by Douglas Rees
I turn off the light. I pull down the shades. I compose myself into the lotus position. I open my mind to allow the images to come.
I guess I must fall asleep, because the next thing I know, my neck hurts and I am jerking my head up because a phone is ringing, and I know I’ve been dreaming, but the only thing I remember is a man’s voice, saying, “Just remember, never write a check with your mouth that you can’t cover with your ass.”
Then Aunt Ariel is knocking on my door.
“Kestrel, it’s Laura from school,” she says. “Do you want to talk to her?”
Why would she be calling me? Why would anybody? I am so curious I go pick up the phone.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” Laura says. “I heard about your tongue. I just wondered if you were okay.”
“Kind of,” I say. “It doesn’t hurt much anymore.”
“Hey, listen, do you want me to bring you any homework?” Laura says.
I’m going to say, “Not much.” But then I think, maybe she’s cool. Anyway, maybe I should find out. I take a step back and thinksay, Interesting. Then I really say, “Whatever. If it’s no trouble. I’ll be back pretty soon. But yeah. Thanks.”
“Okay.”
Then there’s dead air between us. I wonder what more she wants me to say. Or what she wants to say that she isn’t saying.
So I say, “Want me to do a protection spell for you?”
She says, “How does that work?”
“I just do a spell and it keeps the Queens off your back,” I say. “If it works. I’ve never done one before so I don’t know if it’s one of my powers or not.”
“Sure,” she says. “Please.”
“Okay, I’ll get on it,” I say.
“Thanks,” she says.
“Yeah. Well, thanks for the homework.”
We hang up.
Aunt Ariel is in her office, just reading in her big chair. I’ll bet she came in here to give me and Laura privacy. Cool.
“Aunt Ariel, how do I do a protection spell?” I say. “Laura needs one.”
“Just Laura? Not you?” Ariel says.
“Nah. I’m all right,” I say. “But I’m a little worried about her.”
Aunt Ariel smiles. Then she nods and says, “Worried about somebody else, are we? Come with me.”
Aunt Ariel puts on her purple moons robe. We go out to the garage. She lights the candles in the sconces. The shadows flicker on the two-by-fours and the concrete floor and the hot, dark garage turns into a magickal place. Well, duh. That’s what it is.
“You don’t have anything of Laura’s do you?” Aunt Ariel says. “Protection spells require that.”
“No,” I say.
“Then we’ll have to wing it,” Aunt Ariel says. “We’ll just try to help the universe to decide which way to flow.”
“But we’ll cast a circle,” I say.
“Of course,” Ariel says. “What did you think?”
Majix, I think. This will be majix.
Aunt Ariel ducks down behind her altar and comes up with a container of salt, a sort of water bottle with holes in the top, a candle, and a bundle of sage.
“Ready to rock and roll,” she says. “Kestrel, cast the circle.”
I take the salt and I trace over the circle at the center of the pentagram painted on the floor. Salt is very purifying. Also, it’s of the earth, which is important.
Meanwhile, Ariel says, “Powers of the universe, we summon you to guard and ward this place. Powers of the universe, we invite you to join our rites. Powers of the universe, we invoke your help for our friend, Laura. Bestow then on our work your blessing, for we intend no bad thing. Blesséd be.”
“Which way is north?” I ask.
Ariel points and I set the salt container down in that direction.
“Powers of earth, be Guards of the North,” I say.
Ariel lights the candle and hands it to me. Then she lights the sage off it.
“Powers of the universe, we invoke your help for our friend, Laura,” I say again. I set the candle down on the south side of the circle. “Powers of fire, be the Guards of the South,” I say.
Ariel has lit the sage off the candle and is waving it around. Little ghosts of smoke are trailing out of it.
I sneeze.
“Blesséd be,” Aunt Ariel says. “Powers of the universe, we invoke your help for our friend, Laura.”
When there’s a good cloud of smoke, she sets the sage on the eastern side of the circle and says, “Powers of wind, be the Guards of the East.”
Then she hands me the sprinkler thing. I wave it around, making little drops of water fly everywhere.
“Powers of the universe, we invoke your help for our friend, Laura.” I set the sprinkler down and say, “Powers of water, be the Guards of the West.”
Then Ariel and I take each other’s hands, making a circle within the circle.
“Be this circle unbreakable by hate and malice,” Ariel says. “Be it eternal, as is its nature. Be it as large as Laura’s life, that she may be kept safe within. Blesséd be. Kestrel, is there anything you’d like to add?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Hey, universe, this kid’s good people. You can’t expect people to be good very much if you don’t protect them when they are. So keep the Queens off her back. We can do this one of two ways, universe. Either you just keep everything flowing nice and calm around her, or I’ll come back to you and work some black magick on the Queens. So if you don’t want to be responsible for more bad energy flying around down here, pay attention. That’s it.”
Ariel says, “May the unbroken circle be cast wide as the world now. May it release us from its bonds, but hold us in loving protection until we call and cast again. Blesséd be.”
“Blesséd be,” I say, trying hard to mean it.
