Chapter 10

Possibly the best thing about being friends with Julia is having Mackenzie around since it allows me to lust after him quietly and from afar, usually in the campus snack bar, The Rathskellar, which students affectionately call The Rat. Mackenzie usually hangs out with us for a while after dinner before heading off to swim team practice or to study at MacAllister.

The only negative part of being friends with Julia is Fiona Geddes, who dominates every conversation and comes with her own entourage: usually Erin and Molly, two other seniors who are also in Bell Book and Candle. They fawn all over Fiona and flirt obnoxiously with Mackenzie.

The night of my meeting with Mrs. Gibson, I arrive late to The Rat, and the only chair available at our table is next to Mackenzie. Fiona, thankfully, is not here yet. I stand there, holding my tray of French fries and diet Coke, until Julia reaches behind Mackenzie to pull the empty chair out.

“Sit, Callie. Mack, slide down.”

As soon as sit, I feel the space between me and Julia’s boyfriend grow warmer – and smaller. He has, in the shuffle of chairs and bodies, moved closer to me.

“Did you read the poetry assignment yet?” asks me. She and I take Bea’s class together, which, aside from my position as a pledge to Bell Book and Candle, is about the only thing we have in common. Like all of us do, she has changed out of her uniform after dinner, prepping herself out like Fiona often does: wide whale cords and a sweater, scuffed leather moss over her bare feet. She’s not as pretty as Fiona, though, with sort of a horsy face and a line of pimples across her nose and cheeks.

“Uh, yeah. You haven’t?”

Erin rolls her eyes dramatically. “My classes are so hard this year.”

“Oh please, Erin,” Julia says. “Your classes are no harder than any of ours.”

Molly, across the table from me, nods once in agreement. She’s the youngest of all of us here, having skipped two grades. She’s also the smallest and she always perches on her chair so she doesn’t look like someone’s kid sister. To compensate for her youthful appearance, she favors bright red lipsticks and heavy eye shadows in metallic colors like silver and bronze.

She looks exactly like someone’s kid sister wearing hideous makeup.

“Why don’t you try opening a book instead of your iPhone?” Molly says.

“And why don’t you try closing your mouth?” smiles sweetly, first at Molly and then at me. “How about a hint for the quiz next week? I’ll give you a heads up before we haze you.”

“Erin!” Julia says. “We don’t haze anyone.”

While the three girls bicker, Mackenzie plucks a fry from my plate and chews thoughtfully. “You sure you want to join this group, Callie? They can get awfully bi—”

“Watch yourself, Mack.” I glance up to find Fiona standing beside me with a glass of iced tea in her hand; the smell of sweet jasmine surrounds her like a scented cloud. “Are you sure that’s what you want to say?”

“Actually, Fi, I was going to say ‘beautiful.’” Mackenzie winks up at her, an attempt to charm the savage breast.

“Shoo now. Go back to your swim team and leave us in peace.”

Julia bristles at this obvious dismissal of her boyfriend’s talents but Mackenzie ignores it.

“Isn’t it nice that someone as important as Fiona would grace us with her presence night after night after night after night?” he asks the table at large. “We should be glad she doesn’t have anyone visiting her.”

Ouch.

Just then, Mackenzie’s cell rings and I detect a look of profound relief on his face. “Excuse me, ladies,” he says as he rises from the table and graciously holds the chair for Fiona. “Yo,” he says into his cell, then kisses Julia on the lips before leaving.

The girls watch him go, openly leering at his back and butt.

“So hot, Jules,” says.

Molly whistles under her breath. “You are so lucky.”

Fiona is the only one who pointedly ignores the handsome swimmer. I notice then that her sling is gone but she continues to favor the once-broken arm, resting it in her lap against her stomach. She is, naturally, still in her uniform.

“So…what are we talking about?” she asks. “Anything I should know about?”

shakes her head. “No biggie, Fi.”

Fiona, her glass of iced tea at her lips, pauses. “Well?”

Erin’s increased anxiety level is reflected in her pimples which redden frightfully while the rest of her face pales.

“Poetry,” I remind her. “We take Aunt Bea’s class together.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right. We were comparing our homework,” says.

“I’ve taken poetry,” Fiona says bluntly. “Hated it.”

“Oh. Well, sure,” Erin says.

“Iambic pentameter and stanzas and all that theory,” Fiona goes on. “How can you tell me what that poet meant? Unless the poet told you. Am I right?”

“My aunt doesn’t teach it that way,” I say. “She’s fun and energetic and…”

“Your aunt…” Fiona says, as if she is again trying to place me. I mean, my god, how many times does this girl have to meet me to know who I am? She tapped me for her super-secret group!

