Sarah walked away quickly, never looking back; she wanted to run, but didn't want to let anyone think she was scared. Heck, those weird girls probably thought she was a big baby for not digging their "satan" talk--no, not Sa-tan. Man-on. Probably the same thing, wrapped up in one big cult where they drink each other's blood and sacrifice babies. She dropped coins into the bus's receptacle and sat at the front--little old ladies be damned, she wanted to be where the driver could see her, not trapped in the isolation of the back.
The back--that's where the weirdos sit. Like the homeless guy with the snake.
He told her he saw her dead. And then she looked at him, all four girls looked at him, and he...
Died.
No, it wasn't them. That's ridiculous. Nice safe bus, nice safe neighborhood with nice pretty houses...
Nice soon-to-be-familiar driveway. Nice steps. Nice porch. Home.
***
She felt like a heel lying to her Dad. About going to the library. Well, there were books in Lirio's shop...
Books! She looked sheepishly in the brown paper bag that she had been mindlessly clutching this whole time. Even purchasing such items as the witch "textbook" made her feel marked, complicit, dragged into something she couldn't get out of.
Sarah started to quietly panic: she didn't want to be one of the outcast girls, the girls who sit at the back and stare at everybody else! She wanted so very much to be normal, even though it had been so hard, growing up, without a mother, with all those horrible visions...
Wait a minute--
In the corner of her eye she could see the three girls. For real. They were there. She couldn't turn around to be sure if it was something else, the shape of her bureau, anything. She couldn't dare, because if it really really was them, she was going to freak.
One held a bell, a small brass bell, it flared golden as the light hit it, and crowded the vision of the girls out with its brilliance. Sarah's heart began to thump loudly as the bell's clapper struck its sides, calling, calling, calling...
A glance at the phone on the nighttable snapped her out of her reverie. It wasn't the clear, metallic sound of the brass bell anymore, it was the electronic chirp of her cordless. She made the phone jump in her trembling hands, as she fumbled to bring it to her ear.
"H-hello?!"
"Sarah? What's wrong?"
Chris Hooker!
***
"You sounded strange when I called last night. I didn't think you'd come."
They were sitting on the roof of some building, bathed in the rosy glow of a huge neon sign that threatened to overcome the night.
"Yeah..." Sarah answered, trying to play it cool. To play it normal.
"I thought you'd be hanging out with those girls. The ones with the weird heads."
As she took a swig of the beer bottle Chris handed her, the heads of Nancy, Rochelle and Bonnie suddenly popped into her mind...three heads in a row like oranges on a kitchen counter.
"Weird heads," she laughed, "what's weird about their heads?"
"Well, that one girl, she has a big head...looks like a St. Bernard..."
"Really, haha...I haven't noticed her..." Her brain winced at the lie, not because she particularly liked the girls, but because of the principle of the thing: she was feigning stupidity in order to get her guy. That's what it boiled down to.
"I hate that "Big Head" thing...of course, it's better than that "Shrunken Head" thing, with that little tiny shrunken head hanging from the rearview mirror..."
"What's your obsession with heads?" she asked, not realizing the mine field she just set herself up for.
"Well, I was just noticing how good yours is..."
She didn't get it.
"You like my head..."
"Yeah, it's a good head, he said as he cradled her face in his hands. "Good for kissing..."
Sarah felt a warmth flush through her body at his touch, her good ol'
thumpy heart kicking into high gear.
Trey walked by with his girlfriend.
"Well, we'll see you later, bro..."
"Yes, it was nice to meet you, Sarah," the blonde girl said to her, waving. This was the type of person she was supposed to be friends with. But the blank, contented look on the girl's face only sharply reminded her of such a female's opposite: Nancy.
***
Nancy ensconced herself deep within the bowels of her room, dragging on her cigarette with a combination of nervousness and anger. She never considered herself actually "living" in the space...more like barricaded, a myriad of tacked-up pictures and half-melted candles acting as sentinels against the threat that lay so close by, just the cheap, thin walls of the trailer standing in the way of The Horror:
"Nan-ceeeeee! Did you see the remote? Where did you hide the remote?!"
She screamed back at her mother at the top of her lungs, "I DON'T HAVE IT! LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!"
Nancy sucked the smoke through the little cotton filter in frustration. Goddess, what if Bonnie was right? What if Sarah really was the fourth? That would mean she really screwed the pooch in the mystical sweepstakes by driving her away.
Well, who cares about that pathetic girl, anyway? It was clear to Nancy that the girl had no interest in anything else but bedding Chris Hooker. She wasn't the type to devote herself to their Craft.
She took another drag, remembering Chris's touch.
***
Sarah's eyes suddenly widened in concern as she watched the couple leave and Chris sarcastically bidding them farewell.
"C'mon,"Chris said, taking her hand, "let's go to my house. No one's there."
Sarah pulled her arm away shyly but firmly.
"No, I can't...I gotta go home."
The light left Chris's eyes, leaving his look hard and cold. Sarah hoped he'd understand. She just didn't do things like that...just like that...
