by Lexi Witcher
But maybe I didn’t want to blow out those candles. Maybe I didn’t want the clock to strike midnight.
Something strange was going on inside me. I could feel it, but I didn’t understand what it was. I was becoming so hot and flushed. I was having trouble breathing. My throat was dry. I needed more punch.
The music stopped and I opened my eyes. Leopold took a step back and everyone that had been dancing clapped.
“It’s two minutes until midnight. Can everyone please come into the dining room. Dodie will blow out her candles at the clock strikes the hour.
Here we are. Two minutes. Well, one minute fifty-two seconds and counting. I walked into the dining room and around to the far side of the table. Cameras flashed and Grandma wanted Leopold to stand with me for a photo as the caterer lit the candles.
All sixteen candles were stuck in the top tier of the cake around the floral mass of icing. I took a deep breath and let it out preparing myself to get them all blown out in one try. Everyone began to sing happy birthday and as soon as they finished the clock began to strike the hour. I blew with all my might. The flames on each candle flickered out and smoke rose from it.
I felt light headed and I staggered. I closed my eyes and swallowed, trying to open them again, but instead I felt myself falling. My knees buckles and my head lobbed from side to side. I hit the ground with a thud, but then almost immediately I was seeing a flashback of what happened. I saw everyone around me as clear as if I was a bystander in the room. Leopold was knelt over me. My mom and dad were trying to break through the crowd of people to get to me. Brody was climbing over the table despite the platters of uneaten food. Sasha was crying. Father Branum and Mary Margaret were trying to get the guests to back away to give more room for the family.
I searched the crowd, looking at every face taking in their shocked expressions. There were so many different reactions it was a little bewildering. Ambrielle was looking right at me as if she could see me and she nodded.
I looked through the crowd again, realizing there was one I hadn’t seen. Anson wasn’t there. I hadn’t seen him since he wanted to talk to me earlier, or had I? Had he been the doppelgänger trying to take me to the wine cellar? And then I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and there he was.
“It’s time, Dodie. Time to pay for Walter Doherty’s betrayal.”
I shook my head. “No. No it’s not. I knew it was you. I knew you were the evil that was lurking around here.”
“Yeah? Well a lot of good your boyfriend did. He couldn’t save you. None of them could have saved you.” He sneered and grabbed hold of my face forcing me to look at the group huddled around my lifeless body. “You’re dead and that means your mine for all eternity.”
“No. No it doesn’t.” I broke free of his hold and ran, out of the house and as far away from him as I could. I came to the woods and I was running, just like in my vision and a horrible, sinking feeling formed in the pit of my stomach.
If what Anson said was true and I was dead, then Leopold lied to me. He’d told me I wouldn’t die. He’d said he’d made sure that wouldn’t happen. And yet I was lying there on the dining room floor. Dead. So what did that make me? A ghost? Or was I trapped between this life and the next?
In a flash of an instant I recalled when I was in the trance earlier, when I saw myself in the woods running. I had been trying to get away from something and now I knew what, but in the end, I had ran straight toward the evil. I’d also floated above the trees and then fallen back to the ground before I did that. Would it happen as well or was that just something that happened in a dreamlike state?
I slowed and listened, but I did not hear anyone following. Could I hear? Could I make a sound?
I ran back in the direction I came, back toward the house and as I came out of the clearing I saw Ambrielle standing in the moonlight. She had her eyes closed and her arms in the air, but bent at the elbow. It looked like she was chanting something, swaying as her lips moved. When I got closer her eyes opened and they glowed. She spoke directly toward me.
“Remember what you were told child. Remember what you were told. What you perceive isn’t always real. It is up to you to determine your own destiny.”
In the distance I heard sirens and I saw flashing lights as an ambulance turned into the driveway but had to get into the grass to drive because of all the cars.
Two paramedics got out and rushed toward the house. The front door opened and I saw Father Branum usher them inside. I followed.
Callie and Lisa were hugging one another, standing with Callie’s parents. “Had she been ill and no one told us?”
Sasha was huddled beside Brody and my parents who had moved away from my body so the paramedics could get to me. Only Leopold remained by my side, holding my hand. He kissed my forehead when the men asked him to move away.
That’s the moment I stopped seeing. That’s the moment everything went black. That’s the moment I remembered Leopold’s words.
Focus on the darkness, relax, know that you are safe, even in the dark. Nothing can touch you unless you want it to. You are in control, Dodie. Be at peace with your power.
I didn’t know what I was at the moment, but I knew I wasn’t dead. I was in control and I had the power. What I had first perceived as death wasn’t real. Now it was up to me to determine my own destiny.
