Rhymes with Witches

“In that case, we ask you to be one of us,” Keisha said. “Do you accept our invitation?”

Hokey, whispered a voice inside me, but I embraced it, because hokey was better by far than the other.

“I do.”

“And do you swear to keep all our proceedings secret and confidential, or face the consequences?”

“I do.”

She opened the box and took out a key. It was dull with tarnish. She placed it in my palm and folded my fingers over it.

“This is your key,” she said. She gave me a meaningful look, but I didn’t know what the meaning was.

“Okaaay,” I said. I felt its weight and wanted to open my hand and look at it. But I didn’t know if I was allowed.

Keisha’s expression softened. “Congratulations.”

For no reason, my eyes filled with tears.

“Oh no,” Mary Bryan said, “now you’re going to get me going, too!” She jumped up and hugged me. “This is so awesome, Jane! You’re one of us!”

“For real?” My lips wobbled into a grin.

Bitsy unfolded herself from the sofa. She strolled to the kitchen and returned with a bottle of champagne. She popped the cork, and foam bubbled out.

“Cheers,” she said. “You’re officially a Bitch.”

The fly, the fly. The fly in the ointment. The fly in the ointment was this: The key Keisha gave me was to Lurl the Pearl’s private office. Not her classroom, where she held office hours and gave tutorials, but a separate office in Hamilton Hall. And the Bitches had instructed me to go there with an item from the girl whose popularity I was willing to suck away, because for me to rise, I had to knock down someone else … or something like that. My memory of Keisha’s instructions was more than a little muzzy. But anyway, only then would I become the Jane I was meant to be. Uber-Jane, with bonus molecules of charisma bouncing from my cells.

It was crazy, of course. Crazy enough to make my skin prickle. Although of course I’d hidden my reaction.

I had slept hard after yesterday’s induction ceremony, but this morning I replayed it all over again. How Keisha had explained the rules with a straight face, and how she frowned when I kept giggling. But I couldn’t help it. It was either giggle or fall into the pit, and I chose to giggle. Because it made me feel better … and because by that point I’d had two glasses of champagne.

“So it’s like an initiation,” I’d said. “You want me to steal something from someone to prove I’m, like, loyal.”

“It can be a Chapstick,” Mary Bryan said. “Or a ribbon. It doesn’t have to be something big.”

“But it’s not to prove your loyalty,” Keisha said. “Like I said, it—”

“Close enough,” Bitsy intervened. She smiled to show that she knew Keisha was going a little overboard. “Jane gets the picture. Right, pet?”

I didn’t, because I refused to. “The thing is, there’s really no need, because I’m totally yours already,” I said. “So we can skip the rite of passage dealie, okay?”

Keisha looked pained. Bitsy blew air our of her cheeks. She went to replenish the soy nuts. Mary Bryan bit her lip, then grabbed the bottle of Veuve Cliquot Grande Dame and topped off my glass.

“The thing is, you kind of have to,” she said. She grimaced, like, I know it sucks, but what can we do? “I know it’s a drag. I do. But it’s not like we want you to hurt anyone. Like I said, you can take something so small it doesn’t even matter. A Lifesaver, even.”

“Can I just ask someone for one?” I said. I could do that, ask whoever for a Tootsie Roll or a stick of gum.

“No, you have to take it,” Keisha said wearily. “You have to pick a girl, someone different every week, and take something that belongs to her—”

“Steal something that belongs to her,” Bitsy said. She’d returned with more nuts, which she picked through with one hand. She widened her eyes at Keisha’s scowl. “What?”

Keisha turned back to me. “And then you have to deliver it to Lurl the Pearl. If you want to be one of us for real, that’s what you have to do.”

“Ohhh,” I said. The giggles started up again. “So let me see if I’m getting this. I’m ‘officially’ a Bitch, but I’m not officially a Bitch until I pass the test. Is that it?”

“You have to steal something and give it to Lurl,” Keisha repeated.

“But why Lurl the Pearl?” I said, remembering how she scolded me for my Internet hanky-panky. “Anyway, she’ll turn me in. Unless she doesn’t know the thing isn’t mine, in which case she’ll be like, ‘Why is this freak giving me her Chapstick?’” I covered my mouth with my hand. “Oh my god, she’ll think I’m hitting on her.”

Mary Bryan sighed.

Bitsy wiped salt from her fingers onto her jeans. “This is getting extremely old.”

“Well, what do you suggest?” Keisha said. “If she doesn’t come through, you’re screwed, too, you know.”

Mary Bryan leaned back on the sofa so that her head was resting on the cushion. She stared at the ceiling. “It’s been a long summer,” she said. “I feel like I’m changing.”

“Well, you’re not,” Bitsy snapped.

“That’s what I tell myself, but …” She lifted her hands, then let them drift back to the sofa.

“Oh for crap’s sake,” Bitsy said. She put down the bowl of nuts and stood before me. “Look, Jane. You’ll take someone’s bloody Chapstick and you’ll give it to Lurl. Got it?”

“Bloody Chapstick,” I said. “Ick. Bad image.”

“Unless you’re afraid to,” Bitsy said.

I gri

Mary Bryan shot a swift, startled look at Keisha.

“Of course not,” Keisha said sharply.

Mary Bryan trained her blue eyes on me. “I love dogs,” she offered. “I wish I could get one, but my mom won’t let me.”

Bitsy studied me. I couldn’t read her expression. “Come on, luv,” she said. “Throw us a bone.”

I downed the rest of my champagne, which really was delicious. Like fat yellow bumblebees. “Oh okay. As long as I don’t have to kill a dog to get it.”

Bitsy half-smiled, then selected a soy nut from the bowl. She held it, but didn’t eat it. “Quite the dark horse, this one, isn’t she?”

I buzzed with pleasure, as if she’d seen the secret me. Uber-Jane, ready to take on the world.

But today, as I trudged to my locker, the giddiness was gone. In its place stirred an unsettling confusion. Because hahaha, great joke and all that, only they’d never broken character. Not once. No smirks to show it was all a game, no shared looks when they thought I wasn’t watching. They were good, those three. Either that, or …

No. A girl couldn’t really siphon away someone else’s popularity. Could she?

It didn’t escape me that Lurl the Pearl did, in fact, have a sideways co

Then again, if the Bitches wanted to shroud themselves in mystery—while at the same time putting me through the paces—then Lurl was the obvious choice. I’d read more than just Ramona books, and I knew how this stuff worked. The crusty old man in an antique store; the wizened librarian with owlish features; the pale, silent comic-book collector living forever in his parents’ basement—this was the stuff that rumors were made of. Lurl the Pearl was Crestview’s creepiest option, and of course the Bitches were willing to take advantage.