Insanity

by Kira Moericke

  “What’s wrong with her?” Jayden straightened up even more, and a look of concern masked his features.

  “She fell down the stairs.” My legs suddenly felt wobbly, so I rushed over to his bed and sat down. “Actually, more like was pushed down the stairs.”

  “Someone pushed her down the stairs?” I could feel the bed shift beneath me as Jayden came closer to me. “Do you know who?”

  I stared at an empty Twix wrapper that lay on the floor besides Gunner’s bed, debating whether or not to tell him about Lexi. He didn’t believe in witches, so he definitely wouldn’t believe that Lexi was one of them. So instead of answering, I pressed my lips tight together.

  “Em, if you know who did it you have to tell someone,” Jayden said, his voice clipped and serious.

  “It’s just, I’m not a hundred percent sure if it was her,” I hedged.

  “Well, who do you think it was?” he prodded.

  I slowly turned my head to look at him. His dark brown eyes were filled with concern.

  “Em?” He wrapped a hand around mine, sending a wave of heat to rush through me. The temperature in the room suddenly seemed to have peaked a good ten degrees.

  “Lexi,” I said, her name barely audible on my lips.

  “Lexi?” He scrunched up his brows. “Why would Lexi do something like this?”

  “Because she’s a witch.”

  Jayden slowly pulled his hand off mine. He sat back, putting a little space between us. I internally cringed. This was why I hadn’t wanted to tell him.

  Why did I tell him? Why couldn’t I have just kept my big mouth shut? Now he probably thinks I’m insane.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized. I stood up from his bed. “I should have known that you didn’t believe in witches. I mean, earlier today I didn’t even believe in witches. But you know what? I’ve been thinking about it, and why couldn’t there not be witches. Angels and demons are claim to exist, and yet, no one has truly encountered them before, so why not witches?” I was babbling now. It was something I did when I was stressed out. “I’ll–I’ll just be leaving.” I started for the door.

  “Em, wait!”

  I stopped but didn’t turn around.

  “I don’t believe in witches,” he said slowly, “but I believe that you believe in them. And because you do, I won’t entirely dismiss the idea of them.”

  I spun on my heels to face Jayden with wide, hopeful eyes. “Really?”

  He nodded.

  I couldn’t help the smile that formed across my face. For some reason, I had this sudden urge to rush over and give him a hug. But I kept myself grounded in my spot.

  “So, what do you plan on doing?” he asked.

  “Plan?”

  He nodded. “I assume that you have a plan to get back at Lexi?”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t, but now that he mentioned it, I realized that I should. For Nova. And me. I suddenly remembered the note she had left at my door. If she thought she could push me around, she could think again. “No…Not yet, I haven’t.”

  “Would you like a partner to come up with ideas?” Jayden asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

  I grinned. “I would love one.”

  TWENTY–TWO

  THURSDAY PASSED BY slowly. The hands on the clock dragged itself across the hours like a tired man dragging himself across a desert. All I could think about was seeing Casey. I didn’t have the chance to go down to the ballroom yesterday and see him because Jayden and I had spent hours talking about what we were going to do about Lexi. I had showed him the note and told him everything I knew, and by seven o’clock we had absolutely no idea to get back at Lexi. And it wasn’t like we could go around asking people for ideas. They wouldn’t believe us, and we’d more than likely would be given pills from Dr. Langley to help with our insanities.

  Now, all I wanted was to be with Casey and talk to him about Lexi and Nova, and invite him to the dance on Saturday. Lena seemed to notice how distracted I was and called me out as we walked to our rooms after classes.

  “What’s going on with you today?” she asked as we slowly trudged up the main staircase. “You seem to be…somewhere else.”

  “Sorry,” I apologized. “I just have a lot on my mind right now.” Like how I’m going to get back at Lexi.

  “Care to talk about it?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t need her telling me that I was crazy for starting to believe in witches.

