Too Much Witch

by Nicki Greenberg

  With thanks to Poppy Ewin, Coco Ewin and Rosie Bell for guest lettering on page 23

  First published by Allen & Unwin in 2019

  Copyright © Nicki Greenberg 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: info@allenandunwin.com

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76052 367 1

  eISBN 978 1 76087 058 4

  For teaching resources, explore www.allenandunwin.com/resources/for-teachers

  Cover and text design by Nicki Greenberg and Sandra Nobes

  Set by Sandra Nobes

  For Poppy

  (witch-in-training)

  CONTENTS

  WEEK ONE

  SUNDAY 20 APRIL, 6PM

  SUNDAY, 10.40PM

  SUNDAY, 11.50PM

  MONDAY 21 APRIL

  MONDAY, 9.45PM

  TUESDAY 22 APRIL

  WEDNESDAY 23 APRIL

  THURSDAY 24 APRIL

  FRIDAY 25 APRIL

  FRIDAY, 12 NOON

  SATURDAY 26 APRIL

  SUNDAY 27 APRIL

  WEEK TWO

  MONDAY 28 APRIL

  TUESDAY 29 APRIL

  WEDNESDAY 30 APRIL

  THURSDAY 1 MAY

  FRIDAY 2 MAY

  FRIDAY, 10.40PM

  SATURDAY 3 MAY

  SUNDAY 4 MAY

  WEEK THREE

  MONDAY 5 MAY

  MONDAY, 7PM

  TUESDAY 6 MAY

  WEDNESDAY 7 MAY

  THURSDAY 8 MAY

  FRIDAY 9 MAY

  SATURDAY 10 MAY

  SUNDAY 11 MAY

  WEEK FOUR

  MONDAY 12 MAY

  MONDAY, 9.30PM

  TUESDAY 13 MAY

  WEDNESDAY 14 MAY

  THURSDAY 15 MAY

  FRIDAY 16 MAY, 3AM

  FRIDAY, 5.30PM

  SATURDAY 17 MAY

  SATURDAY, 11.40AM

  SUNDAY 18 MAY

  WEEK FIVE

  MONDAY 19 MAY

  TUESDAY 20 MAY

  WEDNESDAY 21 MAY

  THURSDAY 22 MAY

  THURSDAY, 9.45PM

  FRIDAY 23 MAY, 7.30AM

  FRIDAY, 5PM

  SATURDAY 24 MAY

  SUNDAY 25 MAY

  WEEK SIX

  MONDAY 26 MAY, 7.40 AM

  MONDAY, 5PM

  TUESDAY 27 MAY

  WEDNESDAY 28 MAY

  THURSDAY 29 MAY

  FRIDAY 30 MAY

  SATURDAY 31 MAY

  SUNDAY 1 JUNE, 7.13AM

  SUNDAY, 10.30AM

  SUNDAY, 3.30PM

  SUNDAY, 6.40PM

  SUNDAY, 8.30PM

  WEEK SEVEN

  MONDAY 2 JUNE

  MONDAY, 10.30PM

  TUESDAY 3 JUNE

  WEDNESDAY 4 JUNE, 7.30AM

  WEDNESDAY, 5PM

  THURSDAY 5 JUNE

  FRIDAY 6 JUNE

  SATURDAY 7 JUNE

  SUNDAY 8 JUNE

  SUNDAY, 11.44PM

  WEEK EIGHT

  MONDAY 9 JUNE, 9.27AM

  MONDAY, 11AM

  MONDAY, 7.30PM

  TUESDAY 10 JUNE, 1AM

  TUESDAY, 7.30PM

  TUESDAY, 10PM

  WEDNESDAY 11 JUNE, 7.30PM

  THURSDAY 12 JUNE, 3AM

  THURSDAY, 8.06AM

  WEEK NINE

  MONDAY 16 JUNE

  TUESDAY 17 JUNE

  PRAISE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Sunday 20 April, 6pm

  Goals for Term Two:

  1. Be the best teacher I can be.

  2. Keep my spells to myself.

  3. DO NOT UPSET MELODY MARTIN.

  Barnaby keeps smirking at me and asking whether I’ve forgotten anything. No, Mister Clever Claws, I have not. Bag packed, lesson plans done. I’ve even made my lunch (which is not easy with one arm in plaster). If Barnaby thinks he can throw me off balance with his little mind games, he’s wrong.

