The Good Witch

Andrea was a good witch. It was what she repeated to herself every time she looked over and saw her former friends hanging out. They were several feet away in the cafeteria. Three years ago, Andrea had been part of the group. Jaclyn and Marcy, the two taller girls, were laughing and giggling over their lunches. Diana, the shortest and roundest, had a heavy ponytail that bounced every time she moved. They were comparing eye makeup and sharing pictures on their phones.

Admitting she was a witch backfired massively. They didn’t believe her, of course. Her parents warned her not to, but Andrea wasn’t like those cliche witches, dressed in black with a pointed hat. Real witches looked common: the mom in the grocery store, the bank teller in a pantsuit, the old woman waiting for the bus. The magic itself could be dark and demonic and frighteningly gruesome, with disgusting potion ingredients and sharp knives for mysterious rituals in her basement. But Andrea resolved to be good. She didn’t want to lose her friends.

All it got her so far was loneliness and a reputation for being a freak. The last few years relegated her to sitting with misfits. Andrea glanced over at Jaclyn, the cheerful, beautiful leader of the group, once her best friend. From her shined a brightness that enveloped the others like a halo.

“They’re cheerful today,” Erin said. She sat across from Andrea, a speck of ketchup hanging off her chin. She wiped it with the back of her hand.

“They’re nauseating,” Brad said. He was the third member of their loser circle, a kid really into art and ballet and writing letters to the school board about things like where the meat in the school lunches came from.

“No loss that you don’t hang with them anymore,” Erin said.

“Yeah,” Andrea said. She wasn’t listening. After three years the two were just stand-ins, sore reminders of how sad things had gotten.

Andrea bid goodbye and headed to the art room. It was empty now, most students preferring to spend their time outside in the spring air rather than the lower level of the school that smelled like paint chips and grease. The art room was her sanctuary. Though her year-long portfolio was due in a couple of weeks, she’d already finished. Andrea now spent her time working on a model human heart made with gears and glass. No one knew it was made with magic. It appeared as a weird art sculpture, though it could be used for powerful spells. Getting it to work meant she would be leveling up her witchcraft skills, and it gave her a sense of satisfaction to do so in front of everyone without them knowing.

The heart was near finished, the glass plates in place and the gears meshing perfectly. When pressed in certain spots, it could even expand and contract slightly, mimicking a pumping motion. All it needed was a few more screws and bolts to hold it the center together, where a tiny cubby existed to hold objects.

“Creepy,” someone said. Jaclyn was across from her, leaning on the heavy wooden table. “Perfect for you.”

“Whatever,” Andrea said. Direct attacks from Jaclyn only came when the two were alone. Andrea tried to ignore it, but the pain was like someone taking a hold of her own heart and squeezing hard.

“Portrait of your boyfriend?” Jaclyn said with a grin. “Can’t conjure one up with a spell?”

“He’d have a better personality than you,” Andrea said.

“Whatever, freak.”

Jaclyn turned to greet Marcy and Diana who came in along with the rest of the class. The three took their places in the back of the room. Everyone grabbed their supplies and started working before Ms. Tidd, their art teacher, came into the room. Andrea found Ms. Tidd’s stereotypical looks amusing - the tall hair, the dirty smock, the huge bug-eyed glasses - and wondered if art teachers all shopped at the same place. She walked by Andrea’s table and peered at the heart.

“Wonderful. Simply gorgeous,” she said.

“It can really beat,” Andrea said. She pushed the glass gently, showing its ability to expand.

“Fantastic. And your paintings?”

“Done. This is just a…side project.”

Ms. Tidd moved on, giving out more “wonderfuls” and “inspirings.”

Andrea held the heart close, trying to get the pieces back into place when something heavy fell on top of her head, a cold liquid that spread into her hair and down her back. She was too shocked to move. The smell of rotten eggs was overwhelming. She tried not to gag. Andrea touched a sticky goo, red tinted, covering her fingers. When she looked up, another blob of it hit her in the face, entering her nose and mouth, stinging her eyes and forcing her to choke.

“A heart should have some blood!” she heard Jaclyn say.

There was chaos afterwards. The heart made it back to the table safely, but with the paint in her eyes Andrea had to be led quickly to the eye washing station. Kids laughed while Ms. Tidd tried to keep order. Almost ten minutes passed before things were calm and the paint was out of her ears that Andrea realized Jaclyn wasn’t even there anymore, sent to the main office. She was a sobbing, sticky mess.

“Head to the nurse. Want me to go with you?” Ms. Tidd asked.

Andrea’s eyes stung, and her hair was like a log, solid and heavy.

“No,” she managed. “I’m fine.”

At home, Andrea cleaned the heart thoroughly. It was spared from the carnage, though her shirt and jacket were ruined for good, and she couldn’t get the awful taste out of her mouth. School let her go home early. Jaclyn was suspended for a few days. Hardly a fitting punishment, she thought, for something she couldn’t imagine a second grader doing. Kids loved getting time off from school anyway.

