Rhymes with Witches

After homeroom, I hunted down Mary Bryan. I felt bad about my picnic table comment, and I wanted to apologize. She would try to stay aloof, but she’d relent despite herself. And then she’d give me some answers.

I skipped English to talk to her, because I knew on Mondays she had first period free. I found her on the steps of Hamilton. She was wearing a pale blue sweater that matched her eyes.

“Are you mad at me?” I asked.

“Me?” she said. She kept her expression neutral. “Why would I be mad?”

Fine, I thought. Let her get it out of her system. “Because I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

She gazed at me. Then, in a voice as bland as her expression, she said, “Okay, thanks.” She returned to her algebra.

I didn’t know quite what to do. Was that it? Was I forgiven? It didn’t feel as if I was forgiven.

“It was just a really bad night,” I said. “I was totally stressed out. Obviously. And then after you guys left, even more stuff happened”—I watched for her reaction—“and now it’s like, whoa, my head is totally spi

Nothing. Not a flicker of an eyelid. But she had to know what I referring to, because somebody had my freaking key.

“Mary Bryan …”

She lifted her head. She smiled her nice-girl smile, the one she gave everyone. “I’m really kind of busy. I’ve got a math test, and I’m so unprepared.” She wrinkled her nose, her cute little show of we’re all in this together, and my chest constricted.

“Mary Bryan, come on,” I said. I heard how my voice sounded, and my heart beat faster. I nudged her toe. “Mary Bryan!”

“Excuse me?” she said. Gone was the buddy act. She looked at me as if I were trash.

My face flamed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? Why are you shutting me out?”

“I have a math test,” she said. “I’m sorry if you’re feeling fragile, and I’m sorry I can’t rub your tummy and make everything all better. But I have to study.”

I backed away.

Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

With Bitsy, my exchange was as stupid and pointless as I should have known it would be. Which I did know it would be, but which I convinced myself of otherwise, out of sheer desperation.

Me: Bitsy, hold up. We need to talk.

Bitsy: Why, Jane, aren’t you adorable. Is that a new shirt you’re wearing?

Me: What? I’m not … I just need you to … Just listen, okay?

Bitsy: Well, something’s different, I just know it. Is it your hair?

Me: Drop the act, Bitsy. I know you’re all mad or whatever, but I also know that you need me. So play your little game if that’s what you need to do, but get real: You’re nothing without me.

Bitsy, laughing: Oh, pet. I think you’ve got it backward.

Me: You have to have four. You have to.

Bitsy: How sweet of you to care. Ta, now!

As she made her parting remark, she actually patted me on the head. Then she breezed off in her flippy lime-green skirt, her doggy-ears bouncing with every step.

As for Camilla, the one time I saw her was before fourth period, as I was on my way to French. Camilla was on the quad talking to Sukie Karing, which struck me as odd until I remembered that Sukie, like Camilla, was one of them now, at least temporarily. One of the toads.

Still, I paused to stare. Camilla usually kept to herself, her spine ballerina stiff and her nose in a book. But today she had the look of someone wearing a fancy new outfit, both self-conscious and proud. A fu

Well, whoop-de-do for Camilla, I thought. I guess our midnight jaunt had upped her confidence after all.

I started across the quad, then stopped, a half-formed thought itching at the back of my brain. A thought I never would have had if not for my crappy day, what with the Bitches’ weird behavior. And now Camilla, gesturing with pale hands as she wooed a willing Sukie.

This was not the normal Camilla. There was nothing normal here at all.

I flashed back to the hallway outside Lurl’s office, when Camilla and I had made our hasty escape. Camilla had turned off Lurl’s lights. Camilla had shut the office door.

Nausea slammed into me. It wasn’t Lurl who had taken my key, and it wasn’t any of the Bitches. And it wasn’t the cat who had taken my pendant.

It was Camilla.

“Give it back,” I said. I held out my open hand.

Camilla was still flying high from her success with Sukie, but she slid a mask over her satisfaction.

“No,” she said.

I floundered for a few seconds, then narrowed my eyes. “Yes,” I said. “It’s mine. My dad gave it to me. And you took it. That’s stealing, you know.”

“Oh, please,” Camilla said. She headed toward Hamilton Hall.

“Hey. Hey! I’m talking to you!”

She didn’t turn around.

I ran to catch up. “I stood up for you that night. They were going to … and I stopped them, I told them no, and …” I grabbed her arm. “I’m the only reason you know anything about this in the first place. I did it to help you!”

Camilla’s smile returned. “Believe me, you did.”

The next day, Miriam Fossey told me my neck was dirty. Elizabeth Greene sloshed her Diet Coke down the front of my shirt, and Pammy Varlotta, when I sidled up next to her by the vending machines, blushed and refused to meet my gaze.

“You don’t understand,” I told her. “I’m the same person I used to be, I swear. It’s just that the Bitches, they have this secret power, see? Well, actually, it’s Lurl the Pearl who has the power, but she can’t do it without them, and—”

Pammy bolted. She grabbed her granola bar and ran, while the kids behind me watched and snickered.

“There’s nothing wrong with me!” I cried.

“That’s debatable, I must say,” muttered Rutgers Steiner, shoving quarters into the soft-drink dispenser.

During PE I approached Debbie, since I knew how much she hated Camilla.

“And now I get it,” I explained. “Because I see her for the traitor she really is. And that’s good, right? You believe me, right?”

She slammed an oversized red rubber ball into my chest.

“Don’t go bad-mouthing Camilla,” she warned. She caught the ball on the rebound and bounced it off my head. “Whining loser!”

Coach Shaw blew her whistle. “You’re out, Goodwin! Take the bench!”

During my free period, I marched up to Mary Bryan in the commons area. I stood in front of her, hands on my hips, until she looked up.

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “This is absurd.”

“This is life,” she said. She went back to her fingernails, carefully applying lavender flower decals over a pearly pink base coat. When I kept standing there, she said, “Pardon me, but you’re in my light.”

When lunchtime rolled around, I retreated to the library. I needed to be away from everybody. I needed time to figure things out.

“Hello, Jane,” Ms. Cratchett said, looking up from a stack of index cards.

“Hi, Ms. Cratchett,” I said. Was it my imagination, or was even she regarding me a little frostily? I surprised myself by approaching her desk.

“So … are you still having problems with those cats?” I asked.

Her mouth creased in displeasure. “It’s a travesty. Cat hair all over my keyboard, and this morning, excrement by my coffee pot. Excrement! It’s getting so they think they own the place.”