Seriously Wicked: A Novel

by Tina Connolly

  “Oh, good, an agreement,” said Miss Crane. “Now if I can just—”

  “Excellent,” said Jenah to Sparkle’s sarcasm. She snapped her fingers at me. “What’s that new band we were just listening to, Cam? So new we were totally ahead of the curve.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “You know,” said Jenah. “It has that green-eyed boy in it. The new kid. What’s his name, Dev, Dannon, what?”

  “Oh,” I said, catching on. “Blue Crush. They’re sensational. Really, er, fresh. But, uh, I don’t know if they’re available to play.” I was torn—Jenah’s idea would be an awesome way for poor Devon to practice getting over his stage fright, and of course I would love to hear him sing … but on the other hand, I had to get that demon out of him, and the fewer distractions, the better.

  On the other other hand, Pop Pop stunk.

  “I’m confused,” said Sparkle’s sidekick, Reese. “Sparkle’s band is set. Why would we be changing it now? That’s not cool.” Her brown eyes crinkled in befuddlement.

  “You’d know what’s not cool,” I said innocently.

  “True,” Reese said, nodding. “Besides, have you seen how hot the boy in Pop Pop is? Oh. My. God.” This was met with squeals of agreement from the Sparkle supporters on the risers.

  Sparkle glared at us. “Reese’s mother is paying for the band, and she’s paying for Pop Pop.”

  “So, the playlist for Pop Pop,” said Miss Crane. “Can they email me their lyrics so I can check for improper allusions?” She peered at Sparkle. “Do you think they’ll have email?”

  “What’s Blue Crush?” said Benjamin, raising his hand. “Are they a surfer band? We’ve never had a surfer band.”

  “They’re an everything band,” said Jenah. She leaned back on the risers. “Surfers will like them. Ravers will like them.” She looked at Reese. “The lead singer’s really cute, so Pop Pop lovers will like them. And as soon as we book them, Devon can give us the lyrics immediately.”

  “Oh, that would give me time to read them,” said Miss Crane. “Maybe he can send them to me from the computer lab. Do you think he has a file of their lyrics at school? Like on his phone, is that a thing?”

  “My mom would totally approve of supporting a band with a hot boy from the school,” said Reese.

  “Excellent!” said Jenah. “We’re all set, then.”

  “We are not all set,” growled Sparkle.

  “Oh, the disco ball wants to talk,” I said.

  “You just watch yourself, Cash,” said Sparkle. “Little Miss My-Mother’s-an-Evil—”

  I had my last tempura shrimp ready to throw at her stupid sparkle lip gloss when Reese’s dim-witted squeal interrupted her. “Ohmigod, who’s that?”

  We all turned.

  Standing in the doorway was a punk-band boy.

  7

  Punk-Band Boy

  There was a gaga moment where I didn’t recognize him. For one, this boy had black hair, not blond. For two, I’d just seen him ten minutes ago torn and muddy, carrying a box of froggy-looking pixies. The Devon I knew was nothing like this boy here.

  This boy had style.

  This boy had cool.

  This boy was looking down Sparkle’s shirt.

  “Devon!” I said. I grabbed his sleeve (now not torn). “How are you feeling?”

  He tossed back his ink-black hair and looked amused. I felt six years old. “Hey, Flower Girl,” he said. “Come to get a piece of the action?”

  “Ew,” I said, but all the same I thought I might be blushing. I peered into his green eyes, searching for any trace of Devon there. Surely this wasn’t Devon … but what if Estahoth was already getting to him? Already warping his mind, making him think disgusting inhuman thoughts…?

  He looked back into my eyes, completely unself-conscious and with a smirk in his (now) black eyebrows. A sharp smell of firecrackers curled around him, underlaid with the musty tang of mold. The way he looked at me was like he knew me … inside and out. I suddenly remembered that the demon had actually been inside me for a few seconds in the basement. Then I really did blush, red hot.

  I tossed back my hair and tried to regain my normal cool. I mean, I’ve had a couple boyfriends. Plenty of guy friends. When your life revolves around filling the outrageous demands of a cranky witch, other social interactions seem way less scary. Okay, maybe I wasn’t made of cool like Jenah, and maybe boys didn’t just drop dead at my feet like they did for Sparkle, but in general, boys were not foreign scary creatures. Not compared to two-hundred-year-old warlocks who might give you appendicitis just for asking them if they’d barter three unicorn hairs for a drop of dragon milk (true story).

