The Hex Breaker's Eyes

by Shaun Tennant

  I’m eating lunch with Marlene, sitting at my locker like usual, when a group of girls walks by. I pay them only enough attention to see that two of them have followed Melanie Woods into wearing bow ties around their necks. God I hate that one person’s desperate grab at attention can actually become fashionable to other people. I really don’t understand how ironically wearing something to make fun of it can become trendsetting and make the stupid thing fashionable. Anyway, the moment I see the stupid ties on these girls I look away, so I’m a little surprised when one of them stops in front of us, looking down at me.

  It’s Dina Jennings, her arm in a sling (and thankfully, no bow tie around her neck). Her friends, a couple of other well-dressed senior girls, turn back and wonder why she stopped. There’s a reason I didn’t recognize her: Dina’s not glowing. She’s just an ordinary, flesh-and-blood girl. No yellow light, no tentacles of energy.

  “Thanks,” Dina says to me. “I can tell you helped.”

  “You can?”

  “I can just feel it. Here, see.” She pulls a quarter out of her pocket and flips it, catching it in her right hand and slapping it down on the back of her left. “Heads or tails?”

  “Heads.”

  Dina looks at the coin, then leans down to show it to us. It’s tails. Dina smiles. “You think I could have won a coin toss yesterday?”

  “I guess not,” I say.

  “I don’t know what you girls did, but I owe you.”

  One of Dina’s friends chimes in. “Who are these weirdoes and why are you talking to them?”

  Dina snaps right back at her, “They’re not weirdoes. This is Mindee and she’s the girl who warned me I was going to fall. She saved my life.” She doesn’t even pause before she provides an explanation: “Without Mindee I would have broken my neck instead of my collarbone.”

  “Whatever, her shouting probably made you fall,” says the other friend.

  “Have you ever heard of being nice to people? You know, being grateful for things?” Dina says. Her friends are dumbfounded, looking at each other in total confusion. Dina smiles at us and then rejoins her friends. “Come on, let’s go eat.” The three of them vanish around the corner, leaving us alone in the hallway again.

  “I think you have more than just the power to see hexes,” Marlene says. “I think you’re full-blown miraculous.”

  “Oh yeah?” I say, biting into a cracker.

  “Yeah.”

  “What makes you so sure?” I say though a mouthful of crumbs.

  “Because anyone who can make Dina Jennings be considerate is a fricking Jedi.”

  We break into laughter, and soon enough we can’t stop laughing. Other kids enter the hallway and stare at us, but we don’t stifle ourselves. We can’t. We laugh until we cry. We broke a hex, we saved a life. We won.

  Part Two

  The Death Curse

  13

  Wednesday, January 23

  It’s been a few months since we got rid of the hex. Sydney still goes to the same school as us, but there hasn’t been any backlash from her. She never made any move to get revenge on Tam for getting her suspended, and none of the students at school have had any glowy lights around them since Dina’s hex was broken. My theory on the matter is that Sydney didn’t realize what she was doing, or know that her hex actually worked. Once the talisman was gone, the hex was broken, and that seems to have been the end of it. It’s a new year, a new semester, and in a few months Dina, Sydney, and the other seniors will be out of my life forever.

  This semester I’m lucky enough to have my best friend in class with me. Two classes, in fact. We’re in our second-period French class, sitting next to each other, when Tam says something absolutely shocking.

  “I’m thinking about breaking up with Ryan,” she whispers. I can’t even figure out what to say to her after that, so I listen to Mme. St. Pierre talk about past tense for a while. Eventually I pass Tam a note saying we can talk after class. There’s too much weight and importance in the one sentence she said to me, that we can’t possibly have that conversation in French class.

  For the rest of the class I can sense that she’s really antsy, but it’s not like we can work through her emotional problems with thirty other people conjugating verbs all around us.

  We finally get released from class. This term we both have third period lunch, while Ryan is still on a schedule with a fourth period lunch. We’ll be able to talk about him without him being there. We still have the same side-by-side lockers so we go there, take our lunches out, and sit on the floor.

  “So you’re thinking of what?” I say.

  “I’m thinking of breaking up with him,” she says, in a quiet voice that’s very unnatural for her.

  “But why? You guys are my idols. If you can’t be happy what’ll I ever be?”

  “We just don’t see each other much. It’s basketball tournament season, so he’s gone most weekends. He has practice after school. We don’t even have lunch together. I think it would just be easier.”

  I nod my head, eat my sandwich, and for a while we don’t say anything. “Whatever makes you happy, I guess. But I would just say to think about the long term. What will make you happier once basketball season is over? Would you wish you had him back?”

  She nods a little, thinks about things, and says. “Yeah, I know. I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

  “You can call me when you want to talk,” I say.

  “You mean I can call your house.”

  “Shut up. Cell minutes are expensive if you have to pay for them yourself.”

  She smiles. “But I don’t. I have an iii-phooone.” She’s been taunting me about that ever since her folks gave her the phone for her Christmas-and-birthday-because they’re-ten-days-apart gift. “I guess I can text your cell to make sure you’re at home,” she says, and sticks out her tongue at me.

