The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) (3 page)

“Hi again,” said a deep voice.

It was Zac.

“Oh, hi.” I hadn’t realised his locker was so close. I’d never seen him use it before. It was one of the lower ones, and he had to crouch down, his long fringe falling forward over his eyes as he extracted something from its depths with great care. He looked so cute. Why had I ever thought he needed a haircut?

The thing seemed to have gotten stuck. “You need a hand there?”

“No, I’m fine.”

He tugged, and something broke off and skittered across the concrete to finish up against my shoe. I picked it up.

“What
is
that?”

In his hands was some kind of machine, roughly egg-shaped, with three small wheels. He tucked it under one arm and slammed his locker shut with the other.

He grinned, and the dimple peeped out again. “This? It’s my demented chicken.”

“Really?” I handed back the little piece of metal that had fallen off. His definition of “chicken” must be fairly fluid, even allowing for the “demented” part.

“It’s an automatic vacuum cleaner I’m building in robotics. You coming?” He strode off, and my legs just started following without my brain having any input at all. What happened to not making new friends? But he had such a cute butt.

Oh, well,
that
was a good reason for changing your mind. Well done, Vi.

He looked back and I felt my cheeks flush with heat. Hopefully he hadn’t caught me staring.

“Slow down,” I said. “Your legs are longer than mine.”

He waited for me, then matched his stride to mine.
See? He’s a nice guy. It’s not all about the looks.

“So tell me more about this vacuum cleaner. Why do you call it a demented chicken?”

“That was Sona’s idea. It sorts small objects out from dirt, but it’s still a bit wobbly. She says it looks like a chicken pecking up crumbs.”

“What sort of small objects are we talking? How big?”

He grinned, and my heart did a little flip.
Oh, for God’s sake, what are you, twelve? You’ve met cute guys before.

“Lego-sized. My little brother keeps complaining that every time Mum vacuums he loses another piece of Lego, so I said I’d invent a vacuum cleaner to fix the problem.”

“Has he tried not leaving them on the floor?”

“He’s six.”

“Fair enough. I guess the demented chicken is the way to go, then.”

“Anything’s better than stepping on bits of Lego in your bare feet.”

“Ouch.” I winced in sympathy. We’d never had Lego at home, being more of a Barbie household, but I’d experienced that particular treat at other people’s places. Not exactly fond memories. “Remind me not to take my shoes off at your place.”

Oh, God, had I really just said that? I hardly knew the guy. Now he was going to think I wanted him to invite me over. We were walking past the canteen. Maybe I should suddenly remember I had to buy some lunch. The urge to run away nearly overwhelmed me. That telltale warmth flooded my cheeks again. Great. The truly
wonderful
thing about being so fair-skinned was that there was no hiding it when you blushed.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll make sure to deploy the chicken before you arrive.”

I could hardly look at him, but there was warmth in those dark brown eyes.

“Scout’s honour,” he added, holding up his free hand as if taking an oath.

There was something suspicious about that grin now.

“Were you ever a Boy Scout?”

“Do we really have to go into the details?”

I laughed. I liked a guy with a sense of humour. “You weren’t, were you?”

“Maybe not. But I bet I would have made a great one. All that knot-tying and cookie-selling and …”

“And?”

“And … whatever else they do. Okay, so I don’t know much about it.”

“I believe they go camping.” We left the dazzling sunshine of the playground and entered D block. A large tropical-looking garden sprawled in the centre of the courtyard, basking in the spring sunshine. There was an almost identical one in B block, which had caused some confusion in my first couple of days last week. “And hiking.”

Someone was hanging over the railing of the upper floor, overlooking the courtyard. All the buildings were like this, with open-air walkways outside the classrooms instead of enclosed hallways. That someone began to wave madly when she caught sight of us. Sona.

“Hey, you brought her!” she called to Zac. “That’s great!”

We started to climb the stairs, our footsteps echoing in the empty stairwell. “Is she always so …?”

“Enthusiastic? Well, she
is
the only girl in the club, and some of the guys are … how shall I put this? Great at robotics, not so great at conversation. And Sona does like to have a chat.”

