Rhymes With Witches Read online

  I twisted the dial on my lock. Beside me, Sally Howarth’s locker stood open while Sally chatted with Leila Hobbs. Sally had decorated the inside of the door with colorful magnets, some holding up pictures, but some on their own, serving no purpose whatsoever. Just wasting space.

  Sally fished around for the notebook on top of her stack of books. She slammed her locker and headed down the hall with Leila.

  “You look like hell,” Alicia informed me, pulling off another of her great sneak-ups. “Seriously. You look even worse than I do.”

  I whipped around, my pulse in overdrive. “Gee, thanks,” I said.

  “I’m just being honest.”

  “Uh-huh. And thanks again.”

  She leaned against the lockers on my other side. She’d trimmed her bangs, and they lay in a straight, black line over her eyebrows. “Anyway, if you’re worried that I’m still mad at you, I’m not. Which I would have told you if I could have found you at school yesterday. Or if you ever answered your damn phone. You’re like this lady of the night now, always off on some mysterious adventure. What’s up with that?”

  I closed my eyes. I needed to tell her. Had to tell her. But I knew she wasn’t going to like it. I opened my eyes. “Um, actually I—”

  “Yeah, whatever,” she said. The hall was filling up, and some guy knocked her off balance as he passed. “Meet me in front of Hamilton after math, all right? I’ve got big news. Bigger even than cheerleading. See you!”

  Okay, then, I thought. Saved by the bell, which hadn’t yet rung. I shoved my French books into my backpack and closed my locker. I scanned the floor, hoping to spot a wayward pen. A paper clip, even.

  But there was nothing there.

  “I know, I know, it’s totally out of character,” Alicia said two minutes into our free period. “You’re thinking, ‘Who is this chick,’ right? ‘Who is this girly-girl who’s taken over my best friend’s body?’” She widened her eyes. “But Jane.”

  “But Alicia,” I said.

  “He is amazing,” she said. “I’m telling you, I’ve never had a crush this bad.”

  “You’ve never had a crush, period.”

  “Because there’s never been anyone worthy. Until now.” She nodded, as if to suggest that yes, it was incredible, and yes, she could handle it if—understandably—I didn’t know how to respond.

  I didn’t know how to respond, but not for the reason she suspected. I’d spent all of math class gearing up to tell her about the Bitches, and the strategy I’d come up with was to spill the news in a great excited burst, as if I fully assumed that she’d be as happy about it as I was. No room for wounded resentment, that was the goal.

  But now here was Alicia, telling me her own news in a great excited burst. She’d morphed into an actual human being—happy, even—and I’d barely been able to get a word in edgewise.

  “So are you going to tell me who he is?” I asked.

  She gripped the cement bench we were sitting on. “Tommy Arnez. We got put in the same group for English—how lucky is that?” She lifted her eyebrows. “And you know how much I hate group work.”

  “But not anymore?”

  “Not anymore. No sir, no way.” Her voice went dreamy. “Tommy Arnez.”

  “Ah,” I said. Tommy Arnez was a drama geek, not a super-cool jock or a hottie in a garage band. Tommy’s friends called him “Babyface,” because of his big, round face that matched his big, round body. He was way talented, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up on Broadway someday. But he was the funny guy, the always-joking guy, not the smooth-moves-and-aftershave guy. Which was good, because it meant Alicia had a chance.

  “Ms. Morgan assigned us this asinine project, which was to come up with five ‘essential learnings’ for the semester,” Alicia said. “We were all like, ‘You’re the teacher. That’s your job.’ But Ms. Morgan said we had to take ownership of our own experience—gag, gag—and that after coming up with the essential learnings, we had to decide what would happen to anyone who didn’t learn them. And you know what Tommy said?”

  “Tell me.”

  “‘Throw ’em in the chokey.’”

  “The chokey? What the hell is the chokey?”

  “That’s what I said, too!” Alicia said. She slapped the bench. “He said it’s, like, this dark closet with sharp nails sticking out all over the inside. Like a medieval torture chamber, kind of.” She smirked. “Ms. Morgan was not amused.”

