The Fairytale Curse (Magic's Return Book 1) (8 page)

I hesitated. Should I take it outside and sneak it into the garden?

“You coming, Vi?” my lab partner called from the door.

Hastily I shielded the frog from view with my body, but she was already turning away.
Sorry, little guy
. It was too risky. I didn’t want anyone catching me with him. If someone saw him here they’d probably assume he’d escaped from a biology class. That mightn’t end well for the frog, but what could I do? I hurried after her, leaving the frog to his fate.

Of all the days to have double English, it had to be today—the one day in a fortnight of timetabling. Last period saw us back in Mrs Harcourt’s class for more interminable reading. Fairies had never been so dull. If Mrs Harcourt was trying to instil a lifelong hatred of Shakespeare in her class she was doing a fantastic job.

I knew I was in trouble the minute we opened our copies of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
and her eyes fell on me.

“This time I think we shall hear from Violet as Helena, and you can read Hermia, Crystal.”

“But they’ve got laryngitis, miss,” said some helpful soul.

“I don’t think so. It’s time to stop this stupidity, girls. Isn’t one detention enough for you?”

CJ stared at her desk. I looked at Mrs Harcourt, trying to appear innocent, but she was in no mood to be fooled.

“Begin reading, please, Violet.”

I looked down at my book, but said nothing. The room was still, as everyone waited for the explosion. Watching someone else get into trouble is always entertaining.

Mrs Harcourt slammed her book down on her desk, making everyone jump. “Right! I’ve had enough. You can take yourself off to the principal and explain this stupid prank to her.”

I stood, my chair shrieking across the wooden floor, and walked down the aisle between the desks. Just as I passed, that moron Rob Burke stuck his foot out and I tripped and staggered, nearly ending up flat on my face.

“You jerk!”

Oh, no! I clapped my hand to my mouth, but it was too late. The whole class was staring straight at me, and they all saw two green drops fly out and turn into two little frogs sitting all innocent on Rob’s desk.

Rob, who’d been swinging his chair on its two back legs, nearly fell off in his scramble to get away. There were squeals of horror from every girl in the immediate vicinity.

“Miss!” Rob’s voice was hoarse with shock. “Vi’s got
frogs
in her mouth.”

The screaming rose to new heights.

“Ewww, gross!”

“That’s disgusting!”

Half the class were scrambling onto their chairs, craning their necks to see the frogs. Mrs Harcourt yelled for silence but no one was listening.

One of the frogs hopped onto the next desk, which happened to be Julie Lee’s. That quiet little Chinese girl, who rarely spoke above a whisper, let out the loudest scream I’ve ever heard—and that was it. The room descended into complete chaos.

Three boys leapt up to try to catch the frogs. Every girl in the room—including CJ—was either standing on a chair squealing, or pushing towards the door. I stood in the middle of it all and glared at Rob Burke. Jerk face. This was all his fault.

One poor frog, probably terrified out of its froggy wits, hopped my way, trying to evade the frog hunters, whose numbers had grown. One of the more enthusiastic hunters ploughed straight into me and sent me flying.

“Watch what you’re bloody doing!” I snarled, sprawled among the overturned furniture.

Oh, dammit. When would I learn? Three more frogs and a dirty big toad joined the mayhem. I should have just stayed in bed this morning. How could this day get any worse?

Silly question. As soon as I looked up I knew how. At least three iPhones were trained on me, capturing every last damned frog that spewed out of my mouth, ready to be uploaded to someone’s YouTube channel.

“Vi! Are you all right?”

CJ was down off her chair, pushing her way through to me. Her sisterly concern was touching, but OMG did she have to pick that moment? Couldn’t she see people were recording this whole disaster?

I lunged for her hand.

“Shut
up
,” I yelled, but it was too late.

Rob Jerk-Face Burke scrabbled on the floor at her feet, and came up with a look of mingled awe and greed on his face.

“Look at this!” He held something sparkly up to the class. “It’s a diamond!”

The stampede to the door reversed itself, and thundered back our way. We backed up against the wall, ignored by our classmates while they pushed and shoved to be first to find a diamond. Some found frogs instead, and the crowd rippled and eddied around those spots like some great heaving screaming animal. Mrs Harcourt roared for silence the whole time, but no one paid the slightest attention until a deep male voice bellowed from the doorway.

“WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?”

It was the English head teacher, whose office was next door. He waded into the room, manhandling boys up off the floor, pushing bodies back into seats, until some semblance of order was restored. Then he stood at the front of the room with a face like thunder, letting the silence stretch to ominous lengths.

“I would expect a display like that from Year 9, perhaps, but not from Year 11. You are supposed to be setting the standards of behaviour for the rest of the school, not acting like a pack of wild animals. My
dog
is better behaved than you.”

No one laughed. No one dared.

“But, sir, there were frogs—” Jerk Face didn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.

“Silence!” Mr Ormond shot Jerk Face a glare so icy he was lucky not to get frostbite. “When I want to hear from you I will rattle the pig bucket. Mrs Harcourt, I assume I will be seeing some of these boys in my office shortly?”

Boys always got the blame. Of course, that was because ninety-nine per cent of the time they deserved it.

Mrs Harcourt gave me a chilly glare. It needed work; it was nowhere near the standard of the English head teacher’s. “Actually, Mr Ormond, it’s Violet and Crystal Reilly who are the troublemakers here.”

The toad hopped out from under her desk. All the girls in the front row squealed. Mr Ormond recoiled from the ugly thing.

“What is
that
doing in here?”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Violet about that,” said Mrs Harcourt. “I believe it belongs to her.”

A scream and a sudden relocation of students down the back of the room revealed three of the toad’s more attractive friends.

Mr Ormond turned that cold stare on me. “How many of these things are there?”

How should I know? I was too busy bashing elbows and knees on the furniture at the time to do a headcount. I returned his stare in silence.

“You boys!” He picked the two nearest. “Collect those poor creatures and take them outside before all this screaming bursts their eardrums. And
you
two—” CJ and I got the death stare. “You come with me.”

I caught Dad watching us in the rear vision mirror as we drove home. The car was deathly quiet: this was a new low for us. In all the schools we’d attended over the years, our parents had never been called to the school to discuss our behaviour before. That they’d both come surprised me: I knew how busy they’d been at work lately. Obviously Mr Ormond’s garbled story of frogs and mayhem had been sufficiently impressive to make them drop what they were doing and drive straight over.

In Mr Ormond’s office they’d seemed inclined to brush it off as some kind of acting out. As if I always threw frogs around when I was angry at having to start over at a new school.

“The girls were very reluctant to leave Townsville,” Mum had said, leaning forward with an earnest look on her face, as if to take Mr Ormond into her confidence. “They were both so happy there, it was a bit of a wrench for them. I think Violet in particular was hoping to finish her schooling there.”

I’d stared at the floor, angry that they were discussing us as if we weren’t even in the room.

Mr Ormond’s gaze rested thoughtfully on me for a moment. “I can certainly understand the difficulties the girls have faced, and continue to face, due to the peripatetic nature of your work. You say this is their fourth high school?”

Mum nodded.

“Nevertheless, much as I might sympathise with their feelings, Violet’s way of showing them is quite unacceptable. Bringing frogs to school and causing such disruption in the classroom will not be tolerated.”

I could tell he hadn’t believed Mrs Harcourt’s story that the frogs had actually come out of my mouth. He was probably a very good teacher, but he had no imagination. Sadly, that didn’t stop him from laying the whole story before our parents anyway.

Mum’s face paled at the mention of frogs bursting from my mouth. She and Dad exchanged a worried glance, which Mr Ormond caught.

“But as you can see,” he said, smiling to reassure them that he didn’t believe any such nonsense, “she’s not spitting frogs out any more. I suppose she had them in her pocket all along, and some of the eyewitnesses have become a little excitable. Isn’t that right, Violet?”

“Yes, sir.”

The four of us were crammed into his small office, arrayed in a tight semi-circle in front of his desk. My knee pressed up against CJ’s.

“Maybe you should suspend us, sir,” I suggested.

He frowned. “This is not a joke, Violet. I’m sure, once your parents take you home and you have time to think about your behaviour, such extreme measures won’t be necessary.”

