T-E-S-S-I-E Spells Trouble, Chapter One

If it was odd that Sheila had wanted to go back to the camp at all, it was perhaps odder still that two days later Robbie and Peter decided it wasn’t fair for her to have all the fun.

To the boys, however, there seemed no better time for a day-trip. Robbie’s friend Vramm had started his new job as bodyguard to superpowered children the camp over, which was some guarantee of safety from the predatory monsters which ran the place. Peter in addition still hadn’t made any progress locating his favourite siblings’ parents, and had run into trouble last night restoring the memory of Calvin’s father. It turned out he was a man of science, typically resistant to magic spells, and several more phone calls on consecutive evenings were going to be needed to get through to him in the sense that mattered. Peter had telephoned reception at the camp straight afterwards and left a message explaining this, so as far as he and Robbie saw it, the day ahead was theirs.

When morning rose from out of the sea a bright invigorating blue, two minds were made up. Peter had been working hard, and it had chucked it down all of yesterday. Moreover, boys were boys, and there could be no more compelling argument in favour of heading out. A summer world was dawning and its mysteries beckoned to something deep in the beings of both.

Peter on impulse even did what he’d contemplated the day before, and magically altered his robes to a mini. Robbie’s grins and wolf-whistles started the outing on a fine note of hearty male camaraderie, and helped Peter get used to the idea of his having this new and rather astonishing pair of gleaming pale legs. For as he explained to Robbie, pink-cheeked but happy inside, it looked like being hot and he couldn’t very well have made a day of it with those heavy glad-rags dragging on the floor behind him all the time.

He was quite right too. It was unlikely Peter would still have been there by the end of that day, if he hadn’t bestowed on himself the ability to run.

“Oh, feeling the pressure,” was Vramm’s considered reply to Robbie’s question on how his first day was going. “All eyes on me. But I don’t say anything, and just try to get on with it.”

Vramm was a robot, but when inside his outer shell as at present he resembled a thirty-foot tall spaceman with an expressive fleshy mien. Of all Robbie and Peter’s associates on the camp he was hardest to miss from a distance, which was probably why they’d tracked him down quickest. He’d been on patrol by a block of chalets whose walls were painted vivid green.

“So have you seen any of the gang?” Robbie continued smilingly. “We didn’t tell them we were coming. Whereabouts would they usually be?”

Vramm opened his great mouth to answer, but before he could, a different voice interjected:

“Hi, boys.”

It was like a song, the two syllables chiming with each other, especially in point of unduly drawn-out length. Both addressees turned.

There stood a girl, cheeky-faced, her reddish-brown hair in twin braids. She was wearing a bold stripey sundress slightly too small, unless it was a T-shirt that was slightly too big. Besides sunglasses propped up on her forehead there was nothing more of note, and yet the bare legs that had carried Peter and the day’s robust mirthmaking thus far were all of a sudden so quivery as to barely support either.

Such was the rift between dream and reality, Peter wildly apprehended. An hour ago, what men-about-town had seemed the duo now standing meekly near each other, dumb from shyness.

“I’m Tessie,” the grinning girl introduced herself. “You Wednesday to Wednesdays too?”

Peter found his voice at last. “So you only arrived yesterday?” he began in some concern. “Then if you can do anything special, you’d better get to know our friend Vramm here.”

“Do anything special?” repeated Tessie, crinkling her pretty snub nose.

“My sister Sheila can turn invisible,” Robbie advised. “Things like that. Please, Tessie, it’s not safe if you have a power. There are these evil creatures…”

Tessie pushed her thumbs behind her and gave her knicker-elastic a thwack, which Robbie was invited to take as punctuation. Even Vramm blinked, and so unprepared for such rudeness was the speaker that his protestations spluttered into silence.

“Like I’d want to play that geeky game,” scoffed Tessie. “Any time you boys are ready for a real dare, I know where there’s a haunted house. Found it yesterday just after I got here,” she added boastfully. “Went inside because of the rain and it didn’t bother me one little bit.”

“There are no such things as haunted houses,” Robbie retorted, scowling.

“Of course there aren’t!” came back Tessie’s sweet reply. “That’s exactly what I’d have said, if I was a boy who didn’t want to go and look, because he was…”

She let the incomplete sentence linger on her lips. Peter flushed to his trembling thighs.

“Because what?” he demanded indignantly, determined to stick up for his friend. “You just tell us where your haunted house is and we’ll go inside too!”

“Keep your specs on, not to mention your little skirt!” the maddening girl smirked back. She proceeded to give directions, well aware there was no need by now for her to accompany her victims in person. They’d go, or the knowledge they hadn’t would shame them thereafter whenever they met. Tessie may not have been able to turn invisible, but she knew a thing or two about power, especially ways to wield it over boys.

The pair apparent, on receipt of their instructions, tossed their heads and flounced away with purpose, Peter’s bouncing mini-robe bringing up the rear.

So it was that only Vramm saw Tessie smile with satisfaction, and poke her tongue out.

END OF CHAPTER ONE