Fairest (16 page)

His broad shoulders relaxed, and his head bent forward to look at the ground. “I wish you did too,” he choked out. “Can you tell me why I feel this way? Can you tell me what’s wrong with me?”

Mina’s heart soared with the prospect of telling Brody EVERYTHING! She opened her mouth to explain, when a mirror image startled her.  In the reflection of the window, she saw Jared, and he looked scared. She looked over her shoulder, but he wasn’t there in the room with her. She glanced back toward the window and his reflection was faint, far off. It looked like Jared was speaking to her; his mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear anything. He was trying to warn her about something.

She turned to Brody to see if he noticed, but he still had his back to the window.  Mina looked toward the window again, but Jared was gone. And with him went the message, he was trying to get to her. But it gave her just enough pause. What she did was dangerous, and because she cared for Brody, she
shouldn’t
involve him. But it was because she thought she might love Brody that she
wouldn’t
involve him.

Reluctantly, she dropped her chin to her chest and sighed out loud. He was still patiently waiting for an answer. When one didn’t immediately come forth, his posture stiffened again.

“I see,” he said. 

No other words were spoken by either one of them because Brody left the room.

Having to stay off of her sprained ankle made it impossible for Mina to make it up the fire escape to her garden refuge on top of her apartment building. She waited on her window bench, staring dolefully out into the night. There wasn’t much to look at since her room faced the adjoining building and the window of Mrs. Orn, the neighborhood cat lady. Her visitors included, Mr. and Mrs. Wong, from the restaurant downstairs, who brought her dumplings, Nan, and the errant news reporter.

After the fourth knock on their door by reporters wanting to do interviews, Sara Grime was at her wits end. Mina’s mom didn’t know how she was supposed to protect her daughter from the curse when everyone in the world was somehow able to find them, despite being unlisted. The very observant Mrs. Wong, dragged out large bamboo mats and tall plants out of her restaurant to the curb. She covered the entrance to the stairwell with the tall mat and placed various plants and vases in front, making it look like a beautiful display.

She then sat outside with a tray of free samples of orange chicken and in broken English distracted the rest of the reporters by purposely giving them wrong directions to her house. Her behavior was a complete one-eighty compared to a few months ago when she had made a collage of newspaper articles about Mina and plastered them to her storefront window, bragging how a famous celebrity lived above her. Maybe because this wasn’t exciting news but more of a tragedy that brought out the protective instincts of the small Chinese woman, but whatever reasons the Grime family were grateful for their paparazzi protector.

But it wasn’t long before the news reporters forgot about the girl lost in the woods, to report on bigger stories. A local DMV worker had disappeared during the night. At first, a few people wrote it off as an unfortunate government employee being unhappy with their benefits. The next day a young female coffee barista from the local Starbucks disappeared as well.

Three people, in as many days, disappeared without a trace. People began to talk, spread gossip, rumors arose of possible kidnappings, but since no ransom notes were found, and no bodies were discovered, the media and police downplayed it, as individual runaway cases.

Mina barely kept up with the news because she still hadn’t found the Grimoire and was at her wits ends. If it wasn’t for her mother, who made sure Mina left her house to go to the doctors and school, Mina would have become a hermit, too scared to go anywhere.

Dr. Martin, gave Mina explicit instructions and she had to wear a brace and use the crutches as much as possible for a week.  Much to her dismay, her school was almost impossible to navigate. Her crutches kept getting knocked accidentally by stray bags and shoes and Mina would find herself on her back looking at the putrid yellow paint of the hall ceilings.

Thankfully, Nan was there to yell insults at the boys who obliviously knocked into her.  She also turned every embarrassing tumble into a comical adventure, by creating a photo tally. Mina’s fall count had risen to four and it wasn’t even lunch.

“Ooh, that fall was the best; I think you got air on that one.” Nan pulled Mina up and dusted off her bottom and back. “You ready?” she asked. Nan carefully pulled the phone in front of her, and Mina made a face and held up five fingers symbolizing the fifth fall. “Cheese!”

Mina tried to smile, but all she was able to bear was a painful grin. Nan grabbed up Mina’s books, put them in her locker, and helped her get in line for lunch.

The lunchroom was crowded, and the roar of people eating and talking mellowed to a quiet din as she entered. People stared, pointed, and whispered in their direction. When Mina pretended ignorance and didn’t do anything interesting or spectacular, they returned to eating their mediocre lunches. She was used to this pattern of silence then ignorance; it had already happened in each of her earlier classes.

Some meaningful students who wanted fame tried to offer help to Mina, but Nan scared them all away. After all, she didn’t want fair-weather friends or, as Nan called them, storm-chaser friends-people who only wanted to be her friend because of the publicity they would get by being associated with her.

Mina tried to point out her own food, but Nan was too busy talking about the finale of her favorite show to pay attention. Nan selected two deli sandwiches, cookies, milk, an apple, and bags of chips. Mina sighed when Nan switched topics to rave about Valdemar. After making their way through the hectic maze of chairs and tables, she was able to seek shelter at her favorite lunch table.

Even knowing that Brody was in the same room as her, didn’t make her feel any better. He came in, filled his tray with food, passed all of his friends, and sat at a table by himself facing Mina. His posture and furrowed brows betrayed that he was in no mood to be friendly.

Nan noticed his brooding and made a comment on it to Mina. “What is wrong with Captain Popular today?”

