The Five Paths

by Isobel Bird

  She practically ran to history. Partly she wanted to be with her friends, where she felt a little less exposed than she did walking around by herself, but she also wanted to tell them about Sherrie’s latest plan. However, when she arrived at class she found them already talking about it.

  “I guess this is her idea of revenge,” Kate said. “How many people were signing her petition, Annie?”

  Annie shook her head. “I didn’t stick around to find out,” she answered. “Three or four, I guess.”

  “I heard she already got twenty signatures,” said Sasha. “How many do you have, Coop?”

  “Just you guys so far,” Cooper replied. “I hadn’t really started yet.”

  “You’d better,” Kate told her. “You need to get that petition filled up now. You can’t have Sherrie showing up with more names than you have. I know her. She won’t stop until she has every last student in school on her list.”

  “I’ll get on it at lunch,” said Cooper.

  “Take your seats,” said Mrs. Greeley, coming in and shutting the door with a bang. “This is not social hour.”

  Annie and her friends scattered, going to their desks and sitting. Mrs. Greeley walked to her own desk and stood looking out at the class. That’s when Annie noticed that she was holding a copy of the Sentinel in her hands.

  “It seems one of our class members has become something of a cause célèbre,” the teacher said. “Or perhaps I should say two of our members.” She held up a copy of the Tribune that was turned to the page with the article about Cooper on it. Looking at the two papers in Mrs. Greeley’s hands, Annie remembered that it had been partly because of their teacher that the issue over Cooper’s pentacle had been raised at all. She glanced over at Cooper, who looked back. What was Mrs. Greeley going to do? Annie wondered.

  “Since Miss Crandall and Miss Rivers seem to believe that there are issues of freedom of speech involved in their crusade, I thought perhaps we could use this situation as a basis for discussing the reasons why the early colonists came to America. They, too, were searching for such freedom.”

  The teacher paused. Annie tried to imagine how Mrs. Greeley was possibly going to use her and Cooper in the class discussion. She didn’t even want her to use them, but apparently it was too late for that.

  Mrs. Greeley smiled. “We’re going to do something a little different,” she said. “We’re going to have a mock trial. The focus will be on defending the notions of free speech. Miss Rivers will be the defendant. Miss Crandall will be her attorney. The prosecuting attorney will be Mr. Reynolds.”

  Annie looked at John Reynolds. He was grinning from ear to ear. He would think this was fun, she thought. John, she knew, planned on going to law school. This was exactly the kind of assignment he would excel at. She, on the other hand, hated speaking in public.

  “You will each prepare arguments and have them ready for class a week from today,” Mrs. Greeley said. “The class will be the jury, and they will decide which of you presents the stronger argument.”

  “And who’ll be the judge?” Cooper asked.

  Mrs. Greeley looked at her and smiled slowly. “Why, I will,” she said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Kate kept rolling the apple over and over in her hands. She told herself she was rubbing it clean, but she knew she was just trying to occupy herself while she waited for Jessica and Tara to arrive. She’d been tempted to skip lunch altogether, but she knew that at some point she had to face her friends and talk to them about what was going on. There was no way they wouldn’t have heard about it by now, and she knew they would come running to her first for information.

  “There you are,” she heard Tara say. She shut her eyes and sent a silent prayer to the Goddess. Help me make it through this.

  “Hey,” she said brightly as Tara and Jessica sat down, hoping they wouldn’t see that she was incredibly stressed out.

  “So, what gives with Annie and Cooper?” Tara asked immediately. “They’re all anybody is talking about.”

  “I guess they went all over the caf last period asking people to sign that petition Cooper’s got going,” said Jessica. “A couple of the girls on the team signed it.”

  “Really?” Kate said, surprised.

  “Yeah,” Jessica replied. “I think it’s cool what she’s doing.”

  “You do?” asked Kate.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Jessica said, unwrapping her pita bread and hummus sandwich.

  “Well, the other day you said she was kind of weird because she wore that symbol,” Kate said.

  “No,” Jessica said. “I said that some people thought she was weird because she wore it. I didn’t really know what it was.”

  “We read Annie’s editorial,” Tara said. “I guess everybody has. Did you know they were both into this Wicca stuff?”

  Kate hesitated. This was the moment she’d been thinking about all day. She looked at Jessica and Tara. They were waiting for her to answer.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I knew. And I knew what Cooper’s pentacle meant, too. I’m sorry I pretended not to when you asked me the other day. I thought you might be freaked out.”

  “That’s okay,” Jessica said. “I guess they were trying to keep it quiet.”

  “There’s something else,” Kate said.

  Her friends looked at her expectantly.

  “Remember when we met that woman outside the movie theater and we told you that she runs a book group at Crones’ Circle?”

  Tara and Jessica nodded.

  “It’s not really a book group,” said Kate. “It’s a witchcraft study group. Cooper and Annie go to it.”

  Jessica’s eyes went wide. “They have a study group for that?” she said. “Cool.”

