Witch Baby and Me At School

by Debi Gliori

  CrAsH, FLASH! goes the storm outside. Oh, please, don’t let it be Daisy making it do that! I try my hardest to put all my worries about Witch Baby to one side and concentrate on playing, but it’s not easy. Every time I inhale, I can smell something burning. I stop playing and sniff. And sniff again. There’s definitely something burning. I drop the chanter and run to open my bedroom door.

  Sniff. Uh-oh.

  The smell is a lot stronger now - it’s coming from downstairs. It’s horrible, like burning plastic.

  ‘JACK?’ I yell, suddenly frightened. ‘JAAAACK?’

  Just as it dawns on me that he won’t be able to hear me because he’ll have his earbuds in, I see him sprinting down the hall yelling, ‘AaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh.’

  We both arrive in the kitchen at the same time, coughing and gagging because the smell has become a thousand times worse. The kitchen is full of dirty-looking smoke and Jack is flapping his hands at me, although I can’t tell if it’s to tell me to stand back or to clear the air. He hauls open the back door, and immediately cold, fresh air pours into the kitchen. Then Jack stuffs his hands into Mum’s oven mitts, opens the oven door - and a huge coil of black smoke unwinds into the kitchen.

  Aha, I think. Dinner is served. Yum.

  Poor dinner. Poor Jack, too. But honestly. What a complete twit he is. Even I know better than to put a plastic tub of lasagne into a hot oven. A microwave, yes, but in a normal oven, plastic melts. Boy, does it melt. Eughhhhhh.

  Jack removes the whole metal oven shelf, which now has the blackened remains of our supper welded to its rungs. He runs with it, smoking hideously (the shelf, not Jack), into the back garden. Great. Dinner and a show.

  ‘Blasted STUPID thing!’ he roars, hurling the oven shelf onto the path. It turns a cartwheel, bounces a couple of times and lands in a puddle, hissing like an annoyed snake.

  The kitchen stinks of burned plastic, so Jack leaves the door open to the rain. Outside, the world looks as if it’s dissolving. Flashes of lightning light up Jack’s pale face and I can see that he’s not having the best of days. For once, his earbuds are dangling from the neck of his T-shirt rather than stuck in his ears.

  ‘Mum’s going to kill me,’ he groans. ‘What a stupid thing to do. For heaven’s sake, how dumb am I?’

  I could answer that, but Jack looks so miserable that I decide it wouldn’t be fair to say anything to make him feel any worse. So instead I say, ‘Let’s see if there’s something else we can eat,’ and we head for the fridge.

  Hmm. Jack peers over my shoulder. Oh dear. There’s a yellowish cabbage, some tired broccoli and a bowl of squishy-looking tomatoes. Tucked in behind where the milk should be, if only someone would remember to buy some, we find a shrivelled chilli and a furry lump of green mould. Aaargh. The fridge is bare. What are we supposed to eat? Then I remember that Mum was going to go shopping while Daisy was at her friend’s house. That means it will be hours before they come home.

  Meanwhile Jack has given up on the fridge and is now rooting through the kitchen cupboards. The kitchen is freezing cold, rain is pouring in the open back door, but there’s my brother, on a mission to find something to eat. With a whoop of triumph he pulls a tin out of a cupboard and waves it triumphantly round his head.

  ‘BEANS!’ he yells. ‘Beautiful beans. Beans, beans, the protein of choice, the more that you eat, the louder the noise …’

  Oh dear.

  ‘Beans, beans, the wonderful fruit,’ he continues. ‘The more you consume …’

  ‘The louder you PROOT,’ we chorus.

  Then there’s an enormous clap of thunder and the lights go out.

  ‘Jack?’

  ‘Lil?’

  It’s pitch black. We find a torch, then stumble around trying to find batteries that aren’t totally flat. After what feels like hours, Jack remembers our old camping gas lantern and we grope about in the darkness for matches to light it with.

  Much later, when Mum and Daisy finally return home, they find Jack and me sharing the tin of beans. Cold beans. Jack has dolloped mayonnaise on top of his, and in the pale gaslight this looks even worse than it sounds.

  Daisy has had a wonderful time at little snakes-as-laces’ house. She calls her new friend Dugger, which probably isn’t his real name, but Jack makes Daisy fall about laughing when he says, ‘Hey, kid, how’s Duggaduggadugga doing?’

