by Isobel Bird
Then it was her turn. It had been pretty easy to catch the others. But when Kate found herself standing with her back to them, unable to see anything, it was a different story. She had to trust that they would reach out and stop her from hitting the floor. But did she trust them? She had no reason to trust Sasha. And for all she knew, Tyler was angry with her for running off after their date. Now she was supposed to count on them.
She closed her eyes. She knew they were all waiting for her. But she could refuse to do the exercise. She could just walk away and forget the whole thing.
Before she gave in to the temptation to back out, she fell. It seemed as if everything moved in slow motion. She felt herself flying through the air. Once she started, she knew she couldn’t stop, although she very badly wanted to. It seemed like she was falling forever. They weren’t catching her. She waited for her body to smack against the hard floor, and she steeled herself for the impact.
But then she was reclining against outstretched hands. They had stopped her after all. As she felt her teammates lift her back to a standing position, she was filled with a peculiar sense of relief and joy. They hadn’t let her fall. Even Sasha had reached out to help her.
“Now you have some idea of what being part of a community can feel like,” Rowan said. “In falling, you had to trust that there would be people there to stop you from getting hurt. Some of those people might have been strangers to you. Others might have been people you didn’t exactly like. But you had to trust them. You also had to trust yourself. And that’s what deciding to take part in the dedication ritual is all about. You have to believe, first, that studying Wicca is what’s right for you and that you are willing to set out on an adventure, even when it might be scary or hard. Second, you have to trust the people in the community you’ll be becoming a part of, because you’re going to need them, and they’re going to need you. If you think you can do those things, then I invite you to take the first step. Anya and I will be here taking the names of those who want to participate in next week’s ritual.”
The groups broke up and people began going up to talk to the two women. Kate looked around for Annie and Cooper. They were already in line, where she joined them.
“Are you in?” Cooper asked.
“I’m in,” Kate said. “Do you think I’d let you two do this without me?”
When it was their turn, Rowan smiled at them. “I had a feeling you three would be joining us,” she said as she wrote down their names. “Here’s a list of things you’ll need to know for the ritual. My number is on there as well, so you can call if you have any questions.”
The girls took the information sheets and went to look them over. As they were perusing them, Kate noticed Sasha going up to Rowan. A minute later she was standing beside Kate, her face red and angry.
“What did you tell them about me?” she demanded.
“What are you talking about?” Cooper said as Kate looked at Sasha, confused.
“She told them something about me,” Sasha said. “Rowan just told me they don’t think I’m ready for the dedication ceremony. I want to know what Kate said to her.”
“Nothing,” Kate said defensively. “Why would I say anything about you?”
Sasha glared at her, not saying anything. When she finally spoke, she sounded like she might cry. “You don’t think I can be a real witch,” she said. “Well, just watch out.”
Chapter 12
Kate was really looking forward to lunch the next day. She wanted to tell Sherrie she had been right about Sasha. More important, she wanted her friends to be as angry at Sasha as she was. She knew that they were already suspicious of her because of what had happened with Scott, but she hoped to make sure once and for all that they knew how conniving she was. She couldn’t believe that Sasha was blaming her for the fact that Rowan and the others thought she wasn’t ready for the ritual. She was the one who was causing trouble. As Kate walked into the cafeteria, she imagined all of the catty things Sherrie would have to say. For once, she was anxious to hear them.
But her joy faded when she saw that Sasha was already sitting with Tara, Sherrie, and Jessica at their regular table. Even worse, they seemed to be happy that she was with them. What was she doing there? She knew that Kate ate lunch with her friends almost every day. Why would she willingly put herself in a position where she’d be facing their ridicule? And why would her friends welcome someone who had done what Sasha had done? Seeing Sasha sitting in what was usually her seat made Kate even madder than she’d been when she’d confronted Sasha about seeing Scott. She started to charge over, already forming her words in her mind.
