Which Witch Switch - Julie Steimle (book series for 10 year olds .txt) 📗

PE with Mason

 

A foreboding sensation had settled in my stomach, and it was getting hard to focus. I nearly staggered to the girls’ locker room where I had to meet up with the coach and purchase the school issue gym clothes and a lock so I could dress out for the class.

After handing the coach my schedule and getting my things, I found my locker then started to undress. I don’t know how many eyes stared at me as I slathered on more sun block before putting on the white tee, the yellow shorts and the borrowed shoes, but with one sweeping orange-eyed glare to tell them to knock it off they all looked away.

Well, not all of them.

“Is that a tattoo?” Amy Paige asked me, peering at my back just as I tucked in my shirt.

Pulling it down, I glanced over my shoulder, wondering what she was talking about. Then it hit me.

Chuckling, I shook my head. “No. Those are birthmarks.”

“Shaped like batwings?” Amy asked, staring at me incredulously.

Another girl peered down the back of my shirt, even as I pulled my long black hair up into a ponytail.

“Is that unusual?” I asked, knowing the answer but playing dumb.

Amy gave me a look and shook her head. “You’re creepy.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been called that before.”

And I stood up.

They watched me.

“What are you, a vampire?” Amy asked following me.

I halted, blinking as if thinking about it. “Of course not. Who ever heard of a vampire that can walk around in broad daylight?”

“I read about one,” one girl said.

Snorting, I shook my head at her with a wry grin. “Probably from a comic book.”

Several people snickered, though I noticed one girl wearing these fashionable glasses peering down the row of lockers at me.

“Hey, there’s a fellow Californian,” Amy broke out, pointing right at that girl. “Jessy-pooh. Come meet Eve. I’m sure you two would have lots to talk about.”

The girl Amy was teasing had imps that shouted to stake me. I stared at them and then peered at her. Odds were, she was someone I was supposed to know or get to know. Like with those other three boys, they had names I recognized and faces I felt was urgent to memorize.

But as I looked at her, like the boy with the shrunken head, she felt her age—around sixteen. Still, as she stood there, perhaps deciding whether to take the bait Amy was dangling in front of her, I got the impression that she was not a normal teenager. For starters, she also was rubbing her palm as if it hurt.

She walked up to me, examining my face. “Eve McAllister?”

Amy and the rest gasped, withdrawing from us, though peering at us to estimate any similarity. “You know her?”

I blinked, ignoring them and answering the girl. “Yeah, but…how do you know me? I don’t know you.”

More gasps.

The girl bit her lip, obviously choosing her words carefully before speaking. She said, “I know of you. What are you doing here?”

Looking around at the locker room, I then shrugged. “PE.”

She rolled her eyes. “No. I mean in Middleton Village.”

“Oh, that.” I scratched the top of my head, looking around again. “To be quiet frank, I really don’t know. Aunt Margaret and Danna say I’m here to visit. But that is so vague, isn’t it?”

Nodding to me in agreement, the girl took a step back. “You really shouldn’t be here. Michael said you wouldn’t come. That you didn’t want to.”

I blinked, staring right at her. “Pardon?”

Moaning this girl put her hand to her head. I saw a flash of light on her right palm.

That very moment a leaping sensation of terror swept over me. I staggered back from her. Grabbing my chest, wondering why my heart was beating so fast, I shook my head. “Who are you?”

“What?” the girl replied looking just as surprised at me. “Don’t you know?”

Everything was silent. That was when I realized that every girl in the locker room was staring at her and me. I blinked, set my hand to my head and tried to focus my thoughts.

“Look, I—”

“What are all you doing standing around here?” The PE coach rushed in, shouting at us. “Go out to your classes if you are dressed!”

Everyone scattered, though I stood there wondering what was wrong with my head. I just couldn’t think straight. With a sigh, I turned to follow the coach so I would know where my class was. That girl followed me.

“Are you feeling all right?”

I halted, but kept my distance from her. “No. I’m not. My head feels fuzzy. I can hardly focus. And you freak me out, but I don’t know why.”

She stood there staring at me, but the stare was a familiar look—like she was trying to figure me out with a great deal more compassion than most people gave me. It made me think of a friend whose face I could almost see, but her name was as missing as if she were a Jane Doe.

Jane.

I remembered something. I lifted my eyes to this girl, but her name was not Jane. I didn’t know who she was but the revelation was so clear to me that I had to share it with her.

“Jane.” I breathed hard, grinning yet somehow winded. “My best friend’s name is Jane.”

That girl blinked at me, stepping closer with concern. “Ok. You remember your friend. Do you remember how you got here?”

Blinking, I tried to picture how I ended up in some weird town I didn’t know, and I pictured Jane sitting with me on the school gym floor painting a banner. There were others with us but their names were lost to my memory. “I was—”

“Both of you, to class!” The gym coach pointed the way out, her glare fixed more on the other girl than on me.

