Looking back, I would say that everything started to go wrong around the fourteenth of December. Sure, things were wrong before then, but I didn’t notice. I was too busy planning, convincing myself that I would be out of Little Whinging before the year was up. Unfortunately, when you spend all of your energy ignoring a problem, more arise very quickly.
Since the incident with Jilly, I hadn’t really given up on my Twenty Things, but I certainly wasn’t looking very hard. I wandered around, doing various things to keep my mind occupied, and for a long time I didn’t write anything in my notebook.
I had five days left, and every one of them mattered.
************************************************************************
It was too cold to breath. The teacher’s lips were a faint bluish color, and my skin was translucently pale. It was way too cold to move. Recess had been done away with; the last thing Headmistress Schnook needed was a bunch of frostbit kids. We were confined to the cafeteria, armed with blocks and thirty-six-piece puzzles. It was way, way too cold to pedal a squeaky, rusty bike two miles to school, going with the assumption that I wanted to keep all of my fingers and toes. I took the bus.
It was probably a major health risk. You know that cartoon, where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck are fighting over whether it’s duck season or rabbit season? Well, there was no debating at Stonewall Primary: Kata Season all the way. I was beginning to sympathize with Joan of Arc, though I wasn’t sure if she was a witch, or just had some freaky religious parasite in her head.
Anyway. Bus. Cold. Ostracized.
We sixth graders claimed the back row. Spitballs soared over cracked leather seats, and I stayed in the cocoon of a huge jacket I’d found balled up in the attic, probably Dudley’s from when he didn’t have to have his clothes specially tailored. My thin, worn sweater wasn’t cutting it. I was forgetting what it felt like to have feet.
There was a certain social code as to who sat with who on Ms. Greffet’s bus. Winnie and Tonya/Tammie/Danielle sat together because… well, they were them. Sherrie (who might have heard) and Melanie usually paired up because no one else really wanted to hold more than a two-word conversation with either. Kyle and Marty. Pete-From-The-Other-Class and Shane. Gemma ‘n’ Emma, the twins. I sat alone. I was the outcast. I was the village leper.
I was trying very hard to convince myself that I didn’t mind much.
Even with the heaters humming and roaring, I could hear them laughing, too loudly for it to really be funny. I wondered when everyone got so manipulative. No one was like this last year. Last year, everyone was your friend.
I was pretty sure they’d all held a secret meeting and decided to totally and completely freeze me out. No one even looked at me. As soon as I sat down at a lunch table, everyone else got up. The nametag from my desk went missing, and I found it balled up in the girls’ lavatory trashcan. They wanted to take away my name, make me an unfortunate background image. I wanted to rip their throats out. We were on good terms, considering.
Alec beaned me with a spitball. How can spit not freeze in this weather?
Whatever. I did card tricks in my mind and reviewed my newest plan, Operation G.O.O.L.W.B.C.B.A.T.G.T.H.A.P.E.W. silently. Tell you about that one later.
The bus shuddered to a stop in front of the front doors, and the real test of character began. Everyone thinks it’s cool to sit in the back of the bus until you’ve got first graders beating you to the heated halls of Little Whinging Primary. The sixth graders stormed forward. We will exit first, thank you very much. Most of the younglings learned their lesson early, and the ones that didn’t now preferred to carpool.
Slush crunched under my boots as I hopped down from the bus, and I almost lost my footing on the gray ice, slipping and grabbing the sleeve of Alec’s coat for support. He shook me off like a rag doll. I glared and scooped up some snow with my mittens, which were really gardening gloves. Here’s how it went: Snow, crunch, crunch, cold, wind-up, heave, splat, giggle, curse.
By the time he turned around, I was safe behind a brick pillar. He started to come after me, but then realized that fighting back would include acknowledging my existence. Duh. His eyes penetrated the pillar and glared at me, silently wishing me nothing but unhappiness. I stared back evenly. He retreated, and I sighed.
Suffice it to say that I was not having a good week. I barely slept, and when I did, I dreamt of Sherrie (who might have heard), a knowing little smile of her face, throwing green notebooks at me. She transformed into an owl, scratched me with her talons and hooted, “Your fault! Your fault! Bad Kata! Your fault!”
