White Witch (5 page)

Of course, I trip over my own feet as I try to head for my goal. When I untangle my legs, I have to remind myself to run at such a slow pace for me that it’s ridiculous. Halfway to first base, I notice movement out of the corner of my eye. And then a ball hits me in the side of the head. I spin toward the person who’s thrown it, remembering only at the last second that I should fall and indicate pain. In fact, my temple does sting a little.

“Oops, sorry,” Stacy says from a few feet away. “Guess I haven’t figured out where I should be aiming.”

For a blessed moment, I imagine roasting her alive, but bank that urge as the coach and my classmates rush up to make sure Stacy hasn’t bashed in the side of my head.

“Are you okay?” several of them ask in unison.

“Back up, everyone,” the coach orders. “Give me room to get her inside.”

I gently but firmly push at the man’s hands. “I’m okay. It barely hit me, just startled me really.” I look up at Stacy and offer a false smile. “I’m just glad it wasn’t thrown by someone with any strength.”

Snickers and a couple of slapping high fives ripple through the group. Stacy, on the other hand, looks like she might go into a fit.

“You’re sure you’re okay?” Coach Billings says.

“Really, I’m not hurt at all,” I say, using the tiniest fraction of my power to shift his thoughts so he doesn’t insist I see the school nurse. “I’d like to keep playing.”

He still doesn’t look sure, but finally caves to my assurances that I’m not bleeding to death inside my skull. “Okay, back to your spots. And Stacy, be more careful.”

As everyone jogs back to their positions, I catch Stacy’s eye and give my new nemesis my best “don’t mess with me” look. Stacy replies with a mutinous glare of her own, but she finally turns and stalks back to her spot on the field.

We make it through an inning without incident, until my team’s loaded the bases and I’m due up to bat again. As Stacy-engineered luck would have it, she steps onto the pitcher’s mound. What looks like smug self-assurance tugs at her features. No doubt she’s going to try to bean me with the ball, not caring if she gets in trouble for it. While watching her get marched off to the principal’s office would be entertaining, I have something better in mind—if I can pull out a miracle and actually hit the ball a second time.

Our eyes meet as I move up to the plate.
You want war, you got war.

As Stacy lets fly with a surprisingly powerful pitch, I make an adjustment in my stance. I watch the ball spin in the air as if it’s traveling in slow motion, think of it as geometry and physics, not sport. At precisely the right moment, I swing.

The crack of the bat causes several of the people on the field to jump. They all look up as the ball sails above their heads, over the fence and into the woods. My teammates start jumping up and down, screaming as the three runners on base and then finally I come across home plate smiling. I didn’t even trip over myself this time. Yes! That felt good.

Eric swings me around in a circle. “She’s pretty and can hit a home run. I think I’m in love.” He says it in such a teasing, fun-loving way that his words don’t bother me. In fact, his reaction, as well as those of my other teammates, does more to make me feel like a normal girl fitting in at a new, normal school than anything has all day.

I look through the swarm of joyous teens to see Stacy staring hard at me, likely already concocting her next attack. Let it come. Compared to what I’ll face from my family if they ever find me, Stacy is the smallest of potatoes. She might try to rip apart my reputation, but my coven will literally rip me apart from the inside out.

The joy filling me seeps away, and I notice Keller heading inside without a glance in my direction. Is he a sore loser? Or does his reaction have more to do with Eric and my response to him? Or maybe he was never interested to begin with. My stomach swirls as I watch his retreating shape and fight the urge to run after him.

It’s better—no, safer—this way.

Keller has already disappeared into the depths of the boys’ locker room when I enter the gym. With no other option, I head for the showers. Stacy and her entourage are waiting for me.

“You think you’re going to be queen bee, don’t you?”

She seriously just used the phrase
queen bee
? I resist an eye roll.

“I can honestly say I have no desire whatsoever to dethrone you.”

“Oh, really? Then you didn’t just try to show me up?”

“I hit a baseball. And it’s not like you didn’t start this little turf war.”

“I know your type. You strut in, the hot new thing, knowing you’ll get whatever boy you crook your finger at.”

“Know the signs from experience, do you?” I turn my back to Stacy and her clique and head for my locker. But Stacy isn’t so easily dismissed.

“I wasn’t finished talking,” Stacy spits out.

“Well, I am.” Why can’t she leave me alone? I want to soak in thoughts of Keller and hope he hasn’t already lost interest in me.

I stop and stare into the recesses of my locker. Why am I torturing myself this way? I can’t get involved with Keller, and fantasizing about him just makes that irrefutable fact more painful. I have to watch every step if I value my life and that of those around me. If I expose myself, I’ll endanger anyone nearby. And I can’t live with that.

“I saw the way Keller looked at you,” Stacy says.

I can’t help a little jolt of excitement. How had he looked at me? I push that question down, telling myself the answer isn’t important. “And that’s my fault how?”

“Hello, obvious.”

I spin toward Stacy and take a step toward her. “I’m not your competition. Seems like Keller isn’t terribly interested in you, and it makes you feel better to pretend it’s because of me.”

Stacy gasps. “You bitch.”

“Close, but you don’t win the prize.” With that, I grab a towel and stalk toward the showers.

I’m surprised Stacy and the Bitch Clique don’t bother me anymore, but when I leave the shower and dress, the other girls are already gone. Granted, I stayed under the stream of hot water longer than I should have, so I have to hurry to make it to sixth period. At least it’s Art, a good way to end the day.

When I step in the door as the bell rings, Toni waves me over to a table on the opposite side of the room.

“Why did you run out of the cafeteria earlier?”

“Upset stomach.”

“Say no more. So, I hear you hit a mean homerun in P.E.,” Toni says as Ms. Appleton, the pretty, dark-haired teacher who looks about two years out of college, walks into the room.

