Wednesday's Week

Woe and her Baby

Principal Weems deflated to a chair. Her ghost figure sank into it further. "I fell in love."

"First mistake," I whispered.

She ignored me. "But he didn't care for me. Didn't see me. I was overshadowed by my own roommate." I knew exactly who she was talking about. My mother. "And when I was at my angriest, another found me. It was just one night. I never told anyone and we never talked about it again. He never even knew I was pregnant. Shapeshifting helps with that."

"Then why the gravestone?" Xavier asked, stepping closer.

She balled her hand into a fist. "To add insult to injury, Morticia and Gomez found out. They tried to convince me that motherhood would suit me. I knew how pathetic I looked so I lied about putting it up for adoption and they gave it a funeral."

"Her," I corrected Weems. "Bonnie was born and given to Mr. And Mrs. Korl, a normie couple who already have five children. They didn't know that the girl they adopted was a shapeshifter."

There was one more detail we hadn't addressed. "Who is the father?"

"He's dead now anyways," Weems sighed.

I raised an eyebrow and the wheels began to turn. Why hadn't Bonnie started this up years ago? She was at least four years older then me. What event started everything into motion. "You had a child with Mayor Noble Walker."

Xavier's mouth fell open, "How could you possibly figure that out?"

"Noble had lived in Jericho his entire life. He was around when young Larissa came to Nevermore. They would have met with all these insufferable outreach tactics," I stopped to see Weem's expression. She was hiding it from me. "And his death lines up with Bonnie's coming to Nevermore. Besides had you ever seen their awkward chemistry?"

My principal floated upward. "I wish you could be wrong again, Wednesday." Her ghost eyes glimmered with tears.

"But I am not," I answered.

The office doors flew open and Vincent Thorpe strutted in. "This isn't where I told you to meet me, Xavier."

"I wasn't bringing Wednesday to you," Xavier scowled at his father.

His father rolled his eyes, "Useless" he muttered under his breath. He didn't seem to care what he had run into. "I'll be giving Miss Addams her evaluation now."

"It's hardly an appropriate hour. The students should all be in their dorms. Besides, I'd like to discuss your treatment towards Xavier," Weems interjected. It was as if moments ago we weren't discussing her lost daughter and deceased lover. She was in principal mode.

Vincent crossed his arms. "I will not be staying another day. I'm doing this evaluation now or never and I'll be leaving, taking my funding with." He went to grab my arm and I sidestepped him. I held back from flipping him onto his backside.

"I'm coming with them," Xavier declared.

Weems folded her hands, "It isn't up to you-"

"He can come," I interrupted. Perhaps the discourse between the two would aid me in not being so thoroughly investigated.

Mr. Thorpe had decided to do his evaluation in the astronomy tower. Thick curtains covered the windows. We sat down on pillows while sage burned around us. There was a crystal ball in the center. "Wednesday Addams, do you consider yourself sane?" He asked.

"Sanity is a concept invented by the simple minded. I am of my own body and mind," I replied.

He placed his hand on the crystal ball. I was familiar with crystal balls. My mother considered herself a psychic. "Your distaste for affection stems from your parents exaggerated and overbearing obsession to one another. Would you say you are emotionless?"

"I am irritated and angry, so no I wouldn't consider myself emotionless," I responded.

"Then you have a short span of emotions?" He asked.

I wanted to leave. This was ridiculous. I looked over at Xavier, but he was fiddling with the pillow's tassle. "I don't need to present my emotions loudly. I feel them and since they are for me, I don't care if others sense them or not."

"Then explain this," he spoke and pulled his hand from the crystal ball. An image formed in the smoke. The painfully yellow and pastel blue walls identified it as one of the many schools I had been kicked out of. I was strongly familiar with this one, Peters Elementary.

The mascot was a gopher.

Small memory me was in the bathroom. I was practicing my menacing frown in the mirror and ignoring the bell that told me I needed to be in P.E. I detested P.E. Regulated by a public school.

Two girls stepped into the bathroom. I remembered them well. Candace and Lula. Absolute nightmares. They put the chainsaw massacre to shame.

"Freak alert!" Candace gasped and pointed at memory me as if there were a spider on the ground. Her obnoxiously big glitter bow clung to her thin brown hair.

Lula and her whispered so I couldn't hear, giggling and laughing. Memory me didn't care. I continued to do my own thing with the mirror. After noticing that I wasn't paying attention to them, Candace pulled her phone out. "Is it true you are friends with Abbie?"

Lula pulled out her phone and began recording the interaction.

Memory me finally pulled away from the mirror. "We are acquaintances. I tutor her Italian."

Candace smiled gleefully. Her crooked teeth glared at me. "Well that's not what she said!" She shoved her bedazzled phone into my face. On the cracked screen, a video played.

It was Abbie. She was talking to them and didn't realize that Candace was recording. "Wednesday? Friends? Her and I? No thank you. She just does my homework. I think her-"

Little memory me grabbed the phone out of Candace's hand and chucked it into her face. She fell back and grabbed her nose and started crying. I had noticed Lula recording. I took her phone too and smashed it on the ground. "Get out of here!" I yelled at them.

I looked up from the Crystal ball, "You are going to use a elementary bullying situation to prove I need psychiatric help?"

"This is the last recorded time you burst out in anger," Vincent answered.

I rolled my eyes. "Dig into my brain. If you want to find something actually important."

Vincent reached out to touch my forehead. Xavier interceded by knocking his father's hand away. "No, Wednesday. If you didn't like us in that one memory, you aren't going to like an experienced psychic in your mind. It's invasive."

"No one's sane, Xavier," I winked and leaned forward so Vincent's hand touched my temple.