  After lunch, we go to separate classes. Tam has history this term and I’m taking calculus. I sit down with Janelle, the girl who unsuccessfully ran for Student Council President last term. She’s a quiet, nerdy girl who likes math, and that suits me just fine. (Yeah, I suppose we’re both math nerds). Eventually the bell rings, but Janelle and I are still cross-checking our answers so we’re the last to leave.

  We have to rush to get to our last classes of the day, which in my case is English. The class has already started so my entrance interrupts the teacher, and I feel everyone look at me as I make my way to the back to sit with Tamara. Once we get settled in, class goes fine.

  “What are you thinking?” I whisper during the time at the end of class where are supposed to be reading, “about Ry?”

  “I still think it would be best,” she says. The teacher looks our way so we go back to reading until the bell rings. At our lockers, Ryan meets up with us.

  “You coming to watch the game?” he asks me. Behind his back, Tam shakes her head at me.

  “Not tonight,” I say.

  “Come on, you haven’t been to a game since school came back,” he complains.

  I pack up my homework, and Tam just jams her stuff into her locker since she’s going to hang around for a while and watch the game. That means I have to walk home alone, but whatever, I’m used to it.

  It’s almost eleven at night when my doorbell rings. I answer it, and Tam’s waiting outside. I invite her in out of the cold and we head down to the basement where we can be alone without going upstairs where my family might hear.

  “What’s up?” I ask.

  “I broke up with Ryan,” she says bluntly.

  “Already? I thought you were going to think about it?”

  “I have been. I was just tired of sitting around by myself while he was off with the team.”

  “Tam,” I say, “are you sure about this?”

  “No,” she says. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  “Well, whenever you figure it out you should tell him. But try to figure it out quick before anyone else makes a move on your guy.”
>
  “Yeah,” she says. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “It hurt a lot. He was just sort of quiet. I think he had no idea it was coming.”

  “Try to sleep,” I say. “See how you feel in the morning.”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Oh God, what if this was a mistake?”

  We talk for a bit, I give her a big hug and we start to head back upstairs so she can go home. Just as we get to the top of the stairs, a cool blue light appears around Tam.

  I close my eyes and try to make it go away, but when I open them again, the blue light is still there. It glows all around her body, a pale blue aura that clings so close to her.

  “What is it?” she asks when she sees my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “What time is it?”

  “What?”

  “What time is it, check your phone.” She pulls out the phone and looks.

  “Eleven thirty.”

  “Exactly?”

  “What”

  “Is it exactly eleven thirty?”

  “Yes.” She hold up the phone for me to see. “What is wrong with you? I’m supposed to be the crazy one right now.”

  “Not like this,” I say. “You can’t compete with my kind of crazy.”

  “What?” she asks, and then her eyes go wide and she realizes what I mean. “Are you seeing something?”

  “Yeah,” I nod.

  She looks around expecting to see something, then she turns back, “On me?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Somebody put a hex on you.”

  14

  Thursday, January 24

  We spent the night on the phone after Tam got home, talking about what the hex could be and where it could have come from. Obviously, the biggest suspect is Sydney. She knows that Tam was aware of her hexing Dina, and since I managed to get away from Sydney’s house mostly unseen, she might not know that I was the one who stole her talisman. Maybe she’s getting back at Tam for that.

  And while I never said anything to Tam on the phone last night, I think we have to consider the idea that maybe this is Ryan. I hate that this is a thought in my head, and I haven’t had the nerve to say anything to Tam, but it’s possible. Ryan is one of the few people I know who has seen that hexes are real and they really do work. If he was pissed at Tam, or trying to win her back, or God knows what else, then maybe he clicked to some witchcraft websites and figured out how to put a hex together.

  For now, we’re going to have to sort out just what’s going on. I want to know what kind of hex this is, I want to know if it’s getting weaker or stronger, and I want to shut it down. Marlene’s not in any of my classes, and she’s on the opposite lunch this term, but we still see each other in the mornings before school. I basically run at her when I see her in the hallway.

  “I saw a hex last night,” I say, tilting my head toward the wall to tell her I want to huddle near the lockers so nobody can hear me. Her eyes go wide and she leans against my locker.

  “Who?” she asks.

  “Tam. It happened in front of me, like someone turned on a light. One moment she was Tam and the next she was blue.”

  “Tam?” Marlene looked worried. “Why would anyone?”

  “We don’t know, but we have to figure it out.”

  “You said it’s blue? You think that means we’re dealing with a different sort of spell than the one Sydney cast on Dina?”

  “Yeah. It’s not just a different colour. The one on Dina was all around her, it was an aura that reached out and affected things. This one on Tam is tight against her skin. It doesn’t jiggle or move like the other one did either. Hopefully that means the emotions that power the hex are really weak.”

  We’re actually starting to feel hopeful that this hex will go away on its own, when Tam comes into the hallway, and to my eyes, she’s still blue. Marlene sees her, then looks at me, and I shake my head to say ‘nope, still there.’

