by Diane Farr
And, uh-oh. He had an official-looking stack of papers in his hand. My heart sank at the sight.
I walked up to him. “Don't tell me. You registered.”
“Yep. Starting tomorrow, I'm an official member of the junior class of Cherry Glen High.”
“But ... how?” I snatched the papers out of his hand and flipped through them. I think I expected them to be blank. They weren't. “You have an address!”
“That surprises you?”
“And a guardian! Who is this?” I pointed accusingly at the name. “Rune Donovan? You made that up.”
“No, I didn't. He's my uncle.”
My world shifted precariously on its axis. I stared at Lance, speechless. He started to laugh. “What did you think, Zara? That I sleep in a coffin in Transylvania? Spellspinners are mortal. We have families like anyone else.”
“You know exactly what I thought,” I said numbly. “I thought you lived at Spellhaven or someplace like that, and skatched here.” My eyes narrowed as I thought it over. “You know what? I still think it.”
Lance had already shown me that spellspinners can teleport—they call it skatching. And he had taught me how to do it. You just instantaneously disappear from where you are, and show up somewhere else. And since skatching is ridiculously easy, and it doesn't seem to matter how far you go, I knew darn well that Lance doesn't have to live in Cherry Glen to go to Cherry Glen High. His permanent residence could be Chicago, or the French Riviera, or Outer Mongolia. It simply doesn't matter. He gets up, he takes a shower, he grabs his books and boing. He's here.
“I couldn't skatch to you,” Lance said. “Cherry Glen is off-limits. I had to come here in the normal way, like a stick.”
I had been so taken up with my own thoughts, I wasn't listening to his. Now I honed in. What I saw in his mind surprised me. And in a good way, for a change.
“Off-limits because I banished you?”
“Uh-huh.”
I felt ridiculously pleased. “Well, whaddya know. It worked.”
“To a degree.” One corner of his mouth quirked downward. “I'm here, aren't I?”
He sure was. I sighed and hitched my books higher on my hip. “At least I slowed you down. So now what? I don't suppose I can talk you into leaving the same way you came.”
“Heck no. It was a long drive. I don't know how the sticks can stand it, not being able to skatch.”
Lance calls ungifted people ‘sticks.’ It bugs me, but he says all spellspinners use that term. I'm not sure where it comes from or what it means, but I know an insult when I hear one. ‘Sticks’ is an insult.
I frowned. “Your attitude sucks.”
“Yeah. Well. I'm spoiled.” He leaned closer, and his voice went low and teasing. “Come on, Zara, lighten up. I've never gone out of my way for any girl, but I crossed mountains and rivers to be with you. I call that flattering.”
“Yeah? I call it harassment.” But my heart was going pitty-pat. And I was also aware of my bus-bound peers, who were trying not to be too obvious while they stared at us.
My life is way too complicated.
I took a step backward so I could breathe. “Maybe I'll banish you again. Life was so peaceful while you were gone.”
“Dull, you mean.”
“I like dull.”
“No you don’t.” His slow smile made my toes curl. “You like me.”
Chapter 2
Right about then, Meg glided up on her Huffy street cruiser. I’d been concentrating too hard on Lance to notice her approach, but she obviously had taken in the scene. She pulled up beside me, eyes narrowed at Lance. She wasn’t smiling.
I don’t know why I suddenly felt guilty and embarrassed. But I did—like I’d been caught dissing her or something. Which was ridiculous, because I never, ever would.
Unless just talking to Lance is dissing Meg.
Come to think of it … it sort of is.
Lance, as usual, was unflappable. He jerked his chin at Meg in a friendly way, saying, “Hey”—as if summer never happened.
“Hey,” she responded, but her lack of enthusiasm was palpable. “What are you doing here?”
His gaze flicked down her body, taking in the ugly plaid skirt and white blouse. “Nice outfit, shrimp.”
“It’s her school uniform,” I muttered. “As you probably know.”
Meg scowled. “I don’t care what you think,” she told Lance, ignoring me. “I am so over you.”
“Wow,” said Lance. “So much hostility, in such a small package.”
