The Cassandra Curse

by Chantel Acevedo

  I’d read the book once, but they were poems about flowers and dogs, the sea and children, and none of them rhymed. I didn’t get it.

  My mother started to cry a little, but only quietly, the way a person does when grief has been around a long time and they’ve become used to it.

  “Sí, your tia loved this muse,” she said, and kissed the top of my head. “She named you. Hence the statue.” Then my mother did what she always does when she starts to cry. She made a joke. “How’d I get stuck with a name like Gertrudis, anyway?”

  “Aw, Trudy, what’s in a name anyhow?” I said, giving my mom a big hug, which she returned.

  I hadn’t known that Tia Annie had named me after Calliope, the muse.

  “Hmm, you always make me feel better, just like your tia Annie did.” She smoothed my hair. “You look tired, mi niña. Try and take a nap, hmm?” Mami said.

  “Okay,” I told her, then went back to my room and closed the door behind me.

  I wasn’t sleepy.

  I was sad. Confused. I was sure that I had hallucinated all of it—the dreams, the tingly feeling, Clio. This was . . . a lot. I started to breathe really quickly and felt a touch of panic. I’d felt this way before—the night Papi left us, when Tia Annie died, when my dad introduced us to Laura and it felt like he was leaving us for a second time, telling us he was moving to New York. That one time my brothers dressed like zombies for Halloween and snuck into my room at night, or when I put my foot into my shoe only to discover a baby lizard inside.

  I took a deep breath and crawled under my bed.

  Don’t judge me.

  The darkness always helped my breathing slow, my heart rate to stabilize. Even the dust bunnies helped ground me. “Clear your mind, Callie,” I said to myself. “The answers will come if you only think,” I whispered, then started breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth.

  One breath.

  Two breaths.

  When I felt better, I opened my eyes.

  The bed seemed to have . . . dropped. The bottom of it scraped my belly. The light in the room was strange and off somehow. I touched the floor, which felt different, too. Everything smelled different. I looked to my left, and the place where my room should have been was gone. Instead, there was dark paneling and glass cases full of strange objects. It was dim, and thick windows in the distance with wavy glass in them let in the grayest light from outside, where there were . . .

  Tall buildings. With chimneys.

  I turned to the right, my heart racing again. More paneling. More glass cases. Freezing in my tank top and pj shorts, I crawled out from what appeared to be the biggest bed in the world. Seriously, ten people could sleep in it comfortably. It had four huge wooden posters that held up a wooden canopy trimmed in red and gold, like a Hogwarts bed grown out of control.

  “This isn’t real,” I said out loud. “It’s my pain meds.” I touched my head. “Yes, still very much injured and recovering,” I said, squeezing back under the bed and closing my eyes. “Go away, huge bed. Just go away.”

  I waited in the silence, shivering in the cold. I counted to one hundred. Then, slowly, I opened my eyes again.

  A pair of green eyes were looking back at me.

  “No way! You got the Great Bed of Ware!” shouted a vibrantly dressed white girl lying next to me, her face only two inches from mine.

  For the second time in three days, I thought I was going to die. That’s it then, I thought. There I go.

  But I didn’t die. Instead, I screamed and rolled out from under the bed and far away from the smiling girl with the bright red hair and English accent.

  “Where am I?” I yelled at her. She had popped up on her side of the bed and was dusting herself off.

  “The Great ruddy Bed of Ware, you lucky girl!” she said, clapping her hands together.

  “You already said that. Where am I and . . . and the bed? Where are we?” I was shivering so hard now that the words came out half formed.

  The girl’s face grew still. “Of course. I’m so sorry. Come with me, it will all be clear soon.”

  I let her take me by the hand, because honestly, what other option did I have? We were in a museum. A huge museum. The ceilings were coffered and painted in vivid colors. Around us were maps, and cups, and swords, and suits of armor. She led me to a small room with a series of cloaks hung up on pegs. I was shaking and it made her whole arm tremble, too.

  She handed me one in green velvet. “They’re a bit stinky. The kids come in here and play dress-up with them. But they’ll do against the cold, yeah?”

