November dragged.
And winter either didn’t know or didn’t care what month it was. It rocketed forcefully into Little Whinging, coating the ground in mushy gray-white snow and constantly blowing frigid winds in every direction. If you went outside, it was probable that at first you would think that you had entered some sort of wormhole, and had been transported to Antarctica. People bundled up tightly like Eskimos were always half-running on the sidewalks; eager to get where they needed to go.
I watched the window from the pew in the back of Our Lady of the People, enjoying how the wind caught the flurries and swirled them into little tornadoes. Mr. Millerton stood at the front, just finishing a speech about how you shouldn’t drink water from a plastic bottle that’s been left in the sun for awhile, because the chemicals from the plastic could seep into it and poison your system.
What sun?, I thought. I hadn’t seen the sun in two weeks. Even when the snow stopped for a few hours, a thick blanket of clouds lay across the sky.
My notebook sat open across my lap, and I was trying to get a realistic sketch of Mr. Millerton. I’d decided that the church (or whatever it is) meant something to me, enough to be included in my Twenty Things.
Mr. Millerton’s eyes kept turning out funny, sort of lopsided, and when I tried to erase, the rest of his face got smudged and warped. Frustrated, I considered giving him sunglasses, like the guy who sat in the third pew from the front. I called him Secret Agent. He always wore a crisp black and white suit, with dark shades and a little earpiece. Not the kind of guy you would have expected to be there at all, but you could say the same for me. We were a huge bunch of misfits.
I started drawing Secret Agent on the same page, thinking I could do a little collage about Our Lady of the People. I concentrated so hard on getting his suit jacket right, biting my lip and squinting my eyes, that I didn’t notice when the sanctuary was silent and I was the only one in the room, except for a couple of Goth teenagers and a guy of questionable soberness that had fallen asleep.
I also didn’t notice Mr. Millerton, standing right over me, looking down at my drawing with interested eyes and a small, indulgent smile.
I jumped, nearly out of my skin, as his hand lightly touched my shoulder, stiffening like I expected an attack, and knocking my backpack to the ground. The sound of its crash echoed throughout the empty, open room.
When I saw it was him, I relaxed and waited for him to go away.
But he didn’t. Of course he didn’t.
“I have seen you here a lot, little girl,” he announced formally, taking a seat to me on the thin-velvet-cushioned pew. With an expression that suggested he did this everyday, he held his hand out for my pencil. “If I may?”
After hesitating a few seconds, and seriously considering the option of running out the back door, I warily placed it in his waiting, callused hand. He closed his fingers around it, and they seemed like they knew what to do all on their own, with no signal from his brain. Lithely, the curled themselves around the thin, yellow wood, and he pressed the tip of the lead to the paper.
“But I have never seen you here with anyone else,” he continued. His hand began to stroke the paper, almost lovingly, and the pencil marks he left there were light and flowing, sprouting from his fingers as easily as blooming flowers. I saw then that Mr. Millerton was an artist. I almost grabbed the book back, unwilling to have him see my embarrassing scribbles. However, he barely seemed to notice there was anything else on the page. I forced myself to sit very still.
I also didn’t respond to anything he was saying, other than slight changes in expression. That didn’t seem to bother him, and he kept talking.
“If I had to guess your age from your size, I would say seven, maybe eight. But you are much older than that, aren’t you? Yes. Still… you are a child. When I see a child in my church, accompanied by no one, I have to be curious.” He paused, and smiled kindly. “Curious, but not resistant. You seem to like the things you hear here.”
“I do,” I murmured absently, almost mesmerized by his drawing. It was beautiful to me, simple an elegant.
“Ah, you can speak!” he replied, as if he had honestly doubted that I could. “Though that does not make this puzzle any less puzzling. What is you name?”
He had an interesting way of speaking. Everything was enunciated and clear, like an alien who had learned English and grammar too well. It was a little bewildering at first, but then it was almost soothing, and very rhythmic.
