“Now,” said Ms. Noyes, “I think this outburst only confirms my feeling that this would be a good play for you all—for us all—to read and think about. So your assignment is to read act one for tomorrow.”
There were a few mild protests, but by now many of the other students were actually curious enough to want to read about witches.
Not Madison, of course. When class let out, she came up to Olivia and said, “You may fool Ms. Noyes, but you don’t fool me. I’m going to get you thrown out of this school so you won’t make anybody else suffer.”
Quite a few people gathered around them to listen.
“Listen, the only reason I went into the bathroom was to help you,” Olivia said.
“That’s a lie. You enjoyed it. You laughed.”
“I didn’t laugh,” Olivia said.
“Because you caused it. Alex isn’t the only one who knows what you are,” Madison said.
Olivia thought. Besides Alex, there was only one other person who knew she had cast a spell on Madison. But he wouldn’t have told about what went on in the janitor’s room. Would he?
“Whatever you may have heard from anybody about me is a lie,” Olivia said. “And I’d appreciate it if you don’t repeat lies.”
“I’ll say anything I want,” Madison said. “About anybody. My father donated half a million dollars to this school last year. That’s probably more than your father earned.”
Actually, Mother’s contract was larger than my father’s, thought Olivia. And both of them made about twenty times that—per picture. Which you would know if you knew who they were. She shook her head. “I’m so happy for you,” she said to Madison, and walked away.
Olivia told Alex to go ahead to the pizza parlor and she’d join him in a few minutes. She wasn’t sure where Paul was eating lunch these days. But she suspected that he must have gone someplace where pizza was on the menu. She found him in the fourth place she tried.
“Do you ever eat anything but pizza?” she asked as she slid into the booth opposite him.
“It’s the national dish of New York City,” he told her. “And I like to enjoy it alone.”
“I won’t be here long,” she said. “If you tell me how Madison knows what happened in the janitor’s room before her face broke out.”
“I think you’re assuming too much,” he replied. He folded one of the slices of pizza and bit down on it.
“What do you mean?” she asked. He looks even more like Will Smith than ever, she thought. It really is a shame he can’t be my boyfriend. Or Dulcimer’s.
“As I understand it,” Paul said, “Alex only told her that he was keeping a book of spells for you. She doesn’t know that you did all that stuff in the janitor’s room.”
“You didn’t tell her?”
“No. It would only push her closer to the edge. Anyway, I decided that it was all a remarkable coincidence.” He wiped the oil off his fingers with a paper napkin. There were two other slices of pizza in front of him, both with anchovies. Olivia wished he would offer her one.
“What?” she said, just realizing what he had said. “You don’t believe that the spell I cast...”
“Actually did any good?” he finished. “Or any bad? No, I think you’re messing with something you don’t understand. There may be a connection, but I don’t think you can control it. It’s like praying. If you get what you want, then God answered your prayers. If you don’t, then you weren’t praying hard enough.”
She was stung. After all the effort she’d made to impress him... “So you think I’m not able to cast spells.”
“Oh, you can cast them,” he said. “I just don’t know if they have any effect.”
“How about Dulcimer?” she asked.
“What about her?”
“Do you think she just woke up one day and realized she could play music? How do you think that happened?”
Paul held a piece of pizza halfway to his mouth. He stared at her. His deep brown eyes seemed to get bigger behind his tortoiseshell glasses. “You’re not trying to tell me that you were responsible for that?”
“I was,” she told him. She took a deep breath. “And I could make it so you and she would be friends again.”
It took him a few seconds to reply. “How would you do that? Take away her musical ability?”
“I’m not sure if I could,” Olivia said. “But she still likes you. Really. It’s just that she wants to have a real boyfriend.”
Now his eyes turned cold. Olivia saw that he understood what she was going to say. She looked away, unable to face him. “I could make you... that way,” she said. She crossed her fingers, for she didn’t absolutely know if that were true. But Eva would find out how.
