by Fiona Horne
Positive thinking, positive thinking. I kept saying the magic words over and over to myself, but they felt hollow and meaningless, and as soon as the bell rang I bolted from the class to avoid Bryce and Cassidy.
Cassidy, however, had other ideas. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her make a beeline for my locker. I stuck my head as far as I could into the old metal cabinet, willing myself to disappear – which didn’t work – so instead I pretended to be intent on shuffling some books around at the back of the cramped space. But there was no escaping her. The background chatter of students and scuffing of feet along the corridor seemed to fade as she reached me. ‘Hey, Fish Lips!’
The black hatred I’d felt towards her on the bus that day boiled up in the pit of my stomach again, with such intensity it threatened to engulf me in seconds. Why couldn’t she just leave me alone? She had Bryce. I had been made a fool of. Why did she have to keep picking on me?
I considered appealing to her, asking her to lay off. But then she pushed my locker door, hard. It jammed into my shoulder. I struggled to keep from turning around and punching her.
‘You think you’re so special and different, Mrs Fish,’ she said. ‘Well, you’re not. You’re a freak, and Bryce knows it. We all know it. So if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of our way.’
In that moment I hated her so much I wanted to wish her dead. But then I remembered the tree – and the magic and power of thoughts. As horrible as she was, I knew I had to try to find something good in this. The only positive thing I could imagine happening, however, was her going away, so inside my head, with every fibre of my being, I said, Please, please, just go away.
I looked Cassidy straight in the eye. She looked back at me uncertainly. Her eyes flickered, and she opened her mouth as if to speak, but no words came out. Suddenly she swung around as if someone had pushed her and walked rapidly away.
The blackness started to seep out of me, and my hands relaxed as I watched her retreat. I smiled. Positive thinking – maybe it wasn’t crap after all.
Later that afternoon, Amelia and Alyssa waved goodbye and I headed for Mr Barrow’s detention. I still couldn’t believe he was punishing me for doing well in my test.
The door to the chemistry lab was shut. I knocked hesitantly before opening it. Mr Barrow was sitting behind his desk; he didn’t look up. ‘Come here, Vania Thorn,’ he said.
I decided not to let him intimidate me, so I strolled casually to his desk. Annoyingly, he still didn’t look up.
‘Let’s see if you can do this,’ he muttered under his breath. He held up something in his left hand. It was a copper penny. ‘Turn this into gold,’ he said. He placed the penny on the desk in front of me.
I almost laughed. Surely he was joking?
‘You can stop smirking. You are not leaving this room until you do,’ he said.
‘Mr Barrow, that’s impossible!’ I almost whimpered.
‘Alchemists of old claimed otherwise,’ he sneered. ‘You tell me, you’re so very clever – surely you can work it out? You being so . . . talented.’ His mean eyes glinted.
‘Mr Barrow, I have no idea how to do that,’ I said.
‘Then it’s going to be a long afternoon.’
The man was insane, I decided. Why was he always picking on me? Well, it didn’t look like I had much choice. I set my jaw, picked up the penny and walked over to the beakers, hotplates and burners. I didn’t know where to begin. Or maybe I did? Suddenly a sense of calm came over me, as I remembered that under heat zinc reacted with copper and could turn the copper silver . . . that was halfway to gold. I decided to start there.
I heated water in a beaker, added zinc sulfate and waited until the water was hot and oily-looking. I retrieved some zinc filings from a box on the shelf and placed them in the mixture. Using forceps, I picked up the penny and carefully dropped it into the beaker. As it touched the zinc it started to change colour. Ten minutes later I removed a silver penny from the beaker. I looked over my shoulder at Mr Barrow, but he seemed engrossed in some papers he was marking at his desk.
I knew he wouldn’t accept half a result. But I really had no clue what to do with this penny to make it gold. I had once read an alchemy book that said it was possible to turn base metals into actual precious metals. But that was way beyond anything I could achieve myself.
If only magic were real . . . Maybe it could be if I decided to believe it was?