“Kata Potter,” I answered vaguely, still in a kind of trance. I debated giving him my whole name, just to prove that didn’t have a problem with long sentences either, but just Kata was easier.
“Short for Katherine?” he asked, almost absentmindedly as well, as his steady fingers began to form a head, and then a face. I realized that my mouth was hanging open like a fish out of water and snapped it shut.
I winced through my marveling at his drawing. “Short for Katarine-Natasha,” I admitted.
He chuckled. “Well, that is a mouthful, isn’t it?”
I almost laughed, but then shrugged. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess.”
“A lengthy middle name too, perhaps?” he asked giddily, and something about his tone finally snapped me out of my daze, and I looked up into his eyes. They were flat and black, but with a slight glint of something I couldn’t immediately name.
“You could say that,” I said with another shrug, staring at his eyes curiously. Friendship, I realized. There was nothing lurking in his sys, no secrets. Just friendship.
He laughed again, and it reminded me slightly of Mr Flinker. Always laughing, finding even the worst moments in life funny. I remembered breaking my ankle when I was eight, and laughing the whole way to the Emergency Room because I didn’t want to look scared.
“Are your parents etymologists?” He asked it conversationally, but I heard something in his voice that hinted he had a point to the question.
“Eddo-Molly-what?” I replied, confused.
“Etymologists. They are people who study language and, more often, the origins of names. I have a friend who specializes in that field, and her daughter is named Sabina Calypso Lorena. It’s amusing, to a degree,” he explained.
I shrugged… again. I made a mental note to come up with a few more ways to avoid a question. “My parents aren’t etymologists.”
He sighed, but not in a sad way, more… dejectedly. I knew what ever he was getting at was coming. “And that brings to light yet another rather prying question. Where are your parents, and why do they willingly let you come here?” He spread his arms out, illustrating the small dusty room, the man who was now stumbling drunkenly to his feet, and the charts up front demonstrating exactly how the chemicals seep into the water.
My expression didn’t change, but I sort of bristled at his criticism of his own church. “What’s wrong with here?” I demanded. It was a sanctuary in every sense of the word to me.
He laughed at my defense. “How old are you, Kata?”
“Twelve,” I answered briskly. He raised an eyebrow and gave me a look. “Ten,” I admitted
“And do you think normal ten-year-olds traditionally hang out in places like this?” he asked, keeping his tone light.
I deliberated internally for a moment. “ I guess you could say I’m not very normal.”
“Oh, I can attest to that,” he assured me, and I wasn’t sure if I should be offended. “You don’t look like a normal child, at least.”
I didn’t say anything back to him, realizing that he’d go on with or without a response. He didn’t disappoint.
“So, you haven’t answered, which makes me slightly nervous to ask again.” His tone was, just as he said, nervous, edgy. But his face was concerned. “Where are you parents?”
I hesitated. “I’m not a runaway if that’s what you’re thinking. I haven’t made it to that stage yet.”
He nodded, and I knew I had guessed correctly at his assumptions. I sort of liked how he stopped his investigation there, not caring who I was as long as I wasn’t living as a runaway. It was a nice change of pace.
“And do you plan to run away?” he asked.
I still wasn’t sure why I was telling the truth. There was just something about this guy… he didn’t want to cause any trouble. Maybe he didn’t even want to ‘help’. He was just curious.
“I dunno… there’s not much reason for me to stick around,” I murmured, trying to explain. But how could I ever fully explain it anyone, I thought.
He nodded, looking thoughtful. I wondered what the situation would look like to him… It was probably natural to assume that I was a runaway, with my scruffy shoes and lack of parental supervision. I almost liked that people would assume that. It made me feel strangely independent.
Mr. Millerton started talking again, jerking me from my thoughts.