“Ms. Bellflower, Fi? We have her for Shakespeare,” Julia says and offers to me, “I adore her, Callie.”

Fiona opens her mouth as if to say something – probably negative – but stops and frowns. “She’s okay, I guess.”

“Ignore her, Callie,” Julia says. She seems to be the only one at the table immune to the MG anxiety. has her cell out and is texting while Molly is actually sitting back in her chair, which seems much too big to hold her.

“You met with Mrs. Gibson?” Julia asks me.

“This afternoon.”

“And how’d that go?”

I shrug. “Good, I guess. We talked for a bit and then I left.”

Julia rolls her eyes. “She didn’t offer you any of her god-awful tea, did she?”

“Tea? No.”

“I had it once and it gave me the worst headache. She always brings it out whenever I come in to talk to her so now I just avoid going in there at all.” Julia pinches her nose with her fingertips. “Plus it smells like feet.”

“Her office?”

“Her tea.”

“I like that tea,” Fiona says, as she sips her own iced tea for emphasis. “You just don’t know how to fix it right. Use honey instead of sugar.”

Julia makes a face. “Fi, I don’t know why you spend time with that woman when you don’t have to. She kind of gives me the creeps.” Julia glances at me. “Sitting alone in that dark office surrounded by all those books. I’m always afraid I’ll have to go in there one day and the books will fall over onto me and no one will ever find my body.”

“They’ll find it,” Fiona says assuredly. “When it begins to rot and smell!” Her laughter is startling, like a sudden burst of sunshine through a bank of clouds.

“Ewww,” Erin and Molly say together without looking up from their phones.

“I’ll probably smell like feet,” Julia says. Then her tone brightens. “Oh my gosh, speak of the devil. Look who’s just walked in.”

I follow Julia’s gaze to the snack bar’s door where Mrs. Gibson is standing with Beatrix. They’ve apparently become fast friends and purveyors of fast food at the same time.

“That’s your aunt,” Julia says. “I didn’t know she was hanging out with Mrs. Gibson.”

“Neither did I,” I hear myself mumble. I watch in horror as the pair separates: the librarian takes her place in the ordering line at the snack bar while my aunt searches out a free table.

Then she spots me.

And a frown spreads across her face. Uh-oh, this can’t be good.

I feel myself shrink into my chair, swimming in the plastic much as Molly does beside me.

Beatrix narrows her gaze at me, then heads straight for our table.

“Hello, ladies,” she says pleasantly.

“Hi, Ms. Bellflower,” Julia replies. Erin and Molly smile too.

“Studying hard?”

“Just getting a little fortification before we hit the books, ma’am,” Fiona says, with enough sugar in her voice to give someone a cavity. “Want some fries?” She holds up my plate of French fries but my aunt shakes her head.

“If you don’t mind, Callie…could we talk for a moment?” She stares down at me. “Outside, please?”

When I find her, she is pacing the side of the snack bar under the awning that hangs over the outdoor patio area, empty due to the weather and the lack of light. A pre-storm wind has picked up since I entered The Rat, and it whips the canvas flaps up and down, making them jump and snap erratically.

Silhouetted and dark, Aunt Beatrix looks kind of like Mrs. Gulch from “The Wizard of Oz” only without the Schwinn and Toto in a basket.

“Calliope, what do you think you’re doing trying to join a sorority?”

“Um, having fun?”

Bea shakes her head from side to side; loose ebony tendrils flick across her eyes, black slashes that tangle in her lashes until the wind decides to wipe them away. “Low profile. What about those two words don’t you understand? You’re here to finish high school and that’s it. Classes, a few friends, but nothing more.”

“What? Why not? It’s a secret society, Bea. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal. A very big deal. Mrs. Gibson told me she has to trace your genealogy—”

I shake my head to interrupt her. “Julia says it’s nothing. A little Google searching, that’s it. Like a background check.” I hold my thumb and forefinger together. “A mini-background check. No FBI required.”

“This is not funny, Callie. I am not happy about this.”

“I can tell.”

“What?”

I hadn’t realized I was muttering. “What? Nothing.” And then I stop myself. Why not say what I think? I’m tired of playing coy with everyone, including my aunt. “You’re never happy, Bea. You wear this sour face all the time, like the world’s about to end. You never let me do anything that could remotely be called fun. I’m finally on campus—”

“Which you begged me for.”

“Yes, I did beg you for it and I’m making friends and now you want to crush all of that.”

