“What makes your world go ‘round?” I asked Marc as she placed the last bag of chips on the shelf, label facing up and directly in front of the “Buy One Get One Free” sign.
“What makes my world go ‘round?” she repeated confusedly, turning around to stare at me. I was perched on the bottom step of the ladder that Marc hadn’t had to use (If I’m a dwarf, she’s a giant. Both of which exist, by the way), my Twenty Things notebook open on my lap. I’d taken a leaf from the clubhouse tree and pasted it on a page, but other than that and details I still had no idea what made the world turn. So, I was asking Marc.
“Yeah. Like… what’s important to you. What couldn’t you live without? What makes your world go ‘round?” I elaborated. Marc adjusted a sideways can of soup and thought for a minute.
“Well,” she said finally, “why is it automatically my world? Isn’t it just as much your world? Devin’s world? Crazy Ben’s world?”
Devin is Marc’s boyfriend. Crazy Ben is the Quick Mart manager. He has one eye, a straggly beard, and a passion for opera. Like I said, Little Whinging has its characters.
I thought about that and decided. “It just is. That’s the assignment. What makes the world of Marcella Semper go ‘round. Not anyone else’s world.”
“You mean the world of Katarine-Natasha Elisabeth-”
“We truly do not have time for my full name, Marc. For the purposes of conversation, let’s call it your world.”
“Your world,” Marc argued.
“Whatever! Just answer!”
She was ridiculously stubborn, crossing her arms over her chest and declaring, “The world doesn’t belong to me. I belong to it. And to the other people of the world. We’re all in constant harmony.”
“Fortune cookie?” I asked dryly. Usually when Marc says something even remotely deep, she did not come up with it on her own.
“I’m serious. If you want to know what makes your world go ‘round, first you need to look at the people that mean something to you. You have to find meaning somewhere, Kat. Find something that means something to you.”
“I am thinking about the people that mean something to me,” I objected. “I’m asking you, and I asked Jeremy, but the best answer he could give me was hair gel. I am looking in places that matter.”
She shook her head and adjusted her Quick Mart nametag, reading, Hello! My name is Marc! “Find meaning, Kata,” she repeated. “Find something that means something.”
I thought it was a little vague for Marc to keep using the word ‘something’, without giving me any indication what I should be looking for.
What means something to me? The only answer that came to me was knowledge. The knowledge that I was special, the knowledge that I wouldn’t be stuck here forever. It made things tolerable. But knowledge wasn’t really something I could put in a notebook, or a list, or a box, or even a letter.
“I can’t think of anything,” I finally answered, because she was expecting a reply.
“And that is just sad,” Marc declared. She held her arms aloft and swished them around, like she was shooing me away. “Now, away with you, on a quest to find meaning! I hereby sic you on the unsuspecting world!”
“Thanks for all the help,” I muttered, and marched down the aisle without a backwards glance.
Look out world, I thought dryly, Kata Potter’s coming and she has no idea what she’s doing.
As I stepped out through the automatic doors and into the fresh air, I became immediately aware of the holiday buzz. Every store window was decorated with smiling paper pumpkins, and advertisements for jumbo size bags of candy. Extra streetlamps had been lit, and there was a tangible excitement in the air.
Halloween evening. Last year I had been a Friendly Vampire, mostly because I couldn’t find fangs to make myself look menacing. This year I didn’t have a costume, or any plans, really. Except for the whole “find some stinking meaning” thing.
I always loved Halloween. It’s just my kind of holiday, what with the candy, and the dressing up as someone you’re not. I still love Halloween, actually… just didn’t feel right this year.
I didn’t know what it was, but as I started to bike down the road I felt a twinge of premonition. I mean, come on. It’s Halloween, Night of Terrors, Night of the Dead… and I happen to be an actual witch all alone, riding a beat up old bike down a store-lined street. What would you feel?
You know, they used to burn witches at the stake. Even the ones that weren’t real.
Little kids were starting to converge onto the sidewalks, along with the occasional older kid with a sheet over their head, or some other pathetic excuse for a costume. I ducked my head and swerved onto the street, at the last second turning into the park instead of the road that would take me home. My tires rustled over dry leaves, and everything looked amber under the streetlights.
I settled on a bench under a lamp and opened my notebook on my lap.
Things That Mean Something To Me
1. Knowledge
And then I drew a blank. What defines whether or not something matters to you? I like Pop Tarts, but that doesn’t mean that they matter to me… or does it? Am I just supposed to look for things I like, and form my twenty things from that?
It was seriously frustrating me that I still didn’t know how to do this assignment in the first place. Was I seriously that messed up that I couldn’t figure out a simple question like that? What twenty things make my world go ‘round? Not hard! Not even remotely difficult, but I could not put pen to paper. I had no idea what I’d find.
