I sighed deeply. I still wished I could go back to the way I used to look. I had even had Lachlan try to make me less conspicuous. But, as he had warned earlier, the spell just wouldn’t stick to me. It slid right off, like I had some kind of magical Teflon coating.
I was stuck being prettier than Morganna, which she could never forgive me for, which meant I was stuck in this stupid magical war with her.
And it didn’t look like she intended to back down anytime soon.
68
We might have gone on like that forever—casting spells on each other and escalating every day. But Friday things came to a head when Morganna raised her hand in Biology class and said,
“Mr. Barron—I think Emma has something on her shoe.”
“I don’t—” I began.
And then I smelled it.
Looking down, I saw that my right foot, clad in the school-issued Mary Jane shoe—was directly in the middle of the biggest dog turd I had ever seen. Seriously, it must have been made by a dog as big as a horse or something—it was that big.
And the smell was every bit as bad as you might imagine.
“It smells really bad back here,” Morganna went on, pinching her perfect nose delicately between her fingers and thumb. “It’s so nasty I think I might puke!”
Her dramatic words brought giggles as the class all turned to look at me and I could feel an embarrassed blush creeping into my cheeks—just as though the whole thing was my fault, when clearly Morganna had magicked the puddle of dog crap onto my shoe just to be malicious. Now I would have to get up and go try to scrape the nasty stuff off and get some paper towels to clean up the mess…
Wait a minute—no! Why should I clean up Morganna’s mess? I’d been cleaning up her messes all week!
I thought of the hours I’d spent picking the magical rage burrs out of the dogs’ coats and how much it had hurt, pricking myself over and over again as I paid to remove her spell from the innocent animals. And I thought about the mice infestation in the Norm Dorm and the disgusting Palmetto Bugs crawling on my shower curtain and let’s not forget the freaking poisonous spiders she sent to bite me!
Suddenly, I saw red! I was so angry, I could barely think.
“Er, Miss Plunkett, maybe you’d better go to the restroom and take care of that,” Mr. Barron said, frowning at me.
“Oh, I’ll take care of it, all right,” I snarled. Closing my eyes, I held my focus charm between my fingers and reached for the golden ribbon of power, which was becoming easier and easier for me to use and draw from. Using all my rage, I picked up the dog crap with my magic and threw it—every last bit of it—right in Morganna’s pretty face and hair.
69
I have to admit, it was extremely satisfying. Especially when I saw that a good amount of the stinking brown ooze had gotten into Morganna’s mouth when she opened it to scream. It was also smeared all over her face and stuck in her perfect honey-blonde hair like brown glue.
Like I said—extremely satisfying.
But the next minute, Mr. Barron was glaring at me like a thundercloud.
“Miss Plunkett!” he roared. “This is unacceptable behavior! What has gotten into you?”
Morganna, meanwhile, was screaming like I’d set her on fire—while also spitting to try and clear her mouth. A large space had cleared around her—nobody wanted to get the nasty brown dog crap on them.
“Look what she did to me, Mr. Barron!” She wailed, pointing a trembling finger in my direction. “Just look! My face…my clothes…” She reached up to the top of her head and gasped. “It’s even in my hair!”
“Miss Plunkett,” Mr. Barron growled at me. “I do not pretend to know how magic works but you had better remove that substance from Miss Starchild’s hair at once!”
“Fine.” I was still really angry because I could see that I was going to get the blame for this, even though Morganna had started it. She had started everything, damn it! She’d been picking on me from the beginning of the semester and I was sick and tired of it.
Closing my eyes, I grabbed power again and, reckless with anger, threw it at Morganna’s head, muttering, “Off—take it all off!”
The resulting gasp from the rest of the class made me open my eyes again.
What I saw managed to quell my anger like a bucket of cold water being dumped over live coals. Yes, the dog crap was gone from Morganna’s hair—but so was her hair itself.
She was completely bald and it was my fault.
70
“Now then, one at a time. One at a time!”
Headmistress Nightworthy hammered on her antique desk to cut through the shouting.