Be Careful What You Witch For

by Hoobler, Thomas

  Bettendorf, Olivia thought. But it turned out the class was coming from the sixteenth century, the time Mr. Feldstein intended to talk about. Mostly, it seemed, people went from one place to another on boats in those days. Hence the costume. Good thing he hadn’t started with the cavemen.

  The next class was math, which made Olivia a little tense until the teacher said they could use their calculators on tests. She already knew how to use a calculator. It was figuring out math problems that bothered her. Something seemed to be bothering the teacher, a thin little man named Mr. Haber. He kept turning around and looking at the floor behind him as he talked. When he wrote on the board, he twisted himself around so that he continued to face the class at the same time. Some of the students giggled a bit at these antics, but it wasn’t until after class that Muffin explained what was going on.

  “Somebody supposedly set off a firecracker behind Mr. Haber one time,” she told Olivia. “So he’s been on guard ever since.”

  “Is that true?” Olivia could hardly believe it. “Did they catch the person who did it?”

  “I wasn’t there. It was two years ago. But everybody knew who did it. Brian Glidewell.”

  “What did they do to him?”

  “Nothing. He graduated and went to Harvard. Haven’t you heard of the Glidewells? His father is the head of Baldwin, Palmer.”

  “What’s that?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Olivia knew they were a mistake.

  And they were. “You don’t know anything, do you?” Muffin said. “I mean, even in that town in Ohio they must have heard of Baldwin, Palmer.”

  “Iowa,” corrected Olivia.

  Muffin lowered her voice. “Listen, can I ask you something? I promise not to tell anyone.”

  Olivia tensed. She knew already that Muffin would betray anyone’s deepest secrets if it would help her become popular.

  Almost in a whisper now, Muffin asked, “Are you a scholarship student?”

  What kind of dumb question was that? “No,” Olivia said, wishing she had the nerve to shock Muffin by answering yes.

  “Because if you are,” said Muffin, “then it would be almost impossible, really unthinkable, for you to be popular, and I don’t want to waste my time on you.”

  Olivia stopped walking. Muffin continued for a few more steps before she realized Olivia wasn’t next to her. She turned with a questioning look, and Olivia said, “Just go on. Really. I don’t want to be with you any longer.”

  Muffin hesitated. “I’m supposed to take you to classes.”

  “I’ll manage. Somehow,” said Olivia.

  “Listen, you need my—”

  Olivia turned her back and discovered a boy was standing in back of her. A head taller than she was, he had a big smile on his face, showing off his perfectly straight teeth, which contrasted with his dark skin. Except for the fact that he wore tortoiseshell glasses, he almost looked like a younger version of Will Smith.

  “Sorry,” he said, still smiling. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  “I guess you think I’m an idiot, too,” she blurted out.

  He raised his hands. “No, no. Listen, you want to know where your next class is?”

  “How would you know?”

  “Well, you were in my first two classes, so I guess we have the same schedule. Sorry you didn’t notice me.”

  Actually, in class Olivia had been trying not to look at anybody, so that nobody would notice her. Now she shrugged. “It’s either this or skiing.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind. Where’s the next class?”

  Getting into step alongside her, he said, “My name’s Paul, by the way. Paul Dunbar Phillips.”

  “Olivia Bettendorfer. Do you know what Baldwin, Palmer is?”

  He blinked. “It’s a Wall Street investment bank. Does your father work there?”

  “No, he’s a farmer,” Olivia replied quickly.

  “What kind of farmer?” Paul asked, showing unexpected interest.

  There were different kinds? Lying was harder than Olivia thought. “Just a regular farmer,” she said carefully. “You know, that grows things.”

  Paul gave her a funny look. “So, what are you doing in New York?”

  “Living with my aunt,” Olivia said. Who speaks to homeless people on the street and has a cat that used to be a ten-year-old boy. She reminded herself to avoid details.

  They entered a classroom and Olivia saw the teacher she’d met before, Ms. Noyes. Unfortunately, she recognized Olivia and gestured for her to sit in the front row. Paul sat next to her, making her feel a tiny bit more secure.

