Battle of the Beasts

“Mr Walker?” Angel asked, suddenly worried about his job. “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognise you!”

Their father would have been hard for anyone to recognise. He was wearing a ski jacket, torn jeans, loafers without socks, a tattered San Francisco Giants cap, and aviator sunglasses, with a plaid scarf wrapped around his neck. He was crossing the street in a hurry, headed for a deli, while a double-parked cab waited across the way. Mr Walker saw Angel and put on a smile.

“Kids! Hey! Angel, don’t worry about it.” He walked to the rear passenger window. Cars honked at him. He looked like he’d been up all night.

“Mom said you were out for a run,” Brendan said.

“I was working. Your mother tries to shield you from the amount of work I do. But I’m really trying to get my old position back, and that means doing time-consuming research.”

“We understand,” Eleanor said. “We love you, Dad.”

“What kind of research?” Brendan asked, concerned about his dad – and wanting to believe him.

“Medical research. Blood flow and reward centres in the brain. Look, I’m grabbing a sandwich and going home. You kids have a great day at school. I love you.” He kissed his hand, reached through the window, and patted each of their heads.

Then he was off, into the deli. The Walkers looked at one another.

“Maybe he’s going insane. Maybe the book cursed him,” Cordelia said.

“Or maybe he’s just got too much money,” said Brendan.

“Maybe I should have wished for like half as much,” Eleanor said guiltily.

They rode in silence the rest of the way to school.

Bay Academy Prep was situated on a sprawling campus with a duck pond. You had to drive through a gate and up over a hill past the pond – which was home to a few cute ducks and more than a few big, dirty seagulls – until you arrived at the main building, which resembled a red sandstone cathedral. It was listed as a San Francisco landmark. It had been very impressive to the Walkers at first, but now it was just school.

The Walkers gave one another fist bumps and went their separate ways.

Eleanor headed left, down a path where she was joined by other kids her age. The third graders had two forces acting on their bodies as they walked to class – the weight of their backpacks, which pulled them back, and their desire to play with their phones, which hunched them forward. Eleanor texted her mom on her starter phone as she walked in. There wasn’t much else she could do on the phone, since it couldn’t go on the internet. Eleanor didn’t mind; she was just happy to be able to text her mom when she needed her.

I miss you mom

Her mom messaged her back.

Is everything okay?

Before Eleanor could answer, she realised that two girls were walking beside her, one on either side: Zoe and Ruby. Not the nicest girls. Both taller than Eleanor, and (she had to admit) prettier. But they’ve each got models as moms – what are they supposed to be, short and ugly?

“Hey, Ruby, did you see what I posted last night?” Zoe asked, speaking right across Eleanor as if she weren’t there.

“Oh yeah!” Ruby said. “It’s awesome! And did you see? I just Instagrammed the funniest picture of my French bulldog.”

Ruby held out her phone directly across Eleanor’s face, so Zoe could see the photo. Eleanor realised they were showing off their phones.

“I know what you’re doing,” Eleanor said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to be so obvious. I know my phone’s not as good as yours.”

Ruby looked at Eleanor like she was surprised to see her there. “We’re not doing anything. We were just talking.”

“You think you can make me feel bad, but you can’t. I’ve done a lot of amazing stuff that you would never ever understand. I’ve taken down a real witch.”

“A real witch?” asked Zoe.

“What are you talking about?” said Ruby. “You got in a fight with Ms Carter?” There was a rumour going around school that Ms Carter, who had dreadlocks and a skull tattoo, was actually a witch.

“No, I—” Eleanor started to explain, but then realised that if she told them any more of the story, she would sound completely bananas. So she just muttered under her breath: “Forget it.”

Ruby put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to calm down. You’re not, like, so important that we just gang up on you to make fun of you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Zoe said. “But you should probably get something better than a grandpa phone.”

Ruby laughed, just a little, and the two girls breezed past Eleanor into school. Eleanor’s head was spinning. She looked back at her phone, at the question “Is everything okay?”

She wanted to get into how Cordelia was mean on the ride over, and how they’d run into Dad and he looked terrible, and how these two girls were making fun of her and she almost spilled the beans about the Wind Witch, and how she just wanted things to go back to normal, the way they were before … but instead she wrote to her mom:

Everything’s fine

She had a feeling that was the way grown-ups handled it.

Brendan, meanwhile, was in the building that had classes for sixth, seventh and eighth graders, and he was rocking his backpack. It wasn’t just an accessory; it was like a force field that let him walk in a different way, with his chest jutting out, looking at everybody. Because what if they look back? What’ll they see? One of the best backpacks in the world, that’s what.

The bell rang; Brendan was late for class. But so what? I can’t walk fast wearing this. This is a backpack for strutting in. He went to his locker and fiddled with the combination without even noticing the guys behind him: Scott Calurio and his posse.