  Apparently, Alicia was.

  “And get this,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “We left class together, and we talked all the way to our lockers. And then last night, he called me up and invited me to this fundraiser thing on Saturday night. It’s for this performance art group called Howling Muses, and they do all this hilarious stuff like put poems into tampon dispensers.” She whapped my leg, a series of rapid pats. “Can you believe it?”

  “Alicia, that’s awesome.”

  “I know!”

  “I am so happy for you.” I upped my smile and barreled ahead. “And guess what? I have good news, too. I’m a Bitch!”

  “Huh?” Alicia said.

  “You know, a Bitch. A Bitch. They picked me after all!”

  Alicia’s face muscles slackened, and for a second I saw the old Alicia shining through. But she covered her jealousy almost immediately. “Oh my god. Jane, that’s fantastic!”

  “Really? You mean it?”

  “Of course I mean it. Why wouldn’t I mean it? What kind of friend wouldn’t mean it, you spaz?”

  To her credit, she was really trying. And her own windfall softened the blow, I’m sure. Gladness bubbled through me, and I decided just to run with it. She was happy for me, and I was happy for her. Why should that be too good to be true?

  “So … when did this happen? And how?” Alicia asked. “Tell me, tell me, tell me.”

  So I did, and it was so nice not to have to edit myself and make it sound less mind-blowing than it really was. I skipped the part about the stealing, however, because that was privileged information. Besides, it wasn’t a detail I needed to share.

  “In-freaking-credible,” Alicia said after I’d finished and after I’d answered her many questions. She tilted her head, going for supportive with a dash of caution. “You’ve just got to promise to be careful, okay?”

  “Yeah, of course. But there’s nothing to worry about, Alicia.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m just saying.”

  A warmth radiated between us that I hadn’t felt for a while. We grinned at each other.

  From the building came the muffled ringing of the bell. Kids poured from the doors. I saw Phil trip and go sprawling, and I saw Stuart Hill behind him, slapping John Rogers’s palm. I instinctively started to rise, even though I was too far away to help.

  “Shit,” Alicia said. “I wanted to make myself beautiful for English.” She unzipped the bottom compartment of her pack and fumbled for her mirror. “Do I look okay?”

  A girl named Oz Spencer stopped and gave Phil a hand, and I sat back down on the bench. Oz was chubby, with hot-pink hair, and she had a tendency to wear low riders that showed her butt crack. I liked her for being nice to Phil.

  “You look fine,” I told Alicia.

  Alicia scrunched her hair, then rubbed her teeth. Her backpack drooped off the bench, and keys and makeup clattered to the ground.

  “Fuck, I don’t have time for this!” Alicia cried.

  “Relax,” I said. I knelt to retrieve her junk, thinking anew how lucky I was to be me instead of Oz or Phil or Alicia. My fingers closed over a tiny tub of lip balm, which I shoved into my pocket. The rest I scooped into her pack.

  “You’re the best,” Alicia said. She snatched her backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “Bye! Wish me luck!”

  “Good luck!” I called as she hurried up the sidewalk. “Give him a kiss for me!”

  I grabbed my pack and headed for French. Below my hipbone, the tub of l
ip balm pressed into my skin. I felt quivery, although I pushed the sensation down as best I could.

  It’s only lip balm, I told myself. You’ve borrowed lip balm from each other a million times.

  Anyway, it was done. There was no point worrying about it now.

  Mary Bryan squealed a muted squeal. “Yay,” she said, clapping quietly in the crowded hall. “The hardest part’s over, I swear. And at least you didn’t throw up like I did. I honestly threw up, that’s how nervous I was.” She took the lip balm and turned it over. “So whose is it?”

  “Um—”

  “Never mind, I don’t want to know.” She returned the lip balm, a quick hand-to-hand transfer. Her eyes were shining. “Now all you have to do is get it to Lurl. Easy-peasy, right? That’s what Bitsy says.”

  Easy-peasy. Right. I wedged the lip balm back in my pocket.

  “I was actually thinking … do I really have to give it to Lurl?”

  She frowned at me as I were being silly. “Uh, yes, Jane. That’s kind of the point.”

