Rhymes With Witches Read online

  This was not the normal Camilla. There was nothing normal here at all.

  I flashed back to the hallway outside Lurl’s office, when Camilla and I had made our hasty escape. Camilla had turned off Lurl’s lights. Camilla had shut the office door.

  Nausea slammed into me. It wasn’t Lurl who had taken my key, and it wasn’t any of the Bitches. And it wasn’t the cat who had taken my pendant.

  It was Camilla.

  “Give it back,” I said. I held out my open hand.

  Camilla was still flying high from her success with Sukie, but she slid a mask over her satisfaction.

  “No,” she said.

  I floundered for a few seconds, then narrowed my eyes. “Yes,” I said. “It’s mine. My dad gave it to me. And you took it. That’s stealing, you know.”

  “Oh, please,” Camilla said. She headed toward Hamilton Hall.

  “Hey. Hey! I’m talking to you!”

  She didn’t turn around.

  I ran to catch up. “I stood up for you that night. They were going to … and I stopped them, I told them no, and …” I grabbed her arm. “I’m the only reason you know anything about this in the first place. I did it to help you!”

  Camilla’s smile returned. “Believe me, you did.”

  The next day, Miriam Fossey told me my neck was dirty. Elizabeth Greene sloshed her Diet Coke down the front of my shirt, and Pammy Varlotta, when I sidled up next to her by the vending machines, blushed and refused to meet my gaze.

  “You don’t understand,” I told her. “I’m the same person I used to be, I swear. It’s just that the Bitches, they have this secret power, see? Well, actually, it’s Lurl the Pearl who has the power, but she can’t do it without them, and—”

  Pammy bolted. She grabbed her granola bar and ran, while the kids behind me watched and snickered.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me!” I cried.

  “That’s debatable, I must say,” muttered Rutgers Steiner, shoving quarters into the soft-drink dispenser.

  During PE I approached Debbie, since I knew how much she hated Camilla.

  “And now I get it,” I explained. “Because I see her for the traitor she really is. And that’s good, right? You believe me, right?”

  She slammed an oversized red rubber ball into my chest.

  “Don’t go bad-mouthing Camilla,” she warned. She caught the ball on the rebound and bounced it off my head. “Whining loser!”

  Coach Shaw blew her whistle. “You’re out, Goodwin! Take the bench!”

  During my free period, I marched up to Mary Bryan in the commons area. I stood in front of her, hands on my hips, until she looked up.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said. “This is absurd.”

  “This is life,” she said. She went back to her fingernails, carefully applying lavender flower decals over a pearly pink base coat. When I kept standing there, she said, “Pardon me, but you’re in my light.”

  When lunchtime rolled around, I retreated to the library. I needed to be away from everybody. I needed time to figure things out.

  “Hello, Jane,” Ms. Cratchett said, looking up from a stack of index cards.

  “Hi, Ms. Cratchett,” I said. Was it my imagination, or was even she regarding me a little frostily? I surprised myself by approaching her desk.

  “So … are you still having problems with those cats?” I asked.

  Her mouth creased in displeasure. “It’s a travesty. Cat hair all over my keyboard, and this morning, excrement by my coffee pot. Excrement! It’s getting so they think they own the place.”

  I nodded sympathetically, not knowing exactly where I was going but plunging forward nonetheless. “You should see Ms. Lear’s class—they’re seriously everywhere. Poor Ms. Lear, huh?”

  “Lurlene?” Ms. Cratchett said. “Lurlene doesn’t give a damn, pardon my French. I’ve told her, ‘Come see the mess they made of my periodicals. Then try telling me they’re your furry little beasties.’”

  “She calls them her furry little beasties?”

  Ms. Cratchett pursed her lips. She shuffled her index cards. “Don’t you have work to do? Don’t you need to trot off to your hidey-hole and pretend to be busy?”

  I blinked. Her frostiness was not in my imagination. Even so, I made myself push on.

  “But about Ms. Lear …”

  “Yes?”

  I didn’t actually know what I wanted to ask. Is she a madwoman? What does she do in that back room, in that eerie, ghoulish temple? Why does she smell like tuna?

