I've never been fond of private schools; too much politics, too many rich kids. Then again, I never thought I'd receive a letter from the Salem School of Witchcraft…nor did I expect it to come five years late.
Apparently, girls are sent to SSW when they're sixteen, but how was I to know that? I assumed that it had been lost in the mail when I was eleven.
Obviously a JK Rowling fan would find American witchcraft confusing.
…
I stepped into the airport in Massachusetts, clutching the handle of my ragged old rolling suitcase. The thing was covered in gaudy flowers, and it looked like it had been made from the bedcovers at a seedy hotel in the nineties. My ripped purple raincoat had been a last-minute purchase; being a native of San Francisco, I didn't know what to expect from the east coast. As I looked around at the many girls around me with their Luis Vuitton luggage sets, designer outfits, and manicured hands, I grimaced at the private-school-ness of it all. I had expected Salem to be different; what I wasn't counting on was a scene from The Clique.
"Scholarship," someone muttered when they saw me. I frowned.
"Soc," I hissed, grinning at my own literary cleverness. After following the signs to the school's shuttle, I was driven to a bus, which went to a forest, in which there was a school. It looked like a school, not like a castle, and I knew without a doubt that there wouldn't be any moving paintings.
America—land of disillusionment.
…