by Isobel Bird
Maintaining an appearance of innocence meant not speaking to Annie for the rest of the day. Several times Kate passed her in the hallway going to and from classes, but Annie just walked by as if she’d never seen Kate before. Kate did the same, and every time she did it made her feel worse. She had to listen to people talking about Annie everywhere she went, and she couldn’t say a word in Annie’s defense.
The only good thing to come out of the accident involving Terri was that, for a change, people weren’t talking about Kate. And although she hated having to watch her friend suffer, Kate was also a little bit relieved at not being the one everyone was staring at and spreading rumors about. People seemed to think that Annie was just trying to impress Kate by harming Terri. Several students even came up to tell her how sorry they were.
“It must be awful,” said a girl Kate recognized as one of the girls who had confronted her a few days before about flirting with the boys.
“You have no idea,” said Kate. As she watched the girl walk away, she thought, It’s like they’re all bewitched. One day they’re accusing me of trying to steal their boyfriends, and the next they’ve forgotten all about it and are ready to blame Annie for Terri’s accident.
Everything seemed to be spinning out of control. It was almost as if the magic had taken on a life of its own once she’d set it loose. She knew that Annie hadn’t pushed Terri, but something had happened on that stairway. Terri hadn’t just fallen. Something had made her fall. And if it hadn’t been Annie, then what had it been? Was it possible that the magic was doing everything? And how could they stop it before things really started getting dangerous? Were she and Annie carrying around some kind of negative energy that could cause people to have accidents? If magic really was energy, maybe it could act like static electricity, zapping people when they got too close. The idea that she might be able to cause even more damage made Kate feel sick to her stomach. For the first time since she’d opened the spell book, she felt afraid. She’d thought that magic was harmless, but now she wasn’t sure.
Kate had basketball practice that afternoon, and all anyone could talk about was Terri Fletcher and Annie Crandall. Kate was so tired of hearing the story of Terri’s fall repeated over and over that when she was done practicing she dressed and left, telling Tara and Jessica that she had to help her mother get ready for a catering event.
As soon as she was home she went to her room, picked up the phone, and dialed Annie’s number.
“How are you doing?” she asked when Annie answered.
“Okay,” Annie said. “But I got called down to Principal Browning’s office this afternoon. She wanted to know what happened.”
“What did you tell her?” Kate asked.
“The truth,” said Annie. “I told her that I was walking up the stairs, Terri was walking down the stairs, and that I didn’t know how she managed to fall.”
“Did she believe you?” Kate said.
“I don’t think so,” Annie replied. “But there was nothing she could do about it. She kept telling me how much pain Terri was in, as if that would make me confess.”
“I’m really sorry, Annie,” Kate said. “I know you wouldn’t be involved in any of this if I hadn’t dragged you into it.”
“It’s okay,” Annie said. “It really is. After all, you and I became friends because of it.”
“I’m afraid I don’t feel much like a friend,” Kate answered. “Ignoring you in the halls. Pretending I don’t really know you.”
“Just think of it as a game,” Annie said. “Eventually it will all be over, and then things can be normal.”
“Will it ever be over?” Kate said. “We’ve tried everything we can think of, and nothing seems to be working.”
“We have to keep trying,” Annie said.
“You mean another ritual?” said Kate. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Not if we do it ourselves,” Annie said. “But maybe if we get Cooper to do it with us . . .”
“Forget it,” Kate said. “She’s not going to help. You heard her this morning. She said she doesn’t know anything about witchcraft. I bet she checked out the book, decided it was a lot of nonsense, and returned it without trying anything in it. If I were her, I’d pretend not to know anything, too.”
“I still think she knows more than she’s letting on,” Annie said stubbornly.
“Well, I have homework to do,” Kate said, trying to change the subject. “I should go.”
“Right,” said Annie. “Well, I guess we won’t be able to talk much for the next few days, at least at school. We’re still on for Friday night, right?”
“I wouldn’t miss it,” Kate said.
After hanging up, Kate spent the rest of the night working on her math homework and trying to not think about magic and spells. Trying to make the figures on her paper do what she wanted them to do was a good way to distract herself, and when she finally went to bed she had succeeded in feeling almost normal again.
CHAPTER 10
The next two days crawled by. The rumors about Annie continued to spread, and Kate had to force herself not to say anything to her friends that would upset the delicate truce they seemed to have formed. Letting them think that Annie was some kind of out-of-control Kate wannabe was her only option, but it was one that tore her up inside. She really liked Annie. They were different in many ways, and probably would never have met if it hadn’t been for the spell book, but they shared something important.
Kate wanted to help her friend, but all she could do was stand by and watch Annie try to get through the days with people talking about her. Already shy, Annie drew even more into herself. She walked silently from class to class, looking at the floor and trying to avoid the stares and comments from the other students.
On Thursday, one of the senior boys pretended to fall when Annie walked by him in the hallway, and everyone around burst into laughter. Kate, who was walking with Jessica, Tara, and Sherrie, watched as Annie turned to say something to the boy, thought better of it, and then fled down the hallway as the laughter followed behind her.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” someone said, interrupting the laughter.