  At Dugger’s, Daisy has been watching TV, drinking fizzy juice and eating pizza. Mum rolls her eyes as she tells us this, because she thinks that TV rots our brains in exactly the same way as fizzy drinks rot our teeth. But as she says, it’s making friends that’s important, and Daisy seems to have managed that, despite being a Witch Baby.

  Tonight Daisy doesn’t look like a little witch. She looks completely normal. She jumps when there’s a loud thunderclap, and buries her head in Mum’s cardigan when the lightning flashes. The storm is still crashing and flashing outside, but I’m pretty sure it has nothing to do with Daisy because right in the middle of a deafening crash, WayWoof sticks her paws up on the table, stretches out, and with one large slurp, neatly removes all the mayonnaise from Jack’s beans.

  Yeeeurch.

  ‘Ooohhh, bah dog,’ Daisy says, leaning against my legs and gazing up at my face. ‘What noise make a bah dog, Lil?’

  Oh, I think we all know the answer to that one.

  A bah dog makes a Prrrfffffft noise.

  Gag. Cough. No, Mum, it wasn’t me.

  Fifteen:

  Beastly relations

  Just for a change, it isn’t raining when I wake up. I get dressed slowly, but no matter how much I yawn and stretch, I can’t seem to wake up. Brushing my teeth, I stare in the mirror, wondering if I’ve caught whatever it is that Vivaldi’s got, but I don’t look any different from how I looked yesterday.

  Daisy’s already eating when I go downstairs. Just like yesterday, she’s rubbing breakfast in her hair. Oh, groan. Already, today looks like it’s going to be exactly the same as yesterday. Which means …

  … Suddenly I feel awful. Today will be another day with no Vivaldi. Another day pretending that I’m fine - No, really, I’m perfectly happy on my own. Or even another day trying to dredge up fishy things to discuss with Yoshito. I stare at my cornflakes, wondering how much longer I have to wait until Vivaldi is better.

  Across the table from me, Jack is hoovering down a vast trough of porridge. He’s making the most disgusting, slurping, sucking sounds as he shovels the horrible grey mush into his mouth. I don’t like porridge and neither does Jack, but he has rugby practice today, and he always has porridge because he says it gives him the energy of ten mid-fielders. Sluppa, splott, he goes. Schlooop. I try to tune him out, but no matter how hard I try, porridge sounds are all I can hear. As if today wasn’t bad enough, I now find I’m related to a beast.

  ‘What a complete pig,’ I mutter under my breath, too quietly for Jack to hear, but not, alas, Daisy. I always forget that Daisy has ears like satellite dishes. Her mouth falls open.

  ‘Notta pig,’ she says, but because her mouth is full of partly chewed toast, she doesn’t so much say this as spray it.

  Lovely. I’m surrounded by beasts. Jack’s still going splutt, sluppa, and now Daisy’s spraying everything around her in toast-mush.

  ‘You’re both pigs,’ I hiss, pulling the cereal packets across the table to form a barrier between me and my relatives. I’m completely fed up now. Fed up to the back teeth with my brother, my sister, my school … I close my eyes and push the heels of my hands into my eye-sockets. Blackness rises up in front of me.

  ‘Notta pig,’ Daisy insists in the background.

  Sluppa, Sploot, schlepp, goes Jack, but the noises he’s making sound different now. Louder and clearer, as if he’s closer to me. Huh? I open my eyes. Nope. He’s no closer. I can’t see him properly though. He’s reading the paper, and every so often his arm comes round the front page and lifts a spoonful of porridge up to—

  Hang on.

  That’s
not a hand snaking round the paper.

  No way. NO WAY. Daisy? ‘Daze? DAZE? What are you playing at?’

  ‘Notta pig, Lil. Dack’s an effalunt. Hahahahaha.’

  Oh, help. She’s right. The bits of Jack that I can see have gone all grey and wrinkly. As I gape at him, a snaky grey trunk whips round the paper, whiffles about on the tabletop, finds the rim of the porridge bowl, dips into it and …

  SNOOORK

  It’s such a funny sound that I choke on my cornflakes. Daisy is staring at me, her mouth a round O of delight.

  SNURRRK-A-SNORRRK.

  ‘What noise a hungry Dack makes?’ she whispers, and I’m just about to reply when a clot of porridge gets stuck in Jack’s trunk and he reverse-snorts it out across the table.

  THHHHWORRRKSLUPP. It bounces off the tabletop - SPWOTTT - and hurls itself straight into the rubbish bin with such force that the bin rocks from side to side, going Duggaduggaduggaduggadugga.

