Plays

When she was younger, she had joined the plays, but none of them had been centred on horror novels. She had always played a minor character, but Miss Corinne had seemed to have a fondness for her. In Grade three, it had been the nutcracker, and she had played a small grey mouse. Charlotte, then in Grade two, had been Clara. Meleena had been the sugar plum fairy. Naturally, Mrs. Frélein had been disturbed by the sugar plum fairy interpretation, criticizing the fairy as a dangerous distraction. Back then, Meleena had liked the sugar plum fairy and had been fascinated by the opportunities to explore the imagination, but more recently she had become more serious and taken more to the school’s official line: magic is dangerous. She still acted in Miss Corinne’s plays, however. It did not matter how wicked they were in Mrs. Frélein’s views. It was all a part of the indoctrination. Hanna Jean had chosen to stay out of them and take Mrs. Frélein’s side, although she spoke nothing in contempt of the symbols instead only criticizing their portrayal.

Katelyn pushed the door open for what seemed like the thousandth time, a darkness shrouding the tender shards of her soul. She felt broken. She wished she had never spoken at all about Victoria’s death. If only Victoria would rise from the shadows and reassure her like only Victoria could.

It was raining. The large round droplets fell across Katelyn’s brunette hair and soaked her red tips, leaching the red dye she had never added into the fabric of her black t-shirt. She touched the tips of her hair and her fingers came away red. Her eyes leached red tears. She held up her necklace to the light only to see fine glowing red lines etched into the surface like cracks. Victoria had told her that her necklace would protect her soul. She had not trusted Victoria, but at Victoria’s death the pink swirling gas had disintegrated. Her soul had passed away. Katelyn’s soul felt like it was following the same direction, but it had always been that way.

“Katelyn,” the voice behind Katelyn was foreign to her ears and when she turned around the elections officer was behind her. It seemed either Ki or Brittney had asked the elections officer to speak to her but for what purpose Katelyn had no idea. The officer extended her hand. “Naji Ailen. I am Ki’s older sister.” Katelyn bit back her shock. The elections officer and Ki did not exactly look alike. They both had black hair, but completely opposite skin tones and while they both had green eyes, Ki’s were much brighter. Naji stood very straight with her hands clasped behind her back. She had left the files in the Social Unity Party’s headquarters. Katelyn knew the woman was angry with her, but Naji kept her face neutral. “I am sorry about Victoria,” she spoke more softly, but her tone was not quite apologetic. She was most certainly not a witch supporter. The last thing Katelyn wanted was for this woman to find out her secret. “You will have to come and inform the police.”

Katelyn shook her head ardently as she stared at Naji’s gold hoop earrings. She could tell by now that Naji was very proper, so she was probably not going to avoid the police any longer.

“But they’ll take my parents away,” Katelyn protested, but more likely they will blame me and torture me.

“That would be the idea,” Naji responded softly, causing Katelyn to look at her in disbelief.

I don’t want to lose them, Katelyn considered, but instead she found herself admitting, “They’ll blame me and torture me.”

Naji’s eyes narrowed on Katelyn’s hands and her voice quieted even further, “Ah, we do not do that anymore...” Her tone cut off as she averted Katelyn’s gaze. This time it seemed less from hatred as from a personal sense of shame, although Katelyn could not place why she should be met with such a reaction. The woman had also used the informal ‘we’ even though she insisted on using more formal constructions in her speech. Did she mean that it was no longer government policy? Katelyn did not care. She was not going to the police. It was all her word after all.

“It is nothing,” Katelyn hissed. Her fingers were shaking so violently if she were holding anything she was sure she would have dropped it and it would have shattered, glass or not. The red was seeping out of her fingers, and it had nothing to do with the rain or her hair. The wind was picking up around her. Her shirt was soaked through by now.

Naji’s eyes widened, but not in fear. Naji was dangerous, the kind that would get Katelyn killed. Katelyn felt regret on the air, but it was not her regret. She felt shame, but it was not hers. There were more words on the air, voices unfamiliar to her, screaming voices. She did not recognize them. They flowed on the raindrops towards her, rushing in the wind. Katelyn felt a rush of fear from the wind as a wave of concern flashed over Naji’s face. I know how to stop you, a voice floated over the wind, but it was laced with hesitancy, a deep sense that it should not do whatever it was threatening.

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Don’t do this, Katelyn warned herself, but the pain in her heart would not subside. She would do anything, anything to make it stop, but she could not place it. It was not heartburn even if it had the creeping sense of reaching into her throat and scorching her insides. It felt like a hundred knives drawing up against her, if only the knives were made of glass and shattered at impact. She could not go to the police. She could not lose everything left that she knew.

