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

lady!” The coach whipped back with the momentum to swipe at her, yet didn’t. “Detention!”

Jessica merely made a face at the woman as if detention really was the least sort of punishment anyone could think up. “Why don’t you lock me in the cooler, Herr Kaizer? You don’t know what you’re messing with.”

I heard the coach snort, though as I stood there I felt powerless to do anything. Inside something told me I really ought to be getting upset, that what was happening was just all wrong. Yet even with these feelings, the cobwebby sensation in my head prevented me from doing anything more than stand there and be puzzled.

The coach jerked me by the arm to drag me back to the locker room. “A week of detention for you, Mason!”

Jessica stomped on the coach’s foot with her heel. “Why don’t you just suspend me, you witch! It makes no difference. I’ll have you arrested for abetting kidnappers!”

Hopping on one foot, the coach looked likely to murder Jessica. Her imps certainly shouted for her to do so, and worse. However all the woman did was curse under her breath and snarl. “You’ll get yours. You can’t do anything!”

“Wanna bet?” Jessica stomped on her other foot. “You messed with the wrong people. We know who she and how to contact her parents.”

The coach’s eyes went wide.

I just blinked and peered around the teacher. “You know my parents?”

Jessica was sympathetic when she turned her eyes to mine. “Eve, you have to snap out of this. They’re trying to use you.”

Closing my eyes I attempted to clear my head. “I can’t think….”

“Mason!” The other coach called to Jessica. “Get back to your team. The class hour is not over!”

The woman coach yanked me to the other side, finishing her trek to the locker room. Jessica hopped on the balls of her feet, clearly torn, staring after the both of us. Her imps shouted for her to ditch class, but obviously that would put her in more trouble than she was already in. Eventually I lost sight of her as I was taken indoors.

“Come on,” the woman coach said as she dragged me to a bench. “Sit down and listen to me.”

I blinked, dropping down with no other choice anyway.

“You need to stay on task. Who have you seen so far?” she asked as she made a strange gesture in front of my eyes.

Swaying on the bench I recited, “Daniel Smith, James Peterson, Andrew Cartwright, and Jessica Mason.”

“Good.” She then dug into her pocket and took out what looked like a cough drop then held it out to me. “Eat this. It will help you stay on task.”

I took it and popped the candy drop into my mouth sucking on it. Most of it was sugar with a slight lemon flavor, and something else I did not know. As I did, the emotional stirring of discomfort eased up so that I felt more relaxed…but that made my head cobwebbier and not less. I didn’t like it.

“Now listen carefully. You are to find the other three. When you do, find Danna and report to her. Got it?” She waited to see if I understood, peering at my unfocused eyes.

I swayed like a bobble-head doll before nodding. “I got it.”

“You are not to make friends with them,” she said. “They are not your friends, but your enemies.”

“Enemies?” I murmured.

“That’s right. Do not trust them. They want to kill you,” she said.

But I hated the word ‘enemy’. It made the core of my being stiffen with disgust. And with this hateful woman telling me that Jessica, the girl that was sincerely nice to me, was my enemy I was doubly disgusted. So repulsed, I stood up and glared at her. “Even if they want to kill me, they are not my enemy. I don’t use that word. Do you understand?”

The coach leaned back from me. “What?”

“I said she’s not my enemy!” I stomped my foot. “She was nice to me.”

“She was deceiving you,” the coach said.

“No!” I stomped my foot again. “I can tell when people are lying to me. And I can tell very easily who is good and who is evil. You are evil. I don’t like you.”

“Impossible,” that woman murmured, retreating a step.

But filled with righteous indignation I tromped away from her and went to my locker to change my clothes. When I took out what I had been wearing all day from the metal container, I held it up and stared at it. Heavens, it was like a camisole. Why in the world did I leave the house in that? With a huff, I chucked them back into the locker, took out the purse, and put on the rest of my sunblock, the bottle completely small and useless. My skin was really greasy now and still burning. I kicked the locker, gazing around with wonder why I was in that place and not somewhere else. By the time the other girls came back into the locker room I had gathered up my schoolbooks and prepared to go to the lunch hour dressed in my PE clothes.

Jessica met me on her way in. “Eve, are you ok?”

I nodded though I was still angry. “I’m fine.”

“She didn’t do anything to you, did she?” Jessica asked then she looked down at what I was wearing.

“No. She gave me some candy drop but then said something that really made me mad.” I glared at the office. “I’m still mad.”

