Rhymes With Witches

  She kicked at the curb. She wanted to believe me, I could tell.

  A car horn played “Dixie,” and Rae leaned out of the window of her Plymouth Cougar. “Alicia!” she called. “Let’s go!”

  Alicia grabbed her bag. She almost met my eyes, but not quite. “Well, see you tomorrow.”

  “See you,” I said. I scanned the line of cars for Mom’s Volvo, but she wasn’t here yet. Out of habit, I checked for the Bitches. No need. Like Alicia had said, they were way beyond cheerleader-cool.

  When we got home, Mom threw her keys on the counter. “Chinese?” she suggested.

  “Sure,” I said. I didn’t care.

  She dug the menu out of the junk drawer. “Go ahead and chill out for a while,” she said. “I’ll call you when it gets here.” She waited until I was halfway up the stairs, then stepped into the hall. “Oh, and a package came from your dad. I left it on your bed.”

  I stopped. I turned around.

  “He sent me an elephant hair bracelet,” she said. “Not exactly my style.”

  “An elephant hair bracelet? Is that what he sent me, too?”

  “You’ll have to open it. I have no idea.” She hesitated, and for a second I thought she might say something real. Instead, she flashed me a smile and returned to the kitchen. Several seconds later, I heard, “I’d like to place an order to go, please. What? Sure, no problem.”

  I trudged back downstairs, because no way was I dealing with Dad now, even in the form of a boxed-up gift waiting in my room. Already the mention of him had stirred up the familiar mix of anger and loneliness. Anger that this was what he thought being a dad meant, sending knickknacks from all over the world. Or rather, anger that he thought he could get away with it—or was willing to get away with it—regardless of whatever father truth he actually believed in. That was what made it so bad. Because at some level, he had to know he was hurting me. And yet he did it anyway.

  Dad used to love me. He would come to my room when I was scared, and he would turn on the light to show me that everything was okay. “It’s the same house in the night as it is in the day,” he’d say. Then he’d sit on the edge of my bed and rub my back until I fell asleep. Even if it was the middle of the night, he’d yawn and stick it out.

  I couldn’t figure out what had happened to that love, and that’s where the loneliness came in. Stupid, pointless loneliness. I fought against it, but it came in anyway, carving me out and leaving me empty.

  I went into the den and signed on to the Internet. I checked my e-mail. There was a note from Phil about Survivor: Senior High, which he was also addicted to. It would have made me laugh if I’d have been in a better mood. And there was already a moan-and-groan message from Alicia about her cheerleading tryout. “IM me!!!” she wrote.

  Maybe later. I could still hear Mom puttering in the kitchen, so I opened a new window and Googled “snarky bitches,” since I’d never actually checked the site during my early religions class. At SnarkyBitches.com, I learned that if I ever got a boyfriend—not likely, but just say—and he cheated on me or hit me or got a super bad mullet haircut, I could post the sordid details on the site and my snarky sisters would send me all their love. And if I included his e-mail address, they’d flame him with hate messages, up to a hundred a day.

  Good to know, but not related to my Bitches.

  “My” Bitches, who were not my Bitches anymore.

  Before bed, I steeled myself and opened Dad’s gift. Inside was a genuine jade hair comb. It said so on the enclosed slip of paper. I unwound the bubble wrap and regarded the comb, which was decorated with inlaid stones in the shape of a butterfly. It was very cute. Only, I didn’t do “cute” anymore. Hadn’t for years.

  I shoved the comb into the drawer with the Egyptian teddy bear. “Thanks, Dad,” I said aloud. “It’s just what I wanted.”

  The next morning, as I was on my way to check the cheerleader postings, I saw Stuart Hill pin Camilla Jones against her locker. Just as Camilla didn’t kowtow to the Bitches, she also didn’t kowtow to the football players, and from the looks of it, Stuart wasn’t pleased.

  “I hear you’ve been complaining to Coach Sloan,” Stuart said. His ruddy cheeks looked like a little boy’s. “I hear you’ve been talking trash about me.”

  “Leave me alone,” Camilla said, pushing against one of his arms. She gave him her toughest glare.