“I will make them listen,” Naji screamed over the rushing wind her voice coming in slivers. There was no sympathy in her voice. It seemed more like a lie than the truth to Katelyn, but the wind sent her only a sense of fear and an intense desire to resist using the reverse magic—the last resort. Reverse magic. Naji had reverse magic. She was a wizard. She wanted to hurt Katelyn just like Katelyn’s parents had hurt Victoria. They had used Katelyn’s magic and that would send Katelyn to jail for the rest of her life and then she would be tortured. We don’t do that anymore. Was that why Naji did not want to do it? Do not do it except as a last resort, as self-defence.

Ki grabbed Katelyn’s hands and whispered quietly to her, “Katie, come on, let’s go.” Was he a wizard, too, just like Naji? His green magic could be reverse magic and then maybe she was in deep, deep trouble. She needed to get away from them and then... She just wanted it all to be over. Ki pulled her back inside. He had neutralized her magic once again.

Brittney glanced at Katelyn with sympathy, or perhaps even empathy. She knew what it was like to be doubted for being a witch it would seem. That was probably why she distrusted Katelyn’s parents so much. She was always doubted and affronted by anti-witch notions. Victoria had been less distrustful and that had gotten her killed. She could accept that everyone would fall all she wanted and try to embrace them with as much friendliness as she could, but it would only draw her into an earlier end, and it had.

Naji returned to the files, seemingly resigned to waiting for the storm to end, but Katelyn knew she would eventually try to drag Katelyn to the police. From Ki’s apologetic look, Katelyn presumed he knew Naji would be at the party headquarters and that she would insist on going to the police, which he equally seemed to think essential. Why can’t they just understand that it has to be kept quiet? Katelyn asked herself, but she already knew why. It was a murder and Victoria deserved justice. Victoria was a witch, though, so for the overall campaign a witch killing another witch seemed not to make it any worse, but wizards would not care about that. Could they really, actually be concerned about justice?

Katelyn’s fingers were still pulsing with an incessant twitch. Her heart beat in the same faltering pattern.

She had always been by herself. Even though Ki and Hanna Jean had been her friends, she had never really felt close to them. She had never felt comfortable disclosing her secrets to them. Sometimes, she felt more like she was fighting to be as good as them rather than trusting them and being reassured by them. Hanna was not reassuring.

At first, Katelyn had felt even more distant from Victoria than from her best friends, but unlike them, Victoria had known she was a witch. With Victoria’s magical asthma, she could have feared Katelyn, but instead she was calm and almost accepting of her encroaching fate. Why couldn’t you be more careful? Katelyn wondered. How many times did Brittney warn you about my family and you just accepted it?

She remembered the way Victoria’s eyes sparkled as she held her inhaler close each time Katelyn used her magic. Katelyn should have seen the way it affected Victoria. There had always been a hesitation, apprehension.

It was after school, maybe only a year ago. Katelyn’s parents were out, and she had walked home alone. Victoria had been at a political rally. She had invited Katelyn and said she would take her after school, but Katelyn had refused. Victoria was the leader of the Social Unity Party, so she could not miss the rally, and besides, Katelyn was old enough to look after herself. She had been in the school play that year, but she had not connected with her character. She had held back in the auditions, afraid. Miss Corinne had assigned her the role of a monkey.

They had been assembled on the stage risers for a musical number with loud pounding music. Katelyn had heard voices in her head worrying about missing the actions or thinking about which words were next. The lights had seemed to dim around her. Keep trying, she had commanded herself. Her legs had felt unsteady beneath her and gradually the feeling slipped away, and her head connected with the rough grey carpet floor. She had opened her eyes and tried to stand up immediately, but she fell again. The room had been dark and blurry above her. The beats of the music had seemed to come from a distance and yet still low and painful to her ears. She had run from the stage as the feeling slithered back to her.

“What happened?” Miss Corinne had asked quietly as she met Katelyn at the bottom of the stage steps.

“Water,” Katelyn had gasped. She had rushed out the doors to the small silver water fountain next to the nearest set of school restrooms. She had taken a long sip from the water, calming the pounding in her head slightly but she could still hear the buzz of mumbled conversation. She had glanced around but there was no one around her.

When she had returned to the school’s performance hall, the other students had mostly ignored her as if they had not noticed what had happened and as if they were concerned but not invasive, and yet in the back of her mind she could hear laughing, a laughter that matched the mirth in Meleena’s eyes. She had shivered and felt pain sear through her chest. She had no idea how she had gotten through the rest of the rehearsal.