  Daisy bursts into peals of laughter. Spell over. WayWoof reappears under the kitchen table and Jack peers round the paper. He has a normal nose, I’m glad to report.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asks, obviously unaware that two seconds ago he was drinking porridge through his trunk. Poor Jack. He hasn’t a clue.

  Time to go. We have the usual five minutes of MacRae madness as we sort out lunch money, snack, shoes, gym kit, bags and homework. Dad’s away on business today so Mum’s driving Jack to school. Daisy and I sit in the back of the car and watch the world go by. Daisy gives a running commentary on what’s going on outside the window, but I’m not really listening because I’m sinking back into going-to-school gloom.

  Treetreetreehousemoooocow, tacktoetreetreetree …’

  Even my baby sister has more friends than I do. I wish Vivaldi would hurry up and get better.

  ‘Carcarlorryttacktoe, Sopssops Sopstreetree.’

  My breath is misting up the car window and I stab at it with my finger, making little marks in the mist which fill up and start to run down the glass. The car slows down and stops. Jack undoes his seat belt, leaps away from Mum (in case she tries to kiss him) and climbs out, calling goodbye over his shoulder. I watch glumly as a group of his friends run across to greet him. Maybe if I learned to play rugby, I’d have loads of friends like Jack. He’s really good at sports, but I’m rubbish. I can barely swim, I duck if anyone throws a ball at me and I hate gym. I can run really fast, but that doesn’t seem to help me make friends. As Mum drives away, I can see Jack surrounded by schoolmates, all obviously delighted to see him. I try to imagine Jamie and Annabel being delighted to see me.

  ‘Jolly good show,’ Jamie would say, shaking my hand politely. ‘Gosh. We’ve been ever so frightfully bored waiting for you to show up.’

  ‘So glad you could make it,’ Annabel would breathe, leaning in to kiss me on both cheeks.

  Urrrgh, keep away, I’d think, with that awful stinky seal breath, but it’s too late …

  MwAH, MwAH, kiss, kiss, she’d go and—

  Ughhhh. NO. I can’t do it. No matter how hard I try, I can’t do it. I simply can’t imagine being friends with them. What about the rest of my class? What about Craig?

  Craig would slap me on the back and roar, ‘How’s it gawn, Lily, eh?’ and then accidentally knock me unconscious with a football.

  Shane? Yoshito? Donald? Mozart? They’re all OK, but the problem is that none of them is Vivaldi. I happen to like Vivaldi best. Never mind, I tell myself. She’ll be back soon.

  TreetreegrasStacktoe,SeepSeep baaabaaabackSeep.’

  As we drive away from Jack’s school and head for Daisy’s and mine, it starts to rain. Big fat drops batter the car’s roof and the fields on either side of the road look like they’re dissolving. Mum groans and switches on the windscreen wipers.

  ‘Disgusting weather,’ she remarks, to no one in particular.

  ‘‘Gusting,’ Daisy agrees. At her feet, WayWoof sighs in sympathy.

  ‘Honestly. Ever since we moved here, the weather’s been filthy,’ Mum sighs. ‘I’m sick of the endless rain. So depressing.’

  ‘’Pessing,’ Daisy says. ‘So, so, so ‘pessing.’

  Mum smiles at Daisy. ‘What we need,’ she says, ‘is some interesting weather. I wish it would do something exciting like snow.’

  ‘Snow?’ I squeak. ‘In September?’

  Even Daisy is aghast. ‘SNOW?’ she echoes. ‘Intemba? No, no, no SNOW.’

  ‘Yes, snow,’ says Mum. ‘I remember one year, long before any of you were born—’

  ‘I borned too,’ Daisy interrupts and Mum laughs.

  ‘No, Daze,’ she teases. ‘We found you at the bottom of the garden under a daisy bush.’ Then she parks the car, switches off the engine and turns to look at me properly. ‘I know you’re feeling a wee bit lonely, Lil. It’s hard work making new friends. All I can say is: give it time. You’re such a great person - thoughtful, funny, kind, slightly mad …’

  Thanks, Mum. You can stop now.

  ‘… helpful, clever, snarky, brave. Once people get to know you, they’ll be queuing up to be friends with you. Just you wait. Till then, if it’s any help, we all love you to bits and think you’re brilliant.’

  ‘Bill yint,’ Daisy agrees, then, ‘No SNOW?’

  And we all burst out laughing. We sit in the car for a bit longer, till all the windows steam up. Then the bell goes and Daisy and I head inside.

