Small Town Witch

by Kristen S. Walker

  I sent her a note back. “Thanks. We’ll talk later. I don’t know if you can help? But thanks for offering!”

  Kai avoided hanging around me, which I was grateful for, but once he caught my eye across the room and mouthed, “Are you okay?” He looked really concerned.

  I smiled and nodded back at him. I wondered if I was going to have to explain to him what had happened later. What was I comfortable saying to him?

  Other people came by and tried to talk me during the day, so there was a small crowd around my table during every break. Zil asked, “Don’t you feel like your parents are so much more overprotective of you because you’re a girl? I know mine are. If one of my brothers takes off, they barely get a talking-to, but if I’m even a little late coming home from school or something, it’s the end of the world.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t have any brothers.” I tried to shrug it off with a laugh. “They usually give me a lot of freedom. I just crossed a line.”

  Daniela sighed. “My parents are way more strict. One time my sister came home only an hour after curfew and she was grounded for a whole month. My parents really hate her boyfriend.” She glanced across the room at Robert and added, “Most of my dates have a chaperone.”

  “How long are you grounded for?” Zil wanted to know.

  It was Domenico who asked the question that I’d been avoiding all day: “So where were you, Rosa? Did you have a hot date with some guy?”

  I avoided looking at Glen and Ashleigh. “I had a fight with my mom and I didn’t want to be home,” I said vaguely. “I wasn’t with anyone else.”

  Lindsey put a protective arm over my shoulders. “You know, Rosa, you can always just tell people that you spent the night at my house. You’re over there so often that my parents don’t even notice you half the time anymore.” She shooed people away.

  But then, when they were gone, she leaned in close to me and said, “It was a guy, right? Or was it a girl? I know you wouldn’t be doing drugs or anything.” She looked at Heather with narrowed eyes.

  There was a time, back when I was always at Lindsey’s house like she’d said, when I would have told her everything that was going on, even if she couldn’t understand it. Now I just looked at the floor and mumbled, “I had a fight with my mom, and I needed some time to sort out my thoughts.”

  “What was it about?”

  “Magical stuff,” I lied. Well, it was only sort of a lie.

  Lindsey shook her head. “You never fight with your family, especially not your mom. And this is the first time you’ve ever done anything that actually got you into trouble. Is there anything that I can help with?”

  I shrugged away from her. “It’s nothing that you’d understand.”

  “Sorry.” Lindsey looked hurt, but she left me alone after that.

  I felt kind of rotten for putting her off but I just didn’t feel like I could talk to her anymore. I didn’t need the spell to stop my feelings for her, I realized—I didn’t have that much in common with Lindsey now. She wasn’t even a very good friend. I could remember the past with fondness, but that wasn’t what was blocking us in the present—we were growing apart. And since I had other friends to talk to about my problems, it wasn’t any great loss.

  During lunchtime, Kai caught me in the hallway and pulled me aside. He stood there, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched up, staring at my feet. “So, um, about yesterday,” he began.

  I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I had to think of something to say so he wouldn’t think that I hated him. “I’m sorry I ran away like that,” I blurted out. “I had to—I mean, I told my mom that I wanted to start dating. That’s why I fought with her, and that’s why I ran away last night.”

  He looked up at me and blinked in surprise. “Wow. I—I had no idea.”

  “I’m not telling most people the truth right now,” I said. I reached out and touched his hand. “But I wanted you to know.”

  Kai gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. He was so warm. “Why did you fight with her? Does your mom not like me?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t tell her who I wanted to date. She’s really opposed to the idea of me dating anyone. I used to let her convince me that she was right, but you changed my mind.”

  He suddenly broke into a huge grin, and took my other hand in his. “So you—you really do want to go out with me? How long are you grounded for?”

  “A week.” I shook my head. “But even after that—I still don’t think that I’ll actually be able to date anyone. The fight ended kind of badly, especially since I disappeared after that, and—it’s complicated. So even though I want to go out with you, I don’t know if there’s any way that I can make this work yet.”

  I didn’t want to tell him about the spell. I wasn’t ready to admit my problems to him—Ashleigh and Glen, and now Heather, were the only ones who I really wanted to trust with this. I also didn’t want to get his hopes up. I had no idea if I could break the spell, or what it would mean for my life and my family if I did.

  His grin faded a little. “So, what does that mean for us?”

  “I don’t want to lead you on if there’s someone else who you could be seeing instead—”

  Kai dropped my hands and put his arms around me, pulling me close. “There is no one else, Rosa.”

  It was suddenly much harder to speak. I swallowed, feeling my face growing hot. “I—I just mean, maybe we could just hang out as friends for now, when I can hang out with my friends again. No expectations. Just until I get things sorted out at home. My parents may think that I’m already sneaking around behind their backs, but I don’t actually want to do that.”

  He kissed me lightly on the cheek, then dropped his arms and took a step back. “I’d be happy to hang out with you and your friends,” he said. “Until you get things sorted out and your parents approve.”

  I smiled at him. “Thank you. And if we could not, you know, go official at school until then, either?”

