90S GIRL CULT

Season 1

KRISTEN S. WALKER

90s Girl Cult: Season One

Copyright © 2022 by Kristen S. Walker

Cover Illustration: 100Covers.com

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798848396386

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

© Kristen S. Walker and kristenwalker.net

Vellum flower icon Created with Vellum

For all the rebel girls who fought back

Contents

1. "Seether"

2. "You Oughta Know"

3. "Criminal"

4. "You Learn"

5. "Stupid Girl"

6. "What's Up"

7. "Liar"

8. "All Hail Me"

9. "Cursum Perficio"

10. "Here Comes the Sun"

11. "Barbie Girl"

12. "Precious Things"

13. "No Backrub"

14. "Down by the Water"

15. "Sugar Water"

16. "Victrola"

17. "Building a Mystery"

18. "Mother"

19. "Wild in the Woods"

20. "The Mystic's Dream"

21. "Hello"

22. "Pretend We're Dead"

23. "Glory Box"

24. "Do You Sleep?"

25. "2Wicky"

26. "Cornflake Girl"

27. "Nights x 9"

28. "Don't Speak"

29. "Army of Me"

30. "How Soon is Now"

31. "Anything Can Happen on Halloween"

32. "Dangerous Type"

33. "Wolf"

34. "#1 Crush"

35. "I Do"

36. "Bruise Violet"

37. "Split Second"

38. "One Last Time"

39. "Caught a Lite Sneeze"

40. "Truthfully"

41. "Something So Wild"

42. "Earthcrosser"

43. "Intuition"

44. "Leave Me Alone"

45. "Celebrate You"

46. "Rebel Girl"

47. "Know Your Chicken"

48. "Pretty Good Year"

49. "Good Disaster"

50. "Dark Secret"

Thank You

Free Book

Also by Kristen S. Walker

About the Author

ONE

"Seether"

Thursday, April 24, 1997

Song: "Seether" by Veruca Salt

Mood: righteous anger

I got called a slut today. Yes, me, Katie, the biggest thirteen-year-old nerd, I am a slut.

I'm still trying to figure out what happened. I was gone from school because my family was on vacation last week, so I don't know what happened while I was gone. Something went wrong and I think it's all Justin's fault.

Justin and I were kind of going out. He was just a friend, someone I hung out with in the homeschool group, and I never really thought of him like that until he asked me out on Valentine's Day. He bought me a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a really nice card. I said yes because it seemed like such a sweet gesture. But we didn't tell anyone in the homeschool group that we were going out because I didn't know how they would react. Especially my best friend, Georgia. She and I usually sit with Justin and his best friend, Daniel. Daniel's cool because he isn't gross like most guys and I'm in marching band with him, although we sit on opposite sides of the room. I thought Justin was cool, too, but now he's acting like a total asshole.

I thought it would make things awkward for her if suddenly half our group was a couple? I wasn't trying to hide stuff from her. I just didn't know how she would react.

Anyway, we were together for two months, I guess. It was boring. Like, he would invite me over to his house and show me all his WWI plane models and then his mom would make us dinner. His mom and his sister were both really sweet. I didn't really see his dad much, but I guess he was nice, too. But his mom introduced me to all these Vietnamese dishes that I've never had before. Her cooking was really good.

But Justin always wanted to make out. His parents made him keep his bedroom door open, so we didn't get any privacy, but he had this big tree in his backyard. When we climbed up into the tree, the branches hid us from the ground. So we would climb up in the tree and make out.

Making out was the most boring thing. It just felt like he was drooling on me. Then he started getting more handsy, so I told him I wanted to break up with him. He asked if we could stay friends and I said sure so I wouldn't hurt his feelings. I figured things would go back to normal, like when we hung out as the four of us. Although he's been hanging out with those annoying twins lately, Brandon and Trevor. I didn't want to be around them even before what happened today.

I didn't think about the fact that I was gonna be gone for a week. No one knew we were even dating. Why would he tell them?

But he must have said something while I was out, because when I came back, everyone was looking at me like I was the worst person ever.

I've heard different stories from different people. That I broke Justin's heart? Or I wouldn't put out? Or I did sleep with him, and then I broke his heart? Somehow, it's all my fault.

I thought I could trust Georgia to tell me the truth, but she won't talk about it at all. When I tried to ask her, she just looked horrified and changed the subject. It would be so much easier if I could just ignore it and put it behind us, which I think is what she's trying to do, but it keeps eating at me.

And she has to hear the things that everyone else is saying about me. The good Christian girls in our group are all avoiding me like I have the plague, but it's not like they ever liked me, since I don't go to their church. The twins are also Christian, so of course they're gonna judge me. But even the homeschool kids who are like dropouts from public school and juvenile delinquents are looking at me as if I killed a baby.

It's mostly the church girls like Kelsey G. who keep calling me a slut under their breaths. But Liz, who has lived next door to me since we were nine and used to like hanging out with me, she looked straight at me today and asked where my scarlet letter was. Points for using a literary reference, I guess. Negative points for acting like such an idiotic Puritan. We’re only thirteen. It’s not like we could do much, anyway. But even if I did, it’s 1997, not the 1600s. I shouldn’t get burned at the stake.

It wouldn't bother me so much because I don't care what they think, except I didn't do anything. I never even let Justin put his hand up my shirt!

I tried to confront him to make him tell the truth. He must know how awful he's being because he won't even look me in the eyes. When I went up to his table at lunch.

Instead, Trevor got in my face and yelled at me. "Leave Justin alone! He doesn't want to flirt with you anymore!"

Ugh! I wasn't there to flirt with him. I just want him to tell the truth so these stupid rumors will go away. But it's this catch 22 where no matter what I say, I sound like I'm a desperate loser.

I need to get back at him. When I was ranting to my sister, Nikki, she understood. Sort of. She thought Justin had a point to be upset at me because I didn't even let him get to second base.

"You're in junior high," she said. "What did you expect? Guys only date you for one reason."

My sister is turning eleven in a few months and she acts like she knows so much about guys and relationships. She's in fifth grade but she wants to date junior high school guys. I'm a little worried about her trying to keep up with me and do things she's not ready for yet.

"I don't care what he wants," I told her. "I care that he's badmouthing me to everyone at school. How can I make him shut up?"

"We should curse him," she said.

I laughed it off at first. "You don't really believe that stuff works."

Nikki shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. But it will make you feel better. We can ask Annie and Siobhan to help."

The four of us used to play a witch game when we were kids. We had a lot of different games that I was usually in charge of, and I still have all my notes. I think the witch game started because I read The Worst Witch. I copied down all the spells into a notebook. Then I found spells in other stories, and I copied out of books from the library on witchcraft. I was so embarrassed when I found out I misspelled a holiday name for the Wheel of the Year, Belante instead of Beltane. At least I never mispronounced Samhain.

I told my mom it was for a school project so she wouldn't get suspicious. We even wrote some of our own spells and potion recipes using things we found in the woods. I still have that notebook hidden in my closet. It's not the most embarrassing game we ever played, but I thought we'd grown out of that. I got rid of most of my old toys and stuff but I kept the notebooks just got the memories.

Nikki is right, though. Even if we just end up dancing around in the woods and screaming at the moon like little kids again. It would make me feel better.

"I'll call Annie and see when they can come over," Nikki volunteered.

So I agreed. It will be fun to pretend again for an afternoon. I will curse that bastard Justin and then wash my hands of him. This whole thing has to blow over soon.

TWO

"You Oughta Know"

Friday, April 25, 1997

Song: "You Oughta Know" by Alanis Morissette

Mood: vengeful

Today at school was even worse. Georgia was out today so I had no one to talk to. I tried to ignore the whispers behind my back. I held my head high so they wouldn't know they were getting to me.

But underneath it all, I was plotting my revenge.

Justin is bragging about some new girlfriend. He claims that she's a French foreign exchange student named Fifi. The whole thing sounds totally fake, and he was talking about it loudly near me, like he was trying to make me jealous. I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of a response, but I couldn't believe everyone was buying his dumb story.

"Isn't Fifi a dog's name?" I asked.

"Oooh," Trevor sneered at me. "Katie just called your new girl a dog! Talk about your crazy ex-girlfriend!"

I didn't say it like that, but it was no use trying to correct them. They all started taunting me again. I couldn't wait to get out of there.

Then after school, Nikki brought her best friend Annie and Annie's little sister Siobhan over.

Last year, we were all in the elementary school class together. Annie is in sixth grade, ahead of Nikki, which means she'll be twelve in June. Siobhan is two years younger than Annie, in fourth grade this year.

Part of me wishes I was still at Boulder Creek Elementary with them, even though Miss Maria isn't the teacher anymore. It was so much easier before I moved up to Miss Andrews class at SLV middle school. Nobody called anyone a slut or talked about dating last year.

Annie is the calmest one out of the four of us. She listened to me explain the bullying at school because of Justin's lies and she tried to make excuses.

"Have you tried talking to him alone? When his friends aren't there to goad him on?" she asked.

I shook my head. "He's completely ignoring me. When I tried to call his house, his mom said he wasn't there, but I know she's just covering for him."

Siobhan looked between the rest of us. She'll follow along with anything we say because she doesn't want to get left out.

Nikki rubbed her hands together. "I've been looking through the official witch handbook and I found the perfect curse for him."

"Wait, you took the book out of my room?" I asked. "You're not supposed to touch my stuff!" My sister has "borrowed" things from me too many times without asking. One time she tore the pages out of my favorite diary, and another time she turned in a story I wrote as a school assignment. Miss Maria made her read "Dragon Mountain" in front of the class because she said it was so good. I couldn't believe it when I recognized one of my old stories that had gone missing.

Today, Nikki just brushed away my scolding again and opened the notebook. "I didn't want you to chicken out, so I was preparing. This glass bottle should be perfect to hold the potion." She held up an empty spice container that she'd gotten from the kitchen. "But we need a few more ingredients. Do you have something of Justin's?"

At least my attempts to hide my private stuff from her must have paid off, because she didn't find my box of memories in my closet. I made the others wait in Nikki's room while I went to dig out the stash, so they wouldn't see it.

I threw away the box of chocolates once it was empty, but I still had the card he gave me. I didn't show it to them before because of how cheesy it was.

I was afraid the others would laugh, but Annie and Siobhan both looked wistful. "Wow. I hope a boy gives me something that nice someday," Annie said.

"Not if he turns out to be a jerk," I mumbled. I took the notebook from Nikki. "What else do we need?"

The curse was written in childish handwriting from several years ago. I almost laughed at how ridiculous it sounded now.

"How to Make Poison"

Squish fresh poison sumac berries and leave them to soak in water. Pick a twig from the deadly ruz bush and strip it of its skin. Strain the berries from the water and throw them away. Add to the water blue food coloring and a small amount of almond extract. Stir with the ruz twig. Bottle and label carefully. Give only in small doses.

Nikki held out a bottle of almond extract and a packet of blue powdered sugar drink. "We used all the blue when we made blue frosting for your birthday cupcakes, but I thought this might work. The blue raspberry flavor will help to hide the poison. So we just need two more ingredients. Where does poison sumac grow, and what does a ruz bush look like?"

I shook my head. "This is a dumb thing I made up. It doesn't work."

"It sounds like a good spell to me," Siobhan said. "Couldn't we just try it?"

"No, because ruz bushes aren't even real. I made them up." It was embarrassing to explain it, but I was just a kid when I wrote the handbook. "And poison sumac grows on the east coast. We have poison oak, but it doesn't grow berries." I pointed at the almond extract. "Almonds aren't poisonous. I read in a book that cyanide tastes like bitter almonds, and I knew we couldn't get cyanide, so it's the next best thing."

Nikki's face fell. "Well, then why did you make us memorize everything in this stupid book if it's all made up? You made yourself the head teacher of the witch school!"

"Because it was my game!" This was turning into a disaster. My sister was always accusing me of being too bossy and wanting to be in charge of everything. But she asked me if she could play the witch school game, and I didn't have a real book of spells to teach.

"This was fine when it was pretend," I said, snatching the handbook and holding it out of her reach. "Don't blame me now that it doesn't really work."

Annie turned pale. "Wait, I thought we were playing again. I don't really want to poison someone. He could get sick."

"He deserves it," Nikki said, crossing her arms. "He called Katie a slut."

Siobhan covered her ears. "My parents don't want me to use swears like that."

I felt sorry for her. "Junior high sucks. People cuss like that all the time and worse."

Annie looked even more frightened. "I don't want to go next year."

"And I've heard high school is even worse," I said. Maybe it was wrong to scare the others, but I wanted their sympathy. "We should just skip it and go to college. Steven, this boy in eighth, told me that he's going to the community college next year. He already took his GED or something so he doesn't need to take any high school classes."

Nikki rolled her eyes. "But then he's gonna miss out on all the high school stuff, like going to prom. I can't wait until I can go to junior high and high school. No way am I skipping anything." She put her arm around Annie. "I'll be there to protect you."

That was sweet, but it didn't solve our current problem. I still needed to get Justin and the other bullies to leave me alone. There had to be something we could do.

"You know," I said slowly. "A good witch doesn't curse or poison people lightly. It's much better to just stop someone from doing harm. If we cast a binding spell on Justin, then maybe that's enough to make him stop telling lies about me."

"That doesn't sound like a good revenge," Nikki said.

"But it's not evil," Annie said, perking up.

I nodded. "Exactly. And the best way to make a binding spell is…"

I flipped through the handbook. I'd copied some things from the library that claimed to be folk magic, like when we used apple seeds for fortune telling. There was a diagram I'd drawn of a doll. "A poppet."

Nikki rubbed her hands together. "A voodoo doll!"

"Don't you remember anything I taught you? Voodoo dolls are a racist myth." I pointed at my handwriting, which was messy, but Nikki was used to it. "This is an English spell. A poppet works through sympathetic magic. You make it look like someone, and then you include something connected to them…" I held up the valentine. "Like his name written in his own hand. Then whatever you do to the poppet will affect the person."

Nikki nodded. "So you stab him with needles--"

"No!" Annie gasped.

"We're not hurting him. Only binding him," I said firmly. I had to get this situation under control. My sister wasn't really that bloodthirsty, but she could easily get carried away when she was excited.

I've made dolls before, but I didn't want to ask my mom for the sewing machine or she'd ask to see what I was making. I found a few scraps of felt and stitched them together by hand in a rough human shape. Then I cut Justin's name out of the card in a heart shape and stuffed it into the middle of the doll's chest. Annie made short black hair out of yarn, since she knows how to crochet. Nikki found buttons to be the eyes and Siobhan made a blue shirt.

That made me stop for a minute. Justin used to wear blue a lot because I told him it was my favorite color. But this week, he'd been wearing these dumb designer shirts that were black and white. That would be harder to make.

Then I found a long black string. That would make the binding.

"Now, the magic words to bind the spell." Nikki consulted the handbook. "Are any of these real? What does shakuhachi mean?"

"It's a Japanese flute," I said with a shrug. "I thought it sounded cool. It's better if I just speak my intentions with plain language."

I picked up the doll and tried to picture it as Justin. But something didn't feel right.

"Let's take it outside," Annie said, looking over her shoulder. "You don't want your mom to overhear it."

That was it! "Perfect! The forest will be full of magic to feed the spell." I jumped up, putting the doll and the string in my pocket to keep them hidden. "Let's go down by the creek."

We have a big backyard that's actually cool. Close to the house is a lawn, our old swing set, and my mom's garden. The rest is covered in redwood trees and there's a creek that borders the property. We share it with our neighbors, but it's still fun. Now that it's April, it's just getting warm enough to wade in the water without freezing our toes.

I led the others down to a grove of trees along the bank. We called it many different things, but when we were playing the witch game, we called it Galadriel's Cathedral. Like the elf in Lord of the Rings. It sounded dramatic, and the name stuck.

Annie, Siobhan, and Nikki started humming a chant. I lifted the poppet and began the spell.

"Justin M----," I said, naming it after my ex. Wrapping the string around the poppet, I continued, "I bind you against speaking of me. Do not say my name. Do not tell anyone about me or any of my friends. Leave me alone!"

We buried it at the foot of the biggest tree and covered the spot with a rock so animals won't try to dig it up.

Now I just have to wait until school next week to find out if it worked. Fingers crossed.

THREE

"Criminal"

Thursday, May 1, 1997

Song: "Criminal" by Fiona Apple

Mood: guilty

I didn't mean for this to happen.

Justin got hurt. His legs are broken. It was some kind of car accident. He was driving with his dad and another car smashed into them on the passenger side, crushing Justin's legs. Nobody else got hurt. Only him. He's out of the hospital recovering at home, but he won't be back at school for a while. Maybe not for the rest of the school year.

When we heard about it at school today, I kept thinking about that poppet I made to bind him. Did I wrap the cord too tightly around his legs?

Part of me wants to dig it up and check, but I'm afraid of it now. What if someone else sees me? What if touching it makes something even worse happen to him?

No one at school knows what I did, but I keep looking over my shoulder. Usually I keep this diary in my backpack, under my school books, but I took it out and hid it in my closet last week. I have to act normal so no one will figure it out.

But it's crazy to think that I could even do something like this. Magic isn't real, is it? If it worked all the time, then everyone would use it.

Is it just a coincidence that Justin got hurt right after I cast a spell on him?

Georgia gave me a look when we got the news. She leaned over to my desk and wrote on the edge of my notebook, "Are you okay?"

I nodded quickly and tried to avoid looking back at her after that. She can't suspect anything that happened.

But she brought it up again during lunch. "Do you want to go visit Justin in the hospital?"

"No!" I snapped, much harsher than I meant to, and she flinched. "Sorry. I mean, why would I want to see him?"

"We used to be friends with him," she pointed out. "You used to go over to his house all the time."

This is the closest we've come to talking about my so-called relationship with him. It made me feel so weird, like there were ants crawling over my skin. I checked the picnic table where we were sitting just to be sure. No bugs.

"I don't think he wants to see me. He's been acting like a jerk recently."

Georgia nodded and dropped the subject. There's no way she knows what we did. I'm not trying to keep secrets from her but now I'm afraid she would freak out if she heard.

I had to keep it together all through class, then band practice, until I got home. Nikki was already there, and she looked too happy to have heard the news yet.

"Happy Beltane!" she said when she saw me. She was wearing a paper flower crown, and she handed me a paper basket with more paper flowers. "Annie and Siobhan helped me make these for you."

The basket was a dumb elementary school craft. The new teacher, Miss Crane, doesn't seem to plan good activities for the class. Last year, Miss Maria had us raising salmon from eggs and cleaning up trash in the river so we could release them and help rebuild the local population. Making flowers just feels like a waste of paper.

"Cute." I put the flowers down on a shelf. "Can you come up to my room? We need to talk."

"Sure!" Nikki picked up the flowers again and brought them up to my room. She put them in the middle of my dresser, which has so many delicate keepsakes that she could have easily knocked over. "Remember last year when we put May flowers on everyone's front door?"

I groaned. Last year, I really wanted to organize a Maypole dance, but we couldn't get enough people together. Nikki jumped on the idea of putting flowers on our neighbors' doors. Her real motive was this boy Mike who lives at the end of our street, who had just moved in a few months before. Even though he's at least two years older than her, since he's in my grade, she instantly decided she had a crush on him. She spent all last summer chasing after him and making a fool of herself. After the disaster that was a neighborhood game of spin the bottle, where Mike was the only boy, I thought she'd given up on him.

I narrowed my eyes at Nikki. "I remember how you insisted on writing a sappy note to Mike. Don't tell me you're still hung up on him."

"No, no, no," Nikki said, a little too fast. “I just thought it was a nice thing we did. That’s why we made these flowers, to cheer you up.” She flopped onto my beanbag chair. “So what’s up? Did Justin seem different at school today?”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose where my glasses rest. “That’s the problem. He wasn’t in school today. Because he got into a car accident with his dad and got really hurt. He’s in the hospital!”

Nikki clapped her hands together. “That’s incredible! So the spell really worked?”

I stared at her in horror. “Oh, no, I hope it wasn’t my spell. How horrible! We specifically said that we didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

She jumped up and faced me. “But imagine if it did. That means we have incredible power.” Her eyes gleamed eagerly. “What else can we do?”

What could I say?

FOUR

"You Learn"

Sunday, May 4th, 1997

Song: “You Learn” by Alanis Morissette

Mood: excited

I told Nikki that I had no real way of knowing whether the spell worked or not. So Nikki asked if I could use divination to find out the answer. We were already planning to go to a sleepover at Annie and Siobhan’s house on Saturday night, so we agreed that I would bring some supplies.

The nice thing about staying at Annie and Siobhan’s house is that we can sleep outside and get some privacy. Their parents have a camper trailer sitting in their front yard, and we’re allowed to stay out there as long as we don’t make too much noise. It’s too cold in the winter, but the weather is already starting to get nice this month, and I think we’ll be warm enough in our sleeping bags. We’re not allowed to light candles because her parents think it’s a fire hazard, even though I’m always super careful with them, but we can turn most of the lights out and use a camping lantern. It’s the perfect atmosphere for divination.

I’ve experimented with a few types. My mom lets me borrow her astrology book, but drawing up star charts takes a lot of math. I have a crystal sun-catcher that I can use for a pendulum, which is only really good for yes/no questions. I got a set from a bookstore that has a bunch of things like rune stones, I-ching coins, and instructions for things like numerology, but what I really wanted was a deck of Tarot cards. For a while, I was using a deck of regular playing cards, but those aren’t really the same. But last year, my mom finally bought me a nice Tarot deck with dragons on it. I’ve been memorizing all the card meanings and now I barely need to look at the little book that came with it.

The one rule is that I can’t have a Ouija board. That’s stupid, because those are just dumb cardboard toys, anyway. We tried making one ourselves once and you could totally tell who was moving the planchette. I don’t know why people get so freaked out over those.

Anyway, we went out to the camper trailer last night and waited until we saw the lights go off inside the house, just in case. I didn’t want anyone overhearing our conversation. Then we set up the lantern on the little table that’s built into the trailer and I shuffled the cards.

“Concentrate on your question,” I reminded Nikki, then held out the deck for her to cut. “What do you want to know?”

Nikki’s eyes gleamed in the lantern light. “Did our spell work on Justin?”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “The Tarot deck doesn’t do yes/no questions. We should switch the pendulum if that’s all you want.”

“No,” Nikki said, putting her hand on top of mine before I could move the cards. “You said this was better at detailed answers. This will tell us what we want to know.”

I’m still not sure if she really understands when I try to explain these things to her. She probably just likes the artwork on the cards because it looks more interesting than watching a crystal swing back and forth on a string. But it was her reading, so I tried to go along with what she wanted.

I flipped over the top card. A dragon held up a wand over a table full of magical instruments.

“The Magician,” I read. “That doesn’t take much interpretation to figure out. The Magician has control over his environment through the deliberate use of power.”

Annie shivered. “So we really hurt him? I knew we should have never cast that spell.”

“Look, we said that we weren’t trying to hurt him. We weren’t the ones driving the car,” I argued. I’ve spent a lot of sleepless nights thinking about what happened, but I was trying to convince myself that it was true. “You can’t really blame us for how things worked out.”

“But if we hadn’t cast the spell, he wouldn’t be hurt, right?” Annie pointed at the cards. “Can you ask if there’s some way to undo it?”

“You can’t just undo someone’s broken legs,” Nikki said.

“Maybe we could heal him?” Siobhan suggested.

“We should all say a prayer for his swift recovery,” Annie said. She folded her hands and closed her eyes, then stopped. “But I’m not sure it’s okay to ask Jesus for help when we did this with magic.”

Annie and Siobhan get dragged to church with their family on holidays like Christmas and Easter. They say they’re not devout Christians and they believe in a lot more gods than just Jesus, but I forget that they’ll fall back on what they’ve been taught.

“There are gods of healing that you could pray to,” I pointed out. “Like Hermes. Doctors still use the winged staff of Hermes as a symbol.”

Nikki pointed at the deck again. “Ask the cards if that’s a good idea. I don’t want him to get it too easy or he might not learn his lesson.”

“We’re not trying to teach him a lesson!” I snapped. “This wasn’t about punishing him. I just wanted him to leave me alone.”

“Just flip the card!” Nikki shouted back.

“Shhhh!” Annie waved her hands to calm us both down. “If you guys are too loud, you’ll wake up my parents–or the neighbors. Then we’ll all be in trouble.”

“Sorry.” I glared at Nikki and flipped the card.

The Eight of Swords showed next. A dragon sleeping with eight swords hovering in the air above it.

“A long recovery,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t think we can do anything to help Justin now. He’s going to heal in his own time.”

Annie groaned softly and covered her face in her hands.

“Um, but it might not all be bad,” I said, drawing the next card quickly. “Look, the Three of Wands. That means things will pay off if you’re patient.”

Siobhan frowned at the cards. “What does that mean?”

I shrugged. “We’ll have to wait to find out.”

“We’ve spent all this time talking about Justin,” Nikki complained. “It’s not fair that everything is about you and your ex-boyfriend. What spell should we do next?”

Annie looked up with horror. “We can’t do another spell!” she said in a harsh whisper. “Haven’t we done enough damage?”

Siobhan was nodding her head eagerly. “No, I like the idea of a good spell. Something that will make people happy.”

I swept the cards off the table and put them back into the deck since the reading was over. “We could bless the gardens for a good harvest. Nobody could object to that, and it would be a good spell for Beltane.”

Nikki sighed. “That’s boring. What about a love spell? Like for–”

“No!” I said quickly before she could tell us who she wanted to cast a love spell on. “Love spells are very unethical. You’re taking away someone’s free will if you try to make them fall in love with you.”

“Could a spell make me prettier, at least, so boys would notice me?” Nikki asked hopefully. “Right now, I feel like I’m invisible!”

I thought it over. “It’s not always good to have people paying attention to you,” I warned her, thinking of how everyone teased me at school. “But there are a few harmless beauty spells that we could try.”

I didn’t tell her that I wasn’t going to use magic to change how she looked on the outside. My idea was to use an inner beauty spell that would make her feel more confident in her appearance. Nikki is already pretty with her unusual red hair. Her problem is that she wants to be older, so she wants to dress up in clothes that are too revealing for a fifth grader and chase after boys in junior high. Someday, I’m sure there will be lots of guys asking her out. She’s just too impatient about dating and everything.