Then she hesitated. Maybe she shouldn’t eat lunch with her friends. Maybe she should go somewhere else. If they wanted to side with Sasha, she didn’t want to give Sasha the chance to rub it in her face. But where else could she go? She couldn’t sit with Scott and his friends. Annie had gone to the library to look up some materials for one of her classes. And Cooper was probably hanging out in the music rooms with some of her other friends, the ones who thought girls like Kate were a little too clean-cut to talk to.
Besides, she wasn’t about to let Sasha scare her away. If she wanted to play games, Kate was willing to play them too. Sasha might have taken Kate’s boyfriend, but Kate wasn’t about to give up this round so easily. Taking a deep breath, she walked over to her friends’ table and sat down next to Jessica.
“Hey,” she said, as if nothing was wrong.
“Hey,” Tara said. “We were just talking about you. Well, sort of.”
“Really?” Kate said. “Anything interesting?”
“Sasha was just telling us how she ran into Scott the other night,” Sherrie said. “At the Frozen Cow.”
“Did she?” said Kate, trying to sound disinterested as she gave Sherrie a look and her friend raised her eyebrows in response.
“I was there with my parents,” Sasha said, not speaking directly to Kate but making sure Kate was listening. “Scott was there with someone else. A girl I didn’t recognize.”
“I can’t imagine who that might have been,” Sherrie said. “What did she look like?”
“You know,” Sasha replied. “A girl. Blond. Kind of pretty.”
“Sounds like Terri Fletcher,” Jessica said.
“I don’t know,” Sasha said. “Anyway, I was going to just ignore him, but he said hello to me, and I figured I had to say something back.”
“Of course,” said Sherrie, feigning sincerity.
“That was really it,” Sasha said. “I just thought it was interesting that he was there with that girl, that’s all. I’m going to go get a soda. Does anyone want one?”
No one did. When Sasha was out of earshot, Kate turned to Sherrie. “Of course she’s lying,” she said. “She said all that just so I would hear it and believe her.”
“Maybe,” said Sherrie.
“What do you mean maybe?” Kate asked. “You said yourself that you saw Sasha talking to Scott. Not some blond girl—Sasha.”
“Well, she was talking to him,” Sherrie said. “But there might have been someone else there too. I didn’t get that close a look. Maybe the other girl was in the bathroom.”
Kate groaned. “Come on,” she said. “You don’t really believe that she just happened to run into him, do you?”
“It is possible,” Jessica said. “I mean, that makes more sense than Scott’s being there with Sasha. Why would he be there with her?”
Because she put a spell on him! Kate wanted to scream. But she knew she couldn’t say that. For one thing, her friends would never believe that something like magic was real. For another, it would mean explaining to them how she knew anything about how spells worked. She had to find some other way to make them see what Sasha was doing.
“Look, Kate,” Tara said before Kate could think of something to say. “We all know that you’re upset about Scott. He dumped you. We’d all be upset too. And Sherrie didn’t help things by not getting all the facts straight.”
Sherrie started to speak, but for once Tara cut her off. “Not that it was her fault or anything. The point is—you know Scott would never go for someone like Sasha, so probably she’s telling the truth.”
“You didn’t think he would ever go for me, either,” Kate reminded her. “In fact, you were positive he would never ask me out, remember?”
“Good point,” Tara countered. “But that was different.”
“How?” Kate demanded.
“It just was,” Sherrie said, unable to contain herself any longer. “Sasha just isn’t the kind of girl who can steal other girls’ boyfriends. She’s too rough around the edges.”
“You’re being pretty protective of someone you were ready to write off a few days ago,” Kate said.
“I know,” Sherrie said. “But she kind of grows on you. And you know I’m always the first one to admit when I’m wrong about something.”
That was the problem—Kate knew Sherrie would never admit when she was wrong. That’s what made her sudden change of heart about Sasha even more confusing. Something else was going on. Her friends were trying to convince her that the girl who had stolen her boyfriend hadn’t really done it. Ordinarily they would be ripping Sasha apart in defense of Kate.
