Rhymes With Witches

  I shoved her off. “Her parents will call the police. The second they see you, they’ll call the police.”

  “Hmm,” Bitsy said, tapping her lip. “No, don’t think so, luv. Her parents are out with my mum, trying to keep up the charade that they’re still dear friends, even without my father to round out the foursome. So Camilla’s on her own, poor dear.”

  Anna Maria burped. She’d gotten the flask out again, and schnapps dribbled down her chin. “Little Debs, get a rock,” she said.

  “What are we, a band of marauders?” Bitsy asked. “I said no rocks.”

  “Then what?” Anna Maria demanded.

  Bitsy smiled. She looked at all of us, her gaze lingering longest on me. “I know where they keep their spare key.”

  Anna Maria hooted. “Yeah, baby! Let’s get us some ho-bag ass!”

  “Aren’t we … aren’t we going to wait for Sukie and Pammy?” Laurie asked. She alone seemed the slightest bit reluctant.

  “Sukie’s not coming,” Bitsy said. “Pammy had to take her home.”

  “Why?” Laurie said.

  “Sukie wasn’t having much fun, let’s leave it at that. But she’ll be right as rain before you know it. Won’t she, Jane?”

  I swallowed. “What are you going to do? To Camilla.”

  “Nothing,” Mary Bryan insisted.

  Keisha looked grim.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Bitsy said. “What do you think, Anna Maria? What was that you told me about those boys at football camp? Somewhere in Florida, I think. Got into the papers and everything.”

  “I didn’t tell you. You told me,” Anna Maria said. Her words came out messy. “But yeah, how they held down some freshman and stuck a stick up his ass.”

  “Sick bastards,” Bitsy said.

  “Said they did it to toughen him up. And you were like, ‘Poor little tyke, bet he was scared out of his mind.’”

  “So true. What did he do to deserve it?”

  “But Camilla, on the other hand …” Anna Maria said.

  “Skank,” Debbie said.

  “Whore,” Elizabeth contributed.

  “Tight ass,” Amy tossed out.

  “Sometimes a girl like that needs a prod on the bum, yeah?” Bitsy said.

  “Bitsy, stop it,” Mary Bryan said. “You’re being gross.”

  Bitsy rolled her eyes. “Good god, Mary Bryan, you’re as bad as Jane. You don’t think we’re serious, do you?”

  She led her henchmen up the drive, leaving me, Keisha, Mary Bryan, and Laurie behind. Anna Maria took a detour into the manicured yard, where she broke off a thick stick from an azalea bush.

  “Anna Maria!” Debbie cried, as in, You bad thing! Sniggering, they ran to catch up.

  Bitsy turned around. “Laurie? Aren’t you coming?”

  Laurie glanced at Keisha, who frowned. But when Keisha headed toward the house, Laurie followed. Mary Bryan, too, until I grabbed her arm.

  “No,” I said. “This is crazy.”

  “She’s just fooling around,” Mary Bryan said. “You know how she is.”

  “Yeah. Exactly.” My muscles were shaky, because I knew how quickly things could change. “What happened to you, me, and Keisha being, like, a force for the good?”

  “I didn’t see you doing anything to stop her,” she pointed out.

  “Well, you sure didn’t either!”

  The others were halfway up the driveway. Anna Maria and Debbie were leading an inane chant of “Kill the skank. Kill the skank,” which Elizabeth and Amy gleefully took up. Bitsy laughed, but didn’t join in.

  A knot in the center of me heated up. I felt sick and I felt scared, but I felt angry, too. I started for the house.

  “Don’t,” Mary Bryan said. “You’re going to mess everything up.”

  I shook her off.

  “We have to stay together!” Mary Bryan said. “All four of us, we have to stay together or it won’t work. Don’t you get that?”

  “What won’t work?” I demanded. “This? Bitsy’s little games of torture?”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “Us. The fix. Everything.” She stepped closer. “People won’t like you anymore.”

  I looked at her, and I finally got it. Mary Bryan was just as scared as I was, only for different reasons. She thought I was going to opt out. She thought I was going to stand up to Bitsy as a parting shot, and then walk away from their bullshit, leaving them crippled without their magic fourth. I would have laughed if everything hadn’t been so completely shitty.

  “I think what you mean is that people won’t like you anymore,” I said. “And you know what, Mary Bryan? I don’t fucking give a damn.”

  “You will,” she said.

  “Whatever,” I said. “At least I never had sex on a picnic table.” I left her staring after me as I sprinted up the drive.

  A white Range Rover was parked inside one half of the two-car garage. Adjacent to the garage was a stone pathway that led to the back of the house, and around the bend I could hear Anna Maria and the others. They were no longer making any effort to be quiet.

  I hurried to the back door. “Move,” I said, elbowing Amy in the gut.

  “Hey, watch it!” she cried. Then she saw it was me and giggled. “Oh, sorry. Make way for Jane! Clear a path!”

  I broke through to see Bitsy gazing at a second-story window, where a light shone from behind the curtains.

  “Come now, Camilla,” Bitsy cajoled. “Don’t play hard to get. We just want to spend some quality time with you. Right, girls?”

