by Isobel Bird
Sherrie, she thought suddenly. Sherrie would do something like that. But she was only one person. Mrs. Browning had said that several people had come to see her. Maybe Sherrie was one of them. The more Cooper thought about it the more sure she was of that. But who else? Now that Jessica and Tara weren’t following her every order, Sherrie didn’t have that many friends. But I bet the ones she does have would believe her if she told them a lot of lies about me, Cooper thought angrily.
The bell for the next period rang. Where was she supposed to be? English. In Mr. Tharpe’s room. She really didn’t want to go, but Annie was in that class, and if anyone would help her calm down it was Annie.
Cooper walked to the classroom and went inside. She was relieved to see that Annie was already there, looking at the book they were going to begin discussing in class.
“You won’t believe what just happened,” Cooper said as she sat down beside her friend. “Principal Browning just asked me to stop wearing my pentacle. Apparently, Greeley and a couple of kids complained about it.”
Annie looked at her, stunned. “Can they do that?” she asked.
“Apparently,” Cooper replied. “They’re afraid that people will get the wrong idea about me and be afraid.”
“Aren’t most of them already afraid of you?” asked Annie, earning a glare from Cooper.
“Mrs. Browning said that my pentacle makes some people feel unsafe coming to school.”
Annie let out a long sigh. “What are you going to do?”
“I was hoping you would have some ideas,” Cooper told her. “You’re the practical one, right? I’m the one who yells and stamps her feet. I don’t think that’s going to work this time.”
Annie looked thoughtful. “Maybe there is something I can do,” she said. “But not before tomorrow.”
“What is it?” Cooper asked.
Annie shook her head. “I don’t want to say anything in case it doesn’t work out,” she said. “The big issue right now is whether or not you’re going to wear the necklace tomorrow.”
Cooper shrugged. “I haven’t decided yet,” she answered. “I have to think about it.”
She did think about it, all during Mr. Tharpe’s class. She tried to pay attention to what he was saying about the novel they were reading, but her mind kept wandering back to her discussion with Principal Browning. She hadn’t exactly ordered Cooper not to wear the pentacle. She had simply asked her not to. What was she going to do if Cooper did wear it?
Cooper was torn. It would have been one thing if Mrs. Browning had been unpleasant about the situation. But she was a nice woman, and she had treated Cooper like an adult. Cooper didn’t agree with the principal’s reasons for asking her to not wear the pentacle, but she understood Mrs. Browning’s points. Sort of.
Compromise. She had to laugh when she thought about the principal’s asking her to compromise. It was the same thing she’d asked of T.J. a few weeks before when they’d had a disagreement. Ironically, their fight had been over Cooper’s involvement in Wicca, too. T.J. didn’t want her to be so public about her interest in it because he was afraid it would cause trouble for her. Now she was in trouble for being visible. But it wasn’t the kind of trouble that T.J. was worried about. He was afraid that people would try to hurt her. This was almost worse. She couldn’t even fight her accusers in this case because she didn’t know who they were.
Why couldn’t people understand that her wearing a pentacle was a sign of how proud she was to be studying witchcraft? Why did it have to mean something sinister? Just because a bunch of stupid people who wanted to think they were into something weird misused the sign of the pentagram was no reason why she should have to give it up. It wasn’t her fault that heavy metal bands scrawled pentagrams on their album covers and people who didn’t know any better drew them on stuff to try to scare people or to try to look cool.
She realized that she was playing with her necklace, holding it in her hand and pulling on it as she thought. Had she done that before? Is that why people had noticed it? It wasn’t like she flashed it around or anything. People would have to look pretty hard to even see what she was wearing. Usually, it was tucked under the collar of whatever shirt she was wearing.
She tucked it inside, hiding it from view. She didn’t want to give anyone any reason to complain that she was showing it off or anything. Now she could feel it against her skin, the metal warm from being in her hand. Was it really such a big deal to her to be able to wear it? She asked herself this, as well as other questions, as she waited for class to end. Why was she wearing the pentacle? True, it had been part of the ritual she’d done with her friends. That was one reason. But would she have worn it if it didn’t have that meaning to her?
What did wearing the necklace really mean to her? Was she wearing it to shock people? She had to admit that part of her liked the idea that people would see it and wonder why she had it on. But was that a good enough reason to insist on keeping it on? Or was there another reason, one that went deeper than just making a statement?
She looked down and discovered that she had been drawing pentagrams in her notebook. The page was filled with five-pointed stars. Cooper looked at them. In a child’s drawing they would have just been stars. But they meant much more than that. To her they represented one of the fundamental principles of Wicca—the fact that everything in life is connected. Each of the lines joining the arms to one another was like an electrical wire. Energy flowed through them, allowing the powers of the elements represented by the five points to combine.
Earth. Air. Fire. Water. She named each arm as she drew another pentagram. And then the fifth point, representing Spirit, the unseen element uniting all things. She drew the final line and looked at the design. It was so simple and so perfect. How could anyone see anything malicious in it? To her it was absolutely beautiful—five paths joined into one. It was a symbol both of what she believed and of what she was trying to do with her life, unite the different energies within and around her to create something powerful and magical.