“You say there’s no reason for you to stick around,” he began uncertainly, breaking off and looking away for a second, like he was reluctant to finish. It didn’t make any sense to me why he didn’t seem to want to have this conversation, yet he was pushing it on. “But does that mean that there’s any reason for you to go?”
That stunned me for a few seconds, because I hadn’t truly thought about it. I just wanted to get away from this town… I hated that I was attached to the people here, or any other aspect of it. And I wanted to get to Hogwarts and start proving that I could do magic just as well as anyone else.
I had always linked those two goals together because they had always been the same in my mind. Get out of Little Whinging… get to Hogwarts. They were the same… weren’t they?
Yes, of course they were. Nothing was really wrong here, except that I was I the wrong place. If I fixed that, everything would be fine again. Jilly would be my friend again, I could stop failing school… even my Twenty Things would come more easily. I knew exactly what I wanted and I thought I knew how to get it.
So I shrugged and tried really hard not to roll my eyes. “That’s just how it is for me. And… I don’t mean to be rude, but my situation doesn’t really fall into any normal category. Trust me, you’ll get confused if you keep trying to work it out.”
He smiled a bit condescendingly. “Ah, but it’s human nature to believe that we are so complicated that no one can possibly understand us. We all want to believe that we have a right to be angry, because then there is an excuse for our behavior.”
I groaned a little bit. “You’re just like my teacher,” I told him sullenly. “Same warped kind of way of looking at the world.”
He chuckled and beamed. “I love this!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you know, Kata? Hasn’t anyone told you yet? The world itself is warped. How is there any right way to look at it?”
I debated for a moment, and came up with an answer. “Maybe there isn’t one right way,” I suggested, but I thought that was reaching a bit. “Maybe there’s just a lot of wrong ways. Like… it doesn’t matter if I don’t see the world for exactly what it is… as long as I don’t see one group of things for what they aren’t.”
“I suppose I see what you’re saying,” he conceded with a nod. Then his face transformed into a grin again. “Puppet strings don’t hurt as much as pride, right?”
He passed me back my notebook, and I saw what he’d drawn.
I gasped out loud. It was that amazing. His face, perfectly copied onto paper... exactly what I’d been trying to draw. All the smile-lines were there, the little creases below the eyes, the way a couple strands of hair kind of fell into his eyes.
I glanced up at him, attempting to keep my face from showing the complete awe I felt. He smiled, again a bit dejectedly.
“You really have to know yourself to be able to draw a self-portrait. I saw the one you did a couple pages back… I’d say you were on the right track.”
He winked stood up, and walked leisurely to the front of the room.
Hurriedly, I flipped two pages back, racking my brain and trying to remember when I’d drawn a self-portrait.
I hadn’t. It was the leaf I had glued from mine and Jeremy’s clubhouse tree, just starting to shrivel at the edges.
This time I did roll my eyes. When were people going to stop shoving metaphors down my throat?
Snow kept falling.
**********
“Run!” Marty Cahill shrieked at Roger, who was sprinting as fast as he could around the bases, sneakers squeaking against the newly-waxed gym floor.
“Kick it higher, Danielle!” Winnie cried to her friend, who was still in her white flip-flops and high ponytail. Huh. So I was wrong. It was Danielle and not Tonya/Tammie.
“I wanna be pitcher! She’s done it for, like, two innings!” Abigail complained to no one in particular. And I had to say, I backed her up completely. Sherrie couldn’t pitch her way out of a wet paper bag.
My entire class was in the gym, playing a game of kickball and screaming at each other. It was too cold to play outside, so we were confined to the gym, meaning that every noise ricocheted a hundred times against the high ceiling and concrete walls. Every slap as the kickball hit the ground, every shriek as someone was tagged, magnified against the air. It added to the effect nicely.
I turned to Mr. Mendota and raised an eyebrow. “How is this Science again?” I asked. He clapped his large hands together in applause as Sherrie actually pitched the kickball hard enough that it made it to home plate.
“Force equals mass times acceleration!” he boomed with a laugh. He paused, the added after consideration, “Great acoustics, too.”