I’ve tried telling her that I’m tired of junior high school girls always talking about boys and trying to go on dates, but she’s too jealous of me to listen. It would be so much easier if we could switch places. In elementary school, you could just hang out with your friends and there was a lot less drama.

Anyway, the others agreed to the idea of a beauty spell, so I wrote down the instructions last night.

In the morning, Annie and Siobhan’s dad made pancakes for breakfast, and then we went outside to cast the spell. With all the flowers blooming, it was easy to find ingredients. We made flower crowns for our hair and said a prayer to Aphrodite, asking for her blessing. There was nothing scary that anyone could object to and no way that this could backfire.

When we got home, I told Nikki to leave me alone. Then I went out into the backyard and dug up the poppet doll. I said some words to make sure it wasn’t linked to Justin anymore and took the whole thing apart. Every knot, every stitch, I cut them apart and threw the pieces in the trash.

The doll wasn’t really biodegradable, so it wasn’t safe to leave it buried in the forest. And hopefully that’s the end of it.

FIVE

"Stupid Girl"

Friday, May 16, 1997

Song: “Stupid Girl” by Garbage

Mood: ashamed

I’m such an idiot.

All I had to do was keep my mouth shut. No one would ever point a finger at me for hurting Justin. I wasn’t driving the car that he was in or the one that crashed into his. Who would ever believe that I had magic powers?

But I was getting so annoyed by the taunts at school. Trevor is the worst, which doesn’t make sense, because Justin isn’t even there. He’s home from the hospital but it’s hard for him to get around with the casts on his legs so he’s out for the rest of the school year. Shouldn’t this just be blowing over?

It’s not just Trevor, though, it’s all the Christian girls too. Kelsey G., Sarah M., and Nora, who used to be friends with Georgia and me before she turned evil. Even though they don’t have the ringleader for their little clique anymore, since Kelsey C. went to public school this year, they’re still awful like they were in sixth grade. They don’t talk as loud, but I can hear them whispering behind my back and giving me dirty looks all the time.

We had a field trip today, and Georgia wasn’t there. She had a track event today, so she couldn’t go on the trip and still make it back in time for her races. I probably shouldn’t have gone since I was going to be on my own, but it sounded like such a cool activity. The trip was to the marine research center that UCSC has by the beach. It’s not open to the public like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so it’s less touristy and more focused on the science.

I was staying near the front of our group and asking questions about the animals we were looking at. Miss Andrews is really nice, so I actually like hanging around her, plus she is a safety zone because she won’t let anyone say mean things if she can hear them.

But I lingered too long near the octopus tank and Miss Andrews had walked away with the tour guide. Trevor came up behind me and said, “Are you looking for your next boyfriend, Katie?”

I shot him a dirty look and didn’t say anything, but he wouldn’t leave me alone.

“He really seems like your type,” Trevor went on. “Dirty and dumb, just like Justin, right? You know that guy never brushes his teeth in the morning? You were kissing that filthy mouth!”

The trio were there giggling as he talked, egging him on, and they gasped when he said the part about Justin not brushing his teeth. “Ew!”

I rolled my eyes. “How do you know how clean Justin’s mouth is? Did you kiss him?”

“No, that’s gay,” Trevor said. His new favorite insult for everything is that it’s “gay.” He’s such an immature jerk.

The three girls backed away from Trevor and crossed themselves like they were going to get gay cooties if they were too close to him.

I don’t know if anyone in our class is gay, but it would really suck if they were. The school is supposed to have an anti-bullying policy but these Christian kids act like it doesn’t apply to them with their holier than thou attitudes.

Kelsey G. clutched the golden cross on her necklace and said, “I’m praying for Justin to get better. It would be so awful if he missed the school party at the end of the year.”

“He doesn’t deserve a party,” I snapped at her.

“Maybe he’ll come with his new girlfriend,” Trevor said. “Wouldn’t that break your heart, Katie? Seeing him with another girl?”

I pointed a finger at him. “You better watch out or I’ll curse you next!”

Trevor, the girls, and several other kids stepped back and gasped when they heard that. Everywhere I turned, someone was crossing themselves and staring at me.

Sarah M. stepped forward nervously. “Is it true? Did you put a curse on Justin for dumping you?”

Oops. I didn’t mean to say that part out loud. But I was so mad at Trevor.

I folded my arms and stared at her. “For the last time, I’m the one who dumped Justin! If I did curse him, it’s only because he wouldn’t stop lying about me!”

Liz gasped. “It’s that you’ve been doing in your backyard with those other girls? All that weird chanting and dancing around?”

Dammit, Liz is so annoying. We used to let her play with us when we were younger, but ever since the spin the bottle incident last summer, she’s avoided us. I can’t believe she’s spying on me in my backyard, though. She can’t have seen anything real because we were very careful when we buried the poppet of Justin. She’s probably exaggerating now to get attention because she doesn’t have any friends.

But that was enough ‘proof’ for everyone to believe that I was an evil witch who was going to hex them all.

Kelsey G. rushed to go tell the teacher. “Miss Andrews, Katie said something awful! She put a curse on Justin and now she’s going to do it to Trevor, too!”

Well, you can probably guess how well that went.

Mom wasn’t there for the field trip, but when she came to pick her up, Miss Andrews pulled her aside and talked to her for a while. Then I got to hear all about it on the drive home.

“I know you girls like to play some wild games,” she was saying, like she had any idea what we were actually doing. “But not everyone understands that it’s just pretend. And you shouldn’t be threatening the other kids at school. The other parents are going to complain to me about this and blame me because we don’t go to their church.”

Blah, blah, blah. She wants me to get along with everyone and play nice like we’re all in kindergarten or something. She doesn’t understand that these kids will hate me no matter what I do. I’ve tried to keep my head down all year long and ignore their taunting, but I’m sick of it. She says that they’re jealous because I’m skinnier than them and I had the first boyfriend in our class, but I know it’s much worse than that.

Maybe they could always tell that I’m a witch and they’re scared of my power. Whatever, I don’t need them to like me. I just want them to leave me alone.

Then she grounded me for a month and took away my Tarot deck. I’m only allowed to go to school, band practice, and the end-of-year concert. She says if I’m on very good behavior, I can go to the final class party. I don’t even know if I want to go with all those awful people there, especially if Justin comes back.

But it sucks because I was supposed to have a sleepover with Georgia this weekend and now it’s canceled. I feel like I’ve barely seen her in weeks because she’s been so busy with track and stuff. Dad says that I’m better at distance running than sprinting, so after cross country ended, I didn’t join the track team with her. But it means that we don’t see each other at practice all the time, and it feels like she got kind of distant when I started dating Justin. Maybe it’s my fault for seeing him and not telling her about it.

I thought if she slept over, it would be a good time to talk with her and confess what really happened with him. There’s nowhere private to talk at school. But now she isn’t coming.

I’m so mad at everyone, but it’s really my fault. I shouldn’t have said anything about the binding spell. We’re still not sure if it did anything. All our spells since then have been little harmless things, like Nikki’s beauty spell and a spell to help us all on our final tests for the year. Maybe I’m just deluding myself to think that I have any kind of magical powers.

But maybe I deserve to be punished like this. If my spell did make Justin get hurt, it was wrong.

I don’t know what to think anymore. Why does seventh grade have to be so complicated? I can’t wait until summer is here, and this is all over.

SIX

"What's Up"

Saturday, May 17, 1997

Song: “What’s Up” by 4 Non Blondes

Mood: annoyed

Nikki and I were in the backyard when we saw Liz lurking around at the edge of the trees that separate her yard from ours. I whispered to Nikki, "There she is spying again."

Nikki rolled her eyes. "What does she want now?"

Liz looked like she was trying to get our attention, so we went over to the border.

Liz pushed her glasses up and scowled at us. "I tried ringing your doorbell, but your mom said you're grounded. Is that true, Katie?"

She's probably realized that we've lied to avoid her in the past. But my mom feels sorry for Liz, so she wouldn't lie.

I folded my arms and stared at her. "Yes, I'm grounded. What do you want? Make it fast, because I'll get in trouble if my mom sees me talking to you."

Liz's eyes widened. "So you really did it? You put a curse on Justin?"

Nikki grinned. "Yup! Cool, huh?"

I elbowed my sister to shut her up. "It was just a game. You remember when we used to play the witch school game."

She frowned. "But Justin really got hurt."

I shook my head. "That's just a coincidence. If I had real magic powers, do you think that I'd waste them on a creep like him?"

Liz still didn't look convinced. "But you had to have cast a love spell or something to make him go out with you in the first place. Why else would a guy want to date a scrawny girl like you?"

Ouch. So much for my mom's theory that Liz is jealous of how skinny I am. She has a point: I wear a training bra because my mom makes me, even though my chest is basically flat, and Liz got B cups in 6th grade. I didn't realize how much she had developed until the end-of-year pool party when she had to wear a T-shirt over her bathing suit to keep all the boys from staring at her.

Still, I hated the implication that I could only get a boy to notice me with some kind of trick.

"For your information, Justin and I were friends first. He asked me out because he felt comfortable around me. I don't have to chase boys," I snapped at her. Turning to Nikki, I said, "We better go."

"Wait!" Liz said as we started to leave. "Please, can't you just do one little thing to help me out?"

I looked back at her and folded my arms. "Why should I help you? You just spread rumors about me."

"I'm sorry," she said, looking down at the ground. "I promise I won't tell anyone. Just help me get a boyfriend? Please?"

That was the last straw.

"Love spells are unethical," I told her. Then I grabbed Nikki and walked away.

"Watch out for her," I told Nikki. "She's been spying on us and she tells everyone lies about me at school. Maybe we should keep the witch stuff to Annie's house for now so Liz doesn't see anything."

"But you can't go over there," Nikki said with a pout. "You're grounded. We can't do any new spells for a whole month? Don't we need to do a full moon ritual or something?"

I ran inside to check my calendar, and sure enough, the next full moon is on May 22.

"So you guys need to figure out a way to help me," I said. "That gives us less than a week."

"I have plans with them on Tuesday," Nikki said brightly. "We can come up with a plan. I promise, we will get you free on time."

"Good, because the full moon is on Thursday. Maybe you guys can just talk to Mom? Tell her that I'm not making you do dangerous spells, and Liz is jealous, so she's saying mean things about me at school?"

Nikki shrugged. "I don't know, we can try it. But maybe we can think of a powerful spell, too!" She winked at me.

I hope she takes this seriously. I don't want to be grounded forever. But I have my doubts about what could happen.

Since I never wrote it down before, here is what I remember about the Spin the Bottle incident last summer.

Summer, 1996

Song: "Cannonball" by The Breeders

When we first moved to this house in 1993, Liz was the only other kid in the neighborhood. At first, I thought it was awesome that we had another girl our age to play with. We really tried to get along with Liz and include her in our games.

But Liz is a spoiled only child and always wanted to get our own way, so we got tired of her pretty quick. Plus, she has no imagination. She wanted to play boring games like House where you're a mom watching babies while your husband is at work. The kind of game you play where you're in kindergarten. Nikki and I liked to play more original things based on things we read in books and stuff. Like the original witch school, or the elaborate prairie dog town we dug in our yard. Liz never seemed to be able to keep up with our complex ideas.

But Liz also introduced us to Miss Maria's homeschool class at Boulder Creek Elementary. So we had to be nice to her at school.

So in spring 1996, two new families moved onto our street, all on our side. Our side is the one that runs parallel to the creek. Our backyards are all connected, since the creek is the property boundary. We have fences next to the houses, but it's just trees farther back.

First, Mike and Tina moved into the house at the far end of the street. Mike is my age and Tina is Nikki's age, so we thought they would be our friend's, but they were very distant. They go to public school so we didn't see them much during the school year. But as soon as Nikki saw Mike, she had an instant crush on him.

Then, Sarah moved into the house on our other side with her dad, who just got divorced. She has an older sister who lives with their mom. Sarah goes to public school, and she's really pretty, plus her dad leaves her alone at home all the time, so she basically had the whole house to herself.

And Sarah's yard has the only part of the creek that's deep enough to swim in. At my house, it's shallow and you can only wade up to your knees in the deeper parts. In Liz's yard, the banks are too steep, so she can't even reach the water without going through my yard. The banks also get deeper farther up the creek near the other houses. In the water, you can't even see Mike and Tina's house because the hill is so steep.

But Sarah's yard has this boulder where the creek runs over it in a pretty little waterfall, and underneath it, there's a deep pool. Not deep enough to dive, but you can barely walk into the shadows without going underwater and you can float on your back.

So last summer, Sarah started inviting everyone over to swim in the creek. And then we would hang out inside her house until dinnertime. It felt cool to have a kids only space.

But Sarah also didn't like Liz, and she had a crush on Mike, too. So she started finding ways to exclude Liz, like waiting until she was gone for the day to invite us over.

I don't remember the exact day, but we were hanging out in Sarah's house after swimming one afternoon. She was playing records on her dad's record player. Then Sarah said we should play spin the bottle. Tina left, but Mike agreed, and Nikki was really excited about playing.

But Liz realized that we were all there without her and knocked on the door.

Sarah told me to get rid of her. I couldn't think up a good excuse that wouldn't hurt Liz's feelings. Why didn't she just get the hint that we didn't want to be around her? We were only nice to her because my mom said we should remember that she was here first and was technically our oldest friend in Boulder Creek.

I answered the door and told Liz to her face, "We don't want to play with you right now."

I knew it was mean, but I did it anyway. Sarah told me it was really cool that I just told her off. And I felt like maybe I was just learning to stand up for myself. Not trying to be a goody two shoes to please my parents.

My mom told me later that she saw Liz run home crying, so of course I got in trouble for that.

As for the spin the bottle game, it was stupid. We made a rule that you only had to kiss people on the hand or the cheek so it wouldn't be too awkward. And we only played a few rounds because Nikki ruined it.

Sarah kept trying to spin the bottle so she could kiss Mike, but it kept landing on Nikki and me, so she kept kissing us on the cheeks. Then I got Mike, so I kissed his hand really fast. The next time Sarah landed on me, she kissed me on the mouth, but she was looking right at Mike the whole time.

Then Nikki got Mike on her turn, and she got really excited. She licked her lips and puckered up like she was getting ready to kiss him on the mouth!

Mike jumped up and said he was going home.

If Sarah kissed me on the mouth, does that mean she was my first kiss before Justin? Or does it not count because she's a girl?

Anyway, things were super awkward for everyone in the neighborhood after that incident. I've been in band with Mike for a whole year since then and even though we are both in percussion, he never says anything to me. But then all three of the boys who are in the percussion section never talk to me. They hog the drums and I play the xylophone because I'm the only one who can read music.

So I know why Liz hates me. And I'm not doing anything to help her. I doubt we will ever be friends again.

SEVEN

"Liar"

Tuesday, May 20, 1997

Song: "Liar" by Bikini Kill

Mood: betrayed

What Justin did was bad, but Nikki is worse. She said she would ask Annie and Siobhan for help to get me out of trouble and then she kept putting it off and calling me names.

She said my plan was stupid, and I was too picky and bossy, and she won't help me again.

I think she's mad because I won't help her cast a love spell on anyone and she realized the beauty spell didn't work. So she thinks I'm selfish and I'll only use magic for myself.

She is off hanging out with Annie and Siobhan right now and I'm not allowed to be around them because of this stupid grounding!

She always gets her way because she is the baby. I'm supposed to be responsible because I'm older, but that just means I get in more trouble. Then she gets to do whatever she wants even though she's younger than me because it isn't fair if I get special privileges.

Just like I never got to have sleepovers until I was 11, but as soon as I started having friends sleepover, she got to do it too—even though she was eight years old at the time! If a boy asked her out, she'd get to date now, I bet. The only problem is she acts so desperate and throws herself at older boys, so no one is interested in her. That's not my fault. But she thinks since I had a boyfriend, now it's her turn, and if I don't magic her a boyfriend out of thin air then I am a bad sister!

Since she was busy with her friends, I went and searched her bedroom. She has tons of my stuff! She took my writing notebook and tore out the story I was working on. She scribbled in my favorite diary.

I hate her. I am not playing with or letting her get involved in anything ever again. I am not even speaking to her unless I am being rude. She can't borrow my stuff. I am not telling her any secrets.

My sister is a thief. I will have to Nikki-proof my room again. Hide my secret stuff. My notebooks. My journals. Diaries. Spell ingredients. Jewelry.

I can't believe her! I hate her. I hate her. I hate her.

This time she won't get a second chance.

I tried to confront her after Annie and Siobhan left. She grossed me out on purpose and she said she wished I would DIE. Then she ran off without me, which she is not supposed to do.

She went on the trampoline in the backyard and when I came to jump on it, she laid down and wouldn't move. I told her to get off, she screamed at me, and then my mom heard so I got in trouble even more.

I'm never going to be ungrounded. I'm supposed to go to swim team summer camp in July, but my mom is talking about seeing if she can get a refund! It's my first time at a sleep-away camp and now Nikki is going to ruin it for me. But she still gets to go to Girl Scout camp! It's so unfair. My mom always takes her side.

My whole family is so hard to live with. Nikki is such a two-faced liar who acts nice to me one day, and then she makes my life miserable the next. My mom is always moralizing about what I “should” do and how to be a “good girl.” (If she knew half the stuff I did behind her back, she would probably ground me for life.) And my dad doesn’t even seem to want a family. We are just an inconvenience for him to yell at when he is too stressed out after work.

See if I ever cast a spell for any of these people again!

But I won't do a curse again. I'm not sure what happened last time, but I can't run that risk now. I just wish I had someone to talk to about this, but I can't call Georgia since I'm grounded, it's not safe to talk at school, and there isn't anyone in the neighborhood that I can trust.

This is the worst year ever.

EIGHT

"All Hail Me"

Friday, May 23, 1997

Song: “All Hail Me” by Veruca Salt

Mood: vindicated

I spent the full moon alone in quiet contemplation. Instead of turning to divination to help, I tried to think about everything that’s happened so far and how to change it. But nothing could have prepared me for today.

Nikki admitted to me that she tried to cast a spell with Annie and Siobhan behind my back. They did it at school, which is so dangerous–they could have gotten caught, and then we’d all be in trouble. But they’re begging me to help them again.

I made Nikki apologize for all the shitty things she’s done to me lately. Then I told them I’d only agree to work with them again if we set down some ground rules.

Absolute secrecy. We’ve got to be way more careful, so no more spells where anyone could spy on us. Also, we need code words and names for all this.

* * *

All decisions must be unanimous. We can’t go with majority rules, because it would be too easy to tie two against two. And I don’t want the others to be able to outvote me. So all four of us have to agree on a spell or any other actions.

* * *

No more harmful spells. This shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Maybe we worded things wrong that time, so I have to analyze everything for the potential to hurt someone.

* * *

That’s just to start for now. I’ll probably come up with more rules once I’ve had more time to think about this. The rules I set up in the official witch handbook were mostly junk that I copied from The Worst Witch and gave me a lot of authority, which is part of why Nikki complained that I was being too bossy. But we’ve got to be more serious if we want to keep doing this.

Nikki and I talked to Annie on the phone so we could all agree about the rules and make a plan. Everyone’s going to vote on future rules, too, but I can make a good case if I have to.

The next step can’t come until after school is out and I’m no longer grounded. Nikki is going to talk to Mom and say that she was mad at me over something stupid (no real details), so she’s sorry about getting me in trouble the other day. Then we have to show our parents that we’re all made up and on our best behavior until they relax. We can’t give them any reason to suspect us.

For now, I’m going to come up with the code name for our coven and plan an initiation ceremony. The first chance we get to hang out as the four of us, we’re going to officially start this thing off the right way. We will take an oath to uphold the rules and stay loyal to the whole coven. No more fighting.

We’re used to making code names for our games so people don’t know what we’re really talking about. The Family Game and the Bunny Game were both way darker than you’d ever guess. We’ve all agreed that we won’t talk about the Family Game in particular. I destroyed all records of that so it can’t be accidentally discovered.

Since we’ll be mostly casting our spells outside in the forest, I think we should call it the Prairie Game. We’ll tell our parents that we’re pretending to be like Little House on the Prairie, so they won’t question why we’re picking so many plants or lighting candles. I doubt they’d ever let us have a proper fire at home, but maybe we can go camping without them and do it right over the summer. It sounds innocent enough.

I’m not sure what I want my witch name to be yet. Something that sounds magical and has a good meaning. But it has to start with K. I always felt like my name was special because it started with an unusual letter, even though there are actually a lot of girls named Katie. I’ll have to do some research and see what I can come up with.

Nikki went straight for Mom’s baby name book to start looking for ideas. That’s kind of fun because it tells you a little about the origins and meanings of each name, but they all seem pretty common and boring. I don’t think you can pick a magical name like a normal baby name.

I’m still grounded, but maybe I can convince Mom that I need to go to the library to research a school project. I can’t check out any books that would make her suspicious right now, but she won’t watch me the whole time, so I can copy stuff into my notebook and put the books back. Time to go see if they have those old witchcraft books still so I can write a good initiation ritual. If I make it too complicated, Nikki will complain, but it’s got to feel powerful and binding enough to make a difference.

NINE

"Cursum Perficio"

Saturday, June 7, 1997

Song: “Cursum Perficio” by Enya

Mood: accomplished

I survived the school year and I’m officially un-grounded!

And then I performed the initiation ceremony.

Nikki brought Annie and Siobhan home with her after school. I know that Liz said she wasn’t going to be home today, so we didn’t have to worry about her spying on us. I had everything set up and ready in the backyard.

We came to the grove by the creek, the one we used to call Galadriel’s Cathedral. That name doesn’t seem to fit now that we’ve started using it for our rituals, so I’ve started calling it just The Grove as a code name. But for our new coven, we’re calling the biggest tree in the middle the Tree of Life.

I put fresh batteries in the boombox and brought it outside with us. Ever since we came up with the idea of the initiation, I knew exactly what I wanted to play. “Cursum Perficio” by Enya has always sounded like a creepy ritual to me, ever since I had a dance routine to it a few years ago. I wore a black skirt and a black cape in the recital and I still own them, although they’re small enough now that they’re more Nikki’s size. If I had them for all of us, it would look better, but we don’t have matching outfits so I just told them to wear anything black or dark they owned.

My mom told me that “Cursum Perficio” is from a movie called Death Becomes Her. She won’t let me watch it but she said it’s from a part where the sisters cast a spell so they can live forever. I’ve always pictured what the scene looks like when I listen to the song so I tried to copy that.

There are two entrances to the grove, so I told the others to line up on either side, just like the wings of a stage. When the music started, Nikki and I marched in from one entrance while Annie and Siobhan came from the other. It looks more symmetrical that way because of height, and I thought the younger sisters would do better if they were following the big sisters.

Annie understands how serious I wanted us to be. She kept Siobhan from laughing.

After we met in the middle, we joined hands in a circle and danced around three times. Everyone stayed in time to the music.

Finally, we each swore an oath to follow the rules of the coven. We haven’t added anything beyond the three rules I wrote down last time so it wasn’t too much to remember. Then we pricked our fingers to add a drop of blood into the cauldron–

Well, it’s not really a proper cauldron. I’ve looked at those beautiful cast-iron cauldrons in the store but they’re so expensive! I’ve got an old metal pot that is too banged up for cooking, so my parents were going to throw it away. I consecrated it by charging it under the moonlight during the last full moon, then I buried it under the Tree of Life until today. It was pretty dirty, but I washed it out in the creek.

After we swore the blood oath, we were each allowed to choose a new magical name for ourselves. I made them tell me what names they chose and get my approval ahead of time, because I didn’t want them to pick anything that sounded stupid.

My name is Kaeldra, which starts with K, like Katie. It’s the name of a character from a book, Dragon’s Milk. According to the book, it’s a Celtic name that means “one with nature.” That sounded fitting for a witch who is casting all her spells in nature.

Nikki chose the name Quinta. I asked her if she was just copying her Quints dolls, because one of them is named Quinta, but she said she just likes the name. Of course, Q is a more unusual letter than K to start a name, so she’s probably trying to be better than me. It’s a Latin name that means fifth, which I said doesn’t make sense, since there are only four people in our coven. Nikki says that it represents the fifth element, spirit. (At least she didn’t try to name herself Leeloo like in The Fifth Element.) So I let it slide.

Annie had a hard time choosing a name, so I suggested that she use Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. It starts with the same letter as her name and Artemis sounds like a good deity to worship as a witch because she’s also the goddess of the moon. I showed Annie the section on Greek mythology that I studied in school this year and Annie agreed it was a good name. She even has three dogs, although Angus and Mab (the dachshunds) are technically her family’s pets. Annie’s dog is Jazzy, short for Jasmine, a black lab.

Siobhan said that she already has a fancy name that’s too hard to pronounce, and she wanted something simple. She picked Lea. I don’t know if that means anything special, but it sounds pretty so it’s fine.

We are calling ourselves the Sisters of the Forest Path Coven. We bound our hands together with ribbons so we will be linked forever.

Our next order of business is to plan a ritual for the Summer Solstice in two weeks. It’s also Annie’s birthday, so we want to make it really special, but we have to keep it secret. I think we should try to stay up all night so we can see the sun rise. Imagine how much magic there must be if you see the first rays of the sun!

TEN

"Here Comes the Sun"

Saturday, June 21, 1997

Song: Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles

Mood: excited

It's finally the Summer Solstice. Litha, as some call it. I've heard it called Midsummer, but that doesn't fit since it's only June and school just got out two weeks ago. I guess Shakespeare didn't have the same school schedule as we do now.

Tonight, we're celebrating at Annie's house for her birthday. It's so cool that her birthday is on the solstice. And that means her Sun sign is on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer. That's rare.

Nikki is also a Cancer, since her birthday is next month, and she has that classical crabby attitude. But Annie is different. She's more soft-spoken, and she thinks before she does anything.

I'm an Aquarius, so I guess that's why I never shut up and I don't like to follow the rules. I don't remember when Siobhan's birthday is, honestly, so I'll have to ask her again. Maybe sometime I will draw up all the charts for everyone in the coven to see what we can learn. I found a website that makes it much easier than doing it by hand. Georgia is a Sagittarius, which probably explains why she doesn’t believe most of this stuff. But I think she’ll come around someday.