  That feeling soon vanished when Ms. Noyes announced, “I’m going to be your language arts teacher this year, and since I’m new I wanted to tell you a little about myself.”

  Olivia tensed up. She had a bad feeling that she knew where this was going. And she was right. After Ms. Noyes told them she had grown up in some other area of New York (Staten Island, wherever that was), and where she’d gone to college (Wellesley) and how she had always loved to read (books) and everybody in the room was falling asleep, she said, “There is someone else here who’s new this year.”

  Olivia closed her eyes, wishing for a sudden terrorist attack on the school.

  But the dreaded words came anyway: “Olivia, maybe you’d like to tell the class something about yourself.”

  Okay, assume control, Olivia told herself, recalling what Aunt Tilda had said to do in case of emergencies. She took a deep breath.

  “No.”

  Suddenly the room seemed very quiet. She felt everybody’s eyes on her.

  “Pardon me?” said Ms. Noyes.

  “I mean... well, no,” Olivia said. “See, I’m really nobody.”

  A boy in the back laughed. Then everybody started. Olivia wondered where she could go if she just ran out of the classroom. Then she felt somebody nudge her. She looked up, and saw that it was Paul. He was smiling and gave her an okay sign with his thumb and finger forming an O.

  They thought she was trying to be funny.

  Ms. Noyes wasn’t laughing, however. She gave Olivia a sad look, but then brightened.

  “Sometimes we all feel like that,” she said. Olivia doubted it. She was sure her mother never did.

  Turning to the board, Ms. Noyes began to write. “In fact,” she said, “over a hundred years ago, a great poet expressed that same feeling. Did anybody ever hear of Emily Dickinson?” She glanced over her shoulder. “Yes?” she said, nodding at someone a row or two in back of Olivia.

  “My parents have a book of her poems,” a girl’s voice announced. “They’re mostly short, but cool if you think about them.”

  Olivia turned to see who was courageous enough to admit she liked poetry. The girl had bright pink hair framing a narrow face that had piercings in the eyebrows. When she saw Olivia looking at her, she stuck out her tongue, revealing it was pierced too.

  “Have you read this one?” Ms. Noyes asked, stepping back so they could read what she’d written:

  I’m nobody! Who are you?

  Are you nobody, too?

  Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!

  They’d banish us, you know

  “Oh, yeah,” the girl in the back replied. “I remember it.”

  “Do you know the rest of it?” Ms. Noyes asked.

  “Yeah, well, sort of, I guess,” the girl replied.

  Ms. Noyes looked as if she’d won the lottery. “Could you—” she prompted.

  “How dreary to be somebody,” the girl began, reciting quickly. “How public, like a frog. To tell your name the livelong day. To an admiring bog.” Not much expression, Olivia thought. She doesn’t have an acting career ahead of her.

  But Ms. Noyes was so happy she actually clapped her hands. “Oh, and tell us your name,” she said.

  There was a pause, and then the girl replied, “I’m nobody, too.”

  The expression on Ms. Noyes’s face showed that she knew things were
getting a little out of hand. “Well,” she said, smiling gamely, “I guess for today we’ll all just be nobody.” She looked at the clock hanging on the rear wall. Evidently realizing that she had time to fill, she said, “Let’s suppose, then, that we could become anybody we wanted. Who would we be? You first,” she said, pointing to a boy at the end of the front row. Low groans could be heard in the room; the class was like a movie audience that knows something bad is about to happen.

  Olivia glanced down there and saw someone who made her forget about Matthew McConaughey (almost). This guy was tall, with dark eyes and jet-black hair. He looked like he worked out, too; Olivia imagined the way it would feel to have his big arms surrounding her. What appealed to her most, however, was the way his face was put together. Something about it that she couldn’t describe made her want to cup her hands around it, feel the sharp edges of his jaw and cheekbones.

  However, Ms. Noyes’s question seemed like a major obstacle for him. Olivia could almost see a blank thought balloon appear above his head. After a couple of seconds, Ms. Noyes beckoned as if trying to draw a response out of him. He smiled, blinked—but still said nothing. Olivia wanted to shout names at him and then kiss him. She looked away, but then had to turn back because he was so wonderful to see.

