Bewitching (20 page)

So now, Lisette had the bigger room, the nicer computer, and all my former friends.

I just had Kendra. Kendra was my new best friend, and she alone seemed to see Lisette for what she was.

One day, shortly after the pumpkin incident, Lisette had been singing her solo in chorus, and Kendra leaned over to me. “You hate her, don’t you?”

“What?” Lisette stood in front, her blond hair flowing around her shoulders, singing like an angel. “I was just thinking about the song.”

“Right. If your eyes were lasers, the girl would be dead.”

“Who?” But I knew.

“Your … sister. You can’t stand her. You thought about what I said at the hoedown, and you realized I was right.”

Miss Hakes was pointing, gesturing for us to stop talking. Lisette finished her solo. Miss Hakes gave the signal for the chorus to enter.

After we finished, Kendra said, “You didn’t answer my question.”

“What?” I glanced at Lisette, who actually looked a little bored. “No, of course not. Everyone loves Lisette. She’s perfect.”

“Exactly. And whenever anyone starts disliking her the teensiest bit—like some people thought she shouldn’t have gotten the solo because she was new—she pulls out the dead mother card.”

“That’s horrible.”
True, but horrible
.

Miss Hakes had us start again, from Lisette’s solo.

“Don’t you wish, for once, she’d fall flat on her face?” Kendra said.

Unconsciously, I nodded.

Suddenly Lisette’s throat cracked. Then she started coughing, choking really, and holding her chest.

Miss Hakes ran to her. “Lisette! Lisette, are you okay?”

Lisette couldn’t stop coughing. Beside me, I noticed Kendra chuckling.

Miss Hakes yelled for someone to get Lisette some water, and eventually, Lisette stopped hacking. People realized she wasn’t actually dying or anything, but she said she didn’t feel up to doing the solo that day. Miss Hakes let me do it that once.

It wasn’t fun, though. I didn’t just want to do the solo. I wanted to be the best, and I wasn’t, not at singing, not at anything, not compared to Lisette.

Kendra and I sort of bonded after that. Well, as much as you could bond with Kendra. It was weird. She seemed to have no life outside school, like she didn’t exist. At least, she never went to anyone’s house or had anyone over to hers. But we sat together at lunch and studied in the library. She was really my only friend at that point. In high school, you need all the friends you can get.

Oh, and Warner? His family moved to Orlando during winter break of eighth grade. I still didn’t have a boyfriend. Lisette, of course, had dozens, or at least dozens of guys who were in love with her. But what would you expect? She was beautiful.

2

Creepy things about tenth grade: Mr. Fischer, my chem teacher, had a snake. Some people thought it was cool. I wasn’t one of them. I had nothing against snakes per se. The thing that bothered me about it was that I knew Mickey ate mice.

Yes, Mickey. That was the name Mr. Fischer had chosen for the black, scary creature that regularly constricted around real-life Mickeys before swallowing them whole. I’d never actually seen it happen, but one girl had run into Fischer at PetSmart. When she’d complimented him on his cute mouse, he’d told her, “Don’t name the food.”

Me, I had a soft spot for mice. Once, when I was little, we’d had one in our house. Mother had talked about hiring an exterminator, but before she could, I saw it run across our family room, in front of the TV where I’d been watching (by some great coincidence)
Stuart Little
. “Get him!” I’d screamed, and Daddy had thrown a blanket, immobilizing the tiny, scared creature. It was brownish-gray, with big brown eyes. I’d named it Stuart and wanted to keep it as a pet. We’d compromised on releasing it at a nature preserve near the house.

So, today, I was having a hard time concentrating on our density determination lab because there was a PetSmart bag on Fischer’s desk.

The guy in front of me nudged his friend. “Looks like it’s feeding time.”

“Cool!” his friend said. “Are you going to come after school and watch?”

Ick. Someone should really do background checks on these boys.

Kendra nudged me. “Earth to Emma.”

“What?”

“Did you finish measuring?”

