The Five Paths

by Isobel Bird

  Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Annie was able to move. She walked into the classroom and sat down as far from Sherrie as she could get, in the seat closest to the door. She opened her notebook and pretended to be looking at something while she tried to sneak glances in Sherrie’s direction to see if the other girl was looking at her. But every time she looked, Sherrie was sitting there with the same vacant stare and hostile expression.

  The bell rang and Ms. Lopez came in, shutting the door behind her. Annie was relieved to have class begin, as it meant that she could concentrate on what the teacher was saying and try to forget all about Sherrie. But as hard as she tried she couldn’t ignore the fact that the person who hated her more than anyone else in the world was sitting behind her.

  When the bell rang forty-five minutes later Annie gathered up her books and stood up. She wanted to leave the room before Sherrie did. But when she turned to go she found that Sherrie was already ahead of her, pushing past several other students to get into the hallway.

  Annie walked out after her, watching as Sherrie strode quickly away down the hall. It was almost as if she wanted to get away from Annie. That’s weird, Annie thought as she walked to her next class. Usually, Sherrie’s the one coming after people, not running away from them. She knew she should be thrilled that she and Sherrie hadn’t had a run-in. But in some ways that would have been better than not knowing what Sherrie was thinking or planning. This way she had no idea what was going on in Sherrie’s head, and that worried her more than having to stand up to her did.

  She made it to Mrs. Greeley’s class with a few minutes to spare. Kate, Cooper, and Sasha were already there, and they had saved her a seat. T.J. was in the class as well, and he sat next to Cooper. The five of them formed a little group, and they talked while they waited for class to begin.

  “How’d Spanish go?” Cooper asked Annie.

  “Fine,” Annie answered. “Except that Sherrie is in my class.”

  Her friends’ eyes went wide. They all knew about the slapping incident, although none of them had witnessed it firsthand.

  “And?” Kate asked impatiently.

  Annie started to answer, but just then Mrs. Greeley entered the room, shutting the door with such a bang that everyone jumped.

  “Now that I have your attention,” she said in her nasal voice, “I’d like you all to listen closely. I know many of you think that class time is an opportunity to hang out with your friends and catch up on all the latest gossip. Let me disabuse you of that notion. You are here to learn about American history. To make that easier for you I would like you to sit in alphabetical order, beginning with Miss Aarons.”

  Mrs. Greeley pointed to the first desk in the first row along the windows. Emily Aarons got up from a seat next to her friends and walked over to it. She was followed by Jeremy Bowers and Savannah Butler as Mrs. Greeley read off their names and pointed to their assigned seats.

  Annie was in the fifth seat, almost in the back of the room. Her friends were scattered throughout the class, depending on their last names. T.J., being a McAllister, happened to be directly in front of Kate, a Morgan, but Cooper and Sasha were by themselves several rows apart. All Annie could do was look at them all and smile helplessly.

  Things were definitely not getting off to a good start. The Sherrie thing had unsettled her, and now in the one class they all had together she and her friends couldn’t even sit by one another. If this was how all her classes were going to go, it was going to be a very long year.

  Annie barely listened as Mrs. Greeley lectured them about the early American colonies. She knew that it was all in their textbook anyway. Mrs. Greeley was infamous for simply reading her lectures straight out of the text. You didn’t even have to take notes in her class; you simply had to memorize whatever the book said and repeat it on her tests.

  Things improved a little in Annie’s next class, calculus. She was good with numbers, which was why her friends had to suffer through a second year of algebra while she got to sit in with the seniors. Then, in fourth period, she was reunited with Kate and Sasha, this time for driver’s ed. The three of them were excited about taking the class. Cooper already had her license, as well as a car, but the rest of them still had only their learner’s permits.

