by Holly Bourne
“So I thought this might help,” Mia continues. “Does that sound crazy?”
Alexis and I look at each other.
“It’s not crazy at all,” I get out. “You know we’re always here for you, right?”
Mia wipes her nose and gives a small smile. “I know. You guys have been great about not pushing me on this. Thank you for not telling me off or anything.”
Alexis bites on her lower lip. “Are you sure you only want to cast a spell to stop it, though? Like, shouldn’t you talk to your parents or your GP or something?”
Mia shakes her head firmly. “No, no way. I don’t want anyone to know. I can sort this out by myself.”
My stomach twists, like it’s trying to wring itself out. I don’t feel strong enough to take this on between just the three of us. Worry trickles into my bloodstream. There’s a difference between suspecting your friend is doing that to herself and having it confirmed.
“Guys, you’re looking at me weird,” Mia says. “Stop looking at me weird. This is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I just want you to be OK.”
“I’m fine.”
But you’re clearly not, I think. But I don’t say that. “Well, if you’re sure … How do you do a binding spell then?”
Mia seems relieved that she’s been let off the hook and brightens. She digs around in her bag and says, “I’ve got all the ingredients here.”
“Did you just say ‘ingredients’?” Alexis asks.
Mia gasps, a black candle in one hand. “Oh my God. I did.”
The three of us cackle like witches, which I guess we are, at least for tonight. Hearing Mia laugh is like sucking on a throat pastille.
“You guys are the WORST,” Mia says. She places a torn‑out page of notepad in front of her, along with a pen and a length of black cotton. “How am I supposed to stay a miserable soul‑searching type with you two always making me laugh?”
“You love us and you know it,” Alexis says.
Mia smiles downwards, wrapping the cotton around one of her fingers. “Yes, well, maybe I do.”
Her smile releases the tightness in my stomach and I feel suddenly more able to cope with it all. This is what I love about our friendship group – this ability to share anything. It makes even the hardest stuff feel light enough to carry.
“Can we get back into serious witch mode?” Mia asks. “I do want to take this spell seriously.”
“Of course, of course,” I say.
Alexis and I both sit up and go silent, while Mia strikes a match and leans over to light the black candle. Her sleeve pulls up and there they are. Fresh scars across her forearm – new and angry looking. Oh, I do hope this spell works. I feel sick looking at Mia’s arm. The fact that she’d do that to herself willingly … it makes no sense at all.
“I just need to write down the name of the person I’m binding on this paper,” she says, and writes “Mia Castleton” in her loopy style. I’ve always been jealous of her handwriting. Once she’s done that, she folds the paper up and starts wrapping the black cotton around it.
“I’m binding you, Mia Castleton,” she says. “I’m surrounding you with positive energy so you can no longer harm yourself or the people around you. I’m binding you, Mia Castleton.”
Mia then holds out the bound paper over the black candle and sets it on fire.
“I bind you, Mia Castleton, I bind you, I bind you,” she chants.
I’m not sure whether I should join in or not. To be honest, I don’t really want to bind my best friend. I want her to stop hurting herself, but this feels a tad too drastic. And a lot less helpful than speaking to the school counsellor.
I stay silent as the paper bursts into flames, filling my nostrils with the sharp tang of smoke. I hope the smoke alarm doesn’t go off.
“Umm, Mia?” Alexis says calmly as the flame grows bigger. “Where are you planning on putting that out?”
“Oh no! I didn’t think of that,” Mia replies.
The flame’s almost reached her hand as I grab my mug of hot orange squash. “Shove it in here,” I say.
“I can’t put my bound self in hot orange squash!” Mia complains. “Oww, hang on.” She drops it into my cup with a giant hiss. I look down into my drink, which is now a grey sludge. It looks like the least magical and grossest thing ever.
“Well, that ruined the atmosphere,” Alexis comments. “Nothing like hot orange squash to cramp the witchy vibes.”