  So. There was no way any boy was going to get the best of me, no matter how much he suddenly resembled my TV love, Zolak the demon hunter. “Um, this is Devon,” I managed. “With Blue Crush.”

  Reese squealed, and suddenly she and the rest of the girls in the room were sucked into Devon like he was pure gravity. The risers clattered as the girls leaped on him. “Oh my god, we are so booking you to play for us!” said Reese. “You are way hotter than that boy from Pop Pop.”

  “Play for you?” said Devon. He did a thing that was like a wink, but it was way cooler than a wink. “You mean … personally?”

  Reese looked like she was about to faint.

  “Um, maybe we should just stick with Pop Pop,” I said. This new Devon did not need anybody’s help with stage fright. It was weird, but it was like the demon inside him gave him an extra allure. Like he could sing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and all the girls in the room would swoon.

  And if a billion girls swooned on him he’d never get the witch’s tasks completed.

  And then Devon’s soul would be eaten.

  “You’re very busy, right?” I said meaningfully at Devon. “Extra-credit science projects to finish?”

  His green eyes fixed me again but this time I managed not to blush. After all, this was not regular Devon. There was a million-year-old elemental in there, warping Devon’s thoughts. “I’m never too busy for my music,” he said. “What’s the gig?”

  I glared back and refused to think about how hot he was with the dark hair and the sudden confidence. “Halloween Dance. You’re too busy. You’ve got ob-li-ga-tions.”

  Despite all the girls clinging to Devon, I noticed that Sparkle was standing apart from him like I was. Her arms were crossed over her chest, she was clutching her cameo, and she was looking at Devon in a very weird way. I couldn’t tell if it was confusion—or fear. Both seemed like weird emotions for Sparkle to have about a cute new boy. She couldn’t be picking up on his internal demon somehow … could she?

  “You’re probably too busy adjusting to your new school,” Sparkle said. “Besides, we’ve already booked a band, I’m afraid. Miss Crane is prepared to approve their lyrics.”

  “Prepared to,” said Miss Crane. Her fingers gripped the edge of the piano lid, her voice quavering as she tried for firm. “But first I need them, or we’ll have no band at all.”

  “Lyrics?” said Devon. “I wrote our lyrics. I could recite them right here.”

  Reese glanced at Sparkle. “Well … Couldn’t we…?”

  “Reese,” said Sparkle. There was a tone in her voice that usually Reese would’ve obeyed instantly.

  But mortal junior Sparkle versus the magnetism of an immortal elemental force?

  Reese stared up at Devon, who winked/not winked at her again. “I’m unbooking them,” she said dreamily but firmly. “Pop Pop isn’t even part of the school. We’re supporting the new boy’s band.”

  Devon grinned lazily. “Can’t wait to perform for y’all.”

  Reese sighed moistly and the other girls squealed. Miss Crane beamed and moved in for those lyrics. Even Benjamin joined the admiring mob.

  I groaned, grabbed one more spider roll, and snuck out of the room. Left the squealing behind me.

  What on earth was I going to do now? Devon was supposed to complete th
ree tasks—none of which I was sure he should complete—so we could get the demon out before it ate his entire soul and owned Devon forever. The sooner we could get the tasks done, the sooner the demon would be gone—and every minute might count.

  But maybe the newly confident Devon wouldn’t want the demon out of his soul. A demon could make a boy with stage fright into a star.

  That was a nasty thought.

  There was a tug on my backpack and it turned out to be Jenah. “Okay, that A Lunch was full of win,” she said. “Did you see Sparkle’s face when Reese disobeyed her? Hey, so what do you think about the nose job rumors with Sparkle? It definitely looks different, but everyone knows it’s just her living with her grandfather or something, and god knows what he does, but it no way involves piles of cash and anyway, what kind of doctor would perform a nose job at her age? That’s a mystery, I tell you.” Jenah with the auras straightened out was giddy with relief.

