Spells Like Teen Spirit Read online

  “Exactly,” Janis said. “There’s no way that having Jump the Shark play is going to make this dance any worse than it is already destined to be. Besides, you’ve seen those dudes—no matter what magic they’ve got going on behind the scenes, they still present as a bunch of soup-hoarding homebodies. By the time the dance rolls around, you and Cassandra will have mad reinforcements—Ji-A, Amirah, Ruby, and Mallory will be here tomorrow.”

  Janis had a point. So far, the band seemed minimally threatening, and that was just with Cassandra and me, and tomorrow night, we’d triple our ranks. We’d be six on four. As I stood there, I took a deep breath, and two images flitted through my mind: First, Circe’s eyes at the hotel, black with contacts to disguise them, and a constant stream of tears and mascara. I’d just assumed that the tears were because the contacts hurt, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe it was because she was face to face with her daughter for the first time in more than ten years.

  And then, the look on Cassandra’s face, in the backseat of Janis’s car, when I’d found Cybill’s name tag in the driveway. Cassandra wanted, desperately, to find her mother, and if spelling a bunch of my classmates was going to help her do it, then I was willing. The problem was I didn’t know how.

  I hadn’t ever done a persuasion spell before, which meant that even after I found out what the ingredients were, I’d need to find them. I could use my kinesis at will, but Sitter spells required an incantation and, the first time you cast it, a specific set of ritual objects that ranged from throwaway and quotidian to valuable and esoteric. The spell I needed was probably in one of Brian’s books, but I didn’t have time for that. So I pulled out my phone. It was almost four in Kansas, which meant it was almost five in New York, and if I hurried, I could catch Amirah before she went to her private boxing lesson with a coach that, FYI, strongly resembled a young Keanu Reeves.

  Hey, I wrote, do you know any persuasion spells off the top of your head? Asking for a friend.

  Fortunately for me, except for the three times a week when she spent an hour getting sweaty with Olivier, Amirah was never not on her phone, and my text had barely gone through before I got a response.

  How many people is UR FRIEND trying to persuade? she wrote.

  Eleven, I said. Collective IQ around nineteen.

  Off the top of my head, no, she wrote, but I do know populariskinesis, where you can manipulate popularity to make something popular. Then people will just persuade themselves.

  Sounds good, I wrote. Hit me.

  Friendship bracelet, rose quartz, a copy of Twilight, and pumpkin-spice something, she wrote. A latte works best, but cookies or, like, a candle will do in a pinch.

  Got it, I wrote. I OWE YOU. Punch Olivier in the face for me.

  She responded with the knockout and then the heart-eyes emoji.

  I looked up from my phone and at Janis. “I can do it,” I said. “But I need time. How long do you think that meeting will last?”

  “I have no idea,” Janis said. “Maybe fifteen more minutes?”

  I shook my head. “I need more time than that,” I said. “You’re going to have to go in there and stall them. Don’t let the meeting end until I come back.”

  “Got it,” Janis said. “I mean, if there is anything that this school has taught me, it’s how to waste someone else’s time.” With that, she turned and headed back into the library. Then I ran for my locker.

  I wasn’t one of those girls who carried around crystals, like “This one’s for love, and this one’s for protection, and this one’s for inner peace.” I was one of those girls who carried around crystals like “This one’s to charm goldfish, this one’s to control hail,” and, in this case, “this one’s to manipulate popularity.” I fumbled with the lock and then threw my locker door open, grabbed my makeup bag, and started to rummage through it. I’d dropped it the week before and broken my blush into dust, so everything was coated with a fine film of rose gold. I had several almost-empty tubes of lip gloss, a concealer without a cap, two black eyeliners—pencil and felt tip—and obsidian, tiger’s-eye, jade, a blue lace agate, a sunstone, and crap! Where the heck was my rose quartz? I was about to scream when I remembered I’d taken it out the week before when we’d tried a spell to cure Cassandra of her gum addiction, and I finally found it floating around solo in the bottom of my backpack.

