Rhymes With Witches (18 page)

“What'd you do, Piss Girl?” Stuart Hill taunted. “Leave some chicken guts in there?”

“Shut up,” Alicia said. “I didn't leave anything, you asshole.”

“Not even your books?” Stuart said. He guffawed as if he were actually being funny. “Not even a chewed up pencil for your nasty old tomcat?”

The janitor shooed them away. He doused Alicia's locker with Odor-Out, aiming his spray nozzle at the slats and seams as well as the smooth gray exterior.

“Wait!” Alicia cried, but the janitor took no notice. When she opened her locker, a sodden spiral slipped to the floor along with her cheerleading Pep Manual. The stench of cat pee wafted into the air.

I strode toward the other end of the hall. I hoped Alicia hadn't seen me, but two yards from the stairwell, I heard her call, “Jane, where are you going?
Jane!
”

My heart felt sick. I let the flow of students carry me forward.

During Algebra I thought of one of my Ramona books, of a scene in which Ramona was doing a kindergarten worksheet. Only instead of “circle cat, cross out bird,” Ramona substituted the name of a despised fellow kindergartner, Susan of the boing-y curls. As in, “circle Ramona, cross out Susan.”

It wasn't that I despised Alicia—god, no. It wasn't even on purpose, despite the guilt that was making me feel swampy and wrong.

Still, there it was, crazy or not: circle Jane, cross out Alicia.

S
ix, sin, and sorcery,” intoned Lurl the Pearl. “All three words come from the same root, which, once celebrated, has now become vilified.”

I copied the words into my notebook and tried to convince myself that it was purely academic, her use of the word “sorcery.” That she was just going off on her favorite tangent about how female folk healers, drawing on the life force of the goddess, were later denounced as witches. Blah, blah, blah. She'd shown the film
The Burning Times
twice already. She'd quizzed us on the real meaning of the word “wicca,” and she'd told us that many women today have formed their own worship circles as a way to create a sacred space. More interesting than Ms. Bainbright's English class, but hardly the stuff of midnight terrors. At least, as long as I didn't connect it with anything else.

Still, when I'd first taken my seat—after dislodging a gray cat with a torn ear—I could have sworn Lurl looked at me funny through her rose-tinted glasses. Then again, she looked at
everyone
funny through her rose-tinted glasses. The T strap on her forehead didn't help.

What had she done with Alicia's lip balm?

A flutter kicked up in my stomach.
Don't,
I told myself.
What's done is done.

“Yes, Miss Goodwin?” Lurl the Pearl asked, interrupting her explanation of “six” as the number of the creatrix.

I jumped. “I'm sorry, what?”

“You have a concern?”

The rest of the class turned to stare. Friendly stares,
Hi, do you like me?
stares, but stares all the same.

“Um, I don't.” I tried to smile. “Doing fine, thanks.”

Lurl smiled back. It was a loose, smeary smile that made her face look as if it were coming unhinged. “Then let's pay attention, shall we?”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said.

“Hey,” Bob Foskin whispered. He'd gotten up from his seat at the front of the room and was now crouching by my desk.
“Hey.”

“What?” I said. “I've got to pay attention.”

He leaned closer. “Want me to knock her around for you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Wait for her after school. Give her a scare.”

My eyes flew to Lurl, then back to Bob. “You're not serious.”

“As a heart attack,” he said, crossing himself. “Ganging up on you for no reason. No respect, that's what.”

“Oh god,” I muttered. Lurl the Pearl was now roaming the room, and I did not want her coming over here. I straightened my posture and scribbled the number 666, along with Lurl's labored analysis that just as six stood for the creatrix, 666 stood for the holy trinity of maid, matron, and crone. That it was only as people grew threatened by female power that the number took on more sinister meanings.

“No thanks,” I told Bob. “You better get back to your seat.”

“You sure?”

Lurl was two aisles away. One. She paused at my aisle, and my body went stiff. Bob stood up, but he didn't return to his desk. Lurl didn't even look at him.

“Very nice,” she said to me in her gravelly voice. “Very nice. But we can never ease up, can we? Not when the stakes are so high.”

My scalp prickled. A force radiated from her, something I couldn't describe, and I got the uncanny sense that she wanted to
eat
me. To gobble me right up.

“So we'll have your assignment by the end of the week?” she asked.

My assignment. As in another stolen item—was that what she was talking about? But I was in a classroom with twenty-three other students. She couldn't be.

“What assignment?” Bob butted in. “We ain't got no assignment.”

Lurl came up behind me and put her hands on my shoulders. I wanted to jump out of my skin.

“Miss Goodwin is a good little pet,” she purred. “Miss Goodwin is earning extra credit.”

