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  And I’ve never seen Vera more masterful.

  Hands clasped behind her back, she starts walking toward Luba. Who needs fists for fighting when you have words and attitude? As youthful and fit as Luba is now, she’s no match for the real thing; next to Luba, Vera looks vibrant and glowing with health. She’s also brimming with more verbalicious weapons.

  “Well, you must be very proud then,” Vera continues. “Because if Nadine is keeping secrets from you, that must mean the student has learned from the master.”

  Once again Luba tries to speak, but her body refuses to comply to her wishes and she only succeeds in coughing roughly. Finally, she finds her voice, but it’s strained. “My granddaughter and I have no secrets.”

  Inches from Luba, Vera laughs heartily in her face, and Luba reacts as if she’s scalded by the sound, turning her face from Vera and holding a hand to her cheek, only letting go when she’s convinced flesh still clings to the bone.

  “Oh, Luba,” Vera sighs. “You always did make me laugh.”

  From my position I can see Vera and Luba staring at each other. Vera’s eyes are unflinching; Luba’s are searching, constantly in motion, wary of her opponent’s next move and even more wary that she’ll be unable to defend herself against Vera’s actions. This is a scenario I would have thought was impossible, Luba practically cowering in Vera’s presence. I thought I would learn more about Vera by pitting her up against Luba, but just the opposite has happened; I’m learning more about Luba than I ever could have imagined.

  And just when I think I’ve seen it all, Luba lives up to the name I’ve given her, because only a psycho would want to try to attack someone who clearly frightens her.

  Luba raises her hand and points the three fingers at Vera that only moments ago were shaking. Three streams of black smoke jut out from her fingertips, but before they can pick up speed, Vera blows lightly on the smoke streams, and they disappear.

  “Now isn’t the time or the place for us to put on a show, Luba,” Vera declares. “You should know better than anyone that timing is everything.”

  Turning around, Vera walks to the door steadily, her heels noisily digging into the tiled floor, and never once does the smile leave her face, because she’s won this battle. Luba will make no attempt to stop her.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, ladies, I have to tutor Dominy’s brother in the fine arts of science,” Vera announces, poised in the open doorway. “But let’s get together again real soon. This was fun.”

  It only takes about ten seconds after the door slams shut for me to realize that I’m alone in the room with Luba. Correction, I’m alone in the room with the woman who was just put in her place by a teenaged girl. Whatever Vera is, Luba knows Vera’s more powerful than she is, and while that fact should frighten me, it fills me with nothing but joy. And it fills Luba with nothing but rage.

  Flying through the air at tremendous speed, Luba reaches out her arms until her hands wrap around my throat. All the rage she was prevented from unleashing at Vera is now being directed against me. In the next instant I’m being hurtled up off the ground. Luba’s back is flat against the ceiling, her hands still tightly gripping my neck, and I’m dangling from her hold. It’s not by choice but necessity that I’m looking into her face, which appears to be less a product of nature than a grotesque shape symbolizing fury. My body shifts furiously underneath Luba, my legs stupidly kicking in search of ground that refuses to help.

  “Do not think that you’ve outsmarted me, changeling!”

  Luba’s words and breath bang into my face like a scorching pain. Despite all the things she’s done to me, I’ve never seen her this enraged, and I know why: because I’ve seen her defeated. Now she’s doing everything she possibly can to erase the incident from my memory. She’s going to have to try a lot harder if she wants me to forget what I’ve just seen, because it’s valuable ammunition. Luba’s attempt is admirable.

  “Remember, Dominy,” she begins, “LUBA ALWAYS WINS!!”

  I only know I’ve fallen when my back slams into the hard tiles of the floor, and I don’t know if Luba let go of me or if her screech ripped us apart. Not that it matters; the outcome is the same: Luba’s reminded me that she may not be an alpha creature in the universe, but she is still a vessel of enormous power.

