Be Careful What You Witch For

by Hoobler, Thomas

  Olivia lit two candles and placed them in pools of wax.

  “Black,” Paul commented. “Very nice.”

  “Don’t speak,” said Olivia. Paul folded his hands and put them on the table as if he were going to be a good boy.

  “Turn off the lights,” she said to Alex, who did so.

  One by one, Olivia placed her materials on the table: the leaves, the pinch of sulfur, the jar with the frog’s eye. She unscrewed the top and wrinkled her nose as an unpleasant odor wafted upward. Then she opened the envelope, removed Madison’s hairs, and set them on the table.

  Paul watched all this, nodding slightly as if he approved. He seemed about to say something, but Olivia shut him up with a stern glance. Her heart was beating faster now. She was glad that she invited Paul, because she felt he would tell her if she were doing anything really crazy.

  She looked at Alex, who handed her the Dr. Dee book. She opened it to the page she had bookmarked, with the curse for boils and cysts. Across the table, Paul raised his head, trying to read what was there, but of course he couldn’t.

  Then Olivia took the crystal hemisphere and placed it on the page. “Reddo,” she said, and, just like the first time, she could understand the words underneath. The spell was fairly long, and she would have to move the crystal as she went along. She noticed that the spell included directions for putting the materials together at certain points in the incantation.

  Her hands were shaking, and she tried not to look at Paul. It’s time, she told herself, and began to read the Latin words:

  “Ego inflicto...” She put the brimstone powder into the jar with the frog’s eye. Suddenly the room smelled much worse. Olivia closed her eyes.

  “... furunculos et pustulas...” She wasn’t sure she pronounced the words just right, but now she added the nettle leaves to the liquid, and bubbles rose to the surface. As they popped, they released a cloudy gas that made the air almost impossible to breathe. Olivia glanced at Paul, who was holding his hand over his nose.

  Here she was supposed to say the name of the person she was cursing, and Olivia said, “Madison Lispenard.” Paul shot her a look that either meant he thought she was crazy or that he was afraid. She hoped it wasn’t the second choice, because if Paul was actually afraid, then what she was doing was way too dangerous.

  As Olivia finished saying Madison’s name, she dropped the hairs into the mixture. There was a hissing sound as the liquid consumed them, just as if it had been an acid.

  Olivia almost forgot the part Eva had told her about: “aliquat septum dies,” she added quickly.

  There was nothing more on the page and Olivia wondered what to do next. The room smelled so badly that she wanted to get up and dash for the door, but that didn’t seem—

  As she thought about it, the two candle flames flickered, then went out together. Guess that means it’s over, she thought.

  “Turn on the lights, Alex,” she said.

  He followed orders and then asked, “Is the room going to smell like this for long? Kurt is going to be ticked off. I might have to give him another couple bucks.”

  Paul turned to look at him. “Is that all you’re worried about?” he said with what sounded like an attempt at a laugh. “Why not just have Olivia cast a spell on Kurt and turn him into a frog?”

  “You don’t think this is going to work?” she asked, surprised.

  “Well, as a chemistry experiment, it was impressive,” he said. “What was that yellow stuff? Sulfur?”

  “Brimstone,” she corrected him, even though she knew they were the same thing.

  “No wonder it smelled,” he added. “Maybe we could make a stink bomb and set it off at the recital when Dulcimer starts to play...”

  “Paul, you aren’t convinced at all?”

  “If this is what the two of you have been doing at Alex’s apartment in the afternoon, then I must say I’m really disappointed,” he replied. “So will a lot of other people who imagined that you were having a lot more... fun,” he said. “But if you think—”

  He stopped, because even with the door closed they could hear the screaming.

  Telling Alex to take away the things she’d used for the spell, Olivia opened the door. It wasn’t just one person screaming. It was a lot. The sound was coming from upstairs, where people gathered after lunch. Olivia raced up the steps.

  The first person she saw was Muffin Scripps, standing in the hallway screaming as if the building were on fire. “What’s the matter?” Olivia asked, but all Muffin could do was point down the corridor, where evidently there was something too horrifying for words to describe.