Her parents were less enthused to find out about the incident, her mother repeating the line “but you two were such good friends” as though it might repair the damage.

“Should I call her mother?”

“Please don’t.”

“It’s almost the end of the year. Make it work, okay?”

Andrea searched through a pile of old things in her closet. Buried in a box in the corner were mementos and trinkets from her time with Jaclyn. Photos from the photobooth at the mall where they giggled and elbowed one another for space. Notes sent to one another from separate summer camps wishing they were together. Pressed between two sheets of paper was a letter from Jaclyn when she was away in Europe on a family trip. A lock of her hair was taped to the corner.

In case I get kidnapped like in that movie, something to remember me by.

She meant it sarcastically, but Andrea knew it once came from a place of love. It would do well. She pulled the hair out and went to the heart.

The other students at school gave Andrea sympathetic looks, yet were vigilant in the halls, hoping the two would cross paths. Despite their lust for drama, they only shared art and a math class together, their lockers were on other sides of the building.

“She’s back today,” Erin whispered. They were sitting up front beside one another in Calculus, the other students filing in before the bell. “Think she’ll start shit?”

Andrea didn’t think so. Jaclyn was mean, but she wasn’t crazy. A suspension could be overcome. Too many could risk expulsion.

When Jaclyn came in, the conversations became muted. Even Mr. Toniotti, an older teacher who droned through lessons like a worker bee, was thrown off momentarily. Students gazed at them. Andrea kept her eyes forward, pencil in hand, playing it cool.

Class started without incident. The only sounds were pencils scratching on paper and Toniotti’s monotonous baritone.

That was when Andrea carefully pulled the glass heart from her bag and placed it in her lap, giving it a little squeeze.

It pumped back in response.

“So just eliminate both sides of the equation to balance before - Ms. Butler, what are you doing?”

Everyone’s head snapped to the back of the room. Jaclyn was standing beside her desk at attention like a soldier. There were confused whispers. Erin looked at Andrea with a shrug.

“Nothing,” Jaclyn said. Her voice trembled.

“Then sit down.”

“I can’t.”

The class looked at Toniotti for a response. It was one thing for kids to rag on one another; disobeying a teacher was another level.

Andrea gave the heart another pump.

“I can’t,” she said again, “because I have to dance.”

Though she sounded frightened, Jaclyn stood up on her desk, red and white sneakers at everyone’s eyes, and started dancing. The table wobbled on uneven legs as stuck her arms out to a rhythm only she could hear. Everyone started laughing, drowning out the little quivering gasps that came from her mouth.

“Ms. Butler, stop that and sit.”

“I can’t!” she said. The panic in her voice was drowned out, a few “shake it girl”s coming from the boys. Erin leaned over to Andrea.

“What the hell is she doing?”

“I think it’s supposed to be the Macarena,” Andrea said.

Cell phones came out, catching it all on video.

It seemed like Jaclyn was trying to fight her own limbs. They trembled and shook like gravity was attacking her. Andrea gave the heart another squeeze, and Jaclyn jumped from the desk to the floor. She bent into a squat, folded her arms out from her chest, and started kicking her feet out in a mock impression of a Russian hopak dance.

“Tada!” she screamed before stopping. Jaclyn held her arms out in mock triumph for a moment before she ran from the room crying.

“Think she’s cracked?” Erin asked.

Andrea put the heart away and smiled. Jaclyn never returned, even to gather her things.

At her locker Andrea watched the clip of Jacluyn dancing over and over. By the next day the videos were everywhere. Everyone had their own theories: she was depressed, she was auditioning for some reality show, she was crazy. Andrea felt only a little guilt. She knew how it felt to be pointed at, ostracized, whispered about.

“I know it was you,” someone said behind her.

Jaclyn stood with a tired expression on her face.

“What was?”

“Don’t be stupid. That shit that happened,” Jaclyn said. “You did it.”

“Believe me now?” Andrea asked. “Not so fun when everyone else thinks you’re a weirdo, is it?”

“I can’t help if you actually are,” Jaclyn hissed.

“I’m one of the good ones,” Andrea said quietly. “I just wanted you to know that.”

“Just leave me alone.”

Jaclyn gave her the finger, turned, and walked out.

They didn’t see one another for days. Marcy and Diana gave sideways glances at Andrea when they saw her, but Andrea didn’t care. They weren’t important. Without Jaclyn’s whispers or negative comments, Andrea felt like new. When Jaclyn returned to school, they avoided one another in the halls. It wasn’t until a few more days when Jaclyn sent Andrea a text.

Can we talk? it said. Andrea was in the hallway next to her locker. The school day was over. Everyone was heading home or to band practice or sports games or the thousand other things students did.

Ok.

Art room in twenty?

Sure.