  When Tam gets to the lockers she looks to me. “Well?”

  “Still blue.”

  “Crap.”

  “Did anything happen? Blow out any fuses, stub your toe, hurt yourself?” I ask, wanting to know if the hex had any impact on Tam’s life this morning.

  “No, it was a typical morning. Better than average, even.”

  “Ohh,” Marlene says, “did your family win the lottery or something? Maybe this isn’t a hex, maybe it’s a charm.”

  “I just meant I didn’t feel crappy when I woke up,” Tam says. “I am not usually a morning person.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Tam looks back to me. “Do I have any tentacles? Two heads? Angry ghosts swirling behind me?”

  “Nothing. You’re just you, but blue. Like Avatar.”

  “So I look like a Smurf to you?”

  “Kinda, but paler. A pastel Smurf.”

  The bell rings for first period. We head our separate ways. We won’t see Marlene again until after school, but Tam and I will be reunited in French class in a little over an hour. Hopefully the hex won’t do anything to her in that time.

  After French class we’re eating lunch in the hallway when Tam says what she’s been thinking all day. “We should just get in Sydney’s face. We know it was her.”

  “Don’t know for sure.”

  “Come on. You’re like this magical seer person, and in your entire life you saw one hex before this, and it was cast by her. Who else would it be?”

  I’ve been avoiding it, but I decide to just say it. “You did just dump a guy who knows that magic is real.”

  “Ryan?” she says dramatically, “you know he’s like the nicest guy in the world, right? Even when I broke up with him he was trying to make sure I felt OK. Trust me, there’s no secret angry warlock inside Ryan.”

  “I know,” I say. “I still think you guys were awesome together. I’m just saying that there are people with motive to want to hex you, and Sydney’s one…”

  “And you think Ryan’s one too.”

  It’s not that I think Ryan’s some kind of monster but we can’t ignore the timing. “I’m just trying to put all the suspects out there.”

  Tam angrily flails her hands when she talks, almost hitting me with her ham sandwich. “Well thank you, Detective Vefreet.” She pauses to take a bite. “What should we do?”

  I’m not sure how to answer. I nibble on a carrot stick. “I guess going after Sydney would be a good first step.”

  We walk through the cafeteria, but there’s no sign of Sydney, or of her ex-boyfriend Wayne. We see Dina Jennings taping posters to a wall and decide to head over.

  “Hey, Miz Prez,” I say to get her attention.

  Dina won the council presidency over Wayne in the election, and has been all over the school since classes came back for the second term talking about events, hanging up posters and generally trying to promote school spirit. There’s a Valentine’s Day dance in a couple weeks, and Dina is hanging up hand-painted posters that the council made to advertise ticket sales. Thankfully, she’s alone, since we don’t really want anyone else to hear our crazy talk about magic and Tam turning blue.

  “How are you doing?” Dina says when she sees us. “You coming to the dance?”

  I feel myself blush a little and know that I must look awkward and stupid since my shoulders are slumping at the very mention of having a dating life. “Nuh-uh. No Valentine for me.”

  She shakes her head. “If you’d stand up straight and maybe pull your hair off your face I’m sure some sophomore boy would ask you,” she says, and I know she’s trying to help even though her advice sound more like scolding me. “And you have a guy, right?” she asks Tam.

  “Not anymore,” says Tam. “I, um... dumped him.”

  “That big basketball guy? He seemed nice. That’s too bad. But hey, buy a couple tickets to the dance and start something new! Guys like it when girls ask them.” Dina gives a smile that seems a little forced, but Tam doesn’t go for the sales pitch.

 
“No thanks. Not feeling Valentiney today.”

  “Because of the break-up?”

  “Because of,” she tilts her head toward me, “what she can see.”

  Dina’s smile drops and she steps a little closer. “Another curse?”

  “Hex.”

  “Is it me?” Dina looks down at herself, and pats her hands against her sweater as if she thinks she can feel the aura already.

  “No, you’re fine,” I say.

  “It’s on me,” Tam says.

  “We think it’s Sydney again. She knows Tam helped break the spell on you. Plus Tam got her suspended from school.”

  Dina shakes her head. “Of course it’s Sydney. The little witch. After I found what she did to me I made sure everybody cut her out of the social world. She’s like, ostracized. Like an exile or a freshman. Maybe she’s pissed.”

  “Tell me about it,” Tam says. “If she was willing to try and kill you because you flirted with Wayne imagine what she’ll do to me for getting her suspended for fighting. Plus she knows someone broke into her bedroom to steal the talisman she made.”

  “Shhh,” Dina says. “Quiet with all that Wayne stuff. I’m with Ahmed now.” Ahmed is a big guy, a receiver on the football team. People who watch the games say he’s faster than everyone else, and lots of girls are into that, I guess. I personally don’t understand the appeal of football. You sit outside in freezing weather and watch some guys line up to hit each other and then one guy throws a ball, which they usually don’t catch. But Dina’s all about promoting school sports, so she’s at every game, and I guess she just had to get the team’s best player for her big Valentines date.