Monday 24 February
Called in sick. Could not face MM, or anyone else for that matter. I know it’s cowardly, and it isn’t going to solve anything, and tomorrow I will have to go to the meeting and undoubtedly get fired, but I don’t care. I am staying in bed.
Barnaby is being amazingly nice to me. He says there’s nothing wrong with spending all day under the covers with the curtains shut.
Tuesday 25 February
Probably my last diary entry as a teacher. Have put on my best outfit and done my hair nicely. If I’m going to be marched out of the school grounds after the meeting, at least I will look smart and well dressed. Can’t believe that today might be the last time I stand up in front of the class – or any class. No school is going to hire me after this. But I still want to be at my very best today, so that at least this bunch of children will remember me as a sort-of-good teacher and not a complete freak, even after they know the truth.
Barnaby says I shouldn’t bother going back to school at all. But he doesn’t understand how important this job is to me. Have to stop writing now or I’ll cry, and I don’t want to go in with red eyes, not today of all days.
Tuesday, 5pm
Exhausted. Elated. Utterly, utterly relieved. And feeling just a teensy bit foolish for overreacting quite so badly. Because guess what? The meeting wasn’t about me at all!!!! Well, not about me-as-a-witch, anyway, which is the important thing. And Principal Biggins (Yes! He exists!) was nice enough, even though he appeared to have no idea who I was. Also, he scratched his neck throughout the entire meeting, which was a bit strange. I hope he hasn’t caught nits.
It seems that the Know-Mores are ‘extremely displeased’ because Eleanor is not being ‘sufficiently challenged’ in my class. They feel that the standard of teaching is ‘simply not high enough for her exceptional abilities’, and that far too much time is being ‘wasted on shaggy dog tales and other nonsense’. They believe that Eleanor is ‘bored to the point of misery’. If things don’t improve, they say that they will be looking for a new school, one that can properly nurture their daughter’s talents.
I let the waves of complaints wash over me, trying the whole time to keep my face from breaking out into a huge, dopey grin. They had no idea at all that I was a witch! They just thought I was a bad teacher!
Eleanor sat there without saying a word, red-faced and clearly very unhappy. And suddenly I knew exactly what I had to do. When her parents finally stopped talking, I asked Eleanor what she would like to change about our class. It was the first time during the entire meeting that anyone had actually spoken to her. And then Eleanor looked down at her hands and mumbled, very quietly: ‘I’d just like to have some friends.’
Oh, Eleanor! My heart ached for her. I didn’t realise that she was so lonely. And boy, do I know how that feels. I resolved then and there to help her somehow.
All this quite took the wind out of the Know-Mores’ sails. Principal Biggins wound up the meeting very briskly – he obviously couldn’t wait to get them out of the building. We waved them off down the corridor, and I turned to thank him, but he’d already disappeared back into his office and shut the door.
Wednesday 26 February
I have been an absolute fool. It’s been right in front of me the whole time, but until today I had no idea. It’s obvious, though: Zinnia is going through her witchling.
I can’t believe I didn’t notice the signs. The sparkles. They weren’t mine, they were hers. The correction spell was hers, too (a surprising improvement in her reading and writing – I must be doing something right). And the toad, of course. Which is quite scary: her witchling isn’t even complete, and she’s already doing animal transformations. She is going to be a stupendously powerful witch. And how am I possibly going to manage that? I can’t even rein in her ordinary antics. Imagine what sort of mayhem she’ll be capable of once her powers have come through.
The thing is, I don’t know if she fully understands what’s happening to her. Has her mother given her the Talk yet?? Surely she would have warned Zinnia to be a bit more discreet? Well, that’s assuming her mother is a witch. I’ve only met her a handful of times and I didn’t notice anything. But then, she’s not exactly going to turn up at school on a broom, is she?
