Free Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) by Diane Farr

have to get going because I’m late, so I’ll see you later, okay? Bye.”
    And I fled.
    My bike was the last one left in the rack. My hands were unsteady as I unlocked the chain, so it took me an extra second or two. Long enough for Alvin to catch up with me.
    “Seriously, Zara. What was that?”
    Lock free at last, I stuffed it hurriedly into my bag and tried an old CIA joke. “Well, Alvin, I could tell you—but then I’d have to kill you.” I hopped onto my Schwinn . He grabbed the handlebars.
    His face was p erfectly serious. His blue eyes held mine steadily, although he was still so pale that his freckles stood out across his nose and cheeks as if someone had dusted him with wheat bran. “You can trust me,” he said.
    Which was laughable, because of course I couldn’t trust him. I had spent less than five minutes in this boy’s company, and he wanted me to confide the darkest secrets of my existence to him? Yeah, right.
    “There’s nothing to trust you with ,” I said, trying to sound lighthearted and unconcerned. Inspiration struck. “It’s just kind of a… kind of a trick I’m working on. I want to be the next David Copperfield.”
    My cheeks burned with shame as I blurted out this big, fat lie. I hate lying. Irrationally, I felt a flick of anger with Lance for putting me in this position, a position where I had to tell lies to a nice boy with freckles.
    “Really?” He looked uncertain. “So you can’t tell me because it’s, what? A professional secret?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Huh.” He didn’t look completely convinced, but he let go of my bike. “Well, you’re pretty good. You sure had me fooled.”
    “Thanks. I should be more careful, though. Not to startle people.”
    “Yeah. Yeah, that’d be good.”
    I waved back at him as I sailed off into the sunset—m et aphorically speaking, of course—and saw him still standing there, watching me with a puzzled frown on his face.
    If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get home, I would have pulled over into the first shady spot I saw and called Meggie immediately. As it was, I set a new personal best in the racing-home-from-school category, letting my phone chirp and sing from the bottom of my bag, unattended. Which it did. Repeatedly.
    I knew the texts would be from Meg and the call would be Nonny . And I was pretty sure they wanted approximately the same thing: to know where I was and what I was doing .
    When I got home I parked my bike near the back door and checked my texts as I hurried inside. The first one—the one that had jolted me out of my trance while I was downtown— was “OMG a lvin just left call me asap .” The second was “OMG where are you call me asap .” The third was “I cant believe you havent called me call me asap OMG.”
    Nonny was in the kitchen as I walked in, stirring something yummy on the stove. She didn’t seem upset, for which I was thankful.
    “Hi,” I said, tossing my bag on the counter and setting down my books. “Sorry I’m late. Dinner smells terrific.”
    “Where were you?” Nonny tapped the spoon against the rim of the pot and laid it on the spoon rest before she turned to me, her face unreadable.
    Uh oh. Had Meg called the house when I failed to text her back? Probably. It’s what I would have done.
    “I, um, watched the football team practice for a while,” I said lamely. An incredibly  brief while, but at least it wasn’t a lie. “I couldn’t go to Meg’s because she had a boy over.”
    This distracted Nonny —which is exactly what I had hoped. Her eyebrows flew up. “A boy? That’s interesting.”
    “ I guess .” I went to get silverware and set the table. “His name is Alvin. He’s new . I probably could have still gone to her house, but I didn’t want to be a third wheel. ”
    “You could have come to the nursery,” she said—mildly enough. “ Tres would have been glad to see you.”
    “Too glad,” I muttered.
    “Or you could have just come home.” She