“Small package? Takes one to know one, I suppose.”
Never get into a battle of wits with Meg.
I interposed quickly with diversionary tactics, afraid they would start throwing punches in about three seconds. “Hey, Lance,” I said brightly, “Which bus do you take? Because there goes the last one.” I pointed at it. The last two kids in line were boarding and it was about to take off.
His smile would have told me all I needed to know, even if I couldn’t read his mind. I glanced at the student parking lot and saw his bike—and it was no Schwinn. I know nothing about motorcycles, but this one was lean and gleaming and wicked-looking. Rather like Lance, as a matter of fact.
“Oh,” I said.
“Thanks for your concern, babe. See you tomorrow.” He jerked his chin at Meg again and sauntered off. Meg and I stood there with our bicycles and glumly watched him roar away, poetry in motion. My Schwinn didn’t seem quite as groovy as it had five minutes ago.
Meg turned to me, her eyes filled with accusation. “Seriously, Zara, what’s he doing here? And why are you even talking to him?”
She had a point. I think I blushed.
“Hey, I can’t control everything. I guess Lance can go to whatever school he wants to. It’s a free country.”
I hopped on my bike and sailed off.
Meg soon caught up. “You told me you got rid of him.”
“I did get rid of him.” This was going nowhere, for obvious reasons. “Meg, I'm sorry. I don’t know why he came back. I'm clueless, remember? If I understood all this stuff, I wouldn’t need your help to figure it out. Or Lance’s.”
“Well, I wish you’d stick with my help,” she said. “At least I'm on your side.”
“According to Lance, so is he.”
“Right. And you believe him because…?”
Meg’s voice dripped with sarcasm. So I grinned and said something noncommittal, something to assure Meg that I trusted her absolutely and Lance not at all.
It probably wasn’t fair. Because it wasn’t strictly true.
I do trust Meg absolutely; that goes without saying. But with Lance, the situation is a little more complicated. I mean, face it, he tried to suck all the juice right out of my brain (so to speak). But I'm 100% sure—in a way I can’t be with anyone else—that from his perspective, he was trying to protect me. Among a million other, less pure, motives, he genuinely wanted to do right by me.
Sort of.
You would think that being able to read someone’s mind would make the relationship less complicated. It doesn’t. Knowing what Lance was thinking and feeling while he tried to break me just muddies the waters. I shouldn’t have to feel more than one way about a guy who tried to turn me into a turnip, if you get what I'm saying.
In contrast, Meg’s opinion of Lance is crystal clear and blessedly consistent. Now that she’s over the mad crush she had on him all summer, that is.
We headed for the O'Shaughnessy house so Meg could shuck her school uniform and put on something human. Megan’s home is totally different from mine. For one thing, it’s messy. For another, it’s wicked noisy. The O'Shaughnessies have five thousand kids—okay, six, but it seems a lot to an only child like me—and too many of them are boys.
The thump of bass from Donald and Petey’s room told us that (a) Donald was around and (b) he’d never know that we were. So we nipped past the discarded athletic equipment, dirty shoes, laundry and backpacks littering the hall and ducked into M
eg’s room undetected.
Petey’s okay, but I'm still a little nervous about seeing Donald. I kinda saved his life last June, breaking several planetary rules in the process. Now he looks at me funny.
Meg shares the tiniest bedroom in the house with her only sister, Bridget. But Bridget is away at college now, so she has the place to herself. I sat cross-legged on Bridget’s bed while Meg hung up her skirt and kicked her loafers into the back of the closet, and I filled her in on Lance’s re-emergence.
“So you’re telling me he got here on that motorcycle? No skatching?”
I winced. It still sounded strange—not to mention dangerous—to hear spellspinner words like skatching spoken aloud. In Meg’s voice, no less. “I guess so. Unless he came with that Rune guy. The uncle. But if Rune’s never been to Cherry Glen, skatching wouldn’t work for him either.”
“Is the uncle a spellspinner?”
“Meg, for Pete’s sake, lower your voice! I think he must be.” I thought about it. “Yeah, if he’s really Lance’s uncle, he'd have to be a spellspinner.”