  Olivia passed other girls, also screaming. Some of them were running up and down the hall; others were hugging each other. Olivia recognized them as close friends of Madison’s, people she usually ate lunch with. They were clustered around the girls’ bathroom.

  Olivia felt a twinge of anger when she saw that Dulcimer was with them. She certainly didn’t lose any time joining the popular people, Olivia thought. But Dulcimer wasn’t quite so hysterical as the others and Olivia pulled her aside. “What’s going on?” Olivia asked. She was pretty sure she knew, but something made her want to hear Dulcimer say it.

  “It’s Madison,” Dulcimer said, sounding out of breath. “She’s... something terrible happened. It must have been something she ate, but she just... these things started to break out on her face.”

  Olivia pushed open the bathroom door. Another friend of Madison’s tried to stop her, but Olivia brushed her aside. She felt a surge of power run through her, as if nobody and nothing could stand in her way.

  The stalls were along the right side of the room; a mirror and a row of sinks were to the left. Madison stood at the far end, pulling at her face and making little cries, like a bird caught in a trap.

  As Olivia took a step closer, Madison turned and shouted, “Get out!” Olivia paid no attention. She had caught a glimpse of Madison’s face and wanted to see more. She took another step and Madison screamed at her again, “Get out! Get out!!”

  Madison’s face was covered with red spots—no, bigger than spots: they were like the craters of the moon, enflamed, ragged, and leaking a thick, gummy fluid that ranged in color from creamy white to sickly green. They covered every bit of her face, from ear to ear and forehead to chin. The one on the tip of her nose was growing even as Olivia watched, like a soap bubble full of pus, getting ready to burst. It was horrible to see, but Olivia was fascinated. She couldn’t turn her eyes away.

  Suddenly, Madison clenched her fists and ran at Olivia. “You did this!” she shouted. Olivia put her arms out to fend her off, careful not to touch Madison’s face. As she did so, Olivia turned and saw her own face in the mirror and immediately understood why Madison had guessed she had done this: she was smiling.

  Olivia ducked away from Madison and slipped out the door. On the other side, she found herself immediately surrounded by girls who were asking questions all at once. “Is it better?... Is it worse?... Did she try washing it off?... Does she want any pimple remover?... What do you think it is?”

  Olivia just shook her head to all the questions, reminding herself not to smile. But then she heard a question she had to answer: “Do you think it’s... catching?”

  Desperately fighting down a laugh, Olivia nodded and said in a grave voice, “Yes. I think it might be catching.”

  There was a collective shriek and the entire crowd shrank away from the bathroom door. Some girls who were already at the back of the group turned and moved away from the scene—a few actually broke into a run. Others scrambled to find mirrors in their purses.

  Then another voice came out of the crowd, deeper, calmer. “Do you really think it’s catching, Olivia?” She looked and saw Paul’s dark brown face above the heads of the panicky girls. There was a new expression on it. Paul usually had a smile, if only a wry, mocking grin. But now he looked... as if he doesn’t like me, thought Olivia.

  She pursed her lips. He was a hy
pocrite, because he didn’t like Madison any more than Olivia did. “It could be catching,” she said defensively.

  “How long is it going to last?” he asked.

  Olivia turned away with a shrug, but he pursued her. “Until Friday?” he asked, taking hold of her arm. “Just till the party? Is that how long?”

  “Maybe,” she said. She pulled away from him. “If you tell anybody...” she said, leaving the warning unfinished.

  He stopped following her then, but after a few more steps she turned to look back. He was just standing there staring, with that same irritating expression of disapproval. She shrugged. He’ll change his mind, Olivia thought. When he thinks about it.