I was getting messed up in the head.
The Headmistress had taken a “personal interest” in what happened with Jilly. In the first round of Spanish Inquisition, I gave her innocent smiles and tried to deny everything. The second, I made snide comments and counted the ceiling tiles. In the third, I didn’t speak. I believe the Guardians were contacted.
So, yeah. A generally horrible week.
I ducked out from behind the pillar and trudged along, fully aware that my attitude didn’t help anything. What did anyone expect of me? They were the ones that kept reminding me of my age, like at any minute I would stop and slap my head and say, “Really? Only ten? Completely slipped my mind!” But I didn’t feel ten: I felt like a little girl who had been brought up a nobody, informed that she was a somebody, dumped by two worlds, and laden with her parents’ deaths. Pre-adolescence sucked.
Trudge, trudge, trudge. Everyone else was inside now.
Alec hated me. Jilly hated me. Winnie hated me. Heck, even Sherrie (who might have heard) probably hated me, and Sherrie (who might have heard) still didn’t know the name of our school. I couldn’t face Mr. Mendota, knowing that I was all but done searching for the Twenty Freaking Things. Two more steps, and I reached my breaking point: we were scheduled to visit Mrs. Bridge and her Crayons of Destiny.
Nope. No way, I thought. Sorry, God/Buddha/Allah, whichever one of you
has it out for me. I’m dodging you for this round. I set my jaw and turned resolutely around, walking quickly but surprisingly calmly. Emotions battled in my head, and I ignored all of them until the sidewalk ended and I turned left.
Freedom was beautiful.
The initial effect of skipping school was so elating that I almost didn’t feel the cold. My boots snapped in and out of snow drifts quickly, a brisk trot formed by independence that couldn’t be dampened by snow. Where to go? Quik Mart, Our Lady of the People… the possibilities were semi-endless! I could even go home, sneak through the window, try to sleep.
Step, step, step. Bird’s wings on my back.
The adrenaline slowly wore off as I wandered around, trying to hold onto the pleasure of this small victory. The cold found its way into my skin, and I vibrated with shivers. Maybe I should turn around. It had only been ten minutes. It was a stupid idea, after all. Skipping school. Childish. Overrated. I scowled.
I huffed and walked resolutely in another direction, any direction. The cold was nearly unbearable, like my very bones were chilled and my skin had hardened into ice. After a rumble from the sky, frigid rain began to drop against the concrete, and I shivered convulsively.
And then I stopped in my tracks. Hurrying along the side of the icy road, directly across the street from me, was a figure in a salmon pink overcoat and a neat, lace-trimmed hat pulled over her hair-sprayed ‘do.
Aunt P.
No wonder she didn’t recognize me: my thick, tomato-red hair was stuffed under a hat and inside my jacket, I was so small I probably looked like a navy coat bobbing down Main Street at a decreasing pace. And Aunt P. wasn’t one to notice details.
She disappeared into the local grocery store, Dierberg’s, her boots squeaking on the rubber mat as the automatic doors whooshed open for her. Through the clear glass windows, I saw her pick up a basket and pace down to the produce section.
I followed, luxuriating in the warm air as it touched my skin. Breathing shallowly like a fish, I gulped as much hated air down as I could, shed five-pounds worth of winter gear, and crept along the aisles like spy. I paused briefly to mock myself, looking at what I had come to. Ditching school and stalking my aunt in her ho-hum life. Pathetic. Tempting, as a memory of the cold invaded my mind.
She plucked two apples from a bin, said hello to Ms. Winch, and made her way to the junk food. Figured. Dudley was coming home for the holidays. We needed to stock up.
Following Aunt P was even stupider than skipping school. I found the Foreign Dishes section, where she would be sure not to venture, and plopped down, leaning against a display of Chow Mien.
Dear Friend,
I’m running out of paper in this notebook, but I’ve got PLENTY in the other one. I haven’t got a clue what to do there.
