7
Herded into the teacher's lounge with the two soda machines and a snack machine, Sabrina sat in the orange colored room with the yellow cabinets and fought to control her urges to act as an interior decorator and recolor it. Coleman had heard she had started the story about a woman coming to get William from school by Harvey, but several things didn't seem right about that. Although several classmates had seen a strange woman on the school grounds that morning, it was obvious they were all recalling Miss Post, a member of the school board who had come to talk to Principal La Rue about his up-coming retirement, or just rehashing other classmates's stories to talk to the TV news team in front of the school this morning. Talking to Officer Coleman, Sabrina once again nervously claimed that she had seen a woman she thought was William's mother coming to get him from school and then added that it must have been his aunt since Harvey knew Mrs. Samms's hospital schedule made it hard for her to come get him. The whole scenario seemed odd when Coleman pointed out that William's Aunt Maggie was still in New York City to get her connector flight to Boston to get home plus no one knew William was even sick yet or had even got a call to come get him. At that point, Sabrina wised up and stopped trying to rehash her cover story and started speculating what she thought must have happened and let Coleman reach the same conclusions. Could this strange fictional woman who had taken off school grounds be someone that no one knew? It was the only way to get out of this spot into which she had got herself, but she still had to come by the police station over the weekend to get interviewed by a police sketch artist. Hopefully, that would be the end of it. The whole interview and her improvised speculation had taken up all the time of her first period History class with Miss Witherspoon and the opening few minutes of her English class with Miss Quick. A quick excuse note from the office and Sabrina was off to class with her schoolbooks held to her chest like a shield against her teenage tribulations and mystical miasmas.
"Sorry, I'm late, Miss Quick." Sabrina turned in her excuse note.
"That's okay, Sabrina." Soft-spoken Roberta Quick had become Sabrina's favorite teacher since her freshman science teacher, Mr. Poole, had taken the job of assistant principal at Wessington. "Valerie told me where you were plus I met your sister, Samantha. She is so sweet!"
"You've met her?" Sabrina reacted distressed in front of the class. "My god, she's turning up everywhere like a bad penny."
"Well," Miss Quick looked up from her desk while separating the homework papers from her students. "Mr. Kraft and I thought you two would like all the same classes together so we gave her your class schedule."
"What?" Sabina looked up to her class. Halfway down, Valerie was now moved across the aisle of the seating chart and Samantha was in her seat at their table. Waving her hand to Sabrina to get her attention, Samantha grinned excitedly and silently reached out and started lightly and impatiently tapping Sabrina's chair with her fingers elatedly to get her sister to come sit by her. A few students noted her behavior. Harvey looked up to her, and Libby whispered silently to Tiffany, one of the other cheerleaders.
"Oh no…" Sabrina commiserated.
"Sabrina…" Miss Quick noted her behavior. "I kind of get the feeling you don't really care for your sister. You know, I have a twin brother named Michael, and we're really close so I don't understand this sort of response to your twin. Is there something I should know?"
"No, well…" Sabrina looked to Samantha eagerly waiting for her and back to her beloved English teacher. "I guess we've spent too much time living apart." She was rationalizing honesty. "I'm just not ready for her to be back in my life."
"Oh…" Miss Quick understood that. "Well, I'll see Mr. Kraft later about juxtaposing a few classes between you two, but right now, class is in silent reading. Chapters Seven and Eight…"
"Yes, Miss Quick…" Sabrina took a spare paperback copy of "Silas Marner" from the table at the front of the room with the overhead projector and strided back to her fourth row seat behind Harvey and now across from Valerie who usually sat by her. A brief silent apology to Valerie for the seating change from her best friend and Sabrina sighed as she took the seat by Samantha. Grinning like a little girl, she looked up from her book as Sabrina took her chair.
"You hungry?" Samantha whispered and directed her gaze to her purse on their writing desk. "I've got popcorn in my purse."
"No, thank you…" Sabrina placed her purse and books down to start reading the required reading.
"Piece of chocolate?"