Since Annie's parents and brothers will be there, we can't do anything until they all go to bed. And Annie has some other friends from school who are hanging out in the afternoon, but they're not staying for the sleepover.

We're staying in the camper trailer again. It will be really hot when the sun comes up in the morning. But I want us to stay up all night.

I wanted to play more music and choreograph some dance routines, but Annie says that will make too much noise and the neighbors will complain if we are dancing out in the middle of the night. I would have done The Lion King for sunset, Here Comes the Moon for moonrise, and Here Comes the Sun for dawn. I can still picture how pretty it would be to dance as the sun rises.

So far, our coven hasn't done much besides coming up with our magical names and a few Tarot readings. I have to come up with something else cool for us to do tonight.

What I'm most worried about right now is the fact that Liz will keep spying on us at home. I have to figure out a good way to keep her from seeing what we are doing. Nikki said we should do a spell against her, but that seems so dangerous.

Maybe she just needs a good distraction…

Honestly, she could have Justin for all I care. He was a boring boyfriend. But I don't think she's actually interested in him.

All the girls on our street want Mike for some reason. I don't know what they all see in him. He plays the drums, rides around on his skateboard, and never says anything. Is it just convenient that he lives so close?

I'd never do a love spell, but Liz doesn't know that. We could pretend to make her a charm that says Mike will fall in love with her. Then maybe she'll leave us alone, because if she tells anyone else about us, then I'll tell everyone what we did for her. Even if she sees something else, she has to keep it a secret. The charm could be a dud or do something mild like distract her with constant obsessing over Mike. It wouldn't take much of a push.

Then Nikki and I will be gone for summer camp for a week. That will give Liz time to play around with her love charm all on her own. She'll probably make a total fool of herself trying to seduce Mike, which won't work.

I just have to make sure that Nikki understands this is a fake spell. Otherwise, her jealousy will backfire on me.

The others have to agree to this plan, so I'll explain it all tonight. Getting a unanimous vote shouldn't be hard if I can say it right. I'll practice my speech for a while to make sure it makes sense.

And then Operation: Liz Humiliation will begin.

ELEVEN

"Barbie Girl"

Sunday, June 22, 1997

Song: “Barbie Girl” by Aqua

Mood: disgusted

Now I remember why I don’t like hanging out with most girls. Ugh.

Annie’s birthday party was practically a disaster. She invited a bunch of girls from the elementary school class, so I was the oldest one there. I remember these girls from last year when they were way more interested in things like art or science or whatever. All they want to do now is talk about boys and clothes and stupid stuff.

They also started listening to pop music on the radio, and I can’t stand it. Bunch of whiny girl singers who just want to get boys to like them. The worst one, so of course it’s the most popular, is this song that’s—no kidding—called “Barbie Girl” where the girl’s voice is sped up to be super high and the man’s voice is dropped low. She’s bragging about how she’s just like a Barbie doll and the guy can do anything he wants to her. Ew! I’m not a prude, but even I don’t think it’s okay for young girls to be listening to this song.

But everyone—including Nikki, who would be in big trouble if I told Mom about this—knew all the lyrics and sang along to them unironically. Every time the song came on, which is once an hour on the station they listened to, they would stop whatever they were doing to sing the whole thing. Now I have that stupid song stuck in my head! It’s so catchy that it never goes away.

It’s no wonder that boys all think that girls are stupid and air-headed if this is how they act.

And then they started complaining about homeschooling. The older girls, Michelle and Danielle, said that they’re not going to homeschool next year in seventh grade. They want to go to public school because they said in junior high, being homeschooled is “social suicide.” (Mom would be so mad if she knew they were joking with the word “suicide” like that. Frankly, it makes me a little uncomfortable, too.) They say they have to be in public school if they ever want to be popular or get boyfriends.

Annie is still planning to join the homeschool class next year, but I could see that she was second-guessing her choice. If Michelle and Danielle aren’t there, then I’m the only person she likes in the class. We’re friends mostly because of Nikki (and now the coven). But I could tell she was going to miss her regular friend group since half of them will still be in elementary (Nikki, Siobhan, and Gabby) and the other half will be in public.

After the other girls left, I told her how I really felt. We all know that public school kids are way more harsh and insulting. They’ll know that we used to be homeschooled even if we switch to “real” school, so we’d probably never be popular. And since we live in such a small town, everyone has known each other in the same classes since kindergarten or even earlier. It’s too late to catch up with them and I don’t think it’s worth it, anyway. Chasing popularity is a stupid game.

Besides, it’s hard enough getting bullied by the “good little Christian” kids in the homeschool group. There were about twenty kids in the class last year and I only had to see them twice a week, and that already made my life miserable when the whole Justin fallout happened. In public school, there would have been thirty kids in each of six different classes, not counting the ones I see in cross country and band. Right now, I kind of fly under the radar with most public school kids since they don’t really know me and they don’t hear the rumors from the homeschool class. I’d rather be ignored than teased all the time.

Annie’s too sweet and sensitive to survive in public school, so I told her that.

“Junior high is a nightmare,” I said. “Every girl is labeled a prude or a slut. There’s no in between. Boys aren’t going to give you flowers or cards to ask you out. They’ll try to look down your shirt, say gross things about your body, call you desperate if you try to talk to them, and then dare their friends to ask you out as a joke. And the girls are even meaner. You don’t go into it thinking about how you’re going to have the perfect boyfriend or a popular group of friends. It’s just about survival.”

Annie looked really scared when I said that. “Are you sure it’s that bad? You got chocolates and a valentine from a boy.”

“Which was probably his mom’s idea,” I said. “And then look how that turned out. If I’d known Justin was going to be such a jerk, I never would have agreed to go out with him.”

Nikki rolled her eyes. “Katie’s just cynical because she got her heart broken. But don’t listen to Michelle and Danielle, either. I bet most people won’t care if you’re in homeschool or not. We hang out with public school kids at recess and they don’t treat us any differently. It’s only that Katie is such a snob that she won’t talk to anyone, so they ignore her.”

I can’t believe she said that. “I’m not a snob,” I insisted. “Those other kids just aren’t worth talking to. Even in the electives like band and cross country, most of them care more about goofing off than actually paying attention to what we’re supposed to be doing.”

She pointed her finger at me. “See, snob. You don’t like any fun.”

I shut my mouth after that because there was no point in arguing with her.

Later that night, when we were sure everyone else was in bed and wouldn’t overhear us, I told them my plan for stopping Liz. Nikki was all for it, but Annie was the holdout because she didn’t want to embarrass anyone.

“It’s literally what she’s asking for,” I explained again. “She wants a love spell and those are wrong, but she won’t listen when we try to tell her that. So when it backfires on her, maybe she’ll finally learn. But it’s her choice, right? Nothing would happen if she didn’t keep harassing this guy.” I tried not to look at Nikki when I said. It won’t help if she thinks I’m making a dig at her, too.

So finally, they all agreed, and we made the charm.

We didn’t manage to stay up all night, though. After the spell, we were tired, so we just talked for a while and fell asleep. I think I conked out around 3 am. When I woke up, the sun was up and shining on the camper trailer, making it super hot.

I still didn’t get a lot of sleep, so I’m tired today. But I made time to go over to Liz’s house and gave her the fake love spell. Her mom wasn’t inside, but I hid the charm inside a novel that Liz wanted to borrow and pointed it out to her silently with a wink. I’m sure she’ll figure out the rest.

Tomorrow, I have to pack for swim camp because I’m leaving on Tuesday. Mom just told me that she has an appointment for her hairdresser to cut my hair! She thinks it’s too long and it would be easier for me to manage it at camp if I got it trimmed.

I’m really nervous because I’ve only let my mom cut my hair before. I know it’s really long (it hangs past my butt now) and it’s kind of hard to stuff it into a swimming cap, but I’ve always managed. I really hope that the hairdresser doesn’t cut it too short. At least I can grow it back in before I go back to school in the fall…

TWELVE

"Precious Things"

Monday, June 23, 1997

Song: “Precious Things” by Tori Amos

Mood: horrified

This might be the worst day of my life.

I thought it was bad when Justin betrayed me and I was bullied at school, but I got over that. After this, though, I might never be the same. It could take months or years for me to recover.

My hair is so short.

Not just short in a cute bob or something like that. I look like a boy. I look like a middle-aged soccer mom who over-permed her hair in the eighties and had to chop it all off. It’s so short, it sticks out from my head. It looks like one of those Ken dolls with the plastic hair that you can’t brush or style. I tried making it look better with hair clips or a headband or something, but it’s so short, it won’t hold anything. This is a total disaster.

It definitely won’t grow back in time for school in the fall. And I’m going to swim camp tomorrow.

I don’t know what went wrong. My mom said she wanted it trimmed so it would be easier to manage. She said her hairdresser was going to make it look cute and stylish for me.

But her regular hairdresser was out today, and there wasn’t time to get another appointment. So she let some other woman cut my hair. This woman might be certifiably insane. She didn’t listen to anything we tried to tell her.

She took one look at my beautiful long hair and said it looked ratty. She said I had too many split ends from swimming in chlorine all the time, even though I always use conditioner after swim practice. She picked it up and snipped off a giant! Hunk! All at once!

And then she kept cutting! She said it was going to look better with layers, and she kept cutting until there was nothing left!

I was crying the whole time I was in the chair. My mom didn’t back me up at all. She just chatted with the stylist while she was massacring all of my beautiful hair, and she told me it was going to look good and not to worry so much.

Nobody listened to what I wanted. But now I’m the one who has to live with this ridiculous hair every day.

When she was done, I couldn’t say anything. The person in the mirror was a total stranger. I don’t recognize myself. At. All.

The only good thing is that when I asked to save my hair, she let me take it home. She had the ponytail in one big chunk and put it in a bag for me. She probably thinks I’m crazy, but I don’t care.

Now that I know how powerful witchcraft can be, I wasn’t going to leave my hair lying around for anyone to take it and mess with it. I’m burying it in the backyard, under the Tree of Life, and casting a spell to make my hair grow faster. It’s the only thing I can think of to make myself feel better.

And then I’m casting the worst curse I know of on that stupid hairdresser! I hope all her hair falls out and leaves her bald!

But that’s going to have to wait, because I would need the coven’s help for a proper curse, and I won’t have time before camp.

My head feels so light with all the hair. Like it’s floating above my body. I can’t believe this.

I thought Mom liked my long hair. She used to make French braids for Nikki and me when we were younger. Nikki cut her hair short last year, to shoulder length, but it doesn’t look bad like this. Her hair is finer, so it behaves nicely and she gets a little curl on the ends.

My hair is thick and heavy. It used to curl when I was little, so I thought maybe it would get curlier if it wasn’t so long, but it’s not. It just sticks straight out. There is no way to make it look any better.

After a long time of crying and begging my mom to do something, she finally bought me a hat. “You can wear this at camp when you’re not swimming,” she said. “Then we can learn how to style it when you get home.”

A fucking hat!

I don’t care. I’ll wear the hat and hide the hair from everyone. The irony is that it’s so short now, I probably won’t even need a swim cap to hold it in the pool. But I’ll do it anyway because who knows how bad this will look when it’s wet. There is no possible way to make it lie down flat.

I can’t even think about what it will be like for school in two months. All I can do is hope it will grow, even a little bit. But I know I’m going to get teased. So much for flying under the radar at school.

This is the last time I ever get style advice from my mom, ever. She still does her makeup the same way she did in high school, I bet. And she gets blonde highlights because she doesn’t like that her hair is turning dark brown. She has no idea how I want to look and she won’t listen to how I feel. She thinks all girls’ fashion today is too slutty–even though she admits that crop tops and bellbottoms were popular when she was a teen, too. I’m sure she wore things that she would call slutty now.

Not that it matters what I wear. I got called a slut when I was wearing turtle necks and sweatshirts by girls who wore much more revealing clothing. So fuck it.

Goddess, I just want this stupid swim camp to be over with now. I was so excited when my parents first signed me up and then I was disappointed when they threatened to cancel. But I don’t want anyone to see me like this. Can I hide in my room all summer? Will I be able to wear a hat at school all day in the fall?

The only thing that made me feel slightly better was talking to Georgia. She’s got long hair, too, so she knows how protective I feel about mine. I called her on the phone to talk and say goodbye before I left for a week. She hasn’t seen my short hair yet, but she already promised not to laugh or say anything bad when she sees it. We’re going to hang out after I come back.

I haven’t told her about the other stuff yet. It feels weird to keep hiding the coven from her, but we haven’t had a chance to talk in real privacy and I don’t know how she’ll react to it. I have to feel her out before I say anything. Technically, the rule against telling anyone applies to her, too, but she’s my best friend. But I have to make sure she won’t freak out…

THIRTEEN

"No Backrub"

Wednesday, July 2, 1997

Song: “No Backrub” by Bikini Kill

Mood: tired

Well, I survived my first trip to camp. I’m never going again.

The whole thing sucked from beginning to end, not even counting my disaster of a haircut. First of all, the swimming part wasn’t any different from what I do at the normal swim team. The only difference was that we swam twice a day, which was exhausting. And when we weren’t in the pool, they had us exercising somewhere else: running laps around the track, working out in the gym, playing Ultimate Frisbee in the field. It’s like they wanted us to keep up with an Olympic athlete’s training schedule, but I’ve never gotten that much exercise in one day and it was too hard to just jump into that intense level all at once. I was tired and sore the entire time.

We stayed in the college dorms, but it was really cold at night and we only had thin blankets. The food sucked. And everyone was a snobby bitch who didn’t want to talk to me. Even the girl assigned to be my roommate took her mattress out of our room to go stay with her friends down the hall and I was all alone.

I only had two friends, and they were in a different group than me for swimming. Everyone else is crazy.

I got my period on the second day and had to ask a counselor for feminine products, because I wasn’t expecting it to happen yet. She couldn’t give me anything for the cramps because all medications needed a signed permission slip from home and my parents hadn’t thought about it, either. So I was tired, cold, hungry, sore, and full of cramps. I wished that my parents would come pick me up and take me home. I tried telling the counselor that I was too sick to keep going, but she said that exercise would help the cramps and I should just stick with it. Like swimming in a cold pool helps with cramps! I need a heating pad.

My mom says I need to track my period better, but I swear you can’t predict when mine is coming. I started getting it six months ago, in December (when Georgia was sleeping over, which made it even more awkward, especially since I don’t think she’s gotten hers yet, so I can’t really talk to her about it). It’s been a different length every time since then. Sometimes it’s five or six weeks. This time it was barely three weeks since last time, so I thought I was safe and I didn’t bring anything. I’ll never make that mistake again–every time I leave the house, I’m going to make sure I have at least one pad on me.

My mom isn’t good at giving advice when it comes to stuff like this. When I told her I started bleeding, she handed me a pad and a tampon with no explanation and left me alone. Just looking at the tampon in the little cardboard tube was so intimidating. When I tried to use it, it hurt too much, so I gave up. It wasn’t until a while later that I found the whole box of tampons, which had instructions inside that made more sense. It’s not really the kind of thing I could figure out on my own! But my mom gets super embarrassed talking about anything remotely related to sex or puberty, so she blurts out the minimum and then ends the conversation.

And of course, because I’m homeschooled, it’s not like I learn sex ed at school. Ms. Andrews would never cover that topic in class, and I can’t blame her. All the boys would make gross jokes and it would be embarrassing for all the girls. The Christian girls at school won’t even say the word “sex.” One of them spelled it out once, “S-E-X,” and the others crossed themselves like she was cursing them! Like just saying the word is going to make them fall in bed with a boy and get pregnant. And yet they have no problem implying that I am a slut or agreeing when someone else uses that word about me.

The other thing that was hard about camp was I missed my family. My parents and my cat, Patches. Even Nikki. I thought it would be nice to have a break from her, but since I didn’t have anyone else to talk to, it was really lonely. She doesn’t come home from camp for two more days and I have a million things to tell her. I hope she’s doing okay. She’s probably even more miserable than me at Girl Scout camp.

At least I get to see Georgia tomorrow when she comes over. We’ll laugh at my hair and I’ll complain about all the bitchy girls at camp. She’s no longer busy with track or anything this summer, so we’ll have a lot more time to hang out. And Nikki won’t be hanging around and trying to tag along on everything we do. Maybe I can even hint to Georgia enough about the coven to see if she’s interested. The others would definitely let her join if she was interested, and she might help balance us out. Georgia is way more level-headed than any of us.

Oh, and my cat, Patches, is pregnant! She looks like she’s about ready to burst. I can’t wait to see the kittens. But I hope they don’t come until Nikki comes home so she can see them and help me name them. I hope we can keep at least one of them, although Dad will say we have to give them away. Maybe Annie and Siobhan could adopt a couple. They already have one cat but they have three dogs and another cat wouldn’t be more work than that, and most of their pets live outside. We only have my cat Patches, and Nikki’s dog Teddy, and they both live outside since my dad says animals would make the house too dirty.

Maybe Georgia wants a cat, too. I’ll ask her when she’s here. It could be a way to connect the coven together, like we all have familiars that are from the same litter of kittens. I can’t imagine anything more witchy.

FOURTEEN

"Down by the Water"

Thursday, July 3, 1997

Song: "Down by the Water" by PJ Harvey

Mood: amazed

I discovered something amazing today. This could change everything.

Georgia came over to hang out. We wanted to go for a long creek walk to get out of the heat and clear our minds. When we're outside, we can talk about anything or not talk at all. There is something so pure and refreshing about nature. So we ate a quick lunch and left.

No sign of Liz since I came back from camp, by the way. Mom says her family went for a vacation to Disneyland. I'd be jealous except it's going to be even hotter in southern California and really crowded for 4th of July. It's the worst time to do Disney. But it means I'm safe from her for a little longer.

Dad says the creek in our backyard is technically public property. There are houses on both sides, but if you stay in the water, it's not trespassing. And when you get farther up the creek, the banks are so steep that it's not like you can see anyone's house. We've walked it a few times but never farther than the end of the street. This time, we were going to see what it was like deep in the woods.

You'd think our street would be named after the creek, Hare Creek. Lots of them are around here. Boulder Creek, Bear Creek, Jamison Creek. The little cross street is Hare Way. But our street is called Lake Drive. Dad says it's just a little reservoir on the maps, but we've never seen it. Our road ends in a chain-link fence so no one can go past it.

Hiking up the creek is slow. In some places it gets deep, so you have to climb around the banks. Sometimes the mud is slippery. The rocks can be slippery, too, or cut your feet. We wear sports sandals that strap on tight for creek walking.

Going up the street is less than a mile, but it takes a long time. So it was more than an hour before we broke through the trees and saw it.

The lake.

There's a dam that keeps our little creek down to a trickle. This is why there are no fish able to come up the creek anymore. We saw salmon struggling to swim upstream one year, but there is no way they'd get over that dam. Georgia and I had to go around and use the trees to pull ourselves up.

The water is green and dark, with no way to see how deep it is. An awesome swimming hole if I dared go in. It's totally surrounded by trees with no houses in sight. Private. No signs that it's been touched by human hands in years.

As soon as I saw it, I knew. It was the perfect place for our coven to meet. No one could spy on us here or know what we were doing. I can't wait until I tell the others.

But I couldn't say any of that to Georgia. Not until I knew she would be open to it.

So on the hike back, I tried asking some general questions. What does she believe in? Is she open-minded?

I knew that her parents were atheists and didn't raise her around any kind of religion. Her dad actually had a bad experience with a cult when he was younger. But I didn't know how Georgia felt.

She told me that she's agnostic and doesn't know what's out there. She wants to keep an open mind and see for herself. That gave me hope.

Then I asked her if she believes in magic.

"What, like ESP and seeing ghosts and stuff?" She seemed to think I was only talking about psychics.

I tried to find a way to say that was only part of it. Real magic. Casting spells, predicting the future.

Georgia laughed. "That's not real. I know those girls at school started some rumor that you're a witch, but I know you're not like that. Those Christian girls just say everything they don't like is evil. Good thing they can't burn anyone at the stake anymore."

I felt like I'd been stabbed. She laughed at the idea of witchcraft. She meant it to protect me, but it hurt.

I'll wait until a better time to tell her the truth. She's not ready yet. Maybe if I can find a way to prove that my powers are real, then she'd believe me. But I have to be very careful how I tell her so she doesn't get scared.

Then she said something else.

"Don't let all the teasing get to you. Those girls are just mean to everyone. They called me a lesbian because I play sports and dress like a tomboy." She pointed at my hair. "I hope they don't say the same thing to you now that your hair is so short."

Oh, no. I'm already worried about them making fun of my hair. It would be such a weird turn, though, right? Since they call me a giant slut for kissing one boy? How does that turn into lesbian?

I tried to laugh it off, but it made me even more scared. It's already July. In less than two months, we will be back in that classroom and it will start all over again.

Georgia told me not to be scared. She said she'd be there, and try to stand up for me more. She thinks people will have forgotten all about me and Justin by then.

But what if Justin starts being mean to me again? Or his awful friends?

We have to have the coven ready to protect ourselves. I need to do lots more research about magic so I know what I'm doing. No more mistakes.

When summer is over, I'll show those good little Christian girls what a witch can do.

FIFTEEN

"Sugar Water"

Friday, July 4, 1997

Song: "Sugar Water" by Cibo Matto

Mood: confused

Nikki came home from camp today and said she had an awesome time with the Girl Scouts. Well, isn't that just great for her. Now she won't stop talking about all the stuff she did in the woods.

I can't believe it. I was so sure that she was going to be even more miserable than me. She slept outside, on the ground, and she had to cook her own food. But she said it was awesome? And she made tons of friends who are going to be her pen pals!

Nikki was always better at making friends than me. She makes it look easy. Give her five minutes and she'll start chatting with anyone. Next thing you know, they're besties.

I only made two friends in the entire seventh grade and one of them was Justin, who doesn't count anymore. Annie and Siobhan are really here for Nikki. It may seem like I'm just carpooling on my sister's social life… and I guess that's true. But I don't know how she does it. How do you even talk to people?

That wouldn't be such a big deal except we got News today. My parents were waiting until she was home so they could tell both of us at the same time.

Ms. Andrews is expanding the junior high homeschool class. SLV junior high only has 7th and 8th grade. But Ms. Andrews says that if a family has an older sibling in the class, she'll let 6th graders enroll with them.

So Nikki is coming to junior high with me. She's excited because she gets to be with Annie. (Siobhan will still be in 5th grade, so she has to wait a year before she can join them, and by then I'll be in high school.)

Everything is going to be so different with my sister there, and I don't know how I feel about it. Is it good that I will have more people in the class who won't hate me and make fun of me? Yes. But will my sister get teased by all these horrible people? Probably yes, too.

I don't think she's ready for just how bad it will be. I've tried to warn her, but she thinks I'm exaggerating to scare her. My poor little sister is going to get eaten alive by those mean girls, to say nothing of the jerk boys. There's nothing I can do to protect her when I'm a target, too. She's too young to face the harsh world of teenagers.

The only hope for us now is if the coven can come up with new spells to protect ourselves from these bullies. So we need to make a plan.

Nikki's birthday is next week, so Annie and Siobhan will be coming to sleep over at our house. That will be the best time to take them up the creek and show them the lake. Then we can make a plan of attack, or defenses or whatever.

Liz also comes home next week and then we can see the results of our fake love charm. Maybe that will give us some ideas for how we can deal with everyone else at school.

Parents are no help with this. Mom says kids are just mean, especially girls who get jealous, and all I can do is ignore them. She doesn't know what it's like to see them every week.

I'm hearing mixed things about how high school is. Some people say it's not as bad, but some people have told me that it gets worse. And there's no homeschool class to protect me at the high school yet. Of the five students who graduated eighth grade this year, two of them moved away, one went to public school, and two are taking the GED or something so they can go straight to college.

Maybe I can do that and skip HS. It seems like the safest plan. I wouldn't get to stay in band or cross country, but I could pick the classes I wanted. Some people are even starting to go to college online. That sounds perfect because I wouldn't have to talk to anyone, I could just do the work and concentrate on my grades. Heaven.

But for now, I can't let them get to me.

The only thing that I have to look forward to right now is taking the coven to the lake. I tried to find it on the map, but it doesn't seem to have a name. What should we call it? Anne of Green Gables had the Lake of Shining Waters, but that doesn't fit. This place is darker, more mysterious. I can feel the power in its depths.

I used to think the pool in Sarah's yard, next to ours, was scary because of the dark shadows around the rock. I called it the Sea Monster's Cave when I was little. But I'll come up with something better this time. The Mermaid Lagoon sounds too childish, too. It's like a lagoon because it's green, but it's not near the ocean.

Maybe it will come to me in a dream. It feels like some place that I've seen before. Like I always knew it was there, waiting for me.

Patches is walking around crying, so I need to go see if I can calm her down. She might be having her kittens soon. Or maybe she's just anxious because the neighbors are having a party with loud music. They will probably set off fireworks later even though they're illegal and we're in the middle of a drought, so it would be really dangerous. Our neighbors are stupid like that.

She usually calms down when I sing to her, so I'll go try that.

SIXTEEN

"Victrola"

Saturday, July 5, 1997

Song: “Victrola” by Veruca Salt

Mood: happy

The people who gave us Patches when she was a kitten said she was a boy, but that seemed unlikely, since she’s a tortoiseshell. Like calicos, male torties are very rare. Well, now that she’s an adult and she got pregnant, it became very obvious that she was actually female.

Six kittens, dubbed The Squealers, were found with Patches today at 8am. There are four blacks, one light gray, and one white. I wish that one of them looked more like Patches, but I guess that cat genetics are a little random.

We’ve already named them. The first black female is Narknon, named by Nikki after the King of Cats in The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley. The second black female, the runt, is Cinderella. The third black female’s name is Shadow. The black male is Gingivere. The white male is Snowflake. Mom named the light gray one Stormy after a Santana song she likes, but it makes me think of Stormy of Chincoteague, who was Misty’s foal in the book series about the Chincoteague ponies.

Patches is a very protective mother and tries to hide her kittens. They are so cute! I can’t wait until we can touch them. They keep mewing over every little thing that goes wrong, but it sounds more like baby bluejays.