I rolled my eyes, scuffing my high-top toe against the gym linoleum. “Yeah,” I muttered, not meaning for him to hear. “And kickball game plus ‘picked last for teams’ equals Kata sitting on the bench. See, it’s math, too.”
He didn’t say anything to acknowledge that he had noticed, but his eyes started darting around, and suddenly he shouted, “Derek! Out for Kata!”
Derek walked at his usual slow, careless pace towards the bench, but I was barely watching him. I had rounded on Mr. Mendota, glaring ferociously.
“I didn’t say I wanted to play!” I hissed indignantly. He grinned at my expression.
“Exercise is good for the soul,” he countered and waved me out to shortstop.
I gave him a long once-over, and then crossed my arms across my chest, fixing him with a like-you-can-make-me glare.
He stared evenly back, and then said, “I’ll teach you the secret to beating me at chess.”
We had played about fifteen more times, and I had lost every one of those fifteen times. The pointless struggle was a serious thorn in my side, and I now forcefully maintain that a chance at winning was the only reason I went out to play.
The inning was almost up, and when Robin accidentally caught the kickball to make the last out (don’t ask me how you accidentally catch a kickball) my team rushed up to the front, jostling each other to be first in line to kick. I ended up in the back, with Abigail and Kyle behind me… and Jilly Hanks right in front of me.
She was staring determinedly away from me, her curly ponytail pointed in my direction. Her sneakers were covered in pink glitter, and her socks had little fluffs of lace. Overall she was the last person on Earth you would think to be my best friend.
But Jilly and I had once been as close as Jeremy and I. We had all the basics of a little girl friendship: the sleepovers where we never seemed to sleep, the saving seats at the lunch table, the endless stream of giggles at jokes that no one else thought were funny.
And now I was alone at school, and Jilly was glittering it up with Winnie and Crew, like a couple weeks back when Mr. Mendota had first given out the Twenty Things assignment.
So I’m a little bitter. Excuse me.
But if there was one friendship I wanted to keep when I left Little Whinging, besides the Flinkers, I would choose Jilly. Maybe she hated me now… and maybe I didn’t know why… but I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to make things right between us, or at least to know why they were wrong.
“Hey, Jilly,” I greeted, turning to look at her.
Her eyes flashed once in my direction. “Hi,” she spat. And then she was back to staring anywhere but at me, arms crossed tightly over her chest.
I looked down at my shoes until I wound up staring at “Jilly BFF,” still emblazoned on the toe. I wondered if she’d crossed “Kata BFF” out on her shoe. No, I reminded myself. She probably got new shoes. Biting my lip, my head snapped up, and I looked at anything but the shoe.
So that’s how we stood for about two minutes, as the line shifted occasionally. With Jilly staring anywhere but me, and me staring anywhere but down. The silence hung thickly in the air, and each of us was too stubborn to break it.
Her anger won out over my curiosity. “So,” I began. “I haven’t talked to you in a while.”
It was a dumb conversation starter, and I knew it, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
“No,” she replied cuttingly. “I didn’t want to talk.”
“Why?” I hazarded to ask. Because I didn’t care what she said, as long as it was an explanation and not another insult.
“Everyone knows, Kata,” she informed me crossly. I blinked several times.
My heart might have missed a beat, or it might have stopped altogether. Had I really blown it? Did everyone know?
But they couldn’t know about me! About magic! How had they found out? Who had told them? Was it Jilly? Was that why she was avoiding me, because she felt guilty? I needed answers.
But more than that, I needed Jilly to understand a couple things.
“Listen, Jilly,” I said quickly, hoping that it was only a handful of sixth graders that knew, and not… the whole planet. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe they had spells to erase memories. “I wanted to tell you, honestly. But it wasn’t my choice. Every time I turned around, someone was making me swear to keep the secret. And if it helps, I didn’t tell anyone else either. You would have been the one I told, Jill. Honestly.”