“What do you think you’re wearing?” Scott said.

Scott was Brendan’s own personal bully, a junior-varsity wrestler, beady-eyed and muscular, with meaty hands and a neck wider than his head. He had curly blond hair, which Brendan thought was a big reason he got away with so much. Nobody suspected a bully with cute, poofy hair. Scott targeted people he felt were different, stupid, and poor, and he had a bunch of wrestler friends who helped him in this mission.

“It’s a skull backpack from Japan. With real diamonds on it.”

“Where’d you get it? Off eBay?”

“None of your business … why are you even bothering me? What did I do to you?”

“You’re walking around like you just scored a winning touchdown, which we all know could never happen in this universe,” Scott said, sharing a laugh with his group. “And hey … I’ve been wondering … what happened to your ear?”

“I got shot,” Brendan said, touching his left earlobe. Scott and his cronies laughed, but it was true. Brendan’s missing earlobe was a small souvenir from his adventures in Kristoff’s books – the pirate Gilliam had blasted it off. Brendan didn’t miss it too much, but it was pretty sad that for the past six weeks, his parents hadn’t even noticed it, because they were caught up in their own problems, and now here was Scott Calurio pointing it out.

“Yeah, right,” Scott scoffed. “Your cat probably licked it off!” His goons all laughed – and then they grabbed Brendan and pushed him to the ground. He fought, kicking and clawing, but he couldn’t get any leverage – there were too many of them.

“Hey! Stop! Help—”

“Shh,” Scott said. “We’re not gonna hurt you. We’re just gonna take a closer look at this.”

Scott pulled off Brendan’s backpack and squinted at it. The diamonds gleamed under the fluorescent lights. Brendan struggled but it was no use; he tried to scream but a hand covered his mouth. I could bite, he thought, but then I’d get made fun of as the kid who bites people.

Scott palmed the inside lining of the backpack until he found a tag. He tore it out and held it up for Brendan.

“What’s that say, huh? I’ll read it for you, in case you’re dyslexic like your little sister. ‘Old Navy.’ Old. Navy. Now why would a backpack from Japan have an Old Navy tag on it? I’ll bet these aren’t diamonds either. I bet they’re made of glass!”

And with that, Scott ripped six or seven “diamonds” off the backpack, put them in his mouth, and … chewed them up! When they were ground to a fine powder, Scott spit them in Brendan’s face.

“Told you!” growled Scott. “You can’t chew real diamonds. This backpack’s fake. Like you. Like your stupid family that came out of nowhere.”

Scott threw the backpack down on to Brendan. People were passing him in the halls while all this was happening, pointing and taking pictures on their phones. The teachers were no use; they were in their rooms drinking coffee, which was probably better because if a teacher saved you from a kid like Scott, that was even more mortifying than being targeted in the first place. But the worst part? Scott’s right, Brendan thought. I am fake.

“Hope you didn’t spend more than ten bucks on that,” Scott said, before walking away down the hall with his minions. The ambient noise of the building took over. Brendan got up and stuck his head far inside the shadows of his open locker. He didn’t want anyone to see him crying.

Cordelia was feeling a lot better than Brendan. In fact, since she’d started going to Bay Academy Prep, she found that she was happier at school than she was at home, which was a little sad but she didn’t mind. She looked at the place as an opportunity to reinvent herself; at her old school, everyone knew her as the girl who was reading all the time or the quiet girl or “Brendan’s older sister”, because Brendan had such a personality – but not here. Here Cordelia was the person who had started the Student Tutoring Program.

It hadn’t been so hard, and it had come together quickly. In her first two weeks at Bay Academy, Cordelia noticed that a lot of freshmen and sophomores were getting tutors outside the school, which seemed silly, because there were very smart juniors and seniors who could tutor them just fine. And those juniors and seniors wanted extracurricular activities for their college applications, so Cordelia thought: Why not start a programme that turns older students into tutors for younger students?

She went to the Student Union Office to talk about the idea. There she met Priya, student body treasurer, who liked it and liked her. That was how Cordelia found herself participating in student government – or “school politics”, as people called it, but for her it really wasn’t about politics; it was about helping. She set up the Student Tutoring Programme in two weeks and it was a big success, with twenty pairs of tutors and students already signed up.

Maybe helping people is what I’m supposed to do, she thought now as she passed the Student Tutoring sign-up board in Douglas-Kroft, the building that held high-school classes. Help people. It feels good, and it makes me stop thinking about myself, or Will, or what I’ve been through. Priya, the treasurer, had suggested to Cordelia that maybe she should run for class president next year. It was an idea that scared Cordelia and excited her – or maybe it excited her because it scared her.

Cordelia went into her first class, history, with Mrs Mortimer, and sat in the middle of the room. She tuned out her thoughts and got into the work of school, which was something she always had the ability to do … until she felt someone looking at her.

