Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1

  Chapter Three

  As Ross drove his daughter to school, he absentmindedly flipped through the radio stations on his car’s steering wheel. He’d been meaning to choose his preset stations, but at the moment he wasn’t even listening. Aradia, likewise, hardly noticed. They were sitting together physically, but both their minds were elsewhere.

  When Salem’s last ADA unceremoniously and unexpectedly retired after getting his hand caught in the cookie jar, also known as as the evidence locker on a drug bust, it truly did open a great opportunity for Ross. However, the Prestons had a deeper reason to leave their old home. Her parents denied it when she made any such allegations, but Aradia knew she was that very reason.

  When Ross and Liza had found her in that cave, they had lived in Ohio. They stayed there a short while longer before her father’s career led the family to Arizona. She was only about three years old when the they moved west, so she didn’t really have much memory of the Ohio years. Arizona was basically all she’d ever known.

  Aradia clenched her fist, digging her nails into her palm. She didn’t draw blood, but she let it hurt a bit. No matter what her parents said to reassure her, she knew she had made the atmosphere in Arizona so uncomfortable that leaving was the only viable option. It’s my fault, she repeated in her mind for what seemed the ten thousandth time. It won’t be any different here. I can’t run away from myself.

  She gazed through the passenger side window at the passing structures and landscape. Later she would admit that Salem really would be a neat place to live, but for now she was twenty-seven hundred miles away where she had grown up.

  When her parents enrolled Aradia in kindergarten, the trouble started. At first she was just taken as a bit peculiar, as any kid could be. But people noticed she was stronger than she should have been, stronger than several larger kids combined. Fairly early on, a larger kid, a boy named Jensen who was the iconic bully of the class, decided it was her turn to get pushed around.

  For an hour in the afternoon the kindergarteners had “Stations” they could explore on their own. Aradia was at the Art Station drawing with crayons. The fact that her drawings often were of bodies hanging from rafters was an issue all on its own, but fortunately this time she was just drawing a giant butterfly.

  “I want to sit here,” Jensen said, as tough as a six year old can be.

  “You can sit next to me,” five year old Aradia replied as she kept filling in her butterfly’s wings.

  “I want to sit here,” Jensen replied, shoving Aradia with all his might.

  She hadn’t been expecting it, and had no experience in combat of any sort, so he nudged her enough to wobble her a bit. He did manage to jerk her arm, which drew an ugly red gash of a line across her butterfly.

  “My butterfly!” she screamed and promptly started bawling.

  Jensen, seeing her crying, was satisfied with his result, but knew she should have fallen over. She was small for her age and he was large for his. He took it as a challenge.

  He tried again and again to knock her over, and never could. Aradia took it to be a game of sorts, laughing when he failed to hurt her, which angered him even more. That was when he began the name-calling. Soon the other children were in on the cruelty as well. By that point, Aradia didn’t laugh at it anymore.

  One day, Aradia pushed back.

  They were on the playground, because of course such a showdown would occur on a playground. A large group of kids were playing King of the Hill, a dodgeball variant, and Aradia wanted to play too.

  “You’re not allowed,” Jensen had said. Recognizing the will of their leader, the other kids backed him up.

  “I wanna play King with you,” Aradia repeated.

  “You can’t play with us!” Jensen yelled at her. “You have a stupid name.”

  It wasn’t even much of an insult, but it was enough. She looked around at the circle of kids which had formed around them. They were all laughing. She felt like she was spinning out of control. That was when she screamed and shoved Jensen as hard as she could.

  For a second or two he was actually airborne, before crashing to the earth and rolling several meters.

  The other kids stopped laughing.

  By now the teachers were finally involved, and they broke up the commotion. It turned out Jensen had broken his arm in the fall, and he had a cast for six weeks afterward. For those six weeks, that cast was a constant reminder to everybody that Aradia was different than they were. Jensen asked every student in class to sign it, other than her.

  There wasn’t any official fallout with the school. Everybody knew Jensen was a troublemaker, but now Aradia was on the radar too. Perhaps more devastating was the fact that Jensen was the youngest of four siblings, and his parents were well established members of the school community.

  Ross and Liza were none-too-popular themselves after the skirmish.

  There were other oddities as well, of course. Aradia never got sick; she never even got the sniffles. The most off-putting display of her powers, to most people, was that she often seemed to know if something was going to happen just seconds before it actually did.

  As she grew she learned to control and hide these abilities, but as a young girl she couldn’t help herself.

  Needless to say, she was familiar with being isolated from her peers.

  The bullying was hard to deal with, and it didn’t end with kindergarten, or with Jensen. Much worse than that, though, was that in her heart she believed the other kids were right to be afraid of her. She really had hurt Jensen, and as she grew, so did her powers and her strength. As a five year old, she broke a boy’s arm. What would happen if she lost control again when she was much more powerful? How could she be anything but an outcast?

  Aradia’s memories fast forwarded six years. Jensen was long gone, but she doubted there was a shortage of Jensens in the world. She was in middle school, and there had been another boy who had taken to calling her names. This one, named Kasey, went the extra mile of mockery and spread horrible rumors about Aradia.

  For more than a year, Aradia had begrudgingly put up with his behavior. Contradicting the rumors proved fruitless, and confronting him was not an option that she allowed herself.

  Then he went further than he should have.

  Aradia had been walking down the halls, just like she always did and just like always, all the other students were arranged in their groups of exclusivity. Unlike normal, however, they all seemed to notice her. Most days she doubted anybody even remembered she was there.

  And she recognized the look in their eyes, the way their mouths curled up in malicious smiles. Something was going on, something very bad.

  She knelt down to set her bag in front of her locker. It wasn’t until she rose turn the combination that she noticed a flyer taped on her locker.

  It looked like the cover of a Playboy magazine.