Maybe it’s another spell, Kate thought suddenly. Maybe she did some kind of spell to make my friends like her. Why not? It made sense. First Sasha had done the spell to steal Scott away, and then she’d tried to cover it up. But what if she and Scott really had been on a date when Sherrie saw them? What if Sasha had just been trying to throw Kate off the trail when she’d said all that stuff about not really understanding what the spell would do? What if she really did know exactly what she was doing and was just trying to cover her tracks again now? If she had done some kind of spell involving Sherrie, Tara, and Jessica, maybe they weren’t able to see things clearly.
But that’s insane, Kate told herself. She had herself tied up in knots trying to figure out what Sasha was up to. She didn’t know what to believe or what to think. Plus, she wanted her friends to side with her, and they weren’t. She felt as if they were slipping away from her, falling more and more under Sasha’s spell. But she couldn’t tell them anything about Sasha’s involvement with witchcraft because it would mean exposing herself too.
She saw Sasha coming back to the table carrying her soda, and she knew she couldn’t stand to listen to her telling any more lies. Getting up, she stuffed what was left of her sandwich into her bag.
“I forgot,” she said. “I have something I need to do.”
She left quickly, not looking back. She knew that they would talk about her after she was gone, and she didn’t want to see them doing it. She didn’t want to see what were supposed to be her friends laughing at Sasha’s jokes or including her in their plans. She needed to talk to someone she knew would take her side.
She found Cooper in one of the practice rooms, just as she’d expected. She was playing her guitar, and a guy wearing a faded Blink 182 T-shirt and pants cut off just below the knees was standing across from her, a battered bass guitar in his hands. Cooper was nodding as the guy plucked out a sequence of notes. When she heard the door to the room open, she looked up.
“Kate,” she said, sounding surprised. “What are you doing here?”
“Can I talk to you?” she asked.
Cooper put down her guitar. “Kate, this is T.J. We write songs together sometimes.”
T.J. nodded at Kate. He was a tall, thin boy whose reddish hair had been shaved almost down to the skin. There were three gold rings in one ear and a stud in his nose. Kate had seen him around school, but she had never seen him with Cooper. Then again, she’d never really met any of Cooper’s friends.
T.J. looked at Cooper. “We can do this some other time,” he said. “If you guys need to talk. It’s cool with me.”
“Thanks,” Cooper said. “I’ll call you tonight. Maybe we can work on the lyrics some more. It’s really coming together now, and I like that line you laid down.”
T.J. put his bass into its case and locked it. As he walked out, he reached out and slapped Cooper’s outstretched hand, their fingers touching for an instant. “Later,” he said.
“Something I should know?” Kate asked when T.J. was gone, her need to talk about her own problems momentarily eclipsed by her curiosity about Cooper’s relationship with a guy she’d never even mentioned to Annie and Kate.
“No,” Cooper said flatly. “You’re the one who ventured down here into the Underworld, not me. I don’t have to answer any questions.”
Kate thought about pressing her friend for more information. Of all her friends, she knew the least about Cooper’s life away from the group. Cooper never talked about what she did when she wasn’t with Annie and Kate, and Kate sometimes wondered about her life outside of school. But Cooper had a look on her face that warned Kate that asking about T.J. was definitely off-limits for the time being. Besides, she was right. Kate had come to talk to her.
“It’s Sasha,” she said. “I think she’s up to something.”
“There’s a news flash,” Cooper said. “Didn’t you kind of get that feeling when she made your boyfriend disappear? And let’s not forget her little performance last night.”
“I know,” Kate said. “But now she’s getting all friendly with Sherrie and the girls. It’s like she’s trying to take over my life.”
“Maybe she is,” Cooper said. “Didn’t she say that she was jealous of you when you confronted her about the doll?”