“Got lucky.”

“I heard you got this look in your eye right before you swung, like you knew it was going out of the park.”

I deliberately dig around in my bag more than necessary so I don’t have to meet Toni’s gaze. “That’s crazy. Was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

I hadn’t used magic, I know I didn’t, not even on a subconscious level. Did I? I’m just naturally strong and decided not to hold back as much as I had throughout the rest of the day. Add in a dose of luck and, voila. The art of blending into the normal population didn’t include a sixteen-year-old girl hitting a baseball into the next county. But that didn’t mean I had to fake weakness.

“Okay, everyone, we’re pencil sketching today, focusing on shading and detail. Your choice of topic, but nothing too risqué.” Ms. Appleton levels a pointed look at a couple of boys at a table near the front of the room.

Toni leans over and whispers, “I think they took this class because they thought there’d be nude models.”

I cover my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

“Jax?”

I jerk at the sound of Ms. Appleton saying my name and wonder if I’m already in trouble. Let’s see, I’ve acted like a crazy woman by bolting out of the lunchroom, gotten on the bad side of most of the girls in the school, shown up their queen, and now I’m going to end the day by getting into trouble for talking. Yeah, my day has been all kinds of normal.

“There are sketchpads in the back of the room. You can use one until you get your own.”

It takes a moment for Ms. Appleton’s words to sink in, that they aren’t a reprimand. In fact, the teacher smiles at me. I smile back and go to retrieve a sketchpad.

As I put pencil to paper, everything else fades away. I’ve almost made it through day one of being a normal high school student, and that is a bigger accomplishment than anyone else in the building can possibly fathom. So I let worries and anxiety flow away, at least for the hour during which I can escape into my art.

When I finish my sketch of what others will likely see as a sorceress but I know to be my mother in all her magical beauty, I sit back to stare at it. Maybe I’ll frame it and place it in my tiny RV. It’ll be like Mom is watching over me as I sleep at night.

“Damn, girl,” Toni says from beside me. “That’s awesome.”

I come out of my own little world and look over at Toni, who is staring at her own sketch now with a look on her face like she’s smelled a skunk.

“Methinks I have an inferiority complex,” Toni says.

“Let me see.” I grab Toni’s sketchpad and turn it so I can see the drawing of a spaceship. “Is this
Serenity
?” The sketch is a bit clunky, but the shape of the ship from
Firefly
is recognizable.

Toni smiles. “You are so my new best friend. I can almost forgive you for being A-Rod and Leonardo da Vinci and America’s Next Top Model all rolled into one.”

The description goes against everything I’m shooting for, but I can’t help laughing. I hand the sketch back to Toni. “I’m none of those things.”

“Yeah, right. You just keep on believing that. We don’t want your pretty little head getting so big it explodes all over the school and makes a dreadful mess.”

I laugh again, and wonder when I’ve smiled so much in one day. Even with the altercations with Stacy and the angry stares of the other girls of Baker Gap High, this has been one of the best days of my life. The best since before the death of my mother six years ago. I stare down at my sketch and swallow hard.

Paulina Pherson had been beautiful beyond description, and just as powerful. But she’d rebelled against her family’s centuries-old vendetta against mankind. She’d wanted to step away from the violence, the ugliness, to use her power for the good of witchkind and mankind. As soon as that desire had been uttered, she’d sealed her fate.

“Jax, that’s a stunning sketch,” Ms. Appleton says from beside me. “May I?”

I leave the past in the past and look up at the art teacher, who is indicating she wants to show the sketch to the class. Though showing off my artistic talent also doesn’t fall into the goal of blending, I nod. My mother was taken from the world much too soon. I’m proud to share her with these kids who don’t have a clue she was anyone real, that magical beings actually exist in this world.

Well, except for Keller. But he probably views them all as inherently evil, and for the most part he’s right.

I glance at Toni. Does she know what Keller does at night?

I’m busy tonight.

Keller’s words and Toni’s response replay in my head. Toni knows.

I close my eyes and wonder how I’ve managed to befriend the two people around whom I’ll have to be most careful. Fate rolls with laughter in the distance.

As expected, the guys in the room
ohh
at my sketch, no doubt to impress me into thinking them date worthy rather than true appreciation for any artistic talent. And the girls, well, there’s less enthusiasm, except for Toni and a couple of girls in the back of the room. I recognize one of them as Phoebe, the girl I sit next to in History. I smile at the duo, and they smile back. So every girl in school doesn’t despise my very existence—kudos for me.

Thankfully, Ms. Appleton shows off and commends a few other students’ artistic efforts as well, diverting the attention from me. Despite my need to lay low, I can’t help the pride that wells up in me that my artwork has been deemed praiseworthy. So different from when my tutors had scolded me for doodling instead of practicing my mind control on unsuspecting humans. My mother would be proud.

The final bell of the day rings, releasing the teenage population of Baker Gap from their bondage and into the outside world. Releasing me from those unwanted memories that keep creeping into my thoughts.

I go over homework assignments in my head as I navigate toward the bank of lockers. Am I the only person in the building looking forward to my homework? Okay, that’s about as far from normal as I can get, but it’s so freeing after the years of private tutors smothering me with their constant presence. American History and Algebra seem so wonderfully average compared to Levitation of Large Objects and Methods of Pain Infliction.

“Hey,” Toni says as she hurries up to my locker, her own backpack already over her shoulder. “You should come with us to Squeaky’s.”

“Squeaky’s?”

“It’s the local burgers and shakes place, complete with indoor and outdoor seating. Not to mention the stunning view of Bob’s Used Cars across the street.”

“I really should be getting home. Lots of homework.” I pat my fat tote for emphasis. “Speaking of which, why doesn’t your backpack look like it’s about to give birth like my bag?”