It was a nasty, prickly feeling. Cordelia had felt it a few times in the last few weeks, at school and at home, and she always stopped what she was doing to try and catch the watcher. This time was no different. She sat stock-still and moved only her eyes. Was one of her classmates looking at her? She dropped her pen to give herself an excuse to look behind her. No, it wasn’t any of the students – but it was someone!

Suddenly she saw somebody – out the window, moving away. She couldn’t see the person’s face, just a long black body that quickly disappeared.

She stood up, aghast, but stopped and sat back down.

Something was happening to her hands.

It started with the veins. Below her skin, which was fair, her veins were not things she paid much attention to. But she knew she didn’t have veins on her fingers. Who had veins on their fingers? Old people.

And yet: She had them now. They were dark, and thick, and rising to the surface of her skin.

It was like she was seeing it from outside her body; the veins were stretching, fattening, and the skin around them was shrinking, becoming paler and paler, drying up as if it were going to flake off, like she had a disease, or …

Like I’m getting old, Cordelia thought.

This is a nightmare. It has to be. I’m not really even at school. My mind is sabotaging me. I’m not here at all. She flipped her hands around – her palms had deep lines. Her nails were growing, turning orange, becoming dirty underneath. As she looked at them, a piercing cold hit her side, like a frozen bullet biting into her. Cordelia wrenched over in pain, biting her lip to keep from crying out.

Her hands were curling now, becoming like tangled, dead-grey roots. She remembered something she had learned about foot binding in social studies, how when Chinese people used to foot bind women, the goal was to make their toes turn inwards, to make a “golden lotus,” the most beautiful kind of foot there was, a foot you couldn’t even walk on, and that’s what her hands were turning into – a dead lotus, cold inside—

She screamed.

Everyone in class turned to her. Cordelia quickly hid her hands beneath her desk.

“Cordelia? Are you all right?” Mrs Mortimer asked.

“May I please be excused,” she said. It wasn’t a question. She shoved her old-woman hands inside her bag, got up, and rushed from the room, using her elbow to open the door. Mrs Mortimer protested as kids behind her gave one another looks and started laughing.

But Cordelia felt a different look. She felt the look of the person who had been watching her – back again, seeing what she was going through, and feeling pleased about it. She whirled around at the window, but no one was there. I’m losing it!

She could only think of one place to go.

Cordelia dashed down the hallway with her hands in her bag. Why had she not worn something with pockets today? Because, she thought, I wanted to wear leggings with this vintage sweater.

Tim Bradley, from her chemistry class, suddenly appeared at the end of the hall. He was tall, on the basketball team, with shaggy red hair, blue eyes and a sweet smile. He sneaked glances at Cordelia in chemistry when he thought she wasn’t looking – but Cordelia always knew when someone was staring at her. Especially a cute guy.

Still, Tim never talked to her. Maybe he didn’t have the courage. Except now he was waving at her, holding a hall pass.

“Hi, Cordelia … are you okay?”

“Can’t talk!” Cordelia said, moving past him. She couldn’t believe it. Boys never knew how to time anything.

“But … wait! You’re going into the—”

I know, thought Cordelia as she dipped inside the women’s faculty restroom.

She closed the door. The faculty restrooms were like hidden temples at her school; no one had ever been inside them and they could contain anything. Luckily this one was empty. Cordelia pulled out her hands to examine them.

They were worse. Like gnarled old sticks with grey hide pulled over them. Like fossilised snake skins. With great difficulty, she managed to lock the door, noticing as she did that her hands were still getting older, shrivelling and cracking in real time, like they were going to fall off and leave her with stumps—

Like the Wind Witch, she realised. Who had a hand like this? Dahlia Kristoff, that’s who.

Cordelia’s hands were cold. Ice-cold. Suddenly she had an idea. She used her elbows to turn on the sink’s hot water.

When we were on the pirate ship, what did the Wind Witch do to me? She turned me to ice. And what’s the opposite of ice?

Cordelia shoved her hands into the sink. The water burned; she jerked back but held firm. Steam rose into her face. Tears came out of her eyes.

This is good; this will help. Beat the ice. Beat it with heat.

She wiped her eyes on her shoulder. When she looked down, her hands were back to normal. They were swollen, crimson and throbbing, but they no longer resembled Dahlia Kristoff’s hands. Cordelia collapsed on the bathroom floor.

She returned to class. Nobody said a word. She guessed that Mrs Mortimer had warned them to respect other people’s privacy. But now everyone would be talking about her. She needed to find Brendan and Eleanor ASAP, to discuss what the heck was going on. But not until they got home. Talking about the Wind Witch in public was dangerous.

At lunchtime, Cordelia didn’t feel like eating, or talking to anyone. Fortunately Bay Academy had a sushi bar, so she grabbed a tiny prepackaged container of salmon sushi and sat by the window.