Kate nodded. “Yes,” she said. “She said that she was jealous because I had everything she wanted.” She thought about telling Cooper Sasha’s latest excuse about why she’d been talking to Scott, but she didn’t. It was obviously a lie, and anyway, she didn’t want Cooper trying to convince her that Sasha might be telling the truth.
Cooper hoisted herself onto an amplifier. “So, first she went after your boyfriend. Maybe now she’s trying to get to the Graces, although I don’t know why she would want them. If she really wanted some cool friends, she’d try to get Annie and me on her side. Why that bunch of spritz-heads?”
“Because they’re popular,” Kate said. All of a sudden, everything made sense to her. Sasha was jealous of Kate. But it wasn’t just about having a boyfriend. She wanted to be popular. Why hadn’t she seen that before? “She thinks that if she has what I have, she’ll be popular. That’s why she wanted Scott, and that’s why she wants to be friends with Jess, Tara, and Sherrie. She thinks if she can get everything that I had, she’ll be happy.”
“And she’ll get revenge on you for ruining her bid for witchdom,” Cooper added. “You have to admit, it’s a plan.”
“I have to stop her,” Kate said, her mind racing as she tried to think of a plan of attack. “I can’t let her do this to me. Maybe I can cast a spell back at her.”
“Whoa,” Cooper said. “Listen to yourself. Don’t you remember what Anya said about revenge spells? They just make things worse.”
“But I can’t just let her get away with all of this!” Kate wailed. “It’s not fair!”
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t do anything,” Cooper said. “I just said you shouldn’t try to get even. Maybe there’s something about Sasha we don’t know.”
“Like that she’s a demon from the pit of hell?” Kate suggested hopefully.
“It’s a thought,” Cooper admitted. “But not likely. All I’m saying is that maybe you should think of a positive approach to this instead of trying to zap her with whatever she’s zapping you with.”
“You’re the one who’s supposed to have the wild streak,” Kate said. “What gives?”
“Maybe you’re rubbing off on me,” Cooper said, grinning.
That night, Kate sat in her bedroom surrounded by a circle of white candles. Taking a deep breath, she tried to envision herself sitting in a peaceful grove of trees with a full moon overhead filling the grove with light. It was a meditation she did whenever she was stressed out. And she was definit
ely stressed out.
It took her a while, but eventually she felt herself calming down as she imagined roots going from her body down into the ground until they reached a pool of warm, golden light. She breathed deeply, drawing that light up into herself, letting it fill her with its warmth.
When she felt filled with light, she pictured Sasha standing in front of her. Sasha had an angry expression on her face. Kate reached out to her, letting the golden light within her body flow out through her hands and surround Sasha. At first she could only manage to see Sasha with a faint yellow haze around her body. But with a little concentration she was able to imagine the two of them surrounded by a cocoon of gold, their bodies seeming to float within the healing light.
She imagined all of the anger she had toward Sasha within herself burning away in the light and being replaced with peacefulness. She tried too, to imagine the negative feelings in Sasha being replaced with ones of happiness. For a moment, it seemed to be working.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the image of Sasha faded. Kate waited a minute, then opened one eye and looked around the room. Why had the vision ended so quickly? And had it worked? She let herself relax for a moment. She definitely felt a little calmer.
But I still don’t like her, she thought to herself. Apparently, doing magic to get over being mad at someone wasn’t as easy as it seemed. She sighed heavily and blew out the candles around her.
Chapter 13
“I thought maybe you wouldn’t talk to me,” Scott said.
Kate gripped the telephone tightly, half afraid that if she let go of it Scott would disappear, as if only her hand holding on to the receiver was keeping him on the other end. When she’d heard the phone ringing and picked it up, she’d expected to hear her father’s voice telling her when he’d be home from the store. When she’d heard Scott’s voice instead, she’d been tempted to hang up. But she hadn’t been able to. Now she stood in the kitchen, unable to think of anything to say to him.