Witch in Hiding (#1 in the Witches Trilogy) (EDITING)

Three: Wrinkles, Stitches, and the Problem With Time

I say I'm going to ask Jess, but I never do. It's as though she takes special care in making sure we're both surrounded by other people when I see her—surrounded and in a rush. I can't get her alone. Otherwise she acts like everything's totally normal, smiling at me in the corridor, telling me her lame jokes, rolling her eyes at our irritating teachers.

I almost believe everything's normal.

Almost.

I sit in class and stare at her back. She's lanky, tall and long but with enough muscle that skinny isn't really the right word. It's from her softball: she's incredibly tan, the outline of her shades burned into the colour; she never wears dresses and the only jacket she ever wears is her blue and yellow team jacket. It's draped over her chair now.

I don't have a problem with jocks. I do martial arts; Mel is a netballer and Van plays squash. But Jess is the only one who really comes off with the jock vibe. I might look evil, but Jess has the straight out, intimidating alpha girl aura. If people are ever scared of anyone in our group, it's usually Jess. But everyone also loves Jess. She's nice and funny and athletic and she's a ghost.

Stop. I force myself to concentrate on my text—it's A Wrinkle in Time, and trust me, I see the irony. I get through a couple pages—Meg is being reunited with her long-lost father, and I just keep thinking about the necklace—before I notice something in the corner of my eye.

Sitting diagonally in front of me, Esther isn't paying attention to the lecture on good-and-evil allegory in the novel. She's doing what she always does: drawing. She does it quite openly, her book closed and edged into the corner of her desk while her pencils line up across the surface, perfectly aligned and sharpened to a point. Her head bent over the paper, she's concentrating on every detail. There are a couple of good artists in my class. The difference is most of them don't express it this openly.

As she shifts I notice what she's sketching-a ten dollar note. She colours it carefully, perfecting it to the tiniest details. Okay, I think, so she can draw money. Weird, but artists are weird, right? Big deal, even though my artistic skills are limited to stickmen and smiley faces. I return my attention to the story, but, distracted once, I can't focus properly again. I find myself glancing over at Esther occasionally, sneaking peeks at what she's doing.

A few minutes later, Esther murmurs something to herself, touches the drawing with the tip of her pencil once more and suddenly her drawing is thicker, 3-D, more real. Then she smiles discreetly and pinches the corner.

It comes right off the paper.

As she tucks it into her pocket, reaching glibly for her neglected book, I notice the drawing on her sketch pad has... vanished.

When class ends, I act on impulse. Esther takes predictably long to pack away her precious pencils and stow them in her bag. Most people have gotten the hell out of Dodge by the time she even starts. I wave my friends out the door, pretending to be rummaging through my own bag for something. Then, when everyone's gone and Esther's just about to leave, I stop and throw my hands up. "Shit."

Esther looks at me. "You okay?"

"I didn't bring my wallet and I really needed to pay for this thing. The office has been chasing me all week, I was meant to go give it in now." I groan. "They're gonna kill me."

"The magazine thing?" She asks. The school magazine, yes. I nod.

"Ten bucks. Not anything, but I'm completely broke right now."

She fishes it out of her pocket without hesitation. "Pay me back whenever." She smiles cheerily and hurries off; I call convincing thanks after her. I'm more interested in the note. I stare and stare at it, and as far as I can tell, it's real. It's either the most brilliant counterfeit that's ever existed, she had another ten bucks in her pocket, or she's somehow turned her drawing into a real note. Alternatively, my mom's phantom voice says, she might have just been insane and started colouring ten dollars, but I think that notion is more a sign of my insanity than hers.

I reach for my Wrinkle in Time and accidentally knock it off my desk. When I pick it up a phrase jumps out at me. Believing takes practice. 

*

That night I can't sleep. I'm disturbed—by Esther now, because I can't figure her out. Jess I could explain. I can lift a teacup, she can lift herself. The lack of reflection is a side effect of her supernatural nature. Esther, though, is harder to rationalise away. There's nothing in common lore about being able to turn drawings into reality (Dorian Grey was the opposite). Google is stuck and so I'm stuck. There's something I'm missing. I torture myself thinking about it half the night, and the other half, well.

The other half has the dream.

It starts out normal, or normalish. It's very much a thing of the past, with me going to the zoo as a small girl smiling like only an eight-year-old can, holding my mother's hand and skipping around in a pink Strawberry Shortcake skirt and a matching shirt. Vera's there, she's wearing a matching outfit and toddling along beside us, refusing to be carried. And then there's my dad. Like Mrs Bellum in the Powerpuff Girls, I don't see his face.

We go around the enclosures, looking at rabbits and going to the petting zoo. It's noon, the sun was blazing, and my mom sits Vera and I down on a bench with an ice cream while she goes to the bathroom. He lurks, a solid shadow.

Ver and I take turns licking the dripping chocolate while staring around at the people passing by. My eyes are drawn to the snakes. Getting up, I start to walk towards the enclosure, a cool, dark tunnel with the partitions on the side. No one stops me as I stare, fascinated, at the huge things, thicker than my neck. My father is silent, invisible.

Then suddenly I'm inside an enclosure and an anaconda is returning my stare. It's bigger than I am and ten times as strong, probably considering a fresh meal. Its eyes are fixated on me, yellow and sharp, almost appraising me. Challenging me. Come closer. I dare you.

Then it moves. Metres away. Five. I don't move, gazing at it enthralled. Three. Two.

And then it pounces.

Now I scream, frozen to the spot. Everything seems to go in slow motion, the snake unhinging its jaw, darting out like an uncoiling spring. It snaps something in me, some primal instinct, something giving way—I thrust out my hands, as if to try and ward it off, and scream and scream and scream. And I am bursting with energy, a thrill, an adrenaline pumping, heart beating.

Then a thud, and suddenly everything is quiet. I open my eyes, red with yelling, and realise that I'm outside the glass again, and the snake is lying limp on the ground, motionless.

I lean forward to look at it, and as I do something fades, and then I'm on the other side of the glass again, I'm stunned, I'm paralysed, my body is dull. Dead.

I can't place it. It's part dream part nightmare part prophecy part memory. A past I can't get back but can't get away from.

I wake up and stay awake.