  But me, I felt like a ton of bricks. Maybe it was my backpack. At least, something was weighing me down.

  “Okay, spill what’s wrong,” said Jenah. “I’m trying to cheer you up, but something’s wrong and I’m betting some part of it has to do with Devon. And no, I don’t know how he changed his hair that fast, but I expect there’s a sink in a boys’ bathroom covered in black dye. Look, you’re not even thrilled about getting rid of that awful Pop Pop. Hey, over here. Talking, talking, me.”

  We stopped at our locker and I thumped my backpack to the ground. I didn’t feel any lighter. I traded out my books for the American history text and Jenah grabbed a lime-green hair streak and clipped it next to the highlighter-yellow one.

  “You’re always trying to help people out,” Jenah said. “And you like Devon. Why’d you suddenly change your mind about helping him?”

  “Does he look like he needs our help?” I said.

  “No,” admitted Jenah. “His aura sure was different. All purple-black.” She watched me stare into the hairy depths of the locker. “Cam,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  A billion things welled up inside me but I couldn’t say any of them, because they all traced back to the witch in my life.

  Devon’s demon.

  The destruction of the school.

  The dragon’s loneliness.

  “I don’t want to buy pig’s ears ever again,” is what finally came out.

  “Okaaay,” Jenah said. She studied the air around me, like she did when she was looking at her invisible auras.

  I could never figure out if she really saw anything. But again, who was I to judge? My frustration swirled around in my brain.

  Jenah touched a finger to an invisible spot next to my shoulder, then shook her head. “Way too mustardy,” she said. “You and I. Need to cut class. You will tell me about the pig’s ears and the box of frogs.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” I said, brushing her finger aside. “I can’t cut American history and you can’t cut English. You like English.”

  “That’s why I can cut it,” said Jenah. “But fine. We’ll meet after school. You’ve got something you need to share and I’m here for you.”

  The thought of sharing the awfulness that was the witch made my stomach churn. “I’ve got stupid algebra tutoring after school,” I said. I slung my backpack over my shoulders and turned. I tried to laugh off Jenah’s concern, but the words came out bitter and obviously false. “Anyway, there’s nothing to share.”

  I strode off to American history and I didn’t look back.

  * * *

  As always, American history was full of cheesy videos (I could’ve cut, I know), AP biology was fascinating, and gym was sweaty. Biology’s my all-time fave, so it trumped my worries about Devon and his pixie-frogs for an hour. But when we started running boring hurdles around the track in gym, it all came pouring back.

  Possibly it also didn’t help that Reese is in my hour of gym and she kept bringing girls up to me and telling me to tell them how cute Devon was.

  It’s obvious that the only reason Reese is popular is because she’s Sparkle’s best friend, and not to be catty, but I’m pretty sure the reason Sparkle’s best friends with a dingy sophomore like Reese is because she’s rich and Sparkle isn’t. Reese herself is nice to everyone because it’s easy to be. She doesn’t pick fights or humiliate girls just for fun. Sure, this makes her mostly harmless and fools a lot of people. But put a girl like Reese who’s nice because it’s convenient next to someone like Celeste at the grocery store who actually believes in doing good for people, and you’ll see the difference. I’m not saying Reese was nice to purposely cover up a big malicious black-hearted void, although I’ve known girls like that. I’m saying she was a dim bulb who gave no thought to moral right and wrong, and whose superficial manners happened to be pleasant. I wouldn’t trust her farther than I could throw her.

  Reese’s backbone today against her leader, Sparkle, was an unusual event, which is why I suspected it was demon inspired.

  Because the rule of thumb here at Triple H is this: whatever Sparkle says, is so.

  I told three girls on the hurdles that yes, Devon had green eyes, two girls in the shower that yes, Devon had floppy black hair, and one extra-persistent girl that no, I did not know his email, or his shampoo type, or whether or not he would like gifts of soda and cheese whirls left next to his locker.

  By the time I got to the algebra classroom I was Devoned out. It was a relief to see someone sitting in Rourke’s room who was guaranteed not to ask me about Devon.

  “Kelvin? Are you waiting for the tutor, too?”

  “Kelvin is the tutor,” Kelvin said in his robot voice.