Meg looked disgusted. “So now we have two of them to worry about. Honestly, Zara, I wish you’d just banish the both of them.”
“Yeah, right. It worked so well the first time.”
“It did! For a while.”
“That was then. Something tells me it wouldn’t work a second time.”
Meg’s head popped up through the neck of her T-shirt and she yanked it down, frowning. I know that frown; it appears whenever the wheels of her brain are spinning particularly fast. “You’re right,” she said. “They wouldn’t have bothered coming to Cherry Glen if you could get rid of them that easily.”
I nodded glumly. “I think we’re stuck with them. Unless you think of something.”
“I’ll give it my best shot. Come on, let’s go to your place. I bet Nonny’s made cookies.”
So we did, and she had.
The three of us sat around the kitchen table, scattering cookie crumbs on its oilcloth cover and knocking back cold milk. Nonny peppered Meg and me with questions, and listened to us go on and on about the day, and laughed at everything we laughed at. You could tell she’d looked forward to this—for one thing, she left Tres in charge over at the nursery so she could come home and bake. And everything was going swimmingly until I slipped up and mentioned Lance.
Nonny’s smile fell right off her face. She'd been tilted back in her chair, and the chair dropped forward with a thump onto all four legs. “Did you say Lance? Lance Donovan?”
I hope I didn’t look guilty. What do I have to feel guilty about? It’s not my fault Lance showed up.
“Well, yeah. You knew he was going to start Cherry Glen High this fall. He told you he was.”
“You told me he left town. You told me he was gone for good.”
Meg and I looked at each other. Meg raised an eyebrow at me. That meant she wasn’t going to help. Gee, thanks, Meg.
I cleared my throat. “I guess he came back.”
Nonny looked fierce. “Well, he’s not coming back to this house, Zara Norland. Do you hear me? I don’t want that boy on my property. I'm serious.”
I set my empty glass down very carefully next to my plate. “Um,” I said, thinking fast. Thinking fast and coming up with nothing. It’s hard to argue with Nonny when she lays down the law, because she hardly ever lays down the law. So when she does, you know it’s important.
I didn’t exactly want Lance on our property, either. But I have very little control over what Lance does or where he goes, so I didn’t like the idea that if he did show up on our doorstep, Nonny was going to blame me.
“I'm not going to invite him here, if that’s what you mean,” I finally said. “We’re not friends.”
“I should hope not.” Nonny stood up and started clearing stuff off the table. She has to move when she’s upset. “The boy struck you. It’s bad enough you have to see him at school. I hope I don’t have to report him to the principal or…or someone.”
It was clear that this distressed her even more. Nonny has a problem with authority figures. Which may seem strange, since she’s totally old and everything, but she’s still kind of a hippie at heart. Also she’s been hiding me for, like, sixteen years, without ever actually adopting me, which is highly illegal. So she’s not comfortable with ratting people out—not even Lance.
“I hit him back,” I offered, hoping to ease her mind. “It’ll be okay, Nonny. Really. Lance and me are even.”
“Lance and I are even,” she corrected automatically.
“You too? Great,” I said. Then: “Kidding!”—because she immediately turned and gave me A Look.
Meg was being awfully quiet on the subject. But sure enough, she had an opinion. She gave it to me as she was climbing back on her bike to go home.
“This isn’t real to you, Zara,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me. “With one side of your mouth you are saying, yeah, Lance is dangerous, no, I don’t want him around, gee, I'm so upset that he’s back.” Now she looked at me. “But the other side of your mouth is smiling.”
And with that parting shot she took off, leaving me standing on the gravel path with (probably) a dumb look on my face. Because as usual, Meg was right.
Lance was all the bad things Meg and Nonny said about him, and worse.
And just knowing he was in town made me feel more alive.
I didn’t care to face Nonny again just then, so I wandered across the street to the nursery. We were gearing up for fall planting, so Tres was out front, showing bulbs to a plump grandma-type. I hung back and watched him for a minute. I like Tres. Being around him calms me down.