“You could make me a real boy,” he said mockingly, “just like Pinocchio.”
“It isn’t a joke,” she said. “I could.”
He nodded. “Uh-huh. And so maybe you could make me white too? As long as you were doing a makeover?”
Startled, she turned back and saw a fiercely mocking look on his face, as if he were challenging her. “I could try,” she said in a small, uncertain voice.
“And then you know who I’d be then?” he asked. “Michael Jackson. That would certainly be an improvement, wouldn’t it?” He pinched his nose. “How thin do you think this should be?” he asked.
“Okay,” Olivia said, “well, it was you who suggested it.”
Paul slapped the table, hard. The sound was so loud that the other customers turned around to see if anything was the matter. Paul leaned across so that only Olivia could hear him, and hissed: “It was you who suggested that I needed some improving, that I ought to be somebody different from what I am.”
“I only meant—”
“I know what you meant. You and my father would have some interesting chats together. He paid for me to have karate classes, did you know? He thought they would make me become more manly. It was actually a good thing, because only once, in this school, has anybody ever tried to hurt me because of who I am. Nobody ever wanted to try it a second time.”
He leaned back and contemplated her as if she were a roach on his pizza. “Before you, that is. You’re the second, and my sensei would disapprove if I used karate on you. So you’d better go.”
“I’m sorry if—”
“Go. Don’t talk to me again, please. I’m sorry if my existence offends you.”
“I—”
“Go.”
She went.
Alex wanted Olivia to come home with him after school, but she was still angry with him for telling Madison about the book of spells. “I only did it because she asked me why I dumped her for you,” Alex said. “She asked if you could make out better than she did and I had to tell her we never made out at all. Then she said mean things about you, so I told her about the book, trying to scare her.”
“You didn’t have to tell her anything,” Olivia said. “Especially about that book.”
He nodded.
“And the spells. Don’t mention that I cast a spell on her,” Olivia added.
Alex tried to look thoughtful. “Didn’t you cast a spell on her?”
“No. And that’s what you must say whenever anybody asks.”
He repeated it, to make sure he had it right. “Olivia didn’t cast a spell on Madison.”
“Right.”
He wanted to ask another question, but she cut him off. Olivia wanted to dump him entirely, but he was too useful, and she couldn’t trust the book with anybody else. “I’ll come over tomorrow,” she said. “I have to read The Crucible tonight. You should too.”
“We could do it together,” he said hopefully.
“Not today.”
“I could see if there’s a movie of it and rent it online.”
“You are resourceful, I’ll give you that,” Olivia said with a smile. But she wouldn’t go with him.
At home, she managed to keep her thoughts under control by concentrating on The Crucible. When Tilda saw what
Olivia was reading, she said, “There’s a lesson to be learned from that play.”
“You’ve read it?” asked Olivia.
“Certainly. It’s one of the most famous modern plays about witches. We come off much better than we do in Shakespeare.”
“You mean the people who were put to death in Salem were really witches?”
“Some were, most weren’t. Tituba, the slave from Barbados who started the whole thing, was surely a witch. But my point is that the author of that play is basically on our side.”
“How?”
“His message is that people should leave us alone.”
“Because there aren’t any witches,” Olivia said. She thought about it, and added, “But there really are.”
“If the only way to keep people from bothering us is to make believe we don’t exist,” Tilda said, “then we’re glad to pretend we’re nobody.”
Olivia thought of the poem Ms. Noyes had started the year with. “I’m nobody,” she recited. “Who are you? Are you nobody too?”
Tilda laughed. “That sums it up perfectly.”
Madison, however, was not about to give up. The following day and the day after that she brought up the subject of witches—not only in Ms. Noyes’s class, but in Mr. Feldstein’s social studies class as well. Mr. F. happened to be dressed in a Pilgrim outfit that day, which most of the class recognized from Thanksgiving celebrations.