Ms. Tidd always let the students come and go at any time. It made for a more creative atmosphere, she said, though it also gave kids the chance to finish projects that were overdue or just sneak some time in to smoke up. The room was empty now, paints and materials still out from last period. Every desk was covered in half-used paper materials, pencil stubs, and melted crayons. Though everything had a haphazard look to it, the piles of junk and odds things in her corner looked different than before. Once up close she saw what had been done to her painting against the wall on the floor rather than on the easel where she’d left it earlier.

A giant red paint mark ran from the top to the bottom of the canvas, ruining the serene picture of a lake at dawn.

Andrea choked back a cry. She placed it on the table nearby and inspected the other painting from earlier in the year. The red paint was there, but this time it wasn’t a random slash. Instead, in broad strokes, it formed the letter H. Each painting was marked. It didn’t take her long to arrange the message: WITCH.

Jaclyn never showed, even as Andrea sat there for over an hour trying to get the red paint off her work, scrubbing the giant W and watching it goop up the image into a gray sludge. Each was a lost cause. The only project she had left was the makeshift heart. Andrea took it from her bag and held it tight in her hands. The strands of hair were still visible at the center. A dozen scenarios played out in her head of what Jaclyn could be made to do.

She needed a permanent solution.

Jaclyn snapped awake and stared up at the ceiling. All she could see were wooden beams and a spiderweb in the corner of what looked like a basement ceiling. The smell was dank and moldy. She tried to get up, but found her arms and legs tied down to a table. The rag in her mouth was duct taped in. She could lift her head just a few inches. There were frosted glass windows near the corners, black except for some candles on the sill. Looking down she saw her shirt torn open and her bra removed.

“Finally,” Andrea said, standing over her.

Jaclyn tried speaking. The sound came out in muffled anger.

“You know, at first, I had enough hair to command you to walk here under your own power. If I’d had something better - blood, skin - who knows what I could have made you do.” Andrea held the heart up to Jaclyn’s eyes. Eyes that went wide with fear. “What’s amazing is that you figured it out it was ‘freaky, witchy stuff,’ yet you still came at me. Because I’m so nice that I’d never do anything to you.”

Jaclyn’ skin burned against the restraints.

“I think my parents do ritual sacrifices on this table, so don’t bother.”

She had no idea if that’s what her parents did, though it wouldn’t have surprised her. Andrea picked up a knife from her parent’s collection, a long thin blade with a jagged edge. Candlelight glinted off the metal. Jaclyn whimpered.

“Relax. I’m not going to kill you.”

Andrea drew it across her palm until a red line appeared. As she gasped in pain, Jaclyn watched in fear as the blood streaked down her palm. She took a few drops onto her finger, opened the chamber of the heart, and placed it inside, closing the little glass door. It left a tiny red-smudged fingerprint.

Jaclyn inclined her head to see the heart a little closer. Her eyes were still wide, but her breathing had settled.

“You might want to close your eyes,” Andrea said.

Then she plunged her knife into the girl’s chest.

Even with the gag Jaclyn’s screams were loud and high pitched. Andrea sawed up and down, fighting cartilage and bone. The air turned sour. Hot blood squirted onto her arms and face. When she’d gotten a hole large enough for her hand she reached in. Everything was hot and rubbery. Jaclyn’s heart pumped wildly against her fingers. With a few hard yanks it came out, still pumping, a discolored gray and red thing. Jaclyn stared at it with a pale face before passing out.

The rest went smoothly - inserting the mechanical heart, giving it a few pumps to have it acclimate, sewing her back up. The grimoire Andrea borrowed from her mother promised the subject would reanimate once the heart took hold. Jaclyn’s original heart was placed into a jar, where it slumped against the glass leaving a red streak. It continued beating slowly. With Jaclyn sewn up, Andrea released the restraints and waited a moment. Jaclyn sat up, calm and quiet, staring down at her chest and the pink incision, her blood drying in brown clumps around her torso. She didn’t even bother removing the tape from her mouth.

Andrea did it for her, hands still sticky and red.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Fine.” Her voice was monotone.

“You’ve got a little of me at your center,” Andrea said. “Which means you do what I say. I want you to go on living your life. Just leave me out of it. Don’t even look at me. Anyone brings me up, say you’ve no opinion on me. Got that?”

“Got that,” she repeated. The real Jaclyn - the emotions and hopes and dreams version - was safely sealed in her jar. No one would really notice. A personality shift, that’s all they’d say.

“Wipe that blood off. Put your sweatshirt on.”

“What about that?”

Jaclyn pointed at her heart. It let out a little squelch against the jar.

“That’s mine now.”

Jaclyn cleaned herself up robotically, waved goodbye, and walked home alone into the night. After a shower Andrea took the heart up to her room and placed it on her bookshelf in the corner, half hidden by books and field hockey ribbons. She might give it back after senior year. She hadn’t lied when she told Jaclyn things could have been worse. She could have had her send out naked photos that would follow her online forever. Or had her rob a store, antagonize cops. Or jump off a roof. But Andrea wasn’t that kind of person. That’s all she’d wanted her to understand. She was a good witch.