Nina

"I didn't see you at school today, Nina," Judy said. "Were you sick?"

"No, I just couldn't go in."

"Well, I wish you'd tell me when you're going to skip. I was looking all over for you. The Tank and her crew ended up sitting at my table for lunch and I could've just died."

"Why didn't you just get up and leave?"

"Why should I? I was there first. Besides, I thought you or Laurie'd show up to come rescue me, only she wasn't at school today either. How come you were playing hooky, anyway?"

"I had another one of those dreams again last night, and I just couldn't face going in."

Judy giggled. "What were you this time? An elephant?"

"It's not funny."

"I know. I'm sorry. What were you this time?"

"A rabbit. One of those little miniature bunnies you see hanging out on the common by Butler U."

If she looked between her sneakers, which were propped up on the windowsill, Nina Caraballo could see the ornate bell tower of Meggernie Hall from her bedroom window. It stood on University Hill, overlooking the campus and the park where last night she'd dreamed-

Her body felt all wrong. Disproportionate. Her point of view was too low-like she was lying on the grass-except she knew she was sitting up. Her peripheral vision was so broad she could almost see behind herself. Her nose kept twitching and she could smell everything out there in the night. Newly cut grass. The sweet pungency of the lilac bushes nearby. A fascinating odor that rose from a discarded candy wrapper.

She started to investigate it and fell all over herself in a tumble of limbs. Rear legs too long and awkward, front legs too short. A sound came from her throat that sounded far too much like the squeal of a pig for her liking. Lying there, sprawled in the grass, she could have cried.

Because she knew.

This was another one of those horrible dreams.

Clumsily, she righted herself and looked around./ And found herself beginning to clean herself, licking at the soft fur of one shoulder with a pink tongue.

She immediately stopped, disgusted at the action.

"I want to wake up!" she cried.

The words came from her throat in another squeal.

Followed by silence.

But not a complete silence. Her long ears perked ip as she heard rustling footsteps in the grass. She turned her head to see a massive shadowy shape approaching her cautiously from across the common.

She froze, petrified with fear.

It was a huge mastiff. A monster of a dog that she'd have avoided even if she were in her own body.

The mastiff paused when it realized she had noticed it. Through some quirk of her borrowed body's eyesight, when it stopped moving, it became almost invisible to her. She stared harder, trying to make it out, the mastiff's bulk all blurred into one indecipherable shadow.

Until the dog charged her.

Its growl froze her for long heartbeats more, then she bolted.

Or tried to.

Unaccustomed to the odd shape of her limbs and their correlation to each other, she went sprawling again. Before she could recover, the mastiff was rearing over her. Its jaws closed on her, capturing her tiny body, grinding bones against each other as it bit down on her flesh-

"And then I woke up," she said.

"Oh, that's gross," Judy said. "Did you really feel yourself die? I've heard that if you die in a dream, you die for real."

Nina shifted the phone receiver from one ear to another.

"But that's not the worst of it," she said. "This time I've got proof that it's Ashley who's hexing me."

Judy laughed nervously. "Come on. You can't really believe that."

"I saw her," Nina said.

She woke in her own bed, drenched in sweat and tangled up in her bedclothes. Her relief was immediate. The dreams might keep coming-once a week or so-but they were only dreams.

Not real.

She hadn't almost died out there in the common while trapped in the shape of an animal.

Not really.

But still. They seemed so real.

She shivered with a sudden chill and thought she could see her breath for a moment. It was so cold you'd almost think it was still winter. She exhaled experimentally, but couldn't really see her breath. The room seemed far warmer already, and she realized that her trembling chill was just a residue of her dream.

Her stupid dream.

Which wasn't real. Everybody had dreams.

She glanced across the bedroom then to see that her cousin's bed was empty. Still shaking, she got up and shuffled across the floor, arms hugged around her thin chest, to look down the hallway that lay outside their room. At the far end of the short hall, the bathroom door stood open. The light was off. There was no one inside.

It was past midnight, so why wasn't Ashley in her bed?

She tiptoed past her parents' bedroom and crept down the stairs, avoiding the third and seventh steps, both of which she knew would creak alarmingly. Halfway down, she could make out a dim glow that was coming from the living room. Because her mother's beaded curtain hung across the doorway, it wasn't until she was directly outside the room that she could properly see in.