Yes, she decided, it was important to her to be able to wear her pentacle. It wasn’t just something she was doing to stand out. It was something she wore to remind herself of what she was studying and what she hoped to accomplish by her involvement in the Craft. She wasn’t ashamed of it, and she wasn’t going to hide it.
Reaching into her shirt, she pulled the pentacle out again. She let it hang freely for anyone to see. And if they don’t like it, she thought, they can tell me to my face.
CHAPTER 6
The next morning Cooper, Annie, and Kate met Sasha a few blocks from school and walked the rest of the way together. Cooper had filled her friends in on the events of the day before, and they all knew what had happened in Mrs. Browning’s office. She’d also told them about her decision to keep wearing the pentacle.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Kate asked as they neared the entrance to the building. “We won’t think any less of you if you decide not to wear it.”
“Thanks,” Cooper replied. “But I would think less of myself if I didn’t.”
Of all her friends, Kate was being the least supportive, which didn’t surprise Cooper. She knew that Kate worried more about what other people thought than she, Annie, or Sasha did. In fact, Kate had been the only one to actively try to persuade her to go along with Principal Browning. But ultimately her reasons for wanting Cooper to give in hadn’t swayed her, and Cooper had decided to go ahead with her original plan.
“Who knows,” said Sasha. “Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe those people who complained will just back off.”
“We’re about to find out,” said Cooper as they walked up the school steps.
They pushed open the doors and walked down the hall to the lockers. Cooper noticed a couple of people looking at her as she walked by, and she wondered if somehow word had gotten out about Mrs. Browning’s req
uest. Certainly people couldn’t be looking at her for any other reason. She’d gone out of her way to dress—with the exception of the pentacle—more conservatively than usual. She was wearing jeans and a plain denim shirt over a white T-shirt. The pentacle was visible above the collar of the T-shirt, but there was nothing to draw attention to it.
“So far, so good,” Annie remarked as they reached their lockers.
“Not so fast,” Kate remarked. “Principal at three o’clock.”
Cooper looked to her right and saw Principal Browning walking toward them, a neutral expression on her face.
How could she have heard so quickly? Cooper wondered. Someone must have run and told her the minute I walked in.
Mrs. Browning stopped in front of Cooper. “I see you decided not to take it off,” she said.
“That’s right,” said Cooper. “This symbol is important to me, and I don’t see why I should have to remove it just because some people don’t understand it.”
The principal sighed. “Let’s talk about this in my office,” she said quietly.
Cooper looked around and saw that a small crowd had formed. “No,” she said. “We can talk here.”
“Cooper,” Mrs. Browning said. “Don’t make this difficult.”
“I’m not the one making it difficult,” Cooper said loudly enough for those around her to hear. “It’s someone else in this school, someone who’s afraid to talk to me directly. Anything you have to say to me you can say here. That way everyone will know what’s going on.”
The principal looked unhappy. “Fine,” she said. “I’m going to ask you once more. Will you please take off that necklace?”
Cooper looked around at the assembled students. She noticed Sherrie standing toward the back, watching everything intently. Once again Cooper wondered if the other girl was behind the principal’s request. But it didn’t really matter. It had become a larger issue now.
“No,” she said firmly. “I’m not taking it off.”
Principal Browning looked around. “Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to suspend you,” she said.
“Suspend her?” Sasha said indignantly. “For wearing a necklace?”
“A necklace that is offensive and threatening to other students,” the principal replied. “And yes, I’m suspending her. You’ll have to leave school immediately. When you’re ready to discuss this situation we can talk about the conditions of your return. I’ll call your parents.”
Mrs. Browning looked into Cooper’s eyes. Cooper held her gaze, refusing to back down. Finally the principal looked away. “I’m sorry,” she said so that only Cooper could hear. “You left me with no choice.”
“I guess that makes both of us,” Cooper answered. She grabbed her backpack from her still-open locker, slammed the door, and turned around.
Sasha, Kate, and Annie followed her as she walked back to the front doors.
“What are you going to do?” Kate asked anxiously.
“I have no idea,” said Cooper. “Watch a lot of television, I guess.”
“I’m serious, Cooper,” Kate said. “You can’t just not come back, and they won’t let you back until you agree not to wear the pentacle.”
“Then we’ll just have to see who blinks first,” Cooper told her. She paused at the door and looked at her friends. “Thanks for walking with me,” she said. “I’ll see you tonight at class.”
She left the building and walked quickly down the steps. The others watched her as she turned left at the end of the walk and started toward home.
“She is so stubborn sometimes,” Kate said, sounding frustrated.
“That’s our Cooper,” agreed Annie.
“Do you really think she’ll stick it out?” Sasha asked them.
Kate and Annie looked at each other.
“Knowing Cooper—yeah, she will,” Annie said.
