Rhymes with Witches

Camilla’s phone rang, a sharp, staccato blare. Camilla crossed the room and picked up.

“Hello?” she said. “No, everything’s fine. I’m really sorry. I—” Her lips thi

She hung up. The phone rang again.

“Hello?” she said. “I know. I did, too. But it was just a joke, Mrs. Robinson. It was someone from my school. Okay. Okay. Bye.”

She faced me. “Mrs. Robinson’s, like, eighty years old,” she said. “You practically gave her a heart attack. And Mr. Cutter would have called the police if I hadn’t stopped him. Is that what you wanted?”

I stared at her.

She strode through the house, and after a moment’s hesitation, I followed. She crossed a spacious foyer, opened the front door, and stepped outside. On the other side of the street, a man stood with his hands on his hips at the top of his driveway.

“What’s going on over there?” he barked.

“It’s all right, Mr. Simmons,” Camilla called. “Everything’s all right. Sorry!”

She shut the door and leaned against it. She hid her face in her hands.

“I didn’t …” I said. “I never …” I shook my head, unable to process her reaction. “I was helping you.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said.

I straightened my spine. “Look, I just risked everything for you. Why didn’t you call the cops?”

“And tell them what, that some girls in prom dresses were standing outside my house?”

“No, and tell them … I don’t know. Tell them that—”

“Anyway, Bitsy would have oozed her charm all over the officers, and by the end it would somehow be all my fault. As usual.” She swiped her hand under her eyes in a fast, angry gesture. “And Monday at school everyone would hate me even more than they already do.”

“No, they wouldn’t,” I said. “Anyway, so what? You don’t care what they think.”

The look she gave me suggested otherwise.

“You don’t care what anyone thinks,” I insisted.

“Yeah,” she deadpa

This was so not what she was supposed to be saying. I didn’t know what she should have been saying, but not this.

“Camilla—”

“Thanks. Really. Now, bye.”

My body hardened with bottled-up frustration. Didn’t she get how screwed she was? How, save for the grace of me, she was dog shit on the bottom of Bitsy’s gleaming black boots?

I kept my mouth shut for maybe a second, and then I lifted my chin and told her everything. About the stealing, about Lurl—practically everything. Camilla tried to resist, indicating her disbelief with snorts of scorn, but I dug in.

“That’s why you’re so unpopular,” I said. I’d followed her into the kitchen, where she’d gone in an attempt to escape me. “That’s why everyone treats you like scum, because Bitsy steals your popularity from you every single week. Don’t you even care?”

Camilla’s breath came short. A hidden anguish vibrated in her voice as she said, “Are you taping this? Do you have a video camera tucked beneath your armpit?”

I spread my arms. “I’m not taping anything. Jesus.”

“Let’s see your purse. Come on, I know you have one.”

She darted toward me, and my veins surged with adrenaline. I clamped my elbows to my sides and twisted away. Otherwise I would have hit her. I swear I would have.

“They had a key, Camilla,” I said. “Bitsy had your spare key, all right? They were going to come in.”

She looked at me. I looked at her. I wanted to mention the stick, but some things can’t be expressed.

“Well?” I finally said. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“It wouldn’t have worked. We had the lock changed.”

“You had the … what?”

“Some pervert’s been e-mailing me sex messages. He even called and invited me to a Zamfir concert. Are you going to blame that on hocus-pocus, too?”

I felt a sliding down of hope. I didn’t believe the truth at first. Why should she?

But then I saw in her eyes that she did believe—or wanted to, anyway. She wanted it to be true, because at least then there would be an explanation of why life sucked so bad.

“I’ll prove it,” I said. “You can drive us to Lurl’s office in your dad’s Range Rover, and I’ll show you.”

She moved restlessly. “Show me what, exactly? You said Lurl’s office was empty every time you went in. Or are you changing your story to lure me out of the house?” She returned to the front door and peered through a rectangular window. “Are they still out there, waiting by their cars?”

“Their cars are gone,” I said. “You can see for yourself.”

“Uh-huh. And you want me to steal my dad’s car and chauffeur you over to the school so we can break into a teacher’s office.”

“It wouldn’t be stealing. It would be borrowing.” I realized that maybe I wasn’t the one to be clarifying these finer moral distinctions, but I pushed on. “And we wouldn’t have to break into Lurl’s office. I already told you, I have a key.”

“If the school is even unlocked.”

“It will be. Fall Fling, remember?”

Camilla still didn’t trust me. But she didn’t order me out, either.

“When would we do it?” she said. “Right now? This very second?”

She said it like a challenge, but I knew that if we waited until morning, it would never happen.

“Right now,” I said. “This very second.”

The Range Rover was an automatic, but still Camilla manhandled both the gas and the brake to the point that I had to wrap my arms around my stomach.

“It’s not my fault,” she said. She glanced at me defiantly, but her mouth was tight and pale. “I don’t have driver’s ed until next year.”

I doubt it’ll help, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I directed her to my house, where I snuck upstairs to get the key to Lurl’s office and a few other last-minute items.

When I got back in the car, Camilla took one look at the object in my hand and said, “What’s that for?”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I fingered the jade comb and thought about the me that used to be, before all this happened.

“And the …” She gestured at my quilted cotton vest, which I’d slipped on over my party clothes. Its sunshines danced ludicrously across my chest. “Why are you wearing that?”

I twisted my body and stared out the window, because if I couldn’t explain it to myself, then how could I explain it to her? I wasn’t sure why I’d put it on, just that it seemed like the right thing to do. I was glad that the J pendant and the teddy bear were out of sight in the backpack I’d grabbed from my desk.

“And I’m the school freak,” Camilla said under her breath. “Yeah, makes a lot of sense.”

“Just drive.”

The school’s parking lot was empty, save for a beat-up Pinto that I knew belonged to Angie Clark, president of the pep club. Down at the gym, Angie and a few of her buddies were probably taking down streamers and loading up trash bags. But Hamilton Hall was deserted.

“Are we going in or not?” Camilla said.

“Chill,” I said. A breeze shook the leaves in the trees, making a dry rustling sound that made me think of bones. The building was right there, only yards away, but my legs stayed planted where they were. It was as if my body knew something that I didn’t.

The wind rose, ruffling my hair, and I quick stepped forward to the basement door. I did a fancy move with the jade comb, and the door sprang open. Although it would have anyway, since the door wasn’t bolted. My lock-picking was just for show.

“Well?” Camilla said.

I took off my heels—too loud—and shoved them into my backpack. Then I slipped barefoot into the unlit building. The yellow on my vest was dimly visible, and Camilla eyed it again and blew air out of her mouth.