“It… was my fault, professor,” said Claire. “I tried casting a spell, and it ran away from me.”

“And that explains why you and ms. Eleanor were throwing punches at each other? Honestly?” he looked from one of them to the other, unsure whom to be angrier at.

“Yes,” said Claire, lowering her eyes. “Well… no… not exactly.”

“And you two,” he turned to us. “Anamaria? Samantha?” he raised his eyebrows when speaking Sam’s name. “You’re involved in this too?”

“I… was trying to help,” said Sam, honestly, but the teacher didn’t bother. He just raised his left hand, signaling for her to stop.

“Save it,” he said. “You can explain everything to me later. I’m terribly disappointed in the four of you. Especially you, Claire.”

“Sorry, teach…”

Mr. Thomas turned around and spoke to the scattered crowd.

“If anyone else is involved in this, or if anyone feels the need to come and help explain how this mess happened, please come with me to my office. Otherwise, you’re dismissed. There will be no food served in the cafeteria during lunch break, today.”

There was a generalized response of dismay to that comment.

“Be grateful if it’s just lunch break,” Mr. Yves, our math teacher, added, “That’s if we manage to get this mess sorted out in time for dinner. Until then, this area is off limits.”

Mr. Thomas turned toward us again. “As for you four…” he eyed us, individually, glancing from me to Sam to Claire to the priest’s niece. “I want you four to follow me into my office. I want to hear the details of this mess from each one of you.”

Nasty.

I felt bad, having gotten Sam involved in this. She looked miserable. The teacher she so loved had said to her face that he was disappointed in her. That must have hurt. And yet all she ever tried to do was help. The only reason this got out of hand was due to Claire and the priest’s niece deciding to tackle each other. And I was the reason for their fight, no less. I was once again in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Maybe I did have some sort of curse after all… No, wait. I can’t let myself start thinking like that again. Not when so many people have stood up for me. Sam and the girls, Mr. Thomas, Director Louis, even Claire…

Oh, god, Claire. I rejected her. I made her cry. Why was she still trying to help me? I wish I had a moment alone with her to ask her that.

Claire didn’t look at me once. She just walked with the rest of us, a few steps ahead of me, keeping her head held high as if she was absolutely convinced that she had done the right thing. That brat Eleanor, on the other hand, walked as if she was ready to jump on the other girl’s neck at any moment. And Sam walked with her head hung, looking down at the floor and feeling regretful.

We reached the teacher’s room in no time. I still had no idea what I’d say to Mr. Thomas. I mean, I hadn’t actually done anything, yet I was the center of the problem. That hit really close to home, in the literal, cursed sense.

“Get in,” he told me. “Just you. The others wait outside.”

Mr. Thomas’ office was empty (obviously, since Mr. Yves was down at the refectory trying to solve the problem we had created). He sat down on his usual chair, and I sat on a stool opposite.

“Tell me what happened.”

“Why me?” I asked him. “Shouldn’t you ask one of the others?”

“Why you, Anamaria? Well… Claire’s my protégée, if I’m going to scold her for this mess, I want to know everything that happened first. I’m giving Eleanor some time to calm down, since she might be too emotional to speak coherently right now. Between you and Samantha, why not you, then?”

“Sam’s innocent,” I told him, before anything else. “She really was just helping out, she had nothing to do with the fight. And Claire was just trying to protect me. What do you mean she’s your protégée? Does she live with you? Or do you only mean as an instructor?”

“Another time, Anamaria. Just… tell me your version of the facts.”

I nodded, and started telling him what had just happened.

“Sam and I were coming down the stairs, after second period. We were going to the fountain behind the building, when we just so happened to pass by the refectory room on the way…”

I told him about the blue flame spell, and of how Samantha came up with a solution to stop that. I made sure to stress the fact that she’d stood there all alone in the middle of the room while everyone just cowered away in fear. Maybe I was being too poetic in my narrative, but after seeing how miserable Sam looked from talking to Mr. Thomas, I really wanted him to see that she was innocent.

