by Alex Flinn
I had a few blemishes, nothing terrible but, of course, I was self-conscious about them. I nodded.
“Hate drains the energy,” she said, stroking my skin gently, like my mother never had. “It’s not a safe emotion. That’s why you passed out last night. Is there another strong emotion you can tap into?”
My first thought was love, my love for Greg. But that emotion was all tied up with other emotions, my hatred for Jennifer, my anger at Greg himself for ditching me when he suddenly became hot. I tried to think of happier memories, but they all failed me. I thought how I felt every day, how I felt alternately invisible, ignored, ridiculed. How I felt alone, even in my own house, with my own mother.
I remembered what Kendra had said about witches being lonely.
“Would loneliness work?”
Kendra smiled, barely turning up her lips. “Yes, dear, I know it will. It is an emotion I use quite a bit myself.” She reached toward me. Her hand was small and white, as if it had never seen sun. “Close your eyes.”
She passed her fingers down my forehead and across my face. I closed my eyes gladly. The bright light against white walls was suddenly tiring.
“Now remember . . .” Her voice was soft, soothing. “Remember the loneliest you’ve ever felt.”
So many memories to choose from. The time my school had Lunch With Your Child Day, and my mom was the only one who didn’t come. She hadn’t had time, she said, but she sure had time for dumb things like hair appointments. No, it was because I wasn’t presentable, wasn’t pretty. She was ashamed to be seen with me.
I’d thrown my sandwich in the garbage, feeling like the ugliest person in a world full of beauty.
But perhaps this memory edged too close to hate, to anger. I remembered other days, mundane things, walking home from school alone, remembered not having a partner on field trips and having to sit by someone else’s mother who was chaperoning, party invitations handed out to everyone but me, no one talking to me except to ask me to please switch seats so their friend could sit there. I remembered . . .
“It worked.” Kendra’s voice interrupted my thoughts.
“What did?” I realized I was weeping, hot, salty tears seeping out from under my eyelids.
“Look.”
I did, mopping at them as I did. The mirror, Kendra’s lovely mirror, was before me. I gazed into it. My skin was clear, unblemished, smooth, pink, like Mom’s. And still, the tears kept coming, coming out of me.
Kendra’s arms tightened around me. “There, my darling. Someday, you will be able to do this without crying.”
“Will I?”
She stroked my back. “I promise.”
“Can everyone do it then? I mean, does everyone have the power to channel their emotions?”
I hoped not.
“Oh, no. Not everyone. It is a rare thing indeed. No, my darling. You are special.”
Special. No one had ever called me that before, not even teachers at school.
“Come, my darling. You have worked hard. Let me get you some gingerbread.”
“Gingerbread?”
She shrugged. “I am sentimental. The witch who taught me, she made gingerbread.”
I remembered the story of Hansel and Gretel, the children made into gingerbread. What if Kendra turned out to be like that witch, a cannibal bent on murder? Would I have the strength to run away from the one person who praised me and thought I was special? I stroked the smooth skin of my cheek, feeling Kendra’s arm around me. I wasn’t sure. I wanted Kendra to teach me. Desperately.
But the gingerbread she brought me wasn’t shaped like children. In fact, it wasn’t even a cookie, but a cake in a square pan. Kendra cut a still-steaming chunk for each of us and served it with glasses of cold milk. The hot gingerbread warmed my mouth and soon my tears were forgotten.
“What happened to the witch who taught you?” I asked.
Kendra brushed some crumbs that had fallen onto the lace tablecloth. They vaporized instantly. “Alas, she was burned.” She looked down.
I waited for her to elaborate, to explain, but she didn’t. There was only the sound of our forks on china. “I’m sorry,” I said.
She shook her head and still didn’t speak.
Finally, she said, “You should go home. Your mother will miss you.”
I doubted that, but I said, “Can I come back tomorrow?”
“Best to wait a little. Thursday, perhaps, so as not to excite suspicion. I will see you then, my dear.”
And suddenly, she wasn’t there. The air felt chilly as, one by one, the objects in the room disappeared too, and I was all alone in the old, abandoned house.
I touched my cheek.
I wondered what else I could do.
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7
I stepped outside. The door slammed shut. The sound echoed down the silent street. I trudged through the weedy yard. The sun had been shining when I’d entered Kendra’s yard. Now the clouds blocked any sign of it.
Other than the brief, magical time when I’d had Greg, I had always been lonely. Yet the realization that Kendra was the only person voluntarily to speak to me in months chilled me. What was wrong with me? It couldn’t just be that I was ugly. Yet it had to be. What else could it be? It had to. If it wasn’t about my appearance, then changing it wouldn’t change anything. And I wanted to change everything.
Everything.
Down the block, I saw a lone, white cat playing by the roadside. I remembered hearing that most white cats were blind. Or was it deaf? The cat was scrawny, maybe a stray, and, suddenly, I wanted to pick it up, take it home with me. I’d never asked for a pet. Could my mother really say no? I walked faster, suddenly wanting the cat, hoping it didn’t have a collar.