Kate looked around for the speaker and saw Cooper Rivers staring down the boy who had pretended to fall. Everyone was looking at her.
“What’s your problem?” one of the girls said sarcastically. “You her bodyguard or something?”
“I think the real question is what your problem is,” Cooper retorted. “All of you. I swear, if any of you actually had an independent thought your heads would explode.”
She stormed off, leaving everyone staring after her. As she passed Kate and her friends she shot Kate a withering look, as if to say, “I know what you’re doing, and you make me sick.”
“Wow,” said Sherrie. “What a couple of freaks those two are.”
Kate kept quiet. She knew that everyone was probably thinking what Sherrie was thinking about Annie and Cooper. But Annie was her friend, and Annie thought that Cooper could help them. I guess that makes me a freak too, Kate thought as she resumed walking to her class.
By the time Friday afternoon came, Kate was completely miserable. All her friends could talk about was their upcoming shopping trip for costumes, but all she could think about was how things were falling apart. The “Crandall Scandal,” as everyone had taken to calling it, was in high gear. Annie was the school pariah, and Kate knew that it was all her fault. To make things even worse, she had absolutely no idea what she could do to fix things. The magic didn’t seem to be working. Maybe, she thought, she had only one spell in her and she had used it up getting Scott to notice her.
And the whole thing with Scott was just making everything harder. While the rest of her life was a disaster, things with him were going really well. When he was walking her to class or talking to her at lunch, she felt incredibly special and lucky. Part of her even felt proud that she had managed to get him to pay attention to her. But every time
she started feeling happy, a moment later her joy was dampened by the thought of how Annie must be feeling.
Part of her didn’t want to go to Annie’s house that night. But she knew she owed it to her friend, so she threw some things into a bag and headed over.
When she knocked on the door, it was opened by a woman with long dark hair and a kind face.
“You must be Kate,” she said. “Come on in. Annie’s in the kitchen.”
“Thanks,” Kate said as she stepped inside. “You must be Annie’s Aunt Sarah.”
“Yes,” the woman answered as they walked to the kitchen. “It’s good to meet you. Annie’s told me a lot about you. So has Meg. She’s been dying to read to you ever since you were last here.”
When she entered the kitchen, Kate smelled something wonderful. Annie was at the stove, stirring something in a big pot that was the source of the enticing aroma.
“Hi,” she said. “I hope you like vegetable curry.”
“If it tastes as good as it smells, I will,” Kate said. “How are you doing?”
Annie shrugged. “As good as can be expected, I guess. I mean, it wasn’t like I was Miss Popularity before or anything.”
“I really wish I knew what to do,” said Kate.
Annie smiled. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll figure something out. But right now it’s time for dinner.”
Annie’s aunt came back with Meg in tow and they all sat down. As Annie dished out the curry and the salad bowl went around the table, Meg chattered happily about the book she’d been reading. Kate was swept up in Meg’s enthusiasm, and she quickly forgot about her troubles. The curry was delicious, and she complimented Annie on it as she helped herself to seconds.
“I like to cook,” Annie said. “It’s kind of like chemistry. You put things together and see how they react.”
“Annie inherited her cooking abilities from her mother,” Sarah said. “Chloe could make the most amazing dishes out of whatever was left in the refrigerator.”
At the mention of her mother, Annie seemed to become quieter. For the rest of dinner she spoke very little, and the conversation was taken up mostly by Meg’s description of something she’d done in school that day. When everyone was finished, Aunt Sarah took Meg upstairs with her and Kate helped Annie clean up.
“Your aunt is really nice,” Kate said. All through dinner she’d been wondering what had happened to Annie’s parents, and she was hoping Annie would volunteer the information.
“Yeah,” said Annie. “I don’t know what Meg and I would have done without her. She’s really the only family we have left.”
“It must be hard not having your mom around, though,” Kate said, not knowing how else to bring the subject up.
“I guess,” said Annie. “It’s been so long now that I really don’t remember.”
Kate wanted to ask Annie more about her mother and about how her parents had died, but Annie didn’t seem to want to talk about it.
They finished the dishes, then went up to Annie’s room and shut the door. Outside the windows the moon was shining brightly in the clear winter sky, and it filled the room with cold light.
“It’s at the first quarter,” Annie said, standing at the window and looking out. “Next week it will be full.”
Kate sat on a big chair by the door. “You never did tell me why you checked out that book in the first place,” she said. “Or why you bought your own copy.”
Annie turned away from the window and came over to the bed. She sat down on the edge and put her hands in her lap. For a minute she didn’t say anything. Then she sighed.
“When Meg and I came to live here with Aunt Sarah, I was really sad,” she said. “So I disappeared into books. I spent almost all of my time up here reading so that I wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.”
“That sounds lonely,” Kate said, feeling sorry for Annie.
