The Cassandra Curse

by Chantel Acevedo

  I nodded, my eyes stinging. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding out hope that Tia Annie was actually alive out there, somewhere.

  “Any other questions?” Clio added in a way that told me that there would be no other questions, at least not today. I felt Nia’s hands on my shoulders as she turned me toward the door, and the others followed me out.

  “Her sugar crashes must be epic,” I said aloud outside Clio’s office. Thalia, Nia, and Mela led me back to the Great Bed with ease. Would I ever learn how to navigate the museum this easily? Would I even be coming back?

  “See you soon,” Thalia said, giving me a hug. Mela shook my hand. Nia thumped my back.

  I crawled under the Great Bed. Outside, the dawn light was warming the gallery now, brightening the space. I closed my eyes, thought of home, and that was enough.

  When I opened them, I was back under my small, dusty bed, which was not Great, but was definitely Good Enough. I was still wearing the dress-up cloak, which really was a bit stinky, and now that I was back in Miami, was way too warm to wear. I shoved it into a ball and put it under my bed. The dark house was just as I’d left it.

  Chapter 9

  Bestie Woes

  The next day was Thanksgiving. We didn’t have any big dinner plans. My mom had ordered some sliced turkey and sides from a restaurant on Calle Ocho. It was just the four of us, after all. I tried hard not to think about Thanksgiving back when Papi was home, and we would go to big parties at his cousin’s house.

  I’d worn the bracelet to bed. It didn’t do anything special—only glimmered there against my skin. But it was tangible proof that I hadn’t imagined things.

  It was Mario who recognized it at breakfast. “Hey, that was Tia Annie’s,” he said, grabbing my wrist.

  Fernando muttered his agreement through a mouth filled with cornflakes.

  “¿Qué?” Mami asked. Then she looked at me and the bracelet. “Where did you find that? I looked everywhere for it.”

  “In my music box,” I blurted. “I hadn’t opened it in ages, and there it was.” I couldn’t exactly explain that I magically traveled to England via my bed, that I’d inherited powers that I didn’t understand or know how to tap, and by the way, Mom, your beloved sister had them, too.

  So I lied.

  My mother swallowed hard, trying not to cry. “Did she ever tell you the story of the bracelet?” Mami asked. I shook my head. “Back when we were little girls in Cuba, about your age, Annie took to hiding inside an old abandoned armoire outside, between the apartment buildings. She said she found the bracelet inside, and she never took it off again.” My mom was smiling a little now, the way she sometimes did when she thought of her old life in Cuba, her little-girl life that she left behind when she was thirteen. I imagined my aunt at eleven, stepping gingerly into the puddles of light at the V and A, thinking about Cuba seemingly a million miles away.

  “Tia Annie must have left this bracelet for you,” my mom said, breaking my reverie. “Bueno, mi amor, take care of it.” She rifled through the junk drawer and found a bottle of superglue. She let a few drops fall onto the clasp of the bracelet. “Just in case,” she said. Then she patted the bandage on my head. “Feels better?” she asked, and I nodded.

  I wondered what Clio would think of the glue, then pushed her out of my mind. Like she’d said, nothing was binding. I didn’t have to be a muse if I didn’t want to be.

  My phone buzzed beside me. Raquel! I picked it up, almost toppling my glass of orange juice.

  “Hey!” I said. “I’ve been texting you.” I had tried all morning, and nada.

  Raquel sounded a little out of breath. I could hear the rush of cars outside through the phone. “I know! Sorry! I’m coming over, if that’s okay.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Bestie time was exactly what I needed to get my mind off this muse stuff. Besides, I missed Raquel. While I waited for her to come over, I debated whether or not to tell her about everything that had happened. By the time she got there, I knew I was going to spill the beans. Clio could get mad or whatever, but I needed to talk to somebody.

  “Happy Thanksgiving!” she said, giving me a hug as soon as she arrived.

  “No time to talk turkey,” I said, and we ran to my room.

  “I have something to tell you.” I twirled the bracelet on my arm nervously.

  “I have something to tell you,” she said at the same time.