“Aw, man,” Bob complained. “Why don't I know about no extra credit?”

Lurl bent over so that her lips were at my ear. She smelled like tuna. “By the end of the week for best results.”

She tightened her hold on my shoulders, then let go.

During LIFE, my entire class surprised me by singing “Happy Birthday” at the beginning of the period. Roly-poly Mrs. Parmigian sang loudest of all, clapping her hands and swaying at the front of the room. When they were done, Tina Knowles walked to my desk with a yellow-and-white sheet cake, one of those fancy ones with edible flowers and candied ribbons. In the center was an airbrushed picture of me. I looked really young.

“Wow,” I said. “I mean, wow.”

Fifteen faces beamed. Tina nudged Hannah Henderson, who nudged her back. They both looked tickled pink.

“Only, it's not my birthday,” I said.

Tina waved her hand. “That's okay. We figured, you know, what were the odds?”

“We just wanted to celebrate anyway,” Hannah said. “Who cares when the actual date was?”

“Happy birthday!” cried Arnie Aughenbach.

“Happy birthday!” echoed fourteen others. Hands patted my back and ruffled my hair.

I grinned. “You guys are crazy.”

“Heck, it's better than following the lesson plan any day,” said Mrs. Parmigian. She waddled across the room to give me a hug. “In LIFE, there's always cause for celebration.”

I raised my eyebrows. “So … do I get presents?”

“Presents!” Tina exclaimed. “Of course!” She ran to her backpack and pulled out a brightly wrapped box. Other kids dug into their packs and reached under their desks.

“Mine first,” Arnie said, plunking down a lumpy package tied with yarn.

“I don't think so,” Tina said. She bumped him out of the way. “Jane asked me, remember?”

“Wait,” I protested. “I was kidding. I was completely kidding!”

The stack of presents grew on my desk. I tried pushing them back into their owners' hands, but they wouldn't have anything to do with it.

“Open them,” Tina insisted.

So I did. I got the new Spayed CD, a pocketknife engraved with my name, a framed picture of Arnie. Four pairs of earrings. From Tina, a sky blue container of stress therapy bath beads (“Not that you need them. What do
you
have to be stressed about? But they're so cool, because the water gets all fizzy when you put them in!”). A leather bookmark, a mauve feather boa. A tiny tub of lip balm.

“Thanks, you guys,” I said. I fingered the lip balm, then pushed it behind the boa. “I mean it. I was having a really crappy day—”

“You were?” Hannah said. “Poor Jane!”

“—but you guys totally made it better.” I smiled at them, so easy to do because they all smiled back. “And I
love
my presents. Thank you so much.”

A chorus of “aww”s filled the air. Arnie gave me a hug, then Hannah did, too. Melina, who was shy, just touched my hair.

“Now cake,” Tina announced. “Oh! Shit! And I completely spaced the band! Arnie, run to the hall and see if they're there!”

The cake was delicious. The band, decked out in full red-and-black Crestview regalia, was awesome. In addition to the school's alma mater, they played a fabulous jazz piece composed in my honor, with an amazing solo on the flageolet.

“Have you gotten it yet?” Mary Bryan asked the next morning.

“Gotten what?” I asked.

She looked at me in a not-fun-and-games kind of way. “You know. To give to Lurl.”

A sick feeling clutched my stomach. I fiddled with one of my new earrings, which were shaped like tiny doves.

“Do you like my earrings?” I asked. “Hannah Henderson gave them to me.”

“Yeah, they're great,” Mary Bryan said impatiently.

“My whole class threw me a party. It was so sweet.”

“Terrific. And if you want them to
keep
doing stuff like that—”

I cut her off. “I know, I know.”

“Then just do it.”

“Fine,” I said. I sighed and leaned against the row of lockers. I gazed down the hall. “Will this be the last time?”

Mary Bryan snorted, for a second sounding almost like Bitsy. “Hmm, let me think. This'll be the last time until next week. And then that'll be the last time until, let's see, the next week.”

“What?!”
I said. I vaguely remembered an “every week” clause from the day of my induction, but it was all so blurry.

“Jane. Keisha told you all of this already.” She raised her eyebrows. “And it's not just you, you know. We all have to do it, so you can quit acting like such a martyr.”

I went back to staring down the hall. I watched a girl try to shoo a feral cat from her locker, where it perched placidly on a thick blue notebook. The cats were everywhere these days. During homeroom, one had coughed up a hairball on Trish Newman's backpack, and rumor had it that a pack of three had killed a swan and deposited the carcass on Mr. Van Housen's desk. Of course, nobody had been there to verify it, and some claimed that Mr. Van Housen had made it up. Still, the fact remained. The cats were getting more brazen.