The Cassandra Curse

by Chantel Acevedo

  I slid into bed and soon realized I was gripping my bedsheets, as if a strong wind might blow me away. Relax, Callie, I told myself. I loosened my fingers, tucked the blanket under my chin, and concentrated on the mattress against my back, nice and firm, until I fell asleep.

  Chapter 3

  I Make Things Weird

  The next thing I knew, I was looking out on a green field that ended, strikingly, at the edge of a vast body of water. It wasn’t an ocean, I knew that much being from Miami. Maybe it was a river? If so, it was a big one. My heart thundered away.

  I didn’t have a clue how I had gotten there.

  I spun a few times, trying to get my bearings, when I remembered. I had been sleeping. In my room. But where was I now?

  The cola-dark water in the distance sparkled. One corner of the sky glowed, as if a spotlight had been pointed at it like some kind of dream Bat-Signal.

  The earth rumbled beneath my feet. One by one, small hills ruptured the earth and white ostrich eggs popped out. Except they weren’t ostrich eggs—they were white heads, white faces, then necks and torsos; hips, legs, and feet. Statues. Giant statues, each taller than my school. There were nine of them. All women. They glimmered in the light, their faces restful. Slowly, as if they might shatter if they moved too quickly, the statues turned to face me.

  So I did what any intelligent eleven-year-old would do in that situation.

  I bolted.

  Where to? I had no idea, but I ran harder than the time my brothers caught two flying cockroaches off the fruit trees in our backyard and released them in my room. I ran until I was in the water. My feet were wet, my pajamas were soaked. I turned around and those statues were still staring at me. They looked . . . amused. As if my little show of running had delighted them.

  “You’re dreaming,” a voice said behind me. I turned and saw my tia Annie. Seeing her made me feel funny, like having the wind blow your homework into the street and then watching it get run over by a car. When a thing like that happens, you can’t believe your eyes. But I was dreaming. Tia Annie had just reminded me.

  “I know,” I told her. She was in the water too, bald, and wearing her hospital gown. I couldn’t look at her straight. When I was very little, I used to call Tia Annie my best friend. She was the kind of grown-up who didn’t mind playing with a kid, didn’t mind endless rounds of board games or hide-and-seek. When she got sick, she was too tired for all that. Not the same kind of tired as my papi. She was scary-tired. But, even so, she was still my tia Annie. No, I couldn’t look at her in that gown, in the water, talking to me in this strange and too-brightly-lit place. My throat clamped tight looking at her. It felt like I was at her funeral all over again, trying not to cry so much that I gave myself a headache. I needed this dream to end.

  “Sometimes, dreams are portents. Do you know what the word ‘portent’ means?” she asked.

  I shook my head. Tia Annie wrung out the bottom of her gown and tsked before answering me. “It means a dream that can tell you what’s coming.”

  This time, I stared my aunt in the face. “You mean to tell me killer statues are coming for me?”

  Tia Annie pursed her lips. “There’s a message you’re meant to receive, but your dream brain, the one you control, is making this, um . . .” She searched for the word. “Weird. You’re making it weird, Callie.”

  “You’re telling me I’m weird?” It stung a little to hear her say it.

  “I’m telling you to let go,” Tia Annie said. I looked at the statues again. Each of the women held an object. One gripped a frowning mask, another a flute. One held a globe aloft, as if she were studying it, while another balanced a trumpet on the palm of her hand, another a golden arrow. I saw another mask, and two harp-like instruments.

  I took a deep breath. “So what does this dream portent?”

  “Portend, you mean. ‘Portent’ is the noun. ‘Portend’ is the verb.” Tia Annie had been an English teacher, and old habits died hard, I guess.

  “What does this,” I said, waving at the statue, “portend?”

  “Can’t tell you. You’ll have to wait and see,” she said, and then, just like that, I was awake and in my bed. I touched my feet, expecting to find them wet, but they weren’t, of course.

  The dream was just a dream, and it confirmed what I sort of knew about myself—weird things always happen to me, and maybe I’m the reason why.