“Didn’t the Pilgrims hang witches?” Madison asked.
“No,” Mr. Feldstein replied. “The witch trials at Salem came about seventy years later. It was a terrible persecution, because there were actually no witches. Aren’t you reading The Crucible in language arts?”
“That’s fiction,” said Madison. “It’s only the author’s opinion.”
“Well, it’s a pretty good opinion,” said Mr. Feldstein. Olivia, listening to the discussion, hid a smile. She recalled that Tilda had hinted Mr. Feldstein himself might be a witch.
In Ms. Noyes’s class, Madison was much worse. She complained that the play only presented one side of an important issue and that the class was being brainwashed. That really got under Ms. Noyes’s skin. “If you learn in math class that six times six is thirty-six, are you being brainwashed?” she asked.
“This is completely different,” said Madison.
“It’s true,” said Ms. Noyes, “that The Crucible is a work of art. But it is based on history.”
“You say that these people who were put to death were innocent. But how would you know, really?”
“Because there are no such things as witches.”
Madison shook her head. “You believe that, you’ll believe anything.”
Ms. Noyes finally ordered Madison to be quiet, and she sat in her seat fuming until the end of class. Then, in the corridor, she confronted Olivia again. “Did you put a spell on her too?” Madison asked.
“What?” Olivia asked.
“On Ms. Noyes. You’ve really got her eating out of your hand, don’t you?”
“Madison, I didn’t have anything to do with her assigning this play.”
“Yes, just like you didn’t have anything to do with my face breaking out.”
Olivia shrugged and turned away.
At the pizza parlor, she was a little disappointed that Dulcimer and Tim didn’t show up. Alex seemed restless, like he wanted to tell her something. “What’s wrong?” Olivia asked.
“You ought to find some way to make up with Madison,” he told her.
“Why? We’ve gotten along so well up to now.”
“She’s telling people not to talk to you. That’s why Tim and Dulcimer aren’t here.”
Olivia blinked. “And people just obey her? What is she, the queen of New York?”
“People want to be friends with her. That’s just the way it has been, ever since kindergarten.”
“How about you? You’re still talking with me.”
“Yeah.” He thought about it, or he tried to, or at least he looked like he was trying. At last he said, “I guess I’m just loyal, like Wolverine.”
Olivia couldn’t help but smile, even though she was more enraged than ever at Madison, and the little toadies who did whatever she wanted. “I’ll come over after school this afternoon,” she said.
“We’ll make out,” she added, taking a deep breath. Assume control.
Olivia saw a surprised look on Alex’s face.
“And then,” she told him, “we’ll look inside the book.”
Chapter Fifteen
TILDA KEPT PUTTERING around the kitchen as Olivia ate breakfast, so Olivia had to continually do math problems in her head to keep her plans a secret. After putting some of her bottled herbs in a box, Tilda announced, “I won’t be here when you get home this afternoon. I’m going upstate to deliver these to my friend Agnes. I’ll be back around nine o’clock. But there’s plenty to eat in the refrigerator, so you can fix whatever you like for dinner, unless you want to eat at your boyfriend’s.”
“He’s not really my boyfriend,” said Olivia. Making out with Alex hadn’t been as much fun as she’d imagined it would be. He wouldn’t do anything unless she told him to, which kind of took all the thrill out of it.
“Well, you spend enough time there that they must regard you as one of the family.”
Actually, Yolanda was the only other person Olivia had ever seen in Alex’s apartment. His father was always at the office downtown, and apparently his mother liked to shop in Europe, because that’s where Alex said she usually spent her time.
“If you feel lonely,” Tilda said, “you could go visit Eva. She seems quite taken with you.”
“I will,” said Olivia. She wished she could ask Eva for advice, but knew that even Eva would probably disapprove of Olivia fooling around with Dr. Dee’s spells. The one she planned to use today would be better than last time.