  Sixteen:

  The Hisses swap

  ‘Won’t anyone notice that you’re not me?’ the Chin asks. She’s standing outside the bathroom, talking to the Nose through the door.

  ‘No,’ the Nose sighs, gazing at her reflection in the broken mirror*22 over the sink. ‘Today, even Mummy wouldn’t be able to tell us apart.’ And to prove her point, she throws open the door.

  The Chin gasps. There, standing in front of her, is the Nose. But now the Nose looks just like the Chin. Exactly like.

  ‘It’s just a teeny, weeny little spell,’ the Nose mutters. ‘I know we said no more magic but I can’t very well turn up at Witch Baby’s school pretending to be you if I look like me, can I?’

  The Chin frowns. The Nose is right, but a promise is a prom—

  ‘AND,’ the Nose continues, ‘let’s not forget that swapping jobs was your idea. You’re the one who said making money was easy-peasy, so … let’s see how easy you find it. ready?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ the Chin says, lying through her teeth.

  And off they go, in the rain. Unlike the magical downpourings of the night before, this rain is the ordinary, north-western Scottish kind of rain: cold, wet and unwelcome.

  The Chin is heading for the nearest library to borrow a book about how to make money. She is feeling nervous, and is highly likely to cast a spell turning everyone in the library into worms, slugs or even warthogs if she thinks she’s in any danger of being unmasked as a witch.

  Uh-oh. NIGHTMARE.

  The Nose is heading for Lily and Daisy’s school. Unlike the Chin, the Nose will have no hesitation in eliminating everyone within a ten-mile radius if she thinks Witch Baby is becoming too human.

  Uh-oh DANCER.

  Behind them, the Toad blows kisses, then shuts the front door and heaves a sigh of relief. Now she has the house to herself. She sets a pan of nettles and dandelions to simmer on the cooker and goes through to the living room to begin tidying up the mess left after their fight. Outside, the rain keeps on falling.

  ‘I’ll let you do your own milk and sugar, dear,’ Mrs McDonald says, passing a steaming mug of coffee across to the Nose. It’s morning break time, and both teachers are holed up in the staffroom. ‘I couldn’t keep them in again,’ Mrs McDonald continues. ‘I know it’s tipping down outside, but if the children had been cooped up for another day, they’d have started sprouting roots. Children need to get outside and run around, don’t you think?’

  ‘Mmmmn,’ the Nose murmurs, but she’s not really listening. She’s wondering what on earth she’s supposed to do with th
e cup that Mrs McDonald has handed her. It’s full of a black and steaming potion that smells terrible. Can it be that Mrs McDonald is trying to poison her? Surely not. No. Mrs McDonald has poured hot water into another cup of identically horrible liquid and is taking tiny sips from it. That rules out poison. The Nose peers into her cup. Eughhhh.

  ‘You’ll have to go out and supervise them, though,’ Mrs McDonald says, staring through the staffroom window at the children running around outside. Suddenly she leaps forward and raps on the window with her knuckles. ‘NO! Craig. Not by the neck, dear. He’ll choke.’ Then, without a pause for breath, she turns back to the Nose and continues, ‘Can’t leave the wee mites from the nursery running around in the rain on their own. Before we know it, they’ll be up to their armpits in mud.’

  The Nose tries to look interested, but really she couldn’t care less. The only child she’s concerned about is Witch Baby, and right now she’s very concerned indeed. She has just seen her holding hands with another child. Holding hands? Real witches would rather eat wasps than hold hands. Holding hands is what humans do, and is therefore most definitely not how a witch is supposed to behave. The Nose vows that if she finds any more evidence that Witch

  Baby is turning human, then she’s going to grab her and cast a Vortex of Vanishment spell across the whole of the Highlands of Scotland. When she’s finished doing that, there won’t be so much as a midge left to tell the tale—

  Suddenly the Nose is aware that Mrs McDonald is staring at her.

  ‘Drink up, dear,’ the teacher says, ‘then get your coat. I can lend you an umbrella if you need one.’

  The Nose realizes that Mrs McDonald has no intention of joining her in the rain. Mrs McDonald intends to remain in the staffroom, staying warm and dry, reading brightly coloured magazines, while the Nose gets cold and wet. It dawns on the Nose that working with small children and their teachers might be tougher than she thought. Stifling a strong desire to turn Mrs McDonald into a cockroach, she downs her coffee in three scalding gulps and heads out into the rain.