Taking a half step back, Jessica nodded. “I can see that. Are you going out in your gym clothes?”

Looking back down the locker hall I shrugged. “I have to. The clothes I came in are ridiculous. My PE clothes are much more...reasonable.”

Jessica broke into relieved laughter, nodding. “Your head must be clearing. When I first saw you come in here wearing that outfit, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”

I didn’t have any response to that.

After promising to take me to the school cafeteria, Jessica went off to change her clothes. So I waited for her on the bench in front of the office. However, as I waited, sitting there feeling sweaty in my gym shirt watching the bustle in the room, another noise came to my attention, that of someone running to the locker room on clogs.

Panting, out of breath, Danna staggered into the locker room looking right at me. “You…are a lot…of trouble. You know that?”

I blinked at her then peered at her skanky outfit, realizing once more that those clothes I had been wearing were hers.

“What are you doing just sitting there?” Danna asked me. “Did you get faint again?”

“My head is very clear,” I said, glaring at her.

“Well, your blood sugar must be down. Drink this.” Danna handed me a juice box with the straw already sticking out of the top.

I grimaced as I took the box from her. “You are so bossy.”

Danna blenched, biting her lip as she watched me.

As I sucked on the straw, tasting a raspberry punch that was extra delicious, Danna crouched down and whispered to me.

“You are to go back and change your clothes into the ones I gave you. Do not talk to Jessica. Do not listen to her. Do not look at her. Then come back so we can go to lunch together.”

I finished off the drink box then handed it back to her. Rising, I also shoved my books into Danna’s hands. Then I went back to where my PE locker was and did exactly as she told me.

As I dressed, I got a hazy impression that everyone was staring at me. Even Jessica walked over and talked to me, though I really didn’t pay attention. She seemed to be getting upset, though I wasn’t aware of why. I really didn’t even look at her. And when I set the borrowed shoes into my locker and then locked it up, Jessica grabbed me. She tried to make me meet her eyes.

“Speak to me! What happened?”

I averted my eyes, jerked from her hold, took up the pink acrylic purse and trotted away on those pink heels. Danna met me with a grin. We walked to the cafeteria together, though I was sure I heard Jessica’s imp shout for her to throw something at Danna.

Rick and Remembering

 

“Sit here,” Danna said to me.

My head was in a thick haze now. I did what she said because that was the only clear thing I could comprehend.

We sat with her friends. They gossiped as they ate. I munched on my meal silently, wondering what was going on and why I couldn’t think straight.

“…I think you overdid it,” I overheard one of Danna’s friends say to her. “She’s totally spacing out now.”

“I know,” Danna replied with a moan. “But she is so willful. When the coach told me about her tirade, I knew that she was coming out of it again. I don’t know how that girl did it, but the spell was breaking. I had to take drastic measures.”

“But will she be able to do her job like that?” another of her friends asked.

I heard Danna say, “She’s just gathering information today. When I bring her home we’ll have to put her under a stronger spell.”

Spell. That was what was happing to me. I was under a spell.

Witches.

It triggered a number of feelings. Some were fear. Others, anger and hatred. One was of sorrow as I peered at my dinner. Witches had created me—or at least they created the first of my kind. The history of what I was remained clear in my head as it seemed to be integral to something they were planning for me, and I shuddered.

“I don’t feel well,” I murmured.

Danna looked up at me with only mild concern. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

And I jumped to my feet, rushing out of the cafeteria. I almost bumped into a nerd with a pocket protector and thick glasses, tripping on my heels. He stared at me, clenching his hand, but I brushed past and ran to the bathroom before I would vomit all over him.

Clenching the toilet, I lost not only my lunch but my breakfast as well. I was there for several minutes, gasping and panting while my stomach lurched several times over, trying to spill out whatever was messing with my senses. By the time it stopped, I just dropped on my rear and stared at the bathroom stall walls, feeling wretched.

The echo of Danna’s clogs repeated off the walls as she entered the bathroom and crossed the tile. She pushed open my stall door wider. “Did you really barf?”

Peering up at her, I moaned. “I want to go home.”

Danna rolled her eyes then squatted down to help me up. “You are such a baby.”

But I got up, wobbling on my feet. I don’t think I ever felt as bad in my life, and I could recall moments where I had been sick with a fever that didn’t compare to the stomach wrenching nausea I was going through at that moment.

We both walked out of the girls’ bathroom like a pair of drunken partygoers, her holding me up. And though I wished she had taken me out of the school, she took me to the nurse’s office instead. I