I think Mia’s going to cry then. Her face is pale and pinched, but she doesn’t. Instead, thankfully, she bursts out laughing and says, “Well, it’s worth a bloody try, isn’t it? Maybe the orange squash will even be the secret ingredient.”
“Totally won over by the word ‘ingredient’ now,” Alexis says.
We pee ourselves laughing and I think all of us are relieved that the binding is over. Alexis turns to me.
“Right then, Miss Broken Heart,” she says. “It’s your turn. I wonder, oh, I wonder, what your spell is going to be about.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“What’s your surname?” Aidan Chambers asked after our third day kissing by the school gates and then going to McDonald’s.
His question hurt more than it should. “You don’t know my surname?” I said, leaning down and taking a slurp of my milkshake so Aidan couldn’t see my face slump.
“No,” he said. “Why? Do you know mine?”
Of course I do, I thought. You are Aidan Chambers. I have practised what my first name sounds like combined with your surname in case we get married. You have to admit that Sophia Chambers does sound pretty good, doesn’t it?
“Maybe I just remember it from the programme when you were in the school play,” I say.
“Aww, you saw me in the school play?”
Twice. I went two nights in a row.
“Err, yeah. I think so. Maybe it was Carousel? Was that the one you were in?”
Aidan answered the question by kissing me.
I was pleased that he kept kissing me, because I was really enjoying being kissed by Aidan Chambers. Every moment I wasn’t kissing him, I thought about kissing him. I’d go home late, after hours of kissing over strawberry milkshakes, and lie in bed and replay how amazing it felt. I couldn’t believe I had such close contact with him. Him. Aidan Chambers. Finally I could ask him all the things I’d spent three years wondering.
“What’s your favourite song of all time?”
“Do you believe in God?”
“What’s your family like?”
“What’s your favourite food?”
I asked between kisses and milkshake sips and Aidan seemed to enjoy answering all those questions. But he never asked any back.
“Who believes in God any more?” he replied. “I really hate my parents, doesn’t everyone? Burgers.”
It sort of worried me that Aidan didn’t seem that interested in getting to know anything other than the inside of my mouth, but I figured I had nothing interesting to share anyway.
Chemistry lessons became vastly more enjoyable than any Chemistry lesson ever should be. As Miss Matthews blahed on about magnesium, Aidan would run his hand up and down my leg under the table. He never went further than the hem of my skirt, but still, I spent every lesson with a face the colour of a raspberry having a violent reaction to another raspberry. And, outside of class, everyone looked at us. The whole school. I went from a total no one to a full‑blown celebrity. People spoke to me in my other lessons. Some girls started French plaiting their hair. Everyone looked at me, Mia and Alexis in the canteen as we sat where we’ve always sat, sharing a plate of potato smileys.
“I don’t like this,” Mia said, shoving one whole into her mouth. “Everyone looking. I feel like I have to wear make‑up to school now.”
“You wear about ten tons of eyeliner to school every day,” I pointed out, taking a bite of my potato smiley so he was just a smile with no eyes. It was true. Mia was always in detention for her m
ake‑up.
“Yeah, but now I feel like I have to wear concealer too.”
Alexis sat up straighter and fluffed her hair. “I quite like everyone looking.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Mia said.
“It’s funny,” Alexis went on. “I feel famous by association. People keep asking me about you in my lessons.”
“What?” I said.
“Yeah. I have to tell them what a total bitch you are … Only joking!”
I looked over at the cause of all the fuss. Aidan Chambers. The boy I was fairly certain I was falling in love with. He was sitting with his usual crowd, chugging a bottle of Diet Coke, laughing manically at a joke Paul Clarrin had just told. My stomach melted. I touched my lips, but I didn’t go over. We’d never spoken about it, but, apart from the kissing at the gates and the hand‑holding under the Chemistry table, we didn’t acknowledge our relationship at school. I kept pretending it wasn’t a problem, but I secretly worried Aidan was ashamed of me or something. Then I’d remind myself he wouldn’t kiss me at the gates if he was.