  “Fine then.” I could hear the slight bitterness that crept into her voice. “You don’t have to share what’s on your mind.” She was silent for a moment, then suddenly perked up. “Hey, do you want to come to my room Saturday evening to get ready for the dance?”

  I opened my mouth, ready to say that I was fine getting ready by myself–I wasn’t the type of girl who had to hang out with friends before every event–but the look on Lena’s face made me hesitate. Hope had already filled her green eyes, and I didn’t want to be the one to crush it. “Fine.”

  “Yay!” She squealed and clapped her hands excitedly together. “We’re going to have so much fun! We’ll do each other’s hair and make-up and talk about boys.”

  My eyebrows shot up. Lena had everything planned out.

  We chatted more about the dance this upcoming Saturday before we separated to our respective rooms. I fell back against my closed door, relieved to finally be by myself. Now I could think on what I was going to do. How was I going to get back at Lexi?

  A thought suddenly hit me and I rushed over to where I had hid my phone. Grabbing it from the drawer in my desk, I went straight to Rue’s contact. If anyone knew how to get back at someone, she would.

  Me: Hey, Rue. I have a question 2 ask u.

  I sat on my bed with my phone in my hands, waiting for a reply.

  Minutes ticked by slowly, and I slowly started to worry. Why wasn’t she answering? The girl always had her phone on her–even when she wasn’t supposed to.

  “Come on, Rue,” I whispered with urge. “Please answer.”

  Finally, after a whole twenty-two minutes later, my phone dinged with an incoming text. Checking the ID, I saw that it was Rue.

  Rue: What’s up, girlie?

  Me: What’s the best way to get back at someone?

  Rue: Easy! Confrontation. Ppl hate it when u get all up in their face. Especially in front of a large audience. Y? U have to get back at someone?

  I wanted to tell Rue everything that’s been happening lately, but there was no way that she could possibly believe me. Sure, she had once believed there was a cult of vampires living in the city after watching Twilight for the very first time, but that belief quickly died.

  So, biting the tip of my tongue to distract myself from the guilt of keeping a secret from my best friend, I texted her back.

  Me: It’s nothing. I was just curious.

  Knowing that Rue would text back, prodding for more details, I shut off my phone and stuck it back into my desk drawer. I’d deal with her later.

  A sudden knock on my door made me jump. Slamming my desk drawer closed, I spun around, facing the door. “Who is it?” My voice cracked with guilt. Did someone know that I had my phone?

  No, of course not. How could they?

  “It’s me,” came Jayden’s muffled voice.

  Relief washed through me. “Come in.”

  The door slowly swung open and Jayden and his giant mane of curls popped into my room.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “I was wondering if you had come up with an idea to get back at Lexi,” he replied. He stepped further into the room. “If not, I may have come up with a few.”

  “Actually, I did.” I thought back to the text Rue had sent me about confrontation. Lexi seemed popular, and would definitely not expect anyone to get up in her face–not that I’d actually get up into her face. I was never good at doing things like that. “I was thinking about confronting her.”

  Jayden stared at me.

  I suddenly felt self-conscious. “Wh
at? Is that not a good idea?”

  “No, no. It’s a good idea. It’s just…”

  “Just what?”

  “If you do that, you’d need some kind of protection.”

  “Protection?” How do you protect yourself from a potential witch?

  Jayden nodded. “You can’t expect to just walk up to someone who may be…dangerous.” He couldn’t say the word witch.

  “And how do you suppose we do that?”

  “We can go to the library and do an Internet search?” he suggested with a shrug.

  I nodded. That sounded like a good idea. Brushing back some hair, I said, “Show me the way.”

  ***

  I crinkled my nose when Jayden and I stepped into the library. It smelled of ancient paper, yellowed with age, and stale dust. The room was dim, the only true light coming from the sun outside. It was eerily quiet as Jayden and I moved through the rows of books toward the back of the large two-story room, to the computers.