Nikki has already decided that she wants to keep Narknon. She already has a dog, Teddy, although she got bored of him since he’s no longer a cute puppy. Dad and I take him with us when we go running.

I’ve decided to call the new lake Emerald Lagoon. It fits the green color of the water. Nikki wants to go see it, but I think we should wait until the whole coven can go together. Which means we’re still waiting for her birthday party. Her birthday is on Wednesday, but she gets to have a sleepover even though it’s a weekday. One more advantage of having your birthday in the middle of summer.

We also saw Liz get home from her Disney trip today, and she came over to tell us all about it. She got a new Mickey Mouse swimsuit, and she’s ready to show it off at the local pool. I asked her if she wanted Mike to see her in it, and she turned bright red.

Then she told us that the love charm has been giving her way more confidence than she had before, and she thinks it must be working! She hasn’t talked to Mike yet since she got it, but she said she is rehearsing for the next time she sees him.

Nikki and I kept looking at each other and trying not to laugh. Our plan is working, but we can’t afford to give it away too soon.

To keep us from cracking up, I changed the subject to the kittens and even invited Liz to come over and see them. She was instantly in love. She doesn’t have any pets, so she’s going to beg her mom to let her adopt one when they get older. I’m not sure if I want to give up one of Patches’s precious babies to someone I don’t like, but at least Liz lives next door, so I’d be able to see the kitten grow up and make sure she’s taking good care of it.

After she went home, Nikki and I were both in stitches. We joked about what it will look like when Liz tries to seduce Mike while wearing her dorky new bathing suit. Maybe that makes us a couple of mean girls to make fun of her like that. But Liz has it coming after everything she’s done to me.

I called Georgia to tell her about the kittens, and she was also excited about the idea of adopting one. Her last cat died last year from old age and she wants another one. She loves black cats, so I told her she could have her pick of any besides Narknon. She’ll also have to talk to her parents to make sure it’s okay.

I looked it up and kittens are ready to go to a new home when they’re eating solid food, between six and eight weeks. School will be starting around that time, so if we can’t give them away to our friends, I’ll be able to ask our classmates. Hopefully, only people who are nice to animals. But until then, I get to take care of six kittens all summer! I hope I can train them all to be as sweet and friendly as Patches.

SEVENTEEN

"Building a Mystery"

Sunday, July 6, 1997

Song: “Building a Mystery” by Sarah McLachlan

Mood: frustrated

The Squealers (Patches’s kittens) seem a little bit bigger today. I can tell them apart easily now. Snowflake is a white kitten and together with Stormy, the gray, they are the easiest to spot.

The others are hard if you don’t know what to look for. Gingivere is a bit lighter than the others and has a white chin. Cinderella is the smallest and has a light gray chin. Shadow is jet black, blacker than all of them. Narknon is the chubbiest and has slightly lighter gray stripes under the black fur.

Patches loves them a lot. All the kittens pile in a heap to sleep and Patches lies next to them with her paws around them. They look so sweet!

Gingivere won’t lie still. He keeps getting up and bothering everybody else. The only one that will stay still is Cinderella. She is my favorite. Stormy is my second favorite. But of course, Patches is my first cat, so she is the most precious to me. I can’t wait to hold her babies!

My life seems so meaningless sometimes. All I do is wait for something to happen and then it happens so fast and then I’m waiting again. All my stories turn out stupid, or I can’t say something right, or I can’t get something to happen the way I want it to.

Everything is changing, and it’s so confusing. I don’t even have my cat to turn to anymore because she’s busy with her kittens. There are some things that I can’t talk about with Georgia, and no one else seems to understand when I try to talk to them. Annie, Nikki, and Siobhan are too young. And I lost my only other friend, Justin, when he turned into a giant jerk.

All I can do is write about my feelings and hope for the best.

But that isn’t enough!

And why do I keep thinking about Justin? He was a big fake. Nothing he said was true, and then he stabbed me in the back.

I have this theory that Justin still likes me, or is at least trying to make me mad. I think he started the date rumor to get to me and when that didn’t work, he started talking about the other girl, Fifi, who probably doesn’t even exist. I shouldn’t give him the satisfaction of worrying about me.

I hate Justin. He is such an idiot.

Oh, well. I won’t see him until September, but I feel like I should do something, even with school just out!

Why does life have to be so confusing? I hate Justin, but I can’t stop thinking about him! Why do I miss the way it was when we talked all the time? I don’t miss the kissing, but I miss feeling like there was someone who was on my side and would always be there for me. Why do people always remember the good stuff and not the bad?

Maybe I just miss the way it could have been. I keep thinking “If only I had…”

Maybe that’s why I thought I should date him in the first place. Not for what was really there, but my idea of him.

I’m just going to have to start a whole different relationship with someone else if I want to try again. Not that there are any boys who seem any nicer. I have to forget about Justin, the big jerk, and stop regretting the past. Maybe it would still have happened. But I could have tried.

Help! What should I do? I need advice from somebody. Maybe a psychiatrist. I feel like I’m crazy. If I told anyone about the spells, they probably would say I was crazy and lock me up. Nobody gets burned at the stake anymore, just locked away in a hospital.

One thing I can do is make sure that no one ever gets hurt like this again. Boys are stupid and don’t deserve girls to give them any attention.

So I told Liz today to stay away from Mike. I told her how he acts in band, where he goofs off with the other boys and completely ignores me, even though we’re both in percussion and he should at least be civil. She argued with me at first because she thought I was just trying to sabotage her, so I admitted that the love charm was a fake. That really pissed her off. She stormed off home.

That might be a huge mistake. She could tell everyone that I was casting spells and tried to get her to make a fool of herself. But my conscience couldn’t take it anymore. I’m just not cut out to be that cruel, even to someone who’s hurt me.

Nikki was upset when I told her what I did, but I don’t care.

I wish there was someone that could understand all this stuff I’m going through. One day it feels like I have it all planned out. Then the next day it falls apart.

EIGHTEEN

"Mother"

Monday, July 7, 1997

Song: “Mother” by Babes in Toyland

Mood: mourning

Today we found that Shadow, one of the kittens, died during the night.

It’s hard to figure out what happened. I think maybe her left hind leg was deformed, or it had the umbilical cord still wrapped around it. She was somehow attached to two other kittens, Stormy and Cinderella. We managed to separate the other two with scissors and remove Shadow for burial.

I put her in a shoebox and buried her under the Tree of Life, where the dirt is still loose from the poppet. Dad helped me put a heavy rock on top so hopefully no wild animals can dig her up. Our dog, Teddy, isn’t much of a digger, but we get raccoons and things in the backyard.

I really hope Stormy and Cinderella will live after this. The other kittens look alive and well. They fight each other for milk, squirming everywhere. Snowflake is particularly silly. He was drinking by Patches’s hind legs while his tail and hind legs poked out from under the others near Patches’s head!

They’re all adorable. I hope the others will live happy and healthy lives with good owners. We are doing our best to take care of them, but it’s hard when they are so small and fragile.

Poor Shadow. She didn’t even get to see what her own mother looked like. Their eyes won’t open until they’re at least a week old. Now her eyes shall remain closed forever. The only world she knew was inside the carrier with her brothers and sisters and her loving mother, Patches.

The coven will hold a funeral for her on Wednesday when we have the sleepover for Nikki’s birthday. It’s sad that we have to have such a somber occasion during what should be a party.

I made it to the advanced group in swim team today, but it isn’t like I thought it would be. It’s easy! Maybe the extra training at swim camp paid off after all. Or Dad said that maybe the new coach is just going easy on us. He always looks for an excuse about why I’m not doing as well as he thinks I should. Nothing’s good enough for him.

I’m getting so tired of his criticism. When it was cross country, he was constantly pushing me to get my times down, even when I was beating everyone else in junior varsity. We went for extra runs on the weekend and sometimes even after practice on the weekdays. We’re still training now in the evenings during the off-season and we go to local races. He complains that I slow him down, even though he’s way taller than me and he’s been running for like a million years. He runs marathons, and he thinks I should be ready for a half marathon by next year.

He doesn’t swim with me, but he still keeps track of all my times at swim meets and tells me statistics for Olympic athletes. I doubt I’ll ever be good enough to be in the Olympics, but he wants me to train like that’s the end goal.

All this while doing perfectly in school, finishing all my chores, playing multiple instruments, and taking care of my younger sister, of course. I like to be busy, but sometimes it feels like all these things are just piling up and burying me. I barely have time to read or write in my journal anymore.

Why does everything have to change? And I hate the saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” That’s wrong.

Shadow is dead forever.

When something changes, it can never go back to the way it used to be. There is no undo button or eraser in life. Once you have crossed the Rubicon, there is no turning back.

I hate growing up! I want to be four years old again. No school, no chores, no dating or boyfriends, and nothing to confuse you with. Just play, all day long. Everybody is friends. Play, play, play.

But maybe when I grow up, I can make my own decisions at last. I feel like I’m suffocating right now under the weight of everyone’s expectations. Nobody could possibly live like this.

NINETEEN

"Wild in the Woods"

Thursday, July 10, 1997

Song: “Wild in the Woods” by Dead Can Dance

Mood: elated

Yesterday, I finally took the coven to the Emerald Lagoon.

Annie and Siobhan came to sleep over for Nikki’s birthday. We set up a tent in the backyard so we could stay outside all night. Nikki says that when she was at Girl Scout camp, she felt like she could feel the power of the forest, especially at night when she slept outside. We can’t have a campfire in our yard or light any candles outside, but it was still cool, I guess.

First thing, we introduced the others to the kittens. They’re still less than a week old and their eyes are closed, so we can’t pick them up yet, but everyone said they were really cute. Annie hopes they can convince their parents to let them adopt two kittens. Then we’d each have our own cats. If Nikki gets Narknon and Mom gets Stormy, then Georgia can have the last kitten, and that’s all five adopted. None left even for Liz.

We told my parents that we would be playing in the creek and they didn’t ask too many questions. We packed sandwiches for lunch and we set off pretty early.

The hike was hard, especially for Siobhan, because her legs are short. We had to help her climb over some of the bigger rocks in the creek. But we still made it all the way to the lake.

I could tell from the awe on their faces that the others felt the same thing I did when they saw the lake. It’s just so powerful. When you’re looking into that water, it’s impossible not to believe in magic. I’m sure that our spells will only grow stronger now that we’ve found this place.

We said a prayer for Shadow’s soul to find peace in the afterlife. Annie and Siobhan never even got to see the kittens before Shadow died, but they cried for her death, just like Nikki and me. There were flowers growing by the lake, so we picked a few to leave on Shadow’s grave when we got back.

We didn’t have to be home until sunset, so we could spend a few hours at the lake. I thought maybe we could swim there, but the green water made the others nervous, and I know it isn’t very safe to swim when you can’t see the bottom. So we just dipped our toes in and sat on rocks on the shore.

It felt like coming home, even though I’d only been there once before. Something about this place just calls out to a deep part of me. I’ve always loved being in the water, whether it’s the swimming pool or the ocean, but this water in particular is special.

I didn’t have a ceremony planned, but I told the Emerald Lagoon that we respected it. I told it my magical name, Kaeldra, and asked it to help me with my magic. Then the others spoke their names, too, and I felt like something was listening. Acknowledging us.

Then we talked about the coven’s next move. I had to admit that I’d told Liz the truth about the fake love charm and messed up our plan. Nikki is still upset about it, but Annie said that I did the right thing. She’s so nice. But why did she agree to the fake love charm in the first place if she thought it was wrong?

Nikki wanted to do something else to stop Liz from talking about us, especially if three of us will be in the homeschool class with her next year. Nikki is so excited about going to junior high early. She’s not skipping a grade (Mom would never let her skip because she skipped a grade and she said that it actually made things too hard, because everyone else was older than her), but she still gets to be at the same school as the older kids, so she’s already acting like she will older and more mature. I am trying so hard not to lecture her about how wrong she is. Mom says that I have to let her make her own choices, even if she makes mistakes, because she will learn from her experience.

If someone had told me to avoid a few of my mistakes, I would have been happy not to have these experiences. But anyway.

After some brainstorming, we circled back around to the idea of a binding spell. I think what went wrong with the first spell was that I made it too strong. I had a lot of negative feelings about Justin that I channeled into making that poppet, even putting his name inside the doll. Even though I said I was just binding him, I really wanted to see him hurt. I have to control those dark emotions.

So I let someone else be in charge of binding Liz. Annie is the gentlest one of the four of us, and we all voted that she should do it.

We gathered the spell ingredients right there in the woods by the lake. Sticks to make the shape of a person. A hair tie holding it all together, sacrificed from Nikki’s hair. (It still feels weird that my hair isn’t long enough to tie it back anymore. These bangs are already growing longer and I felt like they’re constantly getting in my eyes. I’m wearing a hat most of the time, both to keep the hair controlled and to cover it up.) We stripped reeds that grew near the water and wove them together in a long string for the binding.

Annie crafted them all together and said the words: “Elizabeth L—. I bind you against speaking of us. Do not say our names. Do not tell anyone about me or any of my friends. Leave us alone!”

Then we buried the new poppet in the muddy bank by the lake. I hope this one works better than the last one.

TWENTY

"The Mystic's Dream"

Sunday, July 20, 1997

Song: “The Mystic’s Dream” by Loreena McKennitt

Mood: enchanted

Tonight is a full moon and our coven feels more powerful than ever.

The binding spell on Liz must have worked as intended. She stopped coming around to talk to us and I haven’t seen her lurking in the backyard to spy on us, either. My mom says she’s going to some day camp that keeps her away from home during most of the day. Whatever the reason, I’m grateful. It lets us concentrate on what’s really important.

Nikki learned how to make friendship bracelets at Girl Scout Camp, so she showed us. It sounds like a girly craft project, but knot magic is actually an ancient practice. We looked up the meaning of the colors to help us choose which ones we wanted to use.

My bracelet has purple, blue, and black, woven in a wave pattern to look like water. The blue is for psychic abilities and communication, because I’m working on my fortune telling skills. Purple will enhance the power of these visions. And black is to help me banish all the negative influences I have right now. I helped the others make bracelets to work on their own problems. Nikki actually admitted that she needs to work on her patience! Let’s hope the bracelet she made will remind her to not give up on everything and fly off the handle.

I’ve started using the Tarot cards more often so I can learn the card meanings without having to look them up. I also started writing down my dreams when I wake up so I can see if they mean anything. So far, it’s all been weird stuff that doesn’t make any sense. But maybe they’ll make sense later, after the predictions have happened.

I’m trying to calm down and not obsess over things so much. Nikki had a good idea to help me stop thinking about Justin, which is to get a new crush on someone else. I don’t really know any boys that I actually like right now, but maybe I will meet someone when school starts again. I made a list of things I want in a boy so I won’t make such a bad mistake this time.

I did a Tarot card reading, and it said that my next attraction will be to a fair-haired man who is powerful, obstinate, and helpful. Okay, not sure if that’s going to be good or bad. Obstinate just sounds like a jerk. But I’m going to keep an eye out for anyone who matches this description.

We tied on our new bracelets and promised not to take them off. Mine will probably fall off first because I swim so much, but so far, it’s staying put. We made them strong.

Nikki also showed me how to tie embroidery floss around my hair in a cool pattern. My hair is still so short that it’s not long enough for me to see it without a mirror, but it still looks cuter than wearing a hat all the time. And we’ve experimented with hair clips and other accessories so I look less like a boy.

Summer feels like it’s going by so fast. I wish things could be like this more often, just being able to do what we want and not have to worry about what anyone else thinks. But it won’t last.

Band camp is starting in August. It’s not a sleep-away camp or anything cool like that, it’s just a name for the fact that the marching band starts practicing early to get a head start before the school year. I’ll have to take a few weeks off from swim team because the times overlap.

I’ll start to see people again at rehearsal. Like Daniel, who is not bad on his own, but he’s best friends with Justin. And Mike will be in percussion with me again. It’s fine as long as we just ignore each other. His friend, Robby, is the one who is really annoying.

I casting a spell tonight under the full moon so I’ll have the confidence not to listen to their taunts and teases when I go back. If I just don’t respond to anything, it can’t get too bad. Yelling back at people was what got me in trouble last year. But 8th grade Katie is way more mature, and she doesn’t listen to the jerks!

TWENTY-ONE

"Hello"

Tuesday, August 5, 1997

Song: “Hello” by Poe

Mood: overwhelmed by cuteness

The kittens are one month old today. I still miss Shadow, but the other kittens are strong and healthy. It’s so fun to see them growing up and developing their own personalities. Their eyes have also started changing color.

Gingivere, the black male, has green eyes. Snowball, the white male, has blue eyes. Cinderella, a black female, has green eyes. Stormy, the gray female, has gray eyes. And Narknon, the other black female, has green eyes.

They come in the house a lot and crawl around. We try to keep them in the dining room, but it’s hard. If you sit down on the floor, they climb all over you and chew on your clothes.

They have a little house covered in carpet for climbing and playing in, and we bring that in the house, too. Once Narknon went inside and wouldn’t let anyone else in. If one tried to get in, she would chase them out. It was so funny!

The kittens sleep in the garage with their mother, Patches, and our dog, Teddy. Teddy gets excited whenever he sees the kittens and tries to chew on them like he does to Patches. Then we have to yell at him.

A few days ago, we took the kittens out on the front lawn and I filmed them following Nikki as she ran around. Then Teddy came bounding up and all the kittens ran and hid under a bush! He doesn’t mean to hurt anything and he just wants to play, but he’s so much bigger than them.

My sister likes to make collars for them. They hate them and are constantly scratching them to get them off, but Nikki says it’s just fleas, and it’s good for them to get used to collars at an early age. She makes some of the collars so big they get their legs stuck through them.

The kittens all eat solid food except for Gingivere, who has to nurse every time he sees Patches, which drives her crazy. She has to share her litter box, food dish, and water bowl with the kittens, so whenever she goes in their playpen to eat or drink, they all jump on her. Especially Gingivere, who is the biggest and has the most persistence.

The kittens like to go behind the shelf in the dining room and play. It’s so hard to get them out.

I wish we could keep all of them. It’s going to be hard to let any of them go to a new home, even though I know our friends will take good care of them.

Annie has been bonding with Cinderella in particular. Whenever she comes over, she only wants to play with Cinderella. We bring all the kittens into the tent with us when we sleep in the backyard and Cinderella curls up on Annie’s pillow. Annie says her dog, Jazzy, will get jealous because she sleeps on her bed at home, but she hopes they’ll get along if she introduces the kitten to her dog at a young age. At least Cinderella is already used to big dogs.

I’m thinking about calling up Justin before school starts and have a calm, reasonable conversation with him. I’ve been practicing things to say. I don’t really want to be friends again, but I’d like us to be civil with each other. Maybe something like:

Hello, Justin, this is Katie. Can I talk to you for a moment? Look, I know we used to have this thing going on between us, and we don’t anymore, but that was months ago, so why do we have to keep fighting? We used to have a lot of fun together when we were friends. Why can’t we just let bygones be bygones and agree to a truce?

But part of me still wants to tell him how I really feel. This is the alternate way it could go.

Hello, Justin, this is Katie, your ex-girlfriend. Remember me? The one that you mocked in front of our entire class? We used to be friends and get along with each other. What made you turn into such a raging jerk? If you can’t say anything nice about me, you should just leave me alone.

I don’t know that I can keep it calm and say exactly what I want without going off the handle, so maybe I should wait a little longer. Maybe when school starts, I’ll see that it wasn’t a big deal anymore and everyone’s forgotten about it.

But it could be even worse. The hard part is waiting. It feels like the Sword of Damocles is hanging over my head. Every day that passes on the calendar is another type of torture.

Two weeks left until band camp.

TWENTY-TWO

"Pretend We're Dead"

Monday, August 18, 1997

Song: “Pretend We’re Dead” by L7

Mood: drained

I survived the first day of band camp, and it wasn’t even that bad.

Daniel wasn’t there, still on a summer vacation, so I didn’t even see anyone who knew Justin. Robby was also a no-show and I think he’s quit the band. We rehearsed with the high school marching band, so most of the students were older and didn’t even know me. It was all music, no drama.

Since Mike and I were the only eighth graders in percussion, he actually talked to me. He told me that my hat was cool and didn’t mention how short my hair is now. I thought that he was kind of a jerk in the past, but I’m starting to think that maybe he’s just shy? He offered to take turns with the parts and he even asked me to show him how to play the bells. I told him that it might take a while to learn how to read all the musical notes, but I nicely pointed out that we have workbooks that we’re supposed to practice with and he said he would look at them when he got home.

I’ve heard a drum set playing in his house before, so I asked him if he played a lot. He said the drums are actually his dad’s, so his dad is usually the one playing, but he’s trying to learn more so his dad will let him play. Then he asked me if anyone in our family played music.

And before I even realized it, we were having a real conversation. About music, families, the neighborhood, and just random stuff.

“It’s just kinda weird that there are so many girls in our neighborhood,” he said. “I feel that puts a target on me.”

I shook my head. “There isn’t a target on you. The girls just freak out when they see you because it’s so rare. I know my sister is a little intense…”

“And Liz,” he said, grimacing.

I nodded. “And Sarah. Okay, so almost everyone.”

We both laughed.

“But they’re not like that all the time,” I pointed out. “Especially Nikki. I promise that she doesn’t spend 24/7 thinking about how to get a boyfriend. We like to go hiking, swimming, or just playing with the animals. Did you know that we have kittens right now?”

His eyes lit up. “Kittens? How old are they?”

Everyone loves kittens, even if they say they’re not cat people. Babies are just too cute.

I pretended to think about it for a minute, even though I keep track of their age and growth on a calendar at home. “About six weeks old,” I said. “They’re full of energy now and they get into everything. We’ll probably let people adopt them at the start of September.”

“You’re going to let people adopt them?” he said, looking even more interested. “Oh, man, I wish that I could have a cat. My dad would never let me have a pet.”

I shrugged. “Well, you’re free to come by and visit my cats. It’s practically a full-time job to play with the Squealers. Three of them will be adopted in two weeks, but I think we’re keeping the other two.”

“I’ll have to check my schedule,” he said.

I didn’t want to push him about it. The last thing that I need is for someone to see me chatting with another boy, inviting him to my house, and accuse me of being a slut again. I made a point of telling him that he could bring his sister, too.

It’s so ridiculous. No one cared if boys and girls talked or did stuff together in elementary school. Sometimes people can just be friends without anything romantic happening. And believe me, I’m not interested in Mike, even if he isn’t as rude as I thought he was. He still has dumb floppy hair, and he scowls all the time.

And I don’t want to even think about dating another boy. Nikki says that I need to move on from Justin, but I’d rather concentrate on anything else. Band, swim team, cross country, school starting in two weeks. The coven. It feels like dating a guy just ruins any possible friendship that you had with him and makes everyone else judge you. It’s not worth it.

There will be enough time to date when I’m older. In olden times, like Anne of Green Gables, no one even thought about ‘courting’ until they were sixteen or later. Why rush into dating at thirteen? We should enjoy the time we have to be children and not grow up so fast.

But other people are going to judge me by the stupid standards of society, no matter what I do.

TWENTY-THREE

"Glory Box"

Tuesday, August 26, 1997

Song: “Glory Box” by Portishead

Mood: tired

Well, that didn’t last long.

Mike was actually being kind of nice for a while. I thought he was going to come over last weekend so he could see the kittens. But he never showed up, and now he’s acting totally different.

It doesn’t help that another boy joined percussion. I think his name is Sam? He’s in eighth grade like us, and he wasn’t in band last year, but he’s played the drums before and I guess he knows the high school drum guy, Chris, from somewhere else. And he knows the band director, Mr. T, who immediately started assigning him all the best parts. Now, all of a sudden, he’s the star of the drums.

Mike immediately gravitated to the new guy and started ignoring me. I’m sure that they’ll be hogging all the other instruments all year, which means that I’m stuck with the xylophone and the bells.

We also had some of the incoming seventh graders join us this week. There are a couple of girls who say they’ll be in Ms. Andrews’ homeschool class, but they’re both in the wind section, so they sit in front of me. Courtney plays the clarinet and Jennifer plays the flute.

Mom got really excited when I told her there was a new girl in the flute section, because that’s what she plays. She offered to come help the flutes practice at school. Mr. T doesn’t care about flutes (you can tell that he’s a trumpet player, because that’s who he spends the most time with), so he accepted her offer. So she came to school to do a special break-out section with the five flute players.

I know she doesn’t know anything about playing the drums, but it still felt weird for my mom to show up and spend time with other kids instead of me. She gets involved with my piano lessons and she encouraged me to try the school band, but she never did this for me.

Now Nikki is saying that she might learn how to play the flute and join band this year! Then she’ll get special lessons from Mom. Mom is over the moon and even offered to let Nikki borrow her second flute. (She won’t let anyone touch her nice one.)

This is just one more way that Mom shows favoritism to Nikki because she’s the baby. She did Mommy & Me dance classes with Nikki when she was little. Coached her soccer team and helped out with her Girl Scout troop.

Nikki says it’s fair because I get alone time with Dad when he takes me running, and when I was younger, he tried to teach me how to play sports he cared about, like baseball and basketball. Lots of people have told me that I should play basketball ever since my growth spurt, because I’m one of the tallest kids at school, but I am not coordinated enough to handle a ball flying at my head all the time.

Georgia’s also tall like me and she plays basketball in between the cross country and track seasons. But I prefer to stay in the water. It’s much harder to get hit in the face when you’re swimming (except on Fridays when the coach sometimes makes us play water polo).

But it’s not my fault that Nikki doesn’t like running or doing anything else that Dad is good at, and it’s not my fault that I can’t play the flute. Believe me, I’ve tried. I actually think it’s kind of gross how all the wind and brass instruments involve so much spit. I never have to put my mouth on anything or empty a spit valve in order to play percussion.

Even if the boys hog all the good instruments.

That just teaches me that I shouldn’t expect anything from other people. I have to take care of myself.

Daniel also came back to band from his vacation, but he’s sitting on the other side of the room and he hasn’t said anything to me. Maybe it’s safer if I don’t ask about Justin. I’ll find out soon enough.

SLV classes start on next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day, but the homeschool class won’t meet until Thursday. I’m just going to keep my head down and try not to think about it until then.

