Bewitching (15 page)

“What?”

“Yep, we don’t tolerate horse thievin’ around here. I’ll have to escort you to the hoosegow.”

I looked at my friends to see who’d done it. Lisette.

“It’s just hoedown jail, silly,” Midori said.

“We’ll bail you out, Emma,” Lisette said. “Sometime.”

I tried to laugh—this was fun, right?—and followed Sheriff Hunter. I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes still until my meeting with Warner. It would be fine. I waved to Lisette. “Send me a cake with a file in it!”

“None of that insubordination, ma’am,” Mr. Hunter said.

When I got to the “jail,” which was really the PE shelter, I noticed it was mostly the most popular kids who were there. I wondered who’d arrested me. The deal was, you paid a dollar to arrest someone, then someone had to pay another dollar to bail them out. The money went to the Eighth-Grade Dance Committee.

“What are you in for?” a girl I’d seen around but didn’t know asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“It’s on your warrant.” She pointed to the paper Mr. Hunter had given me.

“Oh.” I checked. “Horse thievery. How about you?”

“Impersonating a sheriff. I had on one of those little badges. My boyfriend’s bailing me out. He’s the one who got me arrested in the first place.”

I wondered if maybe Warner had had me arrested. But, if he had, he wouldn’t be here until after eight, when his shift ended. I checked my watch again. Seven fifty-five. Maybe I should call and tell him where I was.

Except, duh, I didn’t have his number.

I decided to call Lisette, to see if she’d bail me out.

I reached for my purse. That’s when I realized I didn’t have my purse or my phone. I’d put them down for pictures. All I had was Snoopy. I hugged him.

If I’d had my purse, I could have paid a dollar and bailed myself out. As it was, I had to wait for Courtney or Lisette and hope they hadn’t gotten distracted by cute guys.

Where were they?

Eight o’clock came and went. Eight-oh-five. Everyone else was getting bailed out. Would Warner think I was purposely blowing him off? Of course he would. I approached the high school guy who was in charge of the jail. “Can I go?”

“You got the bail money?”

“No. I left my purse. But my friends aren’t coming, and I’ve been here a long time.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just volunteering ’cause my mom’s on the PTA. Hey, Mom!” he yelled to a woman in a gold vest. “Can she leave if no one’s bailed her out?”

“It’s for the PTA, honey,” the woman said to me.

That’s when I lost it. “Is this even legal? Can they hold me when I’ve done nothing wrong? I’ve been here…” I checked my watch. “… twenty-five minutes. I’m missing the whole hoedown. This is extortion!” I remembered the word from one of Dad’s cases. “Or false imprisonment!”

“It’s all for fun, honey,” the mom said. “Can’t you take a joke?”

“No! I’m not having fun.” I was crying now. “I was supposed to meet someone, and … forget it. I’m leaving. You can’t stop me.” I shoved past the boy.

“You can’t do that.”

“Watch me.” I yelled to the kids behind me. “Who’s up for a jail break?”

No one followed. Actually, they were all staring like I was nuts. Maybe I was.

That’s when Lisette showed up. She held my purse on one arm, a short, fat pumpkin in the other. “Oh, Emma, there you are. Sorry we took so long. We had to pay for the pumpkins.”

“Pay for the pumpkins?” I shrieked. “And you just ditched me here?” I grabbed my purse and ran out, toward the game area.

But when I got there, of course, Warner was gone. I approached the woman at the game, hoping it was his mother, that she’d know where he was, but she said, “He left a while ago.”

I had to find him. I walked over to where the hay wagon was giving rides, but he wasn’t there either. It was close to eight-thirty now.

I looked around for the next half hour. No luck. He must have gone home.

“Hey, you okay?”

I turned around. Kendra. “Fine.” I hoped we wouldn’t talk that long.

“Ditch the mean girls?”

I laughed. “Lisette’s not mean.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“She’s my stepsister.”

“And that’s why she tried out for your solo, to be all sisterly?”

Um, yeah. She’d noticed that. Kendra, I was starting to realize, noticed everything.

“It’s hard for her,” I said. “Her mother died.”

