Broken

The heartbreak felt stronger than ever before. The police had taken her home and asked her parents. She was sure that they still thought she was guilty. It was her magic that had killed Victoria and the city hated witches. She was in her room lying on her bed. She had soft red sheets on her bed but they blurred in her vision. Tears stained her eyes and when they dropped on her sheets, they were red, too. No! She whined. They will destroy me. She extended her hands in front of her and stared at the red swirling in her palms.

She hunted through her purse and found the butter, insect wings, and spider web and mixed them together just like Victoria had taught her. She spread the resulting mixture over her hands and willed her magic to recede, but no matter how hard she tried, the voices kept seeping in from below her.

“So, you used her magic?” One voice asked. Why not simply use conventional means?

“It’s poetic justice for infecting our daughter. We have to protect Katelyn and to protect her we have to remove the virus.” Those witches will destroy us all.

“But you must have known that Miss Leste was a witch, so why hire her?”

“We’ve had a lot of babysitters.” I had to find her, but I can’t tell them she was gone. That I hired Leste because of the program. I didn’t know it would come to this, but she was dangerous. We had to stop her.

As the red faded from Katelyn’s hands, the voices dimmed into a faint buzz. Her head was spinning and pain drilled its way through her skull. She poured the rest of her potion over her hands causing them to burn and shake. She willed the buzzing to leave her and suddenly she was shrouded in silence. The darkness clung to her. She could barely make out the edges of her violet curtains covering the window on the side of her room and the white door on the other side of the door.

“She would have killed us all!” Mrs. Valedette screamed. A motorcycle ripped by the front of the house.

A cramp split through the centre of Katelyn’s heart. Her hands had paled until they were almost blue. Her breath bled through her ears. She pulled her knees to her chest and laid her head against the rough surface of her dark blue jeans. A thumping kept tearing at the tender flesh of her ears and the organs beneath. She grabbed her necklace in her hand. Before Victoria had given it to her, she had not felt the magic as strongly, and it reminded her of Victoria’s death and how the pink cloud within Victoria’s own necklace had slowly dissipated. She unclasped the necklace from her neck and threw it across the room. The pain in her heart spread outwards as if glass were shattering within her and tearing at the interior of her body.

A scream tore from her lips. She brought her hand to her still throbbing forehead and sobbed.

The police officer poked his head into her room. “Are you okay, honey?” A crease formed between his eyes.

She faked a smile. “Yeah.”

“Miss Naji Ailen will look after you until the trial,” the officer informed her and then disappeared.

Katelyn tried to lift herself from her bed, but she crumpled at the middle and moaned. Her chest felt like she had broken something. She crawled across her floor to where her necklace lay. A small puddle of red sparkles lay around it, although they melted at her touch. Fear shot through her already crippled heart. As she turned over the glass heart-shaped pendant, her eyes fell upon a long-jagged crack running up the side of it. As she drew her finger along the crack, she felt more scarlet sparkles melt on her skin. She tried to repair the crack by evoking glass but she could tell the glass she was creating was thin. It also caused a layer of sparkles to trickle out of her necklace. She had broken her necklace and she could not truly fix it. She only hoped no one would notice, not that she wanted anyone to know she had the necklace at all. At least Victoria would never know she had broken it.

She strung her necklace back around her neck and lay back down on her bed, letting a flurry of darkness swarm above her head. Emptiness gripped her like a hunger, hollowness deeper than she had experienced before. She was not sure what it was, but a part felt almost like guilt: guilt over Victoria’s death, guilt over her parents’ arrest, and guilt for breaking her necklace. She closed her eyes and let the feeling slip away as she drew her hand across her opposite shoulder in a gentle stroking motion. At least she could give herself some comfort in the midst of her loneliness.

The morning was dark and stormy as a heavy wind drafted from the dark clouds above and rattled on the windows. The emptiness within Katelyn had only grown while she had slept. She needed something to satiate it. She needed to do something, but she had no idea what to do.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She molded a glass vial with her red magic and mixed a honey-based energy supplement. As she drank it, coolness settled into the bottom of her stomach. Supposedly, it had worked. She dressed in all black with dress pants and a sheer-sleeved blouse. She felt like she was mourning something, but she doubted she had actually ever cared particularly for Victoria. She had failed Victoria after all. Two police officers were still sitting in her house. They looked up when she stepped into the living room. It was a man and a woman in black uniforms with short cropped haircuts, severe noses, and small dark eyes. She passed them and wandered slowly into the kitchen. She supposed that they should have been watching her, but she was old enough to look after herself after all. The energy substitute had filled her sufficiently, and though she knew she should eat regular food, the emptiness at the pit of her existence had made whatever hunger she had not filled, whatever external energy she might clench to feel far from her and unnecessary. For pretence to the police officers, she rustled around the cabinets and filled a vial in her purse with honey, and then she took a deep breath to allay her fears and returned to the officers.