“I don’t know why everyone’s so fascinated by me,” I said, trying to play it cool.
“Are you kidding?” Mia replied, and pulled her sleeves further down. “Whenever Aidan has started seeing someone new, you have got obsessed with them. You start asking me for their freakin’ star sign and things.”
“What? That was only that one time,” I argue. “And I KNEW Gemma Teagan was a Capricorn.”
“How about the time you made us stalk Jessica Hadley to check she was really a vegan?” Alexis reminds me.
“We just HAPPENED to be going to town that day anyway. And we just HAPPENED to go into McDonald’s at the same time as her. And I KNEW she was lying about being a vegan. Aidan deserves to be with someone truthful.”
I was not happy about Mia and Alexis bringing up all these other past girls. I was trying very hard to block out the fact that, yes, Aidan went through several girls a month. He may have been my very first kiss, but I certainly wasn’t his. There had been a kind of carousel pattern to his romantic behaviour, but I was sure the ride was going to stop with me. Aidan and I had a connection. I mean, the day before, he’d squeezed my hand and said, “You ask the funniest questions,” when I’d asked him which political party he’d vote for when he was older. I bet he didn’t talk politics with his exes. Plus there was the spell I’d cast on the Bunsen burner that kept us together.
I worried about that spell every day.
Why was he with me, if it wasn’t because of that? I was boring; I was beige. I was the sort of girl you didn’t notice in a corridor for three years. I was torn in two – half of me totally convinced we were falling in love and would stay together for ever, the other half completely sceptical about Aidan’s interest in me.
“I just worry, that’s all,” Mia said, swallowing another potato smiley. “It’s like a circus. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t remember asking your advice.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t be like this.”
“Like what?” I demanded.
“All defensive,” Mia said. “Look, I’m happy for you. I know you’ve fancied Aidan for ever. But he’s not even come over to say hello. He’s not even bothered to introduce himself to me and Lexi. Your best friends! Does that not strike you as weird?”
“It strikes me as weird that you’re supposed to be my friend and therefore supposed to be happy for me.”
Alexis’s head jerked from one side to the other as she watched us argue, her mouth open. I don’t think she’d ever seen me lose my temper.
“I can be happy for you and worried about you at the same time,” Mia said.
“Or maybe just jealous of me,” I replied.
It was Mia’s turn for her mouth to drop open. “You’re kidding, right? Jealous?”
“Yes. Jealous …” I couldn’t think of anything else to say to back that up, so I was left with only one option – to flounce off. But where? Then it struck me – maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. So I found myself walking across the canteen towards Aidan Chambers’ busy table full of popular people. As I moved, everyone around me parted, like they could foresee the upcoming drama.
This is fine, I told myself. Aidan likes you. He said as much two days ago when his tongue was in your mouth. It came out more like “IWD LIDET YOUD” because his tongue was very much occupied, but it’s the thought that counts. It’s fine, totally fine; what you are doing is fine and …
I was at his table.
Aidan had been mid‑laugh when he sensed me and turned, looking a bit shocked.
This is fine, this is fine, this is fine.
“Oh, hey,” was all he said.
“Hey.” I crossed my arms around myself, feeling very odd indeed.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Yeah, you?” I replied.
“Yeah, I’m great.”
Aidan didn’t look or sound great. He seemed unsettled and a tiny bit pissed off. He didn’t put his arm around me, or kiss me, or ask me to sit down. He was just looking at me weirdly, like I’d gatecrashed his life. I just had to stand there, with him watching, and all of his friends watching, and my friends I was trying to prove wrong watching, and basically the whole school watching.
I’d made a huge mistake.
Our love only existed outside the school gates, not inside them.
I’d never felt more embarrassed in my whole life.
Nausea swept over me. My hands shook under my jumper sleeves. I had to style it out, while dying over and over on the inside, my heart ripping at the seams. I had no choice but to pretend this wasn’t totally horrifically awfully terribly awful.