Or what if her parents are both Ordinaries? Zinnia’s witchling might have skipped a generation, or more than one. Her family might have no clue about the change. But pretty soon there’ll be no hiding it. And what will they do when they find out? Jessamyn’s parents were both Ordinaries, and when her witchling began they were mortified. They threw out her toadstool collection and cut her pocket money every time she dropped a spell. They nagged her and lectured her and kept a constant watch over her day and night. And after years of being squeezed down, her powers eventually withered to a wisp of what they might have been. She had a grim time growing up.
I couldn’t bear to see Zinnia crushed like that. Although I must say, I can’t imagine Zinnia being easily squashed. Her powers are going to be formidable, and what’s more, she’s totally fearless. She isn’t even trying to hide her magic at school. In fact, she almost seems to be daring people to notice it. Like today, when I got the class brainstorming ideas for our performance at the fair. Zinnia suggested a fairy dance class run by, you guessed it, a witch, who turns one unfortunate fairy after another into monsters. The act ends with all the monsters chasing the witch off the stage. Zinnia’s idea was the clear favourite on a vote, so that’s what we’ll be doing. Great.
At this point I still had no idea about her witchling. I thought she was suggesting that I play the part of the witch, and get chased away by the class. Imagine that: performing my own greatest fear in front of the whole school. For a gut-sinking moment I thought she’d found me out, for sure. But no, Zinnia wanted to play the witch herself. She jumped up on her chair, struck a pose and started pointing at one kid after another, making up outlandish spells.
And then she threw one for real.
She turned to Phoebe with her right arm raised, and slowly flexed her fingers into beckoning claws. Phoebe looked up, startled, and pulled her notebook closer to her chest. Then Zinnia hissed out the command: ‘Speak, pages! Reveal your secrets!’
Phoebe gasped and jammed the book shut between her hands. And that’s when I saw it, small, but quite definite: a twist of blue smoke curling up from inside the pages. Phoebe jumped as if her palms were burning and dropped the notebook onto the floor under her desk. Zinnia gave a cackle of laughter and took a bow.
A fire spell! And that was just with her right hand! What will happen when the cast comes off her left arm? She might send the entire classroom up in flames. Too awful to contemplate.
Of course I had to pretend that I hadn’t seen anything. Thank Hecate the flames were extinguished when the notebook hit the floor, and I don’t think anyone else saw the smoke. Well, nobody apart from Phoebe, who was pale and trembling. I couldn’t help her, though; I had to stop Zinnia without alerting the others. So I acted like it was just another case of Zinnia’s mischief-as-usual. I barked at her to sit down, and gave her some stern words about disrupting the class. My tone must have startled her; she was much quieter for the rest of the day and I didn’t see any more rogue magic. But surely this isn’t the last of it.
I don’t know what to do. If I talk to Zinnia’s parents, I could open up a whole wasps’ nest of strife, especially if they don’t know she’s a witch. Someone needs to show her how to keep herself under control, though. If she hexes one of the other children we’ll be in all kinds of trouble. But if I try to help her, I’ll blow my own cover. What can I do??
Wednesday, 9pm
Had dinner (my last Absolute Emergency packet of Tweezels) and a long think in the shower. Decided that all I can do right now is give Zinnia a serious talk about ‘misbehaving’ in class, and hope she gets the hint. But I’m not all that confident it will work. And then what? This is almost worse than having leaks myself. It’s something I really can’t
control.
Thursday 27 February
Ugh, lots of ratty behaviour in class today. Perhaps my own nerves are making the kids jumpy, but more likely it’s because of the Full Moon coming on. Ordinaries don’t seem to realise it, but the Full Moon definitely sends them a bit wild.
On the bright side, the moon also seemed to loosen the class up a bit. I got Eleanor to join a reading group with Mitch and Leila and Tom, and the four of them really hit it off. Eleanor skipped away with them at recess, laughing. A win!
Interestingly, despite the moon, Zinnia was much better than usual, with no magic on the loose, as far as I could tell. So I didn’t have any excuse to give her the talk about her ‘behaviour’. Hopefully the telling-off yesterday was enough. For the moment, anyway.