  The ache in my body is too great for me to move, but out of the corner of my eye I can see Winston and Elkie standing in the doorway. They must have responded to the commotion and burst in to investigate. Lifting my eyes, I see that they missed the main attraction, because Luba is no longer plastered to the ceiling, but sitting quietly in a chair in the corner of the room. She looks like a patient in a mental hospital instead of a nursing home, giggling softly, her long, thin fingers pressing against her lips. A truly sinister sight, but one that doesn’t deter the intruders from entering the room. Elkie because she isn’t frightened by Luba, and Winston because he is.

  I feel my body being lifted, the pain weighing on me like an iron weight trying to keep me pinned to the floor. Calling upon all my wolf-strength, I finally get up and see Elkie on one side of me and Winston on the other.

  “Are you all right?” Elkie asks.

  Nodding my head in contrast to how I feel, I reply, “I will be.”

  My voice sounds as wounded as my body, and I’m more out of breath than I thought I was. Winston sounds worse than I do.

  “You have no idea what you’re starting, Dominy,” he whispers. “You don’t want to get Luba mad.”

  Shrugging off Winston’s clammy, cowardly hands from my body, I apply extra pressure to Elkie’s arm so I don’t topple over.

  “Oh, Mister Cell Keeper,” I say, smiling broadly. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”

  Chapter 14

  Something feels wrong because things are starting to feel right.

  Ever since Vera’s arrival, even before she burst into town, I’ve had this sense that something was coming, something was being sent to me to help in this fight. Now that I’ve had a ringside seat to Luba versus Vera, Round 1 and witnessed Vera treat her opponent like a silly puppy instead of, well, instead of the deranged lunatic that she is, it’s yet more confirmation that I should listen to my bodies and trust my instincts. Don’t know if it’s wolf-gut or girl intuition, but my premonitions seriously rock. And finally so does calculus.

  Luba’s fear of Vera is greater than my fear of Luba. We’re like the practical application of some mathematical equation, Dice’s lecture come to life. By making math personal, I’ve made it less scary. Same thing with Luba. I know she’s still dangerous—I’m not a total idiot—but having seen her very personal reaction to the visitor with the capital V has made Luba less frightening to me.

  The correlation of my life to the world of compleximath makes even more sense when I open up my textbook—which is of course clad in a Hello Kitty book cover, with Arith-makitty wearing a cute plaid school uniform, sitting at a desk surrounded by thought bubbles containing plus and minus signs—to a random page that pronounces that calculus is the mathematical study of change. Signs don’t get clearer than that.

  As with most things in my life, I don’t know how long this oh-I-get-it phase is going to last, so I’m going to enjoy it. It’s taken me quite a while to get here, it’s definitely been a struggle, but I feel more peaceful than I have in months. I still don’t know exactly what Vera is, but I’m certain she’s an ally, an unexpected force that’s changed things for me, just as I know that in calculuspeak, the rate of change of momentum of a body is equal to the resultant force acting on the body. Loosely translated it means that Vera is the unexpected force that’s going to help me get my life back on track, even though Luba and Nadine will continue to try and push me off course. And sometimes my enemies will call in reinforcements.

  “Psst.”

  Ignore her.

  “Psssst.”

  It takes me a few seconds to realize that it isn’t Jess who’s pestering me with her pssts, but Gwen. Ironically,
this is the first time in my math-room history that I’m annoyed about being interrupted, because I understand what my teacher is saying. I completely get this thing about the integral derivative. Or was that the antiderivative? Damn you, Gwenevere!

  I look over at her in the seat next to me and mouth the word “what.” Immediately, I feel bad, because that silent communication contained way more attitude than I had intended. Why should I be ticked off at her? She can’t possibly know that I’m in the middle of an academic breakthrough. She probably thinks my startled expression means that I have no idea what Dice is talking about, which is usually the case, instead of the truth, that I finally get it; I finally understand the principles he’s been blabbering on about all semester. Most likely her psst means she’s trying to help me understand, save me from my own stupidity, which only makes me feel worse for my snipitude.