  So, 25 percent of the ingredients down, 75 percent still to go. A copy of Twilight would be easy, especially since the library stocked at least thirty of them, the result of an assistant librarian who wore fangs in her off-hours and who often had on a “Team Edward” T-shirt. I’d pick that up last, but where was I going to get a friendship bracelet? Someplace with a bunch of girls, obviously.

  I turned and headed to the gym. Aside from people voting Republican and caring about cars, I couldn’t think of anything I understood less than sports, especially because playing a sport seemed to involve spending a lot of extra time at school, but now, when I threw open the gym door, I hit the jackpot: the girls’ basketball team was practicing.

  Because they spent so much time traveling on buses and overnighting for tournaments, girls’ teams shed friendship bracelets like snakes shed scales, and sure enough, I spotted two girls who had multicolored thread at least halfway up their forearms. One was a senior who was at least a head taller than me and could probably flick me out of the way with her fingernail, but one was a freshman I recognized from the time when she’d kindly tried, and failed, to explain “traveling” to me in gym. As she ran by me sweating, I quickly called out to her, “Hey, Michelle!”

  She stopped and gave me a puzzled look. It clearly took her a minute to place me as the junior who was always getting in trouble for not complying with the regulation uniform in her freshman-year gym class. “Hey, Esme,” she said, wiping her sweaty brow with the back of her hand, the very hand that wore the bracelets that I was about to try to buy off her. “What’s up?”

  “This is going to sound super weird, I know,” I said, “but can I buy one of your friendship bracelets?”

  Her eyebrows rose in surprise. “Sure, I guess,” she said. “I’ve never sold them before, but I don’t see why not.” She looked back at her teammates, who were all still running and ball-bouncing around her. “Can we talk about this later, though? If you DM me what style you want, I can tell you what colors I have.”

  I shook my head. “Uh, that’s the weird part,” I said. “See, I need one right now. It doesn’t matter what color.”

  “You want to buy one of the friendship bracelets that I’ve been wearing?” she asked, appropriately looking at me like I’d just offered to buy her used Kleenex. I nodded vehemently.

  “It’s for a project I need to turn in in fifteen minutes,” I said.

  “You need a used friendship bracelet for a project? For what class?”

  “Performance art,” I said, which was a class that Spring River most definitely did not offer, but I doubted that Michelle knew that. The basketball coach blew her whistle. “Salinger!” she yelled. “Stop loafing.”

  “Listen, I’ll pay you. Twenty bucks.” I was pleading now.

  “For real?” she asked, and I nodded, whipping out my phone.

  “I can Venmo you right now.”

  “Okaaaayyy,” she said. Balancing the basketball on a hip with one hand, she held her other wrist up to her mouth, grabbed a friendship bracelet with her teeth, and ripped it off. Then she held it out to me. “It’s sweaty,” she said, “and spitty. But that’ll be twenty bucks.”

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching out to take it from her. It was, as promised, sweaty and spitty, and it also didn’t smell all that great either. She had just enough time to tell me her username before the coach blasted her whistle again and threatened her with sprints. I was twenty dollars down, but now 75 percent toward persuasion. The clock was ticking, so I stuffed Michelle’s bracelet
into my pocket and raced back out into the hall. There were three vending machines at Spring River High, one on each floor. I passed by the ones on the first and second floors several times a day, and I knew their contents by heart.

  But I hadn’t been on the third floor in years, and half of those classrooms were barely even used. Maybe, just maybe, the vending machine up there hadn’t been restocked since the fall. I took the stairs two at a time, and then when I got to the third floor, it felt like I’d entered into some sort of weird Twilight Zone high school. The sound of my steps echoed off the lockers as I ran down the hall, and the lights flickered like I was in an asylum for the cinematically insane. I ran almost the whole way down the hallway before realizing that I was going the wrong way, and by the time I did locate the vending machine, clear on the other side of the school, I was out of breath and as sweaty as Michelle’s friendship bracelet.

