“Put this on, you’ll feel better.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she whispers.
I can hear from her voice that she’s been crying. I get a sudden, powerful urge to throw that blond witch into the lake.
“I want to,” I insist.
Maggie turns over in her bed to look at me, covering herself with the blanket. She wipes her face, getting a streak of soot across her cheek.
“It wasn’t you,” I tell her, trying to keep the anger from my voice. “It wasn’t your spell. It was that other witch, the bitchy one, who’s always sucking up to your mom. She put a hex on your offering, I saw her whispering over it before she handed it to you.”
Maggie’s eyes widen, and she sits up. “Ugh, of course.”
“She’s a real piece of work,” I growl, sitting beside her on the bed. Our closeness twists my stomach into a knot. I shake my head. “If you ever need help hexing her, just let me know. Not sure if I’ll be much help, though.”
Maggie manages a tight smile. “Thanks.”
She reaches for the sweater in my arms, and the blanket slips. All along her shoulder, there are blistering red scars. I’m used to seeing scars, but I wasn’t expecting them on her, and my brow furrows. She notices, and reddens.
“Are those from tonight?” I ask, surprised.
“Um, no,” she mutters. “They’re from a long time ago.”
She starts to pull the sweater over her head, but she’s still a little dazed. Instinctively, I reach out to help.
“Thanks,” she whispers.
A moment of silence passes between us. I want to rub the soot off her cheek, but hold myself back.
“You don’t have to talk about it, unless you want to,” I tell her.
“It’s um…I’ve never told anyone about it,” she bites her lip, not meeting my eyes. “Only my moms know, they found me afterwards when I didn’t come home.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven. Seven and a half. But the other kids…they were older…”
I frown. “What happened?”
She inhales slowly. “We live in a small town, Cherry Creek. Everyone there thinks my family is weird. And growing up, it was even worse. Three women living together with a kid? Of course, there were rumors about them. The other kids at school would tell stories about how my moms were spooky, evil witches who ate children. I don’t think they knew what to make of me. They started bullying me really bad. They would chase me home from school every day and make dolls of me to stick pins in. I would find them on my desk. I kept hoping that one day they would get bored, find someone else to pick on.
“Anyway, back then, I would practice magic sometimes. Just little spells and rituals like witch kids do, you know. There was this old abandoned farmhouse I liked to hang out in. I thought that nobody else knew about it. But some of the other kids must have been following me. They surrounded me, about eight or ten of them. Said that I was an evil witch and they were going to send me back to hell. It was Halloween…Samhain.”
She shudders.
My face feels hot. “They shouldn’t have said that to you. I’m so sorry, Maggie.”
“It gets worse. One of them came from his dad’s gas station and…he threw a can of oil all over me. Another kid had matches, they…they lit me on fire…said that witches had to be burned…”
“Oh, Maggie…”
She shakes her head and takes a long breath to steady herself.
“After that, my moms werefurious. I’m sure Astrid hexed them all, most of them actually moved out of town. But the damage was done. After that, I always kept my head down. Inever wanted to be a target ever again. I just wanted to be normal.”
She pulls the sweater tightly around herself, still avoiding my gaze.
I think about little Maggie, alone. My heart pounds with anger and sadness.
