Beth sat up in a room of dark blue in drenched pajamas in the morning while still feeling drowsy. She felt the sheet under her was soaked. The pillow was wet, just like the corners of Beth's eyes. With all the new magic appearing, and repressed memories re-emerging yesterday, maybe she did tear up a little when she slept.

She sighed and wiped off the wet corners of her eyes. As she lifted her hand, she suddenly felt something hanging on her wrist hit against the edge of the nightstand.

The golden bracelet was still there!

On the way to Laurel Prep, Nora and Owen were constantly bombarding Beth with questions about why she returned so late yesterday without replying to their texts.

"Beth, I know that you have new friends at Laurel Prep, but please tell us in advance that you are going out with them, alright? We cannot lose you. Both your parents and us will be worried!"

Beth grimaced at them awkwardly. She used to do this to cope with her parents getting worried about her back in her hometown.

"Next time, if this happens and we can't find you, we may need to inform your dad and mom, honey."

Nora's speech hit Beth like a hard bat on the head. She nervously recalled her parents telling her not to make any trouble at Nora and Owen's house.

"I am sorry! I will make sure that this won't happen again!"

Suddenly, Owen looked at Beth and pointed out her golden bracelet. "Oh, Beth? What's that bracelet? It's very shiny and pretty."

"Haha, the bracelet is nothing! I bought it from the gift shop yesterday." Beth stumbled over her words and nervously laughed at the same time, trying to conceal the fact that the bracelet appeared in her dream. "Ah! Laurel is such a good city with a good culture and interesting shops and great people!"

Shortly after Beth got to school, Julianna noticed the bracelet as well.

"Beth, I just want to tell you that I left you so abruptly yesterday, and I am sorry for that. I prepared for my innovation club materials in advance, so I guess we can continue to carry on our project now."

"Haha, it's fine now, Jules! By the way, I had some ideas about modifications that we could make on the cloud dress. I will show you this afternoon. With these modifications, I have high hopes that we will win!"

"Right, right. I have been thinking this morning about a way to win as well. I think we should collect evidence to expose that they are cheating if they win the preliminary round for the runway show. A photo focusing on the materials of their project would do."

"Absolutely!"

"Oh, by the way, this bracelet of yours looks great!" Julianna pointed to Beth's bracelet. "Where did you get it?"

Beth feigned a smile and scratched her head as she just came up with a seemingly legit reason to put off this topic.

"Ooooh, this one? My parents gave it to me as a gift when I got into Laurel. Like a growing-up milestone something."

"I think your parents must care about you a lot to give you such a thing like this."

"Well, my mom and dad? I am not quite sure about that, to be honest..." Beth casually checked over her phone for the time. It was near class time. "Anyways, we should head to class now!"

The whole morning Beth didn't concentrate on her classes. She tried to concentrate on what her teachers have been saying, but her mind was busy occupied by the bracelet and winning over Simone's group. Her teacher's words became deep, ambiguous murmurs at the back of her head, flowing directly out through her ears.

You are not that academically talented. Concentrate on the class or you will fail. Her mind warned her. Yet she couldn't help but catch a glimpse of the bracelet. I know. However, I need to figure out why the magic happened to me. This bracelet could be a clue. Besides, Jules just told me to collect evidence to debunk Simone's cheats. Hee hee, now they can't walk all over us! Beth held back a giant sneeze, preventing herself from almost bursting into chuckles in class. Stop this! Her mind reissued a warning. No, can't! Jeez, why is it so hard for me to do this?

In the end, her mind is lost to her heart. As a result, Beth didn't wait until the afternoon to carry out her little plan — taking a photo of Simone's dress and recording any conversation that may give away the message of Simone's group cheating. She sneaked into the art room as soon as lunchtime started. Looking around the room, she saw several mannequins with half-sewn drapery of different colors. Some mannequins only had one layer of basic cloth to showcase the length of a potential dress; the waist was marked with pins. Other mannequins had the chest piece and side pieces sewn together, along with sleeves on both sides of the mannequin.

Simone and her group's project was at the corner. It was indeed gorgeous--a long, pinkish A-line dress with a silk cape and lots of small gems, starting to take shape. The gems showed bright colors by reflecting the sunlight that leaked into the art room.

How can these kids afford so many gemstones? They must have found a supplier. Besides, do they allow three people to join the competition together? I think they infringed on this other rule as well. Let me just start by taking a photo of those gemstones...

Just as Beth was positioning her phone on the dress to take a picture, she saw three people heading towards the art room from the window. Since the windows adjacent to the hallways were high on the walls, she could only see three heads instead of the whole body. The three heads were pink, blonde, and brunette. She knew from her gut that they were Simone and her friends.

Shit! Why do they come at such an hour? She quickly hid behind a cabinet near her, pressing the record button on whatever they were saying.

"We are doing an amazing job here!" Simone was very pleased.

"We are so proud to have a friend like you, Simone. You know what, we took the dress to a tailor to let it be made just to cater to your pretty design!" the brunette sucked up to Simone.

Oh god, they admitted that the dress was made by someone else. Let me just record what they said on my phone...

"You are amazing, Simone! We need to make the top place to let people acknowledge the fabulous you on the stage!"

"Awww, don't say that!!" Simone blushed. "If it's not for you guys, we would not have seen this project in fruition!"

Beth felt her legs getting sour and herself getting impatient.

Fortunately, they were just going to leave in her favor.

"Come on Simone, let's come back this afternoon to continue working. Don't look at all those other costumes on the mannequins—they are not worth the attention."

As soon as the Simone group left, Beth tottered unsteadily to her original table with her sour legs. She turned around to her backpack and quickly grabbed her sketchbook. Time to jot down the inspiration fast. With the deadline of the competition approaching quickly, she HAD to make a modified version of her cloud dress fast!

As her pen touched the paper, she suddenly found out her inspirations flowed so naturally that she didn't need to pin down her pen to make marks. However, the movement of her pen was out of sync with the speed of her stream of thought. It was as if her fingers were enchanted, while the pen dragged and spun those enchanted fingers all over the paper.

With the flying pen, she made some shaky sketches of some large pom-poms as 'clouds' on the lower hem of the dress. However, the continuous pencil marks made the 'clouds' stacked together like dark lumps. She also wanted to doodle some curves on her dress design, which represents her idea of painting the dress with a sunset scene and some birds. The plan got spoiled as the pen made a frantic dance around the paper.

The pen became faster and faster while Beth burst trying to catch the slipping pen from making more unnecessary marks.

Beth was on the verge of flying off the handle. She got quickly fired up trying to catch the slipping pen, but it just made more and more unnecessary marks.

Then, a twitching sound alarmed her.

'Shoo!'

Her bracelet suddenly started shaking on her wrist and emitting strong lights as if those weird color blobs appeared again. The small pen disappeared. Instead, now her giant pen was in front of her, jumping on her palm. She tried to grip the giant pen, but it slipped out of her hand, scribbling patterns everywhere in the art room. There was no way Beth could catch it since it was so quick. As the pen jumped onto the table, it created the perfect painted fabric for the design that Beth just made.

A large piece of orange, red, and purple gradient silk with pink and golden cloud print, and bird prints which has the length of the skirt to the floor.

'Why does my magic have to come at this time?!'

Yet when Beth saw the clean, beautiful materials in front of her, she had a quick change of heart.

"Oh my goodness, oh my god, oh my god! What even is this?" she stood at the table, dumbfounded. "Did I just cheat by...unknowingly using magic myself?"

I will be a hypocrite if I expose Simone and her group now!

With this thought in mind, Beth took the materials and quickly stuffed them in a corner in the cabinet.