The Unwilling Witch

by David Lubar

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  Contents

  Title

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  1. Old Lady Who?

  2. Witch Way?

  3. Aftermath

  4. Trouble in Store

  5. Bully for Her

  6. The Perfect Brother

  7. Some Things Never Change

  8. Out of Control

  9. In a Real Mess

  10. Expert Help?

  11. Answers and Questions

  12. Duh

  13. Book Learning

  14. Don’t Ever Leave Me

  15. Family Time

  16. Dingdong

  17. Bad Money

  18. Power and Fury

  19. Glub

  20. Teacher’s Pet

  21. Pranks a Lot

  22. How Do You Do That?

  23. Sweeping the Sky

  24. Traps and Treachery

  25. Out on the Town

  26. Flight

  27. Fight

  28. Decision

  29. Back Home

  Excerpt from The Wavering Werewolf

  Starscape Books by David Lubar

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Alison,

  who scares me sometimes

  Author’s Note

  I’ve always been a fan of monsters. As a kid, I watched monster movies, read monster magazines, built monster models, and even tried my hand at monster makeup for Halloween. Basically, I was a creepy little kid. It’s no surprise that, when I grew up and became a writer, I would tell monster stories. I’ve written a lot of them over the years. My short-story collections, such as Attack of the Vampire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales, are full of vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, giant insects, and other classic creatures. The book you hold in your hands is also about a monster. But it is different from my short stories in a wonderful way. Let me explain.

  Years ago, I decided I wanted to tell a tale through the eyes of a monster. That idea excited me, but it didn’t feel special enough, by itself. Then I had a second idea that went perfectly with the first one. What if a kid became a monster? Even better—what if the kid had to decide whether to remain as a monster, or to become human again? The result of these ideas was not one book, but six. It seems the town of Lewington attracts a monsterriffic amount of trouble. To find out more, read on.

  One

  OLD LADY WHO?

  I almost walked right past the woman.

  She was huddled on a bench, so quiet that I didn’t pay any attention to her at first. But her trembling caught my eye. She was scrunched up and shaking all over. I was on my way to meet my friend Jan at the edge of the park across from the mall. Usually, I got there first. This time, Jan would have to wait.

  “Are you all right?” I moved closer, hoping I could figure out what was wrong.

  She didn’t answer me.

  “Ma’am, are you okay? Do you need some help?”

  She raised her head.

  I saw a doll once with a face made from a dried apple—all deep, dark wrinkles and hard ridges. That was her, but she looked even older than that doll. Her eyes stared past me into the distance.

  I tried to get her attention. “Should I go for help?” I reached out to touch her shoulder and let her know I wasn’t running away. “I’m coming back. Don’t worry—I’ll bring someone who can help. You’ll be fine.”

  Her right hand shot out and clutched my wrist. It was so quick and unexpected, I shrieked in surprise.

  “No time,” she whispered.

  “There’s time,” I told her. “There’s always time. Let me get help.”

  “The moment for passing is here.” She searched the park with her eyes as she spoke. “It must be now. Now or never. Now or lost forever.”

  I tried to step back. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I had to break loose. I expected to slip easily from her withered fingers, but they held me like her hand was a steel claw. “It’s okay. I can get help. Just let me go. Please.” I tried to stay calm, but I hated the feeling of being trapped.

  Her grip tightened. She pulled me closer, then raised her left hand toward my face. “Mine is done,” she said, slowly and clearly. “Yours has begun.”

  As she touched me, a blast of power surged through my forehead. It was like walking in front of a giant water hose. The force washed over me with so much strength that I was thrown free of her grip. I hit the ground hard. I looked up, expecting her to be tossed over the back of the bench. I winced at the thought of those old, brittle bones breaking. But she was on her feet.

  “Wait!” I couldn’t let her move.

  She faced me for a moment. “Wisdom and kindness,” she said. Then she sped away. The helpless, shivering woman fled down the path, fast as a young girl, gaining speed with each step, her black dress flapping behind her in the breeze like a flock of ravens.

  Two

  WITCH WAY?

  She disappeared around a bend in the path. In my last glimpse of her, she thrust her arms out to the sides. Her feet seemed to skim the ground. As crazy as this might sound, she made me think of someone trying to launch a kite. I staggered to my feet, then chased after her. She couldn’t have gotten far. I rushed past the bushes that were between us.

  She was gone.

  All I saw was a bird. A large black bird was taking flight. I watched as it pulled itself higher with each wing thrust. The bird became a small dark shape. Then the dark shape became a dot. As the dot vanished, I saw a flash of dazzling white light against the blue sky.

  I stared up at the emptiness for a moment, then stumbled back to the bench. My wrist was sore where she’d grabbed me. The skin felt hot. My forehead felt hot, too. I tried to figure out what had happened. She’d muttered words about “passing,” but none of it made sense.

  “Angie, are you okay?”

  I looked up and saw Jan trotting down the path from the direction of the mall.

  “I’m fine,” I called.