  He gave me a sweeping bow that nearly made him bump into the wall behind him, then straightened up with his characteristic smirk. “I shall behave as a perfect gentleman toward you. No one shall suspect my true feelings, milady.”

  I smiled back and thanked him again. When we left the room, I went the other way in the hall and spent a few minutes alone until I was sure my blush had faded. If anyone had seen us walking out to lunch together, I felt sure that everyone would know exactly what was going on.

  That week of being grounded felt like it lasted forever. It wasn’t just being stuck at home that was frustrating, although I did miss my friends. It was also the fact that I was trying to avoid my family as much as possible. I wanted to investigate my house to find the source of the spell, but it felt like my every move was being watched. Mom was coming home from the store early because she had to drive me and Akasha home from school, and she was around all the time when I was at home—cooking in the kitchen, working in her garden, cleaning up the house—always busy, but close enough that I didn’t want her to see me acting suspicious.

  I didn’t have a lot to do after I’d finished my homework for the day. I spent extra time practicing the clarinet for orchestra, I finished all of my chores early and even reorganized my room, and I scribbled fragments of poems that never went anywhere. I hung around in my room during the day time, except for meals and school, and after I was sure everyone was asleep at night, I came out to search.

  The attic was the first obvious place to search. But when I looked around, I recognized every tool that was up there. Mom didn’t keep any books or notes about her spells there, so there weren’t any clues to go on. I was careful to put everything back where I’d found it.

  I found one of the other spells that Lavender had mentioned in the family room. There was a loose board above the doorway that led from the family room into the dining room, and in the little space behind it, I found a small glass jar sealed shut with wax. Inside, I could see a bundle of dried her
bs, a tangle of threads in several colors, and four small clay figures. I recognized that it was the protection spell for my family. I was very careful to put it back undisturbed—like Lavender had told me, it was passive, it couldn’t hurt us, and it wasn’t a bad thing to have, at any rate.

  I checked around my bedroom. The two spells that I knew about were still there, and I didn’t find anything else. I wondered if my mom tried using the tracker spell on the night that I disappeared in the Realm of Faerie, and what it told her. I didn’t think her scrying could trace me through the Veil.

  Knowing that my mom liked to hide spells in the walls didn’t help me out. We had a big, old house with a lot of potential nooks and crannies for people to tuck things into, and my mom probably knew it better than anyone else. It could take forever to find the spell I wanted.

  But that gave me another idea about how I could tell my dad and Akasha about the spell. If I showed them proof that my mom was secretly making and hiding spells in our house, that could help raise their suspicions about her.

  I decided to talk to my sister on Thursday afternoon. We’d already finished our homework and gone upstairs, and Mom was in the kitchen making dinner, so there was no way that she could overhear us. I went to her bedroom door and knocked.

  “What is it?”

  I opened the door. Akasha was lying on her bed, reading a book. I said, “I need to talk to you about something important.”

  Akasha sat up and looked at me. “Are you sure it’s important right now? I’m just getting to the exciting part.”

  “Yes.” I came in the room and shut the door behind me. “As your big sister, I have to tell you about this.”

  She sighed and made a face, but she grabbed her bookmark from the table next to her bed and closed the book. She folded her arms and looked at me. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “Have you ever found anything, um, unusual in your room before?” I asked her.

  “Like what?”

  “Like a little glass jar, or a pouch, full of leaves and rocks and stuff.”

  Akasha shook her head. “Nope. Did you lose something? You can’t come in here looking for it. I never touch your stuff.”

  I turned around and stood on tiptoe, craning my head to look at the boards above the door. None of them looked loose at first glance, but I’d test them. “Have you ever found holes in the walls?”

  “What, like mouse holes? No, Mom has a spell against rodents—”

  “Can I borrow your desk chair?” I walked over and grabbed it. Before she could say anything, I carried it back to the door and climbed up on it. I pulled my penknife out of my pocket and started prying at the boards.

  Behind me, I heard Akasha jump up off of the bed and march over. “What are you doing? I told you, you can’t just barge in here and start messing with my room—”

  The board on the far left side of the doorway came loose. I reached behind it and pulled out a little pouch, identical to the one from my room. I passed it down to my sister and said, “Open it. You’ll find a piece of your hair inside, a quartz crystal, and several dried herbs. Do you know what that means?”

  Akasha turned it over in her hands and opened the bag while I climbed down from the chair. When she found that the contents were exactly what I’d described, she looked up at me with a frown. “I don’t study magic, but it looks like some sort of spell. What does it mean?”

  “It’s tied to you,” I explained. “It lets Mom find out exactly where you are at any time. There might be another one under your bed, but that one—does something else.”

  She stared at me. “How did you know it was there?”

  “Because I have the exact same thing in my room. I bet there’s one for Dad in his and Mom’s room, too. I don’t know how many more are in our house.” I took the pouch back from her and tied it shut, then climbed back up and put it back in the wall, carefully replacing the board.

  Akasha wiped her hands on her pants as if they were dirty. “Ugh, that’s gross. Can’t you get rid of it or something?”