Ariel blows out the candle and crushes the burning sage. The smell of it gets even stronger. I inhale and smile. It feels good and powerful.
Without talking to each other, we put everything back under the altar. Ariel blows out the candles on one side of the garage. I do the other. We go back in the house.
Ariel wriggles out of her purple robe and smiles.
“You know, sometimes casting the circle gives me the darnedest appetite,” she says. “Let’s go out to dinner. You pick where.”
Dinner out is righteous. Maybe the universe is on my side after all.
11
ORTHOGONIAN OF THE WEEK
I AM OFF A COUPLE MORE DAYS. Laura brings me my homework and I do it. She doesn’t hang around or anything. Her mom or somebody is waiting in the car.
Today, when I get back to school, I run into Laura hanging by the main entrance.
“Did you cast the spell?” she says.
“It’s done,” I say. “My aunt helped.”
“What did you do?” Laura asks.
I shrug. The Craft is not for everybody.
“Well, thanks,” she says. “I hope it works.”
“The Queens better hope it works,” I say. “What we did was white magic. But if the universe lets you down, I’m going to lay some major curses on those slutcakes.”
Laura laughs. “Slutcakes! I love it.”
I check Laura out, thinking something over. It’s hard to tell what she’s really like in her little uniform. She seems like a goody. But maybe she’s just anxious to be liked. To have me like her. And maybe when she’s not trying so hard to be liked, she’s a gutsy got-your-back girl. The kind of kid who’d rat out a couple of Queens for you. Maybe.
Step back. Thinksay, Interesting.
And I say, “You interested in the Craft?”
She gets all serious and says, “Yes.”
“I’m starting a coven,” I say. “Maybe I could take you on. If you’re interested, meet me after sixth period. We have to talk about some things. And look up your name at the library.”
“Okay!” she says.
Then the bell rings and we go off to our homerooms.
The rest of this chapter is about how I do not meet Laura after school or start my coven today and what happens instead.
Every Friday morning Richard Milhous Nixon Union High School has Spirit Assembly. This could be really cool if any spirits showed up, but all it means is that we get pushed into rows by classes in the auditorium and some kid with a trumpet tries to find a bugle call he’s supposed to know. Then the band plays the school song, which we are supposed to sing and no one does. Here’s how it goes:
What a friend we have in Richard
Milhous Nixon Union High
Where we learn and study gaily (I am not making this up.)
And we’ll love it ’til we die.
When at last we go to college
And leave RMN behind,
We’ll remember it so fondly
Wherever our trail may wind.
We will always be good students,
Learn by lecture and by book
And we’ll tell the whole world proudly,
“World, I am not a crook.”
Dr. Garbage wrote it himself. What a surprise.
If you are reading this a hundred years in the future, maybe you need some background now. I didn’t get the last line until Aunt Ariel explained to me that it was something Richard Milhous Nixon said back when he was president. Before he had to resign. Because everybody found out he was, in fact, a crook.
You also need to know that the kids who go here are called Orthogonians, which is the name of some club that Richard Milhous Nixon founded when he was in college because he couldn’t get into the club he wanted. And get this part: Orthogonians means Straight Shooters. The football team is the Fighting Orthogonians. The marching band is the Marching Orthogonians. The school paper is The Orthogonian Express. You need to know this because of what comes next at Spirit Assembly. The Awards Ceremony.
Every week, some kid who has been the most helpful to Garbage, like say by ratting out some other kid who was writing on the walls or something, gets this big gold-colored trophy in genuine plastic. He then becomes the official Orthogonian of the Week for the next week. He gets free lunch tickets and is allowed to leave an hour early on Friday.
This week the official Orthogonian of the Week is Blake Cump.
Yeah, right. The same one who got detention for what he did to me. He told Garbage some kids in the boys’ bathroom had cigarettes. After they wouldn’t give him any.
Garbage makes the same speech he makes every week about how Your-Name-Here exemplifies the highest ideals of Richard Milhous Nixon Union High School (come to think of it, Blake probably does) and he gives him the trophy. And Blake is up there grinning like it’s this big joke, and he’s right, it is, because even Garbage has to know what really happened.
Blake’s friends out in the assembly holler, “Way to go, Blake!” and he shakes the trophy over his head like a wrestler, while the kids he ratted on holler, “Bogus!” and “Blake sucks!”
So Gorringe blows his whistle, and the teachers all start blowing their whistles and telling us to shut up whether we’re making noise or not, and we herd back to our classrooms, and that’s all the school spirit for this week.
In English, which is last period, I am surprised to see that Blake is there. But he is, with his trophy. He’s filled it with wads of paper and put it by his desk as a wastebasket.
José is also there, acting like I’m not, which is good because that’s the way he is with everybody else.
So we’re diagramming sentences like it was important, and I have my head bent over my paper and my backpack hung on the back of my chair. I’ve got my hands over my ears, and when Blake jumps up and starts shouting, it’s like his voice is coming from far away.