But I kinda wish that I had more friends that I could hang out with. Or at least someone I could talk to during band. Maybe I should talk to the new girls. Mom says that Jennifer looks slutty because she wears crop tops. (I wish she wouldn’t use that word.)

Georgia and I were talking about the upcoming school year. We’re both going to push hard to make varsity on the cross country team in the fall. She also wants to try going to dances just to see what they’re like. If we can go hang out as friends and not worry about other people, that could be fun. We never went to any last year in seventh grade.

Nikki will be a student at the school and allowed to participate in some events, even though she’s in sixth grade, but she won’t be allowed to come to dances. Annie says she won’t go without Nikki. So it would just be me and Georgia. But that could be cool?

TWENTY-FOUR

"Do You Sleep?"

Thursday, September 4, 1997

Song: "Do You Sleep?" by Lisa Loeb

Mood: relieved

I survived the first day of school and it almost went perfectly.

Technically, I've been in school since Tuesday, doing schoolwork at home. I had band practice and cross country practices twice already. But it didn't really feel like it counted until today when I actually went to school for a full day.

The homeschool class moved. The class is bigger than last year, 35 kids, so we didn't fit into the old portable anymore. Last year we had twenty kids at the most. But nearly all the students who were in seventh grade came back for eighth this year, we had just as many new seventh graders, and we have three six graders who are all younger siblings.

Nikki is the only girl sixth grader. The other two are Kaden, who is Kelsey G.'s brother, and Daryl, who is the younger brother of the twins. Yes, there are three of those annoying boys now. So far, he seems much more quiet than Trevor and Brandon, but I bet he doesn't stay that way.

The good news is that there are basically an equal number of girls and boys in the whole class. Last year, the boys outnumbered us two to one. And most of the new girls didn't immediately follow Kelsey's little clique. That should make it a little easier to breathe.

My new hairstyle is looking better. I have these cute headbands to keep the bangs out of my face and look a little more feminine. No one told me that I looked like a boy or said anything else mean. That's another bullet I dodged.

And Justin is back. His legs have healed, and he's walking fine. He was wearing white pants on the first day, like he was showing off. Some stupid designer label. And he styled his hair with gel. Is he trying to look like a male model or like he’s in some boy band?

I tried really hard not to look at him, even though everyone else was staring and making a big fuss. So far as I could tell, he never looked in my direction, either. It’s we don’t even know each other anymore.

It’s weird.

Trevor teased Justin about his white pants and called them gay. Ugh. I just tried to avoid that whole side of the room.

You could see the sides forming already. Me, Nikki, Georgia, and Annie are on the left side by the door (and the bookshelf, which is why I picked it), and a lot of the new girls filled in around us. Justin and his idiotic friends are on the right by the window, so most of the boys ended up there. The Christian good girls are front and center like they’re ruling the place.

The new classroom is in the middle of the junior high campus. That means when we're on break or go to lunch, we are mixed in with all the public school students. We even have to go to school assemblies now.

Georgia knows a bunch of girls from all her sports, so she met them at a table for lunch. I tagged along even though I only recognized two of the girls from cross country. It was kind of fun to be in a whole group, although it was hard to follow the conversation with everyone trying to talk at once. I missed it when it was just me and Georgia.

I also have a longer walk when I go to band. Last year, the homeschool class was right next to the band which is also in a portable, so it took no time to go around the corner. Now it's a five-minute walk uphill. But at least I'm not carrying an instrument with me, since we just use the school drums. Daniel has a huge trombone case. Jennifer's flute and Courtney's clarinet are light.

But we all walked up together. Jennifer was excited to talk about all the kids in homeschool class.

"Do you think any of the boys are cute?" she asked us.

Courtney clutched her golden cross necklace and looked horrified. "I wasn't looking," she said, like it was an insult to even ask her.

Guess that means she's another uptight Christian. I bet she'll be in the good girl clique soon.

Jennifer turned to me. "What about you? Got your eyes on anyone?"

I shook my head quickly. "I'd be careful about looking at anyone in our class. Everyone else will notice, and then they'll tease you about it for the rest of the year."

Jennifer laughed. "Oh, I don't care about getting a bad reputation. I've had loads of boyfriends already. But who cares about what other people say? We should have fun!"

Courtney turned her nose up and walked faster.

But I was a little impressed. Normally, I don't like girls who act so boy-crazy. But Jennifer seems to be confident. I think she's probably exaggerating about the number of boyfriends she's had. It's just cool that she doesn't care about gossip.

I know people are going to gossip about her either way. Her chest is big, even though she's not quite thirteen, and she dresses in tiny clothes. My mom actually complained about her in band the other day when she was wearing a crop top, and pointed out that it wasn't allowed by the school's dress code. But the temperature is in the 90s. The boys are allowed to take their shirts off during cross country practice, but my mom complains if she can see a girl's sports bra strap. Why are there so many rules about what girls can wear?

Anyway, I didn't know what to say, but I nodded and smiled at her to show I wasn't mean and judgey like Courtney.

Later, when we were running at practice, Georgia brought up the school dance.

"The first one is in two weeks," she said. "Do you wanna go?"

I love dancing. Sometimes Georgia and I will put on a CD and just dance around to the whole thing. Not choreographed or fancy stuff like I did before I quit ballet. We just go where the music takes us.

But a school dance, in front of people, sounds awkward. Would I have to dress up? Put on makeup? Would boys try to ask me to dance? Would people stare at us for dancing our own way?

Georgia seems like she wants to be more social, though. She has so many friends now. If I say no, then she'll ask someone else.

"We could try it out," I said, trying to sound enthusiastic. "It could be fun."

"Great! I'll see if my mom can drive both of us." Then Georgia changed the subject to running, which is much easier to talk about.

So I have two weeks to get up the courage to do this. Maybe it will suck and Georgia will want to leave early. Or maybe it will actually be fun. I won't know until I try it.

Nikki can’t go to the dance because she’s in sixth grade. It’s weird how she is kind of a student at the junior high, but then she gets excluded from some things like dances. Annie said she won’t go without Nikki.

Casting a confidence spell with the coven this weekend. We all need it. Even Nikki was too scared to talk in class today. She looks so small and young at the junior high. I promised to watch out for her, but there's only so much I can do.

Let's just hope that witchcraft can save us again.

TWENTY-FIVE

"2Wicky"

Friday, September 5, 1997

Song: “2Wicky” by Hooverphonic

Mood: a little sad

Today, the kittens are two months old, and they went to their forever homes. I’m going to miss their little mews, how they sleep in a big pile together, and the way they love to play all the time.

Since Patches is no longer nursing, Dad is taking her to the vet to get fixed. She won’t have any more kittens. I think she’s relieved that her babies are growing up and don’t depend on her so much, because she doesn’t seem as tired all the time. But I’m sure she’ll miss her kittens, too.

We are keeping Stormy and Narknon, and they’ll get fixed when they’re a little older. So Patches won’t be totally lonely. It’s sad that we won’t have anymore baby kittens, but if we let three female cats keep having litters, we’d have so many cats that we’d probably get overrun. I don’t think I could find homes for many more of them. And could you imagine how many cats we’d have running around? Poor Teddy would be outnumbered!

Liz adopted Snowball and changed his name to Taffy, so we’ll probably see him since he’s just next door. I wanted to save him in case Mike ever got his dad to change his mind, but we already promised Liz, and I’m afraid of doing anything that will make her mad. She’s still not really talking to us, so it seems like the binding spell is working, but that could change.

Annie and Siobhan took Cinderella, who they renamed to Morrigan. Such a grand name for such a little cat! But their family always uses Celtic names since they’re from Ireland, so Morrigan will fit in with the rest of them. And we’ll get to see her.

Georgia adopted Gingivere, who is now Rocky. She hasn’t read the Redwall books, so she didn’t recognize the character (Gingivere Greeneyes, which worked out perfectly because he actually has green eyes!) and she said that it sounded like “gingivitis.” I guess people don’t appreciate my creative cat names.

Patches may not sound creative, but that’s only her first name. Her full name is actually Patches Precious Angelic Sweet Thing. Okay, that sounds cheesy, but she will respond when I call her like that. And in my defense, I was eleven when I named her that. But she also answers to her nickname, “Patchy-poo.” That’s what I usually end up shouting in the backyard when I’m trying to get her to come eat dinner or something.

Today was a busy day at school. We had to write essays introducing ourselves and our hobbies, our families, or anything else that thought was significant about our lives. Then we had to read them aloud to the class.

Most of them were pretty boring. People talked about the sports they play, how many people are in their family, the names of their pets, or whatever. I already knew a lot of that stuff.

Trevor’s was the worst—he went into this huge scientific explanation about the difference between identical twins and fraternal twins. Apparently, since he and his brother Brandon look different, people don’t believe that they’re twins or sometimes even say they don’t look like brothers. I guess I can see that because Trevor is tall with blonde hair, while Brandon is shorter and has dark hair, but their faces still look pretty similar and their younger brother looks like them, too. Plus, they are all giant jerks! But is that really an important thing to talk about in your personal essay? It’s just a biological circumstance, and it doesn’t say who he is. But it’s not like he’s going to admit that he’s a giant bully.

I mentioned in my essay about something that happened over the summer. I was bouncing on the trampoline and Stormy jumped on with me. She stayed on for quite some time and even let me hold her while I did a few small bounces! Since then, I’ve been trying to train her not to be afraid of the trampoline at all. The other cats and even Teddy don’t like it.

But Stormy is very brave and curious. She might be able to a few tricks! I have a book on training cats for show business and most of the techniques didn’t work for Patches, but Stormy already seems much more open to the idea.

Just imagine: Stormy, the famous trampoline cat!

Also, she doesn’t seem to mind water that much and chases her tail in the dry bathtub. A swimming trampoline kitty might be really famous!

But when I read my essay to the class, a bunch of people started laughing like I was telling them a joke. Trevor rolled his eyes and accused me of making it all up.

Ms. Andrews was neutral about it, and told Trevor that his accusation wasn’t nice, although she did remind the whole class that our essays were supposed to be the unembellished truth.

I told Nikki to back me up because she knows what Stormy is like and she’s seen her on the trampoline with me. But she gets nervous about speaking up in class and wouldn’t say anything. Now I’m mad at her.

I am a creative storyteller and I like to make things up, but this actually happened with Stormy. Why doesn’t anyone believe me?

I’m putting a hex on Trevor so he doesn’t criticize my essays again!

TWENTY-SIX

"Cornflake Girl"

Saturday, September 13, 1997

Song: “Cornflake Girl” by Tori Amos

Mood: furious

Sometimes I can’t believe that this is really my life. Why do things always go so wrong? It’s like nothing I try to do ever turns out how I want it to.

Today Nikki has surpassed herself in atrociousness. She had a party with her friends (I can’t believe how many friends she already has after two weeks of school). By doing a lot of work for her, I earned the right to attend. She made me agree to a whole bunch of rules but I was trying to play along nicely because Mom says that I’m always bossing her around and I should let her be in charge for once.

We were having a water balloon war with two teams and we all got soaked. Then Nikki’s team went to get the hose, which was against the rules, so my team got the two extra water balloons. Before I could stop them, they soaked Nikki’s team all over again.

Nikki started screaming at me and told me I couldn’t stay at her party. I was so mad because she was blaming me for something her friends did. I couldn’t get a word in. So I took the bucket full of water that the balloons were in and dumped it on her.

She screamed, and I ran in the house. I could hear her and her friends laughing and having fun without me. I’m so pissed off.

So I decided to do a spell by myself.

The coven wouldn’t agree to help me put a hex on Trevor. Nikki says that he’s just teasing me because that’s what guys do and I shouldn’t take it so hard. Of course, Annie went along with whatever she said. She doesn’t like mean spells, she says.

I think they both have a crush on Trevor. I feel sorry for them because he would just mean to them too if he noticed them, but right now he’s ignoring everyone who isn’t in eighth grade, even though we are all supposed to be one class. Just because he has shiny blond hair, and he’s taller than most of the boys, doesn’t mean that he’s attractive or worth liking!

Siobhan was happy to go along with it, but they talked her out of it because they said she wasn’t there, so she didn’t know. That just made her sulk. She’s already sick of being the only one in elementary school and she says she’s going to be in the middle school class next year when she’s in sixth grade. I hope Nikki tells her how hard it is for the sixth graders in the class before she can make up her mind.

But anyway, I can’t do the hex without a unanimous vote, so that’s it.

What do I need them for, anyway? I am the one who writes the spells. None of my spells work by myself, but maybe I only need one other person to help me. And I knew who would agree with me just for the chance to join.

I went next door and asked Liz if she wanted to see something cool. Of course, she said yes. As much as we’ve had conflicts in the past, she’s so desperate for attention that the minute I offer to do something with her, she will always agree without asking too many questions.

We had to sneak around Nikki and her friends in the backyard to go up the creek. I took Liz to the lake. Because I knew what I wanted to do, I had already had some supplies with me.

I swore her to secrecy before I told her anything, and I didn’t tell her about the spell that I put on her to make her stop talking about me. But even if she doesn’t want to keep her promise, I think the other hex is still working, so that should stop her.

Then I explained what we were going to do. It’s basically the same hex that I put on Justin (and Liz). Liz looked at me suspiciously when I was done.

“Are you sure this will work?” she asked me.

I nodded. “I think the important part is that I need help. When I try to do spells by myself, they don’t work, but every time I’ve tried with someone else, it does.”

Liz’s eyes widened. “Like what? And who are you doing spells with?”

I pressed my finger to my lips. “We are sworn to secrecy.”

Liz folded her arms. “But aren’t I joining you now?”

I shook my head. “Consider this a trial basis. If you prove yourself to me now, then I will ask the others if you’re allowed to join. But you have to do exactly what I tell you to do and you can’t tell anyone else. Then we’ll see.”

The others would never agree to let Liz join us, so I don’t think I even need to ask. But Liz doesn’t need to know that. Maybe I can keep her as my secret partner when the others vote against me.

She asked more questions, like what the spell was going to do and how we could keep it from hurting Trevor. I made her be the one to tie the string around the poppet and I told her to concentrate on just binding his words. She had a good idea that if it was for his voice, she should tie it around his neck instead of his legs, like we did for Justin.

We buried the spell on the shore of the lake, and then we went back home. I didn’t want anyone to see us climbing up from the creek, so when we got to Matt and Tina’s house, we climbed up to the street. No one was home there as usual, so we weren’t spotted.

When I got home, Nikki asked me where I’d been. “Just went for a run,” I said. “Got the first cross country meet coming up soon. I need all the practice I can get.”

She’s still mad at me, so she ignored me for the rest of the night. I’m sure she’ll never suspect what I really did.

Now to see if the spell works.

TWENTY-SEVEN

"Nights x 9"

Thursday, September 18, 1997

Song: “Nights x 9” by Slant

Mood: daydreaming

Trevor was out sick today, so I don’t know if the hex worked or not. At least that was one less thing I had to worry about.

If I could have a party, I would have eight friends over, counting me and Georgia. There would be four boys and two other girls, and everybody would be friends and nice. (Nikki is not invited.) There is music and dancing and refreshments. The dancing would be in the garage.

When we got tired of that we would come in the school room and play games like Scrabble (teams of two), Compatibility, Pictionary, Clue (maybe), Monopoly and other cool board games. We could also play Telephone, card games, and other non-board party games.

After we had the best time ever, the guys would go home and the girls sleep over and have a blast!

Other cool stuff my circle of friends could do is swim, go to the beach or Big Basin, go bowling, see a movie, goof around and play Mad Libs or invent our own games.

We could go to dances, and we wouldn’t have to slow dance. We’d go outside and talk. Or there could just be four of us, it wouldn’t matter. It could even be the group from last year: Georgia, me, Dylan, and Justin. As long as the boys behaved like INTELLIGENT people!

I don’t know why I’m obsessing over this so much right now. I guess I’m disappointed by how Nikki’s party went when she excluded me. I never feel like I have enough friends to have a party. There were a few people at my thirteenth birthday in February, but now I’m not talking to Justin anymore and I wasn’t really close with any of the other girls except Georgia.

I like hanging out with Georgia. But there are only so many games and activities you can do with just two people. I can’t rely on Nikki to be nice to me all the time and she controls Annie and Siobhan, even though we’re supposed to be equal parts in the coven. If I had more of my own friends, then I wouldn’t have to bother trying to keep her happy all the time.

Tomorrow is the first cross country meet right after school and a few hours after that is the first dance. I have to come home after the meet so I can shower and change, then hopefully I won’t be too tired for the dance. I almost said we should skip it, but Georgia’s really looking forward to it.

Maybe I should try harder to be friends with Georgia’s friends. She makes it look easy with her whole group, even though she only sees them a few times a week at various sports practices. I thought public school kids only cared about people who were in their classes that they saw every single day, but maybe in junior high, it doesn’t matter as much.

I should speak up at lunch and join the conversation. Maybe some of the girls will be at the dance and we can hang out with them.

Why does having a social life seem so hard? It’s not something you can make a plan for and follow clear steps to make it work. People are weird and they always do things that I don’t expect. I never think of the right thing to say until hours or days later.

It sucks that I worked so hard to get Justin as a friend and then it all blew up. I kind of wish he and I were still friends. He didn’t love me, but I enjoyed his friendship. That stupid crush thing ruined that. I thought it was so great that I had gained a boyfriend, but I had lost a friend. Maybe a friend is more important.

I wish it had never happened. We had so much fun! Now all I have are memories. And if I tried to talk to him now, the entire class would think that I have a crush on him and tease me for it. One bad relationship and now everything is messed up.

If I could go back to that day in April when we broke up, I would explain it to him better. Why I was tired of kissing. I would tell him that just being with him was good enough for me. It seemed like all we did was kiss and I wanted to do other stuff, too.

Maybe he would understand and it would go back to the way it was that first day and we would have been having fun as friends all summer. Maybe we’d be going to the first dance together. I’d try slow-dancing for his sake.

Maybe we’d go to every dance together. In college, we would still stay together and when we graduated, we would get married and live happily ever after. He’d get a job as a schoolteacher and I would be a famous architect. We’d move to a farm in Australia, where he’d teach and I would design beautiful buildings.

But that will never happen because I said the wrong thing, and he didn’t love me, anyway.

On Valentine’s Day, I should have told him that maybe I just wanted to be friends, and I wasn’t ready for love. Then maybe we could still at least be friends.

TWENTY-EIGHT

"Don't Speak"

Saturday, September 20, 1997

Song: “Don’t Speak” by No Doubt

Mood: grossed out

The first cross country meet was a success. The first dance was the opposite.

The meet was no big deal because it was the same thing as last year. I could tell that some runners didn’t keep practicing over the summer because they struggled, but Dad takes me running with him almost every night, so I had no problem. Plus, I guess I’m taller, so it was easy to beat everyone. Georgia and I were third and fourth overall for the race which means we’re definitely on the varsity team.

Dad said that I should enjoy it while it lasts, because next year in high school, it’s going to be much tougher. The races will be longer and I’ll be competing against all four years. He pointed out that the boys will start to get taller and stronger so I won’t beat them anymore. He said that I shouldn’t look at what anyone else is doing, just work on improving my personal best so I can be ready for the bigger challenge.

He’s never happy with anything I do. I could win every race this year and he would say that the other runners were weak, so it didn’t mean much. What does he want, for me to go to the Olympics or something? I can’t imagine having to run in front of that many people. These school races aren’t a big deal because only some parents show up, but when he takes me to big races like the Bay to Breakers, then it’s so crowded. I don’t like that much pressure.

And then there was the dance. It was so much worse than I expected it to be. The whole thing was in the gym, which they fenced off with chain-link fences, and they barely let anyone go outside to breathe some fresh air. Inside, it was the same smelly gym, but it was even more hot and crowded because of the number of people inside it. It’s like they don’t have any air circulation in there at all, let alone air conditioning.

Most people didn’t even try to dance. They stood around in clumps and talked to their friends, but it was hard to talk at all, because the music was so loud. The girls were in some groups and the boys were in others, and everyone kept staring at each other without going over to say anything. Whenever there was a slow song, a few people paired up awkwardly to stand together and rocked side to side. It didn’t even look like dancing.

And the music sucked! It’s all that stupid popular stuff they play on the radio, like boy bands and shit. Of course, I heard that annoying “Barbie Girl” song again, and all the girls sang along. There was also a rap song that went on for-e-ver! Georgia says that was the eleven minute version, and there’s an even longer version of the song that’s like seventeen minutes. It wasn’t even interesting, just the same repetitive beat going over and over while some guy rambled on in a weird voice, so I couldn’t even tell what he was saying half the time. (Georgia says her brother listens to it at home.)

But that wasn’t even the worst part.

There’s some incredibly whiny girl song about a girl who is so delicate and fragile, she won’t let her boyfriend break up with her. She knows that he’s going to dump her, so she just keeps whining, “Don’t speak! Don’t speak!” Like that’s going to fix any of the problems in their relationship! It’s so stupid.

But all the girls obviously knew the lyrics to that song, too, so they all sang along. Some of the popular girls even went up to the giant speakers at the front and leaned against it while they were singing, like they were giving a performance to the rest of the school! And everyone watched them and cheered like it was cool. Even though the music was so loud that you couldn’t hear them and standing that close to the speakers probably gave them permanent hearing damage.

I can’t believe this is what girls look up to and repeat, like it’s empowering or something. Begging a guy not to dump you? Ugh! She should dump him first and find someone better. Or just enjoy being single. It’s not like girls need to constantly have a boyfriend.

Georgia and I went up to the DJ and tried to request some better music, but he kept saying that he didn’t have the stuff that we asked for. No Tori Amos, no Hooverphonic, not even Poe. I thought dance remixes of Tori Amos were really popular, but I guess that’s only in Europe.

These shallow people would probably have their brains explode if they were exposed to real music.

When we realized that it wasn’t going to get any better, Georgia and I tried to just have fun and danced by ourselves. The thing about repetitive songs is that it’s really easy to find the beat and you won’t get surprised by anything even if it’s the first time you’re hearing it, so I can dance to that music easily. We were actually starting to enjoy ourselves.

Then I heard some girls shouting at us over the music. “Oh my god, you guys are freaking!”

I have no idea what they meant, but it was obviously meant as an insult. We moved away from them, but I still felt like people were staring at us after that.

I’m not normally so self-conscious. But even though it was dark in the gym, it felt like we stood out because virtually no one else was dancing at all.

By the time we went home, I was all sweaty again and even more tired than I felt after the race. My ears hurt from the noise.

I don’t think I want to go again.

TWENTY-NINE

"Army of Me"

Thursday, October 2, 1997

Song: “Army of Me” by Bjork

Mood: homicidal

I hate Bobby the big, fat, bald, little, spitting, pig-faced maggot!

Sorry, I just had to get that out of my system. Sometimes he makes me so mad, I want to SCREAM! Of all the stupid idiot boys in our class, he is turning into the absolute worst!

But he did give me an idea for the winning costume of this year’s Halloween costume contest. His latest taunt is that my short hair makes me look like Princess Diana, who recently was killed in a car crash. My mom told me that I could turn it around and dress up as the ghost of Princess Di for Halloween. I think that’s brilliant. Spooky and topical.

I can’t believe that it’s already October. September went by so fast. School started, so did band and cross country, so I have something going on practically every single day of the week. By the time the weekend rolls around, I’m so tired that all I want to do is sleep.

Mom thinks that I might be going through another growth spurt. I’m already so tall, how much more could I grow? I’m already one of the tallest kids in the whole school.

That’s not an exaggeration. When we were taking school photos, they did a group photo of all the eighth grade students in the field. They made us all line up by height. The back row, which was the tallest group, was only four people: me, Georgia, Justin, and Trevor. I’m taller than some teachers at this point!

You’d think that would make it easy to look down on the idiots like Bobby who don’t even come up to my shoulder.

Georgia says it’s great being tall because she can dunk on everyone else in basket ball. But I just feel like a freak. Tall, skinny, flat-chested, short hair—no matter how much I dress up, I look like a boy.

Nikki says that boys don’t want to date girls who are taller than them. Easy for her to say, because she’s short. I don’t want to date anyone right now, but what if I’m like this forever? I just keep growing taller and nobody likes how I look. That sounds very lonely.

Life is weird. Sometimes I hate everyone and I don’t want to be around anyone else. But sometimes I feel so lonely. Nobody understands me. It feels like everyone else has it all figured out except for me.

Justin is being weird. He keeps talking to that girl from band who sits near me in class, Courtney, even though she’s in seventh grade. He won’t look in my direction but I can’t help overhearing every word that he says to her. It sounds like how he used to flirt with me. Like almost word for word.

Example: today, he flipped through the entire class calendar because Ms. Andrews wrote everyone’s birthday in it. When he found out Courtney’s birthday was February 15, he said, “Wow, that’s easy to remember! Right after Valentine’s Day. Does that mean I have to get you two cards?”

My birthday is February 13. He said almost the exact same thing to me when he found out when my birthday was. And he gave me two cards on the day when he asked me out: a birthday card and a Valentine, along with a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Is he already planning on asking her out then?

It’s like watching a movie play all over again, except this time, I’m not the main character. I’m on the sidelines watching it happen in front of me.

What should I do? I feel like I should warn Courtney about him or something, but I don’t want to sound like I’m jealous just because he’s my ex. We don’t really talk about stuff other than school and band. I don’t know if she actually likes him back, so it might not even matter. But I would feel bad if he ended up treating her the same way he did to me. She doesn’t deserve to be called a slut by the whole class.

But seeing them together right in front of me every day at school would be hard.

Ugh. I don’t know what I want anymore.

THIRTY

"How Soon is Now"

Saturday, October 11, 1997

Song: “How Soon is Now” by The Smiths

Mood: inspired

I don’t want to talk about school right now.

Today was so much better. Mom took Nikki and me to the thrift store to look for Halloween costumes and she helped me find the perfect dress for Princess Di. I knew there would be a bunch of older fashions at a thrift store, since that’s stuff that people are trying to get rid of, so I was just gonna look for something dressy. But Mom was obsessed with Princess Di for a while and she knew her fashion sense perfectly.

The dress is dark blue with a long satin skirt, and the bodice is covered in sequins. The sleeves are big and puffy, and there are even shoulder pads. Normally, I don’t like that kind of overdone 80s fashion, but for this costume it will be awesome. Mom is going to style my hair and do my makeup.

