Free Bewitching by Alex Flinn

your toes.”
    “My feet are so ugly.”
    “They’re okay. Having a second toe longer than the first is supposed to be a sign of leadership.”
    “Your feet are tiny.” I remembered this book I read about foot binding in China, where the girl with the tiniest foot got the richest husband. And then, there was Cinderella. In older versions, the stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to try and trick the prince into marrying them. I looked at my big toes, and I knew which one of us would be the stepsister in the story.
    “I hate my feet,” Lisette said. “I do ballet, and I couldn’t get pointe shoes until last year. My teacher said my foot was underdeveloped. Then, just when I finally got them, I had to quit.”
    “Why did…?” My voice trailed off. Of course she’d had to quit because of her sick mother. “That’s so cool that you do ballet. Maybe you can do it here.”
    She shrugged. “I guess. I miss my old studio, though. I miss…” She looked away. “I miss everything.”
    She glanced at the photo of me and Dad, so I knew she’d seen it. After a minute, she picked up the clear nail polish. “Okay, then!”
    An hour later, we had identical matching fingers and toes, and Lisette had finished grilling me about Dad. That’s when Mother came home. She walked in without knocking and took in the scene: me and Lisette as buddies. “Don’t you have homework?”
    “I did it in class.”
    She looked only at me, not acknowledging Lisette. “Wasn’t there a project in Ms. Dillon’s class?”
    “Not until next Friday, and I’m half done.”
    Why did she have to be so helicopter? I knew my mother had been a lawyer before she’d married Daddy. They’d met at work, actually. And sometimes, I felt like she really needed to get a job again, so she could stop obsessing about me all the time. I always did my homework with no nagging from her.
    But Mother said, “I hate how you wait until the last minute. You might have other homework during the week. Do it now.”
    “Can’t I even wait for my nails to dry?”
    “Don’t talk back.”
    “I wasn’t.”
    She gave me that look, where it looks like her brain’s going to come shooting out her eyes, and I shut up. Only then did she finally look at Lisette. “Emma showed you your room?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Then I suggest you go get unpacked. Dinner will be at six.”
    “Thank you, ma’am.”
    Mother stared at Lisette until she left, not taking any of the clothes with her. When she was gone, Mother went to the door, looked out, shut it, then sat on my bed.
    “I’m warning you, Emma. Don’t get too chummy with that girl.”
    “Chummy? We were just—”
    “Talking? Painting each other’s toenails?”
    “So?”
    “I know her type, Emma. Did you hear her just now—‘yes, ma’am, thank you, ma’am.’ What thirteen-year-old talks like that?”
    “So you don’t like her because she’s polite?”
    “She’s trying to get something.”
    “Oh my God. That’s just crazy.”
    “No it’s not. No it’s not. She wants information out of you, something she can use against you with your father, her father. Did you tell her anything, anything private?”
    I remembered how I’d said I didn’t like sailing, but I said, “Of course not. This is deranged.”
    “I assume you like living in this house, Emma? Having nice things?”
    “Can I just do my homework now?”
    “She’s his flesh and blood, Emma.”
    “Daddy loves me.”
    She sighed. “Just watch out, Emma.” She stood and walked toward the closet. “And change your outfit. That one looks all sweaty. And do your project.”
    I did work on my project, at least until I heard the shower start up in her bedroom. Then, I gathered the pile of clothes and also some books I thought Lisette might like, not nerdy classics, but the kind even the popular girls read, books about faeries. Maybe Lisette would be like a faerie visitor who would change my life in mysterious ways.
    Okay, that sounded