  Sunday, 10.40pm

  Curse that abominable cat! Why didn’t he just tell me?

  Goal number 4: Don’t go to school naked.

  It’s only just dawned on me that I have literally nothing to wear. I can’t wrangle my huge, plaster-encased arm into any of my clothes without ripping them! I’ve been slobbing around the house in pyjamas and old singlets since I got back from hospital, and it didn’t even occur to me to try anything else on. The only decent thing I can get my arm into is the black cape that Mother lent me (‘In case you set the flat on fire, Grizelda. You can’t go outside dressed in rags!’). But there’s no way I’m wearing that. I’m not going to show up at school looking like Queen Halloween! Aargh!

  Sunday, 11.50pm

  Problem solved. Sort of.

  I chopped the left sleeve out of a bunch of my tops. And I made a complete toad-in-the-hole of it. Sewing one-handed is almost impossible, and there was no point even attempting a repair spell, so I tried to tidy things up with a stapler instead. That only made it worse. Plus, I almost stapled my own armpit.

  Barnaby had a good old laugh at my handiwork. He said that if I wanted to look like the loser in a cat-fight, he would have been more than happy to help. Then he tore the right arm out of one of my tops, too.

  I know Barnaby is grumpy about my lack of magic. But it’s not as if I haven’t tried. I was making such great progress before the accident. And I want to keep training, of course I do! But I can’t. It’s like my arm has…withered or something. It’s been four weeks since the surgery now, and I can barely squeak out a simple heat spell. I don’t even know if my magic will come back once I’m out of plaster. And then what kind of a witch will I be?

  Monday 21 April

  What a feeling, being back in my classroom! Well, what a great big jumble of feelings. The kids made me a gigantic WELCOME BACK banner and decorated the classroom with dangly rubber bats and bunches of grinning pumpkin balloons. They dressed up for the occasion, too, in pointy black hats, the shiny nylon kind you get in Halloween costume packs from the two-dollar shop. It took me a moment to realise that they weren’t making fun of me. Hats and bats: that’s what they actually think witches are all about.

  I sneaked a glance at Phoebe to see what she was making of all the hokey Halloween business. But our secret witchling had her hat on just like the others, and a big smile on her face. It didn’t seem to bother her at all. Either that, or she was just doing a very good job of hiding in plain sight.

  The kids were full of questions, which is only natural, I suppose. It felt weird, though, telling a crowd of Ordinary children about things that I’ve had to keep hidden my whole life. I can’t help being a bit scared that something I say or do will turn them against me. That’s just how Ordinaries are with magic: it’s all fun and fairytales until someone gets vanished. Then they start screaming sorcery.

  Of course the kids begged me to show them some ‘tricks’. And of course I said no. I told them that witches don’t do ‘tricks’; magic is powerful stuff and not to be toyed with. Although the sad truth is, I couldn’t do any ‘tricks’ right
now even if I wanted to. Which I definitely don’t.

  Anyway, I’m quite pleased with myself, laying out the rules right from the start. I’m going to be firmer with them this term. I’ll need to: they’ve all come back from their holidays bigger and bolder and more boisterous than before.

  Monday, 9.45pm

  Hairy crabgrass! I just destroyed the telly!

  I was trying to watch the final of Cake Wars – Bake for Your Life, and Barnaby was determined to ruin it for me. He kept walking in front of the screen and blocking my view, and just as they were about to announce the winner, he grabbed the remote and changed the channel. Then he pulled out the batteries and rolled them under the couch! I was so mad – he knows I can’t switch channels by clicking my fingers anymore.

  What happened next was completely unexpected. My left elbow tingled. I felt a jolt go down my arm, and suddenly the channels were flicking by faster and faster until there was a loud BANG and a fizzle of spent-magic fumes, and the screen went black.