  Only a couple of computers were taken up by students. None of them noticed me or Jayden take a seat at an empty computer.

  I let Jayden sit down on the computer chair while I stood behind him, watching as he logged on with his student ID. Once he was logged in, he pulled up the Internet browser.

  “What should we type in?” he asked, his fingers hovering above the keys. He turned his head to look up at me.

  “Can I?” I didn’t wait for an answer. I gently shoved him out of the chair and stole his place. Staring at the screen, I typed in How to kill a witch.

  “Kill?” Jayden questioned from behind. He sounded shocked at my word choice.

  “Well, you can’t hurt a witch,” I stated, watching as results popped up on the screen. I scanned through the links, then clicked on one in the middle of all the choices.

  I quickly read over the article, which was mainly just about the history of witches. But after scrolling more toward the bottom, I saw that there were a few ways to kill a witch, such as burning or throwing water on them. There were a few other things, things that I would no way be doing.

  “Find anything?” Jayden asked from behind.

  “Uh, yeah, but nothing good.” I quickly clicked on the back arrow on the top of the screen and went back to the search engine.

  “Wait. What is that?” Jayden leaned over my shoulder and pointed to a link. I tensed up by the sudden nearness of him.

  Relax, Em. It’s just Jayden.

  Furrowing my brows, I pushed away the nervousness that had started to get my nerves all in a twist and clicked on the link that he was pointing to.

  “Salt?” My brows dipped even lower.

  “Yeah. It says that it’s used for protection such as warding off evil spirits and witches.” He turned to look at me. “I bet we could get some salt from the kitchen?”

  I turned in the chair to look at him. “Are you serious?”

  “As serious as you are about Lexi being a witch,” he replied.

  “Shhh!” I quickly looked around to make sure that no one had heard him say that I believed that Lexi was a witch. Thankfully, it seemed that everyone was too busy doing their own thing to have noticed.

  “So…” Jayden said, grabbing my attention. “Do you want to try getting the salt?”

  I turned back to the computer, staring at the article. Did I really have any other choice?

  ***

  The cafeteria was empty when Jayden and I slipped through it to get to the kitchen. We pressed our backs on either side of the metal swinging doors.

  “Do you think that there is anyone in there?” I asked in a low whisper.

  Jayden shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’ll check.” He eased himself in front of the door so that he could peer through the little window. I watched him.

  “Hide!” Before I could react, Jayden came toward me. He grabbed me and pulled me behind the salad bar that was nearby. We ducked down close to the floor just as the kitchen door swung open, and two kitchen ladies came out, looking tired.

  “Four more hours of this shit,” one of them mumbled. Both woman were slightly overweight with stains all over their white aprons. Some hair has started to fall out from their cheap hairnets, but neither one of them bothered to fix it. “Delores, how did we end up here?”

  “I don’t know, Edna,” the other replied in a raspy smoker’s voice. “I don’t know.”

  Jayden and I watched in silence as the two kitchen ladies walked through the center aisle of the cafeteria before disappearing out the door into the hall.

  “Is there anyone else in the kitchen?” I asked, turning my head to look at Jayden. I froze, my breath hitching inside my throat, when I realized how close we were. So close that if either one of us moved our heads forward just a notch, we would be kissing.

  “Yeah.” The single word came out wispy. He too realized how close we were.

  “Um…” I cleared my throat and quickly stood up. I needed to put space between Jayden and I. “We should probably go get the salt.”

  Blinking, Jayden nodded, then rose to his feet. “Yeah. You’re right.”

  We made our way around the salad bar to the kitchen as quickly and silently as we could. We didn’t know when the two cafeteria ladies would come back, so I knew we had to move fast.

  “Where would they put the salt?” I wondered out loud as I looked around the large cafeteria. Everything was made of stainless steel, and glittered in the harsh lighting.

  “I don’t know,” Jayden replied as he made his way over to the counter. He lifted lids from pots and looked inside. “Looks like we’re having hamburger helper for dinner, though.”

