Free Scary Cool (The Spellspinners) by Diane Farr Page A

turned the heat off underneath the pot. “There’s always Facebook.”
    I gave a derisive snort. “I’d rather watch the football team.”
    She looked hard at me now. “Zara. You’ve never been into football.”
    I shrugged. “I’ve never been into Facebook either.”
    Facebook, in my experience, is just another reminder that I only have one real friend in the world. And my one real friend has weird parents who won’t let her on Facebook . So what’s the point? Although sometimes, late at night when I can’t sleep, I have been known to play Zuma Blitz for hours on end.
    Nonny’s face had puckered into her trademark worried frown. “Zara, you didn’t spend two hours watching the football team. And you wouldn’t have been so fascinated by them that you couldn’t text Meg.”
    “Meg!” I grabbed my phone. “I have to call Meg.” I snatched up my books and bag and ran upstairs—away from Nonny , whose voice trailed after me, calling, “Dinner in ten minutes, Zara. I mean it.”
    By the time the ten minutes were up, I knew that Meg had, in fact, called the house looking for me. I also knew that Alvin had fixed her bike, eaten nearly an entire box of trail mix, and made a favorable impression on Mrs. O’Shaughnessy before leaving to go back to CGH and run around the track . “He runs,” Meg confided breathlessly. “He’s practically an athlete.”
    Meg has never had a crush on an athlete before. She tends to go for the brainy types. Not that athletes can’t be brainy, but if a boy has both brains and brawn, he is usually a snot. This is one of nature’s unconquerable mysteries.
    “Yeah, I saw him there,” I said.
    “You what?” Meg squeaked. “You saw him running?”
    “Yeah. But—“
    “ You were out by the track??”
    “Yeah. But, Meg—“
    “ Omigod ! I wondered where you were. Why were you at the track? Omigod . Did you say anything to him?”
    “Yes,” I practically shouted. “Will you focus, please? Because I’m totally in trouble and I need you.”
    “What?” She sounded cross. I couldn’t blame her.
    I lowered my voice to a near-whisper. “Alvi n caught me skatching .”
    There was a brief, stunned silence. “He what? ”
    “He saw me. It’s just the worst luck. He happened to be looking at exactly the right place , and he saw me just, you know, arrive. Meg, what’ll I do?”
    “Okay. Let me think.” Her voice had taken on the crisp, detached note of Meg in her scientist mode. “What did he see, exactly?”
    “Shall I demonstrate? Where are you?”
    “In my room. Why?”
    “Are you alone?”
    “Yes. Why?”
    I skatched . Meg was curled up on her bedspread, phone to ear, absently working on a knot in one of her shoelaces. She nearly jumped out of her skin when I mat erialized at the foot of her bed .
    “See?” I said glumly. “It pretty much gives you a heart attack.” And I skatched back to my own room.
    Interestingly, my skatching disrupted our phone connection. I called her back. She was still spluttering incoherently. “Don’t do that.”
    “Sorry. You asked what he saw. Now you know. So tell me: Is there any way you could be convinced that what you just saw was an illusion of some kind?”
    “ No . No way. ”
    I sighed. “I was afraid of that.”
    Nonny’s voice floated up the stairs, calling me to dinner.
    “ Gotta go,” I said quickly. “But I’ll call you back in half an hour. Think of something, Meg. I ’m counting on you .”
    But in the end, she couldn’t think of anything better than the lie I had already told, about practicing to become a magician. Especially since I’d already said it. I painted myself into a corner on that one.
    “You know, that wouldn’t be a bad career choice for you,” she said. “Actually.”
    It was the next day, after school. We were at Meg’s house, applying tiny daisies to her toenails. I looked at her in horror. “On a stage? Are you insane?”
    She giggled. “Okay, okay. I forgot. You’re not the