Super Freak by Vanessa Barger Page B

homework, trying not to look guilty. I hadn’t broken any rules. They hadn’t taken the phone away, after all.
    Mom appeared in the doorway. “You should finish up what you’re doing and then shower and get to bed. You’ve got a busy day tomorrow.”
    “Mom, I know you don’t believe me, but I really didn’t do what they say. I swear. I know I can be overly curious, and I take things too far sometimes, but I wouldn’t deliberately be mean and destroy property.”
    She paused in the doorway, her hand opening and closing on the doorknob. “I want to believe you, Caroline, but this time, I have to believe what I see. And if that ever changes, your father and I will be first ones to apologize to you.” She stepped back into the hallway with a pointed look at my paper. “Right now, you’re grounded and I’m very disappointed in you. Finish up.”
    Sometimes I couldn’t win for losing.
    I finished my math and, knowing tomorrow would be a long day, grabbed my clothes and headed toward the bathroom. As I left, I dropped my shorts. Bending down to pick them up, I noticed a small gargoyle face in the wood vine carvings around my doorway. It looked so much like the banister knob I stepped back inside, closed the door and crouched down on my hands and knees to get a better look.
    It was a little more flat and without glass eyes. I ran my fingers over the plaster carefully, excitement fluttering in my gut. They weren’t just similar. The two scrunched faces were exact replicas. No secret switches or hidden holes appeared, and I sat back, discouraged. There had to be something.
    I ran my fingers over it again, and when nothing appeared, I bent down, lying flat on the floor and got so close I might have been kissing the aging little face. Then I noticed a faint line running around the edge of the carving. I debated for a moment whether trying to pry it off would be a bad idea. After being accused of vandalism once already, I didn’t want to get caught ripping up my walls.
    Muttering a prayer, I got up, hunted through the desk until I came up with a cheap plastic letter opener. I wiggled the edge into the crack next to the gargoyle’s ear. For a few seconds, I didn’t think anything would happen. But as I jammed it in farther, the crack widened. I pulled out the blade and moved to the other side, working it back and forth until the face finally popped out of the wall and into my hand.
    Behind it, a shallow compartment was filled with a few yellowing papers and something wrapped in a small piece of green velvet. The fabric was faded and worn, and when I picked it up, it crumbled into chunks in my palm, revealing a round silver locket. It had beautiful etchings of a bird on the casing. A swallow, I thought. When I pried it open with one fingernail, I was disappointed to find the picture had been damaged. On the other side, a tiny curl was tied with a piece of string and clipped in.
    The hair was a little weird. I knew some people saved it. But with magic, if you believed in it enough, leaving a bit of yourself could be dangerous. My parents didn’t believe in such things, but some of their friends did. One wizard had even been so paranoid that he shaved his own head and regularly burned his hair and fingernail clippings, so no one could use them against him.
    I never really saw the point of that. But then, I never had the problem of someone trying to steal my magic either.
    I shoved the gargoyle back into his hole as best I could. I’d have to borrow Dad’s hammer later and tap it all the way back in, but, for now, it worked.
    I took everything to my desk, put the locket inside an envelope and tucked it under the letter I already had. Then, I carefully unfolded the papers and flipped through. None of them followed the last line of the letter in the desk. It was the same careful handwriting, but the three pages just held mundane lists of counting sheets and linens and making a trip into town to go to the library and visit