I did have to hand out quite a few warnings to other kids, and I almost didn’t tell them a Pom Pom story this afternoon. In the end I took pity on them, though. It looks like a pretty powerful moon this month, so it isn’t all their fault. Plus, I really wanted to tell the one where I leave Pom Pom to wait for me outside the supermarket, but he sneaks in, plunders the meat case and leads a chase down the aisles, trailing a string of sausages behind him. Of course when Barnaby did this in real life he also destroyed the entire seafood display, and then attacked the store manager. Very embarrassing, and very expensive.
Speaking of Barnaby, I don’t know what is up with His Majesty at the moment. He is lying face down on the carpet like a greasy charcoal smear, and absolutely radiating Glumness. I don’t think he’s even had a wash today. Usually in the lead-up to the Full Moon he is prickling with energy, getting himself ready for a spree of fighting and carousing. But right now he looks like he couldn’t even scrape himself off the floor for a bag of catnip.
PS – Just realised that I haven’t seen Jeremy all week. Perhaps my nuclear meltdown over the toad has put the class off giving me any more surprises. But believe it or not, I kind of miss him. He was starting to feel like a fun in-joke between the kids and me.
Friday 28 February
I discovered something truly shocking today. It looks like Principal B has been put under a hex! I’m not sure if anyone else knows the truth about the principal’s mysterious illness, but any witch could tell you that it has all the signs of a serious curse.
Ben was the one who told me about it. He had no idea that there might be magic involved, but even so: the story was so strange, he couldn’t wait to share it. Ben was at the library last night – not the school library, but the big City Library in town – when he spotted Biggins and MM whispering together in the Health and Medical section. Of course he was intrigued. He ducked behind the shelf and hid in Food and Cookery to listen.
From what Ben could gather, Principal B has fallen ill with a bizarre and inexplicable disease. Since school began this year, he has become highly allergic to children! Even just being near one makes him itch and break out in hives. And if he’s around lots of them at once, his throat starts to swell up and he can’t breathe. A school assembly would literally kill him! That’s why Principal B is never seen during school hours – and why he was so twitchy the other day when Eleanor was in his office.
Of course this is all top secret. If anyone finds out about Biggins’s condition, he’ll lose his job. He can’t very well be a school principal if he is allergic to children! He must really trust MM to be confiding in her about all this.
MM and Biggins left without finding any answers in the library. ‘So it’s still a huge mystery!’ Ben said, obviously thrilled to have stumbled on this bit of gossip.
I, on the other hand, am the furthest thing from thrilled. So far, it sounds like no one suspects that Biggins’s problem is more magical than medical. But surely it won’t be long before rumours of witchcraft start to fly. And nobody is going to feel kindly towards witches then. It will be even worse for me than I thought. And for Zinnia, too.
Zinnia.
Oh no…
Could Zinnia have cursed Biggins??
Would she really do something that bad??
Honestly? She just might.
Saturday 1 March – Full Moon
Amanita dropped in unexpectedly this morning with croissants. She took one look at Barnaby sulking in the corner and completely lost her temper. Not with him, though – with me! She accused me of neglecting him, and said that if I kept on like this he would shrivel up and die! This is just too much! Me, neglecting him!
I told her she has no idea what sort of outrageous behaviour I have to put up with every day from His Majesty, and that if there is a cat with more privileges than Barnaby I’d like to see it. Then she said that I was the one who had no idea, because the problem with Barnaby is that he is seriously deprived of magic! She said it’s no wonder he is so miserable: a witch’s companion can’t be expected to plod through life like some Ordinary moggy.
As if this wasn’t enough, she then flung her arms out, like she was disgusted by my whole apartment, or maybe my whole life, and said: ‘The real trouble is, you’re getting more Ordinary by the day, Zelda. Okay, you want to keep it under wraps at work, but when was the last time you actually got a proper spell on? Look at you – it’s Full Moon, and you’re going to sit at home marking maths tests!’
In the end I had to agree to go to a Full Moon party with her tonight. It’s by invitation only, upstairs on the roof terrace at Pixies. Surely this is taking ‘hiding in plain sight’ to an unnecessary extreme?