  The school nurse came and, after taking a look at Madison, she went to put on some rubber gloves. Everybody else returned to class, but nobody paid any attention to what the teachers were saying until they got to Mrs. Foley’s class. She informed them that Madison’s family had sent their car to take her to a dermatologist, since what she had didn’t appear to be life threatening. There was a window facing the street in Mrs. Foley’s classroom and everybody went to watch as Madison, with her face swathed in towels, was led by the nurse into the limousine. Olivia fought down the urge to comment that Madison looked like a mummy. At Mrs. Foley’s request, Dulcimer played some sad music for the rest of the period. With an effort, Olivia kept a straight face.

  After school, Olivia agreed to go home with Alex—partly because he was taking the book and the Decodesphere with him and she wanted to make sure they were put in a safe place. Another reason was that she knew she had to get control of her thoughts before she went home to Tilda. She spent the time at Alex’s trying to decipher more of the spells in the secret part of Dr. Dee’s book—at least until Alex insisted that she read one of Wolverine’s adventures in which he fought a wizard who tried to place a curse on him. Olivia didn’t tell Alex, but she was rooting for the wizard.

  Madison’s party, of course, had to be called off. Some of the students planned to visit her while she was recuperating, but she sent word that she didn’t want to see anyone (more likely, she didn’t want anyone to see her). Miraculously, she recovered completely within a week. Even so, people were a little cautious about sharing lunch with her.

  The only downside for Olivia was that Paul stopped eating pizza with her and Alex. He said hello when Olivia ran into him between classes, but when she asked him if he wanted a pizza with pond scum, he said he was on a diet.

  To be honest, Alex by himself wasn’t the most interesting person in the world to have lunch with, so when he asked her if he could bring a couple of friends to join them, she agreed. She might not have told him yes if she knew who it was going to be: Tim Glidewell and his new girlfriend, Dulcimer.

  Tim turned out to be the kind of boy who found it funny to make loud belches after downing pizza and soda. He was also fond of coming up with dirty remarks whenever anybody else said practically anything. Olivia had overheard this kind of talk at her parents’ parties, but there she could always walk away. Up close, it got old pretty quickly.

  Which was why Olivia found it hard to believe that Dulcimer laughed uproariously at just about everything Tim said or did. Later, when the two of them were alone, Olivia asked her if she really thought Tim was all that funny.

  “Oh, what’s the difference?” Dulcimer said. “He likes it when girls laugh at his jokes.”

  “I thought you just wanted to go with him to Madison’s party,” Olivia replied. “All of a sudden you’ve got to do whatever he likes?”

  “Lighten up,” Dulcimer said. “You’re always with Alex. You’re not the only one who can get a boyfriend. What are you doing for him?”

  Olivia wondered what Dulcimer’s reaction would be if she told Dulcimer how she’d attracted Alex in the first place.

  “You know, you could have more friends too,” Dulcimer went on. “If you were willing to let people know who you really are.”

  “You mean if I let them know who my parents really are,” Olivia said.

  “Who cares? Just about everybody in the school has rich parents and they don’t hide it. You don’t have to be ashamed of them.”

  “I’m not ashamed of them,” Olivia said quickly.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “I just want to be... myself. Not somebody else’s little girl.”

  “Look at me. My parents are big-time musicians. I never tried to hide it, not even when it looked like I didn’t have their talent.”

  But your parents aren’t famous like Bedelia and Dirk Yearwood, Olivia thought.

  “Paul was a lot more fun than Tim,” Olivia insisted.

  “In some ways,” Dulcimer conceded. “But I wanted a real boyfriend.”

  Olivia knew what she meant. She recalled the look on Paul’s face when he had repeated that same phrase earlier. Maybe I could do something about that, Olivia thought. Eva says it would be hard to do. But there might be something in Dr. Dee’s book....

  Chapter Fourteen

  MADISON STARTED SPREADING the story that Olivia had something to do with the “skin rash” she had. When Olivia heard about this, she worried that Paul had told Madison something. But it turned out that Madison’s suspicions were based on the fact that, according to her, Olivia had laughed when she entered the girls’ room and saw Madison’s face.

  “I swear I didn’t laugh,” Olivia told Dulcimer, who had told her what Madison had been saying. “I think I smiled,” she admitted, “but it was only... from nervousness.”