I was pleading by the end, willing her to understand. She looked at me, and it seemed like curiosity was winning out over any anger again.
“I guess I believe you,” she finally announced, somewhat grudgingly. “It’s not really something I would admit to a bunch of people anyway.
“Oh, no,” I corrected, grinning. This was the best way things could have gone. Jilly knew, and she understood and she was still my friend. “It’s actually really cool, and exciting. A whole other world, just hidden behind this one!”
Jilly gave me a look that let me know she was questioning my sanity. “What are you talking about, Kata?” she demanded confusedly.
I did the blinking thing again. “What are you talking about?” I demanded right back at her. She meant magic, right? That was the only secret I had to keep, really. Everything branched from magic.
“I’m talking,” she informed me irritably, and very quickly, almost like she was embarrassed, “about how your parents aren’t really dead, they’re in an asylum somewhere, and now your brother is there too, and you’re next.”
I experienced two heartbeats of shock, and then hurt rippled across my face for about half a second. But in the end, I swallowed my temper and burst out laughing. Because, of course, it was a joke. This was either a joke or a dream. I was going to wake up, on the floor of the smallest bedroom, listening to the snow brush against the window.
“That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard!” I exclaimed through giggles. But, as I firmly pinched the skin of my right arm, the scene stayed clear and very real. “What do you mean, an asylum? Where did you get that idea?” I demanded, my laughter empty of any really happiness now.
She was back to glaring at me with a cold expression. “Like I said, everyone knows.”
I laughed again, a stitch opening in my side; I needed to keep laughing. I’d never laughed so hard that I cried before, but that might have been the moment.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asked incredulously.
“I dunno, maybe schizophrenia? Manic depression? Oh, wait… don’t tell me. I have an irrational fear of ballpoint pens, right? Something silly like that, right?” I laughed, grinning widely despite the ice cube sitting in my stomach, expanding to fill my insides.. “Be careful, the insanity is catching!” I warned, control slipping.
“Yeah, I guess so,” she spat, and for the first time I noticed that she was back to using her cutting, icy tone. “I should stay away from you, Kata. You've messed up enough of my life, and your own.”
She moved forward to kick, and I stood there dumbfounded, hearing the exaggerated sounds of the gym.
I probably should have been upset and sad right then, but I wasn’t. Instead, I was boiling mad. I would stake my life on the fact that Winnie started those rumours. And now she had my best friend believing them?
And what did Jilly mean when she said that I had messed up enough of her life? I could understand that she was offended that I had blown her off last summer when I was learning about the worlds and that space between them, but wasn’t that overstating things a bit?
My mind concentrated on this fury, and it built inside me. I didn’t even stop to consider the fact that it was partially my fault, or that the hatred in the pit of my stomach was as irrational as Jilly’s claims. All I wanted was for something to happen to prove that I was still in charge, at least of my life. Because maybe that was all I had left.
Who needs Jilly, I thought. My eyes narrowed as her foot came back to kick the rubber ball rushing toward her. Sherrie had finally managed to push the ball with enough force that someone could get a decent kick, and it looked like that was exactly what Jilly was going to do.
And then the world did something I didn’t expect. It switched to slow motion, time rolling smoothly past me. Every motion and movement of my classmates became evident to my eyes. I saw everything. Every noise, already embellished a hundredfold, was the loudest thing in the world. I heard everything. But all I felt was anger, almost a bloodlust.
I was so aware of the world. All was laid out for me to see.
Including a flash of purple-black smoke around where Jilly was standing just as her foot connected with the ball, the sound of an explosion, and a high-pitched scream from within the smoke.
When it cleared, Jilly was on the ground, a bewildered expression making her eyes wide with fear and confusion, and a scorch mark on the bottom of her T-shirt. She stared up at the ceiling, momentarily stunned, and her arms and legs were sprawling around her on the cold linoleum.