  As she got closer, I noticed she was carrying a sign printed on a piece of poster board: SAVE THE WHALES FOR THE CHILDREN. Jan’s parents were always rescuing animals or saving trees or fighting for other good causes. Jan helped them out by putting up posters.

  “What were you doing?” she asked.

  “Just resting.” It felt funny telling her that, because it wasn’t the whole truth. But I wasn’t sure what the truth was. As I looked away, avoiding her eyes, I spotted a mistake on the second line of the poster. It said: WE ARE THERE ONLY HOPE. Jan’s parents are scientists. I guess they spent so much time studying really deep things like physics and chemistry that they never learned to spell.

  “Hey, that’s wrong,” I said.

  “Where?” she asked. At least in this way, Jan is just like her parents. She’s such a bad speller, it’s a lucky thing she has a three-letter name.

  I pointed to the second line. “There.” As I touched it, I felt a tiny shock. I jerked my finger away and looked at the line again: WE ARE THEIR ONLY HOPE. I could have sworn …

  “Where?” Jan asked again.

  “My mistake. Let’s get going.” I st
ill felt a little dizzy. Maybe that explained why I’d misread the sign. Just to make sure nothing strange was going on, I touched another word on the poster. No shock. Everything seemed normal. That was good—I liked normal.

  “Sorry I was late,” I said to Jan as we walked toward the north side of the park.

  Jan grinned. “I bet the store owners are lined up on the sidewalk, waiting for us. We’d better hurry and get there before they send out a search party.”

  I laughed and started to feel better. This was more like the typical Saturday afternoon I’d expected. We reached the edge of the park, then crossed Commerce Street. We just made it to the mall side before the light changed.

  To the right, I noticed Katrina Betz heading toward us, dressed in the same style long skirt and blue blouse that she always wore. I wondered whether she had a whole closet filled with identical outfits.

  Jan and I said hi. I didn’t really know Katrina, but I’m not one of those snobs who won’t say hi to people who aren’t popular. Katrina glanced up, then rushed past us. Instead of going into the mall, she turned toward the crosswalk and stepped off the curb without even looking at the light.

  “Watch out!” I shouted.

  To our left, a bus hurtled down the road, heading straight toward a meeting with Katrina.

  Three

  AFTERMATH

  When they give us those word problems in math class, I never have a clue what’s going on. You know—a bus is racing along at thirty-seven miles an hour toward a badly dressed girl who’s crossing the street at four miles an hour. Then they ask how much the driver weighs or what’s the length of the bus.

  This wasn’t math class. This was real life. My brain must have figured out that I could reach Katrina in time. I checked for cars, then raced into the street.

  I caught up with Katrina and grabbed her shoulder. She slipped from my grip as I yanked back. But I guess I slowed her down enough. A blast of air and a hot puff of smelly diesel exhaust hit my face as the bus whipped past. We were so close, I don’t think the driver even saw us.

  “Are you trying to get killed?” I shouted at Katrina as I brushed the windblown hair out of my eyes. Then I clamped my mouth shut. I realized I sounded just like a parent.

  Before I could say anything else, Katrina scurried away toward the park.

  “Wow,” Jan said when I got back to the sidewalk. “You saved her life. You’re a hero.”

  I shook my head. The rest of my body shook on its own. “She’d have seen the bus. I didn’t do anything special. Come on, let’s get inside.”

  We went to the main entrance. “Check it out,” Jan said, pointing at an announcement over the doors.

  I read the sign out loud: “MALLWIDE MIDNIGHT MADNESS SALE THIS TUESDAY—ELEVEN P.M. TO ONE A.M.” Perfect. There was no school Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday because of a teachers’ conference, so I figured Mom would let me stay up late Tuesday.

  Jan walked over to the community bulletin board and found a spot for her poster. “Which way should we go?” she asked as she looked around.

  Lewington Mall is built sort of like a wagon wheel with five spokes. Someone with no imagination named the spokes North Mall, South Mall, and so on. That could have been a problem, with five corridors and only four directions, but they called the fifth one Main Mall, even though it’s shorter than the others. From above, I’d guess the whole place looks like a turtle.

  The front door leads right to the Hub—that’s the center area—where there’s a fountain and a stream. People throw pennies in the fountain and make wishes. Some slobs also throw gum wrappers and sales slips into the water. I could make a wish about what should happen to those people.

  Except for some litter, the hub is very nice. The mall owners are always adding new decorations. At the moment, a bunch of workers were carrying in plants and setting them up next to the fountain. Another guy was adjusting the fountain so part of the spray would hit the leaves of the plants. Even though it’s indoors, the Hub is a great place for trees and flowers. The ceiling over the Hub is a big glass dome that lets in lots of light.

  There’s a wooden bridge over the stream. It’s a perfect spot to check out everything. You can see who’s in all the corridors. I headed toward the top of the bridge, but I didn’t make it. Something was very wrong. I leaned against the railing and grabbed the polished wood with both hands. Oh, no …

  “What’s the matter?” Jan asked.

