught Dad watching us in the rear vision mirror as we drove home. The car was deathly quiet: this was a new low for us. In all the schools we’d attended over the years, our parents had never been called to the school to discuss our behaviour before. That they’d both come surprised me: I knew how busy they’d been at work lately. Obviously Mr Ormond’s garbled story of frogs and mayhem had been sufficiently impressive to make them drop what they were doing and drive straight over.
In Mr Ormond’s office they’d seemed inclined to brush it off as some kind of acting out. As if I always threw frogs around when I was angry at having to start over at a new school.
“The girls were very reluctant to leave Townsville,” Mum had said, leaning forward with an earnest look on her face, as if to take Mr Ormond into her confidence. “They were both so happy there, it was a bit of a wrench for them. I think Violet in particular was hoping to finish her schooling there.”
I’d stared at the floor, angry that they were discussing us as if we weren’t even in the room.
Mr Ormond’s gaze rested thoughtfully on me for a moment. “I can certainly understand the difficulties the girls have faced, and continue to face, due to the peripatetic nature of your work. You say this is their fourth high school?”
Mum nodded.
“Nevertheless, much as I might sympathise with their feelings, Violet’s way of showing them is quite unacceptable. Bringing frogs to school and causing such disruption in the classroom will not be tolerated.”
I could tell he hadn’t believed Mrs Harcourt’s story that the frogs had actually come out of my mouth. He was probably a very good teacher, but he had no imagination. Sadly, that didn’t stop him from laying the whole story before our parents anyway.
The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) Page 6