“Not really,” said Annie. “I liked reading. Opening a book was like opening a doorway into another world. I could be anyone I wanted to be and go anywhere I wanted to go. I particularly liked fairy tales, maybe because so many of the girls in them have lost their parents somehow. Whatever it was, I read a lot of them, and I was always fascinated by the witches. They seemed so interesting, even when they were supposed to be evil. I guess it sounds stupid, but I wanted to find out if they really existed. So I started reading about witchcraft.”
“And you found the spell book?” said Kate.
“Not for a while,” Annie said. “I sort of gave up on witches when I got a little older. By then I’d discovered science, and that made a lot more sense than fairies and magic and enchanted castles. But part of me was still curious, and one day when I was looking for books in the library I found the spell book.”
“Which one did you try first?” asked Kate.
Annie laughed. “I didn’t try any of them for a long time,” she said. “In fact, that’s really why I checked it out so many times. It took me that long to get up the nerve to actually try one. Finally I got embarrassed about renewing it so many times, so I bought my own copy.”
“Where did you find one?” said Kate.
“At this bookstore downtown,” Annie said. “I must have walked around the block twenty times before I went inside. I don’t know why, but I was really nervous. But I did go in, and I bought the book. Then I did my first spell. It was one about driving away negativity, and it seemed to work. That’s when I tried the others, and you know what happened with them.”
“Right,” said Kate. “The mice.”
“And that’s pretty much the whole story,” said Annie. “I didn’t do any more spells until you showed up.”
They were silent for a moment. Then Kate asked, “Do you think you’re a witch?”
Annie looked at her and started to speak, but she was interrupted by a knock on the bedroom door.
“It’s probably Aunt Sarah with hot chocolate,” said Annie. “She’s big on making it before bedtime.”
Annie went to the door and opened it. Her aunt was indeed standing there, and she was carrying a tray with three steaming mugs on it. “I thought you and your friends might like some cocoa,” she said.
“Friends?” said Annie. “It’s just me and Kate.”
“There’s one more,” her aunt said, coming into the room. Annie saw that there was someone standing behind her in the shadows. The figure stepped forward, and Cooper Rivers was framed in the doorway. She was carrying a backpack, shaped like a fuzzy pink rabbit, that dangled from her hand.
“Sorry I’m a little late,” she said. “Has the party already started?”
Annie looked back at Kate, who couldn’t believe her eyes.
“No, you’re just in time,” Annie said. “Come on in.”
Cooper stood just inside the door while Annie’s aunt put the mugs of cocoa on Annie’s dresser and turned to go. “You girls have fun,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“What are you doing here?” Kate demanded as soon as the door was shut.
Cooper looked at the mugs of cocoa steaming on the dresser. She seemed to be thinking about what to say next. “Maybe I was afraid one of you would push me down the stairs if I didn’t come,” she said.
“That’s not funny,” said Annie.
“Sorry,” said Cooper. “Humor’s a defense mechanism. You know, to cover up all of my antisocial tendencies and fear of rejection. At least that’s what the therapist I saw once said. But I think he was projecting.”
Cooper looked from Annie to Kate, as if expecting a response. When she didn’t get one she took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said. “I wasn’t going to come, but I changed my mind.”
“Why would you change your mind?” Kate asked.
“Maybe I’m curious,” Cooper said after a long pause.
“Curious about what?” Annie asked.
Cooper brushed her hair out of her eyes. “It’s not every day someone asks you if you know anything about casting spells,” she said.
“Maybe I do,” Cooper said. “But I still don’t see what business it is of yours.”
“You’re impossible,” Kate said. “Why are you here if you don’t want to talk about it?”
“This would be a little easier if the two of you would stop fighting,” Annie said. “Cooper, please sit down and let’s talk about this.”
Cooper and Kate eyed one another suspiciously, as Cooper settled on one of the many cushions strewn around the room. Kate remained in the chair by the door and Annie was on the bed.
“All right,” she said. “Now that we’re all at least in the same room, we can start to figure things out. Cooper, Kate and I came to you because we saw your name in a book we had both checked out of the library. Now, we need to know—did you really check it out?”
Cooper hesitated. “Yes,” she said. “I checked it out.”
“Finally, she admits it,” Kate said. “Hallelujah.”
“I didn’t say I tried anything in it,” said Cooper defensively.
“Well, we did try some of the things in it,” said Annie. “And nothing worked the way we thought it would. In fact, we’ve gotten ourselves into some trouble.”
“So you really did push that drama queen down the stairs,” Cooper said, grinning wickedly. “Who would have thought?”
“No!” Annie said emphatically. “That was an accident. But it is part of the problem. Basically, we did some spells that backfired.”
“Mostly mine backfired,” Kate admitted. “Annie got dragged into it because I asked her for help.”
“So what do you need me for?” Cooper asked.
“We were hoping maybe you had done some of the spells, too,” Annie said. “And we were hoping that yours came out a little better than ours did.”
“How would that help you?” said Cooper.
“Annie has this idea that if we can work as a group—sort of join forces—we can stop what seems to be happening,” said Kate. She hated admitting to Cooper that she’d screwed up, but she had no choice.
