Brittany Geragotelis - Life's a Witch

I faintly remembered Phil. He was four years older than me and had graduated from high school before I’d gotten there, so we hadn’t exactly run in the same groups. Apparently, he’d headed off to college on a basketball scholarship. Either Dartmouth or Berkeley or something like that.

People said he’d refused to go to Cleri classes. Claimed that he was too busy spending his dad’s money to care about advancing his powers. It was hard to imagine that he and Jinx were from the same world. I hadn’t known his dad, but the connection made sense. Members of the Cleri were still active even if their kids weren’t attending classes anymore.

“In three hundred feet, turn right onto Fitzgerald Street. Continue to 10128 Fitzgerald Street, on left,” said Jane, otherwise known as the voice of my GPS. Not long after my parents gave the tech toy to me, I’d taken to calling her Jane. The computer-generated voice had the tiniest hint of a British accent, and I imagined the owner of the voice to be about twenty-five years old, sophisticated, and super-intelligent. Jane was most likely single—but it was by choice, not because guys weren’t into her. In other words, I sort of pictured her as being an older version of myself, but with a way cooler accent.

“Arriving at 10128 Fitzgerald Street,” Jane said.

As she said it, the five of us looked out our windows expecting to see acres of flat, indiscriminant buildings. But there was nothing there.

“What are we looking at?” Peter asked.

“I have no idea,” I muttered, straining my eyes to see in the dark. I pulled the car over and turned off the engine. Getting out, I let the door slam behind me, not even waiting for the others to follow. The street was empty as I crossed it, and all I could hear was the sound of crickets as they chirped in the night, followed by the echo of my heels hitting the pavement.

As I made my way to the other side of the road, I started to get a nervous feeling in my stomach, which always told me when something bad was about to happen. My fear threatened to turn into panic and my breath caught in my throat as I stepped up onto the sidewalk. I didn’t even realize that my hands had covered my mouth to stifle a scream. But the scream came anyway, a shrill cry in the quiet night. Only it wasn’t me; it came from one of the other girls just behind me.

Funny, I hadn’t even heard them come up.

I tried to speak, but for some reason I couldn’t. My mind had shut down and the rest of the world was quickly slipping away.

Because in front of me, on that chilly, dark evening, I was standing out on the sidewalk and looking at the last place my mom was known to be.

And the whole thing was burned to the ground.

I don’t remember the drive home. At some point I must have told Jasmine to call an emergency meeting with the other twitches. Someone tried reaching Jackson again, but only succeeded in getting his voice mail. Either he’d been with the rest of the elders, which was highly possible, or he was out there and unable to connect with us. Whichever it was, it became clear at that point that we were on our own.

By now, I would’ve done just about anything to get away from the wreckage that used to be the construction warehouse. Even if it meant going home and telling the others what I feared had happened.

There had been so much wreckage.

As soon as I had realized exactly what it was I was looking at, I’d gone numb with fear. The place was a charred mess. Everything was burned to the ground, and what wasn’t completely incinerated was covered in black soot, masking any evidence of what had once been standing in its spot. One look at the steaming acre of burned wood and steel and I knew nothing had survived.

And no one.

Before I knew what I was doing, I began to stagger forward, stepping onto the brittle remains of the grounds, not realizing until I’d already walked a few feet that the remnants were hot enough to melt the bottoms of my shoes.

That’s when I knew I was officially out of it. I was aware that my brand-new Jimmy Choos were being destroyed and I didn’t stop walking. I just didn’t care. I kept moving forward, even as I slipped on the loose pieces of debris below my feet. I slowed down only when something caught my eye among the sea of black.

It was shiny and small.

I veered over to see what had been reflecting the light of the moon, approaching where I thought the glint was coming from. The ground wasn’t as hot here and I crouched down, hoping to see a little better.

There it was again. Just a tiny hint of gold among the darkness.

I got down on my hands and knees and began to pick through the ashes and toss burned-up objects behind me. Clawing through the debris, I briefly wondered if I’d been seeing things, and then my hand hit something warm and smooth in the dust. Carefully withdrawing my hand from the mess, I knew from the feel of it that it had a chain. Either a necklace or a medal, maybe. Pulling the scarf out of my hair, I spit on the object and begin to polish it. A thought came to mind about how disgusted my girlfriends would be to see me crawling around in the dirt and spit-shining trash, and I found I didn’t care.

All I cared about was trying to figure out what the hell had happened here. And whether our worst fears had actually come true.

When I was sure I’d gotten the object in my hands as clean as I could without taking it to my jeweler, I tossed my scarf aside and held it up in front of me—and gasped.

It was a gold necklace, thin and delicate, with a pendant about an inch in size attached. The medallion read, “Be the change you wish to see in the world,” and it hung from a fourteen-inch chain. The piece was beautiful and obviously handmade.

And completely familiar to me.

It was the same necklace my mom had worn as far back as I could remember. My dad and I had both bought her other jewelry over the years—some expensive, some one-of-a-kind, one piece was even priceless—but she never took off the necklace engraved with the quote from Gandhi.

Except she wasn’t wearing it now, because it was here in my hand, covered in soot and still warm from the fire. As I thought about what that meant, my head drooped to my chest, defeated.

That was when I officially checked out.

After that I somehow made it back to the car. The others filed in after me, everyone dealing with their grief in different ways. Without my suggesting it, Jasmine told the rest of the coven to meet at my house ASAP. Her usually sarcastic tone had been replaced with one that was softer, kinder. The last thing I wanted was a bunch of kids running around my house—my parents’ house—but I didn’t have the energy to argue. I was having a hard enough time keeping us on the road because my eyes kept blurring with tears.

“Throw your stuff wherever,” I mumbled as we walked inside. The monotone voice that came out didn’t sound like my own and I had to look around to confirm that I’d actually spoken. I locked eyes with the four of them for the first time since we’d left the Elm, and froze. I had no idea what to say. So I said what my mom would have if she’d been there.

“There’s food in the kitchen. Help yourselves. I have to…” I looked around for an excuse to leave the room but was having trouble forming complete sentences, let alone being creative. “. . . go somewhere,” I finished lamely. Not even waiting for a response, I turned away from my coven and trudged over to the stairs, climbing them slowly. I felt like I was moving through quicksand and by the time I’d reached the top, I was exhausted. And I was usually always energetic. A few kids had even nicknamed me the Energizer Bunny back in freshman year.