  Finally, I said, “How long has she been here, anyway? At Crestview.”

  Ms. Cratchett cackled in an on-the-brink kind of way. It occurred to me that she should probably consider new employment. “Since the dawn of time—that’s why she’s got her claws in so deep. She was a student here herself, you know.”

  My stomach dipped. “Ms. Lear went to school here? As a student?”

  “Not too bright, are you?” Ms. Cratchett said. “I suggest you try studying sometime instead of reading your dog-eared baby books. Now, shoo!” She flapped her hand at me. “Go on!”

  I backed away from her desk, then made a beeline for the far bookshelves, over in the “Alma Mater Pride” section. There were old yearbooks there. Rows and rows of them.

  How old was Lurl, anyway? It was impossible to tell. I flipped through 1979, then tried 1973, then 1972. Bingo. “Lurlene Lear,” it said in the index. And then a listing of the pages she appeared on.

  Dread made my limbs feel heavy. Did I really want to look? Then again, what choice did I have?

  I sat on the floor and turned to page forty-eight, where I found Lurl’s class picture in the senior section. If she wasn’t labeled by name, I wouldn’t have recognized her. She was beautiful, with glossy brown hair and glowing skin. She wasn’t wearing glasses, and her eyes were luminous. A strand of creamy pearls circled her neck.

  I flipped to another page. “Big Kid!” read the caption, and the picture showed Lurl reclining on one of the benches outside Hamilton Hall. She wore a baseball cap pulled low, and she was grinning at the camera. The print beneath the picture said, “Senior Lurlene Lear relaxes between classes. She’ll always be a kid at heart!”

  I looked at one more. This one was a full-page spread of a beaming Lurl wearing a tiara and clutching a bouquet of white roses. She was in Crestview’s gym, I could tell, although it had been transformed by silver icicles and sparkling silver trees. A banner draped behind her said ENCHANTMENT IN THE SNOW.

  I read the paragraph beneath the picture. “Lurlene Lear shines as Ice Maiden of the Winter Carnival. ‘I am so blessed!’ gushed Lurlene as she accepted her crown. ‘I will never be happier in my whole entire life!’”

  I closed the yearbook. I felt ill. How could Lurl have been … ? And how could she now be … ? What had happened to her? What had she turned into? And what the fuck was the deal with the cats?

  I exchanged the ’72 yearbook for the ’71 one and checked out Lurl as a junior. Younger, and with shorter hair, but just as pretty and just as busy. One picture showed her on a hayride. “Yehaw!” read the caption.

  In the ’70 yearbook, Lurl as a sophomore cuddled a fluffy white cat, their cheeks pressed together. The cat looked vaguely panicked in that way animals do when they’re held too tight. “Awww, how sweet!” were the words underneath, and then a bit about Lurl’s volunteer work for the Humane Society. I didn’t like looking at that one, and I shut the yearbook right away.

  I pulled down the yearbook from 1969. In this one Lurl would be a freshman, just like me. Only when I checked the index, there was no “Lurlene Lear.” There was a “Sandra L. Lear” listed, but no “Lurlene.”

  Something stilled within me, and the page numbers went out of focus. Sandra L. Lear. Sandy. The girl who had died?

  My stomach turned upside down. I blinked to get my eyes working again and flipped to page twenty-three, the sole listing for Sandra L. Lear. And there she was, in the small rectangular box that framed her cl
ass photo. She stared out blankly, with no expression giving life to her features. Her eyes were dark empty holes.

  Sand in the oyster—the thought came unbidden. And what had Lurl said? “Because I’m such a gem.”

  The stillness inside me broke into a million pieces, because Sandy hadn’t died after all. She had just … changed. And come back as Lurl.

  I stood up, letting the yearbook spill to the floor. I walked quickly out of the library and headed for the cafeteria. I broke into a run. I had the sense that someone was following me, and my nerve endings jangled with adrenaline. I had to tell people about this. I had to let them know.