  “You first,” we both said, then fell onto my bed laughing.

  Raquel whipped out her phone, opened up her photos, and showed me a screengrab of an email.

  Dear Raquel,

  Thank you for submitting your video audition, which we have received and viewed with excitement.

  Congratulations are in order!

  You have been selected to audition on camera for America’s Next Star. Attached are important documents you need to review before accepting the audition. Please be in touch with your response.

  Sincerely,

  Joanne Montgomery

  Executive Assistant

  America’s Next Star

  I felt Raquel’s finger on my chin, pushing up gently and closing my mouth. I hadn’t realized the whole “my jaw dropped open” thing happened in real life. But it totally did.

  “I know!” Raquel squealed before I could say another word.

  “Tell me you already said yes!”

  Raquel nodded, her brown curls bobbing up and down. She held her breath, then blurted, “I’m going this weekend!”

  “What? So soon?” For a moment I thought, This is bananas. But then I remembered that I had recently been magically transported to another country. Maybe everything was going to be bananas from now on.

  “Yep. They’re paying for the airplane tickets and everything,” Raquel said. She stood up and paced my room, hugging herself. As she did, she babbled a bit, something she always did when she was excited. She talked about how nice the producer sounded on the phone, what song she would sing, and on and on.

  I didn’t listen very carefully. My mind kept latching onto other things—the museum, the other muses, what Clio had said about Tia Annie, and that day in the cafetorium. My fingers wandered to the bandage on my head. Then Raquel said something that snapped me out of it.

  “Like, I’ve earned this, you know?”

  She’d been staring into a mirror as she said it, smoothing her hands down her dress. It was as if Clio had frozen time. There Raquel stood, slender and gorgeous. Her curls rippled down her back. Her dress was new. In fact, I could still see the little plastic strand that once held a price tag jutting out from a seam in her waist. Her hands—was that a gel manicure? Those weren’t cheap. I glanced at her toes. Painted, too. In the mirror’s reflection I could see myself behind Raquel, sitting cross-legged on my bed. My mouth was a little open. My hair hung limply. My T-shirt had a stain on it from breakfast. We really did make a perfect ten, she and I. Raquel was number one, and I was a total zero.

  “How so?” I blurted out. I almost didn’t realize I’d said it.

  “Oh,” Raquel said, turning to look at me. “I mean practice. Hard work. The usual,” she said, a question in her voice.

  I fiddled with the bracelet on my wrist. “You don’t think what happened in the cafetorium that day was, you know, strange?”

  Raquel bit her lip. “I do think so. It was . . . magic.”

  “Exactly,” I said, feeling myself brightening. I wasn’t sure I could tell Raquel everything about the muses, but just maybe—

  “It was the magic that’s been inside of me all along, Cal. The producer on the phone said I have ‘it.’ IT!” she said, and twirled twice before looking at herself in the mirror again.

  “Oh,” I said, deflating. That’s what I’d called my muse magic in my head when it happened—IT. But obviously, Raquel meant something else.

  “But don’t you think this is all a bit, I don’t know, sudden?” I asked. Didn’t she question any of it? Did she wonder at all why h
er voice was so much better than it was before?

  Raquel pursed her lips and her left eyebrow popped up. “A little support would be cool,” she said icily.

  I rolled my eyes. “Of course I support you. I’m your biggest fan,” I said, and forced a smile.

  Raquel relaxed, then plopped on my bed again. “You’ll find your ‘IT,’ I know you will,” she whispered, as if she’d seen something other than extreme irritation on my face. “You had something to tell me, right?”

  My throat tightened. I couldn’t tell her anything. Raquel was only seeing . . . Raquel at the moment. And when she looked at me, what did she see? Her talentless, fatherless friend, that’s what.

  “Nah,” I said. “No news at all.”

  “But you said—”

  “Leave it. My head hurts, Raquel. I think I need to take a nap.”

  Raquel’s face softened and she frowned a little. “Oh my gosh, of course.” She gave me a gentle hug. “See you soon, and feel better. Maybe you can help me pack!” she said cheerily, and bounced out of my room.

