“Mr Walker?” Angel asked, suddenly worried about his job. “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognise you!”
Their father would have been hard for anyone to recognise. He was wearing a ski jacket, torn jeans, loafers without socks, a tattered San Francisco Giants cap, and aviator sunglasses, with a plaid scarf wrapped around his neck. He was crossing the street in a hurry, headed for a deli, while a double-parked cab waited across the way. Mr Walker saw Angel and put on a smile.
“Kids! Hey! Angel, don’t worry about it.” He walked to the rear passenger window. Cars honked at him. He looked like he’d been up all night.
“Mom said you were out for a run,” Brendan said.
“I was working. Your mother tries to shield you from the amount of work I do. But I’m really trying to get my old position back, and that means doing time-consuming research.”
“We understand,” Eleanor said. “We love you, Dad.”
“What kind of research?” Brendan asked, concerned about his dad – and wanting to believe him.
“Medical research. Blood flow and reward centres in the brain. Look, I’m grabbing a sandwich and going home. You kids have a great day at school. I love you.” He kissed his hand, reached through the window, and patted each of their heads.
Then he was off, into the deli. The Walkers looked at one another.
“Maybe he’s going insane. Maybe the book cursed him,” Cordelia said.
“Or maybe he’s just got too much money,” said Brendan.
“Maybe I should have wished for like half as much,” Eleanor said guiltily.
They rode in silence the rest of the way to school.
Bay Academy Prep was situated on a sprawling campus with a duck pond. You had to drive through a gate and up over a hill past the pond – which was home to a few cute ducks and more than a few big, dirty seagulls – until you arrived at the main building, which resembled a red sandstone cathedral. It was listed as a San Francisco landmark. It had been very impressive to the Walkers at first, but now it was just school.
The Walkers gave one another fist bumps and went their separate ways.
Eleanor headed left, down a path where she was joined by other kids her age. The third graders had two forces acting on their bodies as they walked to class – the weight of their backpacks, which pulled them back, and their desire to play with their phones, which hunched them forward. Eleanor texted her mom on her starter phone as she walked in. There wasn’t much else she could do on the phone, since it couldn’t go on the internet. Eleanor didn’t mind; she was just happy to be able to text her mom when she needed her.
I miss you mom
Her mom messaged her back.
Is everything okay?
Before Eleanor could answer, she realised that two girls were walking beside her, one on either side: Zoe and Ruby. Not the nicest girls. Both taller than Eleanor, and (she had to admit) prettier. But they’ve each got models as moms – what are they supposed to be, short and ugly?
“Hey, Ruby, did you see what I posted last night?” Zoe asked, speaking right across Eleanor as if she weren’t there.
“Oh yeah!” Ruby said. “It’s awesome! And did you see? I just Instagrammed the funniest picture of my French bulldog.”
Ruby held out her phone directly across Eleanor’s face, so Zoe could see the photo. Eleanor realised they were showing off their phones.
“I know what you’re doing,” Eleanor said, rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to be so obvious. I know my phone’s not as good as yours.”
Ruby looked at Eleanor like she was surprised to see her there. “We’re not doing anything. We were just talking.”
“You think you can make me feel bad, but you can’t. I’ve done a lot of amazing stuff that you would never ever understand. I’ve taken down a real witch.”
“A real witch?” asked Zoe.
“What are you talking about?” said Ruby. “You got in a fight with Ms Carter?” There was a rumour going around school that Ms Carter, who had dreadlocks and a skull tattoo, was actually a witch.
“No, I—” Eleanor started to explain, but then realised that if she told them any more of the story, she would sound completely bananas. So she just muttered under her breath: “Forget it.”
Ruby put a hand on her shoulder. “You need to calm down. You’re not, like, so important that we just gang up on you to make fun of you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Zoe said. “But you should probably get something better than a grandpa phone.”
Ruby laughed, just a little, and the two girls breezed past Eleanor into school. Eleanor’s head was spinning. She looked back at her phone, at the question “Is everything okay?”
She wanted to get into how Cordelia was mean on the ride over, and how they’d run into Dad and he looked terrible, and how these two girls were making fun of her and she almost spilled the beans about the Wind Witch, and how she just wanted things to go back to normal, the way they were before … but instead she wrote to her mom:
Everything’s fine
She had a feeling that was the way grown-ups handled it.
Brendan, meanwhile, was in the building that had classes for sixth, seventh and eighth graders, and he was rocking his backpack. It wasn’t just an accessory; it was like a force field that let him walk in a different way, with his chest jutting out, looking at everybody. Because what if they look back? What’ll they see? One of the best backpacks in the world, that’s what.
The bell rang; Brendan was late for class. But so what? I can’t walk fast wearing this. This is a backpack for strutting in. He went to his locker and fiddled with the combination without even noticing the guys behind him: Scott Calurio and his posse.
“What do you think you’re wearing?” Scott said.
Scott was Brendan’s own personal bully, a junior-varsity wrestler, beady-eyed and muscular, with meaty hands and a neck wider than his head. He had curly blond hair, which Brendan thought was a big reason he got away with so much. Nobody suspected a bully with cute, poofy hair. Scott targeted people he felt were different, stupid, and poor, and he had a bunch of wrestler friends who helped him in this mission.
“It’s a skull backpack from Japan. With real diamonds on it.”
“Where’d you get it? Off eBay?”
“None of your business … why are you even bothering me? What did I do to you?”
“You’re walking around like you just scored a winning touchdown, which we all know