But if Bea has understood anything I’ve said, she’s not acknowledging it. She’s a locomotive barreling down a single track. “That librarian is going to research our family tree and what do you think she’s going to find?”

“Um…nothing?”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t find anything, could I? And you don’t know anything more than what you’re telling me, right?” I stare at my aunt and will her to answer me but she keeps her lips sealed shut. I shrug my shoulders. “Well, then, she won’t find anything more than we know, which is pretty much nothing.”

“You don’t know Mrs. Gibson.”

“Neither do you.”

“You don’t know what resources she has.”

“Please. Have you seen her office? It’s filled with crap. Half the stuff in there is so damn old, it’s about to dissolve into dust. I don’t even think she has internet access. Or a computer. Or electricity.”

My aunt’s stern expression doesn’t change. I wave a hand in front of her face. “Joke, Bea. I’m joking.”

“No sorority.”

“Excuse me?” I couldn’t have heard that right; that must have been the wind somehow imitating Bea’s voice as it spins the thick, wet air around us.

“This is for your own protection, Calliope.”

“That’s crap, Bea.”

“I can’t be concerned about your social life.” She points at the Rat. “You’ll go in there and tell Mrs. Gibson that you’re not interested anymore—”

“No--”

“You will request that she stop researching your family and ask her to please withdraw you from consideration.”

“No, I won’t!”

“Yes. You will.” As usual, Bea is her Triple C self – but I am not. Not tonight. Not faced with this.

“I want to be in this group, Bea. I want to have friends and do things. God, Bea, I want to be…” I stop. Because the next word out of my mouth is going to be “normal” and that sounds far too much like a line from a teen romance or a Lifetime Original Movie. I won’t plead with my aunt. I won’t beg her.

But I won’t do what she asks.

“Beatrix, it’s my final year of high school. I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me for all of my life. I’ve got some friends and I just want to enjoy myself. Okay?”

Surely she can’t ignore that, can she? She can’t deny me what I have so rationally presented, can she? She’s my aunt, my flesh-and-blood, the one person who should want the best for me at all times.

Surely she’ll be kind.

“I absolutely forbid you from joining that group. Now go talk to Mrs. Gibson.”

Before I have a chance to protest – again – Bea is gone, turned on her heel and headed across the quad toward MacAllister.

Damn her!

I am, to put it mildly, furious with Beatrix.

How dare she tell me I can’t join Bell Book and Candle? She thinks by denying me she’s protecting me? There’s nothing Mrs. Gibson is going to learn that will jeopardize Bea and her precious little world. This is simply my aunt acting the part of control freak, of fake mother.

I’m growing up – growing away and leaving her and she knows that and it galls her that she can’t keep me under her thumb any longer.

Beatrix, Beatrix, Beatrix…

My hands by my sides clench into fists and my nails dig into the palms. Damn it! I am not going to withdraw. I will not tell Mrs. Gibson – and Fiona and Julia and Erin and Molly – that my auntie won’t let me join.

Bullshit.

I feel a slow burn behind my ribcage as the center of my chest begins to warm. The heat spreads across my shoulders and down the front of my thighs. I feel clammy within my skin, claustrophobic in my clothes.

And then the aura - that dazzling light show – slides across my eyes, obstructing my vision with bliss and blobs of crystalline sparkles.

Oh shit. I am so far from my dorm room, from Bea’s room, and I don’t have any blue pills with me. I shrink back against the wall of the Rat and feel the scratch of the climbing vines through my clothes. Every sense is heightened: the smell of the French fry grease from the snack bar, the sounds of clinking silverware and laughter and catcalls, the feel of the concrete below my boots, the taste of the rain in the air.

It’s usually at this point that the headache follows, the crushing blow within my skull that makes me run for the magic blue pills. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force myself to remain calm. I breathe slowly and cautiously, willing my heart rate to slow and my body to cool. I haven’t gone through a headache like that since I was ten.

I wait.

I breathe.

I wait.

But it doesn’t come. The headache doesn’t come.

Instead, the aura passes over me like a light misty rain at sunrise, when dew clings to the underside of leaves and there’s a pungent dampness in the air.

Instead, I am left with an overall feeling of clarity.

The aura is gone and there is no pain.

No pain?

Does this mean I haven’t shifted? Does this mean I can’t shift?

I’m not sure whether to be elated or disappointed. As my fingers trace the outline of my face, I have to admit, I am leaning toward the latter. While the ability to shift has kept me from being a completely normal person, knowing that I can do something – me, average-in-most-ways Calliope Louise Bellflower — makes me special.

Even if it means I will die.