"No…" They whispered back and forth.
"Oreo cookie?"
Sabrina made a face of annoyance.
"No, I'm okay…" She looked up. Miss Quick had heard them, looked up and then back down hoping they weren't bothering each other. The Spellman twins lightly gasped and draped their long hair back in unison over their left shoulders and even tilted their heads in sync to the right shoulder. Libby noticed their mirrored gestures and rolled her eyes, but Valerie was enjoying it. She hoped she could become as close to Samantha as she was with Sabrina and have two best friends. The air conditioning kicked in and broke the silence of the room. Samantha unwrapped a piece of chocolate from her purse and slipped it through her lips. Surrounded by a class of twenty-two students, Sabrina yawned as she read the famous British novel and turned the page to catch up with Samantha in the reading. The next pages had an artist engraving of a scene from the story, but as Sabrina watched, one of the images moved and looked up from the book to her.
"Hi princess…" It was her father broadcasting his image through the book!
"Dad…" Sabrina whispered even more inaudibly that she sounded as if she was murmuring to Samantha. "What are you doing?"
"Well, I was in the area." He postured before her like an animated figure in the etching, "I was thinking of you. Who the heck is Samantha Spellman? Why is she telling people she's your sister?!"
"Dad, I can't…"
"Sabrina…."
"Just a minute…" Sabrina zapped herself and started hiccupping. Both Samantha and Harvey looked up to her. Even Valerie looked up. One by one other students looked up until Miss Quick looked up.
"Want some chocolate now?" Samantha slid her purse to her.
"No…"
"Sabrina…" Miss Quick spoke up. "Do you need some water?"
"Yes, Miss Quick…" Sabrina hiccupped and placed her book down and hurried to the front of the room and out to the hall, just barely missing Mr. Kraft on his regular walk through Westbridge High School. Hiccupping again under her breath, Sabrina quickly skidded her feet to a stop and sated her thirst to stop the spell by drinking from the fountain in the corridor heading toward the front of the school. Looking around once and again, she looked to the wastebasket and pulled out a section of newspaper. Ripping out the photo from the story about the old warehouse that had been demolished, she pressed it to the wall and zapped it with magic to ten times in size as her father stepped into it to talk to her. He looked annoyed but overjoyed to see her, folding his hands before him but beaming with a twinkle in his eyes to see his beautiful grown up daughter.
"Hi princess…" Edward Spellman appeared in two-dimension before her.
"Hi, dad…"
"So, who's Samantha, and why do I have suddenly have twins?"
"How did you hear?"
"Bombay's son, Ronald, writes for the World Witchcraft News." Her father revealed. The magic community didn't overlap with regular society, but it mirrored it in several aspects. "Who's Samantha? Is she from an alternate reality or something? Did you clone yourself?"
"One of my spells somehow turned a boy into a duplicate of me, and his mind wasn't able to handle it." Sabrina confessed as she struggled with the responsibility of her actions. "It was completely erased, and now he's got a new identity formed from my memories and thinks we're sisters." She groaned tiredly. "I'm just completely stressing out…."
"Oh…" Edward had never heard of such a thing happening, but he had heard of witches who had duplicated themselves as siblings and as children in order to keep from being alone or to be parents without getting married and siring real children. If he hadn't read about it in the "Births" department of the mystical newsletter, he might have gone on without knowing about it. "Well, honey, you're strong. " Her father responded. "I know you'll get through this."
"I don't know how…" Sabrina spilled her true emotions. "Dad, magic already makes my life stressful. How am I going to tolerate suddenly having a sister in it?"
"Trust me," Edward chuckled at her. "I've got four sisters. You've just got one. You can handle it."
"That's not the answer I wanted to hear." Sabrina shook her head at him. "Can't you take her off my hands?"
"Oh, um…" Edward's image started flickering and turning into static. "I think I'm going through a tunnel here." He used a mortal technological trick to get his daughter to accept her responsibility. "Sabrina, can you hear me?" He started blinking in and out as Sabrina pounded the wall by him. "I'll call you next week…" He blinked out as Sabrina continued pounding then reverted to a scrap of paper that floated down into the trash bin.