  Their instructor was Mr. Caffrey, who also taught gym. He was a large, easygoing man, and Annie knew the class was going to be fun. The first day was spent going over the first chapter in the driving manuals issued by the state. Then they were split into groups for actual driving practice, which would begin in a couple of weeks. Annie and her friends managed to get into the same group, which brightened her outlook considerably as she headed off to the rest of her classes.

  She reconvened with Sasha and Cooper at lunch. They were sitting at their usual table when Annie entered.

  “It’s nice to see that some things never change,” Annie remarked as she pulled out a chair and sat down. “It feels like we were just sitting here last week.”

  “I just wish Kate were here,” Sasha said. “I feel bad for her having to eat by herself.”

  “Don’t look now, Crandall, but your man is coming this way,” Cooper said.

  Annie looked around and saw Brian headed for their table. When he reached it he smiled. “Mind if I crash your party?” he asked.

  “Not at all,” Annie replied, amazed that she could sound so cool when she was really thrilled to have Brian sit with her. She knew that people were looking at them and wondering who the new guy was and why he was sitting with Annie. Let them wonder, she thought happily.

  “How’s the first day going?” Cooper asked Brian.

  Brian shrugged. “Better now,” he said. “But it’s been okay. Nothing too bad, nothing too exciting. How about you guys?”

  Annie looked at her friends. She really wanted to talk to them about Sherrie, but with Brian there she couldn’t. He didn’t know about the slapping incident, and she didn’t want him to know. What would he think of her if he found out? She certainly couldn’t tell him that she’d been under the influence of a goddess she’d invoked. She was waiting until they knew each other a little better before bringing up the subject of Wicca.

  “Driver’s ed was cool,” Sasha told him, saving Annie from having to come up with something to say. “Of course, it will be cooler when we’re actually in a car, but hey.”

  The rest of lunch was filled with conversation about their various classes. Annie was happy that Brian was fitting in with her friends so well. So far things were going smoothly, and she wanted to keep it that way. Then, Cooper stood up to go get another drink.

  “What’s that symbol?” Brian asked Cooper, pointing to the pentacle that was swinging from its cord.

  “Oh,” Cooper said, looking at Annie. “It’s just a good luck charm.”

  Brian looked more closely. “It looks familiar.”

  “It’s a really old symbol,” Sasha told him. “You’ve probably seen it on a lot of things.”

  “I know what it is,” Brian said, ignoring her. “It was on a CD that came into the store the other day. One of those goth metal bands or something. Maybe Marilyn Manson or White Zombie—one of those freaky groups. Are you into them?”

  “No,” Cooper said simply as she walked away.

  “It’s just a good luck charm,” Annie repeated, hoping Brian would buy the story and leave it at that. She was surprised that he’d even noticed the pentacle. Even she had forgotten about it until he’d said something.

  By the time Cooper returned Brian had forgotten about it, or had at least lost interest in the subject. He didn’t mention it again for the rest of the period, and when it was time to go to their next classes the only thing he seemed interested in was walking with Annie.

  She had two more classes before the one period she really wanted to get to. The first was advanced chemistry with her teacher from the previous year, M
s. Blackwood. Then she had English with Mr. Tharpe before the last period of the day rolled around. As she walked to her final destination she felt herself growing excited.

  She’d always thought about working on the school paper, the Sentinel. But while she was good with numbers and scientific formulas, words had never been especially easy for her. It wasn’t until she’d started creating her own spells and circle-casting rituals that she’d become more comfortable with writing and using language. Now she felt ready to try something she’d wanted to do but was sort of afraid of.

  She walked into Mr. Barrows’s room. He was the paper’s adviser, as well as the school’s speech teacher. Annie had never taken a class with him, so she had no idea what to expect. There were several other students already in the room, some of whom she knew and others she didn’t. Many of them were seniors, with a few juniors and underclassmen thrown in.

  “Welcome,” Mr. Barrows said, smiling at Annie. He was a tall man, in his mid-thirties, with short brown hair and round glasses. He was wearing a blue shirt with a yellow tie, and his sleeves were rolled up almost to the elbow. He looks like an ad for J. Crew, Annie thought as she smiled back.