“Cotton?” he asked me, raising his eyebrows.

“Lots of cotton,” I confirmed. “That’s what she said. That she needed a lot of cotton. It worked, though. The flying thingy vanished.”

“Go on.”

“Right. So… after that, I walked up to her, to see if she was okay. And then the priest’s daughter just showed up and started to blame me for the whole thing. Saying it was my… my curse and all.”

“The priest’s daughter?”

“Sorry, I meant niece. Officially, anyway.”

“Is this Eleanor you’re talking about?”

“Err… yeah. She’s from my hometown,” I explained it. “She said it was my curse that caused the whole situation with the flame spell.”

“You don’t believe her, do you?” he asked me. That surprised me a little.

I shook my head. “I don’t have a curse,” I told him, despite not being completely certain of that, myself.

“Good,” he said. “Don’t believe it. Remember what I taught you about bad luck?”

“That… it may be good luck from another point of view?”

“Something like that, yeah. You’ll figure out the meaning of that with time. Now… how did the fight start?”

I swallowed dry, not because I was scared of Mr. Thomas — he really was treating me very kindly —, but because I was ashamed of having gotten Claire involved in this after what I’d done to her.

“Claire showed up,” I said. “She told the priest’s da— er, niece, well, she told her that I didn’t really have a curse, and that the whole thing was her own fault, because the blue thingy was her spell. Then they started arguing. Claire told her to stop spreading rumors about my curse, and that girl kept saying that I had a curse, so Claire got mad and slapped her.”

“Claire slapped Eleanor?”

I saw Mr. Thomas’ eyebrows rise up, wrinkling his forehead. It’s clear he did not expect Claire to be capable of such a thing, and that I was telling him this took him by surprise. To be fair, I hadn’t expected Claire to be capable of any of it either: the shouting and the arguing in public, and the whole fight, it was very unlike her otherwise shy personality.

I suddenly realized just how much trouble I was getting Claire into.

“She was just trying to protect me!” I told him, sounding mildly desperate.

Mr. Thomas shook his head.

“This school does not condone such behavior, and Claire should have known better.”

“Please don’t punish her,” I begged him. “Oh, please, I’ll do anything. It’s all my fault, anyway. She… she just wanted to help me. Can you please, please not punish her?”

“We’ll see about that,” he told me, not letting on what was going through his mind. “So… after Claire slapped Eleanor, then what?”

I cleared my throat, and took a deep breath before resuming the story.

“The priest’s niece threw Claire on the floor… and, well, she started punching the hell out of her. Claire managed to get away, and then the boys intervened. That’s when you found us.”

Mr. Thomas listened to everything in silence, and kept the silence for a while after I stopped.

“Is that all that happened?”

“Umm… yes, sir. I think so.”

The professor remained in silence for a little bit longer, fixing his gaze on my eyes.

“Then,” he said, “could you go outside and assert that those two haven’t ripped each other’s head off? Tell Eleanor to come in next. And wait outside, don’t go, I still want to talk to you some more, after all of this is done.”

“All right,” I said, nervously. I just knew I must have messed up somewhere. Poor Claire. But I couldn’t lie to him, either, could I?

Outside on the corridor, Claire and the priest’s niece sat on opposite sides of a wooden bench. Claire kept her eyes closed, and tried her best to keep her princess aura about her, even though the bleeding nose and the bruises somewhat ruined the effect. The priest’s niece, on the other hand, looked almost feral. I think the only reason why she hadn’t yet jumped on top of Claire to land some more punches on her face was that Claire was acting like a perfect lady, ignoring the enemy completely, and because she was like that, there was no excuse for whoever started a fight now.

“Um…” I began to say, as I walked outside. The three of them looked at me, expectantly. “He wants to see you now,” I pointed at the priest’s niece.

“I have a name,” she told me again, before passing by me and shutting the door behind her.

I know, it’s ms. Asshole, I thought to myself, but didn’t say it, for obvious reasons.

I sat on the bench beside Claire, and Sam looked at me with pleading puppy-like eyes.