"I hate it when he does that." She took another sip of water before returning to class. Looking into the face of her duplicate and wondering if any trace of William existed in there at all was driving her crazy. As Samantha, he acted almost exactly like her. They had the same mannerisms, the same habits, the same gestures, and they were almost always in sync. She'd pull her hair back then Samantha would drape her hair back. In third period math class, Sabrina demonstrated long division on the chalkboard and then Samantha did another equation in nearly identical handwriting. Even their teacher, Miss Hewitt, commented that both girls made perfect fives in one constant motion and had identical threes that resembled parentheses. Was it possible that after their identical memories began that they also were beginning to diverge into different personalities from their new separate experiences? Starting out, Samantha was just as out-going and conscientious as Sabrina, but through the day with the attention on her arrival and being in what seemed to be a new school, she was trying hard to make her own identity in the school. In fourth period gym as all the girls were separated from the boys for aesthetics, Samantha was trying to get Sabrina to sneak away and watch the boys play basketball. After class was over and they were off to the cafeteria for lunch, she noticed Troy Danvers from math class sitting with his friends, walked up to him and placed her leg on to an empty chair before him.
"Hi there…" She flirted. "I think I sprained my ankle. Do you think you know someone who could… massage it?" Jason and his buddies started giggling at her presumptive strike to get his attention. From across the room near the lunch line, Sabrina, Harvey and Valerie watched her flirtation.
"Sabrina…" Valerie took a deep breath. "I'm beginning to see a problem with having your sister here."
"You think?!"
"Shame William isn't here." Harvey had pulled a hamburger and fries from the lunch line for his lunch. "Sabrina, I don't know if you know it, but I think he had a little bit of a crush on you." Sabrina looked back at him taking a bite from his hamburger. "Samantha would have been perfect for him."
"You knew William had a thing for me?" Sabrina turned around. "And it didn't bother you?"
"We talked about you a lot." Harvey confessed. "He promised me he'd never do anything to get in the middle of us, but… I knew he had a hard time accepting us being together."
"Now you tell me…." Sabrina wished she had heard this confession three days ago.
"Harvey…" Valerie ate her salad from the school salad bar. "You're worried about him. Aren't you?"
"He was like a brother to me." Harvey dabbed his school hamburger into his ketchup on his plate. "My mom knew his mom, but to tell you the truth, I really don't think he was really kidnapped." Harvey spoke. "I think he finally had enough and took off." Harvey took a bite out of his hamburger in his school lunch. "William's mom is kind of a witch."
"What?" Sabrina reacted unsure if she'd been insulted or the recipient of new info.
"His mom works with my mom at the hospital." Harvey explained. "She doesn't let him hang out, and she barely lets him out of the house. Every day, he's expected to go straight home, do his chores, do his homework and be at home right when she gets home. She doesn't allow him to have much of a social life." He ate a few French fries and slowly shook his head in embarrassed and awkward repentance. "I was at his house when he and his mom had a screaming fit about letting him work in the garage after school. She didn't even like him being on the basketball team."
"Oh my god…" Valerie picked at her salad over the news. "That's horrible…" Suddenly, her own family didn't seem so bad.
"You know what's worse." Harvey munched on his hamburger and cleared his throat. "His mom is getting married this winter and was going to be shipping William to live with his father at Fort Hastings in North Carolina; he really didn't want to go. They've been divorced since he was eleven. She was then going to go live in Seattle with her new husband."
"Oh god…" Sabrina now got hit with the horrible details of William's former life. No wonder his mind embraced this new identity so fast. He didn't have anything to go back to, but it made her wonder… Was there a fragment or even a splinter of his personality buried in Samantha? Was an unhappy home life any reason behind his disappearing identity or was it just barely in there to begin with?
"Sabrina…" Libby Chessler came up to the table. "I want to make a deal. You get your sister, Samantha, to stop hugging me, and I will stop calling you… freak."