Kendra nodded and looked away a second. Then, a second longer. I tried to figure out what she was staring at, but there was nothing there except a blond little boy in a red and brown cowboy outfit. “Kendra?”

“Sorry. I was thinking. It’s hard when you lose someone. I’ve had it happen. It changes your world, everything, but it doesn’t change who you are. People who are heroes are still heroes. They may get more heroic. People who are the opposite—well, watch out.”

“That’s what my mother says.”

“Mothers can be right about things.”

“Emma!” Lisette was running toward me like I was some long-lost relative. “There you are. Come on! We’re going on the hayride.”

“Great.” I turned to Kendra. “I have to go.”

“Think about what I said.”

I followed Lisette. I was hoping maybe, by some miracle, Warner would be on the hayride. He wasn’t.

When I got home, I put away the jewelry I was wearing and checked the box for my aquamarine earrings.

Of course, they were gone.

11

Monday morning, I searched for Warner in the hall. I didn’t see him. But why would I? We had no classes together. I saw him rarely. Still, I took different routes, long, circuitous ones to each class, searching for him. I planned on telling Lisette I was going to my locker, that that was why I couldn’t walk with her, but she didn’t ask. In fact, she hung back in each class, checking homework assignments or searching for her purse, so I didn’t have to explain.

I never found Warner.

He couldn’t think I’d blown him off, though. I mean, I wasn’t the type of person who blew people off.

Unless, of course, he’d seen me with Midori and Courtney and thought I was a snob by association.

At lunch, I looked for Lisette in our usual spot. She wasn’t there. Neither were Courtney, Midori, or Tayloe. What was with this day? I sat down. The table vibrated with the thrum of hundreds of feet.

A moment later, through it all, I heard a giggle nearby. I turned. It was Lisette.

The smell of watery cafeteria taco meat met my nose, making me feel like I was about to puke. Since Lisette’s arrival at school, the table for four, the table Courtney and her friends had commandeered for the past two years of middle school, had sat empty. Even though they weren’t sitting there, apparently no one else had dared. I’d imagined it being handed down in some special ceremony at the end of the school year. Possibly, there’d be a plaque or something, the way parents commemorated their athletic children on the tile wall outside the school. But, so far, it had been empty.

Until today. Now, Courtney, Lisette, and Midori moved back to the table. They sat down. One empty seat remained, and I started to walk over.

Just then, Tayloe walked through the door. Midori started yelling, “Tay-tay!” really loudly and pointing at the chair.

All living creatures are born with an instinct for self-preservation. It is this instinct that inspires small animals to burrow, butterflies to masquerade as dead leaves, or birds to take flight at the snap of a branch. It inspires us to flee what is dangerous.

I didn’t follow that instinct. Heart racing, I walked to their table, reaching it just before Tayloe did. “Hey, guys.” I slid my books onto the empty spot.

“That’s Tayloe’s seat.” It was Lisette.

Tayloe had reached the table now. She saw the situation, took a step back. “Hi.”

“Sit here, Tayloe,” Courtney said. “We saved it just for you.”

Tayloe gestured toward me. “Maybe we could…”

“No!” Midori snapped. “It’s your chair. We’re all in agreement, right?” She glanced at Lisette.

Lisette nodded. “Absolutely.”

Courtney smirked. “Sorry, Em. No room.”

God, it was sixth grade all over again. I said, “Fine. Whatever,” and turned away. I scanned the room. The girls from fourth period, the ones I’d sat with before Lisette came, were clear on the other side of the cafeteria. No way was I making it that far. I stumbled back to the seat I’d had before and sat. Kendra was on the other side. She didn’t say hi or anything, nor did I. I choked down my lunch in silence, then lay my head down on the table, the way we used to do in first grade, listening to the noises inside it. It sounded like the ocean. What did it mean? What did it mean? Had I done something to them? To Lisette? No. Lisette, Lisette was a dream come true, sort of. I glanced back at her. Her face blurred and looked like the Picasso paintings we’d seen at the Museum of Modern Art, where the features were all different sizes and in the wrong places. Where Lisette’s left eye was supposed to be, there was an ear, an ear with an aquamarine earring.

