Free Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot) by Christine Amsden Page A

idea.”
    I was growing pretty annoyed. I didn’t know Kelly all that well, but she hadn’t seemed like the kind of girl to repeatedly spurn a person for the crime of having the worst complexion I’d ever seen. A part of me considered offering the poor girl some of my mom’s homemade face wash, but I knew that without regular applications, her acne would only come back, and I could not be her permanent supplier.
    Turning back to Kelly, I let her have a piece of my mind. “That’s really mean. She can’t help her complexion.”
    Kelly shook her head. “You don’t get it. She didn’t look like that when she got here. Liza did it. Liza doesn’t like her.”
    “Who’s Liza?”
    Kelly looked around as if she thought someone might overhear us, but the nearest canoes were yards away. “She’s a witch.”
    I snorted. Camp legends were a part of the experience, and I knew better than to take them seriously. “I suppose she’s some hag who lives on an island in the middle of the lake?”
    “No, she’s the girl with the green hair. The one who doesn’t even have an oar, because her partner is doing all the rowing.”
    I followed Kelly’s gaze until I saw the aforementioned green-haired girl. She saw me at the same time, as if she knew we were talking about her, and she gave me what can only be described as an insolent stare. I instantly loathed her. Had I known she was untrained, I might have managed a bit of sympathy, but I doubt it. She was a bully, and not in the sense that many considered Evan Blackwood a bully. He used his mystique as a protection, though many believed he used magic in public more often than he did. Liza, on the other hand, didn’t need protection. Others needed protection from her.
    As soon as we returned our canoe to the beach, I abandoned the other girls to go out in search of the pimply-faced one. She wasn’t hard to find. “Hi, I’m Cassie.”
    She looked up at me, uncertainly. “Aren’t you afraid of being cursed?”
    “Usually,” I said, smiling, “when someone says ‘hi’ and introduces themselves, you should do the same.”
    “Um, hi. I’m Carrie.”
    “Nice to meet you, Carrie. Now, follow me so we can do something about those zits.” I barely had time to see her mouth fall open before I strode away, trusting that she would follow.
    We didn’t join the rest of camp for lunch that day. I had her wash her face three times with Mom’s face wash, and then had her apply some special moisturizer. By the time she finished, most of the acne had vanished, but it would be dinnertime before the last few stragglers disappeared with the rest. Wanting her transformation to appear as spectacular as possible, I took her on a walk through the woods until dinnertime, partly to keep her from seeing anyone until her face looked as good as mine, and partly to gather a few protective plants in case of retaliation.
    Carrie kept touching her face as we walked. “How did you do that?”
    “Stop touching your face,” I warned her. “Let it do its work.”
    “Are you a witch, too?”
    I gave her my practiced mysterious smile, the one I used anytime someone asked me about my magical abilities, and continued to lead her into the woods. “What we really need is stinging nettle and Queen Anne’s lace.”
    “Why?” Carrie asked.
    “The stinging nettle protects us from curses and the Queen Anne’s lace protects us from the stinging nettle.”
    “So you’re a witch, then?” Carrie asked again.
    “I’m not the one who cursed you.”
    “Oh, no, I didn’t mean – I guess you’re a good witch.”
    “Oh, I assure you, I am a very bad witch.” By which I meant lousy rather than evil, but she didn’t have to know that.
    We waited until quarter after six to go to the mess hall for dinner, a ploy to ensure that everyone else would be present and seated when Carrie and I made our grand entrance. Indeed, the whispers started as soon as we were past the threshold. Within a minute they had