  But when I got to the lunchroom, I stopped at the door and stood there, panting. Because there was Camilla, sitting with the Bitches at the soccer jocks’ table. Her face was glowing. Her eyes were luminous. She said something that I couldn’t hear, and Anna Maria punched her on the shoulder. Debbie gave her an affectionate noogie, and everyone laughed.

  Okay, I thought that afternoon. Fine. There was a whole lot of wrongness going on, things that were sick and creepy and unnatural, but the past was the past and the future was now. And I wasn’t about to roll over and play dead just because the Bitches wanted me to—no way. They didn’t get to decide who I was. Only I got to decide that. And I was not going to be a freaking toad.

  I went to the mall and bought a pair of shit-kicking black boots. They cost a fortune, and they were even cooler than Bitsy’s. I wore them the next morning along with the denim mini-skirt from my coming-out party and a fuzzy white V-necked sweater. I looked hotter than hot.

  I waited for Nate at his locker, because what had Mary Bryan said? He’s yours if you want him. He wants to be your prince. Well, today was Nate’s lucky day. I was finally going to make it easy on the poor guy.

  I leaned sideways against the locker, my hip cocked and one arm up so that my sweater stretched over my chest. Then I decided that was a little too come-hither, so I switched positions and propped my back against the locker’s metal grates, my arms folded over my ribs. I saw Nate come in through the front entrance, and a sick, zingy feeling started up inside me.

  Relax, I coached myself. Feel the power.

  “Hi,” I said as he approached. “What’s up?”

  He seemed surprised to see me, but he didn’t shut me out.

  “Not much,” he said. “You?”

  “Oh, you know, just life as normal.”

  His eyes darted down the hall, which could have been wariness or could just have been nerves. I tried to remember to breathe.

  “So anyway,” I said, “I was just wondering … I mean, if you aren’t busy or anything …”

  He stepped nearer, his body this close.

  “Hey,” he said. He leaned in.

  My pulse accelerated. I’d never been a fan of public displays of affection, but maybe that was because they’d never been directed at me. I wet my lips and tilted my head. “Yeah?”

  “You’re blocking my locker. Can you move?”

  “Oh! Right. Sure.” Heat spread through my body as I scooted out of the way. “So do you want to do something sometime?”

  He shook his head. “Nah.”

  “But … I thought you liked me.”

  He shoved his books into his backpack and turned to leave.

  No. This was not the way it was supposed to happen. I grabbed his shoulders and aimed for his lips.

  “Sick!” he yelped, pushing me off.

  I sprawled to the floor, and my mini-skirt slid high on my thighs. Some sophomore almost wet himself in delight.

  “Nice crotch shot,” he crowed. “Not!”

  My humiliation that day included, but was not limited to, the following:

  • my chair was pulled out from under me not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions;

  • Miriam Fossey upended my backpack and kicked the contents across the floor;

  • Ryan Overturf announced to the whole cafeteria that I’d be giving free blow jobs in front of Nate’s locker, after which Nate shoved his shoulder and said, “Shut up, man. Don’t give her any ideas.”;

  • and a cat pissed on my locker.

  Oh, and in my early religions class, Lurl couldn’t stop giggling. She’d teach a little, look at me, and let out her low, throaty man giggle. And I wasn’t the only one freaked out by it. Everybody was.

  “God dang,” Bob Foskin stage whispered from the front row. “Stop setting her off, girl. Are you in heat or something?”

  I sank lower in my seat. My foot hit something soft, and I jerked it back. A white cat hissed and swiped at my ankle, and my heart knocked against my ribs.

  I drew my legs all the way up in my chair. I tried very hard not to think about kittens. But Lurl was right there, not ten feet away, and I searched her face for any clue about how she got to be who she was today. From the hollow-eyed freshman to the radiant Ice Maiden to … this. What unseen power had transformed her so completely?

  She caught me looking, and she broke off her explanation of fertility and the blood of life.

  “The devil’s in the details, dearie,” she said, pitching her words at me. She covered her mouth and dissolved into giggles.

  As I was walking home from school, Alicia’s sister Rae pulled up beside me in her Plymouth Cougar. She rolled down her window and called, “Hey. Jane.”

  I looked at her warily, and she threw a brush at me. A pink plastic Goody. She sped away, her horn blaring “Dixie.”