"Alright..." he slowly muttered, turning away for what seemed like eons. In that unbearable time frame Sarah felt a whole gamut of emotions, none of them good: guilt, stupidity, fear.
"Are you mad?" she asked timidly.
"No," he said a little too fast, a little too loud.
***
Nancy slept with a recently-extinguished red candle held against her chest. She did what she had to do, more to comfort herself than in the belief anything would really happen. Nothing ever really happened, no matter how much she begged Manon, chanted to him. That red candle used to be quite tall, almost a foot-and-a-half long; it saw a lot of use last summer, mostly in conjunction with a certain doomed affair with Chris. She remembered how she stared into the flame, picturing her beloved coming back to her...
***
Sarah really thought things would be ok, as she methodically unwrapped some more items from a box. A red crystal bowl...she walked about the partially furnished room, looking for a spot where it would look just right.
Maybe he'd be a little hurt, that's all. I mean, he really didn't expect her to do it just like that, on a first date. She wasn't a slut.
***
In magic, you had to concentrate on one thing at a time. One wish for every spell. You had to focus.
Nancy had long since gave up on Chris. Chris couldn't make her happy. Chris couldn't save her from the white trash trailer hell she found herself born into.
Only one thing could do that. One presence.
***
Sarah found herself early for class, so she sat down and started to get a jump on her homework. She half-heartedly expected Chris to call last night, to tell her that everything was ok...or at the very least, maybe a hastily scribbled note stuck in her locker : "Hey Sarah, what's up? --C." But nothing happened. Oh well, the day was young. Maybe he was shy about yesterday, afraid he hurt her feelings. Maybe later, after class, she would be bold and make the first move.
A voice spoke in her head: "You, bold? Oh, you have no idea, Sarah...pathetic!"
Nancy, Rochelle, and Bonnie suddenly appeared before her desk.
She was so wrapped up in her thoughts she never noticed their approach.
Now she was surrounded.
"So hot stuff, how'd it go?"
Nancy, looking at her with this smug, poisonous expression.
"How'd what go?"
"Your date with Chris"
How'd...how'd they know? Maybe they really were wi--
"What are you talking about?" Sarah asked, trying to seem bored.
"Sarah, he told everybody," Rochelle said matter-of-factly, as Bonnie fidgeted nervously with her hands.
"He told everybody what?"
"That you guys did it," said Nancy.
Sarah felt a stab of adrenaline in her heart.
"But we didn't. Do it."
Nancy's big, blue, globe-like eyes shined ominously as she told the horrible tale.
"Well, maybe he was just trying to save face then...Because he was going around the whole school," her voice dropped to a whisper, Nancy, so considerate, "saying that you were the lousiest lay he's EVER had, and coming from him, that's pretty bad."
"No, he didn't.."
"He did..."
"He said the same thing about Nancy," Bonnie chimed in.
Sarah felt as she was in a nightmare, a living nightmare that rivaled her dreaded snake-visions in sheer horror. For the first time she noticed the group of girls staring. Laura Lizzie and her friends. The normal girls. The look they branded into Sarah's soul was: Slut/Freak/Loser.
"Told you he was a jerk," Nancy said.
***
There had to be some mistake, Sarah thought, all the blood rushing to her head and making her feel feverish. She walked away from the girls as if in a trance and headed straight to Chris and the boys by the lockers. No. There had to be an explanation. Nancy must have made it up. So she would join her witch-club. Things like this didn't happen. People were civilized. If you were nice to people, people were nice to you. Nobody goes around saying things like that, things so hurtful, just to hurt--
She took a deep breath and addressed him
"Hi...can I talk to you for a second?"
Chris was standing behind Mitt, almost like...hiding from her, guilt scrawled across his face.
"Chris?"
Mitt suddenly stepped forward.
"I'm sorry, Chris is really busy, maybe we can set something up (nice jacket) for sometime later in the week?"
She ignored the annoying little turd and continued,
"Why'd you lie about me?"
Chris suddenly turned on her.
"Look, I don't want to go out with you again...ok?" he said loudly, so everyone in the hall could hear and share in her humiliation.
"Stop begging, it's pathetic..." He mock-pleaded, walking away.
There was that word again. "PATHETIC." That word that was steadily torturing her, self-torture...
She wanted to say some thing witty, something nasty, something...something a girl like Nancy would say. But she could only bite her lip and say:
"Hey Chris...Fuck you!"
Chris was a bit taken aback, he didn't expect her to stare him down...what he expected, frankly, was for her to burst into tears and beg his forgiveness. And maybe, just maybe, he'd let her "forgive" her. Hey, that's how he nailed Nancy...
"Nah," he said as he disappeared down the hall, his voice breaking like a pimply 12-year-old.
Trey turned to Mitt: "But I would."
Mitt, also a bit disappointed that Sarah's emotions were hardier than he figured, nevertheless felt heartened by the wet beginning to accumulate in her stoic eyes.
"She's going to cry...and then I'm going to cry...and then we're all going to cry!"
And Trey and Mitt laughed all the way to next period, leaving Sarah
to lean against the lockers, staring into space as her vision blurred.