Katelyn and The Witch Party

Chapter 4: Meeting Victoria

            They arrived at the school and Katelyn rose and got off the bus. The wind was weaker at school. They walked inside. Katelyn battled once again against the outflow of tears. She could feel the pain bombarding her throat, her chest, and her whole sense of self. When she got home, Victoria would be there and she could tell her all about what was wrong. No, it is all a dream, she told herself. This is not really happening or Hanna would say something to me. When I get home, I can tell Victoria all about it and everything will be okay. No, Victoria is gone. I can never talk to her again. Katelyn sat in her seat at the front of English class next to Hanna. She could not believe Victoria was gone. Whenever she tried to grasp the thought, a new sense of horror oppressed her and she could not quite grasp what being gone really meant. She had never talked to her parents much and sometimes she wished they would disappear, but not like this. She wanted to go back to her home. Maybe, if she went back into the house where she once lived, everything could go back to the way it was. She would be whole again, but her hopes were not possible. They had moved to the other side of the school when she was in Grade seven. It had been three years, but she still did not feel whole. Victoria had been sympathetic, but Victoria was gone now. Katelyn owed Victoria for being there when she needed her. A sickness gripped her heart as Victoria's dead grey eyes floated before her face.

The teacher entered the classroom and started talking, but Katelyn could not seem to grasp what she was saying. Romeo was saying something about light through glass and stars in the sky, but the words seemed so abstract and disjointed. Do they even make a proper sentence? She pondered irritably. The scenes had seemed lovely when she had read them in advance, but now they seemed unworldly and artificial. It was not that she though highly of Romeo before, but now he seemed like a mistaken fool focused on impossible ideas and raging against the iron conventions of society. Oh, Juliet, how Romeo takes advantage of you. No, Juliet was a fool as well. Something in her heart told her they were different somehow, but at the same time, their characters seemed to blend into one so they were indistinguishable and she could not remember which of them did what. What she did remember was that both of them would die just like Victoria and then they would disappear into oblivion with only other people's memories of them remaining.

Of course, as literary characters it made no difference whether they were alive or dead, as they were merely symbols. Still, it felt like a void. Why do they not realize how permanent death is? She thought they would worry, but they were preoccupied by their desires. They were so unrealistic, so distorted, so misled, and so foolish, but she knew people killed themselves. If the pain of life is so great, why not? She asked herself, but she thought Romeo and Juliet's suffering was too artificial to warrant suicide. She did not believe they really loved each other. She wanted to say she was better than them, but when she questioned their actions, she began to see the emptiness in life and she wondered what the point of living might be. Why not kill myself like them? They changed their society, but she would change nothing. She wondered if in reality feuding families really would unite after their children died and in her mind she believed they would not.

Was Victoria's death a catalyst for change? How? No one even knows she is gone and why should they care about a minor politician who my mother somehow overlooked as a politician? And so did I. She felt the tears streaming down her face, but she brushed them away. She could not let them fall. She could not show everyone what was wrong. She did not want them to ask because she did not want to answer. Her red magic pulsed from her heart beating faster and faster in a painful rhythm. Perhaps, she wanted to imagine it was just her heart rate, but she knew better. In the last few weeks, she had used less magic, but she had felt something change in her heart and with it her hair had started to redden at the tips.