Small Town Witch

by Kristen S. Walker

  “I know.” She sighed. “My report card is going to look terrible next week. Mom and Dad are going to be so upset.”

  I rubbed my face. “They’re going to be more upset about you not saying anything sooner. If you told us you were having trouble, we could’ve helped you more.”

  She hung her head. “I know, I just—I’ve never had this much trouble with school before—” She was crying again. I started rummaging around in the car to see if I had any tissues or napkins handy, but there was nothing. “And when I tried to talk to you last week, you just blew me off.”

  I started to say that she hadn’t said anything about her grades last week, but I bit my tongue. She was already upset enough. “Well, the important thing is that we can figure this out and help you now. And it’s just the start of the school year. You got off to a rough start, but you’re not about to flunk seventh grade.”

  Akasha looked up at me through eyes still wet with tears. “So it’s not so bad?”

  I nodded. “It’s never as bad as you think it is when you just get someone to help you, and that’s what your family is here for.”

  She rubbed her face on the back of her sleeve again and sniffled. “Thanks.”

  “Okay, then.” I put the key in the ignition and started up the car. “I’ll even help you talk to Mom and Dad later, too. Right now, though, I’m going to buy you that hot chocolate.”

  On Tuesday afternoon, I had to deliver some prints for an article in the school paper. I handed them over and turned to leave. I saw that Akasha was at another desk across the room, but she looked busy, scowling over a paper she was marking up with a red pen. I decided that it would be better to just leave her alone.

  I almost ran straight into Kai on my way out of the room. “Whoa—hi, Rosa!” he said with a grin as he side-stepped out of the way. “Come to visit the bustling newsroom?”

  “Oops, sorry,” I said. “I was just dropping off some pictures for the tree article. Sara’s got them.”

  He glanced at Sara, then looked back at me, still smiling. “Well, I’ll have to go take a look at those. You always get great shots.”

  “Thanks.” I looked around the room, then beckoned for Kai to step out into the hall with me. When the classroom door was shut, I said, “I read your post online last night. I just wanted to say—thanks. For not mentioning the, um, thing yesterday.”

  Kai waved dismissively. “No problem. I always try to keep my promises.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing that you kept this one.” I sighed.

  He frowned. “You guys still haven’t made up yet, huh?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, if you ever need to talk—” He took a step closer to me, holding out one arm like he was going to put it around me.

  I stepped back out of Kai’s reach. I was starting to remember why I didn’t spend a lot of time with him. “I heard you have a girlfriend who goes to another school,” I said suddenly.

  He hesitated, his arm still in midair, and then let it drop back to his side. He looked away from me at something on the wall and said, “Yeah, I’ve seen a couple of girls who don’t go here, but I’m not dating anyone specific.”

  “Oh.” I turned my head before he could see me smiling at the news, and cleared my throat. “I’d better get back to my class.”

  “Have a good day, Rosa.” Kai opened the door and walked back into the classroom.

  I hurried away, trying to keep my head down in case I ran into anyone else in the halls. I didn’t want them to see how red and splotchy my face was right then.

  Since Akasha was having a hard time with school, I wanted to find a way to cheer her up. I had a few magic tricks up my sleeve that could amuse her. One afternoon, I went up to her room. The door was open, so I went in and flopped down on the bed next to her.

  Akasha sat up and closed her book. “What’s up?”

  I held out a purple flower. “I got you a present.”

  “Is that from Mom’s garden?” She reached out and took the flower. As soon as she touched it, it turned into a purple gel pen.

  Akasha squeaked and dropped the pen onto the bed. “What in the—!”

  I laughed. “It’s just one of those pens that you like. Purple’s still your favorite color, right?”

  She glared at me. “Well, why couldn’t you just give me the pen? Why did you have to make it all—magic like that?”

  My smile faded away. “I thought it would be more fun this way. What’s the big deal? It’s just a little spell.” I picked it up and held it out again. “See? Now it’s just a normal pen.”