  He reached down and pinched her nipple, right there in the hall. Camilla gasped and drew her arms to her leotard.

  Stuart smirked. “Don’t go whining about something unless you want it,” he said as he sauntered off. “Slut.”

  Camilla’s face flamed. “Asshole!”

  I didn’t know what to do. My body had frozen when he first started in on her, and now my heart was whamming away, but the rest of me still couldn’t move. Camilla’s eyes found mine.

  “You saw, didn’t you?” she demanded. “You saw what that asshole did?”

  “I … I—”

  “You have to come with me to tell Mr. Van Housen.”

  Oh, crap, I thought. I was a lot better at being nice to Camilla when it didn’t involve going public. “I don’t think … I mean, I don’t know what I would …”

  “You have to,” Camilla said. She blinked back tears. “Please.”

  In the office, Mr. Van Housen put down a brochure picturing a scruffy tomcat glaring from within a cage. “Trap, Alter, Release,” read the caption beneath the photo. “The Race to Outpace.”

  He listened impassively as Camilla told her story. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Uh-huh, uh-huh.” He was using his broken record technique, where he let a student get it all out while not saying anything in response. “Hmm. I see.”

  “He touched my breast!” Camilla said. “That’s sexual harassment!”

  “Hmm. Well, it certainly is a matter of concern.” Mr. Van Housen propped his elbows on the table and touched his fingers together. “You were there?” he said to me. “You saw this happen?”

  I shifted my weight. I could tell he didn’t like Camilla, and it made me nervous. I hated it when grown-ups went along with the whole social code set up by the students, fawning over the popular kids and treating the underdogs like shit. At the same time, I knew what Mr. Van Housen wanted me to say, and I could feel that pressure weighing on me, too.

  “Um, the thing is, I wasn’t really paying attention,” I said.

  Camilla’s head whipped toward mine.

  “But, yeah,” I said quickly. “He did … what she said.”

  Mr. Van Housen frowned. “Yes. All right. Well, Camilla, you can rest assured that the matter will be taken care of.”

  “Will there be a hearing?” Camilla demanded. “Will he be expelled?”

  “The matter will be taken care of appropriately,” Mr. Van Housen said, with a look that shut Camilla up. “I appreciate your bringing this to my attention.”

  I scurried out of his office. When Camilla came out two seconds later, her face was splotchy. She saw me and blanked her expression, but not before I’d seen what was underneath. She ducked her head and hurried past.

  At the other end of the hall, the cheerleading results were posted on the community bulletin board. I took a breath and headed over.

  “Oh my god!” I heard Tina Burston exclaim. She clapped, and her crutches fell to the floor. “It’s a dream come true!”

  Two other girls squealed and hugged.

  “Where’s Kim?” one of them said. “We have to find her. Kim! Kim! You made it!”

  I pushed my way through the crowd and scanned the list. Kim, Stacy, Rebecca, Tina, and … Shelly Clarkson.

  Oh. Right. It wasn’t as if I were surprised, but just for a moment, I’d thought maybe.

  I found Alicia at her locker.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she muttered. Her eyes were rimmed with red.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Anyway, who was I fooling? I didn’t even want to be a cheerleader. Cheerleaders just exist to make ot
her people feel bad. Plus, they’re stupid.”

  “Okay.”

  She slammed her locker and headed down the hall. I walked beside her. At the door to her classroom, she stopped. She stubbed her pink-and-gray All-Star against the hall carpet.

  “Rae’s singing karaoke tonight,” she said. “Want to go?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  She clamped her lips together. She nodded once, then went into the room.

  Mary Bryan trapped me after French. “We need to talk,” she said.

  Sweat popped out in my armpits. “I’m sorry I was such a dork at Kyle’s party,” I said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you guys.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mary Bryan asked. “You didn’t embarrass us.”

  “But I was such a loser.”

  “Well …” She shrugged. “I had a great time. So did Keisha and Bitsy.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. So don’t worry about it.” She ushered me down the hall and out the back door of the building. “There’s Bitsy. Let’s go.”

  “Huh? Go where?”

  Mary Bryan tugged me across the parking lot. She climbed into the backseat of Bitsy’s car and scooted over to make room for me. Keisha was already in the front.