But that was not the first thing I noticed about her. The first thing I noticed about her was that her hair, already ridiculously curly, now closely resembled the Bride of Frankenstein’s. It stood on end, sticking together in frizzy clumps. If you looked closely, there were even small streaks of white against the light blonde, stretching from her forehead to the top of her two-foot tall ‘do.
Everyone was moving at once, crowding around her. Everyone except me, that is. I was a Kata-statue, not moving, and barely breathing. Did I still need air?
But as Jilly pushed herself into a wobbly sitting position, as my classmates babbled faintly about what they had and hadn’t seen, and as Mr. Mendota blew long and hard on his whistle and rushed over, my mind was whirling.
There was no doubt in my mind that I had done that. I had used magic. On Jilly. And she had gotten hurt.
I knew there was a dark side to magic, curses and charms and hexes designed to inflict pain and humiliation. But I’d never dreamed that I might be capable of a thing like that.
I was disgusted with myself, but mostly I was scared. The magic had just come shooting out of me; I had never consciously decided anything. Could things like that happen? Could I hurt people I loved just by looking at them and getting angry?
All my thoughts of just seconds ago, thoughts of hating Jilly and not caring if she was my friend or not were gone. I looked at her, on the ground, as she rose shakily to her feet with the help of Mr. Mendota. I looked at her and I nearly started crying.
But I didn’t, mainly because of what Jilly did next.
“She did that!” Jilly yelled shrilly, pointed a quivering finger in my direction. I swallowed. “She did it to me with her eyes! I swear she did!”
“No,” I whispered, meeting her eyes. Her expression was livid, but I had no idea what my face looked like. Most of my body was still frozen; only my lips were free to do what they wanted. “No, Jilly, I didn’t.”
I wasn’t sure if she could hear me, but if she couldn’t she barreled on anyway.
“Something’s wrong with you, Kata!” she screamed, advancing toward me. She got very close, so that her nose could have touched mine if I had enough power to lean forward. “What did you do to me?” she cried, shooting lasers out of her blue eyes. I stood, stupidly staring straight ahead, my own eyes wide and reflected in hers. I willed my lips to move, to deny everything like I always did. But I wasn’t sure if I still had lips, though I knew I’d said something a moment ago.
I wanted to block everything out. I imagined the window above me shattering, thick, braided rope being tossed through. I grabbed the rope and was pulled into another world…
And Mr. Mendota’s voice brought me back.
“Jilly,” he broke in sternly. He placed a hand on Jilly’s shoulder and pushed himself between us. “Jilly, calm down. Kata wasn’t touching you. I don’t know what happened, but--”
“I told you, she did it with her eyes!” Jilly roared, fists clenched at her sides. I looked down and examined my own hands: stubby fingernails, chapped palms, paper cut on my right index finger. Unfortunately, my hands did nothing to distract me from Jilly’s rambling. “I was just standing there, and then--”
Mr. Mendota interrupted her again. “Winnie, Danielle, take Jilly to the nurse.”
Winnie and Danielle came rushing forward, and helped Jilly out of the gym doors. I didn’t think she needed help; she seemed to be supporting her own weight fine. But it didn’t feel like the moment to say anything.
Everyone’s eyes were on me, boring into my skin. Some were harmlessly curious, some were a little frightened, but others were livid, like Jilly. They believed what she had said: I had done that with my eyes.
I didn’t say anything. Because what was I supposed to tell them? That they were wrong?
But they weren’t.
***********
I was pretty sure my lower lip was going to fall off soon; I had been biting hard since we’d arrived back in the classrooom. There were just seconds in the day left, and ever since our kickball game had been abandoned, my mind had been racing, trying to come up with a plan to talk to Jilly. The clock wasn’t cooperating at all, and the moments dragged infuriatingly, filling me with anticipation.