  “Sign me up,” Tara said, laughing. “I wonder what the homework is like? Turning people into toads, probably.”

  Jessica and Tara laughed as Kate continued to play with her apple, which remained uneaten.

  “I go, too,” she said softly.

  Her friends stopped laughing and looked at her without saying anything.

  “I go, too,” Kate repeated, unsure if they’d heard her or not. “To the study group. I’m studying Wicca with them.” She was surprised at how easy it had been to say. But how would her friends respond? she wondered, thinking about Brian and Annie.

  “You?” Tara said in disbelief.

  Kate was taken aback. “Why do you say it like that?” she asked, puzzled.

  Tara shrugged. “It’s just that you’re so . . . normal. I wouldn’t expect you to be into something like that.”

  “Well, I am,” said Kate, slightly hurt. “I’m not that boring, you know.”

  Jessica leaned forward on her elbows, her sandwich in one hand. “You really go to this witch group?” she said.

  Kate nodded. “For a little more than five months now,” she answered.

  “How did this happen?” asked Jessica.

  Kate sighed. “That’s a long story,” she said. “A really long story. Can I tell you some other time?”

  “Sure,” Jessica said.

  Kate looked at her friends. “You guys are really okay about this?” she said uncertainly.

  Tara rolled her eyes. “God, you’re acting like you just told us that you’re going to Switzerland for gender reassignment,” she said. “You’re just taking a class. What’s the big deal about that?”

  Kate laughed. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “But it’s more than just a class. Annie, Cooper, and I do other things, too.”

  “Like?” Jessica said.

  Kate tried to think of the best way to explain herself. Suddenly she realized that trying to convey to other people what being involved in the Craft entailed was harder than it seemed. She couldn’t really think of how to tell Jessica and Tara about the rituals she and her friends did, or about t
he spells they sometimes worked. It all seemed so abstract when she attempted to put it into words. So much of what practicing Wicca was about was emotional and deeply personal. Trying to sum it up in one easy explanation was impossible.

  “It’s something that affects my whole life,” she said, feeling completely inadequate. “It’s really changed how I see things. How I see myself.”

  “Is that why you stopped hanging around with us?” asked Jessica.

  “Sort of,” Kate answered. “When I first got involved I didn’t really know what I was doing. Some stuff happened that was really confusing, and I couldn’t tell you guys about it because I didn’t really understand it myself. But then Cooper and Annie and I found this group and that has helped us a lot.”

  “Sounds like therapy to me,” Jessica commented.

  “No,” Kate said. “It’s just really hard to explain.”

  “Maybe we could come to this group sometime,” said Tara.

  Jessica nodded in agreement. “Right,” she said. “It sounds cool.”

  Kate finally took a bite of her apple. She was glad that her friends weren’t spazzing on her, but she wasn’t sure how far to go with the conversation.

  “It’s not really something you just go to to see what it’s like,” she said. “You have to commit to it.”

  “Don’t they have some kind of intro class or anything?” asked Jessica. “I mean, how do you know if you want to do it?”

  It was a good question. Kate, Cooper, and Annie had ended up in the class almost by default. They’d jumped into the deep end of the Craft, so to speak, and had found Crones’ Circle and the study group pretty much by accident. But surely there were people who went there just to learn more about Wicca.

  “I’ll ask,” she told Jessica and Tara.

  “So basically you’re telling us that the three of you are witches, is that right?” Tara asked Kate.

  “No,” Kate said. “The study group is to find out if you want to become a witch. It’s not just something you decide overnight.”

  “And do you?” Jessica asked. “Want to be a witch, I mean.”

  Kate hesitated. This was a question she herself had been thinking about a lot lately. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I know that I like learning about it, and I know that it’s really made me understand a lot of things about myself. But I don’t know if it’s something I’m going to commit to forever.”

  “Well, it sounds interesting,” said Jessica. “So, are you signing up for basketball or not?”

  It was a dramatic change in the direction of the conversation, and for a moment Kate was taken aback. Was that it? That’s all her friends wanted to know about her big revelation? She’d been expecting more. A lot more. But they were treating her announcement the same way they might react to her telling them that she was getting a perm or something.

  “Um, I still don’t know,” answered Kate. “Like I said, the study group is on Tuesdays.”

  “We’d really miss you if you stopped playing,” Tara said. “If we can’t come to this class of yours, at least it would be nice to see you on the court.”

  “I know,” Kate said, feeling a little sad. “I want to play. But I promised Archer and Sophia that I would stick with the class until the end. Let me think about it.”

  You can think about it all you want to, she told herself. That’s not going to change the night that classes are on. What was she going to do? She knew she wouldn’t give up the class, but playing ball with Jessica and Tara would be a lot of fun. Plus it would be something she could do that wasn’t Wicca-related. Lately she’d been feeling as if her whole life was taken up with things having to do with the Craft.

  “You know Sherrie is trying to get people to sign a petition asking for the total ban of occult symbols, right?” Tara said.

