Once Upon a Changeling by V. J. Chambers

Chapter One

My car was trashed. It sat in the senior parking lot where I’d left it that morning. Someone had smashed my headlights and taillights, put dents in my hood, and poured yellow paint all over my windshield. The paint was dry, so it had been done hours ago. I’d have to scrape the paint off. Somebody had painted a message on the hood in case I didn’t know why they’d done this to my car. It said, “It takes two to tango.”

It had been a really long day. One of those days when I thought I was going to snap at any moment. Just stand up in the middle of class and scream, “I can’t take it anymore!”

Then I saw my car. So, yeah. Bad day. Hell. Bad month. Bad year.

I dropped my book bag.

I wanted to throw my fists into the air and yell. I wanted to go find whoever had done this and smash in his nose.

Screw it. It might take two to tango, but I hadn’t actually done any of the tangoing. I didn’t know where the guy who actually had been tangoing was—read screwing my girlfriend. If I did, I’d be destroying his car. Whatever.

“That your car?”

I whirled. A girl stood behind me in the parking lot. She was one of those punk chicks, but she was attractive in a weird way. Except for two thick strands of blue hair framing her face, her head was shaved. Usually, I thought haircuts like that made girls look masculine and ugly, but she looked … delicate. Rings and piercings covered her face, but I kind of liked the tiny diamond stud in her nose.

I picked up my book bag. What was the use denying it? “Yeah. That’s my car.”

The girl sauntered over. “Whoa,” she said, circling the car. “Someone really doesn’t like you.”

I yanked open the door to the car and grabbed an old CD case. Maybe I could use it to scrape the paint off the windshield. The car would be drivable then, at least.

“You know who did this?” asked the girl.

I started to scratch at the paint with the case. It didn’t do much. “Take your pick. I’m kind of not real well liked, if you know what I mean.”

Last year, up until the prom, everything was okay. I had friends last year. When I walked into school, I’d see them hanging out on the benches in the corner of the common area. That was our spot. The basketball team. We were always tight, off season and on, and we always spent time together. Last year in September, something like this would never have happened. I would have been hanging with the guys somewhere. We’d have been talking about whatever video game we were playing. What girls we thought were hot. Which teachers were getting on our nerves. This September, no one was talking to me at all.

“Did you piss someone off?”

Who was this girl anyway, and why did she care? I kept trying to scrape paint off the windshield. Maybe in a half hour, I’d have a peephole I could see through to drive. “You’re new around here, aren’t you?”

“Today was my first day. Well, half day. I got here around lunch.”

I nodded. “Ask anyone. They’ll tell you. I’m public enemy number one.”

“How come?”

I threw the CD case on the ground. This wasn’t working. “People are jerks, I guess.”

The blue-haired girl pursed her lips in thought. “I know a little about cruelty for no reason. I guess I thought things would be different here.”

Where was she from? Were there cesspools worse than Sarasota, Florida?

The girl offered me her hand. “I’m Gabriella Puck,” she said. “You can call me Puck. Everyone else does.”