I looked away, down at the mica cafeteria table, where someone had written
Miss Hill is a pill
.

“Are you okay?” a voice, Kendra’s, asked. At least, that’s what I think she said. She sounded like she was underwater.

I knew I was going to throw up. I stood and lunged to the door, out of the cafeteria, practically knocking someone over on the way to the bathroom. Only when I got there did I realize who that someone was. Warner. I didn’t care. I didn’t care. About anything. I rammed into the girls’ room door, flew through the crowd of girls reapplying eyeliner, to the stall. I didn’t have time to close the door before I started retching.

“Nice!” someone yelled.

“Are you high?” said another.

“Or pregnant?”

When I was done, I closed the door and sat inside the stall, satinsidethestall,
SATINSIDETHESTALL
until everyone left and the room was silent. I was late to chorus and drifted through my next two classes like a ghost.

After school, Lisette had dance, so I walked home alone. I got into bed and lay there, not reading, not sleeping, nothing. When Mother called me for dinner, I said I was sick. I
was
sick. The next day, for the first time in nine years, I went to school without my homework done. After school, I repeated everything from the day before.

Finally, at eight, I decided I was hungry. I hadn’t eaten since I’d puked up lunch the day before. I went to the kitchen. I stopped.

Lisette and Daddy were sitting at the kitchen table. They were carving a jack-o’-lantern

Daddy saw me first. “Emma, are you feeling better?”

“Um, yeah. Yeah, I am.” I walked over to the pumpkin-gut-strewn table and examined the pumpkin. It was the design I’d wanted to do, from my special book (which lay beside them), a tree with a full moon behind it. There was a cat carved on the back, so the jack-o’-lantern would cast a shadow on the wall behind it once lit. “What are you doing?”

“Pumpkin, Pumpkin.” Dad laughed. “Lisette found this great book of designs.”

“Really?” I glanced at her.

She smiled. The odor of slightly rotting pumpkin met my nostrils, but maybe it was my imagination. “I’ve always wanted to make a really special jack-o’-lantern. Mom and I could never afford luxuries like that.” She got a sort of faraway look in her eyes, like she always did when she talked about her mother.

“I’m sorry.” Dad patted her shoulder.

“And since you haven’t been feeling well, I told Daddy we should do it together, as sort of a get-well surprise for you.”

I realized anything I could say was going to sound catty and selfish and childlike. Mother was right. Lisette was Daddy’s real daughter, and he wanted to do things with her, only her. Or she’d fooled him just like she’d fooled me. Whichever it was, I was the loser. I said, “It’s beautiful.”

Lisette nodded, her aquamarine earrings glinting in the fluorescent light. “Let’s take it out where it’s dark.”

We found a candle and a lighter and called Mother down to see too. I wasn’t sure if Mother knew I hadn’t helped, but I didn’t say anything, just smiled like I meant it and admired the jack-o’-lantern, which cast a cat-shaped shadow on the wall.

Hours later, after midnight, I rose. I hadn’t slept at all. I snuck downstairs. There was one door, the door to the pool bathroom, that wasn’t connected to our alarm. The wiring was broken, so it didn’t beep when opened. I snuck out that door and walked through the dark yard to the front.

They’d blown out the candle to save the pumpkin for Halloween. Still, I could see it in the moonlight. I seized it in both hands and carried it out to the street. Then, in the dim glow from the streetlights, I lifted the pumpkin over my head and dashed it down with all my might.

It shattered, smashed into a thousand pieces, and I knew that the next morning, when cars came down the road, it would be orange, then brown pulpy muck.

I didn’t know why that made me feel better, but it did. I stomped on the pieces in a wild dance, my shadow reminding me of the coven of witches dancing in Kendra’s wild symphony. Like those witches, I was dancing on a grave, but it was my own. There was no Emma, no sweet, trusting, gullible Emma who just wanted to paint Lisette’s toenails and pretend to be sisters. That Emma was dead. She was dead, and a new one was born. And that new one knew how to dance, and she danced in the shadowy moonlight, and it felt good to be bad for once, really bad and get away with it, good to be someone else.