Everything’s screwed up. I need to get to Hogwarts fast. Pronto. Ex-treem-ily Quick-ily. School is boring, but skipping is worse. Ignoring Aunt P is probably wrong, but the woman is dull as dishwater. I’m tired.
Any other complaints, you ask. Tons. Wanna hear ‘em? No, you say. It’ll be
“What a storm!” a deep, half-recognized voice exclaimed. I jumped out of my skin and looked up in alarm.
“Boo,” the voice said, smirking.
The first thing I noticed, naturally, was that it was Mr. Millerton, and that he was sitting down next to me, looking committed to being there for a while. But the second thing was that he was sporting the weirdest assortment of clothes I had ever seen, and I had seen Mrs. Figg, my sometimes-sane neighbor.
Despite the cold, he wore lime green shorts with purple stitching (showcasing a pair of long, hairy legs), a light blue oxford shirt with a red plaid tie, short argyle socks, running shoes that looked brand new, and a cummerbund. His short dark hair was all but hidden under a fedora covered with smiley face stickers, and he reeked of cheap cologne. I realized I had never seen him in anything except the rumpled suit he wore to Our Lady of the People.
“What did you do to piss off your stylist?” I asked in surprise, holding back a laugh.
“Is that how you greet people?” he asked back, obviously offended. Which made me want to laugh harder. “You know, you’re not much better in that area yourself.”
He had a point. My clothes were slightly mismatched, but at least it was deliberate. I’d been reading fashion magazines laying around the house, and had been trying to copy the looks.
I shrugged, and then narrowed my eyes. “Are you following me?” I asked suspiciously.
He considered for a second, and then answered, “Yes.”
I rolled my eyes. “As long as you’re honest,” I muttered, shutting my notebook and sliding it into the front pocket of my backpack.
He eyed it with something that might have been interest… except it was too greedy, too wrongly curious. “Another drawing?” he asked eagerly.
“No.”
He chuckled a little and leaned back in his seat, eyeing me. “As long as you’re honest,” he quoted.
Something was off, and I couldn’t exactly place it. . “You seem… different,” I observed, not entirely sure what I meant. His voice was gruffer, with a strange edge, and he wasn’t giving me any hard-to-interpret lessons about life. He’d seemed so much like Mr. Mendota the lat time we’d talked, and now he could be any guy off the street, except for his odd outfit.
He gave me a half-bitter smile. “I’m not that good of an actor, am I?” he grunted with no more rhythm in his voice.
I was completely lost. “What?”
He shrugged, looking slightly pleased with himself. “There was some stuff I needed to find out about you,” he explained, “and I thought it would be easier if I mimicked someone you look up to. Namely, Robert Mendota.”
The fact that Mr. Mendota had a name threw me for a second, but I recovered quickly and defended myself. “I do not look up to Mr. Mendota.”
He sighed in amusement. “I tell you I’m stalking you, I tell you our last conversation was all about me getting some information… and all you’re interested in is denying that you actually care about someone.”
I tucked a curl of hair behind my right ear and did not respond, mostly because I didn’t have a clue what was going on, and I wasn’t about to let him know that.
“S’what I thought,” he rumbled smugly. He removed a pack of spearmint gum from his pocket and offered me a piece.
“I don’t take candy from strangers,” I snapped, and turned away, waiting for him to leave. No surprise, he didn’t. “Go away,” I ordered, glaring.
“Nope,” he chuckled crustily, ripping the paper off a gum and shoving it in his mouth, “This is the fun part, Potter. I have to”” He cut off and removed a worn, wrinkled sheet of paper from his shorts pocket and unfolded it, clearing his throat with mock formality-- “tell you where you should be. That is, what you should be when you grow up. If you grow up.”
I decided to ignore that last bit. “What?” I asked yet again. “You don’t have to tell me anything, especially what I’m gonna be when I grow up. I’m ten.”
“Yeah, I know,” he muttered, examining the sheet intensely. “It’s part of the job. Would you call yourself a people person?”
“Would you call yourself a monkey?” I shot back sarcastically. “And what job? Our Lady of the People? That’s not a job.”