“Yeah, I’d noticed that.”

“You do like robotics, don’t you? You’re not just coming because she pressured you?”

With those dark eyes full of concern, it suddenly seemed impossible to tell him that I’d only planned to come to check it out. As we reached the classroom I reassured him that I loved robotics.

“In that case, welcome to the robotics club.” He took my hand in a firm handshake, then his solemn expression dissolved into a grin. That dimple peeped out again.

Sona threw an arm around my shoulders. “Come on in and meet the gang.”

I went with her, my hand still tingling from Zac’s touch.

I got out the lasagne at six. Mum and Dad weren’t home but I couldn’t wait any longer. I was starving.

“Dad makes the world’s best lasagne,” CJ said.

I would have agreed, but I was too busy shovelling it into my face to talk.

“Did you leave some for Mum and Dad?” she asked.

I wiped my mouth. “If you wanted to play Mother, you could have defrosted and served it yourself, instead of lying on the lounge watching TV. It’s a bit late to be concerned when you’ve already eaten half of it.”

She waved her hand. “Dad usually takes care of it.”

“Yeah, it must be so nice to be you, always being waited on.”

She considered me for a moment, dark head tipped to one side, then sighed. “You always get like this when we move. The minute I open my mouth you jump straight down my throat. Could you
please
try to remember that moving wasn’t my idea?”

“I do
not
always get like this.” Even to me, that sounded defensive. “And I’m not
like
anything.”

“Starting over sucks. I get that. You can always hang out with me and my friends if you get stuck.”

I bit back a nasty comment about her taste in friends. She was trying to be nice. “Thanks.”

“So how did it go today?”

I shrugged. “My physics teacher doesn’t know his arse from his ankle, but otherwise it was all right. I joined the robotics club at lunch.”

“Full of boys with no social skills?”

“Actually there’s one girl. Sona. She sat next to me on the bus. She seems okay.”

“The Indian girl with the beautiful hair?”

Trust CJ to notice that. My sister wasn’t
at all
obsessed with personal appearance.

“Yeah.”

“Her plait is so long she was actually sitting on it!” Her eyes filled with a brief longing. “Ashleigh says she’s just a brainiac, though.”

I bristled on my new friend’s behalf. “Oh, well, if
Ashleigh
says! Guess I’d better dump her then, if Little Miss Forked Tongue doesn’t approve.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be so prickly. I didn’t say I believed her.” She pushed her empty plate away and leaned back with a satisfied sigh. “What are you going to wear to the party tomorrow night?”

“The one the school captain’s throwing? John or James or whatever his name is?”

“Josh. Josh Johnson.”

Uh-oh. Her voice had that same sickly sweetness as Ashleigh’s had when she said his name.

“Who said I’m going? The guy’s a jerk. Why would you want to go to his party?”

“Because it’s a
party
? You know, somewhere you go to have
fun
? And you need to get out and meet people so you can stop being so bitter and twisted. I heard he’s going to have a keg.”

“Yeah, right. As if his parents would let him have a keg when the party’s going to be full of under-eighteens.”

She grinned. “That’s the best part. His parents are in Europe. Anyway, who says he’s a jerk?”

I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t you see him this morning, capering round that statue like a caveman who’s just discovered fire?”

There was a large, vaguely humanoid but very ugly statue in front of the admin block. It had been donated by a past Year 12 as a farewell present to the school. Obviously they’d all hated their time at school and the statue was their idea of revenge. This morning we arrived to discover the current Year 12 had wrapped the thing in toilet paper and sprayed it with whipped cream as part of their muck-up week celebrations. It looked like a giant misshapen mummy and smelled as rank as you’d expect from the combination of dairy and hot sun.

Josh and a group of his mates had been posing in front of it taking selfies and carrying on like three-year-olds. They couldn’t have been prouder of themselves if they’d invented a cure for cancer—instead of which they’d left a giant mess for a bunch of unfortunate Year 7s to clean up.

As we’d streamed in from the bus, the group had caught sight of CJ, in her extra short uniform. I swear she took the hems up when Mum wasn’t looking. They started whistling and shouting at her.

“Where’ve you been all my life, babe?” Josh called.