  Akasha shrank away. “I don’t want it.”

  I started to frown. Something was seriously wrong with this picture. “You’re around magic all the time. Mom’s a witch, I’m a witch, and in a few months you’ll get to be a witch, too. Why do you suddenly have a problem with it?”

  “I told you, I don’t think that I want to be a witch.” Akasha tucked her knees up and hugged them to her chest. “I don’t really like magic. There are too many things that can go wrong.”

  I dropped my hand, still clutching the pen. “Anything can go wrong with anything, that’s just how the world is. If you practice, you get better and you don’t make mistakes. We always planned on being witches—”

  “You and Mom planned,” she interrupted me. “If you and Mom want to do all of this crazy magic stuff, that’s up to you, but I don’t want it.”

  I gaped at her. When she said that she didn’t want to be a witch before, I thought it was just the bad mood talking. Now she sounded serious. I couldn’t imagine how she felt. What could have possibly made her hate magic so much?

  “Have you told Mom this yet?” I asked her in a low voice. “She is gonna flip out. She’s always wanted us to be witches like her.”

  Akasha shook her head. “I haven’t told her, and you can’t tell her, either. I’m not ready yet.”

  “You’re going to have to tell her soon. Your thirteenth birthday is next year. She’s probably going to want to start training you for the test soon.” Then I thought of something else. “You didn’t write about this in your diary, did you?”

  “It’s none of your business what I write in my diary!”

  “I stay out of your diary,” I said quickly. “But Mom reads it, you know. I told her it was private but she said that she should know what you’re doing and kids can’t have privacy from their parents. If you wrote it down, then she’s probably already read it.”

  “You’re making that up!” Akasha jumped off the bed and ran across the room. She unlocked a small wooden chest and pointed inside at a pile of diaries. She had more than I knew about, at least a dozen books of different styles and sizes. “See, they’re all locked in here. There’s no way she can get them.”

  “She can when you leave them lying around the house for her to find.” I folded my arms. “I’ve seen her reading one before. You left it on the kitchen table after fighting with me, and Mom just picked it up and read it. I caught her. I bet she has a spell that can pick the lock on your chest, too.”

  She closed the chest and shook her head at me. “Mom wouldn’t do something like that. I would know about it.”

  “Fine, ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.” I stood up and headed for the door. “I was just trying to give you a present so it would cheer you up. I guess you won’t have a new purple gel pen to write in your diaries with.”

  Akasha held out her hand. “Okay, fine, I guess I’ll take it.”

  I smiled and gave her the pen. “You’re welcome.”

  “Whatever. Get out!”

  That week, Mom and Dad concentrated on helping Akasha do what she could to fix her grades. They met with her teacher and talked about their options. There wasn’t much that she could do with only a few days left, but together they made a plan and talked about how they could help Akasha do better in the future. Having the help and a plan of action helped Akasha feel better, so she relaxed, which made life at home a
lot easier.

  My problems were not as easy to deal with. Lindsey still wasn’t talking to me, and the longer that things stretched out between us, the less I felt like apologizing. She continued to mope around the school and make dirty faces at Robert and Daniela, or follow Peter around like a lost puppy. It didn’t really make me feel sorry for her.

  I tried to ask Heather for advice about it, but Heather didn’t know Lindsey like I did, and she had a hard time understanding the situation. She kept telling me to just leave her alone and let it blow over. “That’s not how she works,” I tried to say. “The longer that she lets this thing stew, the worse she’s going to get. And this has been coming for months. I should have warned her sooner, and now I’ve missed my chance.”

  On Thursday evening, after Dad finished helping Akasha with her homework, he asked me to come talk to him in his study.

  Dad’s study was a small spare bedroom upstairs, most of it filled with bookshelves for his medical journals and reference books. Some of them were in his office at the hospital, but a lot of them ended up at home. There were always more books than shelves, with a stack of journals on his desk and boxes of more books in the corners.