  “Charming,” she muttered to herself.

  She was just about to tear it down and wad it up when she realized it wasn’t quite what she’d first thought. It was indeed the printout of a Playboy cover, but whoever had made it had photoshopped onto the model the face of Aradia's mother.

  She hadn’t made anything of it at first, but she’d seen dozens of students either holding or looking at handouts on her way into school.

  For the first time since she was five, she did not hold back.

  A group of three girls had been passing her way, holding a flyer and giggling. Aradia grabbed the leader of the pack by her sweater with enough force that she dropped the flyer and her notebook.

  “Hey!” the girl, whose name Aradia neither knew nor cared about, protested. “Lay off!”

  “Not the mild-mannered bitch you’re used to, huh?” Aradia said. The girl struggled, but Aradia’s fists might as well have been steel vices. “Who gave you the flyer?”

  “Lay off, freak!”

  “Who gave you the flyer, hmm?” Aradia demanded.

  Her anger was such that she was
well beyond shouting. No, her voice was amazingly level in tone, but just as firm and unyielding as her grip.

  “Kasey gave it to me. He gave out all of them. Let go of me!”

  She didn’t really need to add the last bit. Aradia was already on the move.

  She used a more mild form of her summoning ability to find her foe. It didn’t have any visual manifestations, and was weaker than her bright, glowing light, but it could lead her in the right direction if she was close to what she sought and her will was strong enough. Unfortunately for Kasey, her will was strong, and she was very close.

  He saw her coming. He was on the second floor of the Stevens Library, which was probably where he’d made the copies of his flyer.

  “Heya Rai,” he gloated, knowing that was a nickname her mom used for her. “How’s it–”

  He didn’t get the chance to complete his sentence though. Aradia accelerated to a full sprint in the few final steps between the two of them. She flung aside the table he’d been sitting at and barreled right through him with a tackle that would have made an NFL linebacker proud.

  Aradia wasn’t thinking about how strong she was or how far her lunge might propel them. She also wasn’t thinking about the fact that they were on the second floor and in front of a window. In the moment, lost in her rage, she just didn’t care.

  Both she and Kasey plunged straight through the window and down, landing with two hard thuds on the concrete parking lot below.

  Aradia was actually hurt far worse than Kasey. Yet, with her enhanced healing, she recovered from the worst of her injuries in just a few days.

  Kasey, miraculously, suffered far less than he could have. He took some cuts to his neck and arms from the glass of the window and broke three ribs, but that was the extent of his injuries. The doctor who examined Kasey impressed upon him how much worse it could have been.

  Given the nature of the situation, it was difficult for the Prestons to convince Kasey’s family not to press charges. For them it was Jensen all over again, only older now, and with potentially greater repercussions. Ironically, Aradia would have probably ended up in juvie if not for Kasey himself. He had strongly urged his parents to let the whole situation go. Partly, he recognized he’d been a jerk to pull the stunt he’d pulled. Stronger, though, was that he didn’t want to draw any more attention to the fact that he’d been thrown through a window by a girl.

  After that episode, her parents, who had already been discussing leaving Arizona for Aradia's benefit, decided enough was enough.

  The Prestons would have accepted the first jobs that came their way. It worked out, by chance, that the first jobs to open were actually pretty promising. Ross’s career had plateaued in Arizona, and Liza found a very fitting position at Salem High. Not only were they expanding their art department and looking for a new art teacher, but their guidance counselor had, on short notice, decided to make her maternity leave permanent. Liza’s experience and education made her a very qualified candidate for both positions.

  Without much more thought, the Prestons packed their things, and never looked back.

  Or Ross and Liza never looked back, at least. Aradia couldn’t really help but do so.

  She wasn’t sorry to leave. The only thing she really hated was hate itself, so she wouldn’t say she had hated Arizona. She had certainly strongly disliked it, though. Nonetheless, she was reluctant to start the whole unpleasant process of social isolation over from the start.

  You never know, she gave herself a mental pep talk, you might find exactly what you are looking for. You might find the one thing you want most in the entire world right here in Salem. You might find friends.

  Suddenly, Aradia was no longer back in Arizona, or contemplating her future. She was back in the moment, gazing out the window at the sidewalks and buildings which would be her new home. She was jerked from her reverie with the realization that her father had just spoken to her.

  “Sorry, what did you just say?” she asked.

  "Are you sure you're okay with my driving you to school?" Ross repeated.

  "Of course it is, Daddy," Aradia confirmed.

  "Sorry. I guess I am projecting a bit," Ross said sighing.

  Aradia bit her tongue. You’re not the only one who’s nervous you know!

  "Hey c'mon, Daddy. You'll be great. I know you will," she eventually said.

  "Is that run of the mill motivation or your unique all knowingness?" Ross asked his daughter, cocking his head to the side with a grin.

  Aradia frowned and said, "You know, Daddy, just because I can occasionally do the whole 'Medium' thing, it does not mean I can predict everything about the future."

  "I know honey, I’m just teasing you," Ross said smiling.

  Aradia loved it when her father made light of her abilities. It somehow made them feel more normal. She smiled despite her own nervousness and said, "The fact is, Dad, I haven’t been able to sense much at all about what we can expect here in Salem. It’s kind of weird, actually. I’ve seen less than usual, and I’ve been trying.”

  “Maybe that’s why you’ve seen less,” he proposed. “Maybe you need to just let it come to you.”

  She considered before replying, “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s weird. Like this place is… special.”

  Ross didn’t reply to that.

  After a few moments, Aradia continued, “I think there are some things in life you need to see to know for sure, but other things you can figure out without any psychic flashes."

  "And all of us being happy in our new home is one of those things?" asked Ross.

  Aradia grinned, and though she was anything but certain, she said confidently, "Damn right."