So original.

CJ had ignored him, but I could tell from the way she tossed her hair over her shoulder that she liked the attention.

“Don’t break my heart, gorgeous!” He clutched at his chest with great melodrama, while his friends whooped. “Come to my party on Saturday and I’ll show you a good time!”

Yep. Those pick-up lines definitely needed work. I guess a good-looking guy like him didn’t usually need to try too hard. He was your classic blonde-haired, blue-eyed surfer dude. There wouldn’t be too many girls knocking him back.

“Well,” CJ said now, “at least the caveman has good taste in women.”

“You mean because he likes you? What does that prove? Everyone that’s got a pulse likes you. Hell, I bet there are even dead people who like you.”

She snorted. “Gee, thanks. Just call me queen of the zombies. You make it sound like a crime to look good.”

“Please. Not the ‘it’s not my fault I’m gorgeous’ speech again.”

Tall. Gorgeous. Popular. Everything I wasn’t. Smart too. Not that I wasn’t smart. It was just that somehow she often seemed to get just one little mark more than me in assignments, though I worked just as hard. Scientific studies had proven that beautiful people were better liked than us plain Janes. I couldn’t help feeling that science was on to something there.

She stuck out her already full bottom lip. “Well, it’s not. I just happened to win the genetic lottery. Nothing to do with me.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

There was no point trying to persuade her that her charmed life really was extraordinary. She’d gotten the star treatment from everyone since the day we were born. To her, being the special one was just the normal state of existence.

“You know, you’re not exactly ugly, Vi. Lots of girls would kill for hair your colour. If you tried to talk about things that normal people are interested in once in a while, you’d have lots of friends.”

“I don’t need to be worshipped by the Ashleigh Redmonds of the world.” Who wanted a bunch of airheads following them around? “I have plenty of friends.”

“Oh, yeah? Like who?”

“Sona,” I said. “And there are heaps of nice guys in the robotics club.”

One in particular. She didn’t need to know about Zac yet, though. Maybe I’d imagined that look in his eyes when he’d smiled at me. Too soon to be sharing secrets with my twin.

“Right. Well, you have fun with the nerds in the robotics club.”

Whatever else she’d been about to say was cut off by the phone ringing. While she flounced off to answer it, I put the plates in the dishwasher then settled myself on the lounge to watch TV. Friday night was a night for unwinding, not studying.

CJ came back in and dropped into an armchair. “What are you watching?”

“Nothing. Just some quiz show.”

“That was Mum on the phone. She said they won’t be back until Sunday night.”

Maybe I could spend the whole weekend not studying too. “Did you ask her about the party?”

She threw me a pitying look. “Are you serious? Why would I ask her? They’re
away
, doofus. We can do what we like.”

I turned back to the TV. I was sick of arguing with CJ, but that didn’t feel right. It was one thing to slack off and not study when your parents were away. Sneaking off to a party you knew they wouldn’t approve of was a whole ’nother ball game, and guess who’d get the blame when they found out. Not perfect little CJ.

A newsbreak came on and CJ picked up a magazine with a bored sigh. They replayed the footage of the girl in the glass coffin.

“They’re still calling it the Sleeping Beauty case,” I said. “Dad would be so cranky.”

“Why?”

“Because Sleeping Beauty fell asleep for a hundred years in her own bed in a castle, surrounded by all her sleeping family and servants. Remember? And the hedge of thorns grew up to hide the castle? It was Snow White who fell into a death-like sleep after she ate the poisoned apple. The seven dwarves thought she was dead but they couldn’t bear to bury her, so they left her in a glass coffin in the woods, then the prince came by and kissed her awake.”

“And Dad knew the difference? I thought the only things that interested him were his gadgets.”

“Apparently not.”

The girl was still in her weird coma, and no one knew how or why she’d ended up in that coffin. Basically nothing new had happened, so they were just showing a couple of official-looking black cars arriving at the Three Sisters carpark and talking about the ongoing investigation.

A face appeared at a car window. Only a brief flash.

“Was that—?”

“What?” CJ looked up but they’d cut to another story.

“Nothing. Never mind.”