  “I know,” Kate replied. “Cooper said Mr. Adams was really nasty to her at the school board hearing.”

  “She’s got a lot of kids scared,” said Jessica. “She’s telling them that Cooper and Annie want to start holding meetings on school grounds and stuff.”

  “She’s totally out of her mind,” commented Kate.

  “A lot of them are falling for her line,” said Tara. “I hope Cooper can get more signatures than she does.”

  “Cooper can pretty much do whatever she wants to,” Kate said. “But even if she does, I don’t think the school board will change its mind. Cooper said they were dead set against her.”

  For the rest of the lunch period Kate answered Jessica’s and Tara’s questions about Wicca. She wasn’t always sure that she was doing the best job of it, but being able to talk about what they did in class and what it meant to her made her feel more confident about her ability to explain the Craft to other people. By the time the bell rang she had educated her friends, at least a little bit, and she was feeling better about everything.

  Throughout the rest of the day that feeling of confidence grew stronger. As Kate sat in her classes, thinking about how well the conversation with her friends had gone, she started thinking about the next step. Maybe it was time to talk to her parents. The prospect frightened her more than talking to Jessica and Tara had. After all, she had to live with her family. But maybe she could do it. If she could explain herself to them the way she’d been able to explain herself to Tara and Jess, maybe they would understand.

  She didn’t say anything to Annie, Sasha, or Cooper about her decision, partly because she didn’t want them to talk it to death but also because she knew it gave her an out if she decided at the last minute not to tell her mother and father. But they were so busy talking about the petition, and about how many people had come up to them during the day to say either positive or negative things, that they didn’t notice that she was being more quiet than usual on the walk home.

  Mrs. Morgan was in the kitchen when Kate walked into the house. She was experimenting with some new recipes, and they smelled delicious. Kate knew that they would get to enjoy the results of the culinary experiments for dinner, and she was eager to try them.

  “What is that?” she asked, sniffing the air.

  “Beef stew with rosemary, black mushrooms, and leeks,” said her mother. “How does it smell?”

  “Great,” Kate answered. “What else are you making?”

  “Sourdough bread, glazed carrots, and peach cobbler,” said her mother.

  “What’s the occasion?” Kate asked suspiciously. “That’s a lot of food even for you.”

  Mrs. Morgan smiled. “We have a dinner guest coming,” she said. “Your Aunt Netty is in town for a few days.”

  “Aunt Netty,” said Kate, suddenly frightened. Her aunt had spent the summer battling cancer. “She’s not sick again, is she?”

  “No,” said her mother. “She’s fine. She’s just here for a couple of tests to make sure everything is okay. She’ll be here around five.”

  Kate was both happy and apprehensive. She was thrilled that her aunt was coming. But would she still be able to talk to her parents with Aunt Netty around? She wasn’t sure.

  She went up to her room and pretended to study. But really she was rehearsing in her mind what she was going to say to her parents later. She wanted it to come out just right. If she was overly nervous it was going to come out all wrong, so she tried to relax. But she couldn’t keep from looking at the clock every ten minutes, waiting for her aunt to arrive.

  Finally she did arrive, opening the front door and calling out, “Hey? Where is everyone?” in a loud, cheerful voice.

  Kate raced down the stairs and ran to embrace her aunt.

  “Nice hat,” Kate said, looking at the Seattle Mariners baseball cap her aunt was wearing.

  “Yeah, well, I’m still bald from the chemo,” Aunt Netty said.

  Kate walked her aunt to the kitchen, where for the next hour they caught up on how she was doing in her battle
against cancer and she filled them in on her latest photography assignment, which had been taking pictures of children in a cancer ward.

  “The article was my idea,” she said. “I think it came out really well. I’ll show you some of the shots later. But right now let’s eat. If I have to keep smelling that stew I’m going to slobber all over the floor.”

  Mrs. Morgan started dishing out the stew while Kate set the table and got everything else ready. As they were sitting down Mr. Morgan came in. He was whistling as he walked through the house, which Kate knew meant he was in a good mood. Inwardly she breathed a big sigh of relief. Things were going her way after all.

  As they all ate dinner Kate waited for the perfect moment to bring up the issue of Wicca. But in the end she didn’t have to do it. Her aunt did it for her.

  “Kate, I called Sophia from the bookstore,” she said. “Thanks for getting her number for me.”

  Kate had forgotten all about giving Sophia’s phone number to her aunt. She’d asked for it after Sophia and some of the other coven members had performed a healing ritual for her.

  “You’re not really going to let them do that again, are you?” Mr. Morgan asked, chuckling. “All of that mumbo jumbo?”

  “Don’t knock it, Joe,” Netty said. “I’ve never felt better.”

  “It’s the drugs, Netty,” replied Kate’s father. “It’s medicine. Not some superstitious nonsense.” He turned to Kate. “Speaking of which, I see your friend Cooper made it into the paper today.”

  Kate felt the hopefulness flow out of her. She’d been hoping that her parents hadn’t seen the article.