“Oh, it’s a job,” he corrected, not sounding like he believed it himself. “Or, at least, that’s what they told me when I got picked for it. I help people make choices. How about animals? Like working with animals?”
I shrugged and answered, “They’re okay. I’ve gotten bitten by my aunt’s creepy dog Ripper too many times to be an animal lover, so I guess no. And, isn’t the whole point of the Lady of the People that you don’t have to make any choices? No religion, nothing serious. It’s a fake church for people who haven’t got anything going for them. And me.”
“Don’t talk to me about it,” he growled. “Seems pointless, if you ask me. I didn’t want this job anyway. Are you good with numbers?”
I fidgeted. My current maths grade was… low. “No. How’d you wind up in a job you don’t like?”
I didn’t care much, but I wanted to keep him talking. The difference between this Mr. Millerton and the one I had met a week ago was so profound… There had to be a reason beyond what he told me.
“Lost a coin toss with a mate, Fletcher. All they told me was that I help people make the choices they don’t want to face. Supposed to be a life-changing thing. I could have my own television show,” he mused, smiling at the ceiling.
“And me?” I asked, pulling him from his reverie about mythical spotlights and prime time. “What’s my choice?”
“Nothing,” he grunted, and I felt a little let down, not quite sure why. Did I want to have problems worthy of a television show?
“Then why are you asking me questions?” I demanded hotly.
“Honestly? You entertain me,” he said with a low chuckle. My eyes narrowed, and I grabbed my backpack and pile of padding, shrugging on the coat and hat.
“Leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“School makes you smarter.”
“Shut it.”
The next day, I was back.
The school auditorium was wide and open, with faded, red velour seats that creaked when you sat down, and sticky, pockmarked floors. The stage stood, elevated at the front, and the podium that Headmistress Schnook used everyday at assembly had been pushed off to the side to make room for a fake castle tower. Abigail, donning a blue fez with a stringy tassel cocked over her left ear, peeked out from behind a turret, doing her best to avoid the spotlight. Winnie, her curly hair in pigtails, shouted out lines with unnecessary gusto, and Alec scuffed the toe of his shoe against the wood floorboards, looking like he had as much of a brain as his character. Liam and Brady slouched beside him.
Me? I waited backstage, eyeing the sandbags over my head and preparing to drop the curtain as soon as Robin collapsed to the ground shrieking, and Kyle seized her broomstick.
That’s right. A witch. See the irony?
My class was performing The Wizard of Oz in the infamous Winter Exhibition. Basically, it was a chance for parents to come and watch their kids do something completely un-school-related on stage. The kindergarteners were singing a song about friendship, the third graders had a short skit planned about “doing the right thing”, and Mr. Mendota’s sixth grade class had chosen to act out the climactic scene from Oz, in which the witch dies and Dorothy is saved. Supposed to be a “good triumphs over evil” thingy.
I never liked the Wizard of Oz, not as much as I was growing to like Alice in Wonderland, though the stories were similar. Dorothy gets hit on the head by a window, has a weird dream, and learns an important lesson about how it’s stupid to run away from home when there’s a tornado outside. The only interesting parts were the hot air balloon and the wizard who wasn’t really a wizard.
“I’m melting! I’m melting!” Robin bellowed, the effect somewhat ruined by how she pronounced each syllable of her lines with great care.
“Quick! Get the broomstick!” Winnie shrieked, facing her invisible audience and giving them a winning smile. Kyle jumped at his cue, but recovered and grabbed the hockey stick Robin held out towards him. Her cape billowed around her, and I understood why it had to be seventeen sizes too big. She lay on the ground, her eyes closed and her tongue lolling out unconvincingly, and the folds of black silk made her look like a puddle of melted witch with a head sticking out.
I tugged on the rope, too hard, and the curtain rushed down and slammed heavily on the stage floor. Winnie jumped back, and I hid behind a chair from last year’s Spring Musical, giggling. Everyone was convinced I was a serial murderer, or something.
“Curtain, Kata!” Mr. Mendota shouted from the seats. I obediently pulled on the ropes, making the curtain rise one slow foot at a time. You wouldn’t think a sheet of stained velvet would be so heavy, but it was.