  “But why?”

  “Because. That’s the way it works.”

  I sighed. I wanted to push further, but something held me back.

  “Well, will you at least come with me?” I said. “I wouldn’t ask, except I’m afraid I’ll mess up. Or that I’ll run into Lurl and not be able to do anything, because if I have to actually talk to her, I’m pretty sure I’ll lose it. I mean, what would I say to her? ‘Here, I stole this for you’?”

  “You don’t have to say anything,” Mary Bryan said. “Just put it on her desk and leave.”

  “But won’t she think that’s extremely weird?”

  “She’ll think it’s extremely weird if you don’t,” she said. I must have looked blank, because she made an impatient movement with her hands. “She knows you’re coming. She’s expecting you.”

  “What?!”

  Mary Bryan stepped closer. She scanned the hall, then lowered her voice. “She’s really very nice. She’s just … shy.”

  My insides tightened. “You have to come with me.”

  “I don’t know. Keisha wouldn’t like it.”

  “Please.”

  She twisted a strand of blond hair around her finger and pulled the end to her mouth. I scrunched my toes inside my sneakers.

  She dropped her hand. “Okay, but we have to do it now. Can you be late to your next class?”

  I nodded.

  “Then come on,” Mary Bryan said. She led me to the third floor of Hamilton Hall, where we strode past a half dozen classrooms, including the room where Lurl taught her early religions class. Then she turned right down the south hall. Yellow and black police tape blocked the entrance to the English Department lounge, site of Mr. Cohen’s cat attack.

  “Idiots,” Mary Bryan muttered. An empty metal cage sat outside the door, a fuzzy pink and turquoise ball lying in the corner. Mary Bryan kicked the cage as she passed. The ball jingled as it rolled to the other side.

  “This way,” Mary Bryan said. She tugged open the heavy door at the far end of the hall. The door led to the dim corridor that connected the south hall to the north hall. Since it didn’t open into any classrooms, it wasn’t highly trafficked. Its walls weren’t even plastered with the requisite charcoal sketches and pastel self-portraits of various art classes.

  I held the door and paused outside the corridor. I remembered something from Rae’s ghost story, about how the sacrifice was made in an abandoned storage room on the third floor of Hamilton Hall. Off a hall that nobody used.

  Mary Bryan turned around. “Jane? We’re almost there. Come on.”

  I buried the memory and quelled my uneasiness. Or tried to, anyway. I joined Mary Bryan, and the door swung shut behind us. We walked a couple of yards farther and stopped in front of Lurl’s office. I knew from the fake wood placard held in place by two metal clips. S. L. LEAR, it said in flaking gold letters.

  “There,” Mary Bryan said, jerking her chin.

  I stood there. A terrible dread stole through my veins, and this time it got the best of me. They offered a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was accepted. They offered a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was accepted.

  Mary Bryan glanced at the end of the corridor, at the closed door that led back to the main hall. “Go ahead. Use your key.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You have to.”

  I inched toward the door, then drew my key from my pocket and fit it into the lock. A noise came from the main hall, and both of us jumped. I met Mary Bryan’s eyes.

  “Go,” she said.

  I pushed open the door, realizing with a too-late jolt that I should have knocked first. Oh god, why didn’t I knock?

  But the office was empty. Mary Bryan hurried me in and shut the door behind us. She flicked on the light, and the shadowy form of a desk and filing cabinet sprang into resolution. Nothing else.

  “This is it?” I said.

  Mary Bryan crossed her arms over her chest as if she didn’t want to accidentally touch anything. Not that there was anything to touch. The office was completely sterile.

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “What did you expect?”

  I exhaled, my fear diminishing. Now I felt silly for feeling scared in the first place.

  “It’s, like, dead in here,” I said. “Are you sure she even uses it?”

  “Just put the lip balm on the desk and let’s go,” Mary Bryan said.

  At the far end of the office was a second door. I moved toward it, asking, “What’s in there? Is there another room connected with this one?”

  Mary Bryan grabbed my arm. “You’re not allowed.”