  I was so shocked, I forgot all about Cake Wars. Shocked and excited: I had a rush of hope that maybe my magic was coming back. I tried a simple kinetic spell and – yes! – I got the table lamp to rise into the air. Wobbly, but still better than anything else I’ve been able to do lately. I couldn’t hold it, though. The lamp wavered, and I started jerking my arm frantically up and down like a busted robot trying to get it to stay up. Then my arm went dull inside, and the lamp tipped over and crashed to the floor.

  Depending which way you look at it, this is either Brilliant News (my magic hasn’t completely withered, hooray!) or Cause for Extreme Concern (look out, everyone – I make things explode!). I’m leaning more towards Extreme Concern right now. Uncontrollable magic could be worse than no magic at all.

  Tuesday 22 April

  If I thought it was weird being a celebrity in the classroom, it’s way weirder when it’s happening in the staff room. All these people who hardly said hello to me last term have been falling over each other to welcome me back and tell me how excited they are that I’m part of the team. Maybe they feel like there’s some kind of spooky thrill about having a witch working at their school, or maybe they’re just embarrassed about being so unfriendly last term. Who knows? They might even be afraid I’ll throw a spell at them if they’re not nice to me! Whatever it is, I feel very awkward about it. I’m not sure what’s more uncomfortable: having nobody talking to me or having everybody grinning wildly at me all the time.

  Well, not everybody. Ben and Mara and Adeline and Priya don’t think I’m any kind of celebrity, though they all teased me about my new punk rock look with the hacked-off sleeves. Ha ha – even if I had a pink mohawk and safety pins through my ears, I’d hardly stand out more than I already do.

  So far I’ve hardly seen MM at all. I guess that’s not surprising: she’s flat out doing her own job and Principal Biggins’s job as well. Principal B is still hiding in his office, which means he’s still under the hex. Still fatally allergic to children. Still hanging onto his job by a thread…

  I thought that MM and Phoebe might have been able to sort this whole mess out over the holidays, but it looks like the hex was too strong for them. Or maybe MM didn’t even try. Maybe she didn’t want to risk revealing that she and her niece are witches.

  Sigh. Principal B shouldn’t even be my problem. I’m not the one who hexed him. But since I’m the only known witch in the school, he kind of is my problem. If anyone finds out that there’s sorcery afoot, it could set off a major witch panic. And then they’ll all be pointing the finger at me. Freaky Zelda Stitch, the Person Most Likely to Lay a Curse.

  Wednesday 23 April

  I finally got rid of Pom Pom today. It’s bizarre, but I actually felt quite guilty about killing him off... Even though he never existed in the first place!

  I told the class that I had a confession to make: Pom Pom wasn’t real. I only invented him so they’d think I was a regular, dog-owning Ordinary (I didn’t say ‘Ordinary’ of course, I said ‘person’) and not a cat-owning witch. And then, once I’d started telling them all those funny stories about my little dog, I was stuck with him. I said I was sorry, and I hoped they’d forgive me for making Pom Pom up and then bumping him off.

  Eleanor looked indignant about the fact that I’d lied to them all through last term, and Amelia was a bit crestfallen. She has a Maltese terrier just like Pom Pom, so she was quite attached to him.

  Apart from that, the kids were amazingly unbothered, especially when I told them a far better (and all too real) story about Barnaby. Only last week the diabolical creature crept into perfect-neighbour Mark’s flat and peed right onto a freshly baked apple tart – just before Mark took the tart to work and served it up to his boss. This was an absolute winner with my class, though obviously not with Mark’s boss.

  The kids have been nagging me since Monday to let them sign my cast, and since I was feeling a bit sheepish about poor old Pom Pom, I finally gave in and let them. That was a mistake. Afterwards, I noticed a lot of giggling every time I turned my back to write on the whiteboard, and when I got home I found out why: someone had written HOMEWORK SUX in big black letters right down the back of my upper arm. ‘Someone’ meaning ‘Zinnia’. I’d recognise that handwriting anywhere, even back-to-front in the bathroom mirror, which is where I saw it. I’ve tried a whole lot of clean-away spells but none of them worked, so it looks like I’ll be advertising this excellent educational message to the rest of the school for the next week and a half. Way to look professional, Zelda.

