Storm by Virginia Bergin Page A

them here,” said Grace, interrupting herself. She held up a little compact mirror.
    I caught a glimpse of something weird and terrifying, more shocking than the thing Grace had just said. I gasped. I stood up. Dizzy stars buzzed.
    I checked it in the big mirror.
    The thing Grace had done with my eyes? She’d delicately drawn in a mask. A black-and-gold, twirly, vine-like, complicated mask that made my panda eyes look like a thing of witchy beauty. Meet Evil Witch Fairy Ruby: the shadow girl from the mist.
    The only thing that let me down was my hair. It just looked so peculiar. A head full of long spikes that started in mousy brown and ended in tips of black. I ran my hand through it.
    â€œWe could bleach it?” offered Grace.
    I shook my head. Stars spinning. “Not now,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”
    I caught the look on Grace’s face: disappointment.
    â€œThis is incredible though,” I said, tracing a finger over a winding curl of black.
    â€œDon’t touch! You’ll smudge it!” she cried, but she was so, so pleased. “I was training to be a tattoo artist,” she said. “Well, unofficially. Just at this salon, it belonged to…a bloke I knew. You know, after I got kicked out of school.”
    I’m guessing the bloke was her bloke. Or that she had feelings for him. Who knows? All gone. It’s all gone. “You would have been amazing,” I told her.
    Then I thought about how terrible that sounded. “You ARE amazing,” I said.
    â€œI could do the outline in ink if you really like it,” she offered.
    Ha! Know what?! A part of me felt like saying, “Oh, OK then.”
    â€œMy mom would go ballistic,” I said.
    Grace laughed and I…HA! I smiled so hard it was almost a laugh. And I thought that neither of our moms would have gone ballistic in the least. About any of this.
    They would—they really would—have just been glad—so glad—we were alive.
    And that’s how it was for the rest of that night. I smiled so hard I almost laughed. And it was just such a shame I couldn’t laugh because, basically, it was the most brilliant party I had ever been to…or ever will, I suspect.
    I forgot to eat. I forgot to drink anything that wasn’t champagne.
    And everything stopped hurting, so I danced. I just danced.
    Partly because, after Saskia had finished having her intimate tête-à-tête with Xar (which was still going on when Grace and I trooped/waddled back down stairs), Sask kept trying to grab me, going “Ruby, I really need to talk to you” (in an increasingly slurred voice), and the only way I could shake her off was to just keep on dancing—because I tell you, I did not want to talk about ANYTHING.
    So I danced. I just danced.
    Like it was the end of the world.

CHAPTER SIX
    And then I woke up.
    Ha! You are NOT going to believe how many times I wish I could say this in this story—MY story. The story of what happened to ME. I want this to be like the kind of story I would have written as a kid, when a ton of really awful, scary stuff happens—but then you go:
    AND THEN I WOKE UP.
    And everything’s OK.
    Anyway, I woke up.
    We hadn’t just danced till dawn. We had danced till… Uh, I don’t even know what time it had been, but it had been bright and sunny and warm, which is what the weather usually does in September. It realizes the holidays are over and turns lovely, but you can’t go and join it because you’re locked up in a classroom all day. Ah, the joyous start to a whole new school year.
    Only there was no more school, was there?
    It was late on a sunny afternoon; the veranda doors were open, fancy sheer curtains spray-painted a rainbow of colors, billowing in a gentle breeze. They looked kind of tacky in the light…but maybe that was just because the whole of the rest of the room looked trashed and sad.
    But that’s how a