I started going through my bag. These were the things I took with me, I reasoned. They must mean something. Among a slingshot, a hair elastic, the coffee tin, and my Dear Friend notebook, I found my sketchpad. With a sigh, I flipped it open and the first face stared back at me.
For two years now, I’ve been drawing these faces. Everyone who’s seen them (that is, Harry and Jeremy) say that they look scarily realistic. And, it is a bit scary, I guess, when you think that I’ve never met any of these people in my life. To the best of my knowledge, they’re just random faces that pop into my mind.
But that can’t be it. I want it to be something else. I want it to be magic.
Suddenly I stopped and smiled to myself. Taking a deep breath, I lifted one finger an examined it, like that girl did on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Waving it once, I pointed it at a small rock next to the bench and chanted,
“On this night of All Hallows Eve,
Make this rock fly above all the trees!”
This might surprise you, but nothing happened. I sighed, and pointed my finger at a tree, and cried,
“Be so different from all the others,
Turn these tree leaves purple in colour!”
Maybe it has to be pure rhyme, I thought dejectedly. Mr. Mendota had said something about that, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Something about having the word’s last syllables sound exactly the same, but that wasn’t all, or “other” and “colour” would have worked.
The sounds of trick-or-treaters were getting louder now, and the little watch key chain on my bag told me that it was just after eight. That meant that I had an hour before I had to be home (or, an hour before they locked the door, as I was already supposed to be in), and I was not going to waste it sitting on a park bench.
I hadn’t eaten since lunch at school, so I did hit a couple of houses for some sweets. After telling people that I was Raggedy Ann (my hair is literally the same shade of red as the wig), I had two chocolate bars, and a bag of Gummy Bears. I opened the bears and popped a few in my mouth as I walked my bike down Main Street, looking a people’s costumes and occasionally shooting a spell at something under my breath. Nothing happened at all, but it was sort of fun to know that I had a secret. I laughed once at a little girl dressed as a witch with a hairy mole on her nose and a black pointed hat. I switched to telling people that I was a witch when they asked, and enjoyed watching their eyebrows go up as they examined me.
The sun was quickly disappearing behind the horizon, streaking the sky with colours that didn’t normally appear there. Shell pink melted into pearly lavender, which became ribbons of sea foam green mixed with vivid orange. I looked up at it as I walked, trying to see patterns or shapes.
After a while, the littler kids vanished, leaving the teenagers, and the kids convinced that they were teenagers, to roam the night. Sea foam green faded into grey, and a couple of stars shone through.
My hour was almost up, and I found myself wandering back into the park. I sat down on another bench, and listened to the sounds of night approaching. The quiet buzzing of the streetlamps, the chirping of crickets, the rustling of trees… I shook my head. I was feeling way too poetic tonight.
I leaned back and closed my eyes, trying to think of something a little more… Kata-ish. I was wondering if I could ask Mr. Mendota about that pure rhyme thing without letting him know that I needed it for actual spells when a man sat down next to me.
At least I think it was a man. He (she?) was dressed in a long black cloak flowed to the ground, with a hood that drooped low over his face. His hands were hidden too, in long, baggy sleeves and he was utterly silent, like a ghost, as he sat, staring straight ahead. Silent like the dead.
The sense of premonition was back, and my palms slightly began to sweat. Sinister images clouded my mind, and I tried to push myself away. That was what I got for obsessing over magic at night, on Halloween no less. There must be thousands of people in dark cloaks, wandering the streets. This man was one of thousands.
Yeah, right.
I swung my feet and chewed my lip nervously, wondering, if he was going to pull out the curved Grim Reaper dagger-on-stick. I prayed that, if he did, it would be that plastic one that I’d spotted Eric Stephens carrying around tonight. It’s just a costume, I chanted to myself over and over. This is not worth scaring yourself over.
The sky was black now, no trace of pink left. The silence was killing me.
“Nice costume,” I finally said, trying to bring my metaphoric knife through the tension hanging in the air.
He didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch, or make any indication that he had heard me. I was starting to wonder if the premonition I’d experienced earlier had anything to do with this. Something about the presence of this man mad me terribly nervous, and mixed with premonition, I had a sense of déjà vou, like I’d been here before, on Halloween night, with this man in a dark cloak.
And then I nearly had a heart attack when I realised what had happened on one of the Halloweens of my past. I felt like my blood had turned to ice, and like someone had poured hot water down my spine, both at the same time. I had no memories, so there were no flashbacks, but my body was swallowed by my mind, caught up in thoughts that the dread was real.
It was all real, wasn’t it?
I stood up and moved quickly to leave, snatching my backpack and throwing it halfway over my shoulder, and gripping for the handlebars of my bike.
A hand closed around my forearm and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Instead, I screamed, high-pitched and long, until a hand was clamped over my mouth too. Even through the pounding in my ears I could hear a spell, an actual spell, being whispered, and somehow I couldn’t find my voice anymore.