‘Magic is the art of creating change with will.’ I mumbled the words softly and focused on the silver penny gripped in the forceps. I don’t know how long I stood there gazing at it, willing it to turn to gold.
‘Vania Thorn!’ Mr Barrow said loudly, making me jump and drop the penny onto the hotplate.
‘Yes, Mr Barrow?’ I tried to slow my pounding heart.
‘Are you prepared to admit that you cheated on your exam?’ he said.
‘No, sir!’ I said. ‘Because I didn’t.’
He shook his head and went back to his papers. I turned to retrieve the penny, which had fallen on the hotplate. To my astonishment, it was a dark golden colour!
Had I willed it to be? Had the magic started to work before I’d dropped it? I grabbed the forceps and carefully picked up the penny. It was too hot to touch, so I placed it in a beaker filled with cold water.
And in front of my eyes it transformed into perfect, lustrous gold. I felt dizzy but managed to conceal my shock and delight as I took the penny out of the water and turned off the hotplate, putting away the beakers and zinc. I steeled myself and walked over to Mr Barrow.
‘Sir,’ I said, placing the penny on the desk in front of him.
He picked up the shiny gold disc without saying anything. The silence in the lab felt thick and claustrophobic. Just when I thought I couldn’t bear it anymore he finally spoke.
‘Well done, Vania Thorn. I’m not sure how you pulled this off – are you?’ Far from praising, his tone was sinister.
‘No, I’m not sure, sir,’ I answered truthfully. The words caught in my throat.
‘Well, I expect you are going to find out.’ He turned the gold penny slowly in his fingers.
I stood there, not sure what to do.
‘You may go,’ he said, without looking up. I got out of there as fast as I could.
Five
‘So how did you turn the coin to gold?’ Amelia and Alyssa asked.
The twins, Dean and I were sitting at the back of the history classroom. The teacher was running late, so I was telling them about my bizarre run-in with Mr Barrow.
‘Well, I already knew the trick to turning it silver. I looked up the rest when I got home,’ I said. ‘Turns out I accidentally got the science right – placing the silver coin on the hotplate and then in the cold water is actually the correct sequence to turn it golden. So I guess it’s not magic after all,’ I sighed.
‘But the sequence of events was magical – you couldn’t plan that!’ exclaimed Dean, and the twins nodded. Dean had become a welcome addition to our group; he fitted right in, and I trusted his opinion.
‘Yeah, maybe it was some kind of magic.’ I shrugged. ‘But Barrow really seems to have it in for me. He said something really weird—’ At that moment Bryce walked in, followed by the teacher, Mr Vale, and I buried my head in my study book.
I couldn’t help sneaking glances at Bryce as the class dragged on. Normally I would have found history interesting, but I couldn’t concentrate on what Mr Vale was saying. Bryce was sitting in the back row, three seats away from me. Cassidy and her friends were on the other side of the room. I wondered why he was sitting on his own. I must have looked at him ten times, but I never caught his eye. He was staring off into space. Something seemed wrong.
The bell rang and everyone made a dash for the door, except Bryce. I hesitated, too, and he finally turned in my direction.
‘Vania, could I talk to you for a minute?’ he said, coming over to my desk.
He smelled sweet, like vanilla and cookies.<
br />
‘I owe you an apology,’ he said. ‘I’ve been avoiding you, but I have a good reason, I promise.’
‘I don’t want to hear it,’ I said. I was still embarrassed about looking like an idiot, and his admission made my anger flare up again.
Before he had a chance to speak I got up and walked out of the classroom. He wasn’t going to win me over that easily.
I dodged Bryce for the rest of the day. I only had one other class with him, and I asked the twins to shield me by sitting in the seats surrounding me.
‘We don’t know about this, Vania,’ Alyssa said when the class was over. ‘Maybe you should listen to what he has to say.’
‘No way,’ I fumed. ‘I’m never going to let him make a fool of me again.’
Summerland was a pretty cool town – not just because it was founded by people who liked talking to the dead, but because the centre was full of historic buildings and interesting little curio shops. Call me a nerd, but I liked old things, and there were still lots of places I hadn’t explored.
