Rhymes with Witches

“Fuck, I don’t have time for this!” Alicia cried.

“Relax,” I said. I knelt to retrieve her junk, thinking anew how lucky I was to be me instead of Oz or Phil or Alicia. My fingers closed over a tiny tub of lip balm, which I shoved into my pocket. The rest I scooped into her pack.

“You’re the best,” Alicia said. She snatched her backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “Bye! Wish me luck!”

“Good luck!” I called as she hurried up the sidewalk. “Give him a kiss for me!”

I grabbed my pack and headed for French. Below my hipbone, the tub of lip balm pressed into my skin. I felt quivery, although I pushed the sensation down as best I could.

It’s only lip balm, I told myself. You’ve borrowed lip balm from each other a million times.

Anyway, it was done. There was no point worrying about it now.

Mary Bryan squealed a muted squeal. “Yay,” she said, clapping quietly in the crowded hall. “The hardest part’s over, I swear. And at least you didn’t throw up like I did. I honestly threw up, that’s how nervous I was.” She took the lip balm and turned it over. “So whose is it?”

“Um—”

“Never mind, I don’t want to know.” She returned the lip balm, a quick hand-to-hand transfer. Her eyes were shining. “Now all you have to do is get it to Lurl. Easy-peasy, right? That’s what Bitsy says.”

Easy-peasy. Right. I wedged the lip balm back in my pocket.

“I was actually thinking … do I really have to give it to Lurl?”

She frowned at me as I were being silly. “Uh, yes, Jane. That’s kind of the point.”

“But why?”

“Because. That’s the way it works.”

I sighed. I wanted to push further, but something held me back.

“Well, will you at least come with me?” I said. “I wouldn’t ask, except I’m afraid I’ll mess up. Or that I’ll run into Lurl and not be able to do anything, because if I have to actually talk to her, I’m pretty sure I’ll lose it. I mean, what would I say to her? ‘Here, I stole this for you’?”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Mary Bryan said. “Just put it on her desk and leave.”

“But won’t she think that’s extremely weird?”

“She’ll think it’s extremely weird if you don’t,” she said. I must have looked blank, because she made an impatient movement with her hands. “She knows you’re coming. She’s expecting you.”

“What?!”

Mary Bryan stepped closer. She sca

My insides tightened. “You have to come with me.”

“I don’t know. Keisha wouldn’t like it.”

“Please.”

She twisted a strand of blond hair around her finger and pulled the end to her mouth. I scrunched my toes inside my sneakers.

She dropped her hand. “Okay, but we have to do it now. Can you be late to your next class?”

I nodded.

“Then come on,” Mary Bryan said. She led me to the third floor of Hamilton Hall, where we strode past a half dozen classrooms, including the room where Lurl taught her early religions class. Then she turned right down the south hall. Yellow and black police tape blocked the entrance to the English Department lounge, site of Mr. Cohen’s cat attack.

“Idiots,” Mary Bryan muttered. An empty metal cage sat outside the door, a fuzzy pink and turquoise ball lying in the corner. Mary Bryan kicked the cage as she passed. The ball jingled as it rolled to the other side.

“This way,” Mary Bryan said. She tugged open the heavy door at the far end of the hall. The door led to the dim corridor that co

I held the door and paused outside the corridor. I remembered something from Rae’s ghost story, about how the sacrifice was made in an abandoned storage room on the third floor of Hamilton Hall. Off a hall that nobody used.

Mary Bryan turned around. “Jane? We’re almost there. Come on.”

I buried the memory and quelled my uneasiness. Or tried to, anyway. I joined Mary Bryan, and the door swung shut behind us. We walked a couple of yards farther and stopped in front of Lurl’s office. I knew from the fake wood placard held in place by two metal clips. S. L. LEAR, it said in flaking gold letters.

“There,” Mary Bryan said, jerking her chin.

I stood there. A terrible dread stole through my veins, and this time it got the best of me. They offered a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was accepted. They offered a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was accepted.

Mary Bryan glanced at the end of the corridor, at the closed door that led back to the main hall. “Go ahead. Use your key.”

“I don’t want to.”

“You have to.”

I inched toward the door, then drew my key from my pocket and fit it into the lock. A noise came from the main hall, and both of us jumped. I met Mary Bryan’s eyes.

“Go,” she said.

I pushed open the door, realizing with a too-late jolt that I should have knocked first. Oh god, why didn’t I knock?

But the office was empty. Mary Bryan hurried me in and shut the door behind us. She flicked on the light, and the shadowy form of a desk and filing cabinet sprang into resolution. Nothing else.

“This is it?” I said.

Mary Bryan crossed her arms over her chest as if she didn’t want to accidentally touch anything. Not that there was anything to touch. The office was completely sterile.

“Well, yeah,” she said. “What did you expect?”

I exhaled, my fear diminishing. Now I felt silly for feeling scared in the first place.

“It’s, like, dead in here,” I said. “Are you sure she even uses it?”

“Just put the lip balm on the desk and let’s go,” Mary Bryan said.

At the far end of the office was a second door. I moved toward it, asking, “What’s in there? Is there another room co

Mary Bryan grabbed my arm. “You’re not allowed.”

I sniffed, catching a whiff of something vaguely meaty. “Hey. Do you smell cat food?”

“No. Put the lip balm on the desk.”

“I totally smell cat food. Oh my god, do you think—”

“What I think is that I took my own time to come here with you, and now it’s really uncool that you’re making me late to class,” Mary Bryan said.

“Oh,” I said. “I just thought … I mean, we’re already late, so …”

“It’s just extremely inconsiderate.”

I flinched. I’d never seen Mary Bryan pissed before. I didn’t think she got pissed. I wiggled Alicia’s lip balm out of my pocket and approached Lurl’s desk. Then I stopped short, my body going cold. On the corner of the desk was a dead kitten, its tiny head lolling u

And then it was just a pencil sharpener. A gray mechanical pencil sharpener, its handle jutting out by its base.

My breath rushed back. A layer of sweat slicked my skin. I set the lip balm on Lurl’s desk and stepped away.

“Thank you,” Mary Bryan said. She strode out of the office and waited while I pulled the door shut and locked it. We walked without speaking down the corridor, and it wasn’t until we were back in the main hall, past the water fountain and a bright mural of a teeming jungle, that she relented.

“Sorry I snapped at you.” She gave me a sideways look.

“No, I’m sorry,” I said. I gave her a sickly smile. I was still recovering from my fright. “I didn’t mean to make you late, honest.”

“Yeah, well. Madame Herrera’s going to kill me anyway. It’s not like five minutes are going to make a difference.”

We stopped at the top of the stairwell. Her class was back on the first floor; mine was two doors down.

“So whose was it, now that it’s done?” she asked.