Suddenly I heard a rumbling behind me. A car! I jumped, then ran under a tree, feeling the whoosh of air as the car sped by.
My heart was pounding. I screwed my eyes closed. Then, I heard a dull thud. My eyelids flew open. The cat! The cat, crushed under the wheels of some Mustang.
I waited for the car to stop, but it roared on as if the driver hadn’t noticed. Or just didn’t care.
Then, I was screaming, “Stop! No!” But the words were lost in the motor’s roar, and the pounding of my footsteps on black pavement.
There was surprisingly little blood, only a bit coming from the kitty’s mouth. Black tire marks marred its white coat. I held my hand to its chest, feeling for a heartbeat. There was one, but only faint. I knew it wouldn’t last long.
I gathered the cat in my arms, hating the driver. How could people be so uncaring? He didn’t even stop.
Something, a jagged, broken bone, penetrated the cat’s coat. The loneliness and sadness rose up in my throat like bile, then came spilling out of my mouth in words like vomit, words I didn’t understand. I just sat there in the road, rocking the cat back and forth, saying I didn’t know what, and suddenly, the pointy bone retreated inside its body. The cat’s heartbeat quickened, and then its whole being began to vibrate.
It was purring! Purring and rubbing up against me! I knew I had fixed it, my magic and I had. If my magic only did one worthwhile thing, saving the cat was enough. More than enough.
I picked up the cat and carried it home. To my mother’s questioning look, I said, “I found a cat. I’m going to keep it.”
“Were you going to ask me?”
“No. I’ll take care of it.”
I stared at her, and maybe there was something in my eyes—or my new eyelashes—that made her say, “Okay. We’ll have to get cat food tomorrow, but I have some old tuna tonight.”
I fed the cat—whom I named Grimalkin after a witch’s cat in a book—and took her to my room. She cur
led up on my bed and purred while I did my homework. She loved me already.
“The cat will have to stay outside while you’re at school,” my mother said the next morning. “We don’t have any litter. It will pee all over the place.”
“She will run away if I leave her outside.” The cat had slept on my bed all night, between my legs, her purring lulling me to sleep. I’d awakened more rested than I’d ever been and had spent most of the morning admiring the cat’s blue eyes and white whiskers. I had to keep her.
“If you feed it, it will stay.”
“We don’t have any cat food. Can’t I just leave her in the bathroom?”
“Violet, do you know what cat pee smells like?”
I didn’t answer, assuming the question was rhetorical. In fact, I did know, and I hoped my mother wouldn’t notice the smell on a pair of jeans that had been crumpled on my desk chair. I’d stuck them into the washing machine and planned to wash them after school.
“The cat can come in once we get litter, but for now, it will have to stay outside.”
I drew the cat into my arms. Most cats—I knew from painful experience—didn’t like being picked up, but this one began to purr and rub her head against mine. “I can’t just throw Grimalkin outside!”
“Uck, why give it such an ugly name? Call it something pretty like Tiffany or Courtney.” My mother turned back toward her room. “It has to go out.”
I went back to my own room. I considered skipping school, but there was a test in social studies, and I knew Mom would never write a note for me. Too much trouble. I shut the door, thinking perhaps I could hide Grimalkin outside. But she started to meow.
Finally, I waited until Mom was engaged in the delicate contour drawing that was her morning beauty ritual, then I took the cat outside.
“Stay there.” I placed her on the step.
The cat looked at me as if she understood. She blinked once, then again in the morning sun.
“Stay there,” I repeated.
She lay down on the step, curling herself into a ball.
“Perfect,” I said, even though I knew the cat would probably be gone when I got home, and the loneliness was like a paper cut on my heart. Why couldn’t Mom just get some litter? Be a human for once? But I knew she wouldn’t, so I started toward school.
The cat stood and followed me.
“No,” I said. “Stay.”
But the cat kept following me, like Mary’s lamb.
I remembered what I’d learned about channeling my emotions. The cat could not leave. She couldn’t. It was completely unreasonable for me to get all involved with a cat, but I had. My loneliness made me unreasonable.
I picked the cat up and held her close, willing her to stay there, wanting her too. I was facing east, and the sun was already high and at the perfect angle to get in my eyes. I shut them, still feeling the warmth on my eyelids, on my cheeks, the purry warmness of the cat, who was not struggling in my arms. She nuzzled me, and I knew I couldn’t go to school and leave her. I held the warm, fluffy, vibrating ball, rocking her like an infant. Behind my eyelids, I could see the sky changing colors, blue to red to purple and a burst of bright pink like fireworks. Stay. Stay.
Then, suddenly, I felt the cat’s back feet digging into my stomach. She wanted to leave. You can’t hold a cat who wants to go, and this cat did. I dropped her and opened my eyes.
The sun had gone behind a cloud, a cloud that hadn’t been there before. I’d stood there longer than I’d realized.
I looked at the cat. She was chasing a squirrel. It went up a tree that overhung our neighbor’s property. Grimalkin followed it. I knew she would be lost. The squirrel would go further and further, and she’d go with it.
“Stay,” I said.