  “Why don’t we all form a circle with our chairs,” Mr. Barrows suggested.

  People moved around, getting their seats into a roughly circular shape. Annie took a chair directly across from Mr. Barrows and sat down.

  “Some of you I know from last year,” Mr. Barrows began. “Some of you are new. For those of you who haven’t worked on the paper before, the way this works is that you all make it happen. I’m here to help out, but the real work is yours. We always have an editor and an assistant editor. They work together to assign stories and decide what goes in the paper. We also have a team that works on design and layout. Can I have a show of hands for those who are interested in design?”

  A number of students raised their hands. Mr. Barrows looked around at them and nodded. “Good,” he said. “We should have no problem there. I assume, then, that the rest of you want to be on the writing end. As I said, we start off by choosing our editor and assistant editor. Normally the editor is a senior and the assistant editor is a junior. That way the assistant learns how things work and can take over the following year. Last year our assistant editor was Joel Nevins. Joel, I’m assuming you’ll be taking the editor’s hat this year?”

  “You bet,” replied Joel, a short, pleasant-looking guy sitting a few seats away from Annie. “I didn’t do all the grunt work last year for nothing.”

  Everyone laughed, including Mr. Barrows. “Joel’s not entirely kidding,” he said. “The assistant editor’s job is often a thankless one. But it’s a great way to learn about putting a newspaper together. Are there any volunteers this year?”

  Annie waited for people to raise their hands. She was sure that everyone would want the assistant editor’s job. But to her surprise no hands went up. Mr. Barrows looked around the circle expectantly.

  “Come on,” he said encouragingly. “Someone must want to do this. How about you?”

  He was looking at a girl to Annie’s right. She shook her head. “I’m more interested in reporting and writing,” she said. “I’m not good at the organizational stuff.”

  Mr. Barrows sighed, pretending to be upset. “You writers are never organized,” he said. “Doesn’t someone in this group have a logical bone in their body?”

  I do, Annie thought suddenly. But there was no way she could be the assistant editor. She’d never even worked on a paper before. She didn’t know the first thing about it.

  You didn’t know anything about witchcraft before you tried it either, she reminded herself.

  Before she knew what she was doing she had raised her hand. Mr. Barrows looked at her and smiled. “Ah,” he said. “A willing victim.”

  CHAPTER 3

  “Want some company?”

  Kate looked up from her lunch to see Jessica and Tara standing next to her table. For a moment she was so shocked she didn’t know what to say.

  “If you’d rather be alone—” Jessica started to say.

  “No!” said Kate, interrupting her. “Sit down. Please.”

  Tara and Jessica pulled out chairs and sat. Tara opened her bag and took out a sandwich, while Jessica opened a container of pasta salad. As they did, Kate looked around the cafeteria. Just as she’d thought, Sherrie was there. She was sitting at the table she usually shared with her friends, but now she was sitting all by herself, chewing on some carrot sticks as if she always ate lunch alone.

  “Aren’t you guys going to sit with Sherrie?” she asked hesitantly. When she’d walked into the cafeteria the day before she had been dismayed to see that not only didn’t she have the same lunch period as her friends did but that she had to share her forty-five minutes with Sherrie.

  “Does it look like we’re going to sit with Sherrie?” Jessica asked her.

  “You know what I mean,” replied Kate. “Isn’t she going to freak if she sees you eating with me?”

  “We’re big girls now,” Tara told her. “We can sit wherever we want to.”

  “Translation: We told Sherrie to take a hike,” said Jessica, tucking her long blond hair behind her ear.

  “Really?” Kate exclaimed, not sure she believed it.

  “After what she did to me I knew I would never trust her again,” Tara explained.

  “And let’s just say that Sherrie wasn’t the only one who was woken up by Annie’s slap,” Jessica added. “Seeing how Sherrie acted that day was the last straw for me.”