“Huh? Oh, I’m sorry.” Had that bag moved? No, it must be something else. Who would put a mouse in a closed plastic bag?

“I’ll do it now,” I told Kendra.

“It’s okay.” Kendra took the paper from me and wrote down the number. “Now we’re supposed to add water.”

It did move
.

“Water, Emma.”

“Oh, sorry.” I picked up our container and managed to spill pretty much all of it. I grabbed some paper towels and wiped the filthy linoleum. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing. What’s with you today?”

“Sorry.” From the floor, I stared up at Mickey. His beady black eyes stared back, and I thought about what it would be like to be a mouse. “It’s just … the mouse on Fischer’s desk.”

Kendra followed my eyes. “What makes you think there’s a mouse there?”

“The bag.” I gestured toward it. It moved. Definitely. “Did you see that?”

“It could be anything in that bag.”

“Like what?”

Kendra shrugged and went to get more water. When she came back, she said, “Fang clippers, snake scale medication. I don’t know.”

“It moved.”

“I guarantee there’s no mouse in that bag.”

“Right. How do you do that?”

Kendra poured the water, then gestured at my purse, which was lying open on the floor. I glanced down. Something small and white was moving inside. “I think he made a break for it.”

I shrieked. Kendra’s hand landed on mine, too late. Heads turned to stare. Kendra said, “Relax, Emma. Mr. Fischer would never give us flammable liquids.” She picked up the container of unknown liquid and measured some into our cylinder. “See?”

“Oh, silly me.” I tried not to look down at my purse. “I thought I saw smoke.” I laughed. “False alarm.”

When people finally looked away, I picked up my purse. “How’d it get there?”

Kendra shrugged. “Guess he ran.”

I stuck my finger inside. The mouse nibbled on it. It felt like the teeth of a comb. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

“I don’t know. Give it back to Fischer.”

“Never.” I petted the mouse’s soft, bony body with my fingertip. I’d already mentally named him Ralph, for Runaway Ralph from the book. After all, he’d run away. No, this was crazy. How could I steal a mouse?

How could I not?

“Put him in here, quick,” Kendra whispered. She reached into her own overstuffed backpack and pulled out a mouse-sized box.

I took it and, with my pen, punched some holes in the top. I didn’t ask Kendra how she happened to have the box. She often had strange things in her bag, like foreign coins, antique opera glasses, or once, a preserved butterfly. Careful to keep my eyes forward, I scooped the tiny creature into the box, shut it, then stuffed it into my backpack while Kendra recorded our result.

“Okay,” Fisher said. “Everyone done?”

A chorus of yeses and nos. Fischer strode to his desk. “Finish up.”

That’s when he noticed the flat, empty bag. He patted it. His eyes widened, and he started moving objects on his desk.

“Did you lose something, Mr. Fischer?” someone asked.

He didn’t answer. Someone else said, “Did you lose the mouse?”

A girl screamed. Kendra said, “Don’t be stupid. He couldn’t have lost a mouse. That would be terribly irresponsible, and Mr. Fischer would never be so careless on school property. He always tells us, safety first. Right, Mr. Fischer?”

Fischer stopped patting his desk and said, “That’s right. I just misplaced … my keys. Oh, here they are.” He held them up. “False alarm.”

I was practically hyperventilating by then. Kendra rubbed my back. “Calm down. There’s only one period left. You saved a life.”

At her touch, I felt instantly calmer. My heart, which had been racing like a rabbit’s, slowed down. I drew a deep breath. It would be okay.

Next class was journalism, my favorite part of the day. After eighth-grade solo tryouts, Lisette had gone on to become a total star in chorus and drama. She’d even gotten the lead in the eighth-grade play. So I’d switched to newspaper, figuring she’d have no interest. Turned out, it was something I actually rocked at. From the exposé on which world history teacher was the easiest (definitely Mr. Kalevitch, who played Beatles music and ditched textbooks for a PowerPoint presentation) to the political scandal when a student government candidate tore down his opponent’s posters, I’d cracked them all. This year, tenth grade, I was creative writing editor for
The Panther
. Next year, I expected to be editor in chief.