  Sliding my arms into the cloak, I felt instantly better.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Right. Thalia. Eleven years old. From right here in London. Kensington girl,” she said, putting her hands on her hips as she spoke. Thalia talked fast, and my brain struggled a bit to keep up. “My dad’s a barrister, my mum’s a surgeon, so we can afford it, but my grandparents on both sides were Suffolk farmers, so we aren’t posh, not really,” Thalia said, and would keep on saying if I hadn’t interrupted her.

  “Did you say London? Are we in—”

  “London, yes! Welcome!” Thalia said, then crushed me in a hug.

  “Ow, my head!”

  “Oops. Sorry. We heard about that,” she said, peering at my bandage.

  “We? You heard about my head? Did you say London? I . . . I need to sit down,” I said, and dropped straight onto the floor, my cloak pooling around me.

  Thalia sat beside me. “I should show you the ropes,” she said.

  “I’d like that. I’m so confused. Is this about Clio? Muse stuff? My dreams? Do you know about my dreams? Are you a dream?” I asked, but Thalia was ignoring me, instead rummaging through the pockets in her coat.

  Finally, she drew out a long bit of twine tied up in a knot. “The ropes, get it?”

  I decided that I had, indeed, died, and had gone straight to Annoying Girl Hell.

  “I’m going back under that gigantic bed,” I said, crawling away on all fours.

  “No, don’t leave yet! I’ve messed it up. I always do,” she said, tugging on my cloak. When I turned to look at her, Thalia seemed sad and serious. “I’m Thalia, Muse of comedy. At your service,” she said with a bow of her head.

  I stared at her for a full ten seconds, which is a long time to stare at a person without saying a word. If you don’t believe me, try it sometime.

  Then I got up and ran away from her.

  “Come back!” Thalia cried.

  You’ve made it weird again, I told myself. Wake up from this stupid dream right now, I commanded, and pinched my arm hard. No dice. I was still in the museum. There was a sign pointing to a set of elevators. We were on the third floor, in the British Galleries, apparently. I passed dresses so wide that the women who wore them must have entered doors sideways. I passed models of castles made from balsa wood. I passed glossy furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and knights standing at attention.

  The whole time, Thalia was racing behind me. “Please come back!” she shouted. “I’ll tell you my best joke! I’ll buy you a pastry from the café! I’ll introduce you to the queen!”

  “Go away! You’re just a dream. Go away,” I shouted back, and nearly ran right into the giant bed. “Finally,” I muttered, and slid underneath.

  The last thing I saw before closing my eyes was a pair of pink sneakers, upon which someone had drawn smiling faces with a permanent marker. Home, I thought, my mother’s face filling my memory.

  When I opened my eyes, I was, indeed, back home again. I took a deep, shaky breath. I was tingling all over, I was starving, and I was sweating. But mainly, I was sick of these too-vivid dreams. I touched my head. Maybe it was the pain medication after all. Were hallucinations one of the side effects? I vowed to stop taking it, no matter how much my head hurt.

  I pulled myself out from under my bed, stood, and dusted myself off, only to find Mario and Fernando sitting on my bed, playing cards.


  “Our little sister likes to hide under her bed. How weird is that?” Mario asked.

  Fernando answered, “The weirdest.”

  “No,” I said. “You have your own room. Get out.”

  “But yours is so pink,” Mario said, gesturing to the walls that had been the same color since I was two. “And so Jordan Miguel-y,” he said, making kissing faces at the posters on my walls.

  “And clean,” Fernando added. “Our room is gross.”

  “Because you’re pigs,” I said. “Out.”

  Mario gathered the cards while Fernando picked his nose then wiped his finger on my bedspread, maintaining eye contact with me the whole time.

  “OUT!” I screamed, which made my head throb.

  “Fine, fine,” Mario and Fernando said at once, a twin thing they did often. Then, at the door to my room, they both turned and said, “Where’d you get that robe?”

  I looked down. I was wearing the cloak that Thalia had given me.

  The one from the museum.

  In London.

  I glanced back at my bed. My knees shook. I tore off the robe and chucked it across the room.

  “Hey, you don’t want it?” Fernando asked, and immediately draped the thing over his head. “Phew, this stinks,” he mumbled, but off he went, with who knows what plans for the robe, while Mario followed, shaking his head.

