Sally Green - Half Bad

Jessica’s departure means I can relax at home for the first time in my life, but now I have secondary school to worry about. I plead with Gran that I shouldn’t go, that it is bound to be a disaster. She says that witches must “blend in” to fain society and should “learn how to conform,” and it is important for me to do the same, and that I “will be fine.” None of those phrases seem to describe my life.

Phrases that come to mind, phrases that I’m expecting to hear, to describe me are “nasty and dirty,” “pond life,” and the old favorite “dumb ass.” I’m prepared to be teased about being stupid, dirty, or poor, and some idiot is bound to pick on me because I’m small, but I don’t mind too much. They’ll only ever do it once.

I’m prepared for all that, but what I’m not prepared for is the noise. The school bus is a cauldron of shouting and jeering, simmering with the hiss of mobile phones. The classroom isn’t much better, as it is lined with computers, all emitting a high-pitched whistle that gets into my skull and is not reduced one bit by sticking my fingers in my ears.

The other problem, and by far the biggest, is that Annalise is in my class.

Annalise is a White Witch, and an O’Brien. The O’Brien brothers also go to my school, apart from Kieran, who is Jessica’s age and has now left. Niall is in Deborah’s year and Connor is in Arran’s.

Annalise has long blonde hair that glistens like melted white chocolate over her shoulders. She has blue eyes and long pale eyelashes. She smiles a lot, revealing her straight, white teeth. Her hands are impossibly clean, her skin is the color of honey, and her fingernails gleam. Her school shirt looks perfectly fresh, like it has been ironed just a minute before. Even the school blazer looks good on her. Annalise comes from a family of White Witches whose blood has been uncontaminated by fains as far back as can be remembered, and its only associations with Black Witches are her ancestors who have either killed or been killed by them.

I know I should steer clear of Annalise.

The first afternoon the teacher asks us to write something about ourselves. We are supposed to fill one page or more with writing. I stare at the paper and it stares blankly back. I don’t know what to write, and even if I did I know I wouldn’t be able to write it anyway. I manage to print my name on the top of the page, but even that I hate. My surname, Byrn, is that of my mother’s dead husband. It is nothing to do with me. I cross it out, scratching it away. My palms are sweaty on the pencil. Glancing around the room I see the other kids are busily scribbling and the teacher is walking around looking at what they are writing. When she gets to me she asks if there is a problem.

“I can’t think of anything to write.”

“Well, perhaps you could tell me what you did this summer? Or tell me about your family?” This is the voice she uses for the slow ones.

“Yeah, okay.”

“So, shall I leave you to it?”

I nod, still staring at the piece of paper.

Once she has moved far enough away and is bent over some other kid’s work, I do write something.

i hava bordr and sisser my bordrs Arran

he is niss and Debsis clvrer

I know it’s bad, but that doesn’t mean I can do anything to improve it.

We have to pass our essays in, and the girl who collects mine stares at me when she sees my piece of paper.

“What?” I say.

She starts to laugh and says, “My brother’s seven, and he can do better than that.”

“What?”

She stops laughing then and says, “Nothing . . .” and almost trips over in her rush to get to the front of class to hand the papers in.

I look to see who else is sniggering. The other two at my table seem to be fascinated by their pencils, which they are gripping. The table to my left are grinning away one second and then staring at their desk the next. The same happens with the kids on the table to my right, except for Annalise. She doesn’t look at the table but smiles at me. I don’t know if she’s laughing at me or what. I have to look away.

The next day in maths I can’t work anything out. The teacher, thankfully, has quickly realized that if I’m ignored I’ll sit quietly and not be any trouble. Annalise is hard to ignore. She answers a question and she gets it right. She answers another, correct again. When she answers a third one, I turn slightly in my seat to glance at her and I am caught again by her looking at me and smiling.

On the third day, in art, someone brushes my arm. A clean, honey-toned hand reaches past me and selects a black rod of charcoal. As the hand moves back, the cuff of her blazer grazes the back of my hand.

“That’s a great picture.”

What?

I stare at my sketch of a blackbird that has been pecking at crumbs on the deserted playground.

But I have stopped thinking about the blackbird and the sketch. Now all I can think is, She spoke to me! She spoke to me nicely!

Then I think, Say something! But all that happens is Say something! Say something! booms in my empty head.

My heart is banging on my chest wall, the blood in my veins throbbing with the words.

Say something!

In my panic all I come up with is, “I like drawing, do you?” and “You’re good at maths.” Thankfully Annalise has wandered away before I say either of them.

She’s the first White Witch outside of my family to smile at me. The first. The one and only. I never thought it would happen; it might never happen again.

And I know I should steer clear of her. But she has been nice to me. And Gran said we should “conform” and “fit in” and all that stuff, and being polite is part of those things too. So at the end of the class I manage to direct my body enough to walk over to her.

I hold out my picture. “What do you think? Now it’s finished.”

I’m prepared for her to say something horrible, laugh at it or at me. But I don’t think she’ll do that.

She smiles and says, “It’s really good.”

“You think so?”

She doesn’t look at the picture again, but continues to look at me and says, “You must know it’s brilliant.”

“It’s okay. . . . I can’t get the tarmac right.”

She laughs, but stops abruptly when I glance at her. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s great.”

I look at the picture again. The bird isn’t bad.

“Can I have it?” she asks.

What?

What would she do with it?

“It’s okay. That’s a stupid idea. It’s a great picture, though.” And she sweeps her own drawing up and walks away.

From then on, Annalise contrives to sit next to me in art and to be on the same team as me in phys ed. The rest of the school day we are split into graded groups. I am in all the lowest ones and she is in all the highest, so we don’t see a lot of each other.

We are in art the following week when she asks, “Why don’t you look at me for more than a second?”

I don’t know what to say. It feels like more than a second.

I put my paintbrush in the jar of water, turn to her, and look. I see a smile and eyes and honey skin and . . .

“Two and a half seconds at most,” she says.

It felt a lot longer.

“I never thought you’d be shy.”

I’m not shy.

She leans in close to me, saying, “My parents said I shouldn’t talk to you.”

I do look at her then. Her eyes are sparkling.

“Why? What did they say about me?”

She blushes a little and her eyes lose some of their shine. She doesn’t answer my question, but whatever they said doesn’t seem to be bad enough to put Annalise off.

Back at home that evening I look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I know I’m smaller than most boys my age, but not a lot smaller. People always say I’m dirty, but I hang out in the woods, and it’s hard to keep clean, and I don’t see what the problem with dirt is. Though I do like it that Annalise is so clean. I don’t know how she does it.