Our teacher climbed the steps to the stage just as the curtain clicked into place in the rafters above. His navy beret, usually reserved for art class, sat perched on his head, and his rectangular glasses were low on the bridge of his nose. I was waiting for the goatee and puffy pants tucked into socks.
“Great work, everyone,” he praised, smiling at Robin and motioning that it was all right for her to stand now. “It’s really coming along. Flying Monkeys, don’t be afraid to come a little more forward,” he added, craning his neck to see Shane, Derek, Ann, and Abigail, all of whom were behind cardboard turrets, and Marty and Laura, who were off stage altogether. Almost everyone had been cast as a monkey or a guard member. Jilly, Melanie, and Roger stood like sentries with fake spears, and that just left me, Oscar, Sherrie (who might have heard), Caleb, and Gemma ‘n’ Emma, the twins, as stagehands.
“See you tomorrow!” Mr. Mendota cried, and I realized he had been talking for a while, maybe even directly to me. I followed the hoard of my classmates to the back row of seats, where our backpacks and coats were scattered. Humming tunelessly to myself, I tugged on my coat and pulled my bag over my shoulder, stepping out into the hallway/fray. As usual, people were everywhere, running in every direction with backpacks bouncing on their shoulders. I reached for the pack of gum in my pocket and came up empty.
Frowning, I patted my back pocket, which also held no gum. I bit my lip resolutely and turned back toward the auditorium’s double doors.
When I entered, though, I forgot all about spearmint.
I had never been in the auditorium alone before, and the silence hit me like a tangible sack of bricks: hard and immediately. I was afraid to let the door swing shut, scared to even take a step forward, because I was sure that either one would sound like an explosion.
“Oh,” I breathed, but it didn’t shatter the quiet. My tiny voice bounced around the room, ricocheting against walls, and clattering back down to me. Experimentally, I released my grip on the door, and it swung shut with a spectacular boom, shooting waves of vibrating sound out into the hall.
My sneakers snapped against the sticky ground as I slowly marched to the front of the room. The stage suddenly had an irresistible pull, and I wanted to stand on it and look out at the empty seats. I wanted an audience that loved me, that would think I was the best thing they’d ever seen.
Slowly but eagerly, I climbed the steps.
The lights on the stage had been dimmed, but not put out, and I found the center of the spotlight, just off the middle of the stage. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and spread my arms out.
This place… This was real magic. It was so easy to forget everything about myself, who and where I was, when there was a stage and a light and a purpose that everyone knew. The silence wrapped around my skin and I felt like flying. Wizards have broomsticks. They have Nimbuses in store windows. I took a deep breath.
When I opened my eyes, the place had transformed. Instead of discoloured velvet, the curtain was made from golden silk, and it gathered at either side of my stage with smooth, red-tasseled ropes. The spotlight was bright again, and comfortable on my skin, illuminating me, making me a pretty, young girl with shiny, blood-red hair and round eyes. Where before the auditorium floor had been sticky and flat, it was now polished and rising smoothly into a curved amphitheater shape. The seats were packed, full of fashionably dressed people, smiling brightly, waving their hands, screaming my name.
“Kata! Kata! Kata! Kata Potter!”
An announcer’s deep voice boomed over the crowd’s cries. I gave a small smile as he rumbled, “Ladies and gentlemen of Little Whinging, I give you: the one!… The only!… Katarine-Natasha Potter!”
They erupted. I waved.
For a few seconds, I let myself bask in the glow of the spotlight. My dumpy winter coat was a lacey pink princess gown, it did not clash with my hair, and I understood why every little girl wants to be a famous singer: this feeling was programmed into their minds. Who didn’t want this? Who…
I blinked, lowering my arms, my lips coming open a little.
Who didn’t want magic?
I was not in a magnificent golden amphitheater. There was no crowd, no announcer, and no screams cheering me on, praising me just for being me. I tilted my head to one side curiously, not really sure if I wanted to cry.
I jumped as a sound of real applause reached my ears. Spinning around so fast that I almost fell over, I saw Mr. Mendota standing calmly behind me, leaning against the same turret Abigail had used as a hiding spot. He smiled warmly and clapped his hands slowly.