  Barnaby said I got exactly what I deserved, because what kind of professional lets a bunch of grotty juveniles scribble all over her? I pretended not to care, as if it was just part of my cool new punk image, but Barnaby wasn’t fooled for a minute. We both know that I’ll be hiding from MM like a frightened rabbit until my cast comes off.

  Thursday 24 April

  I had a run-in with Steve Bullen, the PE teacher, this morning. He was the one person who didn’t need to avoid me last term, because I was so busy avoiding him. I know it sounds silly, but every time I see him strutting around with that got-to-win expression on his face, slamming a ball from one hand to the other, all I want to do is run away before he decides to throw it at me.

  I’m sure he can tell that I was always that kid. The last one picked for any team. The witch-who-can’t-catch. I feel like he can see me just as I was all those years ago, getting my school thrown out of the district softball competition. I still get prickles thinking about it. The ball hurtling towards me. Miss Gasket-Brown screaming ‘Catch it, Zelda! Open your blasted eyes!’ My hands shielding my face. And then – POW! – the ball exploding like a firecracker just centimetres from my head. The bitter smell of my frizzled, burnt hair. The umpire’s whistle, and his accusing shout: ‘Disqualified for foul play! Fairview Primary forfeits the match!’

  Miss Gasket-Brown never forgave me for smashing her dreams of Under Twelves softball glory. And the others barely spoke to me for the rest of the year.

  I wasn’t quick enough to avoid Steve Bullen today. He came jogging up to me as the class was going out to the oval for PE, and asked when I’d be out of plaster. Then he said I’d better get cracking with some exercise the minute the cast comes off, otherwise I’ll have no hope of keeping up with the program he’s designed for camp.

  Ugghhhh! Camp. I’d forgotten all about it. Well, not exactly forgotten. I’d somehow managed to push it away into the back of my mind, and every time it popped up I threw a heap of other junk on top of it so that I didn’t have to think about it. But as Steve helpfully reminded me, it’s less than seven weeks away. Maybe the doctor will say that I can’t go. I’ll definitely ask him.

  Watching Steve Bullen in action with my class only made me dread camp even more. When Lucy missed a catch, he puffed himself up like a giant bullfrog and bellowed, ‘Do you think you WIN by DROPPING THE BALL? Give me six sprints to the fence and back. Now! Move it, butterfingers!’

  What a
slime mould. Even mean old Gasket-Brown looks like the Tooth Fairy compared to that jerk.

  I was still boiling with indignation when the Bullfrog snapped at the class, ‘Right! Once again, I’m going to show you lot how to catch a ball. Who here can actually throw straight?’ Leila had her hand up right away. She caught the ball that he tossed at her, and then pitched it back to him; a good, hard throw. But just as the ball was about to hit the Bullfrog’s mitt, it gave a sudden twist to the right. A twist that defied the usual laws of movement through space. A twist that happened as if…by magic.

  The Bullfrog lunged for the ball, but it leapt away from his fingers. He was thrown off balance, and fell sprawling onto the grass like a dropped pie. Zinnia called out, ‘Bad luck, butterfingers!’ and the class exploded into giggles. The Bullfrog jumped up, red-faced and blasting away on his whistle, and made them all run laps of the oval.

  My arm was tingling and prickling around the elbow, just like it did after I zapped the telly. I swear I didn’t do it on purpose. But the feeling was undeniably there. I must have somehow made that ball swerve. I ducked back into the classroom quick-smart before the Bullfrog could catch me standing there looking like a guilty witch.

  Ten minutes later I had another run-in, this time with MM. Just my luck: we were in the washroom at the same time. My first impulse was to hide the enormous HOMEWORK SUX on my arm, which was almost impossible in a tiny room full of mirrors. I ended up standing with my back pressed against the door, but that made it seem like I was trying to stop her from getting out of the washroom.

  Awkward.

  Then I made things worse by asking how things were going with Principal B.

  MM glared at me and snapped, ‘I’m working on it, Zelda. What do you think I’m doing? Sitting around filing my nails all day? And don’t you dare bother Phoebe about it. It was an accident, as you know, and she feels bad enough already.’