So this…is it? This is…the end. I guess a part of me always liked the possibility of danger in my life, even if I kept such a far distance from it. I always felt a secret thrill when I had to swallow the pills, much as I detested the way it made me feel afterwards.

But now, knowing that I can’t shift, knowing that I can be just like everyone else…well, it wasn’t as if I could do anything with it anyway. If anyone will be pleased about this change in circumstances, it will be my aunt.

Beatrix, Beatrix…

We no longer need rules. We no longer need fear attention.

Not only can I join Bell Book and Candle, I can challenge Fiona for its presidency. Heck, I can run for Senior Council, dye my hair blonde and become a cheerleader, dye it blacker and become Goth. I can join the debate team, the ski team, the chess club. I can date the captain of the football team and attend Homecoming and be voted Queen of the Court with a sparkly tiara and a papier mache scepter and…

I can date!

Yes, this non-dying, non-shifting, non-headache-y thing is actually a blessing. I can stop avoiding eye contact with guys. I can dress up and flirt. I can cross my fingers and hope he asks me out and then say yes, yes, yes, I’d love to go to a movie with you. And finally – finally — I will be able to wrap my arms around my special someone, press my lips to his, and…touch.

A gust of wind kicks up a swirl of dirt and leaves, as if it were urging me forward and I nearly skip into the Rathskellar to retrieve my books and say goodnight to my friends.

The room seems shockingly bright and loud: are there more people in here than there were before? Or are they simply noisier? I blink twice against the overhead lights and almost wish for a pair of sunglasses – an unheard of item in this town.

Back at my table, my friends are just as I left them: Julia and Fiona are leaning closely together, chatting quietly, while Erin and Molly continue to text on their phones, probably to each other.

“Hey, guys!”

The girls all look at me and then sit up a bit straighter in their chairs. Molly and Erin lower their cell phones to their laps, shielding them from view.

“What’s going on?” I slide into my chair and reach for my plate of fries, suddenly ravenous.

Fiona pastes on a smile. “Nothing, Ms. Bellflower. Just spending time with friends.”

“Just…what?” I ask with a laugh. What an odd thing to say.

“Fiona and I were talking about ‘Macbeth,’” Julia says. “In the beginning, with the Three Witches’ prophecies, I don’t understand why Macbeth orders everyone to be killed.”

She looks at me, waiting, I suppose, for my response. Um, I have none. I’ve never studied Shakespeare.

“Ms. Bellflower?” she prompts.

“I have no idea, Julia…I mean, Ms. Poole.” I look around at the table. “Why are we being so formal tonight?”

Julia leans forward on her elbows. “Oh, do you like to be casual in the Rat?”

“Well, uh, yeah, why not?”

“Sure! No problem!” Julia says cheerfully. “Would you prefer Beatrix or Bea?”

“Would…I…?”

What?! Holy…no. It can’t be true. I can’t have shifted.

No, no. She must be teasing me, calling me by my aunt’s name as if I were being school teacher-ish, pretending I’m supervising their studies.

She can’t mean – she can’t! I had the aura but it went away and I didn’t have a headache or any residual effects and I’m myself, aren’t I? I am wearing my clothes, although they do feel a little tighter, but that’s only because I have a heightened sensory perception after the aura, certainly not because…no.

“Beatrix?” I hear a voice call behind me. I turn and see Mrs. Gibson holding a tray with two drinks, two plates, two of everything for her and for…me?

“Are you sitting with the kids tonight?” she asks.

I look behind me, half-expecting to see my aunt there, having come in while I was preoccupied, but no, there is no one but me. No Bellflower but me. Mrs. Gibson stares at me and her smile falls a little. She thinks I’m dissing her by hanging out at Julia and Fiona’s table.

“I’m…”

I’m Beatrix!

Slowly I stand, hoping the sound of my heart pounding in my chest doesn’t give me away, doesn’t make these girls doubt I’m not a normal human being just like themselves, not someone who…oh god. I have to leave. I have to…

I gather up Callie’s thing – my things – and shove them into my backpack, sling it over my shoulder. “Callie’s not well,” I say. What an understatement! “So I’m just taking her stuff back to her.”

The girls all smile politely at me, as they would a departing teacher, because to them, that’s exactly what I am. I turn to Mrs. Gibson, trying desperately to remember her first name because obviously I can’t call her “Mrs. Gibson,” nor can I simply call her “you.”

Begins with an M…Mary!

“Mary,” I say. “So sorry but my niece isn’t well.”

She makes a frowny face. “That’s too bad. Another night?”

I nod. “Yes, of course. Some other time.”