Fatal Charm (2 page)

Within a few hours my life took a swift turn in a new direction, so there was no time to wonder about my new half-sister, her mother, or the man with the handcuffs.

After spying, I came back home to find my family stuck in a weird time warp. Dad flipped blueberry pancakes while Mom squeezed oranges and my younger sisters sat at the dining room table. Ashley, AKA Miz Drama Diva, belted out a new song she’d composed while Amy, Miz Book Butterfly, had her nose in one of the vintage mystery series she collected.

This cozy family scene was surreal, as if I’d stepped into a sitcom where everyone smiled too much and the laughter was faked. It was like floating out of my body and watching from a distance, except my feet remained solidly on the ground.

“The chef’s specialty today is blueberry pancakes. Would you like a stack?” Dad asked with a wave of a spatula at me. The deep lines on his face yesterday were gone and he looked happier than I’d seen him in a long time.

“Of course she does. Who can resist the chef’s specialty?” Mom said in a teasing tone. Orange juice dribbled down her hand as she turned to smile at me. “Sabine, get a plate and sit with your sisters. Where have you been so early?”

“Nowhere special. I just felt like driving.” That sounded lame, but my mother didn’t probe deeper. So I quickly averted further questions by grabbing a plate and holding it out to the “chef.”

I scooted a chair beside Amy who didn’t even look up from her book, so all I could see was the top of her dark head and a purple dust jacket on a book titled
Hoof Beats on the Turnpike
. Ashley, on the other hand, was in constant motion and only read under protest for school assignments. My sisters may look alike—tall, slender, with dark lashes contrasting sky blue eyes and long, wavy black hair—but lately they strived to be different. Not that Mom noticed—she still bought them double everything and overloaded their schedules with music classes and modeling gigs. Amy was less than enthusiastic, but Ashley’s eyes sparkled with Hollywood stars.

“Want to hear my new song?” Ashley jumped up from her chair, spinning a pirouette in lavender slippers. “I woke up with the melody in my head and the words came real fast. What do you think of my title—‘Crushed By You’? It’s all about this girl who crushes on her brother’s best friend. I think it’s my best yet.”

I nodded and listened while she sang a bluesy song that sounded too mature for a ten-year-old, but then Ashley was full of surprises—like my entire morning. I still felt seriously confused … but relieved, too. Dad and Mom were acting strange, stealing touches and ogling each other with flirty looks. I had the feeling they’d done some serious talking last night and reached an understanding.

Maybe my family would be okay.

Dad obviously kept his promise about talking to Mom about my moving out. I didn’t know what he said to convince her, but it worked. That evening my mother took me aside and told me she’d decided I should move back to Sheridan Valley.

“We’ll all miss you terribly, but my mother’s health is fragile and she needs you more than we do,” Mom said as if this was all her idea. I kept a straight face and just nodded, like I was making a supreme sacrifice. But inside I was jumping over the moon for joy.

The next day I had a déjà vu moment.

My suitcases were packed and I was moving out.

Mom waited downstairs, ready to drive me to Sheridan Valley.

I felt a strange displacement of time, as if my life had rewound seven months to the traumatic day I’d been forced to leave school because my premonition that football jock Kip Hurst would die on prom night had come true. I was shunned, labeled a “witch,” and sent to live with my grandmother.

But what should have been a punishment turned out to be a blessing. I loved living with Nona, who totally got me because she was psychic, too. I enrolled at Sheridan High and hid the fact that I saw ghosts and regularly had conversations with my spirit guide Opal. I worked hard to be normal and fit in with my new best friend Penny-Love and her cool friends. I even hooked up with deliciously hot Josh DeMarco.

Things were going great (well, except for some freaky premonitions and hauntings, but no one I cared about died, so everything turned out okay). I loved my new life and would never have moved back to San Jose—until my mother summoned me. There was no arguing with The Maternal Dictator, so for the last few weeks I’d lived in San Jose, keeping up with homework through independent study, secretly waiting for my chance to return to Sheridan Valley.

My chance had come.

Only this time I wasn’t being sent away in disgrace. My packed bags had no aura of shame. I was going back to the home of my heart—with Nona.

The two-hour drive was pleasant, with light conversation about things that didn’t matter: Mom’s ambitions for my sisters, her frustration over a rude member of her Women’s Auxiliary Club, and her search for a new hair stylist since the regular girl quit. I found myself wondering if Mom had any clue about Dad’s secrets.

Did she know that Dad almost married another woman? Did she know Dad might have been having an affair with this woman? Did she know I had a half-sister? And on the nights Dad claimed to work late, did she know Dad was seeing his other family? How could she not know? My strong, competent mother had to suspect something. Or maybe she did, but was afraid if she pushed Dad to choose between his families, she’d lose everything.

It was such a strange thing to feel sorry for my mother. Yet I did.

When we slowed into Lilac Lane and turned down the gravel driveway, overwhelming joy brought tears to my eyes. Everything looked so wonderfully the same, as if I’d never left and each blade of grass and graveled stone stood still in time. Nona’s yellow, ranch-style house was peacefully nestled among shady trees, with a pasture, barn, livestock, and dense woods on the surrounding ten acres. The house needed painting, some of the fencing posts sagged with age, and the fields were wild and overgrown. But it was my own perfect paradise and I wouldn’t change anything. No matter what, I was accepted here and loved.

As we neared the house, we were greeted by a strange sight—a row of girls wearing red sweatpants and Sheridan Valley shirts and waving red and white pompons. My best friend Penelope Lovell (nicknamed Penny-Love) raised her arms and shouted, “Ready! Go!