The girl made a face at the coach with clear dislike.

“And don’t drag your feet, Jessica Mason,” the coach added.

Jessica Mason. The name rang in my head. I turned to look at the girl, taking in all of her face. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Fashionable glasses. A slight tan. Average in almost every way. Neither ugly nor very pretty. Very likeable, though I could sense the coach didn’t like her at all. The coach’s imps were shouting for her to give Jessica detention.

Jessica huffed and took hold of my arm, though as she dragged me out I noticed the coach smile with a devious leer at the pair of us. I didn’t like it.

When we were outside Jessica said, “Look. You don’t want to be here. Sneak out of here and call your parents. I’m sure they’re worried about you.”

“My parents?” I immediately felt dizzy, the impressions of my parents coming to my head.

“Hey! You two! Hurry it up!” the other coach outside shouted at us.

Jessica dragged me out farther, whispering to me. “Goodness sakes, they really worked on you. Michael said you were devoted to your family. So did Mr. Deacon. If you have forgotten them then something is really wrong.”

My family. I tried to think of them but the memory block I was having was strongest there. I practically fell over from dizziness.

“Is she ok?” Someone shouted. People were running over to me. “Mason! What happened?”

“I don’t know. She just blacked out.” Jessica’s heart jumped, pounding in actual worry over me.

“She has a condition,” Amy said somewhere in the back of the crowd.

“What did you do to her?” someone else said, his imps shouting to tag on an epithet such as ‘nerd’, though Jessica was no nerd. Several of their imps were screaming for them to mock that girl. I heard a few of them actually being voiced. “Four-eyes.”

My anger must have cleared my head because I stood up and clenched my fists. “Stop that!”

Everyone hopped back.

I put myself between Jessica and her classmates. “Quit picking on her! What did she ever do to you?”

The crowd went silent. Even their imps had gone quiet. Then they started up again, echoed by Amy’s voice.

“It looks like the California girls have bonded.” Her voice had a sneer I really didn’t like. I reminded me of someone, though I couldn’t remember who.

I lifted up my chin as I took a step towards Amy. “Well, they wish we all could be California girls.”

Several of our classmates moaned, though Amy backed off right away, reading well that I would smack her if she got any sassier.

Jessica broke into a laugh.

I turned to look at her and saw her grinning at me, shaking her head as our coach beckoned us to hurry up and get in line for our calisthenics.

Since we were both in the same class and both had last names that started with M, we sat in the same row. That made it easy for us to talk in whispers.

“Are you feeling better now?” Jessica asked as we started into sit-ups.

Shrugging first, I folded my arms across my chest and went into the repetitions. “Not really. But some things are clearer. I feel like I’m in a fog.”

She sat up and then went back down again, grunting. “And you don’t remember at all how you got here?”

I shook my head as I sat up with very little effort. Going back down I replied, “I just remember waking up in this old fashioned house with these four women greeting me at breakfast.”

“No talking!” the coach shouted at us.

Both of us clammed up and finished our exercises. He then had us run around the track twice, and then we divided into teams to play basketball. I had hoped I could have been on Jessica’s team so we could talk more, but the coach separated us. So I ended up playing on Amy’s team instead. About halfway through the class hour my team played Jessica’s team, but even then we did not get the chance to really talk, both of us kept busy.

Jessica was an average player. Though, as I competed against her, I noticed that she was very healthy and fast. Her aim was good, but her dribbling and passing wasn’t really all that great. In fact, Amy teased the other team (especially Jessica) when I kept making baskets, maneuvering around them faster than any human really could go. Amy even cheered me. Yet watching Jessica, I could tell she was worried.

“We’re number one! We’re number one!” Amy chanted after the game finished, then wrapped an arm around my shoulder, grinning. “You’re on your school’s basketball team, aren’t you?”

I shook her off. “No. And I never really considered it. I usually surf in my free time.”

“Surf?” someone echoed.

I nodded. “Yeah. It is sort of my first love.”

“What’s your second? Blood?” another person said.

Narrowing my eyes, I took a step back from the team, towards Jessica. “No. Don’t be sick. My second is….”

But forgot what that was, and I puzzled over it.

“Her second love is flying,” Jessica finished for me.

I turned to look at her. She was right of course.

“She goes hang gliding,” Jessica added.

It was a small lie, yet a more believable truth in a way.

Jessica walked closer to me, watching my expression. “You have cliffs over that ocean over where you live right? And mountains.”

I could picture them in my mind’s eye. I nodded. “Yeah. The cliffs hang right over the beach. But my mother doesn’t like me going into the mountains.”

But even as I said this, the fuzzy recollection of my mother coming to my head, the woman coach that had interrupted us last time inside the locker room marched in between Jessica and me, and took hold of me. “You look light headed. Let me take you somewhere to lie down.”

“No!” Jessica sprang forward to shove her back. “Quit meddling with her!”

“Don’t sass me, young