Thank you!
Thanks for reading Bittersweet Sixteen. I hope you enjoyed it!
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You’ve just read the first in A Dodie Jenks Novel series. Be watching for Twisted Sixteen and Wicked Sixteen which will be coming soon. I hope you enjoy them all.
If you’d like to read an excerpt from Twisted Sixteen, the second book in the series, please turn the page.
Twisted Sixteen
Chapter One
Well, this wasn’t exactly the way I imagined I’d be at sixteen, but considering I was cursed to die on my birthday, I suppose whatever state I am in is better than being dead.
Hi. I’m Dodie Jenks. Pardon me for not introducing myself right away. My real name is Dorothy Anne Jenks, but my older brother Brody couldn’t say my name right because he was only two when I was born and the name stuck. I just turned sixteen and I’m a ghost or something. Maybe a ghost isn’t the right word for it because I can see my body lying in the hospital bed and I’m hooked up to machines that monitor my vital signs. I have a pulse and I’m breathing on my own. So technically I’m alive in some capacity.
For the last three days I’ve watched doctors and nurses come and go. They’ve run test after test and cannot figure out why I do not wake up. I’d like to know that as well, but I can’t exactly tap one of them on the shoulder and ask the million questions that are running through my mind.
My parents haven’t left my side. They’re still wearing their party clothes from my sweet sixteen celebration. My brother and his girlfriend Sasha had to return to our hometown last night so they could go back to high school today. My grandmother, who I’d been living with for the last month, has been by often, but doctors are limiting the number of visitors I can have at one time for some reason. So only my parents have been able to stay.
The one person who hasn’t been to see me is my boyfriend Leopold. He’s a warlock who was supposed to save me from the curse. I think he did since my body is still alive, but for some reason I’m not in it. I’m just hanging around the room, wearing my gorgeous party dress, watching everything that goes on. In a sense it’s pretty cool until the creepy, dark shadows begin to appear. I don’t like those and I try to stay away so they don’t reach me.
&nb
sp; I know it’s Anson Parker, my grandmother’s next door neighbor and a descendant of the witch Bernadette who cursed my family in the late seventeen hundreds because she was jilted by Walter Doherty when he married another. Anson wants me dead. He wants the curse to claim another Doherty first born daughter, but that didn’t happen. And I’m determined it won’t happen if I can keep skirting the shadows long enough to figure out how to reconnect with my body.
I’ve spent the last thirty days with Leopold allowing him to do observations, which entailed some pretty gross plates of food, and I never truly understood what they had to do with anything. We’d gotten to know each other really well and that is when we fell in love. So if he loves me, then why hasn’t he come to see me here at the hospital? If I could leave this room I would, but I’ve tried. I get as far as the front door of the hospital and find myself right back in this room.
My dad’s cellphone rings again and he answers, leaving the room to talk business. He’s a banker and his secretary has been calling all morning about meetings and appointments needing to be rescheduled. I can see that my being hospitalized is not making his life easy. Well, having a three-hundred-year-old curse hanging over my head wasn’t easy for me either, but I lived through it.
My mom sat in the arm chair, flipping through a magazine for the tenth time. She looks tired. I don’t think she’s slept more than an hour or two at a time since I was brought in early Saturday morning. I know she has to be dying to grab a shower and change her clothes. I know I would if it was me.
The door to the hospital room opened and Ambrielle, the seer, comes in. “Hello, Mrs. Jenks, I hope you remember me. We met at the party?”
“Yes. Yes I do. How are you, Ambrielle? Won’t you have a seat?” My mom actually looks relieved to have a visitor.
“I won’t stay long. I just wanted to come and see how you were holding up and how Dodie is doing.”
“Thank you so much. We’re getting along as well as can be expected. As for Dodie, she hasn’t woken up. The doctors don’t seem to know why, but they are hopeful.”
“I see.” Ambrielle glances around the room until she spots me and then sits in the only other chair in the room. I know she can see me because she saw me at the party after I collapsed. She’d even spoken to me after Anson chased me out of the house before the paramedics arrived.
They chatted for a while and then she said, “You look like you could use a break. Maybe go get a cup of coffee and walk around a bit. I will be more than happy to sit with her while you do.”
My mom was hesitant to accept the offer, but then she did. “I think I will. Cherie is supposed to come by this morning, but I don’t know when and I could really use a change of scenery even for just a few moments. It isn’t easy watching your child lay there lifeless.”
Ambrielle shook her head. “I’m sure it isn’t.”
Mom stood and laid her hand on mine, but I didn’t feel it. “I won’t be long.”