She did not, of course, look back at me. She followed the squirrel across the branch, toward the neighbor’s yard.
But when the squirrel entered the neighbor’s yard, Grimalkin didn’t follow. Instead, she stopped, as if realizing she could go no further. She looked insulted, as cats do. Then she turned and ran down the tree trunk and stood at my feet. She began to lick her right front paw.
I glanced at my watch. Five minutes until school started. I had to leave, and I had to run. I gathered my books and lunch box, dropped in my trance. I patted Grimalkin’s head, then started toward school.
When I looked back, the cat was still sitting under the tree, unmoving.
When I returned that afternoon, she was still there, waiting for me.
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8
I visited Kendra after school the following day and the day after that and every day for the next two weeks. She taught me things, magic things. While she cautioned me not to alter my appearance too drastically, I did alter it some, straightening my teeth so much that my orthodontist declared, with a shocked expression, that I no longer needed braces. I also gave my hair a wavy, just-out-of-the-salon perfection. Finally, people noticed. At least, my mother complimented me on finally taking an interest in my appearance. Mom was great at making a compliment sound like an insult.
But Greg didn’t notice.
Or, more likely, he didn’t care.
Kendra taught me some party tricks, moving stuff with my mind like witches did on television shows like Bewitched. She didn’t say anything about casting spells on other people, and I didn’t ask. I knew she’d disapprove since she’d told me several times that my magic could backfire.
“Backfire how?” We were at her house, which was now decorated in some sort of British colonial, dark furniture and stuff with elephants on it.
Kendra adjusted her linen blouse. “Oh, sometimes the unexpected will happen, or you’ll realize the magic you thought you wanted, you didn’t want at all.”
“All I want is to be pretty. And have friends.”
“All?” Kendra asked.
Well, no. Not all. I wanted Greg to love me. And I wanted Jennifer to contract a bad case of leprosy, to help that along. But I didn’t say that. Across the room, a brown spider crawled up a dining room table leg that looked like a lion’s paw. I liked spiders. I never killed them. Unlike most people, I knew they weren’t harmful, not usually. In fact, they killed mosquitoes and flies, bugs that spread disease.
The spider lifted first one leg, then another. Was it a brown recluse? Those could be harmful, resulting in skin death and terrible scarring. But even they didn’t usually bite. People who got bitten by spiders brought it upon themselves. They weren’t careful.
“Can you give me an example of backfiring?” I wondered if I could get the spider to come toward me. Kendra had taught me many tricks, but since the day of the cat, I hadn’t used my magic on another living creature. I wanted to. It would be cool to be able to manipulate others, like maybe make Jennifer scratch herself like a gorilla. But, of course, I’d have to be able to do it so no one knew it was me.
“So hard to think of just one example,” Kendra said. “I have been alive hundreds of years, and I seldom get the opportunity to tell my stories.”
I laughed. That was obvious. For each bit of magic I learned, there was at least an hour of talk. But Kendra’s stories were fascinating. She looked my age, so she was like a friend. Yet she’d lived hundreds of years. Someday, I’d be as experienced and smart as she was. “I’m sure it will be a great story.”
Kendra leaned on an umbrella stand shaped like an elephant’s foot and stared out the window into the waning light. “I once knew a tsar who had twelve beautiful daughters.”
“A tsar? So you lived in Russia?”
“I’ve lived everywhere. But yes, this particular tsar was in Russia, and he had twelve daughters, each with so many suitors that the tsar could not decide—which was a high-
class problem to have. He planned to have a month of balls and events and invited them all to a huge house party—or, rather, castle party. I was employed as a maid, so I knew of all the preparations.”
“A maid? Why would someone with your powers want to be a maid?”
“A maid is an easy job for someone with my powers. A blink of my eye, I can clean the silver, fluff a hundred comforters, and try on all the jewels in the house. But a maid is where the action is. As a maid, I traveled on the finest ships, including the great Titanic, lived in palaces the world over. And people say things when the maid is in the room, secret things.”
“So why aren’t you a maid now?”
“Alas, there are few palaces and even fewer kings. The world has become more democratic, but also more boring. What happened in the tsar’s palace could not happen today.”
“What happened?” Across the room, the spider still crawled.
Kendra continued. “Many great preparations were made. Every stick of furniture was dusted to gleaming. Every sheet was washed in lavender to stimulate restful sleep. I was a lady’s maid to Manya, one of the middle daughters. It was my job to make certain her clothes were in order and to do her hair. She had lovely titian hair.”
“What is titian?”
“Oh, I am sorry. I forgot that people of your generation know so little. Titian is a dark red shade favored by an artist also named Titian who painted many red-haired women.”
I nodded. Titian sounded so much prettier than my own carroty red hair. Perhaps I would change my hair to titian sometime.
“Anyway, Manya had red hair, so she liked dresses in blue and green with satin slippers to match. Since the party would last a month, I made certain she had thirty gowns (it would not do for a princess to repeat) and six pairs of dancing slippers, three each in green and blue. I took great pride in the hairstyles which I—or, rather, my magic—could accomplish. But one morning, the princess had a terrible illness.”