Free Super Freak by Vanessa Barger Page B

up with someone being hurt? Now, promise me you’ll let this go.”
    His fingers stroked the spine of the journal he’d been looking at. I didn’t think he even knew he did it. But it told me where I needed to look for answers. I heaved a dramatic sigh and crossed my fingers, hiding them under one leg.
    “Fine, Dad. I promise.”
    “I know you think I’m being ridiculous, Caroline, but you’ve given me your word.”
    “I said I promised, Dad. I don’t have to like it.”
    He did chuckle then, and I got up, squeezing my arms around his neck and pecking his cheek.
    “Good night, Caro. I love you.”
    “Night, Dad.”
    I walked out, and noticed as I closed the door, he had moved back to the desk and was once again bent over the journal. That did it. Whatever was in there, I needed to know. I just had to find the right time.
     
     
    ***
     
     
    “Please tell me your dad was just as smothering as mine was,” Diana said, sliding into the desk next to me in Mr. Flynn’s class. I pulled the homework assignment on the Mona Lisa out and rolled my eyes.
    “Of course. My dad made me promise not to look for anything else on the curse.”
    Diana froze. “Did you?”
    Rolling my eyes, I grinned. “Of course I did. With my fingers crossed.”
    She laughed. “It’s a good thing. Because I found out Dad’s going to be interviewing the owner of the new bookstore in town on Thursday. I’m going to need you to help me break in after all.”
    Mr. Flynn headed to the front of the room as the bell rang. “You just let me know what I need to do,” I whispered.
    Diana winked and turned her attention to the teacher. In any other class, we’d have tried to continue the conversation. But Mr. Flynn was just too good looking not to watch. Every girl in the school had a crush on him, if they weren’t following after Mr. Darcy. Art might not be a popular subject with high-powered supernaturals, but Mr. Flynn kept enrollments up.
    He tapped a colored pencil on the edge of the podium and flashed us all a brilliant smile. “Today, class, we will be discussing the merits of art in a post-Pandora world. I know you were all hoping to get your next project, but history is just as important to art as the tools are.”
    At the table beside us, two girls sighed and started doodling their names with his, surrounded by hearts. I snickered.
    “Caroline, if you please, tell the class the importance of art before Pandora’s Box.”
    I bit my lip. “I suppose it was a form of expression. A way to record the events of the past before cameras, and then a way to express yourself?”
    He smiled. “That was one purpose, yes. Art is not slapping paint on a canvas, you know. Art can be political, or motivational, it can help form opinions and bring down kings!”
    Mr. Flynn was getting into his subject, practically pirouetting across the front of the room to flip the light switch and plunge the room into semi-darkness. With another tap of his fingers, a tablet computer brought up slides of the artwork he wanted us to see.
    We didn’t get to talk again until lunch, when Leo joined us. Diana told him about her plans to sneak into her dad’s office on Thursday, and I told her I’d talked to my parents over the weekend, and they’d said yes to a sleepover.
    “Great,” she said. “I’ll tell my dad about it. By then, between my snooping around Dad’s office and hunting for more things at your house, we should be able to figure this all out.”
    I didn’t want to crush her dreams, so I kept it to myself that my parents were afraid. Because, though I would never admit it, if they were scared, it meant I should be too.
    “I’m going to do a little searching of my own,” I said. “My dad knows something about all this. Apparently my family is from here.”
    Leo’s brow furrowed. “Really?”
    “He says the Bennings were one of the founding families. He and Mom inherited the house, they didn’t buy it like they told me.”
    “But why would