“Miss Potter,” he began, chuckling. “You were simply born for the theater.”
I blushed, and tried to remember how to smile.
From behind his back, he pulled the small cardboard shoebox he kept his chess set in. “Rematch?”
Ten minutes later, we were set up in the middle of the stage, the spotlight turned off altogether. He had three of my pawns and a knight, and I had his bishop.
“Plans for the holidays?” he asked lightly, eyeing me while I made a bold and hardly subtle attempt at his rook.
I considered whether to tell him what I actually planned to be doing, and decided it couldn’t hurt. “I’m applying to a school up north. I’m gonna see if I can start this term, instead of waiting for next year.”
“Oh,” he said flatly, nodding. His expression was politely interested.
“Yeah. So, I might not be coming back,” I warned him, waiting for a reaction.
“That’s too bad.”
We played in silence, both losing a couple pieces, before I spoke again.
“Mr. Mendota, I… When you… What I mean is…” I didn’t know what to say. “What are your Twenty Things?”
He didn’t seem surprised. “I can’t tell you that.”
My eyes snapped up from the board. “Why not?” I demanded angrily.
He sighed. “You may recall that this is an independent project, Kata. You’ve got to find them on your own.”
I gave him an exasperated look. “I’m not asking you to help me find them! I’m just asking what yours are!”
He shook his head. “No. Sorry. I can’t help you.”
I bit my lip. “Whatever,” I grumbled.
“You know, you’re only one of three students who hasn’t turned theirs in yet,” he said, an odd look on his face. “I mean... I expected that you… No, never mind.”
I didn’t care what he had been going to say. “Who are the others?” I asked eagerly.
“I can’t tell you that, either, it’s confiden--”
“Who are the others?”
He huffed. “In this class, Jilly Hanks, Sherrie Parker, and you have not yet found the Twenty Things That Make the World Go ‘Round.”
I nodded slowly. I couldn’t say I was surprised about Sherrie (who might have heard)… she was just weird. But Jilly? Jilly seemed like she had it all figured out. I’d thought she would be first in line to show everyone how perfect she was, how wonderful her Twenty Things were.
“What were you thinking about?” he asked, suddenly. “You were onstage, and I believe you were trying to recreate an announcer’s voice, but then you stopped, and you looked like someone had broken your heart.”
I gave him a look. Broken my heart? What? “I…” I muttered, before clearing my throat and continuing in a stronger voice. “I don’t have a broken heart. I’ve never been in love.”
“Oh, all kinds of things can break hearts,” Mr. Mendota explained knowledgeably. “It’s true, people often associate broken hearts with failed romances, but it doesn’t have to work that way. A dream, perhaps, that didn’t come true. Epiphanies, those are very efficient when it comes to heart-breaking. Some combination, in your case, is my guess.”
I looked at centre stage wistfully. “I was thinking about magic,” I murmured. “I was thinking that I know why some people believe in it… and some don’t.”
“Hmm,” he said disapprovingly. I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t believe in magic,” he explained.
I choked on a piece of gum from the pack I’d finally found hiding in my shoe. It bobbed near the edge of my throat. “W-what?” I stammered. “You… you don’t believe in magic?”
“I don’t believe in anything that could have any control over my destiny,” he informed me with a stubborn voice and a shrug. “I want to believe I have that power.”
“There is no destiny!” I objected.
“You’ve got some pretty strong opinions for a ten-year-old,” he observed, once again knocking my pride down a few notches at the mention of my age.
“What about wands, and cauldrons and spells? I demanded. He shook his head. “Goblins! Goblins are real. They run banks. And ogres and hags, and people really do use newts’ eyes and rats’ tails… and they wear robes, and those hats, those pointy hats? They come in a zillion different colours, and…”
This was Jilly all over again, but for crying out loud, Mr. Mendota? People like him had to believe in magic! People like him had artsy wives named Cinnamon, and drove VW vans and listened to strange music about the young French girl who began to fight and die. It was insane for him not to believe in magic.
He was laughing at me. “Do you have experience with these matters?” he asked.