  Chapter 4

  Raquel Hits a High Note

  The next morning, groggy and out of sorts, I went to the bathroom, washed up, and checked the mirror. A zit had sprouted on my forehead overnight. My uniform shirt was wrinkled. I pinched a roll near my waist, sucked in my breath to flatten it out. I felt crummy for a moment, then remembered not falling to my death the night before and felt better.

  Perspective, I told myself.

  At breakfast, Mario and Fernando took the last of the good cereal and left me with granola, and I was so tired, I didn’t care. Why did weird dreams have to be so exhausting, anyway?

  “¿Qué te sientes?” my mom asked over breakfast.

  “Strange dreams. It’s nothing,” I said.

  My mother narrowed her eyes at us. She took a bite of her buttered Cuban bread and a sip of her café con leche. Then she cleared her throat. “I know that your father’s news may have left you a bit shaken.”

  “Shook, Ma,” Fernando said.

  “And we aren’t. Shook, I mean,” Mario added.

  I glanced at him, and he kicked me under the table.

  My mom continued. “He won’t love you any less because there’s a new baby on the way,” she said, though it didn’t seem like her heart was in it. The news was hard on her, too, I knew. It wasn’t like Mami had kicked Papi out, after all. He left us.

  “We know, Mami,” I said. “We’ve got this.”

  “Yep,” Mario said. “Worry not, dear Mother.” He raised his spoon like a sword when he said it.

  If I had a knack for making things weird, then my brothers had a gift.

  Mami took another bite of her bread, another sip of coffee. “Okay, you three. If you need to talk about it—”

  “No talking. More eating,” Fernando said, slurping his cereal. Honestly, that could be his motto. He could get a tattoo with “No talking. More eating” across his chest and nobody in the family would be surprised.

  My school, Miami Palms Middle, serves free breakfast in the cafetorium every morning. Today it was silver dollar pancakes, and I got in line for some, even though I’d already eaten at home. Because who can resist tiny pancakes?

  I slipped in line behind Violet Prado, Max Pascal, and Alain Riche, who were just as irritating as they’d been in the third grade. Max and Alain were two of the most popular boys in school. Violet was popular, too, and Cuban-American like me. We’d been in classes together since kindergarten, but she didn’t seem to like me very much, or have very many actual friends besides Max and Alain. Violet was in the choir at church, and participated in a local theater, and she told anyone within earshot that she was going to be famous someday. Alain was the class clown, always cutting up, with a smile so charming the teachers let him get away with anything. Max was tall and athletic, and got really good grades.

  I kept my eyes on my cell phone as the line shuffled forward, hoping not to draw their attention. I’d almost made it to the front when Violet turned around, pulled my phone out of my hand, and clicked the button that showed the home screen.

  “Aw, isn’t that cute,” she said as her eyes locked on the selfie of me and Raquel. “A perfect ten.”

  Max and Alain laughed, and Alain said something to Max in Haitian Creole.

  “Um. Thanks?” I said, and held my hand out for my phone.

  Violet plunked the phone down hard on my palm. “Get it? A perfect ten,” she said, and formed a zero with one hand and a one with the other.

  I didn’t get it.

  “Hey!” Raquel called out from the front of the cafetorium, waving wildly at me to sav
e her a space in line.

  “There’s the one,” Violet said, and now I understood. Slender, elegant Raquel was shaped like the one. And me—round and zit-faced—was the zero.

  “Grow up,” I said.

  Violet rolled her eyes. She, Max, and Alain loaded their trays with pancakes and walked off together, laughing.

  Raquel made her way to me, cutting in front of half the line. “Sorry, sorry,” she kept saying.

  Our science teacher, Ms. Rinse, shouted at Raquel from across the cafetorium. “No cutting in line, young lady.”

  Violet, Max, and Alain snickered loudly.

  “I’m suddenly not hungry,” I said, my eyes following Violet and her crew.

  “Don’t let her get to you,” Raquel said, loading up a tray for me. “Come on. My manager needs her strength.”

  I laughed, took the tray from Raquel, and left the line in search of a table. “Your manager?”

  “Sure. I’ll need one when I’m on Broadway,” Raquel said. After classes were over, she was going to audition for the lead role of Belle in our school’s musical rendition of Beauty and the Beast. Actually, I’d been the one to sign her up. I faked her handwriting on the sign-up sheet, putting her name just underneath Violet’s. Raquel didn’t talk to me for three days afterward, but then I caught her singing the opening bars of Belle’s first song. Raquel was a great singer, though she didn’t believe it.