“Hi, Cordelia.”

It was Tim, from the hallway. Cordelia had a momentary burst of excitement before she remembered the crazy situation she had been in that morning – then she felt a quiet numbness as she realised she’d need to lie to Tim.

“Yes?”

“I just … seeing you before … are you okay? I mean, you seemed upset—”

“Oh, I’m fine. I thought I was getting the stomach flu, but I’m okay now.” Cordelia forced a smile, took a bite of sushi.

“Look,” said Tim, a bit nervous, “I was wondering …”

“Yes?” asked Cordelia, taking another small bite.

“If you’re not too busy this weekend, would you like to go to a movie with me?”

Cordelia blinked. Somebody put this day in the calendar! The first time a boy has officially asked me out! Hopefully the freaky thing with my hands won’t happen again. Maybe I imagined it all. Maybe everything’s just fine.

But there was one thing that wasn’t fine. The last time Cordelia’s heart had raced like this, it was because of Will, and she still missed him …

But you know what? Will’s gone. He had his chance and he never showed up. And Tim is right here.

Cordelia didn’t want to appear too eager. She took one last bite of sushi, for dramatic effect, ready to answer yes, when she heard a chunk and felt a tugging in her gums. Now what?

She pulled the piece of sushi out of her mouth. The salmon was covered in blood.

Protruding from the top of it, like a gravestone, was one of her teeth.

Tim Bradley stared at the tooth in horror. He looked at Cordelia, back to the tooth, back to Cordelia …

“Uh,” muttered Tim, “I just remembered. I have to get a haircut this weekend. Maybe some other time.”

Tim backed away, bumped into a table, and made himself scarce. Cordelia cupped the tooth-sushi in her hand and rushed out of the cafeteria. Kids gasped and stared, but there was nothing she could do – she needed help. She barrelled down the hall and pushed open the door to the nurse’s office, screaming: “You need to put it back in! Can you put it back in?”

“Put what back where?” Nurse Pete said.

Bay Academy’s school nurse weighed almost eighty kilograms, with big sweat stains in the underarms of his dress shirt. He was bald, with a small grey goatee, black glasses and fuzzy blue Uggs. The office was covered in posters about depression and lice.

“My tooth fell out!”

Nurse Pete pointed to a bench. Cordelia sat while he took the sushi, then handed her a towel to stop the bleeding. As it subsided, he placed the tooth and sushi in separate Ziploc bags.

“Can you explain what happened?”

“It just came out like a baby tooth.” Cordelia moved her tongue into the spot where her tooth had been. She could feel her exposed, ragged gumline.

“Baby teeth get loose before they come out,” Nurse Pete said. “Was this tooth loose?”

“No—”

“But sushi’s very soft. It’s nearly impossible for food that soft to extract a tooth. This is very disturbing, could be serious.”

“Like how serious?”

“Gum disease, mouth ulcer, oral cancer—”

“Cancer?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions.”

“You’re the one who said cancer!”

“Here.” Nurse Pete handed Cordelia two Advil and a Solo cup full of water. “Take these. And most importantly … you need to see a dentist. A dental specialist. Have your mother make an appointment.”

Yeah right, Cordelia thought as she took the Advil. Nurse Pete meant well, but of course she couldn’t discuss this with her parents. Her parents would send her to a bunch of specialists, but they wouldn’t find anything, because this was no normal tooth decay. This was a curse. And it had something to do with Kristoff House.

Come to think of it, Cordelia thought, should I even tell Bren and Nell? If she told her siblings that her hands were turning geriatric and her teeth were coming out, what would that accomplish? It would be one thing if she were the little sister, and everyone was expected to take care of her. But she was the oldest – she was supposed to be the strong one. How can I expect to be successful at anything if I can’t even handle my own problems?

Once she was out of the nurse’s office, Cordelia scratched at her arm as she walked down the hall. Nurse Pete had told her to go home but she didn’t want people to start talking about her, so she was just going to sit in class, keep her mouth closed, and eat broth and triple-whipped smoothies to protect her remaining teeth. But now her arm was itching something fierce. What’s going on?

Cordelia began to pull back her sleeve. When she reached the itchy spot, several peach-coloured flakes fell on to the floor. Cordelia picked one up and examined it. Skin! There was a torn patch on her arm, as if the flesh had been peeled away like cheap black ink on a Lotto card. Like she’d been scratching for hours, getting through her skin—

And under it was ice.

No veins. No muscle or blood. Just clear blue ice.

Terrified, Cordelia tapped the ice with her fingernail. It made a small clacking sound. She pulled her sleeve back down. Her flesh was cold beneath it. She wasn’t going to look. She wasn’t going to say anything. She wasn’t sure how, but she was going to deal with this herself.