by Isobel Bird
Jessica shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “It does seem strange that a guy who never noticed you before suddenly asks you out and dumps the girl he asked in the first place.”
Kate looked at Tara. “And what do you think?” she asked. She knew she sounded really angry, but she couldn’t help it.
“I don’t think it’s your fault,” she said carefully. “But I also don’t think it’s like you to stand one of your friends up to talk to a guy, and you did that last night.”
Kate didn’t know what to say. She felt like she was on trial. And to make things worse, her very best friends were the ones judging her.
“I’ve known you guys since we were all six years old,” Kate said. “I can’t believe you would listen to what other people are saying about me!”
“We’re not saying you did anything wrong,” Sherrie reassured her. “We’re just saying you should be careful. You don’t want people to think the wrong thing.”
Kate looked away. “I think they already do,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”
Hugging her books to her chest, she walked away as quickly as she could without running. Part of her hoped that her friends would come after her, but another part wanted to get away from them. How dare they accuse her of doing something to win Scott away from Terri? It wasn’t her fault that he had asked her out and then changed his mind.
Or was it? Had the spell really done that? Did magic work that way? She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. She’d just wanted Scott to like her.
As she walked to class, she couldn’t help but notice that some people were watching her. Most of them were boys. She was getting used to that. But now some of the girls were staring as she passed them as well. She thought she heard some of them whisper as she went by, but she didn’t want to know what they were saying, so she kept going until she reached the chemistry room. She went to her seat and sat down, pretending to look at her notebook as the other students filed in. Tara came in and took the seat next to Kate, but Kate didn’t say anything.
“All right,” said Miss Blackwood, entering the room as the bell rang and closing the door behind her. “The midterm will have two parts. The first part consists of twenty-five questions. The second is a short experiment. I’ll give you the instructions for the lab when you’ve completed the first part of the test. You have the entire period, so take your time.”
She walked around the class handing out test papers. When Kate received hers, she turned it over and read through the questions. Her heart sank. She hadn’t studied most of the material on the test. She didn’t even know what some of the terms meant.
As she looked at the questions, however, words and formulas began to form in her mind. Sometimes they were sort of familiar, but more often she had almost no idea what they meant. She wasn’t sure if she really knew anything or whether she just thought she did because of the spell, but she didn’t have anything to lose. She quickly filled in the blanks for the first three questions and moved on. Her pencil practically flew over the paper as she read the questions and waited for the answers to come to her. While the students around her sat looking stupidly at their tests, Kate worked rapidly. She wasn’t sure that what she was writing down was right, but it all seemed to make sense in a way she couldn’t exactly explain.
When she finished with the first part of the test, she walked up to Miss Blackwood’s desk. Everyone in the class watched her as she handed in her paper.
“You’re not finished, are you?” her teacher asked.
Kate nodded.
Miss Blackwood gave her a peculiar look. “All right,” she said. “Here are the instructions for the lab.”
Kate took the instructions and walked to the back of the room. She felt people watching her, but she tried to ignore them. She wanted to concentrate on her lab work.
The equipment for the experiments was already set up, and Kate got right to work. Again, she didn’t entirely understand the purpose of the experiment, but she seemed to know exactly what she needed to do. She quickly became engrossed in watching the liquid in her test tubes, and she barely noticed when the other students started coming back one by one and beginning their labs. She was busy taking measurements and recording her results.
The time seemed to fly by, and Kate was surprised to see that when she was finished there were still fifteen minutes left in the class period. As she cleaned up her equipment and prepared to hand in her results to Miss Blackwood, she noticed that Tara, who was using a table near hers, was barely halfway through her experiment. Not only that, but Kate could see that Tara had botched her work pretty badly. Kate felt sorry for her friend—until she remembered their encounter earlier in the morning.
“I thought you said you didn’t study,” Tara whispered as Kate passed by on her way to the sink.
“I didn’t much,” said Kate. “I guess I just studied the right things.”
Tara sniffed. “You seem to be doing everything right these days.”
Kate ignored the comment and, snatching up her paper, walked to the front of the room and placed the paper on Miss Blackwood’s desk. The teacher looked surprised, but Kate left the room before she could say anything. She wasn’t in the mood for talking.
As she approached her locker she saw that Scott was standing there, and she knew he was waiting for her. When he saw her, he smiled and waved, and suddenly all of the bad feelings that had been weighing her down disappeared. Who cared if people were talking about her? Who cared if her friends were acting strangely? Scott Coogan was waiting to talk to her. And she was feeling better and better about the chemistry test. She was getting everything she’d ever wanted with the help of the spells.
Besides, it was Friday. She just had to make it through one day, and then it would be the weekend. She knew that by Monday the whole Terri scandal would have blown over and things would be back to normal. She just had to wait it out.