I clammed up. “No.”
He shook his head and laughed warily. “I’m never going to get a straight answer from you, am I?”
I had some pretty good sarcastic replies lined up, but he chose that moment to sweep my king off the board with his…
No.
“Pawn!” I shrieked indignantly. “I was just checkmated by a freaking pawn?”
He grinned. “It would appear so.”
“That was low!” I shouted, my pride seriously wounded. “You distract me with broken hearts and magic, and then…” I trailed off in a huff.
But, through it all, I realized that I wasn’t actually upset. How odd. Some lingering feeling of the stage was clamped in my stomach, and I felt… happy. With a lost game, and no friends, and a teacher that didn’t believe in magic, I felt weirdly perfect in that moment.
I waited for it to go away. I wasn’t sure if I liked feeling happy very much. Being happy was just letting the world line you up for disappointment.
Mr. Mendota appraised my expression. “Sorry about that,” he apologized as I calmed down. I surprised myself by smiling.
“S’okay,” I answered with a shrug. “I just thought we were done with the whole character building thing.”
“Yes, but I did promise to teach you the secret to beating me at chess,” he reminded me. The memory seemed foggy, distant. It had been too close to Jilly’s accident for me to have much time to dwell on it.
I waited.
“Sacrifice,” he announced smugly.
I blinked. “Sorry?”
“Sacrifice. That’s how you win at chess. You see, Kata, you’re going about it all wrong. You try to protect all of your pieces, except to do that you may have to use one piece to protect another piece that is supposed to be protecting a third piece. It’s a vicious circle. A bad idea. You have to accept that, sometimes, you’re going to lose men. Chess is a battle. Not everyone survives a battle.”
It seemed to me that Mr. Mendota had a remarkable ability to make something small mean something really, really huge without altering his tone of voice at all. I considered his solution, and thought there was no way I could follow that advice. I couldn’t let my chessmen die, couldn’t let them be cut down in battle for the greater good of the game. That was warped.
I was still happy.
It was infuriating and puzzling, at the very least. Of all the reasons I had to be unhappy… But I was so close. Harry was coming home for Christmas, and I could explain the situation. I needed to go to school with him. I was reasonably smart; I could handle catching up on the work. Believe me, I had it all figured out. And, sitting there, in the auditorium of Stonewall Primary, playing chess with a teacher that didn’t think my powers were real, chewing gum and forgetting what kind of person I was… I let myself feel happy. I let myself have a moment.
“I’ll leave you alone to ponder that,” Mr. Mendota announced quietly. I jumped, and realized I had been sitting still for a while, twisting a pawn round in my fingers. I was zoning out so much lately. It always surprised me when people started to talk.
He packed his chess set, but when I offered him the pawn, he hesitated. “You keep it,” he told me. “A reminder. Sacrifice.”
I rolled my eyes, enjoying how weightless I felt in my reassurance that everything was going to work out soon.
When the door swung shut behind him, I wandered over to the piano on the side of the stage and pounded out Chopsticks, the only song I knew.
I put the pawn in my jeans pocket.
Between the stage, the approaching holidays, and the fact that when I woke up four days later, fluffy snow coated the ground instead of gray mush, my good mood lasted awhile. My Twenty Things were back on. Scribbled words and sketches covered almost the entire east wall of my small bedroom, and Marc helped me compile them all into a list, which she laminated in the Quik Mart break room when Crazy Ben wasn’t looking. I almost gave Verno a coronary when I hopped down the stairs, snagged a muffin from the table, and walked lightly out the door, singing ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ in my horrendous, off-key voice.
It was Christmastime, and I loved Christmas, always had. Hated winter, yes, but Christmas was like a warm patch in a frigid, barren season. Holly garlands were twisted around staircases, red velvet bows set against the clock in Town Square, random carolers placed on street corners, smiling widely as they serenaded busy shoppers. Caravans of cars made their way out of town, driving to a bigger city that actually had a mall. I believed in Father Christmas.