  “The skank loves dick!” the girls caroled. “The stick is dick!”

  The curtains moved. Camilla’s pale face appeared, then disappeared.

  “She’s going to call the police,” I said, willing my voice to be steady.

  Bitsy turned. “Why, look. If it isn’t little Jane.”

  “Or if she doesn’t, I will.”

  “You would, wouldn’t you?”

  I blushed. Debbie and Anna Maria sniggered, and my hands balled into fists.

  “Just leave her alone,” I said. “Maybe she’s not, like, Miss Congeniality, but she never did anything to you.”

  “So not the point,” Bitsy said. She jerked her head at a small ceramic poodle to the right of the back door. “Laurie, get the key. It’s under there.”

  “Laurie, don’t,” I said.

  Laurie, who had taken one step toward the poodle, stopped in her tracks.

  “Laurie,” Bitsy said.

  “I’ll do it,” Anna Maria said. “Jesus.” She strode across the entranceway and kicked over the poodle, which shattered when it hit the stones. Underneath lay the key. “Nice hiding spot,” she said as she bent to retrieve it. She chortled, her stupid azalea stick still clutched in her other hand. “Real sneaky, ho-bag.”

  For a flashing moment I felt absolute panic, because god help me, I wanted to join in. The skank loves dick, the stick is dick …

  But I fought against it, because I was not going to be that person. Yes, I was a Bitch. But I didn’t have to be a bitch.

  I pushed past Bitsy and Laurie and up to Camilla’s door, where Anna Maria was inserting the key in the lock.

  “Give it to me,” I said, grasping her wrist.

  Debbie edged closer, as did Trish and Amy.

  “Jane,” warned Mary Bryan, who’d joined the rest of the group.

  I thought I caught movement at the second-story window. Why hadn’t Camilla called the police? Or if she had, where were they?

  “Give it to me or I’ll scream. I mean it. I’ll scream so loud the neighbors will come running.”

  “What neighbors?” Bitsy asked. “I’m her neighbor.”

  “You’re not the only one,” I said.

  She strolled toward me, trying to feign indifference despite the tightness in her jaw. I could feel the force of her hate.

  “Anna Maria, unlock the door,” she ordered.

  Anna Maria twisted the key.

  I screamed.

&nbsp
; As Bitsy’s thugs scattered, as Mary Bryan hissed, “For shit’s sake!” and pulled Bitsy out of the back-porch light, I felt something claw my arm. Camilla. She yanked me inside and slammed the door.

  “What did you do that for?” she demanded.

  I pulled free and pressed my face against a side window. Keisha waited for Mary Bryan and Bitsy by the garage. Then all three fled down the driveway, high heels clattering. Bitsy’s laugh floated through the night air.

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

  “Hello?” she said. “No, everything’s fine. I’m really sorry. I—” Her lips thinned. “Yes, Mr. Cutter. I understand. Good-bye.”

  She hung up. The phone rang again.

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

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

  I stared at her.

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

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

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

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

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

  “Gee, thanks,” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

  The look she gave me suggested otherwise.

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

  “Yeah,” she deadpanned. “That’s right. So you can leave now, because you’ve done your good deed. You can trot home knowing that you’re morally superior to Bitsy McGovern, which, I’m sorry, isn’t saying very much.” She moved so that she was no longer blocking the door. “See ya.”

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

  “Camilla—”

  “Thanks. Really. Now, bye.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You had the … what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “If the school is even unlocked.”

  “It will be. Fall Fling, remember?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Just drive.”

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

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

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

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

  “Well?” Camilla said.

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

  “I can’t believe you wore that to school,” she said.

  “What? I never wore this to school.”

  Camilla gazed at me. “We are at school.”

  I pressed my lips together.

  “Third floor—that’s where Lurl’s office allegedly is, right?” she said. She marched down the hall. “We better get a move on.”

  Ceiling-level fire alarms shone faintly, casting an eerie red light over the rows of lockers. In the stairwells, moonlight streamed in from square windows. What looked normal by day was claustrophobic by night, full of hungry shadows stretching toward us as we padded toward Lurl’s office. Or as I padded, rather. Camilla walked normally, spine erect and arms swinging. I admired her for it even as I resented it.

  On the third floor, I banged my shin against what turned out to be a wire Animal Control cage. “Fuck,” I said. Pain bloomed under my skin, and I paused to massage my muscle. Camilla stopped, too, turning around when she realized I was no longer with her, and in the sudden quiet I heard a scrabbly sound. Like claws tic-tacking across the floor.

  Clamminess squeezed my insides. “Do you hear that?” I whispered.

  “Hear what?” Camilla said in her normal voice.

  “Shhh,” I said. I strained my ears, but the noise was gone. We continued on. We reached the corridor that connected the north hall to the south hall, and looking at the heavy door, I was again hit with foreboding. I didn’t want to go on.

  Camilla exhaled impatiently.

  I tugged it open, and we stepped into the dark passageway. This section had neither windows not fire alarms, so when the door thunked shut behind us, we were thrown into black. My body went rigid.