On the way to class, I ducked into the girls’ bathroom and checked on Ralph. His box was a little crushed, but he was fine. I had a pet!

I got to class late, but Ms. Meinbach, the teacher, liked me, so she said, “Oh, good, you’re here. I was hoping you could help our new student.” She gestured toward a red-haired boy. “He’s interested in creative writing. Emma, I’d like you to meet…”

I didn’t even hear the next words out of her mouth because he turned. The room froze like a broken DVR. It was Warner.

He started to smile, then stopped. “Hey, I know you. Eighth grade, right?

My face felt hot, then cold. Warner! I tried to say … something, to explain what had happened at the hoedown, but it came out as a cough. Then another. I was going to choke to death right in front of him. Or die of embarrassment.

“Are you okay?” He pulled a chair toward me and gestured for me to sit. I nodded, and he saw me. “Hey, you’re Emma Bailey, right?”

I breathed in. “Yeah. Warner. I thought you moved.”

“I did. We moved back.”

“Cool.” I nodded a few times too many.

“So what do we do around here? I was on newspaper at my old school, but I did sports.”

He didn’t say anything about the hoedown. Was it possible he didn’t remember, that the experience was so insignificant that he didn’t care? Maybe. Still, I wanted to explain.

“That time at the hoedown…”

He looked down. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

“I want to. For two years, I’ve been wanting to tell you what happened.”

“It’s okay. Really.”

“My friends, they had me arrested.”

His left eyebrow kinked up. He had no idea what I was talking about.

“At the hoedown, you could pay a dollar to have someone arrested. Then they’d pay a dollar to get out. Except I didn’t have my purse, so I had to stay and stay, and when I finally got out, you were gone.”

I sounded crazy. What if, after all this time, he thought I was crazy?

But his expression turned to a smile. “You’re talking about when I asked you to go on the hayride. When you blew me off?”

“I didn’t blow you off on purpose. I totally wanted to go on the hayride with you. I was so mad. I even broke out of jail, I was so upset about missing it.”

He shook his head. “You’re kidding.”

“I looked for you at school the next day, the next week, even the next month, until I heard you moved, but I never saw you.”

He laughed. “Yeah, I was avoiding you. I felt so stupid. I figured you’d been joking when you told me you’d come. You were there with all your cool friends, and I thought you were laughing at this dorky guy who’d invited you on a hayride, like we were in a production of
Oklahoma!
or something. What a nerd.”

“No. I love
Oklahoma!
That’s exactly the type of thing I like, and I thought it was cute. I really wanted to go. I… I liked you. A lot.”

Kill me now, I am such a geek
.

But Warner said, “I liked you too. You busted out of jail? Is that what you said?”

“Hoedown jail. I ran past all the PTA moms. They were chasing me. It was seriously like a video game.”

He laughed.

Ms. Meinbach was walking around the room, checking how everyone was doing. I pulled some old issues of the paper toward me. “So, we try to have three or four poems in every issue. The staff writes most of them, but if a student submits one, we look at it. We encourage student work.”

Ms. Meinbach nodded. “Showing Warner the ropes?”

“Absolutely.”
Leave. Please leave. He was going to ask me out
.

Sure enough, the second she left, he said, “I guess it’s too late for that hayride, but maybe we could get together, um today after school.”

“Y—” The word
yes
was screaming out of my mouth when I remembered Ralph the mouse, trapped in my purse. I shook my head, “God, I can’t.”

Warner nodded, like he understood. “All righty then. I’ll just crawl back into my cave of shame.”

“No, it’s not like that. I want to go with you. Any other day. It’s just…” I glanced at my purse. “Can you keep a secret?”

“I guess.”

I opened the box, then pointed inside.

Warner drew back, surprised, then leaned forward again. “Is that … a mouse?”

“It was about to be fed to a snake,” I whispered.