As soon as the door closed, Ambrielle stood and came over to where I was perched on the top of a supply cabinet. “All right, Miss Dodie, we don’t have much time before she returns. How are you doing, child?”
I shrugged, not sure if I spoke she could hear me.
“Hang in there and know that you are safe. I told you at the party your warlock was cunning, but I don’t think he knows his own strength. From what your grandmother told me, his plan was to keep you safe for a twenty-four-hour window and it has now lasted almost seventy-two. It may last longer.”
She walked over to my body on the bed and touched my arm. “I see there is a darkness that is trying to reach you. But you are shielding it away. Keep doing that as long as you can. Don’t give up hope. You have the answer within you.”
The door to the room opened and she lowered her head as if she were praying for me. A nurse came in to check my vitals and then left again.
Ambrielle turned back to look at me. “I know who the dark one is now. I was wrong about your warlock when I warned you against seeking his help because of the Grimoire. But the book belonged to the dark one and he has it back now and that is bad. I will keep watching and do what I can to help protect you.”
She sat back down and it wasn’t long before the door opened again and my parents returned with cups of coffee. She didn’t stay long after that since visitors were limited only a few minutes.
I curled up on the supply cabinet and dozed for a while until voices woke me. Grandma had arrived and so had a few of my doctors and they were discussing plans for my short-term care. My parents didn’t like what they were hearing, and in my sleepy state I didn’t really catch everything that was being said.
All I know is my mom was crying and dad ushered her out of the room again, leaving Grandma to sit with me. I yawned and dozed off again, finding it very tiresome to be in this out-of-body state.
When I woke again I was no longer in the hospital room. I was in Leopold’s room at Grandma’s. The usually tidy space was a mess. The bed was unmade. Clothes were discarded on the floor and Leopold looked like he hadn’t showered or shaved in three days.
“Stop pacing, Leopold,” Oscar said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“That’s easy for you to say, dad. You didn’t just put the girl you love in a comatose state that was supposed to last only twenty-four hours but has now lasted seventy-two. I promised her parents that she’d survive the curse and now she’s lying in a hospital bed unresponsive.”
“How many times have I told you not to make promises? Magic can be tricky depending on unforeseen elements.”
“I told Dodie she wasn’t going to die. What if I failed? What if the coma she’s in turns out to only be prolonging a life that is already gone?”
“Stop second guessing yourself. You did what you knew how to do. You told Dodie to relax, feel safe within the darkness, and to know she was in control. How do you expect her to survive if you don’t even trust in yourself?”
“What’s going on in here?” Grandma asked, coming into the bedroom. “I can hear you all over the house.”
“Sounds carry in this house, especially at night, if you didn’t know that.”
“Oh…Oh…Oh, I had no idea.” She looked at Oscar and her cheeks flushed. For a second I thought I was going to be sick. Had they been? My grandmother and his dad? It was bad enough to imagine your parents doing it, but not your grandmother.
“Oscar, did you tell him the news?”
News? What news?
“Not yet.”
“What?” Leopold demanded.
“Dodie is coming home today. The doctor at the hospital has agreed to allow us to move her here until she wakes up.”
“So soon? Don’t they want to keep her at the hospital so they can observe her?”
“You and I both know there is nothing wrong with her. The doctor has run all the tests to prove it. The only conclusion he has come to is that she will wake up on her own and the insurance company feels it’s more cost effective preventative if they set her up in a hospital bed and monitors here.”
He shook his head and sat down on the bench at the bay window on the far side of the room. “I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Jenks would rather not lay eyes on me again. I failed them.”
“You told them she’d be in a coma. Certainly it has lasted longer than you anticipated, but as far as they are concerned this is the best thing right now. Dodie didn’t die because of the curse. She’s alive. We just have to be patient and wait for her to come back to us.”
He put me in a comatose state? My parents knew before it happened? Why didn’t anyone tell me?
“But what if she doesn’t wake up?” he asked. “I have this gut feeling that something went wrong. She should have woken by now.”
Oscar placed his hands on his hips. “She’ll wake up when it is time for her to wake up. Let’s just hope it’s before the winter solstice.”
“Why then?” Grandma asked.
“When a spell as powerful as the one Leopold performed
on Dodie is enacted, then it must be resolved or reversed by the next solstice or it cannot be undone.”
About the Author
Lexi Witcher is a young adult author who writes contemporary paranormal stories. She’s always enjoyed stories about falling in love for the first time and watching programing geared toward teens like Pretty Little Liars, The Lying Game, Jane By Design, and Switched at Birth. This is her first young adult novel.