  “I’m trying to find all of them, and I don’t want Mom to know that I’m looking for them. If I got rid of one, she might notice.” I put the chair back and flopped down on the bed. “They make me uncomfortable, too. I’ve found spells that do other things, too.”

  Akasha sat down next to me. “Are you trying to get in trouble again?”

  “No, I just think that we have a right to know when she’s using magic on us.”

  She threw up her hands. “Well, good luck figuring that out. I don’t know anything about magic, and I don’t want to know more.”

  I leaned closer to her, frowning. “Don’t you want to know what she’s got on us? Doesn’t it bother you?”

  “Of course it bothers me.” Akasha shot a glance up above her bedroom door. “It’s going to freak me out all the time now, knowing that thing is up there. If you won’t get rid of it, I wish you hadn’t told me at all.”

  “How can you not want to know about it, though?” I looked down at the bedspread. “What if there’s something worse—something that makes us act differently? What if there’s a spell that she’s using to control us?”

  Akasha shook her head. “Now you just sound paranoid. Mom wouldn’t do something like that, and isn’t it against that oath you have to swear when you become a witch, not to use your powers to influence others?”

  “But I have proof, I mean, I think I can tell how it’s affecting us, but—”

  “Stop!” She put her hands over her ears. “I told you, I don’t want to talk about this. Get out of my room!”

  I tried to argue with her, but she wouldn’t listen to me anymore. Eventually she forced me out of her room. I left reluctantly, but I knew that I didn’t have any way to convince her right now. Maybe I could try another time if I caught her in a better mood, but I couldn’t understand why it didn’t work—why my sister was so resistant of magic that she wouldn’t even let me talk to her about it.

  The next person to talk to was my dad. I realized, too late, that part of the problem with my conversation with Akasha was that I’d talked to her at home, where the spell was strongest. But while finding time to talk to my dad alone was not hard, getting to see him outside of the house was tricky, especially without my own transportation. It wasn’t like I could just go visit him at the hospital where he worked and pull him aside to talk to me.

  On Friday afternoon, my dad got off work early and he was the one to come pick my sister and me up from school. I told him that I had an idea that we should give my mom a treat by telling her not to cook dinner for one night and ordering take-out for our family instead. “We can go pick something up in town before she gets home from the shop,” I said. “I don’t have a lot of homework to do, so I can go with you.”

  At first, he was reluctant to leave my sister at home alone, but she’d already started doing her schoolwork. We drove to the local Chinese restaurant, Lucky Eight, and picked up food.

  When we got back in the car and started to drive home, I asked him, “Do you think we might go visit any of your family for the holidays this year?”

  He gave the response that I expected: “Your mother likes to stay home for the holidays. She’s not very comfortable traveling.”

  “Well, then, could we go visit them another time?” I suggested. “I feel like I haven’t seen them in ages. The cousins must be so big by now.”

  “Well, I’d have to see if I could get the time away from work,” Dad said slowly. “And I’d have to ask your mother how she feels about it.”

  “Why? Don’t you miss your family? We haven’t seen any of them since before Grandma died.”

  “That’s true.” His hands gripped the wheel tighter, but he didn’t say anything more.

  “So why don’t we ever visit them anymore?”

  He let out a sigh. “We’re just a busy family, I guess.”

  I pouted and turned to look out the passenger window. “We should make the time. Family is importa
nt.”

  He shot me a puzzled glance. “Where did this sudden interest in seeing your cousins come from? We always have to remind you when to send them cards for birthdays and holidays.”

  “Maybe I’m just tired of listening to Mom always making excuses about why we can’t do one thing or another. Like visit our family.”

  “We can’t do everything that we want all of the time,” Dad said in his patient voice. “We have to make these decisions together, as a family, and we all want different things.”

  I shook my head. “That’s what she says, but I think we always end up doing what Mom wants and everyone else gets disappointed. It isn’t fair.”

  “Rosamunde, you know that’s not true. I know right now you’re mad at your mother over some boy, but she just wants what’s best for you—”

  I whipped my head around to stare at him. “Aren’t there things that you’d want to do with your life that you can’t because Mom always talks you out of them?”

  He slowed the car to a stop and turned to look at me directly. “I make compromises for you girls and your mother because I love all of you. I don’t regret the decisions that I make.”

  I looked down at the floor. Maybe I was pushing this too hard. With or without the spell, my dad had a good heart, and of course he was willing to sacrifice things for his family. I didn’t want to make him feel bad for that.

  Dad was quiet for several minutes. I thought he was going to lecture me, or just drop the subject completely. Then he said quietly, “I do sometimes wonder if the things that she decides for you girls might be a little too harsh.”

  I blinked in surprise. At first, I didn’t know what to say. Then I asked, just as quietly, “Do you mean like making Akasha go to a school where she doesn’t belong?”

  “Yes.” He paused, then started driving again.

  Hearing him admit it was enough. I didn’t want to push it anymore. I didn’t say anything for the rest of the trip home. When we got out of the car, right before we went into the house, I looked at him and said, “I love you, Daddy.”