  Gwen’s always been sweet to me; she’s sweet to everyone in fact, which is probably the reason my brother has fallen for her. To him she’s like this cuddly, almost six-feet-tall, teddy bear. A mental picture invades my brain, and suddenly all thoughts of high-level mathematical concepts are vying for space with an image of my brother wrapping his arms around a towering stuffed animal whose face bears a striking resemblance to the girl sitting next to me. The girl desperately trying to get my attention. The girl tossing a folded up piece of paper at me that lands squarely in the middle of my notebook.

  Trying to soften my nasty face I smile in Gwen’s direction, but she doesn’t smile back. Was my initial expression that ug-lyesque? Have I lost the little bit of charm I still possess?

  Looking like the mayor of Somberville, Gwen juts her chin in the direction of the note lying on my notebook, willing me to open up the missive. Not wanting to risk unleashing the wrath of this sitting Goliath, I do as I’m silently told, but when her words meet my eyes, I want a do-over.

  Meet me in the music room closet after class.

  Direct and demanding and dangerous.

  I can already feel the walls of my inner sanctum closing in on me. That small closet off of the music room is my safe haven, where my friends and I can go and hide from the world to have some very private moments. It’s the place I can go to that allows me to escape from the Lubossibilities that threaten me at every moment and the Nadinophobia that wants to cripple me and turn me into a frightened little wolf-girl. I know Gwen has entered our hallowed space before, but it was as an intruder, not a party planner. As much as I like Gwen and as much as she’s about to become part of my life via her status as my brother’s girlfriend, I want to keep her at a distance, and the close quarters of the music room closet don’t allow for that.

  Besides, I know exactly why she wants to meet me in private; she wants to ask for my brother’s hand in boyfriendom. Her German-Korean heritage means she’s all about procedure and policy and protocol, and since my father’s not around, I’m next in line to offer the Robineau blessing. She really is very sweet. But wait a second, how stupid am I? Barnaby and Gwen have been dating since the summer. Why would she just be asking me for permission now? Could they want to go steady? Get married? Did Dice just say something about the slope of a secant line? What the hell is a secant line? Why is it sloping? Why have I let Gwen take over the reins from Luba and Nadine and drive me back off course?

  I nod my head furiously in her direction, and finally the girl smiles. Glad you’re happy, Gwen. I’m back at point zero, feeling academically stupid and royally arithmeticked off. You better make a strong case to be Barnaby’s girlfriend, because right now I consider you a very unsuitable suitor.

  She’s proving to be an even worse speaker.

  Normally, communication spews out of Gwen like curlicues. Rivulets of words interrupted by asides and encumbered by tidbits of TMI tangential thoughts. But now Gwen can hardly get the words out. She’s stuttering and stammering and stopping herself just when I think she’s about to tell me the reason that we’re here, alone in what I’ve come to consider one of my homes away from home. Her words are like undelivered letters, lost, misplaced, never read. Finally, I can’t take it anymore, and if Gwen won’t speak, I’ll speak for her. Even if I don’t fully believe in what I say.

  “You don’t have to worry that I’m going to ship Barnaby off to some boys-only boarding school,” I blurt. “You two officially have my approval to date.”

  I’ve unlocked the key to Gwen’s word library.

  “Oh I know that you know about us!” she squeals. “And Barn’s told me that you’re okay with Gwenaby.”

  What exactly am I okay with?

  “Gwenaby?”

  “Our smooshed up name,” she says. She also scrunches up her brow and shrugs her shoulders in that annoying way people do when they can’t believe you don’t already understand what they’ve just said. I can’t be too harsh on Gwen though. I am a wordsmith; I love to portmanteau, make up new words to add to my fauxlexicon, and Gwenaby sounds like it could be a perfect addition. I think for a second, and it is perfect, even if it’s based on an imperfect pairing.

  “Like the name the paparazzi would give you and my brother if you two were celebrities from two different mediums who suddenly started dating one another,” I explain, getting more excited about Barnaby and Gwen’s relationship now that I’ve distilled it down to its literary implications.

  “Exactly!!”

