First Magic by Raven Steele (ebook reader screen txt) 📖

He stared at me with a strange expression—not the expression I’d been expecting. It was several seconds before he said, “You look incredible.”

I tried not to grin. “Thanks.”

“But why the sudden change?” He tilted his head, like he was trying to figure me out. It made me squirm.

“I just felt like shedding my cocoon.”

“Not buying it, not you.” Then his eyebrows raised, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear him say “eureka!”, but instead, he said, “You’re getting back at me, aren’t you?”

I heard the countdown of a bomb in my head. “What? No way.”

Three. Two.

I looked around frantically for an escape route.

“Llona, I’m so sorry. I thought you said everything was cool. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

One.

The bomb exploded. “You didn’t hurt me. I got to go.”

I hurried away before he could stop me. He called after me several times, but I ducked into the nearest bathroom, which just happened to be the men’s room. One boy, a freshman who was relieving himself into a filthy urinal, shrieked like a girl while two other boys with dilated pupils whistled. I managed to squeak out a “sorry” before I speedily exited.

Once I was safely inside the girl’s bathroom, and behind a locked stall, I slumped upon the toilet, head in hands. What a morning. It went from bad to stupidly worse. I should’ve known Christian would see right through my scheme.

“What are you doing?” a voice from above asked. May peered down at me from the top of the bathroom stall, grinning ear to ear.

“Trying to figure out why I’m such an idiot.”

“Pshhh. You’re hardly an idiot. You look amazing, by the way. Different, but amazing.”

I rolled my eyes.

“What’s with the new look?”

I shrugged. “Thought I’d try something new. I know. It was a stupid idea.”

“Why stupid? I do it all the time.” I heard May step off the toilet next to me. “You want to come out?”

I sighed and unlocked the door. "I’m going home at lunch to get out of this drag. I’ll catch up with you later.”

"Rock it, Llona!" she called after me.

I headed straight to first hour, head down, and dropped into a desk at the back of the room. I hoped to go unnoticed, but a guy whom I’d never talked to, leaned over and asked me, “Are you new?”

I stared at him. Really?

A girl sitting in front of me turned around. “She’s not new. That’s Llona. She just looks different.”

“Llona?” he said. “Oh! you’re on the girls’ basketball team, right?”

“That’s me.”

“Huh. I didn’t recognize you with your hair down.”

I kept waiting for him to turn around, but he continued to stare.

“Anything else?” I asked.

He blinked. “What? No.”

When he finally faced forward, I slumped my head into my hands. How in the world did my mother do this? I hated this kind of attention.

The rest of the morning was much of the same with me causing a commotion. It wouldn’t have been a big deal if I could’ve embraced my new look instead of being such a spaz about it, but I didn’t know how to act. I felt like an ant in a beehive.

By the time the lunch bell rang, I was more than ready to go home. I headed straight for my car, clenching my keys tightly. I was vaguely aware of someone approaching me from the right. Keep moving.

“Wait up, Llona,” a male voice called.

I kept walking but glanced over. Mike caught up to me.

I grimaced. “What do you want?”

Neither of us had spoken to each other since the encounter at Johnny’s, and I was just fine with never speaking to him ever again. I didn't stop moving.

“I never had a chance to apologize for what I said to you.”

I grunted. He was as transparent as a jellyfish.

“I mean it. I was very rude.”

When I reached my car, I whirled around. “What do you want, Mike?”

He folded his arms to his chest, forcing his biceps up. “I’ve been feeling bad about what happened at Johnny’s and wanted to make it up to you. Can I take you to dinner tonight?”

“Just because I look different doesn’t mean my personality has changed.” I put the key into the lock.

The corner of his mouth turned up. “I don’t care about your personality. You’re hot.”

I stared him straight into his eyes. “We will never hang out for any reason, got it?”

His arms dropped to his side, and his large beefy hands balled up. “Any girl here would die to date me.”

“Then go find one of them and leave me alone.” I opened my door, but he shoved it closed, whirled me around, and pressed himself against me. I brought my knee up between his legs hard enough to make him childless for life. He doubled over and stumbled to the ground, moaning.

“Is there a problem?” Christian called. He was jogging toward us, darting between parked cars.

“Not anymore.” I opened the car door again and hopped in. Christian knocked on my window just as I brought the car’s engine to life. Reluctantly, I rolled it down.

“What happened?”

“Go ask weenie over there.” I nodded my head toward Mike who had managed to get back onto his feet and was hobbling across the parking lot.

“Did he hurt you?”

“Do I look like I’m the one who’s hurt?”

Christian leaned his head against the top of my car and closed his eyes. I wanted to reach up and touch his face. He doesn’t like you, I reminded myself. I remained face forward.

He took a deep breath before he said, “Llona, I really am sorry. It was mean of me to lead you on like that. I guess I let myself get caught up in the excitement and didn’t stop to think what it could mean for the future.”

“Not to be rude,” I interrupted. “But I need to go.”

“You really do look beautiful, but I thought that before the dramatic change.” He moved away from the car.

I wanted to speed off in a blaze of glory, but I didn’t. I was done playing games. “Thanks. And don’t worry about anything. We’re friends. I’m just being insecure.”

“You don’t need to be.”

I shrugged. “See you later, okay?”

“Um,” Christian paused. He looked toward the school and then back to me. “You mind if I come with you?”

“Yes.”

“Right. See you when you get back then.”

I drove away from him, my fingers tight around the steering wheel. So many ups and downs this school year. So many changes. I still wasn’t convinced any of them were good. Thinking of Christian, my heart felt like it would shatter, and yet, thinking of loving him, touching him … I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

At home, I changed into practical clothing, and tied my hair back, but I couldn’t bring myself to go back to school.

I made lunch and sat on my bed, eating and listening to music. My eyes wandered around the room, looking at nothing particular until I saw a yellow daisy painted onto an old shoebox sitting on a shelf in my closet. It had been months since I’d looked at it. Everything I had left of my mother existed in that tiny space. It made me sad. She’d had such a huge personality, so to have her whole life confined to an old shoebox was depressing.

I lifted the lid and thumbed through several pictures and letters my mother had written to my father. There was only one letter written to me. Very carefully, I unfolded it and remembered the day I’d found it.

It was the day of my mother’s funeral. I remembered it clearly because it was the first letter I had ever received. I discovered it resting in the arms of my stuffed teddy bear, which usually sat at the foot of my bed, but that day the bear had oddly been sitting on top of my pillow. The over-stuffed animal normally held a red heart pillow in its paws, but the heart was gone and in its place was the letter. I never stopped to think about the missing heart; I only wanted to know what the letter had said.

Secretly, I hoped the envelope was left by my mother. Maybe she knew she was going to die and had written me a farewell note, but even as I tore into the perfectly sealed envelope, I knew my hopes were in vain. My mother never thought of the future. She lived every day to the fullest, enjoying life as if it were a never-ending rollercoaster—always going up and never coming down. But it had come down, crashing down, destroying herself and all those around her.

As I read the words, a new (foolish) hope entered my head. The fancy calligraphy words read:

Little one,

You are so lovely, despite your fitful sleep as if the weight of the world is on your shoulders. But all this is