The Shark sighed and looked at his watch. It must have been nearly golf o’clock.
I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr Sharkey, but can I ask you something? My arm’s been a bit unpredictable lately, so I was wondering—’
He cut me off. ‘Of course it’s weak. You haven’t moved it for six weeks. Make an appointment with the physio.’
I tried again. ‘I don’t mean the muscles. I mean my magic.’
The Shark said, ‘Your what?’
Did I really have to spell this out? Surely someone had written ‘witch’ in my medical notes? Did he even read my file?
I said, ‘I’m a witch. And, like with most witches, my left hand does most of the magic. It’s been playing up quite a bit lately, so—’
I didn’t get to finish. The Shark said, ‘I don’t have time for this nonsense.’ Then he turned around and sailed out the door. His assistant had to run down the corridor to keep up. After he’d gone, I realised that I’d completely forgotten to ask him for a note to get out of camp.
Amanita and Jessamyn came to pick me up from the hospital. Jessamyn said, ‘Who cares if Mr Bone Business doesn’t believe in witches? The important thing is to believe in yourself.’ Which sounds nice, but I’m not sure that believing in myself is going to fix my arm.
Afterwards, Amanita helped me put the sleeves back onto my clothes. She couldn’t resist making a few ‘improvements’ while she was at it, because ‘for Hecate’s sake, Zelda, you’re a teacher, not a tea cosy. A bit of style isn’t against the school rules, you know.’ The whole time she was working, she kept wrinkling her nose and saying that my clothes smelled like stinky children. I took a good sniff and realised that my clothes do smell, but not of children. They smell like the UFO: the Unidentified Foul Odour in my classroom. Ugh. What is it?
Monday, 7pm
Oh no. MM is on the warpath. Ben just called to warn me. He said that she took my class today as there wasn’t a substitute teacher available. According to Ben, MM is always cranky if she has to spend a full day dealing with children, but this time she ‘practically had smoke coming out of her ears’. He had no idea why.
Oh, snakeroot. What did those children do?? Was it Zinnia? I bet it was. Of all the days to misbehave!
I have to stop thinking about this. My elbow is starting to twitch! What if it means a blowout is brewing?? Argh! I need to calm down.
Right. I’m going to the shops for more Tweezels. Barnaby’s eaten my emergency stash again.
Tuesday 6 May
My kids aren’t in trouble. I am.
MM found out about my little magic show. Yesterday, when she was minding my class, she looked up (doing her trademark eye-roll, no doubt) and saw footprints on the classroom ceiling! And then it all came out: the spider chase, the flying, the whole bag of tricks. I know the kids didn’t mean to get me in trouble. It wouldn’t even have occurred to them that I’d done anything wrong. And of course I don’t want them to lie for me. But oh, I wish they had!
MM was furious. She came storming into my classroom at recess and gave me an absolute burner of a lecture about my ‘extraordinarily irresponsible behaviour’. She asked me what the blazes I was playing at, and didn’t I realise that all eyes were on our school because of me? Didn’t I appreciate how nervous everyone was about a witch teaching children?
Then she lowered her voice and said that on top of everything else I was setting a terrible example for Phoebe, doing party tricks like a performing poodle. I grovelled out a wretched apology and promised that nothing like this would ever happen again. Some promise: barely one second after MM left the room, my elbow gave a twitch and every single poster slithered off the wall, spraying drawing pins in every direction. I could hardly see through my tears to pick them up.
I’ve cancelled my physio appointment at the hospital. The lady on the phone tried to convince me to go, but she can forget it. Nobody in that place understands anything about witches. All they’ve done is make things worse.
PS – This is very weird, but MM couldn’t smell the UFO. While I was blithering out my sorry-sorry-sorries, I noticed her nostrils flaring the way they do when someone brings a whiffy tuna casserole into the staff room for lunch. So I started apologising for the mystery smell as well. But she cut me off, and said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Zelda. There’s no smell in here at all.’
I don’t understand it. But at least that’s one thing I’m not in the doghouse for.
Wednesday 7 May
Jumpy and grumpy. That was me today. I was so nervous about keeping out of trouble, it was like being back under cover again.
How’s your arm, Ms Stitch?
FINE.
Can we see your scar?
NO!
Can you do some magic for us now?
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
What about a Barnaby story?
JUST DO YOUR WORKSHEETS, PLEASE.
B-O-R-I-N-G. That’s what I am, according to Zinnia. And to Zac and Ollie and Marlo and Leila and Matilda…
Well, better boring than booted out of my job.
Thankfully the rogue arm seems to be playing along. So far, anyway.
I didn’t see MM all day, although I did almost crash into Principal B. I was skulking down the corridor with my head down, and he just appeared out of nowhere, right in front of me. I stammered out a hello and cringed up at him with a pathetic ‘please don’t yell at me’ grimace on my face.
His reaction was…bizarre. He didn’t yell. He didn’t even speak. His whole face flushed bright pink, then he bobbed his head, ducked around me and practically ran down the corridor. It was almost as if he was afraid of me.
Thursday 8 May
Screaming midnight mandrake. I’m not running this show at all – my evil limb is.
