Janette Lennox

Chapter 7

The next day, Janette found herself waking up early. She sat up in bed and recalled the events from yesterday; she had gone to Pleasant Valley Church and realized that the people of Grimwich had a different worship style than the people of Gillamoor. Janette wasn't very impressed with the contemporary worship style at all.

She also spent the entire afternoon in her room, trying to figure out what her problem was. She finally determined that not only did she have chronic shyness and was prone to panic attacks, but she had very poor social skills and isolated herself from people who could have been her friend.

"I just don't understand what is wrong with me," Janette wrote down in her notebook. "I mean, I can be a bit of a panicky crybaby at times, but that doesn't mean that I am a selfish witch for hiding myself from everyone. I believe that it's everyone who has a problem with me, not me who has a problem with the world."

She jumped out of bed and went to the bathroom to get dressed. Her new tutor was coming today and Janette needed to make a good impression on him. That meant that she would have to stop playing the part of the shy girl and be the Gamaris Academy student that Headmaster Baynard knew that she was before she knew it herself.

Speaking of the headmaster, he himself had an important meeting with Winifred, Talaith, and Sibyl Hawksley, who were also known as the Hawk Sisters in the magical world. He was angry that the women had dared to send a message to one of his students and to use the snake Droffilc and Clifford to deliver the message. Erwin Baynard had a reputation for being ruthless, especially when it came to the safety of his students and people that he worked with, and he wasn't going to let the Hawk Sisters intimidate him. He knew that the reason that Linus Lennox had sent Janette to Bethsaida had to be a very good reason, or he would have had to retrieve Janette from the Hawksley family.

He also had to prepare for the barrage of elf and fairy students that would be arriving in Gamaris in a matter of days, and with that, he would have to announce that impending arrival to the students at dinner.

First, he would have to find out who Janette's tutor would be and whether or not Janette could be properly trained to use magic. Janette claimed that she had little to no knowledge of how to use magic, but Baynard knew that Janette had first used magic to alter her appearance. But did she really use magic to alter her appearance or was that something that Helen Lennox had done? He was going to find out the answer soon.

- - - - -

Meanwhile, in Emmanuel Lutheran School, Malinda and Silas found themselves sitting in the isolation area of the cafeteria; upon their arrival back to the school, the headmistress had banished the kids to the isolation dorm as punishment for them leaving the school in an effort to track down Janette Lennox, who had left the school earlier that week.

The rule of the isolation was simple; the student who was sent to the isolation dorm had to eat in the isolation area of the cafeteria, sit in the back of the classrooms, and were forbidden to participate in any school activities until the punishment was over. In the case of the two miscreants, the headmistress had made it clear that they would never leave the isolation dorm for the rest of their education years.

"I can't believe this," said Malinda. "Janette was our friend and then she betrays us and goes off to that strange school. This isn't right, you know."

"But did she have a choice?" said Silas. "You saw what happened when she didn't show up at Tyson's birthday party. You know some other people have gone out of their way to humiliate her for no reason. That had to stop."

"We could have done something about it," said Malinda. "We could have told someone and they would have ended this. Janette didn't need to leave."

"But would they have believed us?" said Silas. "You know that Tyson's dad holds the power in Gillamoor. That means that if we speak out about Tyson beating Janette, Tyson could tell his father that we were lying and then we could be thrown in jail. I don't want to go to jail!"