Turned out, Mr. Mendota was also a fan in the holiday season. He just wasn’t allowed to sponsor any one holiday, being a public school teacher, so Menorahs, Christmas trees, and whatever those Kwanzaa-candleholder things are called turned up among the globe and encyclopedias. Somehow, everything smelled like gingerbread. Ms. Bridge taught us how to put some paint inside a glass orb, and shake it to create swirl patterns.
It was surreal, how quickly everything had changed. I’d gone from sullen recluse to relatively happy Christmas elf in less than a week. In a fit of insanity, I even stole some paper chains from the attic and strung the around my room, and dug a pair of gold buckles out of Aunt P.’s sewing kit, Super Gluing them to my rain boots.
It was Friday, the last day before the last weekend of the first term. Monday, December 19th, was the last official day of term, but it was mainly devoted to Holiday parties and, at night, the Winter Exhibition, so in my mind I was already free.
I waved merrily to the bus driver when he dropped me off at the top of Privet Drive, and when I arrived home there was an entirely impolite note telling me that Aunt P. and Verno had gone to pick Dudley up from school, they were staying a couple nights in London but would be back in time for their annual Christmas Show-Off Party, and to stay out of their fridge.
I ate a Pop-Tart from the pantry instead.
I left my crumbs rather obviously on the countertop and decided that under no uncertain terms could I sit here while the gleaming, untouched snow beckoned from the backyard. Dudley and his friends would wreck it in no time. I pulled on too-big snow pants that had previously belonged to Mrs. Next Door’s daughter, tugging on my coat, a thin scarf, and the garden gloves/mittens, and tromped out into the yard, trying to touch as little snow as possible.
I had no idea where Dudley’s sled was, and I wasn’t about to venture up to the attic, so I rolled down the hill a few times. Too dizzying. It was eerily silent. The snow seemed to create a tingling sound in the air, and my wet scarf smelled like first grade. I lay quietly on the ground, eyes turned to the sky, for a long time, long enough that snow started to fall again. It stung my sensitive skin. I wondered how long it would take the snow to bury me.
The wet snow seeped through my snow pants and through my jeans too, until the skin of my legs was numb. I’d lost all the feeling in my hands, and clumpy snow stuck to my hat. My hair was spread out around me, staining the snow like blood.
Eventually, my thoughts ebbed. I felt my pulse in my neck beating strongly. My breath was slow and almost silent, stirring the cold air. The most peculiar feeling came over me: I felt like I could look at my life objectively, think things I felt all the time without really offering any real thought. My mind was open wide, a basin for the world to slowly trickle into, to crawl around curiously and examine my feelings. I let go of my body, and soon I couldn’t feel any of it (though, in retrospect, that may have been from the cold). I was a tiny, orb of light, floating without senses. I didn’t see, or hear, or feel. I simply was.
I’d never understood the term out-of-body experience before, but I was petty sure I was having one. Here, in the snow, soaking wet, I tested this new happiness, seeing how far I could push it. I hovered. I thought I knew what it felt like to be born.
I don’t have a birth certificate. Harry might, but Aunt P. never showed it to anyone because it included ‘blood status’ and the fingerprints wiggled. But there’s no record anywhere that I was born. I could have just dropped out of the sky and tacked onto some other family… some other family that ended up dying because I didn’t die first.
I wanted to cry. Instead, I opened my eyes, realising with a slight shock that they were closed, and propped myself up on my elbows, blinking blearily, like I’d just woken up.
Snow was still falling, dusting over my coat. It fell off in little drifts when I moved. Icicles hung from the trees… very oddly shaped icicles, too. And they stuck straight up. Huh. Maybe I had gone to sleep and entered Wonderland, a strange wintry Wonderland that Alice hadn’t seen. Her Wonderland had been in the summer…
My icicle moved. I frowned, stood up, and slowly walked a few steps forward. My boots crunched in the snow, and I gasped loudly, covering my mouth with snow-caked hands. My heart raced, stopped beating then picked up again.
Because icicles don’t have wings. Icicles don’t move. And I’m not sure what goes on in Wonderland, but in Little Whinging, icicles don’t glare at you with large, amber eyes, hoot softly in annoyance, and ruffle their feathers.
“Hedwig!”