I had a MAJOR blowout. A whoppingly bad one. And whatever it may have looked like, I did NOT mean to do it. I don’t even know how I did it.
It happened right before lunchtime. The kids had been playing up outrageously all morning, clearly in revolt against their boring teacher. Zinnia and Zac started it, but the others weren’t far behind. Their weapon of choice was the old classic: everything I said, they repeated in a whisper. Massively infuriating. Then they added a new, fun twist: pulling grotesque faces while they did it.
None of my stern words had any effect whatsoever. The little gruesomes just repeated them back to me. My arm started jiggling horribly, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I brought out that bit of nonsense about the wind changing and their faces getting stuck that way. Their response was to pull the most outlandish faces they could come up with.
At which point, the wind changed.
Well, something changed. I don’t know what it was, but my arm gave a jolt, and within seconds their laughter turned to a frightened jabber. They stared in horror at one another: their faces were stuck! Even those who weren’t deliberately pulling faces looked like trolls: frozen laughter is actually extremely creepy. And poor Owen, he’d been caught hard at work in the snot-mine, and couldn’t get his finger back out of his nostril!
I called out for quiet and told them not to panic, whatever had just happened wasn’t permanent, and I’d find a way to fix it before home time.
Their frightened eyes stared back at me through their awful new faces. And of course I had no idea if I could get them back to normal before home time – or ever.
Just then the bell rang for lunch. We all panicked. Nobody wanted to go into the yard looking like that. But I couldn’t keep an entire class in at lunchtime without setting off MM’s Misbehaviour Radar. Thankfully Marlo came up with a solution: they’d go outside, and if anyone asked they’d pretend they were having a competition for who could hold a silly face the longest. It wasn’t the most plausible story, but we didn’t have anything else. So, out they all went, looking like the cast of a horror film.
Lisa was rostered on for yard duty. I grabbed her in the corridor before she could catch sight of my flock of monsters, an
d offered to take her place. You would have thought she’d just won a trip to Hawaii. She ripped off her yard duty vest and was away to the coffee shop so fast, I didn’t even need to give her my fake excuse for the switch.
I paced back and forth along the fence, neglecting my duty and working myself into a lather of dread. I’d sweated right through the fluorescent orange vest when Phoebe sidled up to me with a strange expression on her face. Strange, in that it was normal. She whispered that she’d unlocked her face by running her fingertips over it. I asked if she could do the same for the others, but she blushed and shook her head. If she did that, they’d all find out that she was a witch. She wasn’t ready for that. Plus, ‘Aunt Melody would go ballistic’.
I was torn. Of course I couldn’t push her to reveal herself. But I really needed her to unlock the others. I groaned, ‘I wish I could make you invisible! Then you could do it without anyone knowing.’ You won’t believe what she said next. ‘Oh! I can do that,’ like it was the easiest thing in the world! It’s incredible: Phoebe is only just going through her witchling, and she can already do a full-body invisibility spell! I’ve never got any further than making my toes invisible, which is completely useless.
Phoebe slipped into the toilets and disappeared. I only knew that she’d returned when I saw the other children’s faces unfold one by one under her invisible touch. What a relief.
Kids are amazingly resilient. They all seemed to bounce back just fine from their Hour of Horror, although they were certainly more subdued for the rest of the day. I, on the other hand, am completely spent. I feel like an old balloon with all the air knocked out of it. I can’t even think about what might happen to me tomorrow.
Friday 9 May
Unbelievably, nobody has complained. Not yet, anyway. I was prickling with anxiety all day, just waiting to be hauled into MM’s office and ripped to pieces by an outraged parent. But it didn’t happen. Nothing happened.
Could it actually be that none of the kids told their parents about yesterday?? It seems impossible. Why wouldn’t they say anything?
Maybe they felt bad about how abominably they were behaving. Or maybe – more likely – they were just worried they’d get in trouble themselves.
The whole lot of them were unnaturally quiet all day. We tiptoed through the lessons with no disruptions – and with no laughs, either. It was miserable, all of us being so watchful and wary.
I don’t want them to be afraid of me. But the truth is, I’m afraid of me, too. I need to get myself under control before I do something that can’t be undone.
PS – Horrid news: guess who I’m going to be bunking with on camp? The Bullfrog and MM! I knew about the Bullfrog already – he’s the one who organises this whole camping nightmare. But I had no idea that Melody ‘Eyeballs’ Martin would be there too, watching me day and night! If I have a zap-attack on camp, there’ll be nowhere to hide. Oh, why didn’t I get that bone-shark to write me a get-out-of-camp note?!
Saturday 10 May
Amanita just called to ask if I wanted to come to Cauldron Club with her and the rest of the gang. I started to tell her about my arm troubles, but she had to go and prepare for her mirror-spell workshop. She said we could talk about it tonight; between the four of us we’ll surely be able to sort out my ‘latest little drama’. And if we can’t, the place will be packed with smart witches who we can ask for advice. Like my mother, for example. What did she have to say about it?
