Witch (15 page)

Dean's words cut through me; tears stung the corners of my eyes. He was right, why was I getting so worked up? Being a loner I'd never had such good friends before. And in that moment I realised I hadn't been treating them very well. But Bryce and me? I honestly couldn't fathom how Dean and the twins could have come to that conclusion. But alienating Dean wasn't going to help. I tried to calm down and take in what he was saying.

‘Dean, I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on this one. I'm really sorry I was rude to you,' I said. The second bell sounded, indicating classes were about to start. ‘And thanks for the compliment on my hair.'

Dean nodded, and we walked up the hall together towards our homeroom. It occurred to me that Dean, having an alcoholic father, was probably used to emotions exploding irrationally and then having to be left behind. He was good at getting over things quickly. I, on the other hand, needed to learn to control my anger. Even with the cool spell working, not everything was perfect – there was still this
blackness
in me, this weird energy that could just boil up and make me feel . . . a bit crazy.

Later that day all of us were sitting in the school cafeteria . . . surrounded by admirers. Dean was cracking jokes and Donna Hilles, one of Cassidy's friends, was laughing hysterically and batting her eyelashes at him. In addition to his acne disappearing, he also looked twenty pounds lighter than he had when we'd gone into class that morning.

I noticed three junior girls sitting at the next table gazing at Bryce adoringly and felt really jealous. But then I remembered that I needed to get a handle on my hot head.

We'd cast this spell together – we were in it together. For a moment I let myself consider the idea that maybe Bryce really did like me and that I didn't need to feel threatened by three non-magical juniors.

The twins had bigger problems. They were trying to fend off three older guys who were asking for their phone numbers.

And Cassidy was talking to me! ‘Vania, I really like your lip gloss – what is it?' she said as she sat down beside me.

I rubbed at my lips self-consciously. ‘I don't have anything on . . .' I began to say, but there was a pinky pearlescent sheen on the back of my hand. ‘Actually, I've forgotten what it's called. I think it's something by Victoria's Secret.' I shrugged helplessly. I knew I certainly hadn't put anything on my mouth – I always went out of my way to avoid drawing attention to my lips.

‘And your hair looks really good, too,' Cassidy said. ‘Hey, do you want to hang out after school?' She nodded enthusiastically, as if I couldn't possibly say no.

‘Um, thanks, but I can't today, Cassidy.' She looked disappointed and I pinched my leg under the table to make sure I wasn't dreaming. This was surreal.

I noticed the junior girls encroaching on Bryce's personal space and decided to rescue him. ‘See you later, Cassidy,' I said. I walked over to Bryce, pulling up a chair next to him. It made a loud screeching noise on the floor, and for a moment everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me. I just shrugged and smiled.

‘Bryce, I'm sorry for getting so worked up over nothing before,' I said.

‘No problem – and thanks for rescuing me,' Bryce replied in a friendly tone.

Reassured, I winked and laughed. ‘I thought you might need a saviour.'

‘I think the twins need saving more than me right now.' He nodded over at them. The three boys now had the girls pinned against the cafeteria wall. Amelia and Alyssa were gripping their books to their chests. All of a sudden they dropped them, though, and grabbed each other's hand. Their eyes closed, and almost imperceptibly their hair started to float away from their shoulders. I felt the familiar magical prickle down my spine, and from the corner of my eye I saw Dean turn away from Donna and take a step towards the girls.

Everything shifted into slow motion.The twins began to float upwards, until they were a metre off the ground. As this happened, the guys who had been bothering them fell backwards to the floor – but slowly, like feathers settling, as if they had passed out and some invisible hand had caught them, and lowered them gently down.

Bryce and I made our way over. The air felt thick but tingly, like we were swimming through crystal soup. Everything was sparkling.

Dean appeared next to us and the three of us joined hands. Amelia and Alyssa floated over, their eyes were still shut. Alyssa took Bryce's other hand and Amelia taking Dean's. We were joined in a circle and I felt my feet lift from the floor, too – we were all floating at least a metre above the ground. Every breath I took seemed to inflate me, like helium. I looked around the cafeteria, and all I could see were shadowy figures suspended as if frozen in time. I turned back to look at the twins. I had absolutely no idea what the hell was going on.

Suddenly the twins' eyes shot open.

Our feet crashed to the ground, but we remained standing, holding hands, as the room came into focus again. To my dismay, there was complete and utter pandemonium surrounding us.

The three boys on the floor were howling like dogs. Donna Hilles was screaming and running around pushing chairs over with Cassidy helping her, and the three junior girls were giggling maniacally, their eyes rolling back in their heads like they were possessed. Someone had started a food fight; kids were scooping their hands into the food buffet and throwing it at each other. And into the centre of all of this walked . . . Mr Barrow.

‘STOP!' His voice thundered over the noise.

The room went silent. Suddenly everything was normal again, as if nothing had ever happened – except that there was food dripping off some of the knocked-over chairs, splashed on the walls and covering the other students. And we, the coven, were still standing in a circle holding hands in the centre of the cafeteria.

Mr Barrow's finger pointed at us, sharp like a stake he would skewer us on if he could. ‘You lot – my office!'

We marched after him into the hall.

‘What the hell was that floating thing?' I whispered to Amelia.

‘A psychic shield. We read about them and learnt how to make one, in theory. I think we overdid it on this one, though,' she said, leaning towards me her voice hushed so that Mr Barrow wouldn't hear her.

‘It's only meant to be like a light forcefield that blocks people from approaching you, but I think we sucked too much energy into it and made everything in its immediate vicinity go out of balance,' Alyssa whispered in my other ear.