  Across from his desk was an old slouchy love seat. It was beat up and stained, because it was originally in our living room back when I was little. After years of being used as a fort and a trampoline, the fabric was worn and scratchy, too. But I felt more comfortable there than anywhere except my own bed. When Dad called me in, I sat down in the middle where the cushions were squashed flat.

  Dad sat down in his desk chair and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. That was the pose that meant he was listening as a concerned friend, which he used on his patients at the hospital and his daughters at home when he wanted to have a Serious Conversation(TM). He cleared his throat. “Your mom told me that she was talking to Lindsey’s mom about you girls,” he began. “She said that you and Lindsey had a fight at school a few days ago?”

  I tried to think of how to explain. “It was more of an argument.” I didn’t want him to think that I was shoving other girls off of dance floors or anything drastic. “She’s been having some boy trouble, and we had different opinions about how she should handle it.”

  “Hm, I see,” he said, and paused. The phrase “boy trouble” made him look suddenly uncomfortable, puckering his mouth like he’d tasted something sour. “And now, because of this difference in opinions, the two of you aren’t talking?”

  “Yeah, we’re both pretty much avoiding each other at school. It’s very awkward.”

  Dad nodded. “Lindsey’s mother said that she’s pretty upset about the whole thing. Her mom is worried, and so is yours.”

  “About the argument with me, or the trouble with the boys?” I asked pointedly.

  He smiled a little in a way that suggested he didn’t really find that funny. “Well, I imagine that she’s upset about the boys too, but losing her best friend is really harsh. A little squabble like this isn’t worth ruining a friendship that you’ve had for years. As her friend, isn’t it your part to be there for her?”

  I sighed. “Sometimes, she makes it very hard to ‘be there’.”

  He nodded again, as if he’d expected me to say that. “Yes, well, even the closest friends can have rough patches sometimes. It’s troubling, because you don’t usually fight with anyone. You girls used to be so close, and you shouldn’t let a couple of boys get in the way of that.”

  A part of me wanted to reassure him, but in my heart, I felt like it just wasn’t that simple. The rift between Lindsey and me had been there since our relationship ended, but I couldn’t tell him about that. “I know you’re trying to help, Dad, but it may not work out this time. It’s not the end of the world—I do have other friends.”

  His face shifted into a faintly disapproving frown. “Your mom and I have been worried about that. You’ve been spending a lot of time with this vampire girl—”

  I was getting tired of defending Heather to everyone else. “She’s not a vampire, that’s just her parents—”

  “Yes, I know, I’ve seen her at the hospital.” Dad gave me a sympathetic look. “I feel bad for her medical problems, and it’s good that you want to help her, but this shouldn’t come at the expense of your friendship with Lindsey. For that matter, you two shouldn’t let dating concerns get in the way of your friends, either.”

  Here came the whole lecture about how friends and family were more important than romantic relationships. I rolled my eyes. “I know, Dad. I’m not the one who’s interested in two different boys. You know that I don’t date.”

  “Good.” Dad smiled and leaned back in his chair, which meant that he felt his point had been made and the conversation was over. “Mom and I wanted to make sure that you weren’t throwing away a good friend over a silly argument. I’m sure that you’ll apologize to Lindsey soon and everything will go back to normal between the two of you.”

  “We’ll see.” I left the room.

  I did really hope that we could make up. Even if our friendship wasn’t going back to the way it was four years ago, when we did everything together, we could at least be friends at school. But I wasn’t going to go crawling back to her. Lindsey had to know that what she was doing was wrong.

  Mom was standing in the hallway outside Dad’s study. She smiled at me. “Did you have a good talk with your father?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  I heard a “meow” at my feet and looked down. Menolly rubbed her head on my shoe. I didn’t have time to get distracted by the cat right then.