It hadn’t actually occurred to me to ask Mother about my arm. I haven’t spoken to her since the stunt she pulled with my class – I’m still mad about that, to tell the truth. And she didn’t reply to my message thanking her for the roses. But she’ll definitely be at Cauldron Club, so I guess I could ask her tonight. Although I’m not really in the mood for a sizzling serve of ‘What have you done NOW, Grizelda?’
Sunday 11 May
I don’t know what to make of it. Mother wasn’t at Cauldron Club. It’s very odd: as far as I know, she hasn’t missed a Dark of the Moon all year. Nobody else had heard from her either, and she’s not answering her phone.
Barnaby says I should stop being such a fuss-weed. He says that she’s a grown witch, and what she does on the Dark of the Moon is her own business.
I must admit, I did have a nicer time at Cauldron Club without Mother there telling complete strangers about what a ‘late bloomer’ I am. Lou and a bunch of others put on an amazing display of broomstick-riding – lots of swoops and spirals – and then there were relay races high over the park. Even Jessamyn had a go, and she was surprisingly good. I felt quite envious; I would have liked to be up there too.
But my wobbly wing is definitely not up to broom-handling yet. One crash-and-burn was quite enough, thank you – and that was with two hands.
Amanita ran her mirror-spell workshop, which was very impressive. The most surprising part was the ‘reveal’ technique, where you make the mirror show hidden things about a person. I took notes, although mirror spells are still out of my league.
Afterwards, I told the gang about my disaster blowout. Amanita thought it was hilarious (‘I would have left them like that for the rest of the year, the little beasts!’) but Briony and Jessamyn were very sympathetic. Briony is the closest thing we have to a doctor, so she took a look at my arm. She really had no idea, though – they don’t teach you much about arms in dental college. She said that it looked a bit ‘wasted’, and I ought to go and see the physio at the hospital. Uh-uh. Not happening.
She did suggest something else that might be worth a try. Briony and Melvin the Perfect Feline have been doing meditation together for years, and apparently the breathing exercises have been brilliant for focusing her powers. So they might help me get things under control, too. I asked her whether her breathing exercises had ever caused a room full of Ordinaries to fly into the air, or smashed her cat into the ceiling, and she said no, nothing like that should happen if you do it right.
She’s going to lend me a book to get me started. It’s got a section about cat meditation, too, would you believe. Briony says cats are ‘natural born meditators’, and I should ask Barnaby to try it too.
Ha ha! As if !
My cat doesn’t meditate.
He seethes.
Monday 12 May
Peace and serenity, here I come.
Briony’s book, The Mindful Witch, was waiting for me in the mailbox when I got home. I’m going to sit down and read it right now. I’ve got to get this sorted out so I can earn my class’s trust again. They were so jumpy with me today, I felt like some sort of terrible monster. Eleanor actually flinched when I called on her to answer a question. Eleanor, who usually has her hand waving wildly in the air before I’ve even asked!
Monday, 9.30pm
Very proud of myself. I got through three of the meditation exercises – quite an achievement, especially since Barnaby was doing his best to derail me. It wasn’t easy to observe each breath when I could hear him scratching strips off the couch, rummaging in the bin, and then tipping the entire cutlery drawer onto the floor.
I just kept doing what the book said: if distractions arise, imagine them as clouds passing across the sky. Observe them without judgement, and let them go. Then return to focus on your breath.
I thought I’d mastered it, until Barnaby cracked open a tin of sardines (spilling oil all over the carpet, as I later discovered), gulped them down and then sat in front of me belching fish-breath right into my face. It was impossible to observe that without judgement. I could barely observe it without gagging.
Still, nobody hit the ceiling. I’m definitely making progress.
Tuesday 13 May
On the plus side:
1. I did feel calmer today.
2. Nobody got zapped.
On the minus side:
My class is still scared of me.
The fact is, I’m not going to win them back with peaceful thoughts and deep breathing. I’m going to have to talk to them. Apologise. And honestly
explain what I really am. Not a party magician. Not a monster. Just a witch who makes mistakes like everyone else.
Yes, I know it sounds like a crazy idea. Mother would be disgusted at me ‘flapping my witches’ britches around’ like this. And I know exactly what everyone in the staff room would say:
DON’T DO IT.
Never show weakness.
Kids are like sharks: if they smell blood, they’ll tear you apart.
I don’t care. I’d rather go out in a feeding frenzy than be slowly frozen to death.
Breathe in.
Breathe out…
Wednesday 14 May
Oh, my heart could just explode! What a wonderful day! What a wonderful class!
They didn’t tear me apart. Of course they didn’t. They let me speak. They listened. They did their very best to understand. And they forgave me.
I won’t pretend I wasn’t terrified beforehand. I got to school even earlier than usual, shut myself in the storage room and stayed there for half an hour just trying to steady my breath. I came out right on the bell, a bit wobbly but determined to be brave and let them see me, warts and all.
I started out by saying how sorry I was for what I did to their faces, and that I would never do a thing like that to them on purpose. I explained that I can’t always control my powers as well as I’d like to, just like they can’t always control their feelings. But I’m working on it. I’m working hard to be a good teacher, a good witch and a good person. I don’t want them to be afraid of me.
Too Much Witch Page 3