  She’d put on some rosy lip gloss that morning, and a set of press-on nails, which she clicked against the table as I ate.

  “I thought you’d be nervous,” I said through a mouthful of pancakes.

  Raquel was thoughtful as she chewed. “Me too. Maybe I got it out of my system on the Metrorail? That was so scary.”

  “Speaking of scary,” I began, then I told her about my dad and the new baby.

  “I don’t know. I’ve always wanted a baby brother or sister,” Raquel said.

  I tapped my spork onto my tray. “It’s just that we never see him. A new baby makes it harder to get away. Airline tickets aren’t cheap, and neither are diapers, I think, and . . .”

  “Maybe don’t overthink it just yet,” Raquel said.

  “Coming from you? The number one overthinker on the planet?”

  “Liar,” Raquel said, laughing.

  I got up to put my tray away just as the first-period bell rang. “Come on. Ms. Rinse will kill us if we’re late to science,” I said.

  “Don’t exaggerate, Cal. She won’t kill us. Maim us, maybe,” Raquel said.

  “You’re right. Ms. Rinse is not the murdering type,” I said. “Now Ms. Fovos on the other hand.” We both looked to the front of the cafetorium, where Ms. Fovos stood, glaring at all the students. A pad of detention slips stuck out from her pocket, and she had a pen tucked behind each ear, ready to give out detentions with both hands if necessary.

  Raquel pretended to shiver at the sight of her.

  “Let’s go,” I said, and the two of us walked quickly past her.

  “Uniforms!” she screeched at us, and we tucked our uniform shirts into our skorts rapidly before she could write out a detention.

  I sighed. Weird dreams. Violet, Max, and Alain being rude. Having to see Ms. Fovos first thing. Some mornings were just plain stressful.

  Raquel really is an overthinker, but I do my best to help. Sometimes, that means I have to lie to her. I don’t lie often, but when I do, I make sure it’s at least a helpful lie.

  “Raquel Falcón,” I said, “you’re the best singer at Miami Palms Middle School. You are basically a Venezuelan Beyoncé.”

  Raquel knew it was a lie. We were sitting in the cafetorium before the auditions. Whatever confidence she’d had that morning had evaporated.

  “That’s it. I’m not auditioning,” Raquel said. She twirled a pencil over her fingers like a tiny majorette’s baton. As she did so, she groaned.

  “I thought you said you weren’t nervous.”

  “I am now,” she said.

  “Don’t be.”

  “I’m not. It was the pizza at lunch. I’m lactose intolerant,” Raquel said.

  “Since when are you lactose intolerant? You snarf down cheesy arepas like you need them to live,” I said.

  Raquel stopped twirling the pencil. “Callie. I can’t do it. Violet Prado is going to wipe the floor with me.”

  Raquel was not exactly the best singer at Miami Palms Middle, and we both knew it. She was good, though. Really good. But so was Violet. Maybe Violet was going to wipe the floor with her. But Violet was also kind of a jerk. Besides being a talented singer, Raquel was kind, patient, and a good friend—everything Violet wasn’t. She deserved that part.

  Raquel covered her face with shaky hands.

  “Look at me,” I said, taking hold of Raquel’s shoulders. “You are Raquel Falcón. You’re on the honor roll every quarter, you’re a starter on the volleyball team. You know all the lyrics to at least four Sondheim musicals, and—”

  “But, Callie—”

  “And,” I said, putting my hand across her mouth to shush her, “aaaaand, you have a really sweet voice. You will be Belle. Belle will be you. Everyone else out there is just a beast. Get it?”

  Raquel blinked a few times but still had a startled look on her face. Well, I tried, I told myself.

  The cafetorium was packed with kids from the afterschool program noisily playing board games in the back of the room, while the theater kids amassed up front, lounging on the stage, sitting at tables and either poring over lyrics or scrolling through their phones. Other kids had shown up just to watch. Over at a nearby table, the class triplets, two girls and a boy, were drawing on one another’s arms with markers as they waited for the auditions to start. They’d recently moved to Miami from Tampa and walked around school with coffee mugs, like grown-ups on a break at work. They each had a name that began with L—Letty, Lisa, and Leo. Max and Alain were thumb-wrestling at another table, while four eighth-grade girls bobbed their heads in time to the music blaring from their headphones.