"I'm sorry, Libby." Sabrina grinned because that was one thing she liked about Samantha; well, that and the look of Libby's face getting hugged. "You see… she was raised a little touchy-feely; she's a hugger." She grinned enjoying Libby's discomfort. "She might stop in a week… or a few months…"
"Libby…." Samantha came around again and hugged Libby trying to step away from her. "How's my new best friend?"
"Oh-god!" Libby looked terrified as Samantha pulled apart from her. "I think I'm starting to like the hugs!" She turned and fled the cafeteria in fear of her feelings. Chuckling at the domestication of Libby Chessler, Valerie and Samantha shared a hug then Sabrina hugged Samantha just to get it over with.
"Sabrina, I really think your friends are starting to like me!" Sitting at the table afterward, Samantha sat before her twin sister and new friends and pulled a bag tightly packed into her purse. It was so wide it barely fit the opening. Setting the bag on the table, she then peeled the paper down around a glass chalice containing a shrimp cocktail. Sabrina started rubbing her forehead in exasperated frustration.
"You've had a shrimp cocktail in your purse since this morning?" Valerie asked.
"How'd you fit it in there with the popcorn, cookies and chocolate bars you've been munching on in class?" Harvey asked.
"Two look-alike purses." Samantha daintily dabbed a piece of shrimp in cocktail sauce and produced a bottle of grape juice. She munched on one piece of shrimp then unscrewed the top off her juice.
"Samantha…." Sabrina groaned under breath and placed her turkey sandwich down. "You have to eat from the lunch line here or bring a sandwich from home." Her classmates were watching and noticing Samantha's privileged dinner. Daintily dabbing another piece of shrimp in cocktail sauce, Samantha looked around from the salad bar, to the hamburger line to the hot lunch line with greasy fried chicken.
"I don't think so…." She disagreed. Although she allowed both Valerie and Harvey to each have a piece in their remaining lunchtime, it was just one suggestion to Sabrina that just maybe, just perhaps, some trace of William existed in that new pretty blonde head. Were parts of his preferences bleeding through his new personality, or could he have just acquired Sabrina's mind and memories. Sabrina really wanted to use another spell to get in there and check it out, but then she wondered. Could her dream counterpart have taken over? William had a mental representation of what he thought Sabrina was all about. She even represented his inner identity in control as the librarian controlling and filing his library of memories. Could she have broken loose and taken over? Could she have unwittingly helped her escape, and was such a thing possible? Could William's inner identity have taken form of Sabrina and been unleashed. If it was at all possible, Sabrina had to find one last trace of William existing within Samantha. All through fifth period biology, she debated on the matter, and partially through sixth period economics where she found a book left behind from the library about psychiatry, but that didn't explain much to her except that people with repressed personalities usually found other ways to let them out. Could that be what had happened? Could Samantha be William's repressed personality?
"Coach Jackman…" Sabrina was looking for her new sister after class. Miss Quick had finally had the office juxtapose Samantha's math, gym and biology classes to give Sabrina some more freedom. Just as sixth period started, Samantha was sent to gym again for the day, but now Sabrina was worried. Maybe getting her taken out of class and way from her was a bad idea. She had just unleashed a person with mystical powers in the school without her supervision. Her only hope was that her morals and upstanding character was still a part of Samantha's psyche. Departing the empty gym at the end of the school, she pushed through the doors into the north wing for the school swimming pool looking for her errant clone loose in the school. "Have you seen my sister, Samantha, anywhere? I really need to find her." She faced the school swim coach.
"She left early to audition for the school play." Coach Tom Jackman looked from Chloe Tisdale in her school swimsuit jumping from the diving board and plummeting aesthetically into the water. He whistled for Bridget Lovato, Selena's little sister, to make the next dive. "You'll find her in the auditorium."
"Thanks…" Sabrina turned away.
"Spellman…" Jackman called her back. "That's some sister you have. She's going to make this school proud."