Melanie was still sneaking little glances at me whenever she thought I had turned away. She was in the frightened group, as I called it. Curious, scared, angry. Three sharp, staccato words, like my impatiently drumming fingers as I willed the clock and time itself to hurry up.
Sherrie was the only one I couldn’t categorize, mostly because she was doing what Sherrie did best. She was staring at me blankly and unabashedly, not even looking away when I met her glance. She would just blink and keep watching calmly.
I honestly didn’t care what Sherrie, or anyone else for that matter, thought. All I wanted was to explain to Jilly… not that it was likely she’d forgive me. Still, against all logic, I wanted her to know everything.
Everything.
The shrill, piercing sound of the bell that I had never loved so much rang through the classroom. I flew to my feet and snagged my already-packed bag off my chair. Jilly had obviously guessed what I had been planning, and she was already out of the room, leaving her friends behind.
Fine with me. Like I want to talk to them anyway.
I rushed out of the classroom, preparing to sprint down the hallway after her.
But navigating the hallways of Stonewall Primary right after the bell has rung is like trying to bike through a sandstorm. I know… how many kinds can there possibly be in a town this small? But even pushing, shoving, and occasionally kicking someone out of my way, it took me forever to get to the stairs, and another forever to get outside.
And then I did start running. A flat out sprint, actually, because Jilly had a head start and I had no idea where I was going. Snow whipped my face, settling in my hair.
A flash of light gold caught my eye. I wasn’t too late! Jilly was walking very quickly towards the street, her hair secured one more in a ponytail that stuck straight out behind her.
“Jilly!” I shrieked as I started running again. Her neck twitched like she wanted to look back, but at the same time she knew who was calling. “Jilly!”
She started running, but I was faster; I always had been. I rushed up behind her and caught her arm.
Jilly screamed furiously and tugged on her arm. I held on tight, ignoring the stinging flakes that bit my cheeks before melting.
“Let go of me!” she howled. A couple parents shepherding puffy-coated kindergarteners into mini-vans stopped and stared at us openly. “Let go, Kata! Get away from me!”
“Just let me explain,” I pleaded, nearly panting from the effort of holding her into place. I glanced quickly over my shoulder, very aware that we were only a few yards away from the school. Unsecured by a winter cap, my curls blew around my face in the harsh wind, and I felt my ears go numb.
“I don’t want an explanation! I want you to get the heck away from me and stay away!” she roared, enunciating the last two words so harshly that they echoed around my mind.
“You do want my explanation! I promise! You’ll understand!” I argued, making promises to myself as much as I was to her. My mind would not except that Jilly could turn away after she got the full story. She had to listen.
And it seemed like she would. She finally stopped struggling, and she turned to face me. I have never seen anyone turn so slowly in my entire life, head barely moving, it seemed, but eventually reaching the point when her eyes found mine. Her face was cold and hard like stone as she looked at me. Reluctantly, I released her arm, but she didn’t run.
She spoke.
“Fine,” she growled, her lips turning red from cold. Her teeth looked very white against them, like my skin against my hair. “What is your amazing explanation for trying to kill me?”
In that moment, my plan fell flat. I drew a complete blank, nothing from my brilliant solution remained.
“I didn’t mean to” I squeaked, fighting hard to keep my eyes up. “I swear I didn’t.”
Both of us were swearing a lot of things today. Only more was riding on my promises.
Jilly’s mouth popped open with an audible click. Her eyes narrowed in anger, and then her eyebrows turned down at the ends in hurt, and at the end, her expression was some combination of the two.
“What?” she gasped, her voice low and scared. A gust of snow slapped us both in the face. “What did you say?”
I swallowed, very aware of the fear in her voice. “I said I didn’t mean to,” I repeated, my heart somewhere around my throat. I had no idea where the rest of my insides had gone. Maybe they’d jumped ship. “It was an accident, Jilly, I have to tell you something.”