  “But … it’s sixth period,” I said.

  “So?” Bitsy said.

  “So I’m supposed to be in LIFE.”

  She looked at me blankly, and I said, “Learning Inspiration from Empathy. LIFE. Today we’re taking a field trip to the zoo, to talk to an expert on feral cats.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can learn more about the cats on campus. So we can learn to coexist, and help other people to—”

  “I think you should pass,” Bitsy said. “I’m sure the cats will understand.”

  I glanced back at the building. Then I squeezed into the car. We followed the winding campus road that led to the back gate, but no one explained what was going on. We left the school grounds, and Bitsy selected a song on her iPod.

  “Uh … where are we going?” I asked over the music.

  “My place,” Bitsy said.

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  A shred of hope sliced through me. Was it possible I was still being considered?

  Idiot, idiot, idiot, I scolded myself. Don’t even go there. I didn’t ask any more questions.

  The neighborhood Bitsy lived in was even ritzier than Kyle Kelley’s, and her house was unnervingly gorgeous, with vaulted ceilings and gleaming hardwood floors. Mary Bryan disappeared into the kitchen and returned with Diet Cokes, pitas, and hummus. I sat on a white leather sofa across from the others, and I crossed and recrossed my legs. On the glass coffee table sat an ornately painted vase. I could hear the ticking of a clock.

  “We brought you here to tell you that we’re interested in you,” Keisha said at last.

  “Not to be blunt, but we don’t have much choice,” Bitsy said. Keisha shot her a look of warning, and she added, “Of course we adore you, it goes without saying.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. I tried to form my mouth into a smile.

  “It’s true,” Mary Bryan said. “Out of all the candidates, you’re our top pick. It was unanimous.”

  “Candidates?” I said.

  “Chelsea Campion had potential,” Mary Bryan said, “but her dad’s this Hollywood mogul type, so she’s got all sorts of contacts already. She doesn’t need us.”

  “She certainly needs something,” Bitsy said. “Her bum’s as big as a bloody buffalo’s.”

  “And we almost asked Lynn Seigler,” Mary Bryan continued, “but we decided she’s too pretty. She looks like a model, practically.”

  She continued listing girls—as well as why they were axed—and my stomach folded in on itself. Too pretty, too well connected, too smart without being nerdy … All of these descriptions sounded like good things. I didn’t understand what any of it meant.

  “Carrie Beale came this close,” Mary Bryan said, holding her finger an inch from her thumb. “But then we were like, Ohhh. She doesn’t mind being a free agent. Which made us realize that she wouldn’t want it bad enough.”

  “Want what?” I said.

  “Do you?” Keisha asked. “Even after Kyle’s party?”

  “What, to be a Bitch?” I tried to play it cool, but my words tumbled over themselves. “Yes. God, yes!”

  “Enough to do whatever it takes?” Keisha pressed.

  “Well, sure,” I said. They offered a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was accepted, came a voice in my head. I faltered. “I mean, I think so … but what do you mean?”

  Mary Bryan got up from her sofa and moved to sit by me. “Don’t worry, Jane. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Anyway, we’re not talking, like, bank robberies or kidnapping innocent children.”

  “But we’re not talking a new hairstyle or a cute new pair of boots, either,” Keisha said. “Jane’s entire life would change. She needs to know that.”

  Mary Bryan made a face, like Don’t mind her, she’s being such a grown-up.

  Bitsy put down her Diet Coke. “I think you’re both forgetting the point of being a Bitch, which is to dump your grotty old life and start over again. So of course Jane’s life would change. That’s what it’s all about.” She stood and walked to the entertainment center, where she opened a wooden door to reveal a large-screen TV. She pivoted to face us. “Get comfy, dearies. I think it’s time for our video presentation.”

  The video was of Mary Bryan, only I don’t think Mary Bryan knew it was coming, because she turned pale when the images flickered onto the screen. “Oh my god,” she kept saying. “Oh my god.”