  Trembling all over, I picked up my phone and texted Raquel.

  Raqui. Something strange is happening.

  I waited for her to answer, but she never did. I texted again with an annoyed HELLO?? but again, there was no response. Frustrated, I plugged my phone into the charger, stomped off to the living room, and distracted myself with an hour of reality TV.

  By dinnertime, I’d decided that I’d hallucinated the whole thing. I told my mom that my head didn’t hurt anymore, even though it actually did, just to avoid taking any pain meds. Just when I’d convinced myself that there was no such thing as muses, Raquel texted me.

  Sorry I didn’t answer earlier. Everything is bananas.

  Tell me about it.

  I’m going to send an audition tape to America’s Next Star. That video online has a lot of likes. A LOT.

  It has to mean something, right?

  My cousins are coming over with their guitars tomorrow afternoon and we’re going to record a song and send it.

  What do you think? Bananas, right?

  YES, DO IT! I wrote back, sending her a thumbs-up emoji, a kissy-face one, and a banana one.

  I waited a few minutes until Raquel finally texted:

  Can’t talk now. Gotta go. I need to practice!

  This wasn’t like Raquel. I’d had to sign her up for Beauty and the Beast auditions, after all. Maybe the audition had unlocked her confidence. That must have been it. Her new faith in herself had nothing to do with anything muse related, I told myself.

  But later that night, when Fernando came out of the shower, he was wearing the cloak from the museum. He gave me a thumbs-up when he saw me staring at him. The panicky feeling started in my chest again, so I went to bed early, determined to forget about it all by morning.

  My eyes wouldn’t shut, though.

  If you sleep, you dream. And if you dream, you make it weird, I told myself.

  Then a voice inside my head asked: What if it wasn’t a dream?

  Chapter 7

  The Muse Squad

  Sitting up in bed, I made a mental list of everything that had happened lately.

  I almost fell thirty feet to my death after the Jordan Miguel concert.

  My dad and stepmom were having a new baby.

  I might have accidentally turned my best friend into a pop star.

  Some random lady claiming to be a muse stopped time and told me I was kind of a goddess.

  I crawled under my bed, closed my eyes, and was transported to London.

  Either I was completely losing my mind, or something huge and magical was happening. But why would a huge and magical thing happen to a kid like me? I was living in a one-bathroom house with a bad roof that leaked during storms. My parents were divorced. I wasn’t super smart, or athletic. I was chubby, and my hair was frizzy, and I didn’t wear cool clothes. I couldn’t even touch my toes. Me? Magical? It made zero sense.

  There was, however, only one way to find out if I’d imagined things or not. But first, I pinched myself hard. Definitely awake. I hadn’t taken any medicine since this morning even though my head was pounding.

  “Callie, go. Be brave,” I said, giving myself a pep talk out loud. And you know? It worked. I felt a little braver as I crawled under the bed, a little more courageous as I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them, there were the pink sneakers and the hand-drawn happy faces. And there was Thalia.

  “You’re back! Brilliant!” she said, reaching out to grab my hand.

  Okay. I’m doing this, I thought. And I won’t make it weird.

  I took Thalia’s hand, which she’d been holding out for me patiently, and I rose to my feet. “I’m Callie. I guess I’m a muse, too? That’s what Clio said,” I told her, though it all sounded like a question.

  “You certainly are. This is the Victoria and Albert Museum—Muse Headquarters,” Thalia said, opening her arms as if to show it all off at once. Then she stopped and frowned at my bare arms and legs, covered in goose bumps. “What happened to your cloak? You really ought to bring it back,” Thalia said, scrunching up her nose. “And come better prepared next time,” she added, pointing to my tank top, shorts, and flip-flops. “It’s November in London, for goodness’ sake. Damp and cold, that’s all we get over here. Don’t want to catch a chill.” I followed her back to the dress-up room, and she handed me another, even stinkier cloak.

  “Warm and appropriately dressed,” I said. “Where to next?” I was still riddled with doubts, but I was intent on following this girl, this dream, this . . . whatever this was . . . to its logical conclusion.