  All I wanted was to be alone, but as soon as she left, my phone buzzed again. It was Papi.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  “¿Qué pasa?”

  “Nothing!” I said, trying to sound a little more upbeat. The last thing I wanted was to have Papi asking questions. Unlike Mami, he always asked too many, or he jumped to conclusions about what he thought was upsetting me.

  “Is it about the baby?” he asked softly.

  Oh.

  That.

  “No, not that,” I said. With all the muse stuff happening, and Raquel acting so differently, I had forgotten about the baby. But now that Papi mentioned it, I guess I’d been worrying about it all along.

  “The new baby won’t change anything,” my dad said. He’d dropped his voice to a whisper, and I wondered if Laura was within earshot.

  “When I came along, I changed things, didn’t I?”

  My dad laughed a little. “You did, kiddo. You rocked our world.”

  “See?”

  “But us? You, me, and the twins? That won’t change. Maybe you guys can come up to New York this summer. How about that?” Papi asked.

  I’d never been to New York. “Sounds like fun,” I said. “As long as I don’t have to change diapers.”

  “I don’t do negotiations,” Papi said with a laugh. “You’ll love it here.”

  He asked about the twins, and I asked how Laura was feeling (“Pukey” was the answer), and then we hung up. I didn’t know if I’d love New York, or spending time in a cramped walk-up with my dad, stepmom, new sibling, and brothers. In fact, I was sure I wouldn’t like it at all.

  I clicked on my messages, and saw a new one from Raquel. It was a GIF of Jordan Miguel blowing a kiss to a camera. Another message came in—a selfie of Raquel making a kissy face, too. Sending a kissy-face selfie back to her felt like a lie, as did sending a heart emoji. Instead, I left my phone on my bed, and went to get a snack.

  That afternoon, when everyone thought I was napping, I slid under my bed, closed my eyes, and let the muse magic take me to headquarters. Clio had said not to come unannounced, but whatever. If breaking a rule meant not being a muse, then maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. After all, what had this magic accomplished anyway? A head wound and a best friend who was acting . . . differently.

  Because Raquel did feel different to me.

  The old Raquel would have understood what I meant about the suddenness of all this, and she wouldn’t have gotten gel manicures, and she wouldn’t have fallen for it if a stranger on the phone, producer or not, told her she had “IT.”

  Then again, maybe Raquel wasn’t the problem after all.

  Maybe I was the one who was different now.

  The museum was quiet. I glanced at a clock. Just past closing time. I’d looked at a map of the V and A online, trying to memorize the layout, so I sort of knew where to go. Sort of. It was a big place. I found my way to Clio’s office. I hesitated before knocking, and when I did, it sounded as if the whole museum could have heard me.

  There was no answer. The door opened a bit. I took a deep breath and peeked inside. Clio’s office was empty. A blue plate sprinkled with brownie crumbs sat atop a stack of files. I stepped in. The first folder underneath the plate was the one she’d shown me, the one with the picture of the muses. I pulled it out gently, sat in Clio’s chair.

  I opened the folder. The group picture on the steps of the museum stared back at me. There were other photos, too, and newspaper clippings. One after another, the articles described people doing miraculous, wonderful things—saving a village’s water supply in Mozambique, establishing a dog rescue in Paris, a young woman who lifted a car off her dad when it had dropped on him during a tire change, a young man who jumped onto subway tracks to save a stranger, teens on spring break who saved a woman from drowning, and on and on.

  “That would be the hero file. They were her students. All of them,” Clio said from the door to her office.

  I sputtered, trying to apologize, stood, and the file fell to the floor, the clippings fluttering down after it. “I’m sorry. Clio, I’m sorry. I just, I had to get away,” I said.

  “Headquarters is not a vacation spot, and my office is not your personal library,” Clio said. “Now sit.”

  I plopped back down onto Clio’s chair. She took the seat opposite me. Today, Clio was wearing a sweater and dark jeans, but somehow managed to make it look professional. Her white hair was loose and coiled around her shoulders. Reading glasses hung from a chain around her neck. Her cheeks were flushed, though, and she looked worried. She held a large bronze key in her hand—the old-fashioned kind. When she saw me notice it, she put it in her back pocket.