Brody picked up his fork and stared at Mina, ignoring all conversation directed his way from his friends. T.J. tried to talk to him, but Brody brushed him off. Savannah even tried to catch his eye, but nothing she did could hold a flame to the angry glare he kept directing toward Nan and Mina.

Mina more than anyone understood what Brody was probably thinking. But she never expected to be the recipient of his indifference, and it totally discomforted her. She squirmed, fidgeted, and found it impossible to even open up her milk carton, while he looked at her. Her nerves made it impossible for her to eat, and if he didn’t stop it she was going to go hungry.

Nan noticed. “Brody Carmichael!” she hissed out loud. “Where are your manners? You should know better than to upset someone who is in a very delicate state right now.” Nan had taken on a thick southern accent while she reprimanded Brody.

Brody was completely taken aback by Nan’s abruptness.

Mina grabbed the edge of Nan’s striped shirt and pulled hard, trying to get her attention.

Nan picked up Mina’s food and put it on her own lunch tray and headed out the lunchroom doors. Mina followed behind slowly, being careful to not look around or behind her at the open mouthed Brody.

“Nan, wait up,” Mina hissed, when she entered the hallway and couldn’t find her friend.

“Over here!” Nan called out, as she poked her head out of the unlocked biology classroom.

Mina entered the class and sat on the stool at one of the lab stations while Nan redistributed their lunch. She was angry, and kept squishing and damaging their food as she tried to separate their lunches. Mina ended up with two broken cookies, a crushed bag of chips, and a very shaken up carton of two percent milk.

“The nerve of him!” Nan fumed. “Doesn’t he realize how lucky we are to have you here? There was no reason whatsoever for him to glare at us like that.” She tried to pull the wrapper off of her straw and stab it into her own carton of milk before she realized she had Mina’s chocolate milk.

Deftly Mina switched their milk cartons back as Nan continued her rant. “I mean, for goodness sake, Mina! Your face could have ended up on a milk carton if you weren’t found!” Nan held up the carton an inch from her face.

“Nan,” Mina soothed. “It’s fine. Brody’s only angry because we had an argument. I think he is just confused. He actually came to the hospital and visited me.”

When Nan’s eyes went wide in disbelief and her mouth dropped open to comment on Brody personally coming to see her, Mina quickly changed the subject. “And besides, they don’t put kids’ faces on milk cartons anymore.”

Nan’s blonde eyebrows furrowed in speculation, and she began to scrutinize her own milk carton. “Are you sure, I thought I saw it in a movie somewhere.”

Mina laughed out loud, “I’m sure, if anything, it would have been an amber alert.”

“Oh,” she said somewhat dejectedly. “I would have liked to see your face on a milk carton.”

“Nan Taylor!” Mina guffawed and shook her head. “What is wrong with you?”

Nan’s face lit up with a mischievous grin. “That’s what you get for not telling me about Brody! You don’t think you can avoid the question that easily. How come you didn’t tell me that the prince of hotness visited you in the hospital? Where was I, by the way?”

Mina fumbled a bit. “I think you were out looking for a magazine.”

“But I’m your best friend. Don’t you think you should have told me? It’s not like I would have teased you about it--much.” She did a beautiful pout, and Mina couldn’t help but apologize to Nan.

“I’m sorry; I was surprised and caught off guard.”

“It’s because you like him, I know.” Nan sighed and leaned her head on her hand. “He has almost as many hot points as Valdemar. Well, I think they are tied, for hot points. On a one to ten, they are a definite twelve.”

Mina took a bite of her cookie. “But the scale only goes to ten?” she mumbled through the crumbs.

“Not with hot points,” Nan explained. “You get an extra bonus point for being rich, and one for being a celebrity. And since that covers both of them that would make them a twelve.”

“Well, that doesn’t do us much good, since we are not a twelve.”

Nan began to pick all of the M&M’s off of her cookie and popped them into her mouth one by one. “Nonsense. We rank high in cute points.”

Mina raised her eyebrow in disbelief. “Cute points?”

“Duh, the cute points are better than hot points. We rate high in cute points. We are funny, quirky, have great personalities and are extremely charming.” She batted her eyelashes comically. “These are way more important than hot points.”

“How so?”Mina asked dumbfounded.

“Well, girls that rank high in hot points will eventually get old and will no longer be hot, so their hot points lower. If you have cute points, they last forever, even when you are old. So they are definitely way more important.”

Mina almost choked on her cookie, she was laughing so hard. Nan always had a different way of looking at the world. They finished their lunch discussing the hot versus cute point ratings for all of the kids in their class.

It wasn’t until Mina caught movement over her best friend’s shoulder that her smile died on her lips. Every muscle in her body tensed as a familiar tingling raced up her spine, her only warning that something magical was at work.

The movement came again, and she tried to pretend indifference to the fluttering movements coming from the locked Biology cabinet. She knew what was stored in that particular glass cabinet. She had seen the preserved bodies of the chickens, frogs, and even a two-headed pig. Year after year, they had been floating lifeless in their jars of formaldehyde.

The Kennedy students had even nicknamed the two-headed pig Twinky. Mina never gave credit to the names and preferred to ignore the creatures suspended in the liquid glass coffins. But she could no longer ignore them because the dead specimens were moving. Twinky himself, with both heads, started to struggle in the jar. His mouth opened wide, and she could almost hear the silent squeals echoing in the classroom.

She faltered mid-sentence with Nan, and quickly began to gather up her uneaten lunch. Mina glanced out of the corner of her eye to see one of the frogs swimming happily back in forth in his jar.