“SABINE! SABINE! Who reigns supreme?” Penny-Love chanted, and the other girls echoed each word with a resounding yell. “Gimme an S! Gimme an A! Gimme a B-I-N-E! What’s that spell?” They all jumped and waved their poms. “SABINE! WELCOME HOME!”

Catelyn and Jill sprang into back flips, while Kaitlyn sliced the air into splits and Penny-Love jumped so high that when she hit the ground, gravel spit up around her red tennis shoes.

I flung open the car door and rushed out.

“I’M BACK!” I squealed. Then I was hugging Penny-Love and the other members of the Sheridan Cheer Squad. We laughed and jumped and even cried a little.

There was Nona, too, wearing a long paisley skirt with butterfly pockets and a dark blue jacket, her gray-blond hair clipped back with a butterfly barrette. Perched beside her on the porch was my white cat with mismatched, blue-green eyes, Lilybelle. Even one of the cows leaned across the fence and mooed as if to shout out “welcome” along with the cheerleaders.

I felt a wonderful sense of homecoming.

Of course, a few special people were absent. Like my Goth friend, Thorn, who had her own psychic uniqueness but scorned society (especially cheerleaders); rebel-with-a-computer Manny, who was editor of the school newspaper; and of course, Josh and Dominic—the two guys causing a tug-of-war in my heart.

Mom and Nona went into the living room to talk and my friends helped me lug my suitcases upstairs. Once we were in my room, gossip maven Penny-Love couldn’t wait to announce a “surprise.”

“Guess who made this?” Grinning widely, she showed me a balloon twisted into a heart.

“Josh?” I nearly dropped the suitcase I’d just lugged up the stairs.

“Who else?”

Not a question I wanted to answer. I bit my lip and asked, “You saw Josh today?”

“Yeah. At school lunch break. He was rushed for some meeting, so he didn’t say much. But he asked me to give this to you. Isn’t it soooo romantic?” Penny-Love flounced onto a corner of my bed and hugged a pillow. She was so in love with everything romantic that she’d recently started working part-time for my grandmother’s computer dating business, Soul-Mate Matches.

“Josh should give lessons to the losers I usually date,” Kaitlyn said.

“You’re so lucky,” Jill added. “He’s like the ultimate Mr. Romance.”

“Yeah … lucky.” I reached for the balloon. “Thanks.”

“Careful not to pop it,” Penny-Love cautioned. “It’s fragile.”

So is my relationship with Josh, I thought with irony.

I wasn’t even sure what had gone wrong. Even when I had to move away, we kept in touch through emails and phone calls. But we never talked about us. His last email went on about this guy from his magician’s club with the odd name of Grey and in my email I’d shared some of the lyrics from Ashley’s newest song. We kept everything surface without touching on serious issues between us, as if we were both afraid of what we’d uncover if we went too deep.

I ran my fingers over the rubbery balloon heart, wondering why this thoughtful gift made me sad. Josh could get any girl he wanted, yet he’d chosen me. I was lucky to have a guy who was both popular and a humanitarian, giving his time on weekends to entertain kids in hospitals. What girl wouldn’t love a guy who put on a clown wig and red nose to make sick kids laugh? Only I wasn’t sure what I felt … admiration, respect … but love?

If I loved Josh, why did I long to see Dominic?

Every day that passed without hearing from Dominic was a black hole on my calendar. He’d left last week to search for the final silver charm needed to locate the remedy to cure Nona’s illness. To look at Nona, you’d never know she was critically ill. But her memory was slipping away, like sand in an hour glass, spilling out of time. When the disease reached its climax, she would lapse into a coma. But this wasn’t something I could discuss in front of my mother or cheerleading friends.

“So what’s been going on at school?” I asked my girlfriends, bending over to unzip my suitcase. “Any new hook ups or break ups or scandals?”

“Always!” Penny-Love giggled. “But first I want to know what’s really going with you and your sexy magician.”

“He’s only an apprentice,” I said, sidestepping the question.

Penny-Love wagged her red and white pompon at me. “Since when did learning stage tricks take up so much time? Shame on him for standing you up so much.”

“Is there trouble in magic-land?” Jill asked with her usual bluntness. She wasn’t a gossip like Penny-Love, but she had a take-charge attitude that was so honest she could get away with being bossy without being a bitch.

“We’re fine.” I tried to act casual as I avoided the curious gazes, opened my suitcase, and began to put away my clothes. I slipped a silky black blouse on a coat hanger and hung it in the closet.

“Just fine?” Jill persisted. “Last time I asked you were ‘absolutely fantastic.’”

“I’m absolutely fantastically fine,” I lied.

“I don’t buy that … oh, but I wish I could buy a cute outfit like this.” Penny-Love had followed me to the closet and pointed at a feathery yellow skirt with a chiffon spaghetti-strap top.

I shook my head. “Yellow’s not your color.”

“I know.” She tugged on one of her dark red curls. “I also know something’s up with you and Josh. Or why would he ask me to tell you he was sorry?”

“He said that?” I frowned.

“Sorry for what?” Kaitlyn and Catelyn asked in unison. Kooky Kaitlyn and Conservative Catelyn were best friends and complete opposites, purposefully spelling their names differently and clashing with their fashion styles. Kaitlyn wore layers of vivid colors while Catelyn draped herself in sophisticated black. Yet they did so much together, they moved like echoes of each other.

Trapped under the piercing scrutiny of my friends, I was tempted to slam into my closet and hide my reddening face behind a door. I really hated answering personal questions. I mean, I hadn’t even been home for twenty minutes and already my love life was under fire. If I said the wrong thing, it would be all over school before I ever returned tomorrow morning. Penny-Love may be my closest friend, but she made no excuses for her big mouth. In fact, she was proud to be the Queen of Sheridan High Buzz. And usually I enjoyed hearing her latest gossip—as long as it wasn’t about me.