“Somebody stole my wallet!” He’s standing up, feeling in all his pockets and turning around. “My wallet’s gone.”
Ms. Southworth says, “What does it look like?”
“It looks like a wallet,” Blake says. “You know. Flat. Narrow. Brown.” He starts to cry. “It had my lunch tickets in it.”
“Has anyone seen Blake’s wallet?” Ms. Southworth asks.
We all look around our desks like it’s somehow migrated from Blake’s seat.
“Who’s got my wallet?” Blake cries.
Then I feel the straps on my backpack move. I hear the zipper unzip.
Jason Horspool jumps up from the seat behind me and shouts, “Is this it?”
“Yeah, man,” Blake says. “Give it here.”
“Where was it?” Ms. Southworth says.
“In her backpack,” says Jason.
I feel my stomach turn over, my skin get hot, and tears burn in my eyes.
“You put it there!” I shout.
“Ms. Murphy,” Ms. Southworth says. “Did you take Blake’s wallet?”
“He put it there,” I say, and point at Jason.
“I saw it in there,” says the kid sitting next to me. “Her backpack was open and I saw it.”
“Hey, wait. It’s empty,” Blake says.
“I think you had better give Blake back what you stole from him,” Ms. Southworth says. “And then we had better go to the principal’s office.”
“I haven’t got it. I didn’t take it,” I say.
“Give me back my tickets and money, man,” Blake says.
“Ms. Murphy, if you do not give back what you took from Blake, Dr. Gorringe may have to call the police,” Ms. Southworth says.
“I haven’t got it,” I say.
Southworth doesn’t answer. She just takes me by the arm and marches me out of the class, down to Garbage’s office.
Behind us, I hear Blake call, “Give her detention, man. Like, for a million years.”
12
DETENTION
WHICH IS WHAT THEY DID. After Garbage went through my backpack, and threatened to have me strip-searched by Coach Stendahl if I didn’t empty my pockets.
Strip-searched? Can they do that? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to find out. I emptied my pockets.
What they found was:
No lunch tickets
$1.37 in cash
All my private stuff.
I felt like a criminal. Which was really dumb, because I was the victim. And I was so mad I couldn’t talk. Which made me cry again. Which made Garbage sure I was guilty.
“Well, Ms. Murphy, I’m pleased to see some contrition in you, at least,” he said, while I stood in his office bawling like a baby. “It makes me feel relatively lenient toward you. If you confess, I’ll be willing to let you off lightly.”
And all of a sudden I get it. Garbage knows I didn’t do this. And he’s enjoying it.
When I can talk a little, I say, “Go to hell.”
Garbage’s face closes down like a steel door slamming shut.
“You will apologize at once,” he says. “Or I will call the police. We have the evidence against you to expel you, and I will.”
Like I ever want to see this place again. But the thought of the cops scares me. I don’t know what would happen if he called them. Maybe they’d take me to Juvenile Hall. I’ve heard about that place.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“What? I didn’t quite hear that,” he says.
“I’m sorry.” I try to shout it, but it comes out more as a squeak.
Garbage smiles.
“Very well. Now where are the money and the tickets?”
“I—don’t—have—them. I—never—did,” I say sort of one breath at a time. “It’s—the—truth. A—Witch—Never—Lies.”
Garbage sneers when I say that. Then sits there for a minute, thinking what he can do to me next. Finally, he says, “I’m sending a note home with you today, Ms. Murphy. You are to bring it back on Monday signed by your caregiver. If you do not, we will pursue this matter further. You are under detention for the rest of the afternoon. Go and sit in the lobby.”
So I do.
There are three wooden chairs along the wall, the kind they call student desks, with a
box under the seat and a wooden arm the size of a ping-pong paddle that is supposed to be the desk part. I take the one by the door.
A few minutes later, José Iturrigaray comes in. He looks around like he’s afraid something’s going to jump him. Then he sits down. He keeps one chair between us.
So where is Blake? If José’s still got detention, he must, too. But he’s a no-show.
I keep thinking how great a cigarette would be right now. But who needs a smoky aura? It is very difficult being a witch.
I don’t know how long José and I sit there not looking at each other. It seems like a long time. Plus, I keep crying on and off. Some of it is because of how unfair everything is, and some of it is because I want that cigarette so bad. I hate wanting anything so bad. I hate having him see me cry. And I am out of anything to wipe my nose with.
Still looking straight ahead, José says, “I’m sorry.”
“Huh?” I say.
“For asking if you was a witch. When that pinche Blake was there. I didn’t see him around, or I wouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.” He’s still looking straight ahead.
“It’s cool,” I say, with my waterworks turning off. Then I ask, “What’s a pinche?”
And José does something that is only slightly less weird than if he grew a second head, but weird in a good way. He blushes. I mean, he turns the color of raw gold.
“Never mind,” he says. “It’s dirty. I shouldn’t have said it in front of you.”
“Well, you did. So tell me what it means,” I say.
“In English it don’t—doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “It’s so dirty you can’t even think it in English. That’s how dirty it is.” And he slouches down real low.