I wanted to find a unique present for my mother in one of these stores rather than just going to the mall and getting something generic. We were still getting along really well, and I wanted something special. But I only had an hour before I had to be home, and I only had twenty dollars. Everything was more expensive than I’d thought it would be. I was starting to think a plain old book might be the best option. Then I saw the cafe.
It was tucked down an alley, and it only caught my eye because there was a large purple raven perched on the wooden awning out the front. It looked so lifelike I expected it to flap its wings and fly off at any second, but on closer inspection I saw that it was an impressive model.
‘Waiting for him to fly?’
A woman emerged from the dark interior of the cafe. She was tall and beautiful, and her dark skin and long black hair also made me think of a raven. I noticed she had one eye that didn’t blink and was a bit taken back.
‘My gramma said I sacrificed it for the inner sight,’ she said as I tried not to stare. ‘My name’s Brenda,’ she added, putting out her hand. She wore a stack of beaded bracelets around her wrist.
‘I-I’m Vania,’ I stuttered as I shook her hand. She didn’t let go.
‘Come inside,’ she said, leading me into the cafe.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The decor inside was exotic. There were tapestries on the walls and candles on the tables, and the whole place gave me the feeling of being inside a cocoon, shielded from the outside world.
Brenda was standing by the counter. A soft glow coming from the display case there lured me over. It was full of beautiful cookies all cut into intricate shapes – flowers, birds and snowflakes.
‘I make them with a recipe my mamma passed down to me,’ Brenda said.
‘They’re beautiful!’ I said.
‘They taste good, too.’ She picked up one of the bird cookies with a pair of ornate silver tongs and handed it to me. I bit into it, expecting it to be dry and crumbly, but instead it melted in my mouth with a subtle, delicious flavour like orange blossoms.
‘It tastes . . . magical!’ I said.
‘Secret recipes from Mamma’s grimoire. The birds help you see the truth, the snowflakes are for healing and the flowers are for fertility.’
‘A grimoire? Isn’t that a book of spells?’
‘Well, cooking is a magical art, don’t you think? You take a few things, put them together and then add some power . . . and something new is created. Something that didn’t exist before you decided it would.’
I could only nod in agreement.
‘I’m interested in magic, in alchemy – I have friends who are psychic, and another one who is a Spiritualist,’ I blurted out.
Brenda smiled. ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place. I find that special, the way like-minded people are drawn to this enchanted little town. Mamma was a voodoo priestess in New Orleans before she passed over a few years ago; my gramma passed there, too, not long before her. I would have stayed in New Orleans, but I felt a calling to come to Summerland, when they crossed over. Here is where the veils between the worlds are at their thinnest.’
She paused and looked around the room – well, actually, only one eye did. The other stayed fixed on me. I was trying not to look confused. What did she mean about the veils and the worlds . . . ?
‘Mamma and Gramma can speak to me from beyond most easily here in Summerland, so it makes sense for me to be here,’ she explained. ‘I make their enchanted cookies to honour their presence.’
Brenda’s wandering eye settled back on me and a sudden a chill went through me. I had the sense that eerie, ghostly spectres were watching us. Maybe the Spiritualists who’d started this town really had opened a doorway to another world.
‘Isn’t voodoo bad?’ I asked hesitantly.
‘No magic in itself is bad.’ Brenda frowned. ‘It’s all in the intention of the practitioner.’
I nodded. That made sense to me, but I was starting to feel that this was all a bit odd, and I needed to be getting home before my great new relationship with my parents turned into me being grounded for being out so late.
‘Well, thank you for the cookie, but I have to get going. I’m looking for a birthday present for my mother and I’m nearly out of time.’ I started to walk towards the door.
‘Why don’t you give her some cookies?’ Brenda said.
Why not? They were beautiful and apparently magical, and if nothing else they were definitely delicious.
‘Okay.’ I smiled. ‘How many cookies can I get for twenty dollars?’