Amanita said I could come as her guest, and companion animals are included in the invitation. When he heard that, Barnaby perked up right away. He tried not to look too happy all at once, but within five minutes he was washing and preening himself, and then he leapt up onto the bench and ate all three croissants.
I really don’t fancy going to the party. I’ve got nothing to wear, and Amanita is right – my magic is so poor, I hardly feel like a proper witch at all.
Sunday 2 March
What a night! I got home as the sun was coming up, and only just woke up now – in the middle of the afternoon! Barnaby is still asleep here beside me, and is actually purring. I’m so glad Amanita made me go to the party. It was fabulous. The music! And the dancing! And the spells! The spells were incredible! Firework spells and vanishing acts, and an absolute feast that appeared out of nowhere, and the most extraordinary transforming spells: at midnight a whole table of witches turned themselves into peacocks! And you’re not going to believe this, but I got on a broom! Me! I can hardly believe it myself. Briony had a ride, too – Amanita said we had to try it – and it was brilliant! Well, actually it was quite terrifying at first because it was Full Moon and I was sure someone would see us, but we shot up behind the clouds and started racing and dipping and twirling high up over the city. I can’t even describe how amazing it felt. Of course I couldn’t fly the broom myself – I rode with Amanita, and Briony rode with Amanita’s friend, Lou. And they went like rockets! I thought I’d be too scared to go that fast, but I loved it!
I was so caught up in the excitement of it all, I barely took any notice of what Barnaby was up to. I thought I saw him in a conga line of cats and monkeys and smaller animals at one point, but it might have been a different black cat – of course there were loads of them. He was quite content to come home with me afterwards, though, so I can’t have been too much of an embarrassment to him.
I do feel more…witchy, too. It’s like being around all that power has kindled something in me. Maybe I do need more magic in my life? Or maybe I have more magic in me than I thought?
Monday 3 March
I woke up feeling like a new person today, full of energy and sparkle. My good mood was definitely contagious: the whole class was in excellent spirits, and even Barnaby had a grin on his whiskery chops. It was only later, when we were rehearsing our class performance, that I realised how dangerous a bit of extra magic might be.
Zinnia was relishing every second of her starring role as the witch. She really was electric, strutting and cackling a
nd twirling her fingers. Having one arm out of action didn’t seem to bother her at all. And the more the class laughed and cheered, the wilder and more frenzied her performance became. She was treading a frighteningly fine line between pretend witch and real.
I watched her with spiralling anxiety, clenching my fists and holding my breath, waiting for actual sparks to fly. And the more anxious I got, the more I could feel my own powers stirring. My fingers started tingling, and then the heat was flowing down my arms, and my hands were flexing all by themselves. My brain pleaded for it to stop, but my entire body was fired up to fight magic with magic. It was coursing through me, ready to leap out and counteract whatever spells Zinnia might throw. I shut my eyes, bracing myself for a full-scale thunder-and-lightning hex-fight.
The class egged Zinnia on, oblivious to the danger they were in. And just as I was sure it was going to come blasting out of me, I felt something smack me in the back of the head. I jumped and grabbed at my hair, and instantly felt the magic shrink back along my arms. The startle must have disrupted the flow. My wobbly fingers found something hard and bristly snagged in my hair. Jeremy!!
My squeal caught the class’s attention, and Zinnia lost her audience. She dropped her witch act, eager to know what the laughter was about.
Whoever threw that rubber spider had just saved us both. I know I should have hunted out the culprit and given them a consequence or two, but the struggle with my own powers had wiped me out. I had nothing left in me to give.
That was when I noticed that Phoebe wasn’t laughing like the others. She was eyeing Zinnia warily, and no wonder. Zinnia’s last ‘performance’ almost set her precious notebook alight. I still haven’t said anything to her about that. I haven’t done a thing to put her mind at rest.
The Cursed First Term of Zelda Stitch. Bad Teacher. Worse Witch. Page 4