I didn’t care that I wasn’t supposed to do this. What did it matter? I accepted that the promises for me and by me weren’t exactly fault-for-fault, but I had been attacked. That proved that I was unprotected and truly alone. So what would it matter if I did this? It was just Jilly, and I kept telling myself that she’d understand.
Jilly was totally beyond being able to respond, and I didn’t know if she was waiting to hear my secret, or even if she could still hear me. I just kept talking, wondering how to begin my story.
I decided that beginnings were too hard; better to launch right into the hard stuff.
“Jilly, I’m a witch.”
That roused her, and she glared, frowning. “I know.”
I almost sighed at her interpretation, but instead I barreled on, talking faster and faster. “No, Jilly. Like, a real witch. I can do magic, and there’s a whole other world, my world! I was trying to tell you, but then you started talking about insane asylums, and how I somehow messed up your life. It made me so mad, and the magic just came exploding out of me. But I couldn’t control it, Jill, that’s the thing. I never meant to hurt you, or anyone. You have to believe me! I promise, magic is the most amazing thing in any world, ever! You just have to listen!”
My words were slurring together by the end, and Jilly kept shaking her head robotically. I started talking again, desperately.
“That’s where Harry is, at a school for magic! Imagine that, Jilly, a whole school for magic. I’m going next year, and my parents were wizards, too. I didn’t know until last summer, that’s why I was never around, and I’m sorry about that. I should have told you when I first found out but I couldn’t. They all made me promise to keep the secret. But I don’t care anymore! It shouldn’t matter.”
Somewhere in the middle of my rambling, Jilly ran away. She hitched her pink backpack up on here shoulder, and disappeared, still shaking her head and murmuring, “No, no, no,” to herself. I had never seen Jilly run so fast. She wasn’t a runner.
“The school is called Hogwarts,” I continued, not fully grasping that I was talking to myself. Maybe I was crazy, like Jilly said. Maybe every single person in the worlds was crazy. “It’s a castle, like in a fairytale. I think the whole thing is a fairytale. But I don’t know much more about the castle because Harry hasn’t written in a while. I know there’s a reason, so I’m not worried. Aunt P and Verno never told me I was magic. I think they’re scared. I would be, too, because apparently some lunatic tried to kill Harry when we were younger. No one ever told me what role I played in that story, but he must have been trying to kill me too, right? Why else would he have attacked me?
“I think Harry asked them not to tell me. It’s the sort of thing he would do, right? But I want to know, because what if this whole thing is my fault? I was only about four months old, but I must’ve done something. No one ever told me what, though. No one told me what Voldemort was doing at our house, or why Harry lived, or why I don’t have a scar like his. But I’m not supposed to know, right? Like I said, I’m not worried.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply, not quite sure what had just happened. My mind was fuzzy, full of unclear images, names and things and faces I couldn’t place.
When I opened my eyes again, I saw someone else disappearing over the hill, out of sight.
The mane of odd, bronze-streaked blonde hair that billowed out behind the person was oddly similar to that of Sherrie Parker.
Later that night, when I couldn’t sleep, I reached into my bag, pulled out Alice’s Adventure’s In Wonderland. I opened the front cover and began to read:
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book that her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, and what’s the use of a book Alice thought, without pictures or conversation?
I couldn’t say that I agreed with her. In that moment, I didn’t have any pictures or conversations to add to my Twenty Things notebook.
Twenty Things That Make the World Go 'Round by eva_writes
Chapter Notes: Wow... this chapter did take me a while, didn't it? I hope that didn't turn anyone off the story, because I think this is my best so far, and I know it's by far the longest. I also (finally) worked out my italics issues. Just an FYI: this is the last "introductory" chapter. I've set up the scene and the plot, and introduced all the characters that I will, so things are really going to start happening in chapter seven. Thanks to twilightHPgirl18 for beat-ing, and to everyone who reviewed. Enjoy!
Chapter Endnotes: Thanks for reading! Keep checking for updates, there's one coming soon.
_Eva_