“Umm, sorry to interrupt,” I said to Aidan, my voice casual. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m busy after school today. I forgot to tell you.”
I was pretty pleased with that one. I mean, of course I wasn’t busy after school. I’d literally stopped doing anything after school since Aidan had asked me out. But this was the only way I could think of leaving this situation with any dignity intact.
“Oh,” Aidan said. “No worries.” He did not look worried at all, to be honest. Whereas I now realised I’d just cancelled our date FOR NO REASON and was devastated.
“No worries,” I repeated back at him. Like a stupid twat parrot. “I, er … have to go to class now or I’ll be late.”
This was another lie. Lunch did not finish for another twenty minutes. We all knew this.
“Oh, cool, bye,” Aidan said. “See you in Chemistry.”
I stood there, blinking. Waiting for him to kiss me. Not even a proper kiss, but at least a small peck, one to reassure me that I hadn’t dreamed every afternoon for the last two weeks. But Aidan just waved his hand, like I was a departing grandma who’d come to stay for the weekend. Then he turned back to his mates as if nothing had happened. While I fled from the canteen and burst into tears in the English‑block loos.
“Don’t say I told you so,” I yelled through my tears when Mia and Alexis found me.
“Are you OK?” Mia called down as her head appeared over the top of my stall. “Let us in.”
“I mean, I could be pooing in here,” I went on. “You can’t just go around poking your head over the tops of cubicles.”
“We actually did see a girl pooing just now when we checked the Art block,” Alexis said, her head bobbing up next to Mia’s. “Poor little Year Seven. I think she’ll be traumatised for life.”
I couldn’t even laugh. I just cried harder, scrambling up to let Mia and Alexis into my cubicle. We all crammed inside and they hugged me hard and said, “There, there.”
“I’m so embarrassed,” I said.
“Don’t be, no one saw,” Mia said.
“Apart from everyone in the canteen,” Alexis pointed out.
“I don’t understand …” I sat back on the closed loo seat and folded my face onto my knees. “I mean, Aidan and I
are together, aren’t we? Why is what I did so strange? Why did he behave so strangely? I’m so confused.”
“You are not the only one who is confused,” Mia said. “But I’m mainly confused about why you fancy such an arsehole who doesn’t acknowledge you in public.”
“He does!” I argued. “At the school gates!”
“And just now?”
“I don’t know what just happened. I shouldn’t have … have … broken the terms of our relationship.”
At this, Alexis and Mia both squatted down so they were at my eye level and looked at me with serious faces. “Honey,” Alexis said. “I’m sorry to say this, but I don’t think you’re in a relationship.”
I didn’t want to believe them, of course. I told them thank you, but you are wrong. Thank you, but it was a misunderstanding. Thank you, but I’m sure Aidan and I will figure it out. Thank you, and I will forgive you in time for our wedding, don’t worry.
I kept my head down for the rest of the afternoon. I got all my work done in lessons. I used my hair as a shield against the world. I agreed to go to town with the girls so I had something to do later rather than sitting at home feeling embarrassed. Then we were going to go to Alexis’s and do face masks because she’d heard the sheet ones were on offer at Superdrug. I felt a bit better as Mia, Alexis and I linked arms to leave school and walk home via town. I could kiss Aidan Chambers at the school gates tomorrow. I’d get it back to how it was. I’d just rushed him, that was all. He was just a bit scared by the intensity of his feelings.
It was cold and everyone’s breaths came out as puffs of white that floated up into the freezing afternoon sky. Alexis picked up a twig and pretended to smoke and I howled with laughter – feeling better and glad for my friends. Then Alexis paused, twig still in her mouth.
“Oh, Sophia,” she said.
I ground to a halt just before we got to the school gates.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
But my heart already knew.
I followed Alexis’s gaze. Aidan Chambers was at the gates, as always. But not as always. Because he wasn’t kissing me. He was kissing that Capricorn cowbag, Gemma Teagan.