  It was pretty creepy. Someone (Stuart Hill?) had videoed a rafting party that I guess happened last fall, because the Bitsy in the tape had a short, flippy haircut that now had grown out. She was there along with Keisha and a bunch of other kids, all piled onto big rubber rafts stocked with coolers. One of the rafts had a keg floating along behind it, tied to the raft so it would stay cool in the river.

  Bitsy was wearing a turquoise bikini, and she looked fantastic. Keisha was wearing a black one-piece, and she looked fantastic. They both laughed and sipped their drinks while the other kids drooled all over them. Just like at Kyle’s party. A third fantastic-looking girl was there, too, and after a moment of confusion I deduced that she was last year’s senior Bitch, now graduated and out in the real world. She was stretched out on the rim of the main raft, wearing cut-offs and a red halter. While I watched, a guy dipped his fingers into his cup and sprinkled beer on her tummy. She shrieked and swatted him, and the guy turned about a hundred shades of happy.

  The camera jerked around a lot, so it was hard to see everything. Mainly Stuart stayed focused on Keisha, Bitsy, and the red halter girl, but occasionally he’d pan in on a guy belting out a burp or drumming his chest like Tarzan.

  And every so often there’d be a glimpse of Mary Bryan.

  It made my heart hurt to see her. She had on a hot pink one-piece made to look like leather, and it was cut too high on the legs and too low in front. Physically I guess she looked pretty much the same as she does now, only it didn’t seem that way at all. Part of it was how she held herself, with her stomach held in super tight and her chest sticking out. And part of it was the way she clutched her Styrofoam cup and ripped off the top in little bits. But mostly it was her expression: bright, bright smile even though no one was talking to her. Desperate, shiny eyes.

  My thighs felt heavy. Was that how I came across at Kyle’s party?

  On the tape, Mary Bryan adjusted her bathing suit. She stood in the raft and wobbled toward a junior named Chase Mattingly, then dropped down beside him. Her drink sloshed onto his leg. He glanced at her, annoyed, but kept talking to his buddy Steve. Several times Mary Bryan opened her mouth to speak, but each time she chickened out. Finally she leaned forward so that her breasts practically fell out of her suit.

  “Um, you’re on the soccer
team, right?” she asked.

  Chase broke off in the middle of his sentence. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Just … you’re really good,” Mary Bryan said. “That was terrific how you scored all those goals last weekend.”

  “Thanks,” he said. He noticed her cleavage—it was pretty impossible not to—and with some sort of guy code, he got Steve to notice, too. “What’s your name again?”

  “Mary Bryan,” she said.

  Chase draped his arm around her shoulders. Stuart, who was getting it on film, zoomed in close. To someone else he said, “Hey, bro, check out the titties!” The Mary Bryan on the raft couldn’t hear, but the four of us at Bitsy’s could.

  “Tell you what,” Chase said, all pals-y and smooth. “Find me at the picnic area, after we get off the river, and I’ll go over the highlights with you. Sound good?”

  Mary Bryan’s face lit up, and for a second, she looked like the Mary Bryan I knew now. “Okay. Sure!”

  The camera jiggled and panned back to the other raft. Keisha and Bitsy were squealing and drawing up their legs while two guys wrestled each other for the tap of the keg. Drops of beer landed on the camera lens.

  “Geronimo!” one of the two yelled as he pushed the other overboard.

  “Hold on, Mike,” Stuart called. “The Stu-Man is on the way!”

  The image shook, followed by a blip of static. The screen went blank.

  “That was my tryout,” Mary Bryan said after what seemed like hours. She didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. “I didn’t … I had no idea …”

  Keisha studied the sofa cushion. Bitsy gazed at Mary Bryan. Her expression was unreadable.

  Mary Bryan laughed shakily. “Can we burn it, please?”

  Bitsy strolled behind her and stroked her hair. “Don’t be a ninny. How else would we prove how far you’ve come?”

  “Why would we need to?” Mary Bryan said. “I’m serious. Can we please burn it?”

  “We should certainly burn that bathing suit,” Bitsy said. “Wretched.”

  Keisha stayed serious. “Tell Jane the rest.”

  Mary Bryan’s cheeks went from red to redder. “Oh, let’s not. I mean, god. She probably already hates me.” She turned to me. “You do, don’t you?”