  On Thursday, I told Mom I was sick. I also told her that I needed to switch schools, because I didn’t fit in at Crestview and I never would. I didn’t mention the fact that my humanities teacher had sold her soul to the devil.

  “Oh, honey,” Mom said. She sat down beside me. “What’s going on?”

  “Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me.”

  “Guess you’ll go eat worms?” she said, quoting a song she used to sing when I was little. She saw my death look. “Sorry. But, Jane, you’ve got tons of friends.”

  I pushed my Cheerios with my spoon.

  “Don’t you?” Mom asked. I snuck a look at her face and saw that she had grown uncertain. She started to rub my neck, then drew back her hand. “Surely things aren’t as bad as you think.”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Sweetie …”

  I released my spoon handle. I watched it slide sideways under the milk.

  Mom frowned. She glanced at her watch, then stood up. “Well, if you’re really sick, you can stay home. But why don’t you think about calling Alicia? Or Phil. Maybe they could cheer you up.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That’s a great idea.”

  Last week, Mom would have held my face in her hands and told me how much she loved me. Today, even she couldn’t bear to touch me. I dumped my cereal into the sink and went back to bed.

  I didn’t go to school on Friday, either. What was the point?

  No one called to check on me. No one brought me chicken soup.

  In a fit of furious self pity, I threw away the teddy bear, the jade hair comb, and the Polynesian vest, as well as every other Dad-related knickknack I could find. I purged myself of everything Dad, because what good had he done for me? He’d left on a three-year trek to find himself, and now, because of him, I was as lost as he was.

  But I went back once my blood had cooled and dug out the teddy bear. I touched his stupid shirt, the one that said, “I Love Cairo.” I hugged him tight, closing my eyes and resting my chin on his head.

  That night, Mom went out with her friend Kitty. They were going to a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a boutique called “Essentials.” There were going to be fabulous giveaways.

  “Are you sure you don’t mind?” Mom asked. “I’d be happy to stay home. We could order a pizza.”

  She would have, if I let her. I saw that now. But I said, “Go, I’ll be fine. Really.”

  I watched Mom climb onto the back of Kitty’s motorcycle, and I felt as if I were looking at her from a far back place insi
de of me. As if there were a gap between me and the rest of the world. Everything looked so fragile.

  Kitty’s voice rang out, and Mom laughed. She tightened the strap on her helmet.

  Who are those people? I asked myself. Who am I?

  Kitty’s Harley purred to life, and I stood there until I could no longer see the taillights. I went back inside and picked up the phone.

  First, I called Alicia. I was worried that Rae might answer, but she didn’t.

  “This is me,” I said to the machine. “Jane. I need to talk to you, okay? Call me.”

  Next I called Camilla, but when Camilla’s mom answered, she said Camilla was out for the evening.

  “Oh,” I said. “Uh … where?”

  “A party,” said Camilla’s mom. I could hear the pride in her voice, the still surprise of it. “She dressed up as Dorothy from that movie with the munchkins. One of her new friends came by and helped her get ready.”

  “Right,” I said, as if I’d simply forgotten. “Thanks so much.”

  On a hunch, I looked up Kyle Kelley’s number and punched it in. I switched the phone to my other ear, wiped my palm on my jeans, and switched back. My pulse thrummed in my temples.

  “Hello, gorgeous,” Kyle said in a sultry tone. I heard voices and laughter in the background.

  “Uh, hi,” I said. Did he have caller ID? Did he know it was me? Just in case, I said, “This is Jane. What’s up?”

  “Who?” he said. The party noises were really loud.

  “Jane,” I said again.

  “I’m sorry, do I know you?” he asked. There was a splintering crash, and he said, “For God’s sake, Stuart, you’re the tin man, not the terminator. Will someone please give this man some lubrication?” He came back to me full strength. “Who’s this again?”

  “It’s Jane Goodwin. And I—”

  “Nevermind sweets. This really isn’t the best time. Bye now!”

  The line went dead. I hit the off button and threw the phone onto the couch. It bounced off a cushion and landed on the floor, where it trilled its shrill ring.