  An inflatable turkey, the kind people put up on their lawns for Thanksgiving, wobbled in one corner of the room under a rush of air from the AC. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving break. You could feel that familiar buzz among the students—vacation loomed. The drama teacher, Mr. Gomez, stood next to the turkey. He wore suspenders over his big belly, his frizzy white hair was uncombed, and he held a red pen in his mouth, even as he spoke.

  “Belle auditions first,” he barked. “Then Gaston. Princesses and villains, in that order, LINE UP!” he shouted. The pen trembled in his mouth like a twig in the breeze. The inflatable turkey wobbled some more.

  “You’ve got this,” I said to Raquel, giving her arm a little squeeze.

  She nodded, her cheeks pale.

  “No, you definitely don’t got this.” I felt a shove. “Move, hippo,” a voice growled in my ear, and I watched as Violet, carrying a huge garment bag, pushed Raquel out of the way.

  “Don’t listen to her. You aren’t fat,” Raquel whispered to me, letting Violet sashay past her onto the stage.

  My feelings were stinging a little, but I took a deep breath. Then I turned to my best friend. “Nope, this isn’t about me. Just ignore her and do your thing.” Raquel nodded and followed in Violet’s wake, her arms crossed over her stomach.

  “She’s awful,” a little voice squeaked beside me. It was Maya Rivero. We were both in the sixth grade, but she wasn’t like anyone I had ever known. Tiny as a fourth grader, Maya wore her long hair in two thin plaits every day, the part down the middle of her head so straight and tight that it seemed to glow in the fluorescent lights of the cafetorium. Her mouth was full of very crooked teeth, covered in braces. A metal contraption against the roof of her mouth flashed whenever she talked, and it gave her a slight lisp. “ItTH for my narrow upper archTH,” she told me one day during class. Today she was wearing a denim jumper over her uniform shirt, a flagrant abuse of the uniform rules, which no teacher ever called her on.
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br />   That was because Maya Rivero was a genius.

  She could have skipped middle school altogether, but she didn’t want to miss out on any “developmental social milestones.” At least, that’s what she told my science class on the first day of school, when we had to introduce ourselves. Everyone else sat at their desk while they talked about their favorite color, or the sport they played, or what they did over the summer. Not Maya. She stood up, her rainbow backpack still on, her hands on her waist in a “hero pose.” She told us that she wanted to go to Space Camp, but that she couldn’t afford the trip, and that a never-before-seen species of lizard had moved into her backyard (“Probably an invasive species,” she said, except she pronounced it “invaTHive THpeeTHees”), that she loved orca whales, and that they were in danger of extinction thanks to global warming. Then she started to sob, right there in front of everyone, using a pigtail to wipe her eyes. Our homeroom and science teacher, Ms. Rinse, had to tell her to sit down. Twice.

  It was a scene.

  Speaking of scenes, I asked her, “So, Maya, are you auditioning?”

  “I’m auditioning for the narrator,” Maya said.

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know this play had one.”

  Maya then began to narrate, Once-Upon-a-Timing with gusto, her hands dramatically moving through the air, as if she were doing a hula.

  “Okay, Maya,” I said, but she kept going. “Maya. Maya. Okay. You’re . . . you’re great. You can stop practicing now.”

  Maya froze, her eyes on the stage. The entire cafetorium had gone silent.

  There stood Violet in a yellow gown. It was off the shoulders and embroidered in gold thread. The stage lights bounced off the dress, which sparkled when Violet turned around.

  “We were supposed to bring costumes?” Maya asked nobody in particular.

  Mr. Gomez clapped his big hands. He has one of those loud claps, the kind of applause that makes my ears feel as if I’ve gone too far with a Q-tip. “Brava, Violet!” he said, before hearing a single note.

  “Merci,” Violet said, curtseying. “Belle was French, so I’ll say it again, MERCI, MONSIEUR GOMEZ!”