I left the Purple Raven Cafe carrying a silver cardboard box tied with thick white ribbon. Inside were ten assorted cookies, individually wrapped in lavender-coloured tissue paper. It was the prettiest and unique present I could imagine. I was sure Mum would love them.
It was a grey morning. There were heavy swirls of mist coming in from the ocean, cloaking everything in their path. Summerland High loomed out of the fog, foreboding.
I was dreading getting off the bus. Usually I couldn’t wait to get away from Cassidy and her back-seat gang, but today I wished the bus would just keep going because I could see Bryce waiting at the stop. It had been two days since he’d tried to talk to me. I’d managed to avoid him by coercing the twins and Dean to walk and sit with me like bodyguards whenever he was nearby. Despite avoiding him, my feelings for him continued to grow. I felt so embarrassed – sure he could see my crush written all over my face, and convinced he’d asked to speak to me so he could let me down easily. I couldn’t face the humiliation.
I stepped off the bus. The air was damp and cold. My face was frozen like a mask as he walked towards me.
‘Vania,’ he said quietly. ‘Let’s talk, please.’
His ‘please’ sounded desperate, and I finally cracked.
‘Okay.’ I didn’t smile.
Cassidy appeared next to us. ‘Ooh, look at Bryce, playing with his pet fish,’ she said loudly.
A look of anger crossed Bryce’s face. ‘Shut up, Cassidy!’ he said.
Cassidy looked hurt, but only for a split second.
‘Well, Bryce, it’s clear that you want to hang with this Fish Lips loser with her Shrek friend and Weirdo Twins crew. And I told you – it’s her or me.’ She stormed off. ‘And forget about being voted back in as class president!’ she yelled back over her shoulder.
‘You don’t have to talk to me, Bryce. Go and make up with your girlfriend,’ I said, walking away.
‘No, wait, Vania, you don’t understand.’ He followed me and gently grabbed my arm, forcing me to stop and turn towards him. ‘I’m so sorry I was avoiding you. Cassidy told me that I wasn’t to talk to you. That I couldn’t hang out with you. And I hoped that if she saw we weren’t spending time together she and her friends wouldn’t be so . . .’ his voice faltered, ‘. . . nasty to you.’
‘I don’t care if Cassidy is nasty, Bryce – she means nothi
ng to me.’
‘Well, you mean something to her.’
I looked at him, confused. I knew what I meant to her; I was a loser who deserved to be picked on for the rest of my life.
Bryce seemed embarrassed. He looked down. I could see the long sweep of his eyelashes dusting his cheeks . . . soft and beautiful . . .
I had to get a grip! I steeled myself to hear the obvious.
‘I told Cassidy last night that she’ll just have to deal with us being friends.’ He looked over to where Cassidy was standing with her group of friends by the drinking fountain. She saw him looking and turned her back with a toss of her head. ‘I told her I need to take a break from her and that whole group, actually,’ he said.
I had to stop my jaw from dropping. My heart leapt, but just as quickly it sank. I needed to protect myself. A guy like Bryce would never fall in love with a girl like me, and right now I was falling head over heels.
I realised I was staring at him, saying nothing, and I quickly looked down, my hair shielding my face.
He put his hand lightly on my arm. ‘Friends, okay?’
At his touch I trembled, but he had said the F-word. I tried to think.
We could be friends – that would be safe. In fact, we could even be best friends. If he were to meet another girl and wanted to date her, I would cope.
‘Friends.’ I looked up and smiled. But inside, my heart closed shut with a thud.
Six
After stumbling across the Purple Raven on the present hunt, the cafe had become my favourite place to hang out. It was cool, mysterious and, best of all, no one else from school knew about it. Almost a week after Bryce and I had decided to become friends our group was gathered around a cafe table. The table was draped with a lush red velvet cloth and in the centre a candle glowed softly, emitting an exotic scent. It was the perfect setting to talk to Bryce, Dean and the twins about an idea I’d been mulling over. The Sixth Sense and Us had inspired me to suggest forming a magical club. We would be a bit like the Spiritualists who used to gather together in Summerland, but we wouldn’t just talk to dead people – we could also do spells and cool psychic things together.