There was Ashley, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the fake mantelpiece. Her dyed black hair stood up three inches from the top of her head and hung in shagged layers down her back, and she was wearing one of her typical headbanger T-shirts-not her usual tight, torn ones, but an oversized Metallica one she used as a nightgown. By the light of a candle that she had placed on the end of the coffee table, she was reading a book. Nina couldn't see the title, but she didn't doubt it was one of those creepy black-magic books of which her cousin was so enamored.

Sensing her presence, Ashley looked up, her gaze locking on Nina's through the beaded curtain. A smile that was more a sneer touched her lips, and then she returned to her book, ignoring Nina's presence.

Nina fled back to their bedroom.

"But that doesn't mean anything," Judy said. "Just because she's weird doesn't mean she's a witch."

"What else would she be doing down there in the dark?" Nina wanted to know.

"You said she had a candle."

"That makes it even worse. Witches always use candles and stuff like that for their spells. I tell you, she's hexing me. I looked through some of her books when I stayed home today, and they're all about casting spells and awful things like that."

"She's just trying to spook you," Judy said.

"Well, she's doing a really good job."

"You should talk to her about it. "

Nina laughed unhappily. "I can't talk to her about anything. And besides, if she's not hexing me, she'd tell everybody and I wouldn't be able to show my face outside the house ever again. I'd die if it got out."

"I won't tell anyone."

"I know. But she would. Just for spite."

Judy sighed on the other end of the line.

"Want to watch something on TV?" she asked.

Nina knew exactly what her friend was about. Time to change the subject. Not that she minded. She'd been thinking of nothing else all day long and she was sick to death of it. It made her feel like she was going crazy.

"Sure," she said.

She got up from the chair by the window and slouched on her bed. Leaning over, she switched on the battered twelve-inch black-and-white that was on her night table.

"What's on?"

" 'Beauty and the Beast' started around ten minutes or so ago on three."

Nina turned to the channel just in time to catch a commercial from one of the local car dealerships up on Highway 14. A fat man in an ill-fitting superhero costume was extolling the virtues of "!!Hundreds of used cars at rock-bottom prices!!"

"I hate this commercial," she said. "Friendly Ed's such a geek."

Judy laughed. "His kid's in Susie's English class, and she says he looks just like him."

"Poor kid."

Because they lived across town from each other, tuning their TVs to the same channel and making comments to each other on the phone was the closest they could come to hanging out together on a school night.

More ads-one for Diet Coke and one for tampons-finally gave way to the show, which had already begun.

"I've seen this one before," Nina said.

"Yeah, it's one of the mushy ones."

"Did you ever wonder why Catherine doesn't go just live down there with Vincent? I mean, it's such a neat place. I'd live down there in a flash."

"I always wonder where they get their electricity."

They both paused as the beast character recited a few lines of poetry.

"God, I love his voice," Judy said.

"Mmm."

"Are you going to the dance on Friday?"

"I don't think so. I don't really feel up to that kind of thing this weekend."

Judy laughed. "Which means you didn't get a date either. We could go together."

And stand around like a couple of geeks, like they had at the last school dance, Nina thought.

"My dad says we make guys nervous because we're too brainy," she said. "Girls aren't supposed to be good at math and stuff like that."

"What did you say to him?"

"Nothing. My mum called him a pig."

"Good for her."

"He doesn't really believe that," Nina added, defending her father. "He was just telling me what guys think."

"So who needs 'em?"

Nina thought of the guy who sat in the back of the calculus class. Tim Lockley. To die for. But he never even gave her a second glance.

"I suppose," she said. "Except-"

She broke off as she heard footsteps on the stairs. It was neither her mother's light tread nor her father's heavier one.

"I've gotta go," she said. "Ashley just got in."

She hated having Ashley listen in on her phone conversations. After a quick promise to be at school tomorrow, she hung up and gave the impression of giving the television her undivided attention.

Ashley paused in the doorway of their room, decked out in all her gear. Tight faded jeans, torn at the knees. A Def Leppard T-shirt with the arms torn off. A leather jacket. Hair like a black lion's mane haloing her head.

"I can't believe you watch that garbage.," she said.

Nina looked up. "What's wrong with it?"

"How long do you think that show'd last if the woman was the beast?" Ashley replied.

She took off her jacket and tossed it onto her bed and unselfconsciously began to take off the rest of her clothes-with the curtains on the window wide open so that anyone standing out on the common behind their house could get an eyeful.

Which was probably just what she wanted, Nina thought.

"Well?" Ashley asked.

Nina's only response was to turn the sound up louder on the TV.