  Thalia smiled in relief at my apparent enthusiasm. “Come on, we’ll head to the Tea Room. It’s an entrance point, too. I’ll show you and we can grab a bite to eat. The Tea Room is not as terrific as the Great Bed of Ware, mind you. Honestly, everyone will be so jealous of you they’ll eat their hair! But it is really nice, and maybe you’re hungry?”

  “I’m never not hungry,” I said, and felt my cheeks go hot. Thalia grinned.

  “You’re funny! I love the funny ones. Come on,” she said, and I followed her out.

  We went down a set of wide marble stairs. At the base were a pair of busts, one on each side.

  “Muses, like us,” Thalia explained, then tipped an imaginary hat in their direction and said, “Ladies,” as if she were a gentleman in a movie.

  “Tell me about the bed. You called it my ‘entrance point’?” I asked. If this wasn’t all a dream, and I wasn’t sure about that, I’d need to know precisely how to get out.

  Thalia leaned against a statue of a girl resting on a slab of marble, the sculpture’s fine marble hands crossed on her chest, her eyes closed. “The Great Bed of Ware is from the 1500s, I think. Used to be in a famous inn. Really just a quirky bit of furniture, but so fun and silly. It’s everyone’s favorite thing to see here, and that’s because people like to laugh.”

  “But how does it work?” I asked.

  Thalia thought for a minute. “Well,” she said, and twirled a long red strand of hair for a second. “It’s a bed, so you lie down on it, and cover up, and count sheep or something.” There was a glimmer of mischief in her eyes that I was starting to recognize.

  “Muse of comedy, I get it,” I said. “Now tell me. How do entrance points work?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you,” Thalia said, then took my hand and pulled me to the end of the hall. To our left was the biggest gift shop I’d ever seen, full of paintings and jewelry and toys. To the right were a set of glass doors. Outside was a courtyard dominated by an oval pool surrounded by pale pink tile. It was shallow, I could tell. The perimeter
of the courtyard was bordered by low, leafy bushes. “Watch this,” she said.

  Thalia stepped into the pool, sneakers and all. At its deepest, it only reached her mid-calf. She turned to look at me, waved, and sank into the water. I gasped aloud. She was gone! I chucked my flip-flops and waded in to get a closer look. The water was ice-cold. When I got to the center of the pool, the water began to lift and part, and out popped Thalia again, her red hair glistening. Dripping and shivering, she stepped out of the pool, muttering about the cold, and I followed. Then, just like that, she was dry.

  “That was amazing,” I said.

  “It really is. Takes me right back to the tub in our flat. My parents think I’m the cleanest girl in London ’cause I take baths at lots of random times.” Thalia checked her watch. “Come on. Let’s go meet the others.”

  She led me around the pool and through glass doors into the Tea Room, which was the most beautiful café I’d ever seen. Every inch of the walls was covered in mosaic tiles, and hanging from the ceiling was a massive glittery chandelier. Thalia put her hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face the fireplace, which was taller than I was.

  “In three, two, one,” Thalia said.

  Just like that, two feet popped down from inside the chimney, wiggled a bit, then landed onto the flat, clean grate at the bottom. A tall black girl emerged from the fireplace, stepping out with a hop. She was wearing a NASA hoodie and spotless, cream-colored jeans.

  I closed my mouth, which had been hanging open. “Like Santa Claus,” I whispered.

  “Well spotted,” Thalia said. Then she said, “Nia! You’re right on time.”

  “I always am,” the girl said. She stopped short when she noticed me. “New person?” she asked.

  I nodded, and Thalia supplied the answer. “Callie’s her name. Guess her entrance point. Go on.”

  Nia pursed her lips. “Let me guess. You come out from behind one of the tapestries on the first floor. The one with the unicorn. You look like the type.”

  I didn’t know whether to be offended or not, but before I could say a word, Thalia blurted, “The Great Bed of Ware!”

  “Oh, come on!” Nia said. “Not fair at all.” Then, she turned to me. “I’ll have you know that I have to sneak into the fireplace back home every time I want to come here. You know how hard it is to do it when my dad isn’t looking? He was in the CIA. It’s not easy. Thank goodness this fireplace doesn’t get used, and the one at home is gas, because if I ever get soot on one of my outfits—”