  “I don’t know.” My stomach was twisting around like someone was using it to practice tying knots. I stumbled toward Jan. Wow. The moment I got off the bridge, I felt better.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Jan asked.

  “I’m fine. Honest.” And I was. Just like that, the bad feeling went away. “Where do you want to go?”

  “How about East Mall?” Jan asked. “We could look at swimsuits in Sharon’s Sports Shack. I guess all I can do is look. I only brought six dollars.”

  “Sounds good.” Our gym class was going to use the high school pool on Monday. Mom said my old suit was perfectly fine, but at least I could look at new ones.

  I glanced toward the entrance to East Mall. It was empty except for one person—May Mellon. She was easy to spot in a bright yellow shirt decorated with purple and green parrots, and a pair of orange pants. But it wasn’t her taste in clothes that worried me. There’s this poem that called April “the cruelest month.” It’s by the same man who wrote all those poems about cats. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean or why he picked on April—I just saw it in one of Mom’s books—but the person who wrote those words had never met May.

  “Let’s save East Mall for later,” I told Jan.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jan said. “It’s the meanest of the Mellons. Hard to believe there are more at home like her.”

  I nodded. Amazingly enough, May was one of a set of triplets. Her brothers Clem and Clyde were also in our class. They weren’t as nasty, but they were pretty rude and crude. She also had tons of other brothers and sisters, including two who went to school with my brother Sebastian. I turned away from May. I had better things to do than to dwell on Mellons. “Where now?” I asked Jan.

  She looked toward West Mall. “I’ve got it!”

  I knew what she had in mind. There weren’t any good clothing stores in West Mall, but there was one place we both loved. I grinned back at Jan and we said the name together: “Kitty, Kitty, Coo.”

  Okay—it was a stupid name, but it kind of made sense for a pet store. They had a picture of two kittens and a dove on the sign painted on the window. In real life, I don’t think a dove would hang around with kittens, but you’re allowed to make stuff up for ads. Jan and I loved looking at the kittens and puppies. If the nice owner was there, we got to hold the kittens and pet the puppies. If the nasty owner was there, we couldn’t hold the pets, but we could still look at them until he chased us out and yelled at us for not buying anything. That wasn’t fair. Since I didn’t have any pets, I can’t see how he expected me to buy stuff.

  We hurried down West Mall, past Miller’s Fat-Free Donuts (icky), Pretzels with a Twist (crunchy), Wrench City (boring), the empty place where the video store had gone out of business ages ago, two nail salons, three hair salons, the empty place where the popcorn store had gone out of business two years ago, and the ninety-eight-cent store that had taken over the ninety-nine-cent store in the spot where the dollar store used to be.

  “We’re in luck,” Jan said when we reached the front of Kitty, Kitty, Coo.

  “We sure are,” I said when I saw that the nice owner was there. “It’s our lucky day.”

  In less than a minute, I learned how wrong those words could be.

  Four

  TROUBLE IN STORE

  “Oh, look, they are soooo adorable,” Jan said, rushing over to the cages stacked along one wall.

  Every kitten in the place gazed at us; every pair of eyes begged, Take us home. We are really, really cute.

  I hurried to the kittens. Across t
he shop, a scurrying bundle of puppies in their own cages stared at us in disbelief. I guess they couldn’t understand how we could possibly visit the kittens first.

  Birds in cages over our heads flapped and fluttered, but I think they knew they were stuck in third place. Birds are nice, but you can’t really play with them or take them for a walk. Well, I guess you could take them for a flight, but I bet it would be a bad idea.

  I went up to the first cage of kittens, unable to keep the oooohhhs and aaawwwwws from spilling out of my mouth. “They are so cute,” I said. “It’s a shame they have to be locked up.”

  Jan nodded. “My parents made a poster about that last month. It said: FREE THE PETS. They put it up on a tree in front of the house, and people kept ringing our bell and asking about the free pets.”

  I put my hand on the corner of the first cage. I swear, that’s all I did. I didn’t bang it or thump it or anything. When I touched the metal, I got a shock, like I’d scuffed my feet on a carpet. I jerked my hand back right away.

  I have no idea how the cage door fell open.

  It just flipped right down. So did every other door on every other kitten cage. One after the other—clickita-clackita—they dropped like toppling dominoes.

  I stood there with my mouth open.

  The kittens were a lot smarter. They didn’t stand around.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if it was just the kittens. They scampered through the store, but they didn’t try to hide or escape. At least, they didn’t until a couple of seconds later, when the puppies got out.

  That wasn’t my fault, either. I barely bumped the puppy cages. There wasn’t any spark this time. But the water in one of the dog bowls splashed up and hit the cage door. There was no way the water could have knocked open the door. But it did. Then all the other dog doors swung down.

  And I hardly even touched the birdcages. But when I brushed against them, the birds got startled and fluttered their wings. Somehow, that blew open the doors.

  Everyone in the store helped out. The dogs and cats were a lot easier to catch than the birds. But we finally got them all.