"Thanks…" Sabrina watched as Bridget dived into the water to the applause of her swim team members. "Um, just out of curiosity." She stalled a bit. "Was William Samms… in the boys swim team?"
"William?" Jackman only knew the boy from the press conference on his disappearance. Blowing his whistle to send the girls into the locker room, he thought back and recalled him from the beginning of the semester. "No, he wasn't. He had tried out at the start of the year, but he wasn't good enough. I had to cut him."
"I knew it!" Sabrina shrieked and spun around to head to the auditorium. The girl's swim team was racing into the hall for the locker room behind the ground level bleachers, but Sabrina passed through the doors of the gym and picked up her steps to race up the stairs to the gym lobby upstairs separating her from the school auditorium.
"I knew he was faking it!" Sabrina talked to herself. "He's in her somewhere."
"Hey, Sabrina…." Jesse Hoffman noticed Sabrina emerge up from the stairs descending down to the gym. "I love your sister."
"Who doesn't?"
"Sabrina…" Leonard McCall from the school chess club approached Sabrina from the front hall as she started for the auditorium. "Could you fix me up with your sister?"
"I don't think she's going to be going here much longer." Sabrina unwittingly crushed his dreams, pulled the heavy metal door open and stepped into darkness under the auditorium balcony. Ahead of her, the balcony opened up and revealed Miss Victoria Witherspoon, her math teacher, doubling as the school drama teacher. Stepping forward from under the balcony, Sabrina recognized many of her fellow classmates immediately from the seventeen members of the drama club. Scattered and mulling around on stage rehearsing lines for their up-coming musical was Maddie Hudgens, Kate Collins and Gabrielle Winters. All three of them were close friends both in and out of school. Teddy Bolton and Carter Danforth with the crazy mane of wild brown hair were also in the school's basketball team as they faked a sword fight as the school's original set of twins, Ashley and Taylor Evans, sat at stage end with red-haired Casey Nielsen reading lines with Matt Crawford from her science class. Following Miss Witherspoon trying to control this group of students was Libby carrying a clipboard and sending everyone out of the way to sit in the seats. Setting up the microphone, Miss Witherspoon clapped her hands to get the attention of the room. Sabrina stopped and watched from the fifteenth row.
"Auditions… auditions…" She called out as Teddy and Carter reached their seats last. "Now, this November we will be performing a tribute to Broadway; songs and routines from the top five or eight most famous musicals to ever grace the New York stage. I also don't want to forget we have a late edition to the drama club… Sabrina Spellman's sister, Samantha, who will be joining us from England."
A few students started commenting about the vivacious British blonde.
"Miss Witherspoon…" Libby spoke up. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Miss Chessler, she's a hugger… get over it!"
Libby made her tired face created when destiny didn't bow in her direction. Little laughs and comments emitted from the volley of teenagers.
"Miss Spellman?" Their drama teacher looked around her faces. "Samantha…."
"I'm ready…" Samantha came strolling out from the darkness with her shoes clicking across the wooden stage and echoing up into the stadium rafters. "I was just giving my music to Steve at the sound board…" She waved at him backstage, and he gestured back to her with thumbs up. A few students had yet to see her in person. Several were skeptical anyone could look that much like Sabrina, but those who met her were often stunned or surprised that Sabrina even had a sister.
"Okay, but let me warn you, Miss Spellman…" Victoria Witherspoon's voice turned serious. "You better have a good voice. I do not like having my time wasted by people who think they can sing." She sat down in the front row of seats in front of Kate Collins and Gabrielle Winters and was joined by Libby by her side ready to judge this new rival for attention in this school. Insecurely catching her breath, Samantha looked off stage to Steve Burnette playing her music tape through the auditorium sound system. A steady stream of piano chords played to classmates and would-be peers. Samantha looked as if she was having stage fright as Libby started grinning viciously. From the fifteenth row of seats, Sabrina watched and waited in fear herself. A symphony of woodwinds and other instruments mixed into the sound.