She has a book about Princess Di which has tons of photos, and she can copy it for me. And she’s going to let me borrow some of her nicer jewelry. Everyone will know exactly who I am.

I’m not sure if anyone will know who Nikki is dressed up as. She found a long white gown, which is probably a bridal gown, and she instantly said, “The Child-like Empress!” Nikki watched The Never-ending Story so many times when we were kids and her favorite character is the Child-like Empress. But that movie came out such a long time ago, I’m not sure anyone will remember it. Especially since she’s not even dressing up like the main character, and the Empress doesn’t have red hair.

Nikki says that it isn’t fair for her to have to always pick a costume that matches her red hair. She liked it the year that she was Pippi Longstocking, and Mom braided pipe cleaners into her hair so it would stick out. But then another year she wanted to be a Disney princess, so everyone naturally said she should be Ariel. Except her favorite princess is Belle. She got the official Disney yellow Belle dress and everything. But it didn’t look right because Belle has brown hair.

Whatever. I don’t care what Nikki does on Halloween, because I’ll be getting all the attention.

Speaking of Halloween, we decided to watch a scary movie with Annie and Siobhan. We can’t sleep over at their house because it’s too cold to sleep in the trailer now, but we went over for the afternoon today.

Mom doesn’t let us watch many scary movies at home. She still regrets the time that Liz’s mom told us that Jurassic Park wasn’t going to be too scary, despite it being PG-13, and she took Nikki and me to watch it in the movie theater. Nikki and I got so scared by the scene where the T-rex eats the lawyer on the toilet that we started crying and asked Mom if we could leave.

But that was such a long time ago. I’m much older than I was and I’ve gotten used to scary stuff. The dinosaurs don’t even look that real. We rented Jurassic Park recently, and Nikki and I laughed at that same scene. But Mom still won’t let me see PG-13 movies! And I’m thirteen, almost fourteen! She says it wouldn’t be fair since Nikki can’t see them, but I should be allowed to watch things without her sometimes.

Anyway, we realized that we could get around the rule by going to a friend’s house. We just don’t tell Mom what we’re watching. Annie’s parents don’t have rules about what she’s allowed to watch, because her older brothers are watching violent stuff all the time.

And I finally got to see The Craft.

All I knew about it was the story is about four teen girls who practice witchcraft. I didn’t realize it was going to be so awesome. I recognized one of the actresses, because when she was younger, she played Dorothy in Return to Oz. (Which is so much darker than the original Wizard of Oz, even darker than the books, which are pretty different from the movie versions. Nikki and I have read all of them.)

Even the music was cool, not that stupid pop stuff from the radio. I wonder if there is a way that I can get the soundtrack without Mom finding out, because then she’ll know that I’ve seen the movie.

I wish we had the kinds of powers that the girls do in the movie. Flying? Walking on water? That’s probably not really possible, but then I didn’t know our magic was going to work at all. And our hexes have definitely been working.

Yeah, I didn’t write this down before, but we may have been too strong with our binding spell on Trevor. He’s been out of school for a month with mono. But I can’t say anything or the others will know that I did a spell without them.

The only thing that bothered me about the movie was that Nancy, the one I liked, got treated like the villain. She was trying to use her powers to protect her family and her friends, but the others turned on her and took her powers away. Maybe she went a little too far because she killed those guys, but they were the real bad guys. Her stepdad was abusive and the so-called “popular guy” was trying to rape Sarah! And Nancy is the bad one for stopping them?

I don’t think it’s wrong to punish people for hurting others. Nancy was punishing those bad men and keeping them from hurting anyone else, ever again. Killing them was a little extreme, but her heart was in the right place. Sarah just fought back with her own magic instead of talking about things.

At the end of the movie, I tried to talk to the others about it. But they got freaked out about the idea of me defending Nancy and wouldn’t listen to my reasons at all. I had to change the subject before they started thinking that I was dangerous.

Our coven is supposed to be fair because we have a unanimous vote. But if everyone else votes against me, what can I do? There are real people out there who are as bad as the rapist and the abusive stepdad, or even worse. The cops aren’t going to stop them. So we shouldn’t do anything ourselves?

The movie gave me ideas for new spells and rituals that our coven can do. Maybe if I give everyone a little time to calm down, they’ll come back around. It was so inspiring to see girls like us with real power. That has to have an effect on them sooner or later.

And Halloween will be the perfect time to try it out.

THIRTY-ONE

"Anything Can Happen on Halloween"

Friday, October 31, 1997

Song: “Anything Can Happen on Halloween” by Tim Curry

Mood: fuming

Halloween used to be my favorite holiday, but I feel like it might be ruined forever now.

I thought it was the perfect Halloween costume. Mom said I looked great. Since I was going to school during the day, we agreed that she’d just do regular makeup for now and we’d add dark circles and stuff to make me look more like a ghost when we went trick-or-treating in the evening. But now I don’t even want to go out tonight.

Georgia dressed up as a paparazzo and followed me around with an old camera, pretending to take pictures. It was the extra thing to add to the joke. My friends all said it was great. Teresa even did a sketch of me because she said I looked so cool.

But most of the people at school didn’t even know who I was supposed to be. Even that idiot Bobby didn’t say anything, after he’s the one who insulted me by comparing me to Princess Di. He was too busy acting out in his own costume.

I don’t remember school this being crazy on Halloween last year, but it was an absolute madhouse today. Maybe because we were in the middle of campus, so I saw all the other students. And it was obvious that they’ve decided to turn Halloween into something completely different.

It was chilly today, but that didn’t stop most of the girls from dressing in as little clothes as possible. I thought the dress code was stupid, but now I’m starting to think that maybe it’s not all bad. Students threw those rules out the window today. The boys were all being totally disgusting by ogling them, whistling, grabbing at them. It was like a gauntlet of terror just to walk through the quad.

The drama class is doing Guys and Dolls right now, so lots of students wore their costumes from the play. The boys get pinstriped suits and hats, but the girls have skimpy little flapper dresses that look more like lingerie than actual clothes. I don’t think those are historically accurate for the 1920s, but drama class is super popular for some reason, so they get to do whatever they want. They have all this money for their shows to get new costumes and stuff while the band gets nothing.

Since my dress was so long and covered so much skin, no one gave me a second glance. Poor Nikki was also ignored, so I was right that nobody knew who she was supposed to be. But that isn’t the kind of attention I wanted.

The worst part was Bobby dressed up as a girl, too. He isn’t in drama, but he was still dressed up as a 20s flapper with a short dress. He stuffed his chest to give himself fake boobs, wore a bad wig, and way too much makeup. A bunch of the boys followed him around and pretended to flirt with him while he acted like a stereotypical bimbo. It was so disgusting.

Nikki thought it was funny that a boy was wearing a dress. But he’s only doing it to make fun of girls. It’s disgusting. It just reinforces all the horrible things that Bobby and everyone else says about girls: we’re sluts, airheads, bimbos. He gets to play around like that for a day, but I have to listen to those insults all the time. No matter how I dress, how I act, or what I say, that’s the label that gets slapped on me.

At the end of the day, Trevor and Brandon’s mom was there picking up the twins and their brother. She saw my blue dress and her face lit up. “Are you Princess Diana?” she asked me.

Finally, someone recognized me! Georgia was already gone by then, so I could show how she was part of my costume, but I told her all about it. Then I added, “I’m the ghost of Princess Di. You could say I’m… Die-anna!”

The smile disappeared from her face. She clutched her cross necklace and said in a flat voice, “That’s really inappropriate.” Then she hurried her boys off and left.

I couldn’t believe it. I’m the one who is inappropriate? If she knew about half the things Trevor says at school to me and the other girls, she’d realize that her good little Christian boy is the inappropriate one. He’s called me a slut, a bitch, accused me of lying and putting curses on his friends.

But I bet Trevor is on his best behavior when he’s at home or in church, so his mom doesn’t know what he’s really like.

That’s why I need to put another curse on him. And this time, I think Nikki and the others will agree with me. Tonight, we’re supposed to go trick-or-treating with Annie and Siobhan, because they live near downtown Boulder Creek and it’s a lot easier to walk around. I’m going to tell them my plan and ask for them to help me put another curse on Trevor.

I know he just recovered from mono and got back to school, but I won’t put a binding on or do anything else to hurt him this time. Instead, this spell will reveal who he truly is. Make his mask disappear so his mom and everyone else see how horrible he acts when he’s at school. He’s a bully, and he deserves to be punished.

But I won’t punish him. I’ll leave that to his parents when they find out the truth.

This is going to be the sweetest revenge yet, if it works.

THIRTY-TWO

"Dangerous Type"

Saturday, November 1, 1997

Song: "Dangerous Type" by Letters to Cleo

Mood: excited

This has to be our best hex yet.

After discussing it, the coven decided that the appropriate response to Trevor would be to cast a reflection. Everything that he does should literally be reflected back at him and be revealed to the people around him.

I had to argue my case for a while against the others. Nikki keeps insisting that I'm overreacting and he's not that bad, but I got Annie around to my side finally. She's seen too many insults from him now. And as I pointed out, if Trevor doesn't do anything wrong, then nothing bad will happen to him. It's like instant karma.

But I know Trevor is a bad person and every mean thing he says is about to come back on him. Whoever tried to say that sticks and stones will hurt you, but not words, never went to middle school. He didn't learn from the first hex, so now he's in for some real pain.

Because we spent so much time arguing about the spell, and then had to find a mirror to cast the spell, we didn't have much time left for trick or treating. I barely filled the bottom of my bag.

But I don't really care about the candy much. So much of what you get trick or treating is just sugary crap, and I only really like the ones with peanuts. But of course, most houses don't give out candy with peanuts anymore because of allergies.

I'll probably trade most of my candy to Nikki for bribes after she's eaten all of hers. She's picky about most foods, but she'll eat almost anything sugary.

Today, I feel super drained. Yesterday was such a long day with all the extra work around Halloween. Magic also seems to take a lot out of me. At least today was Saturday, so I could sleep in.

But I have a cross country meet this afternoon and it's the final race of the regular season. We are basically a shoo-in for the regionals at this rate, but I still have to place well today to keep my stats up. Then we have sectionals in two weeks and if we place at that, then the championship at the end of the month.

I just want the season to be over with so I can get a break. Georgia is going straight into basketball, but I won't have any sports until I go back to swim team in the spring. Just band (and piano lessons). It will be nice not to be running every single day.

Since we don't have a meet next week, Georgia wants to go to the school dance on Friday. I was surprised that she even brought it up, after what happened at the last dance? But she says she doesn't care what other people think. She wants to dance, no matter how many people stare at us.

I wish I had her confidence. It would be nice if I could just say "fuck it" to other people's opinions. I feel like I'm constantly looking over my shoulder and worrying about who is looking at me funny or talking behind my back.

We also found out that last night, Dad locked the cats in the garage all night long. We usually leave the door open for them to sleep in there because it's cold at night, but they can get in and out to explore the woods. But Dad was worried someone would try to hurt our cats as a prank. Especially Narknon, because she's all black.

Apparently, some people are still superstitious about black cats and kill them because they're scared of witches! That's ridiculous in 1997.

I mean, Narknon does belong to a witch. But she isn't really a familiar or anything because she isn't there when we cast our spells. She's still young, not even four months old. And you can't assume she belongs to a witch just because she is black.

The fact that someone would hurt a cat for any reason is disgusting. I'm going to write a protection charm that we can put on all our pets. Something small that will attach to their collars. They are innocent animals and they deserve to be safe.

Maybe I can find a way to sneak a charm onto Georgia's cat, too. Rocky should be safe like his siblings. But I can't let her find out about it, because I'm not sure how she will react to it, and I can't explain it without it leading to more questions.

Yes, I still haven't told Georgia about the coven. I just don't know how I would explain the whole thing to her. She would probably think it was a juvenile game.

But I know our spells work. We've done so much in the past six months that I wouldn't have believed if I didn't see it with my own eyes. For some reason, we have real power. And I think that we are doing good things with it–stopping bad people.

After all, if you see bad people doing bad things and you do nothing to stop them, aren't you complicit?

I'm going to make sure that bullies like Trevor don't get to hurt anyone else, ever again.

THIRTY-THREE

"Wolf"

Thursday, November 6, 1997

Song: “Wolf” by Veruca Salt

Mood: broken

Trevor isn’t acting any differently today, and it doesn’t seem like he’s gotten in trouble yet. Maybe it will take longer for this spell to work. I have to be patient. The thing that sucks is if it doesn’t do anything really obvious, Nikki will take this as a sign that I’m exaggerating about how bad he is. She thinks that I just like to complain about everything.

Justin is still flirting with Courtney in front of me every chance that he gets. He keeps dropping hints that he wants to go out with her, but he won’t just come out and say it. It’s so painful to watch from the outside. Like it’s so obvious to me now what he’s doing. He acts all coy and teasing, but it’s really because he’s afraid of getting rejected.

I can’t believe that I fell for this before. He was always taking forever to say anything to me, too. I knew what he wanted to say, but I pretended to be surprised and waited for him because I thought it would be more romantic that way. Now I just feel like an idiot.

In my older journal, I still have all the entries where I wrote about him as our relationship developed. They make me sick to read now. How could I have been so naïve and stupid? I was acting dumb just to make him happy. It’s hard to believe that was less than a year ago.

It’s barely been six months since we broke up, but it feels like a lifetime has passed. But he hasn’t changed at all. He tries to dress more stylish, maybe, in his stupid designer clothes. But the way he talks to girls, and the way he takes forever to understand anything in school, that’s all the same. I feel like I took off a blindfold and now I can see him clearly.

Or maybe I’ve just gotten more mature.

Last spring, I would’ve reacted to his stupid flirting. Maybe it would have worked for him to make me feel jealous about all the attention he’s paying to Courtney. But I’ve gotten much better at not responding to him at all. I look past him like he’s not even there and refuse to answer anything he says.

Because if I did react to Justin in any way, Trevor would be right behind him to swoop in and belittle me for it. It might do Justin some good if someone called him out on his stupid behavior, but as long as the twins are hanging around him, it won’t be me.

And I don’t think I need to warn Courtney about him. She’s a good little Christian girl who would never let a boy lead her astray, right? If she was nicer to me, then I’d tell her a few things about Justin. But I don’t think she wants to hear anything from me.

Speaking of “good Christian girls,” they’ve started a new annoying trend. Kelsey and her clique like to sing pop songs from the radio, but they censor out any words that are too “dirty” for them. It sounds ridiculous, especially since these songs are implying so much worse in the words that they are still saying. Like this one song they like right now, it’s called “Sex and Candy.” They just don’t say anything when it gets to the word “sex” in the chorus. But they sing all the innuendoes from the rest of the song! Isn’t “candy” probably code for drugs or something?

Or there’s that song “Lollipop” by Aqua, the same band that did that horrible “Barbie Girl” song. Pretty sure we all know what the female singer means when she says that she wants the man to be her lollipop. But as long as they don’t actually say the bad words, somehow this is okay. They can sing, and gyrate their hips around, and look at the boys suggestively while they sing, but they’re still pure and innocent.

What a bunch of hypocrites.

If this mirror curse works on Trevor, I should cast it on everyone in this stupid class. I’m surrounded by morons.

I don’t know how Georgia can just ignore all this stupidity. She has much better focus than me. No matter how many antics the other students are doing in class, she never lets herself get distracted from her work. She’s so smart, I bet she could skip high school and go straight to college next year.

Meanwhile, I’m just trying to keep on top of everything. In band, we’re already rehearsing for the Christmas concert. One of the songs is “Jingle Bells.” In percussion, there are three parts: one person on snare drum, one on bass drum, and one person who gets to play all the sound effects. Like the wooden blocks (for the horse hooves clopping), the strap (it’s supposed to sound like the whip cracking), and of course the sleigh bells. It’s actually the most challenging part because you have to keep track of where all the changes happen.

Guess which part I got?

Sam and Mike trade off on every song now, who gets to play the snare and who gets to play the bass. They never offer the drums to me.

I’m already sick of the constant jingling of sleigh bells. It’s going to drive me mad.

THIRTY-FOUR

"#1 Crush"

Friday, November 7, 1997

Song: “#1 Crush” by Garbage

Mood: excited

Georgia is going to come over at 5 pm with her dance stuff so she can get ready at my house. We’ll goof around for a while. Dinner will be pizza and then we’ll get ready for the dance. I have a new dress that’s knee-length and cute.

Georgia thinks I should call Justin and try to smooth things over with him, but I think it’s better if I stick to my plan of no contact. I’m not talking to the twins, either.

When we are all ready, we will go to the dance together. We’ll dance as goofy as we please and invent freaky dances. We will have the time of our lives and wonder why we didn’t do this last time. Georgia and I will bring candy to keep us hyper the entire time.

But when the dance is over, the fun won’t end. Georgia will come over to my house after and we will stay up all night talking about the dance and tons of other things. I want to plan a party or something really cool, but only the right people can come.

I’ll have my Tarot cards and the fortune telling board game so we can play around with them. Georgia doesn’t believe any of that stuff really works, but she likes to do it casually. One of these days, I’ll read the cards well enough that she’ll have to believe. But until then, I don’t mind pretending that it’s fake because she doesn’t say it’s stupid or anything.

Tomorrow, we’ll go to Big Basin and find a creek to explore. We’ll talk more about our party plans. Whatever we do, it’s going to be a blast!

My idea for a party right now is still nebulous.

I want to have a circle of friends, and they don’t all have to be girls. Keep it separate from the coven business. Some possibilities could be like Mike and Jenny from band, Georgia could invite some of her sports friends, Teresa from class, etc.

We will have dancing to good music like Georgia’s New Wave album, Veruca Salt, Garbage, Hooverphonic, Tori Amos’s dance remixes, etc.

It’s surprising how much you can tell about a person based on their favorite types of music. I should ask more people what they like so I can learn what they are really like. People think it’s weird if you start asking about their astrological chart or something, but they’re usually happy to talk about their favorite bands. That’s how I can tell that I get along with Georgia so well because she likes a lot of the same music as me. Before we invite anyone else to a party or get them to join our friend group, I have to make sure that their music tastes align with us.

We could also play games, talk, watch a movie, play in the backyard, have a pillow fight, or just goof around.

Maybe the party could even start by going to Big Basin first. We could explore up a creek to see how far we can go. I bet we can go for miles there, much farther than the little Hare Creek in my backyard. If you follow one long enough, one time we made it to Berry Creek Falls, but that took all day (it was like 14 miles round trip) so I don’t know if I want to go again.

This party will be the blast of the year. If it’s successful, I will have a party as often as I can. Maybe other people will start having parties as well. My social life would be totally awesome. I wouldn’t need witchcraft to get what I wanted.

Imagine if I were like the prettiest girl in the school and I could get away with anything. Tons of guys would like me and would keep trying to get my attention, but I would just ignore them, which makes them try even harder. I’d get dozens of invitations to dances, parties, and dates, but I’d turn them all down.

Until one day when a guy with REAL manners started being nice to me but didn’t pester me too much about dances or dates. I wouldn’t show it, but my heart would begin to warm towards him.

Yeah, right. Some girls may have it that easy, but that will never be me.

But tonight, I’m going to have fun on my terms with my best friend.

THIRTY-FIVE

"I Do"

Tuesday, November 11, 1997

Song: “I Do” by Lisa Loeb

Mood: introspective

The new Lisa Loeb album came out today, so I’ve just been laying on the floor in my room listening to it over and over again. It sounds different from a lot of the music I listen to, but it seems to make sense to me. There are layers that I’m still trying to understand. I’ve been hearing this single for a few weeks now, but the other songs are all new to me. I feel like they are already becoming part of my soul.

No one understands me. Am I not expressing myself well enough? I keep trying to find all the right words, but it’s like I’m not even speaking the same language as the people around me.

Even Georgia, my best friend, doesn’t get all of it. There are things that I’m hiding from her because I know she wouldn’t like them. Like the coven. And the constant rage that I feel burning inside me.

Nikki acts like she understands me because she’s known me her whole life, but she’s too young to understand certain things and she’s actually more self-centered than she realizes. Maybe she knows things that we’ve been through together, but she doesn’t know how I feel about them. She doesn’t know what this does to me.

I probably sound like a moody, self-centered bitch myself, but it’s hard to be anything else when it feels like the entire world is built to make things hard for girls. We have to put up with so much shit. Oh, I should be making myself look pretty and smiling to make other people happy? While being constantly harassed, looked down on, and ignored? Fuck all that.

My mom didn’t want me to buy the album today, even though I saved up my allowance to get it. She said that the cover looked too “sexy” and she was worried that it was inappropriate. The front is a painting of Lisa Loeb in the music video for “I Do”, where she’s wearing a man’s button-up shirt and laying down. But if you watch the video or listen to the song, she’s not trying to be sexy at all. She’s fucking pissed!

But there are no curse words. There’s no explicit content warning label on the front of the album. So I convinced her that it was okay. She made me listen to it with her the first time so she could check the lyrics, but there’s nothing wrong.

There are sexual innuendoes in virtually all the Spice Girls and Aqua songs that Nikki listens to. And I hear even worse at school, including the dances (although I won’t tell Mom about the dances or she won’t let me go anymore).

I don’t know what she’s freaking out about. This is just music that expresses something like what I’m going through. It’s not going to make me start doing drugs and having sex with tons of boys, or whatever she’s scared about. I’m not that easily influenced by other people, even music that I like.

Today in band, I got into a stupid argument about music. Usually, I ignore the boys while they handle the drums in the percussion section and I take care of my things. But I couldn’t keep my mouth shut when I overheard what Sam said.

Sam said, “I love that band, No Doubt. Gwen Stefani is the only good female rock singer.”

What! The actual! Fuck!

“No Doubt isn’t even a rock band,” I said automatically, turning around to glare at him. “They’re ska.”

Mike stared at me, but Sam just folded his arms and said, “What, you can name someone better?”

Are you kidding me? I couldn’t get the names out fast enough. “Joan Jett. Lisa Loeb. Nina Gordon and Louise Post from Veruca Salt. Alanis Morissette. Sheryl Crow. Shirley Manson, in Garbage. Courtney Love? From Hole?”

He frowned at most of the names like he didn’t even know who I was talking about, but on the last one, he snapped his fingers. “Hey, wasn’t she married to Kurt Cobain from Nirvana? Wasn’t she, you know, crazy?” He twirled his finger next to his head.

“Oh my god!” I yelled. “Sure, just reduce her to someone else’s wife and call her crazy! She had a career before she even met him—”

Mr. T, the band teacher, turned around and warned us to be quiet then.

I closed my mouth after that, but I couldn’t stop fuming over it.

No matter what a woman does, she will always be judged first by her relationships with men. I’m so fucking tired of it all.

THIRTY-SIX

"Bruise Violet"

Friday, November 14, 1997

Song: “Bruise Violet” by Babes in Toyland

Mood: annoyed

I’ve been making a list of all the interactions between Justin and Courtney that I have observed, and it’s definitely turning into a pattern.

October 2: Justin looked through the entire calendar to find Courtney’s birthday. He also talks to her a lot. Courtney suspects he might have feelings for her.

October 3: Justin talks with Courtney quite a bit. He was told to hold hands with her, and at first he refused, but then he seemed to enjoy it. Courtney asked him if he likes her, and he denied it, but her suspicion is doubled.

October 9: Justin talked to Courtney heaps and confirmed her suspicion by throwing paper at her. Courtney defended him when I made a joke about him, so I was certain by that point that Courtney liked him back. That afternoon, Justin asked Courtney if she would go out with him, and she said, “I don’t think so,” much to the amusement of his friends. But I didn’t think it was over yet.

October 16: I found out from Courtney that the conversation went as follows: Justin asked Courtney if she likes skating, and she nodded. Justin said it would be fun to do that sometimes and Courtney said she said okay “just to humor him.” Hmmmmm.

October 17: Justin talked to Courtney a little during the day, more on a class walk, and later played football with her. Trevor was throwing paper at Kelsey.

October 23: I’m getting sick of paper wads being thrown by Justin at Courtney, but they keep hitting me. Justin didn’t actually talk to her, though.

November 13: Justin passed Courtney a note that says: You want to do something together this weekend?

November 14: Courtney told Justin that she’ll call him.

So I guess they’re going out this weekend.

Well, I won’t let him get the satisfaction of seeing a reaction from me in class. But I’m tired of this and I can’t stay silent any longer.

I decided that I will write him a letter so I can say exactly what I want, so I can keep it calm and concise, and his friends won’t be able to interrupt. I don’t want to cause a scene at school. But I have to tell him what I’m thinking, so he will stop trying to toy with my emotions all the time.

If he wants to go out with Courtney, that’s fine by me, and I hope they’re happy together. But if he’s just toying with her in front of me to make me jealous, that’s not fair to her or to me, and he has to stop.

I hate that I’m obsessing over this all the time, but I feel like I’m going crazy. Did my spells even do anything, or was it all in my head? Was it a coincidence that Justin got in the car crash in the spring that broke his legs or that Trevor got mono when I put a hex on him? Even if I had some kind of powers, it doesn’t seem like those spells made a difference. They’re still just as bad as they’ve always been.

I can’t talk to the coven about this because they think I’m exaggerating, even though they are in the same classroom and seeing the exact same things that I do every day. They can hear how Trevor and Justin talk to me. They see Justin flirting with Courtney right in front of me. But they say it’s not a big deal and I shouldn’t get so worked up about it.

I can’t talk to Georgia because she doesn’t seem interested in boys or dating and she gets tired of other girls talking about it at school. I don’t want her to think that I’m a stupid girl who is boy-crazy and only thinks about getting a boyfriend.

I can’t talk to my mom or anyone else, either, because they will tell me to get over it and no boy is worth this much anguish.

But I’m not even missing the relationship with Justin. If I didn’t have to see him all the time, it would be easy to forget about him and everything that happened. But this keeps happening. I am stuck in this stupid loop where I have to watch it all play out, all over again, with Courtney taking my place. And I get harassed by Trevor and the other goons on a daily basis.

This is why I’m glad I’m not in public school. If I tried to keep up with people talking like this every day during class, I’d never get any work done. Why is everyone such a bunch of morons who waste their time on this petty crap instead of paying attention?