Well, it was worth a try.

Then he’d shaken hands with Mum and Dad and sent us on our way. The last bell rang as the interview finished, and we got swept along in the usual tide of kids rushing to leave school.

Only today the tide seemed to swirl around us full of whispers and pointing fingers. Word had spread already.

“Give us a diamond, CJ!” yelled one boy.

Funnily enough, no one seemed to want a frog. I heard the word enough, though, along with
disgusting
and
gross
and
freak
. Never had so many people looked at me with such revulsion. I stuck close to Dad and tried to ignore them all, but by the time we got to the car I was almost in tears.

I’d expected the lecture to start as soon as the engine did, but neither of them said a word all the way home. Guess they were saving it up.

We trooped in from the garage and Dad pointed at the couch in the family room. “Sit.”

We did, though I made sure to sit close. CJ’s leg was warm against mine. Mum sat in an armchair, but Dad remained standing, leaning back against the kitchen bench with his arms folded. If he was going to rant I wished he’d just get it over with. The suspense was killing me.

“Okay, young ladies. I want the truth now.”

No, you don’t, Dad. You really, really don’t
. Now I knew we were in for it. Last time he’d called us young ladies we’d been grounded for a month and scrubbing the shower with a toothbrush.

“And don’t bother looking at each other like that, trying to get your stories straight. I’m perfectly happy to interview you separately if that’s what it takes.”

“You don’t have to do that.” Immediately I tried to look cooperative, but I must have overdone it.

He looked at Mum and she nodded. “Violet, come with me while Dad talks to Crystal.”

“No! Can’t I stay? I won’t say a word.”

Mum’s gaze hardened. She did a death stare even better than Mr Ormond. “Get up.”

I sighed and stood up. I guess trying to keep it from them was a pretty forlorn hope anyway. She crooked her finger at me and I walked to the door with her.

“Before you go,” Dad said, “answer me one question. Where did you get the frogs?”

I hesitated.

He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Well?”

Fine. If you really want to know
. We needed help. If we were going to fly to Las Vegas to see an illusionist, we’d need Mum and Dad on board with the idea. “Out of my mouth.”

We all stared at the three little green frogs on the carpet. They stared back, blinking their bulbous orange eyes as if surprised to find themselves the centre of so much attention. Mum drew her breath in sharply as they appeared, but Dad didn’t bat an eyelid.

“And the diamonds, CJ? The same place, I suppose?”

“Yep.” She caught the diamond as it fell and held it out for his inspection.

He sighed heavily and sat at the table, waving me back toward the couch. “Fine. You can sit down again. We don’t really want to be overrun with frogs. Being together suppresses the effect, I take it?”

I nodded and resumed my seat. How had he figured that one out so fast? And why was he so calm? My heart was pounding, but he seemed to be lost in thought, gazing off into space while his fingers tapped an absent rhythm on the table top.

“You’re taking this better than I thought you would,” I said.

Mum sighed. “It wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

“It wasn’t?” CJ stared open-mouthed. “Do you know what caused it? How do we get rid of it?”

“The Hendrix counter, I think,” Dad said to Mum. They both ignored CJ’s questions.

She nodded and left the room. Okay, this was getting weird—weirder still when she returned a moment later with a box no bigger than a paperback. It had a couple of dials on the side, but the main feature was a clear glass tube mounted on the front of the box. She knelt on the carpet and held it over the frogs. One hopped away but the other two sat patiently. As she adjusted the dials the glass tube began to glow a soft pink.

Then she brought the box to us.

“What is that thing?” CJ asked.

“A Hendrix counter.”

The tube flushed bright red as she held it out to CJ.

“For counting Hendrixes?” I joked, uneasy now. What was going on?

I edged away. I didn’t want that thing anywhere near me.

“Sit still,” Mum said. “There’s nothing to be scared of.”

“I’m not scared,” I said at once, but as the tube began to glow red that wasn’t exactly true. “What are you
doing
?”

Mum looked at me calmly. “It’s called a Hendrix counter because it was invented by a man named Hendrix. It measures the presence and intensity of aether, the raw stuff of magic.”