"I don't want to be left behind..." Samantha stared forward as if she were in a trance. "Distance was a friend of mine…" Girls were looking at each other and commenting; guys were leaning back and picturing themselves with her in their lives. "Catching breath in a web of lies… I've spent… most of my life riding waves and playing acrobat." Samantha removed the microphone as if she'd broken from her trance. "Shadow-boxing the other half, learning how to react… I've spent most of my time…"
The music turned into a bouncy pop song beat no one had ever heard before.
"Catching my breath, letting it go, turning my cheek for the sake of the show…" Bouncing her body up and down to the beat of the music, she was becoming someone else, an entertainer who had not been born yet or who was yet to become famous. "Now that you know, this is my life; I won't be told it's supposed to be right!"
Libby's jaw dropped in shock; her teacher's eyes had lit up to discover this young lady. Her female students were getting excited. Her male students were standing and cheering.
"Catch my breath; no one can hold me back…" Samantha was becoming overwhelmed by both her own voice and this song she had perceived from another time far ahead of her. "I ain't got time for that…" She seemed to uncontrollably turn her head back and forth, making her long hair fly around her head. "Catch my breath, won't let them get me down, it's all so simple now."
"Addicted to the love I found…" Samantha stopped and stood pulsing her shoulders to the beat of the music. "Heavy heart, now a weightless cloud… Making time for the ones that count…" It was obvious she was picturing herself on stage before hundreds of fans and screaming concertgoers. "I'll spend the rest of my time… Laughing hard with the windows down… Leaving footprints all over town… Keeping faith kind of comes around… I will spent the rest of my life..."
This music beat came faster.
"Catching my breath, letting it go, turning my cheek for the sake of the show…" She grinned to hear the other girls in class singing her lyrics along with her. "Now that you know, this is my life!" She punched at the air excitedly over her head. "I won't be told it's supposed to be right…"
From out in the hall, Harvey and Valerie stopped from looking for Sabrina and heard her voice coming from the school auditorium. Silently and carefully, they slipped inside through the double doors on the side of the school seats and discovered the party going on. Guys were cheering. Girls were dancing in place above their seats and Libby was blinking in disbelief trying to find a reason to hate this audition and the song. If she said the wrong thing, she'd be the most hated person in school. Her teacher was even enjoying it and looking forward to mentoring this young lady.
"Catch my breath, no one can hold me back, I ain't got time for that!' Samantha was beaming and finding what she wanted to do with her life. "Catch my breath, won't let them get me down, it's all so simple now…" The music slowed and responded as if she were seeing images only she could see.
"You helped me see… the beauty… in everything…." Her voice belted the last tune as if spirits were telling her to hit it with all she could. Miss Witherspoon dropped her jaw wondering what she could teach this girl, and the room went even more crazy. Mr. Kraft was racing to the scene to stop the unauthorized concert, and Miss Quick and teachers in the teacher's lounge were wondering who among their students had that voice.
"Catching my breath, letting it go, turning my cheek for the sake of the show… Now that you know, this is my life; I won't be told it's supposed to be right…" Samantha felt her hair swaying back and forth as she moved with the song. If anyone in this school didn't like her, surely they had changed their minds about her now.
"Catching my breath, letting it go, turning my cheek for the sake of this show. Now that you know, this is my life; I won't be told what's supposed to be right…
"Catch my breath…" Samantha slowed just to catch her breath.
"Catch my breath, no one can hold me back, I ain't got time for that! Catch my breath, won't let them get me down, it's all so simple now - it's all so simple now!
"Catching my breath, letting it go, turning my cheek for the sake of the show. Now that you know, this is my life; I won't be told it's supposed to be right…."
Sitting in stunned silence in the fifteenth row, Sabrina sunk even lower into the shadows with the unhappy task she had to do. She had unleashed a monster. Samantha was very quickly taking over her school and eclipsing her. She had to find a way to destroy her. It was for her happiness and peace of mind… and William's identity… if it existed at all inside that pretty blonde head…