I don’t even think I’m that smart. I just think I try harder than most people bother to do. It’s not about the grades, it’s about actually learning something so I can get a decent job someday and get the fuck out of this house. Away from these horrible people.

THIRTY-SEVEN

"Split Second"

Tuesday, November 18, 1997

Song: “Split Second” by Lisa Loeb

Mood: gonna smash something

I finally got the courage to talk to Justin about the way he’s been treating me. Instead of being a coward and sending him a letter, I called him and told him what I thought about him directly.

He said he doesn’t really want to “hang out a whole lot” but we shouldn’t be enemies. We should be “like, polite to each other.”

I could hear all the things he really meant in his tone of voice, and he doesn’t care.

I hate him. Is this good or bad?

I don’t know what to think or what to feel. If he would at least talk to me once in a while, it wouldn’t be so bad. But it’s clear that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.

He has changed so much, and now we can never be friends again.

I’ll hate myself forever for what I did. It’s all so messed up.

I guess I should just give up on him, and make other friends. But I’ll never forgive myself for the mistake I made.

I just wish I knew which one…

I’m never going to say or write that name again. I’m crossing it out wherever I find it. I hate HIM.

I will not even think about, look at, write about, or speak of HIM again. From now on, for me, HE does not exist at all! I will concentrate on making real friends, like Georgia.

The good news is that the coven is on my side this time. Nikki heard me crying after I got off the phone and she said she’d get the others to agree to a hex on him for sure this time.

I told her that he wasn’t worth the effort, or at least, that’s what I tried to say. But when I tried to protest, she said now was not the time to be silent.

She’s right. It’s time to do something about him once and for all.

The biggest hex we’ve done. I can’t say for sure if the others worked or not, but there can be no question this time. Something that will shut him up permanently.

This isn’t just for me. This is for all the girls at school who have been subjected to the cruel treatment of guys like this jerk and his cronies.

I still have more presents from him that I can use. I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away, so I just shoved them in the back of my closet. When Annie and Siobhan get here, we’re going to take all of it and burn it. Something that will break all my ties to him so I can stop thinking about him.

I’ve already been going back through this diary and crossing out his name, in the good entries and the bad ones. It felt so cathartic. This is the last time you’ll ever hear me talk about him.

It’s going to be hard to burn the presents because it’s not like we can just start a fire in the backyard. My parents wouldn’t let me have one for safety reasons. It’s only rained a little bit so far this year and everything is pretty dry. We have to be careful not to start a wildfire.

But if we go to the lake, we can burn things on the shore and there will be plenty of water right there to keep the fire from spreading. Or maybe I should just drown everything in the lake? No, that wouldn’t be good for the environment.

Burning will feel so much better, anyway. Watching it all go up in smoke. Like our doomed relationship never happened in the first place. Burn it all down and walk away.

I feel like this is all distracting me. I didn’t place at cross country sectionals last weekend, and my dad is coming down hard on me for not doing well. I tried hard, but there were so many runners in that race, not just local kids but ones from all over, and I felt like I didn’t stand a chance. The season is finally over, but he wants me to keep running so I stay in shape for next year. That’s on top of school, piano, band, and my regular chores.

It’s all so overwhelming. I don’t know how long I can keep going like this. It was fun to have lots of activities when I was younger, but now that everything is so competitive and focused on winning, I can’t keep up with it.

I just hope I can get rid of this nasty boy once and for all.

THIRTY-EIGHT

"One Last Time"

Wednesday, November 19, 1997

Song: “One Last Time” by Veruca Salt

Mood: free at last

We burned everything from my ex today.

I feel better already. Watching it all go up in smoke, I felt like everything that tied me to him was gone. Now I’m lighter. Maybe I can finally move on.

I thought about burning my old journal entries about him, too. Get rid of it all and forget it ever happened. But I think it’s important that I remember my mistakes so I never make them again. Never will I let another boy have this kind of power over me.

I can’t believe that I spent this much time obsessing over a relationship that barely lasted a few weeks. It’s embarrassing to admit it. But I’m not focusing on the past, just on moving forward.

We kept the fire low and kept waving away the smoke. We were so worried that someone would see us. But it’s cold enough now that people have fires going in their fireplaces already, and I saw a neighbor burning a pile of leaves in his backyard over the last weekend, so we probably don’t need to be too paranoid.

The hard part was hiking up the creek to the lake. The water level is low right now because it hasn’t rained much yet, but it’s so cold. We tried to stay on the bank as much as possible, but there are some places where it’s so steep that you’re forced to go through the water. Even though we went early in the afternoon, when it was the warmest part of the day, we were all shivering by the time we got to the lake.

The worst part was walking back. We’d just started to dry off and warm up, but then we had to get back in the water.

We took a risk when we got close enough to hike up to the street, cutting through Mike and Tina’s backyard. They always take a while to come home from school and their parents are at work all day. Still, I felt weird walking through their yard. The house seems so empty and dark without anyone inside.

Nikki wanted to peek inside their windows and snoop a little, but I told her no. She probably wanted to see Mike’s bedroom. I told her that she wouldn’t want anyone peeking her windows, so she clammed up.

Tomorrow, I’m sure school will be so much easier with this weight off my shoulders. I can finally stick to my plan to ignore J—HIM and his friends. Maybe I’ll just ignore all the boys for good measure. It’s not like any of them are worth talking to. I already block out most of the boys in band because they’re distracting, even the ones who are in percussion with me. They ignore me, too, so that’s not hard.

The hard part will be if any of the boys try to pick on me again. But that’s the worst time to respond. There is nothing I can say that will get them to leave me alone. It’s better not to give them the satisfaction at all.

The only thing I have to figure out is what I will tell Georgia. She chats with the boys, especially Daniel, like we’re all still part of the same group. I have to tell her not to include me in any conversations with any boys. If she doesn’t know what’s going on, it could get really awkward.

But how much should I explain? Do I tell her about the phone call I had yesterday? Do I admit how it bugs me to see HIM flirting with other girls in class, even though we broke up so long ago? I don’t want her to think that I’m weak or obsessed with boys. It’s just so hard to explain these things to her when it’s like she doesn’t think about dating at all. She complains about the “drama” with other girls in class, and I don’t want her to think that I’m starting drama. My goal is actually the opposite of that.

I’ll make a list of things to say to her so I can plan it out ahead of time. She won’t be available until this evening, so I have a few hours left before I can call her.

In the meantime, I still feel freezing from that creek water. Maybe I’ll take a hot shower to warm up. We rinsed our feet with the hose before we came inside, so Mom wouldn’t see us tracking mud in the house and ask why we were walking in the creek in November. But the hose was almost as cold as the creek. Hot water sounds so nice right now.

THIRTY-NINE

"Caught a Lite Sneeze"

Sunday, November 23, 1997

Song: “Caught a Lite Sneeze” by Tori Amos

Mood: frustrated AGAIN

Well, my grand plan worked out SOOOOOO well that I managed to completely avoid HIM because I stayed home.

I got sick. When I went to bed on Wednesday night, I just felt cold and tired. But when I woke up on Thursday morning, I had a fever. Mom said there was no way I could go to school.

Nikki complained, because she still had to go. She tried to say she was already getting sick, too, but she didn’t have a fever, so Mom took her anyway. The same thing happened on Friday.

I always feel drained after we cast a spell, but this was the worst time yet. Maybe it was because we spent so long walking through the cold creek. But Nikki, Annie, and Siobhan didn’t get sick. It’s all me with this nasty flu.

I begged Nikki for details after school to see if she noticed anything different, but she said she didn’t notice on Thursday. So I told her to keep an eye on HIM and his friends on Friday. She said that Trevor’s hair looked cute because he’s styling it a new way. I can’t rely on her for help at all.

Today is the first time that I felt human enough to put pen to paper. My brain is still in a fog and my nose is running, but I know that I’m recovering.

The fever was so bad that I didn’t know where I was for a while. It was so disorienting. On Friday night, I was having a horrible nightmare, but it felt so real. I was trapped in my bed and there was a rusty coat hanger in the bed next to me. I couldn’t move, because I knew if I moved at all, the coat hanger was going to scratch my bare skin. It was so scary, I started crying.

I woke up because Dad came into my room and started shaking me. “Are you okay?”

With the lights on, I couldn’t see the coat hanger. Just to be sure, I checked everywhere inside my bed, but there was nothing there. “It’s not here,” I told Dad. “Did you take it?”

“What are you talking about?” he said. “I came in here because I heard you screaming.”

I didn’t remember screaming in the dream, just crying, but my throat was sore. So maybe it happened without me realizing it.

He put some music on to help me sleep and left me alone. But I turned on the flashlight that I keep under my pillow so I can read in the middle of the night and left it on. I was too afraid to lie there in the dark. In the morning, I found out the batteries were dead, so I had to change them out. But I don’t think I could have slept without some kind of light on.

If I turn on my lights in the middle of the night, though, my dad always sees. He comes in and yells at me to go to sleep. Sometimes, he finds the flashlight and takes it away. He’s also taken my books away before. It’s not like I’m a little kid anymore, though. I just like to read and sometimes I get caught up in the book, so I want to find out what happens next. Is it hurting anyone else for me to be up reading? Yeah, I might feel tired the next day, but that’s something I have to deal with. Reading helps especially if I wake up from bad dreams. But I couldn’t focus enough to read on Friday night after I woke up.

Anyway, now that I’m writing down the nightmare, it doesn’t sound that scary, and it barely makes sense. But I was really terrified at the time. It’s hard to describe that feeling. It was so intense. I just knew that it was real.

The timing of this whole thing is terrible. I can’t find out if the spell worked until I see HIM again. But I missed both class days because of the flu, and now this week, we’re on vacation for Thanksgiving! I won’t know anything until next month.

That feels like forever, but maybe the break will help. Right now, I just want to concentrate on getting over this nasty flu and feeling better. I hate being sick.

FORTY

"Truthfully"

Thursday, December 4, 1997

Song: “Truthfully” by Lisa Loeb

Mood: actually… happy?

This morning when I woke up, I knew I was free from that hateful boy at last. I had woken up from a splendid dream where a boy had kissed me (TWICE!) and I thought I loved him, but I realize now he didn’t act at all like the real boy. Okay, I admit, it was Mike.

It didn’t bug me today when you-know-who drooled all over Courtney, and even Trevor was acting nice to me. But I also think I might have a crush on another boy from band. Both he and Trevor are fair-haired, powerful, obstinate, and helpful, except Trevor’s only helpful to me in group projects like Team-building workshop.

Somehow, I feel like my heart is being pulled in all these different directions. I don’t know what any of these boys are really like when they’re not at school, but these are just harmless crushes. It doesn’t hurt anything to think about them from afar.

Who knows if any boys like me at all, even a little. No one is nice to me all the time. Trevor is only civil to me in group projects. Mike stopped teasing me, probably because I help him on bells. The other guy hangs out with another girl although I don’t know that they’re dating.

I can’t let Nikki or anyone else know that I was looking at Trevor because they would never stop teasing me. He was so nice to me today. He’s usually mean, but today, it was like he was a totally different person.

My heart is so stupid. What do I do?

But the good news is that I’m no longer obsessing over my ex. I think that fever finally sweated him all out of my system. He can do whatever he wants.

In band, Mike and I seemed to have reached a sort of understanding. During class Mike, Sam, and I work together as a team to get everything done and at the end we put everything away and go our separate directions.

Then Mike told me today that he’s quitting at the end of the semester, right after the Christmas recital. Even though he is annoying sometimes, I think I’ll miss him when he quits, because then I’ll be stuck with Sam and the idiot seventh grader who can’t even keep time. I wish it was Sam who was leaving.

Mike is so weird. I thought he wanted to be a drummer like his dad. The few times he has opened up and actually talked to me, I felt like we could at least be friends, but then the rest of the time he is so closed-off that I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don’t understand him at all.

No matter how many silly crushes I get on idiotic boys, I will always love my cat, Patches. She is so sweet! She seems happier now that she doesn’t have to take care of so many kittens. Though is is terribly spoiled and can raise quite a ruckus and can be awfully naughty, she gets away with it. Because every now and then she climbs on my lap and purrs her little heart out and falls asleep and she is so darned cute!

And she plays with me, the silly darling.

She will never deceive me or take me for granted or dump me and break my heart or lie, and that is a thousand times better than any boy. Even when she gets mad at me.

Cats are better than boys, without a doubt.

And yet, I feel like something is missing.

If I could dream up the perfect beau and have him appear just like that, I would dream up mine as follows:

His name could be anything, from Adolphus to Bob, and his looks wouldn’t really matter either. He could be tall and lanky or short and chubby.

But if I could choose, he would about six months older than me, six inches taller, with brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. He would live within walking distance of me and be a vegetarian. He is sweet, compassionate, sympathetic, and he has a good sense of humor, although he knows when to be serious.

Like me, he is a rebel from society, who doesn’t care what others think and doesn’t try to conform. We are two wild young things outside, like Cathy and Heathcliff playing on the moor.

We have secret forts all over and guard them well. We spy on and drive away any intruders to our “territory.”

We are both happy to have found true love, and delight in each other’s company. Sometimes we wish we were the only people in the whole world, so we could enjoy it together without interruption from anyone else.

I wish it could be like that and last forever, just two young people in love. But I don’t think anyone will ever be everything I want.

FORTY-ONE

"Something So Wild"

Thursday, December 11, 1997

Song: “Something So Wild” by Bettie Serveert

Mood: okay

This month is already flying by. I can’t believe the year is almost over. School is so busy with the end of the semester and I’m trying to plan ahead for the holidays.

I’m making a bunch of lists because I’m trying to figure out what presents I want to give people. Georgia’s birthday is coming up first and then there are so many people I want to buy Christmas presents for. Georgia is the hardest one to shop for because she doesn’t seem to like a lot of stuff. My ideas right now are a board game, hiking gear, or a kinetic dolphin wheel. She loves looking at the kinetic toys that I have in my room and she agrees with me that they’re very peaceful to watch, so that might be the best idea.

The kinetic toys come from a kiosk in the mall. If you could call the Capitola Mall a real mall. It’s so small and it has barely any stores besides J.C. Penny and Sears. They even shut down the Sanrio store!

I used to always want school supplies from the Sanrio store, even though my mom wouldn’t buy me too many things because they’re expensive. I’d be embarrassed to take that kind of cutesy stationery with me to school now, though. All my notebooks are dark colors like navy blue and even my backpack is forest green, so it won’t show dirt. That feels more practical, and it means no one can tease me about having little kid stationery, but I kind of miss the cute stuff. (Nikki still loves Hello Kitty, but even she didn’t buy the Hello Kitty binder this year. My favorite characters are the Little Twin Stars.)

Georgia never liked cutesy things like Sanrio, so it doesn’t matter. She always seems so mature. She’s going to be fourteen. That means I’m going to be fourteen in two months, too. I can’t believe we’ve been teenagers for a full year already! If all my teen years are going to be this full of drama and roller coaster emotions, I’m not sure I can survive them all.

Could I just skip ahead to being, like, twenty-something? I’d like to have a nice, calm day where I could focus on my studies or whatever without worrying about who was going to make fun of my clothes or my hair. Maybe in college, people won’t be such idiots in class, and we can get actual work done. I can’t wait.

I am making another present list of ideas for my relatives. Nikki and I try to make as many things by hand as we can. I don’t have a big allowance, so I usually only buy things for Georgia and my favorite cousin.

My parents asked us if we want to go visit our family in Las Vegas for the winter break. We could wait and drive out there over spring break instead. I have made a pro/con list to help me sort out my feelings. Good things about the trip: I like to see my favorite cousin because we can talk about books. The last time we went out there, my cousins were busy so we couldn’t see them. The weather in Las Vegas is very hot in spring or summer, so winter is the best time to visit. And my grandma throws a Christmas party at her house that I usually enjoy.

But my favorite aunt won’t be there for Christmas this time, it’s a long drive, we were just there last spring, my dad doesn’t like the trip and always complains, and we always spend Christmas in Las Vegas. Would it be better to try staying home for once?

I can’t decide. Nikki and I only get two of the votes, so it’s not all up to us. I’ll have to think about it some more and figure out a persuasive argument if I want to get the rest of my family to agree with me.

Anyway, I have to keep practicing. Tomorrow night is the band concert and I want to make sure that I have all the timing down right for switching between instruments. Our band only has two performances a year, and I really don’t want to screw this up. The last thing I need is for someone to make fun of me because I’m a girl playing percussion, but I can’t stay on the beat.

Fingers crossed that tomorrow night goes well.

FORTY-TWO

"Earthcrosser"

Sunday, December 28, 1997

Song: “Earthcrosser” by Veruca Salt

Mood: hopeful

I got a bunch of colored gel pens for Christmas, so I’m trying them out. They write so much more smoothly compared to ball-point pens and I don’t see any little streaks of ink. I usually use a pencil, but those have to be resharpened so often, and on some entries, I can see the pencil marks are faded and hard to read. I think gel pens will be my favorite writing instrument from now on. Bonus: so many colors! I haven’t picked my favorite yet.

I also started practicing how to make the cute bubble letters when I write. I made fun of that cutesy writing when I first saw it, but it’s starting to grow on me. Why shouldn’t I have fun and be creative with how my writing looks? Especially in this journal, which no one else can see.

Man, I sound like such a girly-girl right now. I’m excited about gel pens and writing bubble letters. My other presents were mostly clothes, which are also kinda girly? Like I have a blue shirt with three big pink hearts right on the chest. A year ago, I would’ve never even thought about wearing something like that. But it looks cute on me. Mom says she would be worried about drawing attention to my chest if my boobs were any bigger, but she can’t say anything because I’m still wearing training bras.

I can’t believe the vacation is over (well, almost, we just have to drive home, which is taking ALL DAY). I had tons of fun and I have also finally settled my boy troubles. I will turn retro, in the sense that I will follow the example in L. M. Montgomery’s books in which the kids still play until they are at least sixteen and then they do the silly boy-girl thing, when they are more mature and “ready for love.”

I am going to enjoy my childhood while I still can and then go swooning over boys. I can still daydream, but I’m not going to do anything stupid.

My cousin unconsciously helped me to see this, and I only hope their letters will be enough to keep me from veering off the path before I see them again. They said they might come visit us before Christmas next year, but I’m not that sure it will actually happen. I don’t know if their dad can get the time away from work and they almost never travel. Well, here’s hoping.

To reinforce this New Year’s resolution thing, I’m going to develop a new ritual for the coven. We didn’t do anything for the Winter Solstice because we were all so busy, but I think it’s close enough that it could still count? I just want to do something simple to say goodbye to 1997 and hello to a fresh start.

We can’t have another fire because I don’t want to try going back to the lake when it’s so cold. The creek is also running high now because the winter rains have already started, and since you can’t see where the usual banks and rocks are under the muddy water, it’s not safe to wade in the creek. But maybe I can come up with a releasing ritual that involves the creek itself. If there was something safe to put in the water, we could send it floating downstream with all the things that we want to get rid of. For me, that would be all my boy crazy ideas and crushes.

I almost told Georgia about the coven on her birthday. We didn’t do much because she doesn’t like to throw parties at her house. I just went over for a sleepover and we watched a movie, then we talked for a long time. She was telling me how she wants to start taking more responsibility for stuff and show that she’s getting more mature.

I told her that she’s already very cool and mature, way more than anyone else at school, and I was envious of her. That surprised her. I thought about telling her that the coven was helping me process my emotions, but I stopped myself again.

I don’t know why I keep stopping myself from saying something. I don’t know how it will go. One thing that I’ve learned is that I’m not good at predicting other people’s reactions or what will happen when I say what I’m really thinking. Who knows? Georgia might love the idea of the coven and want to join right away.

But what if she hates it? What if I lose my best friend?

I’ve already lost one friendship this year. It’s too much to risk a second one.

Out the window, I can see snow on the hills where the sun can’t reach it. The desert looks like a painting with snow streaks making little highlights in the shadows. It’s so pretty, I wish I could think of the right words to describe it.

I can never find the words that I really want to say.

FORTY-THREE

"Intuition"

Friday, January 2, 1998

Song: “Intuition” by Natalie Imbruglia

Mood: confident

We finally got the time for the coven to perform our New Year’s ritual. Annie and Siobhan came over for the afternoon and we went into the backyard during a break in the rain.

The rain has been getting heavier than ever this year. My dad says we’ve already had more rain than we did all last rainy season, and it’s still going. It’s a special storm season called El Niño that’s bringing so much extra rain. The creek is so swollen that it’s hard to get close. The sides are all muddy and I don’t want to fall in. I guess we’re lucky that the creek is so far from the house or we might have to worry about flooding.

I’m worried that the power might go out or the roads will get washed out by a mudslide. It’s kind of scary to think that we only have the one road to drive into town, and if something happens to that, we could be cut off from the rest of the world. And I hate it when the power goes out because the house gets so cold and dark. Our neighbors have generators, which are so loud, so we have to listen to the noise while we sit in the dark. Sometimes Dad lets us use the fireplace that only heats the living room a little bit, and my room is on the opposite side of the house.

Anyway, we were in the backyard this afternoon. Just standing there and watching all that water roaring past felt so different from when we play in the creek during the summer. It’s like a living thing or a primal energy, all rushing past us. How does anything stay alive in that creek when it’s so full? In the summer, we can see water striders, salamanders, crawfish, and minnows. But now there is nothing but churning, violent water. And it only gets bigger when it meets up with other creeks and becomes a river. That river can wash out bridges and knock down trees. It’s humbling to think about.

For the ritual, we tied sticks together with bits of grass. Normally during the winter, things grow like crazy from the moisture and everything is green, but it’s too much this year. Half of my mom’s garden is so flooded that the plants are just falling over and dying in the mud. The redwood trees are managing so far because their roots run so deep, but the high winds might push them over. The grass was also getting torn up by all the mud, so we could find long stalks that were already broken.

I told everyone to make some kind of symbol that represented anything they wanted to get rid of. I told them how I wanted to give up all my stupid crushes on boys and acting silly, so I tried to make mine into a heart. It was a little lop-sided, but I could tell what it was supposed to be.

Nikki said she wanted to let go of her fear of speaking up in class. She didn’t used to be so shy in elementary school, but since she started going to the junior high, she is always afraid to talk. I’ve been so caught up in my own problems, I barely noticed how much Nikki was struggling with the new school. I promised I would try to help her with that so she can participate more.

Annie said she wanted to let go of her fear of dancing en pointe. She’s been working really hard with her ballet teacher to strengthen her muscles, getting ready to switch to pointe shoes, but she’s scared because she could get injured. Dancing ballet is actually dangerous. But if she doesn’t keep working and trying, then she’ll never get better. She’s a really good dancer, so I think she can do it.

Siobhan was the most surprising one. She said she wants to let go of her anger. I didn’t think of Siobhan as being very angry, but she says that she keeps a lot of things bottled up inside where it eats away at her. That’s a surprisingly mature thing to hear from someone who is about to turn eleven. I don’t think I had that kind of self-awareness when I was that young.

Maybe seeing me work on my anger issues with all the bullies in school is rubbing off on Siobhan. I’d like to think that I’m a good influence on these younger kids, so I’ll have to keep that in mind in the future. I express a lot of my anger in this diary and to the coven and try to find things to do about it. But do I ever let it go? Something to think about.

Let’s hope that 1998 is a better year than last year.

FORTY-FOUR

"Leave Me Alone"

Friday, January 9, 1998

Song: “Leave Me Alone” by Natalie Imbruglia

Mood: focused

My plan is working so far. My New Year’s resolution. My promise to myself to not do anything stupid this year. To keep myself above silly crushes and boys and dating.

I keep telling myself, I am just a kid. I’m too young for love. I want to be silly and childish, and at the same time, terribly responsible and grown-up by taking charge of my life.

No more crushes. And it’s working so far. (It helps that all the boys around me are acting like idiots.) I’ve just got to keep it that way.

My birthday is only a month away and I’m trying to plan the right party. At first, I thought I wanted to have a mixed party with boys and girls, hopefully getting enough people together to do a murder mystery. I’ve never done one, but I got a set for Christmas from Game Alot. It sounds like fun.

But since my new resolution is to stay away from boys, that idea is gone. It didn’t used to be so hard to be friends with boys. In elementary school, no one made a big deal about boys and girls hanging out together. In junior high, it feels like all the boys have lost any sense they used to possess and most of the girls are acting stupid, too. I don’t think all of them are completely stupid, but there is so much pressure to conform that I think lots of people are just copying everyone else.

The trick will be to figure out which girls could be interesting if I could get them away from the mainstream idiots. Mom said I could have a sleepover if it’s just girls. That would give us the most time to hang out and maybe even get time away from parental supervision. If we stay up later than my parents, we have to be quiet, but then we can do whatever we want.

I’m making a list of potential names. Obviously, Georgia gets included automatically, because she never cares what anyone else thinks. Nikki is being nice to me right now and Annie is cool, so I might let both of them join. I don’t think it would be appropriate for Siobhan to join a teen sleepover, though. Let her be innocent for at least one more year.

The other potential girls are all from the homeschool class, too. I don’t keep in touch with anyone from sports teams when it’s not in season and I don’t really speak to anyone at band. That limits things, but right now the options include Jennifer, Teresa, Jackie, and Sarah. I might even invite Courtney. She’s nice enough when she isn’t following around the other Christian girls.

My mom is asking if I want to include Liz, since she’s right next door, and she’ll know I’m having a party. But I’ve been ignoring her for months now and it would feel weird to start up another conversation. Also, she never lets me see her cat, even though she adopted him from us as a kitten. Sometimes we see him in the window and he looks like he’s getting fat. If she would talk to me, I would tell her that it’s bad to overfeed cats, especially ones that are trapped indoors so they can’t get much exercise. He isn’t going to be very healthy if she lets him eat too much. But that’s not the kind of thing that would lead to a birthday party invitation.

At least Liz still hasn’t told anyone else about coven activities in a while, including the spell that she and I did in secret. So I don’t hate her anymore. But that doesn’t make us friends, either. It’s safer if we just don’t talk to each other.

After I have the potential guest list and confirm that everyone is available, I can figure out plans for the sleepover. It’s harder to find things that so many people will agree on doing together. Like if we have too many people, then we can’t play the fortune telling board game, because that’s only six players. If we want to watch a movie, then everyone is going to have a different suggestion for the movie we pick. There is logistics in finding food everyone can eat, and so on.