‘That's one way of putting it.' Dean snickered. ‘I think you caused complete chaos – quantum style.'

We reached Mr Barrow's office. I noticed Bryce was still holding my hand and a warm feeling went through me, but when I looked up and saw the horrible look on Mr Barrow's face an icy chill took its place. He was glaring at me with such intensity that I shrank behind Bryce to get away from it.

‘Get in here,' he snarled.

While our cool spell had worked to enchant our classmates, it seemed to have exacerbated Mr Barrow's persecution of me – so much so that his hatred had now engulfed my coven, too.

We shuffled into the office and lined up against the back wall.

Mr Barrow took a seat behind his desk and said nothing. The silence made me even more uncomfortable than when he'd yelled at us.

‘Mr Barrow, why have you called us in here?' Bryce said eventually.

‘As an ex-class president, you should have an idea.' Mr Barrow emphasised the ‘ex', and a fleck of spit left his mouth as he spat the word out.

‘Actually, sir, I don't.'

‘Causing a commotion, creating an uproar among the younger students in the common area, when you all should be setting an example. You all deserve detention as far as I'm concerned,' Mr Barrow said. He seemed exultant, spreading the words out over us all like a net. Still, I couldn't help but feel most of his anger was reserved for me.

‘Sir, we didn't do anything,' Amelia said.

I had to admire her boldness. We'd been floating a metre off the ground, after all. I glanced at her, but her face was a mask of innocence. Alyssa also looked completely guilt-free. I wondered if maybe we had been the only people to experience us floating. Like we'd been in some parallel dimension, unseen by normal people.

‘Starting today, you will be in my laboratory after school for a minimum of two hours a day for a total of seven days,' Mr Barrow said, glaring at us. ‘One more word from any of you and I will make it a month.'

We all kept our mouths closed.

As we left his office I fingered the desert sage I kept in my pocket all the time now. It wasn't doing a very good job of protecting me from misfortune – maybe I needed to stuff both my pockets with it.

When we were out of Mr Barrow's earshot I spoke up. ‘He has no evidence that we did anything wrong. Why did he give us detention?'

‘Maybe the spell is backfiring?' Bryce said. ‘So far being cool has been a pain in the butt just like I said it would be.'

‘You're biased,' I said, rolling my eyes. ‘You never really wanted to do this spell in the first place. But I like being cool. I like having people like Matt and Cassidy sucking up to me.'

‘Geez, Vania, I never realised you were so shallow,' Bryce said. ‘I think I liked you better the way you were before.'

His words shot through me like a bullet. I ran out of the building.

I went and sat under a tree outside, my head buried in my hands. What a mess everything was. Being cool had only made things worse with Mr Barrow and got all of us detention, Bryce had made it clear he didn't like the cool me and now I was back where I started – feeling like a freak.

I hadn't realised how much I'd secretly longed to be popular. The purpose of the spell had been for everyone to get on – to be equal – not for us to become the cool group. Had I somehow tainted the intention of the spell? Was that why today had gone pear-shaped?

I went over the words I'd written for the incantation:
We know who we are / No longer hidden / we reveal our true
selves
. These were positive, good ideas about being the best we could be. I didn't limit it to appearances . . . The problem must be in how I was viewing things.
Well
, I told myself,
I'll just have to stop focusing on that part of the result
and work harder to live up to our intention
.

Turned out Bryce had been right – being cool was proving not to be as great as I'd thought it would be.

My heart sank as the final bell rang for the day – time for detention with creepy Mr Barrow. Still at least we were all doing it together.

When I arrived at the chemistry lab, Dean and Bryce were already there. Mr Barrow wasn't.

‘Hey guys, I'm sorry I freaked out before – I think being cool went to my head briefly. I went a bit nuts!' I laughed a little, hoping they'd chuckle, too.

‘I should apologise, too,' Bryce cut me off. ‘I didn't think enough about your perspective on the spell. I shouldn't have been so quick to judge.'

Dean nodded. ‘I'm enjoying this spell, but we didn't intend for it to cause us more problems. If you guys want to reverse it, I'm happy to. I don't need it. I feel the same on the inside. And it would probably be simpler to just stop eating crap to lose weight and fix my skin.'

We were all laughing together as the twins walked in.

‘This is a first – laughing during detention!' they both said.

And now there was just one thing missing – Mr Barrow.

Half an hour later he still hadn't shown.

‘Did we get the day wrong? He did say we had to start this today, right?' Dean said. We had all been sitting there fidgeting, growing more and more uneasy.

‘I feel like I'm being watched.' Alyssa took the words right out of my head.

‘Can you sense him?' I asked.

‘I'm not trusting my psychic powers right now,' Alyssa whispered. ‘Not after what we did with that shield. This is just my gut telling me – he's messing with us.'

‘Maybe we should just leave?' Bryce stood up. ‘I'm over it. Barrow had no good reason to give us detention anyway.' He said the last words loudly and defiantly, as if daring Mr Barrow to confront him.

‘Yeah, I vote we leave,' Dean said loudly too, pushing back his chair.

We were gathering our bags when the door slammed shut behind us. I jumped and turned to see Mr Barrow standing there.

‘Detention is cancelled,' he said coldly.

None of us moved.

‘Get out of here before I change my mind,' he snapped. ‘And if I catch any of you so much as even causing a whimper among the other students I will have you back in here before you can blink.'

We grabbed our bags and walked towards the door. Dean reached it first, but Mr Barrow just stood there, blocking it with his stocky frame.

Dean stood in front of him uncertainly. ‘Sir, can I pass?'