This was really happening. Some magic-maniac was kidnapping me, I had no idea why, and I couldn’t even scream! My thoughts were moving much quicker than they normally did, racing around my head and trying to find any way out of this.
But I couldn’t, of course I couldn’t. Shrimpy little girl vs. armed Wizard… who had the better chance of winning? How could I fight when I had no means of fighting?
Then the whole scene changed. I wasn’t any stronger, or any more able. I still had no magic. Everything was so completely different, but all that physically changed was me. My attacker gave me a weapon, something that only I could fight with, something that meant something: a reason to fight.
It was a cold voice whispering in my ear that did it. “Don’t you ever resent it? Being left powerless?” he hissed, voice like a snake.
Snap. My mind went snap.
I don’t know what it was, but suddenly it didn’t matter that I couldn’t scream. It didn’t even matter that I didn’t have a wand, or any magic that I could control. Who was this man to come and take me and tell me I couldn’t stop it? I could fight him. I could fight him in the only way I’d ever learned.
With adrenaline-fuelled strength, I brought my head forward and then back, ramming in into his where it still rested by my ear. An inhuman snarl of rage was all I had time to hear before I snap-kicked my foot into the man’s groin. There was a strange sound like someone snapping a twig in half, but I didn’t focus on that. His grip released long enough for me to break loose and snap his pinkie finger back so far that it almost touched his wrist.
And then I was free, but I only had seconds. Not enough time for my bike, which would be faster, but I didn’t care. I was sprinting like my life depended on it, because it did, and screaming over my shoulder, “That’s what happens when you play with your food before you eat it!”
It wasn’t a very happy metaphor, seeing as technically I was the food. I didn’t actually want to think about what would have happened if he had decided that it wasn’t important to taunt me, and that it was more important I was dead.
Dead. Could that have happened? Would that man have killed me? I didn’t know how much danger I was in. The thought that I was marked for death was… unbelievable. They’d promised… there wasn’t supposed to be any danger…
I was still running, though my burning lungs and a sharp pain in my right side were all for stopping. I would run through the whole town if I needed to, to get home. It was after nine, I knew that, and I still didn’t have my voice, but I told myself that getting home would solve these problems.
The few memories of magic I had were swirling inside my brain, and I settled on the darkest “ the explanation that I could not immediately depart the Muggle world. A teacher whose name I vaguely remembered was Scottish (McGoogle, or something) with a stern face was telling me that I had to wait a year.
Of course it will be safe, she answered, when I had asked. The knowledge that I was once the object of murder hadn’t really settled well in my stomach, and I was nervous to be left alone in a tiny town. There was no need for anything but minimal protection. There was no immediate danger.
I ran up the walkway and slammed into the door, banging my fists against the hard wood. “Open up!” I screamed. “Open up, I’m being pursued! Open up!”
I heard the lock click, and the door swung open. Verno stood there in a forest green bathrobe and a purple face, but I rushed past him and into the kitchen. I wasn’t really sure what I was thinking, but I grabbed a knife from the drawer and started turning all around, like the man who had tried to kill me could be right behind me.
“What the bloody hell is going on?” Verno thundered, moving toward me, but stopping a safe distance away from my knife.
My mind was whirling, wondering why he wasn’t here. I knew that wizards could disappear and reappear wherever they wanted, as long as they had a wand. And he had a wand, because he had taken away my voice… before I’d kicked him.
The noise like a twig snapping… I’d broken his wand. He couldn’t follow me.
I collapsed to the ground out of relief, letting the knife slide from my fingers and clatter to the spotless linoleum. I sat up cross-legged and put my head in my hands.
“I think I broke his wand,” I murmured from between my fingers.
“You did what now?” Verno roared, advancing toward me now that I didn’t have a knife.
“I… he did something to my voice… and I broke his wand.”
I wasn’t thinking clearly. Mentions of magic were utterly taboo in this house, and I was pretty much confessing that I’d been in a fight with a wizard to my uncle. Not all that smart.
“What did you say?” Aunt P asked, coming into the kitchen with a pink bathrobe.
I didn’t say anything, remembering that in a court of law anything I said could and would be held against me. I figured the same riles could apply.
Verno, for his part, clearly didn’t want to hear what I had to say, as he pointed to the stairs in a kind of I-can-only-handle-so-much-of-this-in-one-night gesture.
I marched up the stairs and sat in the middle of my bedroom floor, awake and alert, because I knew that sleep was pointless.
***
I got to school the next morning exhausted and still a little paranoid. Every time my bike hit a bump in the sidewalk (I had stopped by the park and dug it out of the bushes), I almost jumped off the seat, and the slightest twittering of birds set me on edge for five minutes.
So, okay, more than a little paranoid.