I can’t just pick what I want, even though it’s my birthday. It’s my job to be a good host and try to make sure that everyone is having a good time. I can’t boss everyone around like Nikki tries to do at her parties.

It’s going to take careful planning to make sure this party works out, but if it goes well, I may expand my friend group and be able to have more parties in the future. A busy social life would keep me from getting distracted by other things.

I’d better start another list.

FORTY-FIVE

"Celebrate You"

Thursday, January 15, 1998

Song: “Celebrate You” by Veruca Salt

Mood: victorious

I’ve won. Really and truly this time. HE is leaving my life forever.

We found out in class today that J—— is moving away. His whole family is moving to Colorado at the end of the month! I don’t know why they decided to move so quickly all of a sudden, but I don’t really care. The important thing is that I won’t have to look at his stupid face anymore.

I have no idea if my spells had anything to do with him moving. Honestly, it seems like a stretch. But I did say that I wanted him erased from my thoughts.

Nikki and Annie gave me a big thumbs up, right in the middle of class. I had to pretend that I didn’t notice them so it wouldn’t turn into a whole thing. Way to stay subtle, guys. Then they came up to me at lunch and congratulated me—in front of Georgia.

“This is our biggest success yet!” Nikki said. “Can you believe it?”

I shushed her with a warning look. Annie turned bright red and dragged Nikki off. But after they walked away, Georgia asked what they were talking about!

“Um, just some school project we’re working on at home,” I said vaguely. I couldn’t think of a good excuse that wouldn’t sound weird.

Georgia shrugged and didn’t ask anything else, but I don’t know if she was suspicious.

I can’t believe those two almost blew our cover! I had a long talking-to with Nikki when I got her alone later. She apologized, but she never thinks about these things ahead of time. She just says what she’s thinking and gets surprised by the consequences. She is so immature.

Nikki is excited for the next spell with our coven. She said we can do lots more revenge spells now that she knows they won’t all turn out so dangerous. And she has a point. After all, nobody gets hurt with this. J— and his family are just moving to another state and going about their own lives. I’ll have to remember this for future plans. I don’t want to get carried away with it, but it does open up more possibilities.

Something else weird happened with Nikki. She found something in her backpack when we got home. It’s a red bag containing chocolates and a note saying: “Be mine. Your secret admirer. I love you.” The handwriting is unrecognizable, so I don’t think Nikki wrote it to herself.

Who could it be? She doesn’t know anyone else at school, so it would have to be someone in our class. But only two boys in our class are in sixth grade like her: Kelsey’s obnoxious brother and the younger brother of the twins. Both of them are terrible. As far as I’m concerned, all the other boys are too old for her. So who is writing creepy notes to my little sister and leaving her presents?

If I find out who it is, I’m putting a hex on him! No boys are allowed near my sister. She’s too young to think about dating.

And why is Nikki getting chocolate and stuff right now? Valentine’s Day is a month away!

Nikki called up Annie, and they spent like an hour on the phone talking up theories about who it could be. She says a secret admirer is so romantic. She’s ranked all the boys in the class based on how attractive they are. No matter how much of a jerk those boys are, she thinks all of them have the potential to be cute. I told her to get better standards, but she told me to shut up and let her talk to Annie alone. Ugh! I can’t believe she’s so stupid about boys.

This could get ugly.

But despite the talk with Nikki, I’m still in a great mood. I can’t believe this is actually happening.

Since she isn’t going to be dating my ex-boyfriend, I decided to invite Courtney to my birthday party. I’m still working out the details, but she’s on the list now. Hopefully, she isn’t too heartbroken that he’s leaving. I don’t think they had a lot of time to really get close.

But then, I dated him for barely two months, and look at how long it messed up my life after that! No, I’m not dwelling on that anymore. Moving on.

Anyway, I don’t have to worry about that anymore. This whole sordid affair is finally ending and I can put it all behind me. Before long, people will probably forget that I dated him at all.

If only his rotten friends were moving, too. They’re the real problem. But if they don’t have him to make fun of, then maybe they won’t target me anymore, either.

I feel like my birthday came early this year. This is the best present.

FORTY-SIX

"Rebel Girl"

Thursday, January 22, 1998

Song: “Rebel Girl” by Bikini Kill

Mood: life is officially unfair

Nikki got another gift from her secret admirer. It’s a small paper box containing more chocolate and a note: “Be my valentine. I’m falling in love with you. Your secret admirer.” There was also a cheap gold necklace.

We still don’t know who is leaving these presents for her. There aren’t many opportunities for someone else to put something in her backpack while she’s at school, since we all have cubbies inside the classroom. Maybe they’re sneaking around while most of us are gone at lunch or break.

This is all just so typical. Last year, I was getting presents and valentines from a boy, but he turned out to be an absolute jerk. Now my little sister is getting all the attention.

I’ve destroyed MY image at school, but Nikki hasn’t. That’s not fair. She has a secret admirer and I have all the boys thinking I’m some kind of nut.

I don’t want to believe this is real, but that just might be jealousy speaking. She is walking around smiling and giddy all the time, speculating about her secret admirer. She says there’s nothing more romantic than a secret admirer. It’s all she and Annie talk about now.

Frankly, I think this boy must be a coward. He knows that if he said anything to Nikki in person, he would get targeted by every other boy in school and they would all laugh at him. Since J—- isn’t there anymore, no one is flirting in our class now. The boys and girls are separated by this huge divide. I’m fine with how things are, but I’m afraid the next drama is just around the corner.

And if I find out who this boy is, I will make his life a living hell. I don’t care about my reputation if it comes to protecting my baby sister. Let me be the wicked witch they believe I am if it makes them too scared of me.

So I can’t pass up the opportunity to cast a truth spell.

Annie jumped on the idea right away, and Siobhan chimed in, too. They both think that uncovering the secret admirer’s identity will help Nikki.

But Nikki was weirdly against the spell. She kept coming up with excuses about why we shouldn’t do it. “What if it hurts him?” she asked. “This magic is dangerous. We should just give him time to speak on his own.”

It’s the first time Nikki has spoken up against a spell that was meant to help her. She never asked if it was too dangerous to cast a beauty spell or make a love charm.

Fortunately, Annie did most of the persuading for me. She pointed out that many of our spells haven’t hurt anyone. Liz didn’t have any bad reaction to the binding spell that keeps her from telling people about us, for example. So why couldn’t we just reverse that spell and encourage someone to speak?

I was suspicious about her reluctance. “Do you think it’s fake?” I asked her, point blank. “Because if this is some kind of prank, it’s better to find out right now. We should expose who it is before you get your hopes up any higher.”

Nikki caved after that.

She wouldn’t let me touch most of her gifts, but I finally persuaded her to give me the box. That was all I needed to make a poppet that would link back to the person who gave it to her. We didn’t put any other features on the poppet so it won’t target anyone else by mistake.

To reassure Nikki, I let Annie cast the spell. Now we just have to wait and see what happens next. It might work as soon as tomorrow, but I think it will take a little longer than that.

I didn’t tell the rest of the coven, but I also put a protection spell on Nikki’s backpack. I don’t want anyone else going through her things while she’s at school. She deserves some privacy.

While I wait, I am getting the ingredients together for a big curse. As soon as I have the name of the boy who is trying to charm my sister, I’m going to hit him with everything I’ve got—no matter what he says.

No one touches my sister.

FORTY-SEVEN

"Know Your Chicken"

Friday, February 6, 1998

Song: “Know Your Chicken” by Cibo Matto

Mood: know-it-all

I fucking knew it.

Nikki has been acting weird after since we cast the truth spell to reveal her “secret admirer.” And the presents stopped coming. There were no more notes, not a single word from the secret admirer.

Annie and Siobhan were confused, asking so many questions, but I already suspected the truth. I didn’t believe that there could be anyone in our class who would honestly write these love notes and leave presents for Nikki. I was afraid someone else was doing it as a prank, but the real answer was much simpler:

She was faking it all along.

I searched her room because I was afraid that she might still be getting notes, but she was hiding them from us for some reason. That’s when I found an identical “necklace” to the one she got as the second gift—and the rest of the box of chocolates. There was also a receipt. She bought two charms at a craft store and made the necklace herself.

I called an emergency meeting of the coven, so Annie and Siobhan came over after school. Then I presented the evidence I found in her room. Nikki finally broke down and told us the truth.

She did it for the attention, of course. She was jealous that I got a boyfriend last year, and she wanted to show off, so she made up the story.

I didn’t have to say anything after that. Nikki feels terrible, but I’m not really mad at her. It’s not the first time she’s lied to get attention. I’m just relieved that I don’t have to worry about protecting her from boys at school. No one is noticing her at all.

Siobhan laughed, which was harsh. Even though I thought it was kind of funny, too, I told Siobhan not to make fun of her.

Annie took it the hardest. She trusted Nikki as her best friend and she believed everything that she had told us before now. It’s her first taste of betrayal, and she started crying when she confronted my sister.

“You had to know we would figure this out sooner or later!” Annie said. “What did you think you could do to keep this up? Would your secret admirer suddenly move away and have to write you letters in a long-distance relationship? We’re not that stupid, Nikki!”

Nikki looked at the ground and didn’t say anything. She had already apologized, but I could tell it was still eating her up.

When Annie stopped yelling, I stepped in.

“It comes down to this,” I said. “We swore an oath that we would always tell the truth to each other. You lied to your coven, the people who are trying to help you. That’s unacceptable.”

Nikki folded her arms and glared at me. “What are you going to do? Say that I can’t go to your birthday party?”

If I wanted to punish her, I could do that. It’s the kind of thing Nikki would do. She cares about parties and socializing way more than I do. My birthday is next week, and it would be satisfying to say she couldn’t be involved at all. Mom would back me up.

But I had something else in mind.

“No. You can both come to my birthday party,” I told Nikki and Annie, who looked at each other with a smile.

Siobhan sighed, but I refused to get into the argument again.

“For now, you are just on probation for the coven,” I explained. “You have to promise not to do it again. If we catch you lying or doing anything else that breaks the rules, then the rest of us will discuss how to punish you. We might kick you out of the coven for good.”

Nikki narrowed her eyes at me. “What does probation mean?”

“Just that. You have been warned not to break the rules again.”

Annie was already on board, and she nodded. “That makes sense. It’s like a warning. If you don’t do anything bad, then it’s fine.”

“The same thing would happen if any of us broke the rules,” I pointed out.

The others agreed to the plan, and Nikki was relieved. She expected me to do something mean to punish her, but I’m not that immature anymore. She already feels bad, and that’s enough.

This keeps me in control of the coven—and if they find out about the things I’ve done on my own, they won’t be able to kick me out right away. I can use the probation argument to save myself if I have to. Although I’m not so stupid that I would get myself caught like Nikki. There’s no evidence of my extra spells that she could find, even if she searched my room.

Next week, I have everything ready for my slumber party. This birthday is going to be so much better than last year’s. Girls only. I can’t wait.

FORTY-EIGHT

"Pretty Good Year"

Friday, February 13, 1998

Song: “Pretty Good Year” by Tori Amos

Mood: nostalgic

Today is my 14th birthday. It’s weird to think that I’ve already been a teen for a whole year, but at the same time, it feels like the time is taking forever to pass. I know that seems like a contradiction, but I feel the same way about being older. Part of me wants to be a kid again and part of me wants to be a grownup. But I don’t think any of me likes being a teenager.

I wish I could say that it’s been a good year. I started off with such high hopes because I had a boy ask me out for the first time. Now it sounds stupid, but at the time, I really thought I was growing up and having the future life I’d dreamed about. A boyfriend, a small group of friends, the chance to finally get out into the world and experience new things. It felt like things had fallen into place.

But then so much crazy shit happened.

I know some of it is my fault. I let people get to me with their cruel taunts. My anger made me do some harsh things. Maybe if I were a better person, I would have just been able to ignore them.

But it also felt so satisfying to get my revenge. To know that I had the power to punish people for the way they wronged me. Maybe I was cruel in my own way, but I didn’t give anyone a curse that they didn’t deserve. They all had it coming for what they did to me.

But do I want to keep living this way? Always feeling angry and lashing out secretly from the shadows?

No. I want to grow beyond the curses and the coven. To find a way to deal with my emotions without lashing out.

Like last week, when I found out the truth about Nikki’s fake secret admirer. I could have punished her for lying to us. Yet she already felt bad (at least about being caught) and I realized that I didn’t need to do anything to get back at her. She knows that she’ll have to earn back our trust and I hope it will keep her from making a worse mistake in the future. We both need to consider our actions before we do things.

Maybe I can put this game to rest. I’m getting tired of constantly obsessing over the details like who I have cursed, if the spell has worked yet, if anyone will get suspicious or find out what I’ve done. Tracking the moon phases and the sabbath is a lot of work, too.

I don’t really want to be a normal teen girl, but I don’t want to be this vengeful witch, either. There has to be more out there.

Tonight, I’m having that big party I always dreamed about. Counting me, Nikki and Annie, there are seven girls who are celebrating this party. The other guests are Georgia, Courtney, Jennifer, and Liz. (Yes, I graciously even chose to invite my next-door neighbor. She has been good about not revealing our secrets, so I’m willing to give her another chance.)

That’s the biggest sleepover I’ve ever had myself! And since I know all of these girls are friends with each other and don’t like drama, I know it’s going to be a fun night. I can’t wait.

I’ll wait until after the party to let the others know that the coven is taking a break from our spell work. They might be disappointed, but they’ll understand. No one has felt totally happy with what we’ve done or the results we’ve gotten.

But it feels freeing to give it up. Like I’m taking another step toward growing up and becoming the person I want to be.

We can always start it again if we really need it, but I don’t think we will. J— is gone, moved out of the state, and I don’t even think about him anymore. There are other boys who are annoying, but I don’t think cursing everyone will solve my problems.

Magic isn’t everything.

FORTY-NINE

"Good Disaster"

Saturday, February 14, 1998

Song: “Good Disaster” by Veruca Salt

Mood: crushed

So much for my idealistic plans.

The sleepover was a bad idea. So bad, I can’t believe how much things derailed. When I try to think about where things went wrong, I’m not sure I can even point to the moment that it all started.

It seemed like fun at first. Everyone came over. We had pizza and birthday cake, then we watched a movie. I knew it would be tricky to get everyone to agree on one movie, so I went with something safe: Jurassic Park. We made a big bowl of popcorn and had other snacks, so everyone had something they liked.

My parents went to bed, so we had to be quiet, but that’s when I expected the real fun to start. I had picked out some games that allowed seven players, and Nikki promised me that she would play nice with anything I chose. Or if Nikki and Annie decided to go off by themselves, we could do more activities.

Then Jennifer found my deck of tarot cards. She asked if she could get a reading from me.

“You guys know about that occult stuff, right?” she said. “Can you tell the future?”

Georgia told her it was just a game and she shouldn’t take fortune telling seriously. Courtney got uncomfortable because she didn’t want to get involved in anything that could be associated with the Devil.

“They’re not connected to the Devil,” I told her. “Look, they’re just like playing cards. In fact, the modern deck of playing cards comes from these designs.” I pulled out a playing card deck and put some cards out side-by-side to show her how there are four suits with numbers 1-10, plus the face cards.

Courtney looked at everything closely, but she finally shook her head. “Nope, I’m not going to do it. I’ll just go hang out in the other room. Let me know when you guys are done.”

I didn’t want any of my guests to be left out, so I put the tarot cards away.

We brought up a few more suggestions, but someone always shot them down. I thought this group of people would get along—we all seemed to be friendly enough at school. Last night, though, they seemed totally different. I didn’t want to just pick something and force everyone to go along with it because it was my birthday, but it seemed like we would never get everyone to agree. We just sat around and talked, and I could tell that people were getting bored.

Eventually, Annie and Nikki wandered off to Nikki’s room. They said they were tired and just wanted to sleep. I couldn’t blame them for getting bored. I was getting frustrated with the whole situation.

Finally, Jennifer said, “When I get bored at home, I sneak out of the house and go to this bar down the street.”

“No way,” Courtney said, folding her arms. “You’re thirteen. You couldn’t get into a bar.”

“I do it all the time,” Jennifer insisted. “Lots of men tell me I look really mature for my age. The bartender doesn’t let me buy drinks, but he doesn’t kick me out, and it’s so interesting just to sit and talk with people.”

That didn’t sound truthful to me, but I couldn’t help getting curious. “What do you talk about in a bar with a bunch of gross old men?”

“Everything,” she said with a shrug. “You would be surprised what people will tell you after they’ve had a few drinks. And it’s a great place to meet guys. They’re not all old men, but they’re better than dorky middle-school boys. I make out with older guys all the time. They know how to treat a girl.”

Georgia looked bored with the conversation, but the other girls were asking questions. Courtney wanted Jennifer to prove it.

Then Jennifer said she could show us if we left the house with her. “I saw the country club nearby on the drive here,” she said. “They’ve gotta have a bar, right? We can dress up and head over there for an hour or two.”

Of course, there was only one catch: “You have to be able to look grown-up enough for them to let you in. I can help you two with some makeup,” she said, pointing to Courtney and Liz.

Then she pointed at Georgia and me. “But you two are too flat-chested. No one would ever believe you were old enough to be in a bar, and believe me, padding your bra does not work.” She thrust out her chest. “This is how I get older guys to let me in.”

I couldn’t believe she said that! I know I haven’t developed much, but I don’t look like a little kid, either. Georgia and I are the tallest girls in the whole school. Lots of people tell me that I look like I’m at least sixteen.

But Jennifer was the one with the crazy plan, and she said Georgia and I would get them in trouble. Georgia said she was fine staying home. Courtney and Liz nodded like they were ready to go along with the plan. I had to put my foot down.

“You can’t sneak out of the house in the middle of the night!” I told them. “If my parents find out, we’ll all be in huge trouble—and they’ll tell your parents, too.”

“I don’t care,” Jennifer said. “My mom doesn’t mind what I do.”

Courtney and Liz backed out of the plan, though, because they were afraid of getting caught.

We went to bed after that, but I couldn’t sleep. I was so upset about what Jennifer said about me. I was used to getting picked on by boys at school, but I thought she was my friend.

It’s not really about being flat-chested, anyway. It was the way she looked at my body and criticized it so bluntly. I’ve never had anyone be so mean to me in my life.

Georgia didn’t look like she cared, but I felt bad for her sake, too. Georgia is beautiful in her own way. She’s tall and strong, a great athlete.

So in the morning, I asked if Annie could stay a little later after the other girls went home. Then I told her and Nikki that we needed to get back at Jennifer.

I know that I said I wasn’t going to use magic anymore. But what else could I do? She has to learn her lesson. There were only three of us, but I have a good feeling about this.

We’ll wait and see what this curse does.

FIFTY

"Dark Secret"

Monday, February 16, 1998

Song: “Dark Secret” by Matthew Sweet

Mood: secretive

I may have to burn this journal. It’s been really helpful to write out my feelings in a safe place, even if I sometimes look back and feel embarrassed about how immature I was.

But now I’m worried that it’s not really safe. I realized that this is the only evidence that links me (and the others) to all the spells we’ve cast. If someone found this, they would know what we’ve done. Every grudge I’ve kept and everything I’ve done to get revenge is laid out in incriminating detail.

And after this last one, I’m worried about the fallout.

After the disastrous sleepover, I had Annie and Nikki help me with a curse on Jennifer. I won’t write down what we did, but it seemed like our best spell yet. It wasn’t supposed to hurt anyone. Actually, I thought it might be helpful to Jennifer. If anything she said is true, about sneaking out and kissing men, then stopping her would be for her own safety.

Then we heard about the results today on the news.

With the extra rains and high winds, there have been trees falling all over the place. Some have blocked roads or taken out power lines. There has also been flooding and mudslides around the county. I heard the president declare a state of emergency for Santa Cruz County a few days ago.

But today it was a calm day, a rare break in the storms. The sun actually came out for a moment.

The neighbors said there was no warning—just a loud crash that echoed through the neighborhood. When they ran outside to look, they saw an enormous redwood tree had split one house in half.

Jennifer’s house.

Fortunately, nobody in her family was home in the middle of the day, so they weren’t hurt. But their house is destroyed.

I saw Jennifer on the TV, talking to a news reporter. She was crying and her face was all red. Without her usual heavy makeup and tight clothing, she looked like a kid. A thirteen-year-old girl who was upset about losing her home.

Nikki looked at me across the room, and I shook my head. We couldn’t talk about it at all. It’s not safe.

But my stomach feels like it’s eating its way out of my body. I’m going to be sick. Just the sight of the house torn in half by that tree…

This is the worst thing I’ve ever done.

I was so mad at Jennifer after what she did at my birthday party, but she didn’t deserve this.

Burn this journal. Bury the ashes. Destroy any other references to witchcraft and our coven so no one can trace it back to us. Stop talking to the coven. Nikki can still be friends with Annie, but I can’t hang out with them anymore.

But Liz knows that we have cast spells before. She saw what happened at the party and she knows how upset I was about Jennifer. This happened too close to the party. She’s bound to be suspicious.

What should I do if she starts asking questions?

Oh, no, I feel like I’m going to throw up.

This isn’t something I can undo. I should have never been messing around with spells in the first place, or I should have stopped when I saw people getting hurt. I didn’t really believe that I could be responsible for all of it—but now there is no doubt.

I have tapped into something powerful, and I have used that power for evil. There is no other explanation. It’s too many times to be a coincidence now.

The real question is, even if I can keep other people from figuring out what happened, can I live with myself knowing what I have done?

What about the others? Will they turn on me, like Nancy in The Craft? Will they decide I’m so dangerous that they have to take away my powers?

No. They’re responsible for this too, and I’ve sworn them to secrecy. They know what the consequences will bed if they tell anyone or try to act against me.

But I swear this is the last time, for real now. No more magic.

Thank you for reading 90s Girl Cult! I’d appreciate it if you took a few minutes of your time to write a review online. Your feedback can help other readers decide to give the book a try. Word-of-mouth is the most important way for books to get discovered by readers.

Read More

Are you ready for more adventures? Continue reading 90s Girl Cult in the ongoing serial! Check my website to find all the places you can follow along, and stay tuned for updates about season two.

90s Girl Cult

Katie and her friends started playing with witchcraft as a game. But they discovered dark magic lurking in the woods. As teen girls, they feel like everyone else makes their lives miserable, from controlling parents and teachers to mean girls and boys. Time to take the power and get revenge. Set in the late 90s, this occult thriller follows a group of teen girls in the Santa Cruz mountains.

* * *

A complete list of all my books:

www.kristenwalker.net/books/

Free Book

Get a free book! When you sign up for my author newsletter, you can receive a free copy of Third Generation Witch: Applications, a YA urban fantasy novella!

Third Generation Witch: Applications

A teen girl fears her family’s reputation will label her for life. Her mother wants her to follow in her footsteps and learn witchcraft. Can she become a witch on her own terms?

Brie knows two things about the witches in her family. Her grandmother almost destroyed their hometown with magic. Her mother saved it. But the upheaval from their fight has caused problems for twenty years. Now witchcraft is subjected to strict laws and everyone knows the McAddams family is to blame.

When Brie is old enough to study witchcraft under the new laws, her mother, Rosa, assumes that she’ll attend the school where she teaches. But everyone would put Brie under a microscope to see if she’ll turn out to be a hero like her mother or a villain like her grandmother. She wants to hide in anonymity.

Then her second mother suggests that she try a different school—one where people won’t know her family name. Brie would have to be accepted under her own merit. The MATs—Magical Aptitude Tests—will score her ability to learn magic. But if she succeeds, Brie might find a more welcoming home at Santa Cruz Witch Academy.

She just has to pass the entrance exams.

* * *

I send out a newsletter each week with free stories, deleted scenes, the secrets behind my books, and more exclusive content for readers. To join, follow the link:

http://www.kristenwalker.net/newsletter/

Also by Kristen S. Walker

90s Girl Cult

Season One

Season Two (2023)

Santa Cruz Witch Academy

Third Generation Witch: Applications

The Reluctant Witch: Year One

The Salty Witch: Summer School

The Daring Witch: Year Two

Fae of Calaveras Trilogy

Small Town Witch

Witch Hunt

Witch Gate

Fae of Calaveras Trilogy

“Witch Test”

“A Witch’s Halloween Surprise”

“A Midwinter Night’s Dream”

“Midsummer Knight”

Divine Warriors

Riwenne & the Mechanical Beasts

Riwenne & the Bionic Witches

Riwenne & the Airship Gambit

Riwenne & the Electrical Prophecy

Riwenne & the Ethereal Apparatus

Riwenne & the God-Killing Machine

Divine Warriors pt.1: Books 1-3

Amena’s Rise to Stardom!

“The Girl Who Talked to Birds”

“Vilqa’s Gift for the Sea Goddess”

Wyld Magic

A Flight of Marewings

A Pride of Gryphons

The Reign of Dragons (2022)

“The Duke’s Daughter”

“The Ghost on Winter Solstice”

Serials

9os Girl Cult

Vampires’ Daughter (Vampires of Calaveras #1)

Anthologies

Tales of Ever After

2019 Halloween Short Story Challenge

2019 Christmas Spirit Short Story Anthology

Flights of Fantasy

Gilded Glass

Ink & Incantation

Kindred Kingdoms

Stand Alone

The Voyage of the Miscreation

“The Pirate Cat and the Merkitty”

To learn about future releases, join my mailing list and get a free book!

About the Author

Kristen S. Walker wishes she was a pirate mermaid who could speak with sharks, but she settles for being an author. She's proudly bisexual, Wiccan, a liberal feminist, and lives in Northern California with her family and two rescue pets. She grew up in the mountains, running barefoot through the woods and chasing imaginary dragons. Her fantasy novels for teens and adults explore diverse characters, detailed worlds, high-stakes adventures and emotional journeys. When she's not writing, Kristen enjoys geeky crafts like cosplay, toy photography, and watching anime.

For more books and updates:

www.kristenwalker.net

Instagram icon Instagram

Goodreads icon Goodreads

Amazon icon Amazon

BookBub icon BookBub

Facebook icon Facebook

Patreon icon Patreon