  “So what did you tell her?” Kate asked, curious to hear how they had told Sherrie the news.

  Jessica and Tara looked at each other. Then Jessica grimaced. “We sort of didn’t say anything,” she said. “Tara was already not speaking to her. I just stopped returning her calls. I think she got the message when I didn’t wait for her to walk to school yesterday.”

  “That explains the weird mood,” said Kate thoughtfully.

  “Weird mood?” Tara echoed.

  Kate nodded. “Annie and Sherrie are in the same Spanish class,” she explained. “Annie was expecting some big showdown when Sherrie saw her, but nothing happened. She said it was like Sherrie didn’t even know she was in the same room.”

  “Annie really shocked her,” said Jessica. “No one has ever stood up to Sherrie like that. I don’t think she’s quite over it.”

  “Either that or she’s planning something really nasty,” said Tara. “Look at what she did to me.”

  “How are things with Al?” Kate asked, referring to the guy Tara had been seeing before Sherrie started a rumor that the two of them had slept together when they hadn’t.

  “We decided to be just friends,” Tara answered. “But it wasn’t because of those rumors Sherrie started about us. Like you predicted, people forgot about that pretty quickly. We hung out a lot over the summer and had a good time, and I really like him, but I don’t really want anything full-time right now.”

  “Listen to you,” Kate said, grinning. “One boyfriend and you’re Miss Hot Stuff.”

  Tara laughed, her freckled Irish complexion turning pink. “I just grew up a little,” she said. “I don’t need a boyfriend to make me happy.”

  There was a pause in the conversation as the three of them ate. Then Kate said, “I really missed you guys.”

  “Same here,” said Jessica. “I can’t believe we let Sherrie keep us apart like we did.”

  “It’s like she had some evil spell over us or something,” said Tara.

  “And she said you guys were the ones who were witches,” added Jessica, laughing.

  “She said what?” asked Kate.

  “Oh, it’s just something Sherrie said,” Jessica said. “She said that you, Cooper, and Annie reminded her of the three witch sisters from Macbeth. I didn’t even know she knew who Shakespeare was, let a
lone read him. Then I realized that she was reading it in English last year. She thought she was so clever dropping literary references.”

  Kate laughed but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t the first time Sherrie had made witch references when speaking about Kate, Cooper, and Annie. Kate had always managed to deflect them, but it bothered her that Sherrie was hitting so close to home, especially when there was really no way for her to know what Kate and her friends were up to. It was almost like she was picking up on something that other people couldn’t see.

  Forget about it, Kate told herself. No one is paying any attention to Sherrie now anyway. That at least seemed to be true. Jessica and Tara were sitting with her again, not with Sherrie. It was like Kate had finally won them over from the dark side or something. Thinking about that made her feel good.

  “So fill us in on what we missed while we were away,” Jessica said. “Who’s that cute guy I saw you with at the restaurant?”

  “Oh, that’s Tyler,” answered Kate. She’d momentarily forgotten about Jessica’s waitressing job. But of course Jessica would wonder who Tyler was after seeing them together.

  “He’s majorly cute,” Jessica said. “I take it you’re going out?”

  “Sort of,” Kate told her. This part was going to be hard to explain, she realized. She couldn’t really tell Jessica and Tara that she and Tyler were on a break from their relationship because she was trying to figure out how to tell her family that she was involved in the Craft. That would mean telling them that she was involved in it, and she wasn’t ready to do that.

  “How can he sort of be your boyfriend?” said Tara, opening a bag of chips and munching on one.

  Kate sighed. “We’re just going through a rough spot right now,” she said. She hated not being able to tell them the truth, especially now that they seemed to be her friends again, but she just couldn’t. They’d had enough trouble understanding her splits from Sherrie and from her ex-boyfriend, Scott. While eventually they’d come around, she knew that telling them she was in a Wicca study group might shatter the tentative bond that was re-forming between them.