  I sniffed, catching a whiff of something vaguely meaty. “Hey. Do you smell cat food?”

  “No. Put the lip balm on the desk.”

  “I totally smell cat food. Oh my god, do you think—”

  “What I think is that I took my own time to come here with you, and now it’s really uncool that you’re making me late to class,” Mary Bryan said.

  “Oh,” I said. “I just thought … I mean, we’re already late, so …”

  “It’s just extremely inconsiderate.”

  I flinched. I’d never seen Mary Bryan pissed before. I didn’t think she got pissed. I wiggled Alicia’s lip balm out of my pocket and approached Lurl’s desk. Then I stopped short, my body going cold. On the corner of the desk was a dead kitten, its tiny head lolling unnaturally from its body.

  And then it was just a pencil sharpener. A gray mechanical pencil sharpener, its handle jutting out by its base.

  My breath rushed back. A layer of sweat slicked my skin. I set the lip balm on Lurl’s desk and stepped away.

  “Thank you,” Mary Bryan said. She strode out of the office and waited while I pulled the door shut and locked it. We walked without speaking down the corridor, and it wasn’t until we were back in the main hall, past the water fountain and a bright mural of a teeming jungle, that she relented.

  “Sorry I snapped at you.” She gave me a sideways look.

  “No, I’m sorry,” I said. I gave her a sickly smile. I was still recovering from my fright. “I didn’t mean to make you late, honest.”

  “Yeah, well. Madame Herrera’s going to kill me anyway. It’s not like five minutes are going to make a difference.”

  We stopped at the top of the stairwell. Her class was back on the first floor; mine was two doors down.

  “So whose was it, now that it’s done?” she asked.

  “Whose was …? Oh, you mean the lip balm?”

  She nodded.

  I paused, then spit it out. “Alicia’s. Alicia Dugger’s.”

  Mary Bryan paled.

  “I know,” I said. “I know, I know. But it’s not like she’s never borrowed anything from me before. I’ll get her a new one, I swear.”

  “But Keisha told you,” Mary Bryan said. “She didn’t keep anything secret, she told you right up front …”

  “You mean that hocus-pocus from last night?” I
said. I tried to laugh it off. “Come on.”

  Mary Bryan twisted the bottom of her shirt. “She told you how it works,” she whispered. “‘For one to rise, another must fall.’”

  It brought the cold feeling back to my body, and I almost felt as though I was going to faint. “Please. You guys are nuts. I mean, it’s done, okay? I did what you wanted, so you can drop the whole charade thing.”

  She gazed at me.

  “Because it’s really pretty stupid,” I said. It was the first time I’d said anything like that to her, anything the slightest bit critical.

  But all Mary Bryan said was, “Don’t do it again. Not if she’s your friend.” She touched my arm, or rather the cloth of my shirt. She turned and hurried down the stairs.

  During geometry, something odd happened. I was taking notes as Mr. Hopper explained some proof when suddenly the world slid sideways. My pen clattered to my desk, and a shimmer pulsed through me. Life was an infinite web of lights—I knew it because I felt it—and mine burned brighter than most.

  The sensation lasted only a second, and then it was gone. I was still me, my butt on the hard plastic seat. But I understood, although I wasn’t sure how, that Lurl had found the lip balm.

  At lunch, the cafeteria lady handmade my turkey sub, adding guacamole, fresh tomatoes, and two strips of caramelized bacon. I put aside thoughts of offerings and rituals and gave myself to the moment.

  “How did she know?” I asked Keisha, glancing down the food line to verify that yes, the lesser mortals were receiving Turkey Joes. I spotted Phil receiving his plate, and he grinned a hello. He motioned with his eyes at Keisha, a gesture that meant, Someone’s moving up in the world, hmm? Then the cafeteria lady handed him his Turkey Joe, which was gray, and he turned back quick not to drop it.

  “Chill,” Keisha told me under her breath. “Never act entitled.”

  “So here’s our starlet,” Bitsy said, joining us as we exited the line. “This way, luv. We’re sitting with the cheerleaders today. Fair’s fair, you know, and Elizabeth positively begged.”