CHAPTER 5
But first Kate had to survive the rest of Friday, and it was hard. The story about Scott’s ditching Terri and asking Kate out had spread like wildfire, and Kate couldn’t help thinking that Sherrie had had something to do with how quickly the word got around. However it had happened, though, people were most definitely talking about her. And anyone who didn’t know about it did after Scott walked Kate to her second period class, holding her hand. Again, Kate felt the peculiar mix of elation and worry as she walked beside him, her fingers entwined with his. Everything was happening so fast, and the fact that she had made it all happen made her feel a little invincible.
Even though she adored what was happening with Scott, she wasn’t totally happy. Boys were still paying attention to her, but it was becoming distracting. She had thought that when people knew she was going to the dance with Scott they would quit leering at her, so she couldn’t understand why it was still going on now that she had what she wanted.
Even worse, things between her and her friends were still strained. At lunch she sat with Scott and his friends. She enjoyed the fact that the other students were looking at them, and she loved being included in the conversation. But it felt strange to not be sitting with her friends. She couldn’t remember the last time they hadn’t sat at the same table to eat lunch. To make things even harder, the one time she looked over at them, Sherrie shot her a nasty look and said something to Tara and Jessica that made them laugh. Kate knew that they were laughing at her, and she tried to not care. After all, they had practically accused her of doing something wrong. Still, it felt strange to not have them around her, joking and talking about what they were going to do over the weekend.
The weekend was the hardest part. While part of her really wanted to hang out with Sherrie, Tara, and Jessica, she thought it was best if they had some time apart. But she didn’t know how she was going to explain to her parents that she wasn’t hanging out with her friends over the weekend. They normally did everything together, and it was going to look weird if she stayed home alone. As she walked home, she tried t
o come up with a plausible explanation. To her relief, when she arrived at the house she discovered that Kyle had made a surprise weekend visit home from college.
That made things a little easier—it meant that the family spent the weekend going out to eat and seeing movies, and her parents were too busy asking Kyle how things were at college to get around to asking her anything. On Sunday morning they went to church, and when Kyle left on Sunday afternoon Kate worked on her history paper. Now that she knew a little bit about what witchcraft could do, she was finding the research more interesting. And when the phone rang on Sunday night and it was Scott calling to talk for a little while, it almost made the fact that her friends were giving her the silent treatment okay.
But now it was Monday. Kate hadn’t spoken to her friends since Friday, and she wasn’t sure what kind of reception to expect when she walked into school. She was almost relieved when she didn’t see them standing around the lockers, as they usually were. But a few minutes later she heard Sherrie’s unmistakable voice.
“That dress is so cute on you, Jess. It’s definitely better than the green one.”
Kate turned around. Jessica, Tara, and Sherrie were standing there, all of them in new outfits.
“Hey, guys,” Kate said tentatively. “Great clothes.”
“We had a little shopping spree this weekend,” Jessica said. “You know—girls’ day out.”
Kate felt a stab of jealousy. They’d gone out together, and they hadn’t even invited her, hadn’t even given her the chance to say she was busy with her family. But at least they were talking to her again. That was something.
“Sorry you couldn’t come,” Sherrie said, as if reading Kate’s thoughts. “But we figured you’d be busy with other . . . commitments.”
“Well, Kyle came home for the weekend,” Kate said. She knew Sherrie had a thing for her brother and that she would be annoyed that she hadn’t had a chance to come over and drool over him. Still, it didn’t make her feel much better about being left out. Before all this Scott business, they would have gone out together and had a good time. She felt as if she was being punished.
“We’ll all go next time,” Jessica said, trying to sound positive. “We have to shop for our dance costumes pretty soon.”
“Sure,” Kate said, but she felt anything but confident.
Sherrie and Jessica left for their class, and Kate walked to chemistry with Tara.
“She’s still mad, isn’t she?” Kate asked, meaning Sherrie. Kate, Tara, and Jessica sometimes had misunderstandings, and even fights, but it was Sherrie who was the undisputed champ of grudge holding.
“You know Sherrie,” Tara answered. “She always has to be the center of attention. Give her a few days. She’ll settle down.”
They walked into Miss Blackwood’s room and took their seats. The mood in the class was subdued, because everyone knew that they’d be getting the results of their midterms back. When Miss Blackwood came in carrying a stack of test papers, they all held their breath.
“Well,” their teacher said, “I’ve graded all of your papers.”
No one said a word as they waited for her to continue. Miss Blackwood picked up the test on the top of the pile.
“I have to say, I was a little surprised by the results,” she said. “The grades were better than I had expected.”
There was a collective sigh from the students, and some even smiled.
“At least some of the grades were better than I expected,” Miss Blackwood said, dropping the test paper back onto the stack. The sighs of relief turned into groans.
Miss Blackwood walked down the rows of desks, holding the tests in her hands. She stopped in front of one student and paused.
“As usual, we had an A,” she said. She took a paper and handed it to Annie Crandall, who smiled slightly and immediately stuck the paper into her notebook without looking at it.
Annie’s getting an A was no surprise at all. She always got A’s in chemistry. In fact, she was so far ahead of everyone else that Miss Blackwood didn’t count her score when setting the grading curve for everyone else.
Miss Blackwood continued walking. “However, we also had another A,” she said.