He sold the lady a dozen narcissus cyclamineus (daffodils, non-nursery people call them) and wandered over to where I stood, surveying the ranunculus bin. “Hey,” said Tres. “What’s up? How you doing?”
He tends to greet you three times, which (he says) is how he got his nickname—tres, of course, being Spanish for ‘three.’ But he’s also Alejandro Palacios the Third, so I bet his family started it. Anyway, he followed it up with, “How was school?” which was technically four greetings.
“You’re not missing anything,” I told him. “Same old, same old.”
“Good.”
Tres graduated last June. His part-time job at Norland’s Nursery had morphed into a full-time job long before he turned eighteen, and although he doesn’t talk about it, I kinda think he barely passed his senior year. Which, speaking purely selfishly, is a good thing for me and Nonny. We’d be screwed if Tres went off to college.
“No homework the first day, right?”
“Heck no.”
He tossed me a canvas apron. “So make yourself useful.”
I followed him inside the shed, wrinkling my nose against the smell of potting soil. “I’m not useful, I’m decorative. Haven’t you noticed?”
All he had to say was something like Ha, ha or Yeah, I noticed you’re not useful. Because I was kidding. But Tres didn’t say anything, and his ears turned red. Which turned my stupid remark into something I totally hadn’t intended.
I wanted to bite the words back, but it was too late. So now I turned red. What a dope.
And then he said, “Yeah, I noticed,” and that made everything worse.
Tres is great, and he’s probably even good-looking, but I just don’t think of him the same way he obviously thinks of me. So I pulled the ugly apron on over my new school clothes and struck a silly pose.
It’s times like this when I wish I could just use the freakin’ Power. I’ve never tried to defuse social situations with it, but I bet I could. Briefly, anyway. Long enough to skate me past the awkward moments.
Unfortunately, you can’t use Power that way. It’s not tame. You can’t pull it down off your shelf and play with it like a toy. I mean, you can, but there’s always some major cleanup to do afterwards, so you better think things through before you get cute with it. And social dynamics never give you time to think things thro
ugh.
So I helped Tres water the flats and the flower six-packs, and told him about my day. I didn’t mention Lance. Tres is a good listener, but I didn’t think he’d want to listen to me talk about another boy.
And speaking of that other boy, the whole time I was with Tres, trying to relax and get back to normal, Lance was whispering my name. The air around me pulsed with a voice that only I could hear.
I ignored him, of course, on general principles. If there’s one thing Lance Donovan has got to understand, it’s that Zara Norland is not at his beck and call. I firmly shut the door on him and concentrated on Tres.
It wasn’t easy.
I hung out and helped Tres close at 6:00, then crossed Chapman Road and went around back to our kitchen. Good dinner-y smells were emanating from the oven and wafting through the screen door—which banged shut behind me, announcing my arrival even before I yelled, “I’m home.”
“Okay.” Nonny’s voice floated down the hall from wherever she was. “Set the table, hon.”
“Okay.”
I turned to head for the silverware drawer and stopped dead in my tracks. Lance was there, hands shoved in his pockets, leaning lazily against the kitchen counter. He smiled when he saw my expression, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile.
“You know, you really should lock your doors. You and Nonny.”
“From now on, we will.” I yanked the drawer open and grabbed the tray. “If Nonny sees you here, she’ll freak.”
He didn’t move. “Let her.”
“I think you’d better leave.”
“I will, if you’ll meet me later.”
“I don’t want to meet you later.” I slapped forks and spoons down on the table.
“You should, Zara. Because if Nonny sees me here, she’ll freak.”
I shot him some choice thoughts. He smiled blandly and shrugged. “You shouldn’t ignore me, cupcake. I’ve been trying to get through to you for hours.”
“I heard you. And stop calling me ‘cupcake.’ You are such a creeper.”
“Town square. Gazebo. I’ll be waiting. Come on, it’s a public place.”
A door shut in the distance. My anxiety level shot through the roof. Lance felt it, of course, and his smile widened. “Yes or no, babe. It’s not a hard question.”