  I made a note to self to remember this particular vending machine on days when the lunch options were particularly dire, because it was pretty well stocked. There were Goldfish crackers, pretzel chips, mini Oreos, and Skittles, but the closest it had to pumpkin-spice anything was a gingerbread man, left from December, no doubt because his head had snapped off and was now trapped in the package down by his feet. I dug out a couple of bills and bought the G-man anyway. As I raced back down the stairs, my thoughts volleyed back and forth in my head: the gingerbread man would totally work; the gingerbread man would never work. Gingerbread and pumpkin spice were from two different seasons. They weren’t even on the menu at the same time, and while one was beloved, one was merely tolerated, even if their ingredients were basically the same.

  My feet, almost of their own accord, were heading to the gym. I pulled open the door again and kept my gaze down on the painted wood floor so that I wouldn’t make eye contact with Michelle Salinger, who’d no doubt already told her teammates about her super-weird interaction with that one junior from her gym class. And honestly, I didn’t blame her. It was weird. I was acting weird, and I was about to act weirder as I headed straight to the locker room. The guys’ locker room.

  As the athletic director and football coach, Brian had an office at the back of the guys’ locker room. There was another way to get there, but it required going outside and taking the long way around, and I didn’t have time for the long way right now. I braced myself, then pushed through the door and went for it. “Girl coming through!” I yelled as I headed toward Brian’s office, holding my hands up around my eyes like blinders. “Total emergency! I’m not trying to see anything!” I heard some shouts and protests, but I let them go in one ear and out the other, not paying enough attention for any of the voices to register an identity. I was operating on the same principle as little kids when they close their eyes: I can’t see you; you can’t see me.

  Thankfully, Brian was in his office, sitting at his laptop with another adult, deep in intense discussion. I couldn’t see the screen, but as soon as I entered the office, I knew it was something football, by the sounds. They both looked up at me sharply, the assistant coach registering much more confusion than Brian.

  “Brian—uh, I mean, Coach Davis,” I said, “I need to speak to you in private, right now. It’s an emergency.”

  “Did you walk through the locker room to get here?” the assistant coach asked. “There are people changing in there right now!”

  “Gender is a construct,” I said, before turning to Brian and trying to send him a message with my eyes. “It’s a family emergency.”

  He definitely got my vibe. “Uh, yes, of course,” he said, turning to his coworker. “Josh, can you give us a minute? Miss Pearl’s father and mother are close friends.”

  Josh, whoever he was, had gone from startled to concerned, and he stood up quickly. “Sure thing, Coach,” he said. “I need to track a new shipment of balls anyway. I’ll check in with you later.” Brian nodded as Josh gathered his things and left.

  “What’s going on, Esme?” Brian said as soon as we were alone. “Your entrance no doubt raised some eyebrows.”

  “I didn’t see anything,” I said. “I made sure of that.” I threw the gingerbread man onto his desk.

  “Oh, how nice,” Brian said. “You brought me a snack.”

  “No,” I said. “Don’t eat it! It’s for a spell, but first I need you to turn it into a pumpkin-spice latte.”

  “You need me to do what?”

  “Like you did at the Summit,” I said, “when you made all those cheap, cheesy decorations turn into a really classy après-ski theme.” When begging, it never hurt to throw on a little flattery.

  “I do remember that,” he said. “Especially as you and Cassandra keep reminding me of it whenever you need anything. But why do you need me to turn this gingerbread man into a pumpkin-spice latte? Can’t you wait until fall just like everyone else?”

  “Brian, you know I only drink iced coffee, and unsweetened!” I said. “I need to do a spell, right now, and I need something pumpkin spice. It doesn’t have to be a latte, if that’s too hard; just make it a muffin or something.”

  Brian looked at me and nodded, then took out his phone and typed something into it. “Okay, so, pumpkin spice,” he said, looking at me. “That means you’re either trying to do popularis or gratiskinesis.”