A moment later a noticeably upset T.J. came running up to them. “What happened to Cooper?” he asked anxiously. “Everyone is saying she just got thrown out of school.”
“That didn’t take long,” Sasha remarked.
“She wasn’t exactly thrown out,” Annie said, trying to calm T.J. down. “Principal Browning asked her to leave.”
T.J. held up his hands, looking very confused. “Why would she do that?” he asked.
Annie looked at Kate and Sasha for help. She knew that Cooper hadn’t mentioned the issue to T.J. She hadn’t wanted to upset him, and she hadn’t thought things would go so far so quickly.
“She refused to stop wearing her pentacle necklace,” Kate said.
T.J. slammed his hand against the wall. “I knew something like this would happen,” he said, almost shouting. “I told her she was going to get into hot water if she insisted on talking about this stuff.”
“She wasn’t talking about it,” said Annie. “She was just wearing a necklace.”
“It’s the same thing,” said T.J. argumentatively.
Annie was surprised at how upset he was. Normally, T.J. was a soft-spoken guy who rarely raised his voice. But now he was really angry, pacing around and hitting the wall as he talked.
“Why doesn’t she ever listen?” he said. “Why does she always have to be right?”
Annie put her hand on his arm. “It’s really not that big a deal,” she said.
“Yeah,” T.J. said, shaking her hand off. “It is that big a deal. I’ll see you guys later.”
“T.J.!” Annie called after his retreating form, but he kept walking.
“Great,” she said. “That was very helpful.”
“You can’t blame him,” said Kate. “One of his big fears just came true.”
Annie looked at her. She knew Kate was right. But that didn’t help.
“Hey, is it true that your friend is into some weird cult?”
A girl had come up to Sasha, Kate, and Annie. She was a freshman, and none of them had ever seen her before. She was with two friends who hung back, watching her but not saying anything.
“No,” Annie said. “She’s not in a cult. Where did you hear that?”
The girl blushed. “Some kids were talking about it just a minute ago,” she said. “They said she was into Satanism or something.”
“Well, she’s not,” Kate snapped. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”
Kate turned and walked away from the girl and from her friends. Annie and Sasha ran after her.
“Hey,” Annie said. “She was just asking a question. A lot of people are going to want to know what happened. We might as well get used to it.”
“I know,” Kate said. “But I can’t help but think that T.J. was right. We warned Cooper about this.”
“Saying I told you so isn’t going to help,” replied Annie.
As they neared the end of the hallway Jessica and Tara rounded it, almost running into them. Seeing them, Kate looked at Annie and made a face.
“There you guys are,” Tara said. “We’ve been looking all over for you. What’s up with Cooper?”
“What have you heard?” Kate asked.
“That she went off on Browning and got kicked out for a week,” Jessica answered.
“I can’t believe this,” Kate said. “Not ten minutes has gone by and already people have managed to make up a dozen different stories.”
“What really happened?” asked Jessica.
“Cooper refused to take off the necklace she wears,” Annie said, trying to avoid giving them too many details.
“The good luck charm?” Jessica said, puzzled. “Kate, you said that didn’t mean anything.”
“It doesn’t,” Kate said quickly. Then she saw the look on Annie’s face. “At least it doesn’t mean anything bad,” she added.
“I don’t get it,” Tara said. “She got kicked out because Principal Browning doesn’t like her n
ecklace? Please, if bad fashion choices are a reason to get suspended there are girls here who should have been booted out long ago.”
Just then the bell for first period rang.
“Time to get to class,” Kate said, thankful for the diversion. “I’ll explain it to you guys at lunch.”
They split up and went to their respective classes. In Spanish, Annie noticed that Sherrie once again acted as if she wasn’t even there. After days of the same behavior she was getting used to it, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that Sherrie was just gearing up for something later on. She had more immediate problems, though, and those were the ones she concentrated on.
All day long, everywhere she went, she heard people talking about Cooper. Some of them, miraculously, actually had the story of her suspension straight. Most of them, though, had either heard or made up a warped version of the events and were only too happy to pass them along as the truth.
“I guess she told Mrs. Browning that she’d put some kind of curse on her,” Annie overheard someone telling a friend in the hallway. “They found all kinds of weird stuff in her locker, too.”
“I heard she’d made a list of people she wanted to do stuff to,” someone else said while Annie was walking into a classroom, but he stopped talking when he saw Annie glaring at him.
While most people talked about Cooper and what she was supposed to have done behind Annie’s back, others were more direct. At lunch, while she was sitting with Sasha, two girls from the varsity cheerleading team came over. Annie recognized them as two of the girls she had done Tarot readings for the previous semester.
“Hey, Deb. Hey, Kim,” she said pleasantly.
The two girls looked around anxiously without returning her greeting. “We just need to know something,” Deb said. “Are you like your friend Cooper?”
“What do you mean?” Annie asked them.
“You know—are you into witchcraft? Is that why you were able to do the stuff with the cards?”
Annie looked at Sasha, who had stopped eating and was watching her expectantly. “Why do you ask that?” Annie said.