  Her voice sounds incredibly shrill in the close confines of the closet, and I’m sure that Gwen sings superdiva soprano in all those choirs she belongs to. From the way she keeps talking, I’m also sure she has every solo that’s ever performed.

  “I know that you were surprised to hear that your brother and I are a couple, at least that’s what your brother said, which is why we didn’t want to say anything at first. We wanted to wait until we knew we wanted to be boyfriend and girlfriend, because I’m a year older and a few inches taller and he’s a year younger and a few inches shorter,” Gwen says, wandering in the land of verbal redundancy. “But I think we make a super-cute couple, don’t you?”

  Before I can answer in the negative, Gwen continues.

  “Well, that isn’t an entirely fair question. You have to say yes,” she states. “You’re family, well, Barnaby’s family, not my family, not yet anyway!”

  The only reason Gwen stops talking is because her laughter overtakes her and erupts out of her like some benign volcano spewing a high-pitched sound instead of high-intensity lava. She doesn’t care that she’s making me semi-deaf; she’s reveling in the fact that we’re semi-family!

  “Don’t worry. Barn and I have decided to take things slow,” she consoles. “We have to graduate high school first and then college before we even start thinking about anything more permanent and long lasting. But I have a feeling, and my feelings are usually very accurate, that one day me and Barn and you and Caleb might be spending the holidays together! Wouldn’t that be beyond fantastic?!”

  If ear-shattering and heart-stopping and soul-crushing are the next steps beyond fantastic, then yes, I agree completely.

  “I’m so glad that you and my brother are thinking things through sensibly,” I say with a remarkably straight face.

  “Which is so incredibly hard to do ’cause your brother is so sexy!”

  Not surprisingly my insides twist and turn uncomfortably.

  “I mean he’s smart, he’s a track star, and such a great kisser!”

  Once again I’m assaulted by Gwen’s high-pitched squeal, and I have to grip the sides of my khakis so I don’t accidentally unleash my wolf-fury in an attempt to shut her up. But why do I need a wolf’s strength when I have a girl’s words?

  “That is so gross, Gwen!” I shout. “I don’t want to hear about my brother’s rank as a kisser. I don’t even want to think about my brother kissing. Some things should be kept private.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Gwen replies. “Sorry!”

  She nods her head and raises her hands, palms toward me, to signify a truce and an end to this awkw
ard topic. Only to enter into even more awkward territory.

  “That’s why I asked you to meet me here,” she continues. “I needed privacy to talk to you about my father.”

  What?! An opening sentence like that cannot lead to a happy conclusion. I flash back to the only time I ever had to talk to my friends in private about my father, and those conversations led to the revelations about my curse, undisputedly unhappy times. Logic tells me that Gwen isn’t going to disclose that she too has a curse hovering over her head, but I get the sense that we’re headed into equally icky territory. A path I really don’t want to travel down.

  “Shouldn’t you maybe talk to Miss Martinez?” I suggest. Excellent solution, Dominy! Who better to offer guidance than our guidance counselor?

  “This is way too personal a matter to bring in an expert,” Gwen replies. “I need a friend.”

  When did I become Gwen’s friend?! Did I sign up for the role and forget? And I can’t possibly be Gwen’s closest friend. There must be someone else whom she can lure to a desolate area of the school to talk about a very private matter involving her and her father. Suddenly my knees feel weak, and I actually hope that a transformation is starting. Snap my legs so they break and invert—I’d take that over listening to whatever Gwen wants to share with me.

  “Are you okay, Dom?” Gwen asks, grabbing my arm. “Maybe you should sit down.”

  Maybe we should leave!

  Ignoring my unspoken plea for escape, Gwen leads me to the corner of the room, kicks away a stray clarinet, and helps me to sit down. She sits across from me, her hand releasing its grip on my arm only to take hold of my hand. Her skin is incredibly smooth, her touch warm, and her connection strong. Being superficial sure can get in the way of seeing a person’s true worth. Gwenevere Schültzenhoggen has more than my approval to be my brother’s girlfriend; she has my blessing.