  “As I said, all those heroes were her students.”

  “Who are we talking about?”

  Clio narrowed her eyes at me. “You can’t possibly be this dense.”

  I exhaled. “Tia Annie. But how?”

  “Online classes. Poetry workshops here and there. She got to know people, stayed in touch, inspired them to be their best selves. She mentored people far and wide. She was—” Clio stopped, her eyes shining. “She was the best of us.”

  “Right,” I said shakily. I’d made up my mind just then. “Right. I am so not worthy of this.” I struggled with the bracelet.

  “Why do you think so?”

  The bracelet wouldn’t give. Stupid glue. “It’s because of my best friend. She’s changing. Because of me.”

  “That’s partly true.” Clio ran her fingers over the rest of the folders on her desk. “You read the success stories. These files here . . . well, let’s say our tactics aren’t always successful.” Clio sighed. “This job, our job, isn’t easy. And it requires courage, but mostly, hope. Annie always hoped. Have you given up on your best friend already, Callie?”

  I shook my head. Of course I hadn’t. I bent down and picked up the dropped folder and the clippings, putting them away carefully. Lastly, I put away the picture of the muses. Tia Annie seemed to be staring at me pointedly.

  “I’ll give it another chance,” I said, and put the file folder back under the plate, Raquel’s words, You’ll find your IT, Callie, still ringing in my head.

  “Good,” Clio said. “Now that you’re here, I’d like to show you something. But first,” she said, stopping mid-sentence. She rubbed one of her earrings. The tiny golden trumpet shone under the office lights. “Headquarters, junior muses,” she called into the air. I could feel my bracelet warming up. I looked at Clio anxiously. “Give them a minute,” she said. Soon, I heard footsteps on the spiral staircase, and Thalia’s tinkling laughter.

  “What’s the emergency?” Thalia asked. She was wearing her school uniform—a plaid skirt and blue blazer.

  Clio held up one finger, and her eyebrows rose as she waited. Then there was the sound of more footsteps, and Clio’s office door opened again. Mela and Nia stepped through. Nia was wea
ring an apron with a swirly picture of the Milky Way and the words IN THE KITCHEN. NEED MY SPACE. Underneath, she wore a green dress with a golden ribbon at her waist.

  “It’s Thanksgiving, for the love,” she said. “I’m making a grilled cheese casserole, and it had better not burn.”

  Mela was in her pajamas, and she was rubbing her eyes and yawning.

  Clio walked around her desk and opened the door to the office. “Come along, you four,” she said. “It’s time the junior muses got their first assignment.”

  Thalia coughed the words “Muse Squad,” and the rest of us pretended not to notice.

  We followed her through the library, down a set of stairs, passed through a gallery full of glittering jewelry, and down a hallway lined with paintings. Finally, we stopped in front of an old, speckled mirror that was about the size of a refrigerator.

  “This mirror was a gift from Athena to the first Muse of history.” It was set into a marble frame with owls carved into each corner. “For the gods, time does not exist. Everything to them is just the now. The past is now. The present is now. All possible futures are now. The mirror allows me to see as they see, which is useful in understanding Fated Ones.”

  Clio stroked the surface a few times, as if she were petting a dog. Our reflections blurred, and a different picture appeared. It wasn’t like looking at the television. It was more like peering through a window. I reached out, thinking I could touch what was on the other side, the way Alice had walked through the looking-glass in her book, but Clio held my wrist.

  “Don’t touch,” she said, but didn’t explain why.

  The mirror showed us a city, half-submerged in water. I could see the tops of buildings, and how ocean foam lapped at windows.

  “Is that the past? Or the future?” I asked.

  “A possible future,” she said. “Here’s another.” She touched the mirror again, and the image shifted into a room with white walls. A bank of computers lined one side. A woman in a lab coat peered at one of the screens. She had a streak of rainbow in her hair, which was parted into two braids. Even though she was a grown-up, there was something about her that reminded me of a kid.