Everyone looked around, trying to figure out who might have done so well on one of Miss Blackwood’s tests. As she moved down the rows, they waited for her to stop and present the lucky person with the paper.
Miss Blackwood stopped in front of Kate and held out her test. “Congratulations, Miss Morgan,” she said. “You scored a ninety-seven, the highest grade in the class after Miss Crandall’s.”
Kate looked at the bright red number circled at the top of her test paper. It had an exclamation point beside it, and with good reason. She could hardly believe it herself. She’d thought she’d done well, but this was better than she could ever have imagined. The highest score she’d ever gotten on one of Miss Blackwood’s tests before was a 78.
“I think Miss Morgan’s score proves that this material is not as difficult as some of the other test scores would suggest,” Miss Blackwood said as she began to pass out the other test papers. “I’m disappointed that so few of you improved from the last test to this one, as she did.”
Tara was handed her paper, and Kate looked at it. She’d gotten a 69.
“I passed,” Tara said with a sigh. “Barely, but I passed.” She smiled at Kate, and it was the first genuine smile she’d given her since their misunderstanding the week before.
“Normally I would consider a grade of sixty-five passing on an exam such as this one,” Miss Blackwood said as she gave the last couple of tests back. “But given Miss Morgan’s grade, I can only assume that the rest of you should be capable of the same results. Therefore, the passing grade on this exam is seventy.”
There were exclamations of protest from a number of students.
“That’s not fair,” said Robert Pela, who waved his test with a 65 on it in the air. “I studied really hard for this.”
“Not as hard as Miss Morgan did, apparently,” said Miss Blackwood. “I’m sorry, but I have to set the curve according to the highest grade. Perhaps next time you’ll all put as much effort into learning the material as Kate did.”
Robert turned and glared at Kate. So did a number of other students. Suddenly, her 97 turned from a badge of honor to a mark of shame. She looked over at Tara, hoping she at least would be happy for her. Instead, her friend looked like she was about to start crying.
“What’s wrong?” Kate asked.
“What’s wrong?” Tara said quietly so that Miss Blackwood wouldn’t hear. “Don’t you get it? I failed the exam. That means I have a failing grade in the class. I’m going to be on academic probation, which means I can’t play in any games for the next two weeks.”
Kate had forgotten about Tara’s academic troubles. She wasn’t the best student, and she was having a really hard time this year. Her grades in math and chemistry were borderline failing, and she’d been told that unless she improved them she would have to sit out two weeks’ worth of games. The chemistry midterm had been her last hope, and now she’d failed.
“I studied so hard!” Tara wailed. “And I would have passed . . .”
“If it weren’t for me,” Kate said, finishing her sentence.
Tara looked at her and didn’t say anything.
“I’m really sorry,” Kate said. “I didn’t mean to do it.”
“I even asked you to study with me,” Tara said quietly.
“I said I was sorry,” Kate tried again.
Tara didn’t say anything, but Kate knew she had done something awful. For the rest of the class, she sat staring at her test paper. The spell she’d done had given her a good grade, all right, but she had made a lot of other people fail in the process. Was it worth it? If things were supposed to be working out the way she wanted, why did she feel so terrible?
After class Tara left without waiting for Kate. But several other people made sure they spoke to her, and what they had to say w
asn’t particularly nice.
“Thanks a lot,” Robert said as he passed her on the way out. “Next time you plan on ruining the curve, make sure you let us in on it.”
“Way to go,” said another girl, and Kate knew it wasn’t a compliment.
“I got a failing grade thanks to you,” said Alan Folger. “But I’ll forgive you if you go out with me this weekend.”
Kate ignored him and brushed past the other students waiting to insult her, and made her getaway. She was beginning to feel like there was no place in the school she could go where someone wasn’t angry with her. Even the sight of Scott walking toward her didn’t cheer her up.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s wrong? You look upset.”
“I aced my chem test,” she said.
“And that’s a problem?” Scott asked. “I’ve never dated anyone who was mad about being smart.”
Scott put his arm around her and steered her down the hall. Having him next to her, Kate felt a little better. She felt protected and safe. With Scott there, it didn’t matter if people were angry at her. She was proud of having done well on the test. It wasn’t her fault the other students hadn’t done well. It wasn’t her fault that she was able to make a spell work.
By the time she and Scott reached the end of the hall, she felt a lot better. When he said good-bye and went into his next class, she walked to her own class thinking that things would be okay after all. Her friends couldn’t stay mad at her forever, and people would eventually forget about the test. She did feel bad that Tara would have to miss out on basketball for two weeks, but she would find some way to make it up to her. Maybe she could even do a spell to help out.
She was so busy thinking about all the things that were going on that she wasn’t watching where she was going. When she bumped into someone and dropped her books, she barely noticed.
“I’m sorry,” she began, picking up her fallen books. “I wasn’t looking and—”
“I bet you weren’t,” a girl said. Kate looked up. Terri Fletcher was standing in front of her. A group of Terri’s friends were with her, and they looked at Kate with undisguised hostility.