After Olivia reached her locker, she was annoyed to see that Alex wasn’t waiting there. She’d told him to bring the book and the Decodesphere. Maybe making out had exhausted him and he’d stayed home. Opening the locker, she saw a white envelope that somebody had evidently slipped through the air slots in the door. Maybe a note from Alex? She picked it up and saw her name written on the front, but not in Alex’s handwriting.
Before she could open it, Olivia became aware of somebody standing behind her. She turned and saw that it was Muffin and Jessica. Oddly, they were both smiling at her. “What are you two doing here?” Olivia asked. She slipped the envelope inside her purse.
“We just thought we’d say hi,” Muffin said cheerfully. Jessica nodded, and added, “Maybe sit together in class.”
Olivia stared. She didn’t remember putting a spell on them. She wouldn’t have bothered. “Well,” she said. “I sort of wait for Alex...”
“Oh, you can’t let boys take you for granted,” Muffin said, just as if she were the leading expert on boys in the world. “He’ll catch up to us.”
Wondering what was going on, Olivia decided to play along. She picked up the books she needed for morning classes and shut the locker. Still no Alex. She started off down the hall, with the two girls on either side of her. They acted as if they were her best friends, asking her what she thought of the new Coldplay album.
“Do you ever get to see them?” Jessica asked.
“Who?”
“Coldplay.”
“There was a concert at—” Olivia was going to say “Hollywood Bowl,” but remembered in time and said, “Iowa College stadium” instead. The other girls laughed as if this was a big joke.
“I meant did you ever meet them,” Jessica explained.
“Like at a party,” Muffin added.
“Um... no,” Olivia said.
“I’ll bet you could if you wanted,” said Jessica.
Just then, Alex came running up, out of breath. “Yolanda hid the book,” he explained. “I had to threaten to have my father fire her before she would tell me where it was.” He held it up for Olivia to see, and sh
e jerked her head toward Muffin and Jessica. Don’t show it to them, idiot, she wanted to shout.
“Oh, look at that. An old book,” Muffin said, like nobody had ever seen one before.
“Then you two really do study together,” Jessica added, sounding surprised. “We thought you—” she began, but didn’t finish.
“We made out yesterday,” Alex said helpfully. The two girls went, “Oooooo!” Olivia looked around desperately. Where are the fire alarms when you really need one?
“Keep the book for now,” she told Alex. “Put it away so Mr. Feldstein doesn’t see it.”
“Is it dirty?” asked Muffin excitedly. Great, thought Olivia. Now the word will go around that Olivia and Alex are working their way through a sex manual.
“No,” Olivia said, “it’s just that Mr. Feldstein is...” A witch and I don’t want him to see that I have a book of curses and spells? Better come up with something better, Olivia.
“. . . He has a collection of old books and we want to surprise him,” she said. That sounds lame even to me. Who could believe it?
“What a nice idea!” said Muffin. “That’s so cool.”
All Olivia could do was shake her head.
When they got to Mr. Feldstein’s classroom, the teacher hadn’t arrived yet. But the girls—and even some of the boys!—greeted Olivia with hearty hellos and smiles. Several people had saved seats for her, but since Muffin and Jessica had taken her hostage already, they got to sit on either side of her. As if he was needed to protect her, Alex grabbed a seat right in back of them.
Something’s wrong, Olivia thought as she scanned the classroom. Then she noticed: Madison wasn’t there.
But that still didn’t explain why Muffin and Jessica had suddenly latched onto Olivia. The least popular person in the class would only move up one notch if the most popular person was absent.
Unless... Olivia looked around for another face, and found it, peeking out at her from behind a book: Dulcimer.
She’d told them about her parents! That explained Muffin and Jessica’s behavior. Nothing else would have made them act this way. Olivia felt herself getting angry. She wanted to go over and tear Dulcimer a new one, but not now. Olivia would wait until lunch—and make sure her new fan club witnessed what happened then.
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