Cara Shultz - Spellcaster

“Watch it!” I gave her a dirty look, snapping my hand back and briefly wondering if she’d missed her intended target. I bet she had planned to impale my finger with her heel like a shish kebab. I wouldn’t put it past her.

“Where’s your boyfriend, Emma? Did he have a bad day? I mean, a worse day than usual. Since he’s wasting his time with you, I figure his days usually suck,” she cooed in a baby voice that dropped with false concern. Her fake tan had persisted through the winter—the girl looked like a grilled cheese sandwich in a push-up bra.

I usually try my best to ignore Kristin—going back at her only made things worse. The school’s resident rich bitch had had it in for me since the second I started school. She’d had a thing for Anthony, and it had been Kristin who had facilitated Anthony’s attack on me last December. Her little role in the ordeal had earned her a week’s suspension. I had thought (hoped?) that Anthony’s brutal treatment of her would soften her cruel streak—and it did, for a little while. But recently, she’d started up with me again. I guess somehow, in her overprivileged, spoiled little brain, she had managed to twist things around to the point of where it was my fault that she had gotten in trouble. That I was the reason Anthony was a psycho. In the past few weeks, her cutthroat behavior was worse than ever—and, of course, her sycophants followed suit. Her much unrequited crush on Brendan just fueled her attacks, even though he’d done everything short of doing an interview in the Vincent Academy Observer proclaiming how uninterested in her he was. I used to wonder why she hadn’t gotten expelled, but realized all too soon that her lax punishment coincided with the purchase of twenty new laptops for the library. Whatever daddy’s little girl wanted, she got—except for Brendan.

I continued ignoring Kristin as I followed Jenn and Cisco out of the museum—we’d decided to eat lunch in Fort Tryon Park since it was nice out—but she wouldn’t let up.

“So, the cops came, right? I guess hanging out with your low-class ass is finally rubbing off on him,” she snapped, her overly made-up-for-school-are-you-kidding-me-with-those-false-eyelashes eyes narrowing as she looked me up and down. And then we walked right past Kendall, one of Brendan’s discouragingly pretty, strawberry-blonde ex-flings. Oh, joy.

“So what’s the story with Brendan, Emma?” Kendall asked, lounging against the banister and crossing her legs—legs so long only the ground stopped them from going on forever. I ignored her and quickened my walk.

“I know how to make him feel better—better than you could, at least,” Kendall purred as I hurried past. “He had a lot of fun last time,” she called after me, Kristin joining in on her cackling as I tried to push the mental picture of Brendan kissing Kendall, holding her close as those mile-long legs wrapped around him—No!—out of my mind, but it was like an alien invaded my head and was forcing me to think of different scenarios with them. Unrealistic scenarios, too. No one is that bendy.

I kept my pace level and my head high, not wanting the Bitch Twins to see that they’d gotten to me. After what felt like an eternity, I finally met up with Jenn and Cisco where they had set up camp on a low stone wall that had dried enough from the previous night’s storm.

“You look pissed,” Cisco observed, unwrapping a massive pastrami sandwich.

“Kristin.” I just had to growl the one word, and both Jenn and Cisco wore identical expressions of sympathy as I pulled my sandwich out of my bag.

“If you make it through this year without punching that girl in the face, you owe me five bucks—or maybe even a pony,” Cisco said as I squirted a packet of mayo onto my turkey-and-cheese hero. I bit into the sandwich angrily, even though guilt, worry and plain old annoyance had vanquished my appetite.

“It will never stop amazing me how Kristin was in a few commercials as a kid, so now she thinks she’s better than everyone.” Jenn frowned, glancing over to where Kristin was lounging on a bench with Kendall, who effortlessly looked glamorous. Hell, even Kristin managed to look effortlessly chic.

“So, any word from Brendan?” Cisco asked, and I pulled my phone out of my sweatshirt pocket to check it for the billionth time that afternoon.

“Nothing.” I shook my head bitterly as a fresh new wave of guilt slammed into me. “So, Jenn, what’s up with Austin? You guys haven’t seemed…friendly…lately,” I said, changing the subject without any tact or grace. But Jenn’s on-and-off romance with the very enthusiastic junior Student Council rep had always been a source of amusement for Cisco and me.

“He kept trying to force me to try out for the spring choral performance,” she snorted, picking apart her BLT and flinging an anemic-looking T into a garbage can.

“Do you even sing?” I asked, and she emphatically shook her head. Austin took his role in student government way too seriously. The guy lived and breathed for Vince A. He probably wept every time there was a snow day, drying his tears with the school handbook.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Austin was going to get a tramp stamp of the school insignia,” Cisco cracked, and I nearly choked on my sandwich, laughing.

“Oh, he’s talked about getting a tattoo of the school insignia. Over his heart. You guys don’t even know. Anyway, enough about Austin.” Jenn waved her hands impatiently. “There are plenty of cute guys at my sister’s dorm. You know, if you two weren’t so settled in relationships, you could come and wing me. Or you could come and pretend to be single and wing me. The dorm parties are awesome. Em, you could bring Ashley. And Cisco, I bet Gabe won’t mind.” She smiled, hoping to entice him with the offer, but Cisco shook his head.

“I’m quite happy with Gabe, thank you very much.” Cisco smiled. He was out everywhere except Vince A, where people wore judgey pants as if they were part of the school uniform.

“But speaking of Gabe—” Cisco paused, taking out his cell phone and showing me a bright orange flyer “—I’m sending you this even though I know you’re probably a lost cause. Gabe’s new band is playing the Battle of the Bands tomorrow night at Magel. They’re awesome. They used to be called Duck Duck Goose, but some band at Collegiate had that name. So now they’re Freeze Tag. Anyway, Em, it would be nice if you saw him actually sound good. They do punk covers of pop songs, it’s hysterical.”

“His old band wasn’t that terrible,” I lied, and Cisco just raised his eyebrow at me. It was true—Cisco’s boyfriend, Gabe, played drums in one of the worst bands in history (with one of the worst names).

“So, Broken Echo is no more…no more…no more… .” I called, letting my voice fade out like an echo as I pretended to wipe a tear from my eye.

“Kenny decided he wanted to go solo as a rapper. You should hear him try to rap about life on the street. Like life on Central Park West is really hard. ‘Soy milk in my latte, who’s ready to par-tay.’” Cisco’s brown eyes twinkled devilishly as he mocked the band’s grandstanding guitarist.

We busied ourselves coming up with some non-PG raps for Kenny as we finished our lunch. As we were trying to find something that rhymed with “foie gras,” Jenn jumped up, wiping the last of the bacon from her mouth. She hopped off the stone wall and skidded on the wet grass a little, grabbing the wall to steady herself.

“I’m still hungry,” she announced. “Wanna come with me to the café, buy some overpriced cookies or something for the ride home?”

The ride home…when I’d find out what happened to Brendan. And suddenly I felt horribly, terribly, soul-crushingly guilty for the levity I’d enjoyed for the past ten minutes.