Mr. Mendota showed up to class wearing a beret, like he always does when our class is scheduled to go to the art room.
Our art teacher, Mrs. Bridge, looks a little like what most people consider to be a witch. She has short bristly black hair, a wart on her left ear, and a mannish build. I don’t actually like her that much, because she always tried to see weird things in people’s pictures. I draw a cat; she sees Marie Antoinette being executed by the rebelling French. I draw a tree; she sees a giant talking bird working at a kiosk. She also calls everyone by their entire name, which can make for a long conversation if she’s talking to me. Thankfully, I asked her to omit all my middle names a long time ago, and she agreed that that was probably best.
Anyway, Mrs. Bridge makes for a very interesting class period, but I just wasn’t up for it that day.
“Today, we are going to delve deep into our creative souls, and bring forth a masterpiece to the world!” she announced as soon as we were all sitting down. “You shall give birth to a work of art so pure, so great, that Van Gough and Monet, should they still live, would hail you as ruler over all mankind and the great heavens as well!” she looked to the sky, her frizzy black hair hanging in her eyes.
We looked at her and blinked.
Mrs. Bridge readjusted her glasses, which were splattered with paint and hung sideways off one ear, and put her hands on her hips. “So, everyone draw a picture of what Halloween means to you.”
I sort of hate people that don’t let holidays die once they’re over. Halloween was yesterday, and those of us who had near-death experiences really want to get over it.
Sherrie, Winnie, and a boy named Andy shared my table. They all reached into the basket of dull coloured pencils and began working.
I picked up a green pencil and twirled it lithely between my fingers, wondering what I should draw. Considering that some really crappy things had happened to me on Halloween, I wasn’t about to draw pictures of candy, like Sherrie was, or a picture of myself in a princess costume, like Winnie was. And, uh, fighter planes were out as well, which was what Andy was drawing.
Nearly being kidnapped yesterday wasn’t the half of my Halloween troubles. I was pretty sure… Actually, I was positive that Halloween was the day my parents died.
It didn’t make me sad like it probably should have to know this. I took the green pencil and started colouring in a corner of the paper, thinking about that. Of all the things in my life that I am sad about, losing my parents isn’t really one of them. It’s just a part of who I am, at this point. Mostly, I just kind of admired the bitter irony of almost being killed yesterday. I wondered if the man had planned it like that.
And then I realised two things. One, magic wasn’t responsible for their deaths. That would be like… if they’d died in a car crash, like I was always told, and I grew up hating Henry Ford. If they had died in a fire, I wouldn’t have blamed the guy who invented matches. It was stupid to hate magic because of that.
The other thing I realised was that it sort of was my fault. That guy called Voldemort… he had been trying to kill Harry and I, right? What if he had tried to kill us first? The curse would have rebounded off of Harry like it had, and everything would be fine.
It was probably stupid to blame myself as well, but… all the what ifs kept swimming around in my brain.
I’d coloured almost half of the paper entirely green when my picture started to change. I saw my face in my mind, and suddenly there it was on paper, a Drawing, like the rest of the one’s in my sketchpad. It was different, though. My face was bunched up like I was confused, and my hair became words, twisting and turning away from my scalp in a single phrase.
My fault? My fault? My fault? It said over and over again.
Mrs. Bridge came over to our desk to observe what we’d done. Winnie smiled dazzlingly and held her picture up for the teacher.
Mrs. Bridge looked at the picture for a moment, and then announced, “You’re a spoiled little brat, aren’t you, Winifred Marie Alderson?”
I had to muffle my laughter with my fist, but the expression on Winnie’s face was enough.
“No,” Winnie corrected quietly, “this is a picture of my Halloween costume!”
Then, Mrs. Bridge shook her head and moved onto Sherrie’s picture. Sherrie looked terrified to have her work examined after what had been said to Winnie, but Mrs. Bridge smiled and said softly in her gruff voice, “You have a pure heart.”
After looking at Andy’s drawing (“You resent the wars that you so eagerly draw!”), Mrs. Bridge looked at mine.
She was quiet for a full ten seconds. “You’re starting to figure things out, aren’t you, Katarine-Natasha Potter?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. But as she turned and walked away, she called over her shoulder, “But you should know… it isn’t.”
And I like to think of that moment as a turning point. Because, even if I didn’t believe her (who would?) I made two very important decisions.
Twenty Things That Make the World Go 'Round by eva_writes
Chapter Notes: So, I've been thinking. I could apologise for being late, but that's how I start most chapters. Which means, if you think about it, that I am right on time. All right, you don't have to agree with my logic, but at least enjoy the chapter. Thanks to Azhure, I own Kata but not Harry... and let's hear it for twitternet! *Awkward silence*
Chapter Endnotes: I'll try to be early (or on time... this can get confusing!) ;) -Eva