  I ignored him, continuing to look around for the salt.

  “Not too bad,” I heard him say from behind.

  “Jayden!” I hissed. Whirling around, I caught Jayden with a finger in his mouth, tasting what was for supper. My brows furrowed. “You’re supposed to be helping me look for the salt.”

  Guilt flooded across Jayden’s face. He slowly put the lid back on the crockpot.

  Huffing out a sigh, I rolled my eyes and turned back around. I searched the countertops, but didn’t find any salt containers anywhere.

  “Do you think the salt could be in one of the cupboards?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” I reached up and started flipping through the cupboards.

  Jayden and I riffled through the cupboards in silence for several moments before Jayden made a sound from across the room.

  I turned to look at him. “Did you find it?”

  “Yeah.” He closed the cupboard with one hand while holding up the salt in the other.

  “Toss it here,” I said.

  He did.

  Catching it out of the air, I tightened my grip around it. “Now let’s go before the cooks come back.”

  Jayden nodded in agreement. We both headed for the door.

  “So how many more years do you have left, Edna?” The lunch ladies’ voices came floating to us just as Jayden and I reached the door. We both paused in fear and looked at one another, silently asking What are we going to do?

  “There should be another exit in the back,” Jayden whispered. He grabbed my hand and tugged me away from the door.

  “Well, I would like to retire at sixty-five, but who knows with the economy now days.” The voices were closer. Panic started to grip me as Jayden pulled me toward the large walk-in freezer in the back of the kitchen. I was starting to doubt Jayden, but after pushing our way past shelves of boxed foods, I spotted the door he had mentioned.

  Together, we made out like bandits.

  ***

  I rolled the container of salt from one hand to another while Jayden and I sat at the bottom of the grand staircase in the front of the building. People walked past, paying no heed to us. Though the security man, who had stripped me from my dummy phone when I first arrived, was eyeing us suspiciously.

  “So, what are you going to do now?” Jayden asked, watching me roll the container of salt in my hands.
>
  “Well, I should probably confront her,” I replied, though I didn’t really feel up to it. I was never good at confrontation. Rue was the expert between the two of us. She would do confrontations all the time–the larger the audience, the better.

  “But…” It was as if he could tell that there was something holding me back.

  I sighed and gripped the container with both hands. “It’s just…what if this doesn’t work? Or what if she didn’t do it?” I turned to look at him with doubt scrawled all over my face.

  Jayden stared at me with his kind brown eyes. For a moment, I forgot about everyone around me and all I saw was him. But then I remembered Casey, and my heart pitter-pattered inside my chest.

  “Well, back home, my mom always told my sister and me to go with our guts.”

  “So you’re saying…?”

  “To go with your gut. If you truly believe that Lexi had something to do with Nova’s fall, and your gut is telling you to do something about it, then do it. It’s what led me to breaking into that pharmacy to get medicine for my sister.”

  I pressed my lips together into a tight smile. Tucking a long strand of hair behind my ear, I glanced down at the container of salt.

  “So, what does your gut tell you?” Jayden asked, his voice soft and close.

  Closing my eyes, I listened to what my instincts were trying to tell me. After a moment, I understood what I had to do.

  Opening my eyes, I turned to Jayden. “I’m going to do it.”

  “You sure?” He raised his scarred eyebrow.

  I nodded then rose to my feet. “Will you come with me though? Maybe wait outside her room?”

  I watched Jayden stand. He looked down, grabbing my hand. His hand was big and warm and sent a wave of courage to surge through me. When he raised his eyes to mine, I could see something swimming in them–something that I didn’t reciprocate. “Of course.”

  TWENTY–THREE

  I BARGED INTO Lexi’s room before I could chicken out. I stared at her. My breath was coming out heavy. I balled my right hand around the small container of salt that Jayden and I had stolen from the kitchen.