  What was I doing? Oh, right, my parents wanted me to apologize to Lindsey. Why hadn’t I apologized already? I didn’t want to lose my friend.

  Mom patted me on the shoulder. “Oh, good. We were both worried about you.”

  “Yeah, I just haven’t had the chance to talk to her yet. Don’t worry about it.” I smiled and walked past her to my room.

  I spent the rest of Thursday evening going over what I wanted to say to Lindsey, and most of the next day at school worrying about sounding genuinely apologetic. I didn’t want to just say that I was sorry about it and forget what had happened, because I still thought it was important for Lindsey to get her act together and fix the love triangle situation. I had to think about what I really wanted to say, how I could explain what I thought, and show that I thought we could work past this. I was afraid that I was going to screw it all up or ramble on without making a lot of sense.

  Finally, after agonizing over how to approach her, I handed her a note during lunch, and a few minutes later, she passed me back another note agreeing to meet with me after school. I left Akasha at the library, then went to the Drip.

  Lindsey was waiting for me when I arrived. It was a nice day outside, since the clouds and the rain had only lasted for a day. She’d gotten a table out on the patio. She waved when I arrived and tried to smile, but she looked as nervous as I felt.

  I sat down and we both stared at the table for a few minutes in awkward silence.

  Finally, I took a deep breath. “Look, I said some pretty harsh things the other day. I may not agree with everything that you do, but you are my friend. I know that you’re in a tough position right now, regardless of whose fault it is. I also shouldn’t have yelled at you in front of the whole school where everyone could hear us. That’s probably made things even worse for you. I’ve been having family problems at home, which made me more frustrated, so I was too harsh and took that out on you.”

  When I’d finished, Lindsey nodded. “I have to apologize to you, too,” she said slowly. “Um, part of the reason that I was so mad at you is that you were kind of right about stuff. It hurt when I heard it from Peter, but it hurt even more coming from you, because you’re my best friend. You should be able to tell me when I’m doing something wrong, though, and I should have tried to listen to you better. I just feel like you’ve been kind of distant from me lately and I wanted you to be on my side.” She looked up at me
shyly. “Could we please be friends again, even if I’m selfish?”

  “Of course,” I said right away, and we both smiled. It felt like there was a huge weight taken off of my chest. Then I had to laugh.

  Lindsey gave me a weird look. “What’s so funny?”

  “We both sounded like we rehearsed these complicated apologies,” I said, and she laughed a little, too.

  “So,” I asked after a pause, “how’s it going, anyways? Is Peter still mad?”

  “No. Actually, I apologized to him, too.” Lindsey laughed again. “I rehearsed that one too, so it sounded just as bad, but he accepted it. I promised that I was going to let Robert go and try having a serious relationship with him. We’re going on a date tonight.”

  “Wow, that’s great. Congratulations, I guess? I hope that you two are happy together.”

  “Thanks, I think I will be,” she said, and the smile on her face looked different from the one she usually got when talking about the boys. It was more wistful.

  I looked down at the floor. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  I cleared my throat and glanced up at her. “What happened between us? I mean, I’m glad that we’re friends again, but it’s like we still have this distance between us. And I still don’t understand why you broke up with me.”

  Lindsey gave me a sad look. “I didn’t think that you really wanted to be with me. You were acting so weird. One day, it was like everything was great between us, and the next you would be totally distant. Why did you act like that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, I wanted to be with you, I just—I guess I was young and I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’ve never tried to be in a relationship before. It was hard, finding time to be with you and still have school and family and witchcraft. Mom kept telling me that I was neglecting everything else to be with you, and I was afraid of her finding out the truth about us.”

  “I wish you’d told me this back then, Rosa.” Lindsey sighed. “You kind of broke my heart. Maybe it’s hard for me to trust you again.”

  “I’m sorry.” I blinked rapidly, trying not to cry and make a scene in the middle of the coffee shop. “My heart was broken, too.”