  And dumb. Okay, nobody’s perfect.

  By now, everybody else in the room was feeling the tension too. A boy seated behind the Silent One leaned forward, and Olivia could hear him whisper the name of a basketball player.

  Silent One furrowed his brow. Really. You could almost hear him thinking. Didn’t he like basketball?

  “It doesn’t have to be a real person,” Ms. Noyes prompted. “Maybe somebody you’ve read about in a book.”

  That visibly set loose a thought, like a gas bubble rising to the surface of a murky pond. The Silent One opened his gorgeous mouth to let it escape. “Wolverine,” he said.

  Who?

  Olivia could see she wasn’t the only one asking that question. Now it was Ms. Noyes’s brow that was furrowed.

  Fortunately, the boy behind Silent One knew the answer. “He’s one of the X-Men,” he explained.

  Oh, right, X-Men, thought Olivia. The hottest guy in the school wants to be a movie superhero.

  Ms. Noyes apparently decided she had gotten all she could squeeze out of this particular stone and decided to move right along. She pointed to the next boy. “And you?”

  He responded with the same basketball player’s name he’d tried to feed to the Silent One. Olivia thought that was a little like cheating, but Ms. Noyes was glad to accept it.

  There were no more tense moments after that. Down one row and up the next, people readily supplied the names of sports stars, actors and actresses, rock musicians—anybody they thought must enjoy a life of pleasure and happiness. If you only knew the truth, thought Olivia.

  Then it was the turn of the pink-haired girl who’d known Emily Dickinson’s poem. Olivia half-expected that she would name good old Emily as the person she’d most like to be.

  Instead, she said, “Bedelia Yearwood.”

  Olivia froze. Paul noticed her reaction and sent a questioning look at her, but she managed a weak smile in his direction. Slowly, trying to show how unconcerned she was, Olivia turned to look at the girl. Their eyes met, the girl raised her pierced eyebrows, and she stuck out her pierced tongue—again.

  She couldn’t know, Olivia thought. Could she?

  A sudden silence let Olivia know the class was now waiting for another slow-witted person to come up with an answer. Oh, right. Me. She turned to see Ms. Noyes smiling encouragingly down at her. Did Wolverine have a girlfriend? Olivia had no clue about that, so she said the first name that popped into her head:

  “Emily Dickinson.”

  Once again, Ms. Noyes’s face showed how pleased she was. “Wonderful, Olivia!” she said. “Why is that?”

  “Oh, well, you know, I just kind of was really impressed by the poem.”

  The class made a sound of disapproval. They snorted really, if a group of people can all snort in unison. Olivia realized she’d gone from lovable class clown to disgusting class suck-up in a single hour. The bell rang, and everybody stood, loathing her. She wondered how long it would take to get to the nearest skiing area.

  Chapter Four

  PAUL DIDN’T ABANDON Olivia after class, as he might well have. “Did you bring a lunch?” he asked.

  Olivia shook her head. Aunt Tilda had given her money and said that she could buy lunch at the school.

  “So you like food poisoning?” Paul asked.

  “Um... no.”

  He smiled, showing two rows of perfect teeth. He wasn’t bad looking himself, Olivia thought. And he knew it too. “Then you don’t want to eat in the cafeteria,” he told her. “Most kids go outside for lunch. I know this pizza place where they have pond scum topping.”

  It took Olivia a couple of seconds to realize he was kidding. “Umm, my favorite,” she finally said.

  He took her to a little place about two blocks from the school. It looked pretty dumpy to her, with Formica tables and an old tile floor. Olivia’s mother would have been horrified to see her daughter going into such a place.

  But inside it smelled good. Paul snagged an empty table and waved to a middle-aged man wearing an apron. “Pizza with pond scum?” the man called out.

  “You got it,” Paul responded.

  “Tadpoles on that?”

  “Not today.”

  “Large or medium?”

  “Make it large,” Paul said.