The officers immediately rose when she returned to them and proffered her towards the door and to their shiny black police car in which they drove her to school. The clouds outside the window were dark and thick. A shadow hung over the street, the houses, and even the brightly-coloured election signs casting them into semi-blackness. Her hands shook on the handle of her grey backpack. She was afraid of going back to school like this. Someone might see her with the police and then they might draw conclusions, conclusions she was not ready for them to make. She did not want anyone to know about Victoria, so she could not let them see the pain that she felt. Besides, it was a selfish pain because she did not truly care about Victoria, so it was not right for her to feel it at all. She had told Ki, though, and she regretted that, because now he could expect something from her—honesty or just simply not denying the whole police investigation—which she was not prepared to give.

When she stepped inside the school, the halls were empty, surprising her because it was still early, but not that early. Surely, more people should be around getting ready for their classes. The police were no longer behind her. If they had spoken before they left, she had not heard them. Only some of the lights in the hallway were lit and some of the rest were flickering on and off. The grey lockers on the walls were cast in partial darkness. She walked down the concrete floor towards her first classroom. As she walked, glee and frustration filtered towards her.

“Did you see me in the rehearsal, yesterday?”

“You were totally awesome!” A voice responded, “But whatever is Miss Corinne going to do about Carrie?”

“I know right? Alice is going crazy just imagining the special effects that will have to be involved.”

The lights flashed brighter and the silhouettes of three of Charlotte’s friends with their long dull brown hair flickered into her vision before fading away again.

Katelyn increased her pace as a strange emptiness surged through her. The lights flickered faster. Silhouettes of her classmates continued flickering in her vision.

What am I going to do about that math test? I’ve barely studied. What if I fail? Fears rushed towards Katelyn, but she was unsure where they came from. She had never actually been afraid of failing, just doing less well than she thought she should, and she did not even have a math test.

Foreign thoughts flowed towards Katelyn. I can’t believe the Liberals are considering that French girl as leader. She’s a good speaker and all, but there is so little on the internet about her past. Any girl with no past is hiding something. Maybe, Caroline is right about her. Miss Corinne was suspicious of the Liberal leader. “Hey, girls, I am changing the lines for scene five. I’ll have the new ones printed out in my office at the end of the day.”

“Sure thing, Miss Corinne!” the three called out in response.

Katelyn slipped into her classroom. It was empty and as eerily dark as the rest of the school. She felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Katelyn?” Hanna Jean whispered shaking her hand lightly as if it had been zapped. Her blue eyes were wide and bright despite the orange line weaving through her irises. Katelyn blinked. There were students in the classroom and outside in the hallway. None of the lights were flashing and even the grey lockers were decently well illuminated. Everything looked just as it should have.

Katelyn faked a smile and led Hanna to the shared desk closest to the window. Katelyn traced its bright golden wood with her finger and closed her eyes. Her mind was playing tricks on her. How could she have not seen all the students already in the room or the students in the hallway that she could hear? She pressed her hand against her eyes as a tremor spread through her heart. She opened her notebook and posed her pen above it as the teacher strode into the room. Hanna seemed more relaxed now that she was prepared to take notes on class, because she loved school and excelled in it, but her eyes alighted with something between concern and alarm when she noticed Katelyn’s eyes on her. Something was different in Hanna’s reaction to Katelyn today than yesterday and it worried Katelyn, because she still wanted Hanna to act the same. If nothing changed, then nothing could get worse. Of course, she knew that could not be. Nothing ever remained the same for particularly long.

As the teacher began talking, Katelyn scribbled down the lesson. She would try to understand it later, but she could not focus just now. Grey eyes swam before her vision, but this time she could see the pink swirling within them. She could sense fear behind the calm demeanor as the grey eyes met Mrs. Valedette’s brown eyes for the last time. There was fear in the brown eyes too, but it was a different fear laced with hatred. She would have hurt us, Mrs. Valedette had whispered, but she had left off the end, if we did not kill her first. It was pre-emptive murder based on perceived insecurity. Katelyn blinked back her tears. She knew Victoria never would have hurt them.