“What did he say?” she asked. She’d been biting her lower lip so hard in anxiety that it was starting to bleed. I told her that. “Sorry, bad habit.”

“He didn’t tell me much,” I said to her. “He just asked me what happened. I think he’s going to call us individually, to ask each of us for our story.”

“Oh god!” Sam exclaimed, panicking and starting to pace. She looked just about to cry.

“Don’t… don’t be like that. I don’t think he’s angry at you. I did tell him you had nothing to do with… with the whole fight about me and my curse.”

I glanced at Claire, trying to see if that caused a reaction on her. I wanted her to talk to me, to explain why she’d done all of that. She’d gone far beyond the call of duty in trying to defend me from those rumors. Proof of it was that we were all sitting together outside a teacher’s office, waiting to be scolded. It didn’t make sense. We had nothing to do with each other anymore, we both agreed that this was the better solution. And she was the student council president, too, this would reflect poorly on her. Why risk everything for lame old me?

Claire said nothing, and gave me no sign of having even heard what I was just talking about. She seemed lost in thought, almost frozen in time, like a perfectly carved marble sculpture. Even bloodstained and filled with bruises, Claire was still beautiful.

I rummaged through my backpack, until I found a small square piece of fabric, and extended my hand to Claire, offering her it.

“Err… you might want to wipe those blood stains before he calls you in,” I told her.

She looked into my eyes for the slightest moment, before turning her sight back to my hands.

“Thank you,” she said, softly, accepting the hankie.

Claire got up from the bench and walked down the corridor to the bathroom.

It was only for a moment, but hadn’t her eyes looked so… sad?

Was she feeling sad because of me? It didn’t feel like it was just because of the whole situation with the priest’s niece. There was something else making her sad, and I suspected she wouldn’t tell me, even if I could bring myself to ask.

Sam rolled her eyes at me, while I was watching Claire walk down the corridor.

“Sorry,” I told her, embarrassed.

“Even though you were the one to end things… you still can’t get over that girl, can you?”

I felt ashamed. “Not… yet.”

“Do you want to?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

I heard Sam let out a very contemptuous, very disappointed sigh.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” she told me, glancing out the window in a distressed manner. “But I can’t stop you if that’s what you want to do.”

Sam walked up to the windowsill, and remained there. I stood still on my seat, trying to work stuff out in my head. I didn’t know which way to look. On one end of the corridor, there was my best friend, leaning over the windowsill. On the other end, there was the girl I still loved, inside the bathroom, wiping off the wounds she got from trying to defend me. In-between them sat myself, lost and unsure what to do.

The priest’s niece walked outside, looking distressed. She turned to Sam.

“You… Samantha or something. Where’s the bitch?”

“Bathroom,” I told her. She ignored me.

“Tell her that her daddy wants to see her.”

Claire’s “daddy”? Was she talking about Mr. Thomas? She had to be, right? What was all of that about?

The priest’s niece didn’t wait around. She quickly made her way to the stairs, and was out of there.

“Y’know,” said Sam. “You should go tell Claire that Mr. Thomas wants to see her. I’ll talk to him and explain.”

I nodded. “Alright.”

I walked down the corridor and into the seemingly empty bathroom. There was only one stall with the door locked, so Claire had to be in that one. I opened my mouth to call her out, but stopped when I heard a sob from inside, and realized she was crying.

So even though she kept the princess aura in public, looking dignified and proud, when alone she was as vulnerable as anyone else.

I decided to backtrack up to the bathroom door, away from the locked stall. I knocked on the wood, as if I was just walking into the bathroom.

“Hey, Claire,” I called from all the way over. “Mr. Thomas wants to see you now.”

Claire didn’t reply. The sobbing stopped, immediately after she heard my voice. After about a minute, she opened the door, and walked outside, looking as princess-like as ever. She walked to the sink, and washed her hands.

“Thank you,” she told me, before walking past me.

“Um… you’re… welcome?” What was she thanking me for, getting her in trouble?