  “Very funny. But I’m on to your sense of humor.”

  “I am,” he said normally. His black sleeves were rolled partway up, revealing a retro plastic watch. “Is it just chapter three you need help with, or do we need to go back farther than that?”

  “No, just chapter three,” I said. “I understand the other stuff from Algebra One. I had Mrs. O’Malley for that and it went A-OK.” I dropped my backpack on a desk, smelling the familiar math classroom scents of dry-erase dust and root beer. I parked my butt on the skinny pink back of a chair, where I could see the hallway through the open door over Kelvin’s shoulder. I was still confused. “Rourke said the tutor was sick yesterday—but I saw you after school.”

  Kelvin looked behind him to see if Visible Undershirt was still in the room. “If I’d known it was you, I wouldn’t have told him I was going home early.” He looked flustered for a moment and I didn’t know why. “You remember you needed me to meet you at the Thunderbird with goat’s blood?”

  “Of course,” I said, and then the rest of those events hit me. “Wait a minute. Wait one frikkin’ minute.” I stood up from the chair back. “That wasn’t goat’s blood.”

  “Yes, it was. I always get you goat’s blood.” Robot voice: “Kelvin rotate through goats.”

  Shudder. “No. This time it wasn’t. Are you sure you told your mom goat’s? Because it was cow’s blood. It messed up my … experiment.”

  He looked shifty.

  “Kelvin?”

  Kelvin lifted his chin and stared me in the eye. “Sorry, Cam,” he said. “We don’t even keep cows. It was definitely goat’s.”

  I sighed. “All right, I believe you.” I dug my wallet from my backpack and handed over the remainder of the cash I owed him. “Something sure got screwed up, though.”

  Kelvin tucked the bills into some pocket deep in his backpack. From its recesses he said, “So, algebra. You should get this because you’re good at science. You’ve got a logical mind.”

  “I used to think math was logical, but this year it seems like you just have to be born understanding it.” I stared glumly around the room at the posters of geometric figures and Escher staircases. “Wait, how did you know I like science? You’re not in biology with me.”

  “Your science fair projects in grade school,” Kelvin said, stowing his backpack under the seat. He emerge
d with a perfectly sharpened pencil, which he pointed at me. “You beat me one year with your project about the theoretical genetics of werewolves. Pounded my ego flat as a pancake. I had nightmares about being attacked by your blue ribbon.”

  “I did?” I felt bad for not remembering that Kelvin participated, too. Was I supposed to know that? I hadn’t paid much attention to the other projects. If I’d managed to get something done at all, between all my regular chores, I counted it a win. Besides, I rarely made it to the actual fair, because I was so busy making sure the witch didn’t go.

  “Is that what the goat’s blood is for this year?” he said. “‘Because that’s gotta be an interesting project. Maybe you could give me a behind-the-scenes tour. Show me all the blood and guts, so to speak.” Then deadpan added, “No, literally.”

  “Er, no,” I said. “I don’t have time for the fair this year. I have to concentrate on figuring out this math.”

  “Input received,” Kelvin said, and it sounded like it should have been in a robot voice, but it wasn’t. He looked away from me, down at the textbook. Shrugged his trench coat off and back on his shoulders. “Let’s start with basic algebraic multiplication and build from there. The problem with Rourke’s teaching is that he shows you the steps once and then he expects you to just do them in your head from there on out. So, basics. Show me how you multiply 2(x + 5).”

  “Okay, I think that’s 2x + 10,” I said. “Right? It’s just when we get into word problems that I get lost. They have all this misleading stuff and you have to sort through it and … it’s like Rourke expects you to just see where his answer came from. He just naturally understands it, I guess, and I don’t.”

  “You will,” said Kelvin, “if we do it our way, which is one step at a time. No leaps necessary. If you can do 2(x + 5), you can do it all.” He grabbed the study guide for the test I’d bombed and worked through the first problem with me (some gawdawful thing about sides of triangles totaling sides of rectangles), one piece at a time.

  First we wrote down what we knew. We crossed out what we didn’t need. It almost made sense when I took each step slowly instead of trying to leap to the end like Rourke did. We got through three whole problems before Mr. Visible Undershirt himself came in.