  After looking at the pizzas on some of the other tables, Olivia leaned toward Paul and said, “I don’t know how much you’re going to eat, but maybe a large will be a bit much.”

  “We’re sharing with another person,” he said.

  For a second, she let herself hope it was the Silent One. Paul saw something in her expression. “Who are you thinking of?” he asked.

  “Well...” A little embarrassed, she decided to be honest for a change. “That guy who wanted to be Wolverine?”

  Paul laughed, and Olivia felt her face turn red. “I didn’t mean—” she started to say, but he put up a hand.

  “I know exactly how you feel,” Paul said. “His name is Alex Theodakis. Greek shipping family. But you can’t compete with Wolverine for Alex’s affection. Believe me, I’ve tried to slip into that little world of his and win his heart.”

  “Why would you—” This time, she stopped herself from finishing. She suddenly realized that Paul was like some men she had met at her parents’ parties. There were a lot of them in Hollywood, even ones who played macho tough guys in movies. They were usually nicer in person, like Paul.

  Paul patted her hand. “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “I think if he had to choose between either of us, it would be you.”

  She had questions she wanted to ask Paul, but didn’t know how. He was so far her only real friend, and she couldn’t afford to alienate him. “Aren’t you worried somebody will find out?” she asked.

  He didn’t understand what she meant, at first. “You mean that I’m gay?” he said after thinking it over. “Everybody knows about me. But nobody really cares. Or rather one guy did, but I... persuaded him otherwise. This is New York. The only thing that matters at this school is money. Your father the farmer must make plenty of it.”

  “Maybe I’m a scholarship student,” she said, just to see how he’d react.

  He shook his head firmly. “Then you’d be a lot smarter,” he replied. Looking past her shoulder suddenly, Paul waved his hand. Olivia turned and saw the Emily Dickinson girl coming toward them.

  She plopped down at their table and said to Paul, “I see you’ve picked up an orphan. Have you decided you want to be Emily Dickinson too?”

  “You’re the one who memorized all her poems,” Paul shot back playfully. He turned to Olivia. “This is Dulcimer,” he said. “Dulcimer Weiss.”

  “My parents are musicians,” Dulcimer said. “In c
ase you were wondering about the name.”

  Olivia looked blank. Dulcimer added, “A dulcimer is a medieval instrument, like a piano.”

  “Olivia’s parents are farmers,” Paul responded cheerfully.

  Dulcimer shot her a look. “Is that so?” By now, it was obvious that she knew all about Olivia’s parents.

  Olivia sighed. “Nobody else has recognized me,” she said.

  “Why should they?” Dulcimer said. “In the magazine pictures, you’re always trying to hide.”

  “Could somebody enlighten me on what we’re talking about?” Paul asked.

  “You see?” Dulcimer told Olivia. “And he loves movie stars.”

  Fortunately, just then the man in the apron brought their pizza. The pond scum turned out to be extra cheese. As Olivia bit into a slice, she thought about what her mother would say. Mother had the ability to estimate the exact number of calories of any piece of food just by looking at it. The slice of pizza would be way off at the red end of the dial.

  “Good, isn’t it?” asked Paul. He handed her a napkin. “Oil on your chin,” he explained.

  “Just out of curiosity, what would we have gotten if you’d asked for tadpoles?” Olivia asked as she wiped her face.

  “Anchovies, but not many people like those,” he replied.

  “I adore anchovies,” Olivia said.

  Paul beamed. “I knew you were one of us the minute I saw you.”

  “He doesn’t mean exactly like him,” Dulcimer pointed out.

  “I know,” said Olivia. He had paid her a compliment and that was what mattered.

  “But now let me in on this big secret,” Paul went on. “What magazine have you been in? How come I’ve missed it?”

  “Because—” Dulcimer started to say and then caught herself. She looked at Olivia.

  “You might as well tell him,” Olivia said.

  “Her parents are Bedelia and Dirk Yearwood,” Dulcimer announced.

  Olivia almost laughed at Paul’s reaction. He looked at her like she had just torn off her false face to reveal she was a creature from outer space. Recovering a little, he turned his head to one side, and began to study her.