  “What’s gratiskinesis?” I asked, unintentionally taking the bait.

  “A spell to host Thanksgiving dinner,” he said, putting his phone into his pocket.

  “What, do you have an app on there or something?” I asked.

  “Counsel only,” he said, avoiding my question and answering it at the same time. “So, since it’s February and I know you prefer food that comes in plastic, or at least cardboard, I will assume that you are casting populariskinesis.” He took my silence as assent. Then he sat down at his desk. “Esme, I never would have thought you cared about being popular,” he said, flexing his fingers into that little triangle-house shape. “Is this about the Valentine’s Day dance? Are you trying to get a date?”

  I groaned. “Oh, jeez, Brian,” I moaned. “I would rather barbecue my own foot than be popular at this school. It’s Sitter related. The only way we’re going to get Jump the Shark out of—”

  “Wait, who is Jump the Shark?”

  “The band we were staking out,” I said.

  “I thought they were called something else?”

  “They were,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter what their name is. What does matter is that they literally never leave their house unless they have a gig, so with the Valentine’s Day dance coming up…”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” he said. “You want to bring a bunch of suspected Red Magicians into this school? That’s a dangerous operation, and we would need to get the Synod’s sign-off—”

  “Brian,” I started as seriously as I could, “you know there’s no real Synod right now, so where would we even start? And besides, the only thing that following the rules has ever gotten the three of us is almost killed.” I paused, and I could tell from the look on his face that he was actually hearing me out. “Please, just trust me. Change the freakin’ gingerbread man, and I promise that we will go over all these details.”

  Brian gave me one last look, then raised his palm over the package and muttered an incantation, and just like that, a steaming latte was in the gingerbread man’s place, pumpkin spice wafting into the air. “Thanks, B.,” I said, swooping down to grab it, and then turning toward the door.

  “Esme,” Brian hissed after me, “don’t spill it, or crumbled cookie will fall out!”

  I nodded. Then, holding the cup up to help shield my eyes, I darted back into the locker room.

  “Emergency! Girl coming through with a hot beverage,” I yelled.

  “I’m reporting you!” a male voice yelled after me.

  “Title nine!” I yelled back.

  “That doesn�
��t mean you get to come into our locker room,” he responded.

  “Have you read it?” I shouted back, then pushed through the door into the hallway without waiting for a response.

  Holding the latte carefully, I speed walked back to the library, and through the doors just in time to hear Janis say “But banning cell phones at the door would really encourage people to live in the moment.”

  “No one wants to live in the moment,” snapped someone, probably Karen, “because then they’d realized that they got all dressed up to hang out in the gym.” I snorted with a laugh, almost spilling the mirage latte, because I couldn’t have spoken truer words myself.

  “What if we put it to a vote?” Janis said.

  “Oh my God,” the same girl’s voice screeched. “Is this a prank? Where’s the camera? What are you doing here?”

  I dipped through the young adult section, grabbed a copy of Twilight from the thirty that were still on the shelf—a block of black easily visible half a stack away—and then headed to where Janis was doing her valiant best to stall the dance committee.

  “Oh my God,” Karen said as soon as she saw me. “You’re back now too? Please tell me that you’re only here to retrieve your friend.” She paused, and sniffed. “Wait, is that a PSL? How did you get a pumpkin-spice latte in February?”

  I just smiled and set it down on the table. “Janis, you should leave now,” I said, and she nodded quickly, then got up and started to run out of the library. The rest of the committee sat still, confusedly watching me as I lined up the latte, rose quartz, friendship bracelet, and the copy of Twilight.

  “What are you doing? This isn’t a yard sale,” Karen snapped. Or maybe it was Kendra? Now I couldn’t keep them straight, but I looked up, held my hands in the air, and addressed the committee as I chanted, “Populariskinesis, populariskinesis, populariskinesis.” When I was done, I waited, hopeful. I had no idea if the spell had worked, since everyone still looked exactly the same.