No Good Witches | ONC √

Breaking, Entering, And Getting Eaten

"What?"

If it had looked like she was coming out the other side of her tears before, I surely wouldn't have thought that now. She was sobbing, wheezing, her whole body shaking, her hands making tangles of her hair.

She may have also been talking. If she was, it wasn't in any kind of language I could understand.

I sat beside her, the mattress bouncing up and down to accommodate my weight, and pulled her hands from her hair. "Rebecca. Rebecca, please...Rebecca!"

She flinched.

"Sorry." I said.

But at least that had snapped her out of it.

"Rebecca, I'm gonna need you to take a deep breath and explain to me exactly what you meant by 'Dr. Alvarado is dead because of me'."

She sniffed and nodded, taking in a deep breath like I told her to. And with the release of this breath came at last a string of coherent words. "There was this...this test for english. A big one that was going to count a lot towards our final grade. It was supposed to be easy too. Based of the reading we did the night before. For The Scarlet Letter."

The story of how a woman's life is ruined after being accused of being a witch being taught at a Witch School? Typical.

"A-and I tried reading it, I did. I even looked at summaries online, listened to the audio recording and everything but the words all just washed over me, like...and I just knew that I was going to fail yet another test in that class and I couldn't handle it so before I went into class that morning...I did a knowledge siphoning spell." She said this last part avoiding my gaze.

I sucked in a breath. Siphoning spells of any kind were the type of Big Bad magic that humans feared, the kind that were rarely looked the other way for. The kind that, if not done properly, can screw with your magic permanently.

"The teacher caught on pretty quick." She rushed on. "But she didn't know it was siphoning so I only got a week of detention. But..." She shifted, uncomfortable. "But I knew that the spell had done...something to my magic. It feels heavier now. Darker. Wild." She looked back at me at last. "And I knew that performing that suggestion spell wasn't going to end well as soon as we started it. I didn't know it would...that she would..."

"Why didn't you tell us, Rebecca?"

"I don't know. I didn't want you to know, okay?"

"What? That you were practicing siphoning magic?"

"That I was stupid!"

"You aren't stupid..."

"Am I not?" Her laugh was harsh and flat. "Do you want to see my doctor's note?"

It was my turn to flinch. I don't think I'd ever heard her yell at anything before, let alone a person. And I kept waiting for her to apologize, for this jagged girl in front of me to fold back into the meek Rebecca that I knew. But that didn't happen. She only grew more jagged, her eyes darker and sharper as she practically spit out her words.

"My brain doesn't work like everyone else's. Learning things, reading...it just doesn't work for me and I've never known why. The doctors, they give it all these fancy names like that changes the fact that everyone is always ten steps ahead of me when it comes to just about anything."

"You have a learning disability..." I nearly whispered.

She snorted. "Yeah. Big surprise, right?"

"But...plenty of people go through that, Rebecca. You don't need to hide who you are. I'm sure no one would even care."

"But I care!" Her voice was venom, and her eyes piercing fangs. "Let's face it, Cass! I'm a straight, rich, white, blond girl who writes paragraph long instagram captions and frequents Starbucks." Her hands curled into fists on her knees. "I wear flowers in my hair, I giggle instead of laughing and I prefer dresses to pants. I'm a big enough cliche as it is, don't you think? Being stupid too? Well, that's a little on the nose."