  “I’ll tell the others that,” said Dulcimer. “Because it would be weird if you laughed.”

  “I don’t care what anybody thinks,” said Olivia. She didn’t like the idea that Dulcimer had become kind of like her publicist.

  “You should care,” Dulcimer said. “Madison’s trying to convince people that you’re a witch. She says that’s how you brought Alex under your control.”

  Olivia forced a laugh, which sounded more like a cough. She didn’t think Madison had noticed when Olivia told her she’d cast a spell on Alex. “Well, she really has freaked out,” Olivia said. “Maybe the skin rash affected her brain.”

  Ms. Noyes must have heard the rumor, since she assigned the class to read a certain play. Which just goes to show that people trying to do good can cause as much trouble as people who cast spells.

  “The play is The Crucible,” Ms. Noyes said, “by the great American playwright Arthur Miller. It is set in Salem, Massachusetts, in the 1600s, at a time when people believed in witches.”

  That woke Olivia up from a daydream she was having—trying to decide whether she would dump Alex if Paul turned into a real boy. All her attention was suddenly on what Ms. Noyes was saying.

  “Witch hunting wasn’t a new idea,” Ms. Noyes went on. “For centuries, innocent women had been persecuted and even killed because they had abilities to heal people, or because they followed a different lifestyle, or merely because their neighbors didn’t like them. It was easy to blame a ‘witch’ if your cow died, if a storm wiped out your crop, or your chickens wouldn’t lay eggs.”

  There was an uneasy feeling in the classroom. People shifted in their seats and glanced nervously at one another. Seeming not to notice, Ms. Noyes continued: “People remember Salem today because it was the worst such incident in American history. Twenty people were put to death, convicted of practicing witchcraft.”

  Olivia looked around. At the other end of the row, Paul was giving her a strange look.

  “Could that happen today?” Ms. Noyes asked. “Most people would say no, because we don’t believe in witches. But Arthur Miller was writing at a time when—yes, Madison?”

  Olivia turned her head. Madison was waving her arm, clearly eager to say something.

  “But there are witches today,” said Madison.

  Evidently this wasn’t the response Ms. Noyes had expected. She paused and then said, “You can’t really believe that, Madison.”

  “I do!” Madiso
n insisted. “And I think somebody else knows it too.” She shot an angry stare at Olivia, who turned away and then realized it was the wrong thing to do.

  “What do you think, Olivia?” Ms. Noyes asked, clearly trying to be calm.

  Olivia remembered Eva and her warnings about getting people angry at witches. “Of course there aren’t any witches,” Olivia said smoothly. “Except at Halloween.”

  Luckily, this drew a laugh from the class. A nervous laugh.

  It only made Madison angrier, however. “She knows that’s not true,” she said, pointing at Olivia. “When she saw my face in the bathroom, and laughed, I knew that she’d done it. Ask Alex. He told me she has a book of spells that she uses.”

  Olivia felt as if she’d been struck by a hammer. She turned to her right, where Alex always sat next to her. The look on his face told her that Madison was telling the truth. He betrayed me, thought Olivia, trying to keep herself from shouting at him.

  “I was just trying to keep Madison from being mean to you,” he said.

  An excuse popped into Olivia’s head, and she seized it. “He means the comic books,” she said. “You’re afraid of spells made up by the X-Men?” she asked Madison.

  The laughter from the rest of the class was a little louder this time. They believe me, Olivia thought. Only a small part of her felt guilty.

  She decided to press her luck. Assume control. She turned to Alex and said, “Isn’t that right? Weren’t we reading how the X-Men battled a wizard who was casting spells?”

  Alex was confused, a normal condition. But he wanted to please Olivia, and when he looked at her he saw what she wanted him to say. “Uh, yeah, it was issue #124,” he said. “See, this wizard from the planet system of Sirius was in league with the Brotherhood of Evil, and when he threatened the X-Men—”

  “That’s enough, Alex,” said Ms. Noyes. “We don’t need to hear any more.”

  Alex started to reply, but Olivia touched him on the arm and he shut his mouth.