Oh hells. I fanned my rear end desperately, but the smoke only thickened.
“Sorry about this,” the boy-band boy muttered. He uncapped his water bottle and doused the rear of my jeans. Water soaked me down to my ankles. I gasped.
He looked both hopeful and apologetic, the same expression Wulfie the werewolf cub gets when he tries to bring in the newspaper and chews it to bits.
It is not often that my wits completely desert me, but they did then. There is no appropriate thing to say to someone who has just emptied his water bottle on your rear end to save you from going up in magical flames. Well, “thank you,” I suppose. A very squeaky sort of “thank you” came out as I tottered past the wide-eyed gaze of Oliver and sat down on the next-to-last seat left on the bus. Humiliation and anger at the witch warred inside me. How could I keep people from finding out about my weird home life if the witch insisted on sending flying flaming feathers to my bus stop?
Unfortunately, the very last seat on the bus was right next to me. That’s where boy-band boy sat. He looked down at me cautiously, like he wasn’t sure if I was pleased or upset with him.
Inanely I said, “Very hot bumblebees they have this time of year. Liable to burst into flame at any moment.”
He looked at me, and I honestly could not tell if he was as stumped for words as I was, or if he just thought I was the craziest person he had ever met. I mean, really, what do you say to that?
Slowly, he reached up and put his earbuds in.
Embarrassment flooded me and I stared out the window all the way to school. I didn’t even remember to look at my soaking-wet study sheet for algebra.
*
Jenah found me in the girls’ locker room, drying my butt under a hand dryer and flipping like crazy through my algebra textbook with the other hand. “Oh, honey,” she said, beelining to me. Jenah is my best friend and lockermate, and she would be my confidante if I dared have one of those. She’s tiny and trim and Chinese, third generation. Her parents fancy themselves rebellious punk-rocker types, and they encourage her to express herself, whether that means changing the colored streaks she clips into her hair or obsessing about the auras she claims to see around everybody. She says the auras help her tune into the universe—sure, whatever. When you’ve got a dragon in your garage, you’re in no position to judge.
Today Jenah was all in black and pink and bracelets, and her black, asymmetric, partly shaved bob thing had a clipped-in pink streak. She is so chic, so herself, it hurts. My hair is kind of nutmeg, my eyes are kind of blue, my nose is kind of shapeless. Whereas Jenah looks like the epitome of Jenah, someone so perfectly who she is that she’s untouchable. One of those girls whom everybody already knows, even if we’re only in tenth. Jenah would never end up with crispy jeans, witch or no. She commandeered a mini-hairdryer from a freshman on the swim team and turned up the heat on my butt.
“Back to your blush brush,” she ordered the Freshman. “I’ve got news,” she said to me, over the dryer.
“Well? Spill.”
“Happy to,” said Jenah. “Just as soon as you share some information with me.” She flicked back her pink lock of hair. “What color is Aunt Sarmine’s bedspread?”
Seven years of best friendship and Jenah had never once seen the inside of my house or met the witch. I told everyone I lived with my aunt, because it was easier than explaining the truth about how the witch tricked me out of my loving parents’ arms before I was even born. Once when I was eight I looked up all the Hendrixes in the phone book (there were four) and spent the next month of Saturdays taking the bus to each house to ask politely if a witch had stolen a daughter from them—an adorable baby girl with nutmeg hair and a smudge of a nose.
Three of them laughed and one sicced his chihuahua on me.
Anyway, it was one of Jenah’s goals in life to see inside my house and meet Aunt Sarmine. I told her she needed better goals, but she went on about keeping our friendship aura tuned by understanding my living space. Or something.
“Her bedspread is white with embroidered golden bumblebees,” I said. That was true. For a megalomaniac witch who made spells with goat’s blood, Sarmine could be pretty particular. “Now spill.”
Jenah clicked off the hair dryer and tossed it back to the ninth grader. “New boy in our grade,” Jenah said to me. “Quiet. Has potential. I think you could nab him if you move fast.”
“Not interested,” I said. “Too busy. I’m over the whole boy thing. I only date college men. I only date hot-dog vendors. I only date aliens from Neptune.”
Jenah laughed appreciatively.
“Do you know if Kelvin’s back from his bout with the pig flu?” I said. Kelvin was a total 4-H nerd—and an excellent goat’s blood supplier.
“Ew, I do not keep tabs on mustard-aura Kelvin,” said Jenah.