Samantha walked down the corridor with me and out of the main building, into the school grounds.

“Where are we going?” I asked her.

“To the director’s office.”

“What?!” I exclaimed. The last thing I wanted was to get in trouble with the director, not within weeks of coming to that school. “Wait, no,” I stopped walking, and Samantha, who still held my wrist, was forced to stop too. “I… I don’t want to go there.”

She turned to look at me, her face a mixture of anger and sadness.

“Tell me,” she said, looking me straight into my eyes. “Do you seriously intend to spend your whole school year being avoided by pretty much everyone in the entire school?”

I fought back the tears.

“I’m used to it.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be! It’s not fair! I can’t stand by and see you get treated like trash because of a stupid curse.”

I began to cry. Yeah, I know it was unfair. I lost count of how many times I’d thought that over the past years. The constant rejections had numbed down my feelings, as if shrouding me within a curtain, so that I stopped noticing the world outside. But then this Samantha girl showed up, and tore right through the curtain, reminding me of what the world outside of it was like. It’s… cruel and brutal and unfair. I found myself sobbing loudly in the middle of the school yard, tears streaming down my face in a seemingly never-ending fashion.

Then I felt her arms close around me, hugging me tightly.

That was the first time something like that happened. That someone would learn about my curse and decide to stick up for me… I honestly had lost all hopes of that ever happening.

“There, there,” she said, patting my back. I chuckled, amidst the tears.

“Thanks,” I told her, taking a step back from her hug, and then proceeding to wipe the tears with my shirt sleeves. I smiled at her. Really, I was grateful for that.

“Will you go to the Director’s office with me now?” she said, softly.

I nodded. “I don’t suppose I can talk you out of this, can I?”

She shook her head negatively. “But don’t worry, I’ll do the talking. You just need to be there.”

We resumed walking. She took my wrist again, holding it firmly but not so strongly anymore. Maybe she did it because she thought I might run away otherwise. And she was right, I actually might have.

“You know,” she told me, as we walked down the cobblestone path. “My mother has a curse too. It’s nothing big, and even though it doesn’t rub onto others, like yours, people still avoid her for it. People are so prejudiced. It’s not as if she has an infectious disease, and even if, she’s still a person, you know.”

“What does her curse do?” I asked, genuinely interested.

“She, um… She gets rabbit ears on full-moon nights. And a tail, too.”

I giggled. She smiled back at me.

“Yeah, it’s funny. I laugh about it sometimes too. Just don’t do it in front of her. She’s sensitive about it.”

“Noted,” I said.

We arrived at the large stone building where most of the administrative part of the school was housed. I had only been there once, on my first day. Samantha knew the way around the corridors much better than I did.

We were soon at the door of the director’s office. Before I could say or do anything, the girl just swung the door open and spoke to him.

“Director Louis, sir. Do you have a moment. I have something I need to talk to you. We do,” she added, raising my arm to show him she was accompanied.

“What’s this about?” he asked, from behind his desk. Then he tilted his body sideways to look at me. “Is that the new girl? The one everyone’s talking about?”

I looked down at the floor. So there have been rumors, I wasn’t wrong about that.

“I’m… Anamaria, sir.”

“Yes, that’s right. Anamaria. Please come in, the two of you.”

Samantha and I took a few steps into the room. I froze in place once I saw there was another person in there, sitting opposite to the director. She looked at me too, blushing slightly.

“So, hm…” he cleared his throat. “Claire here was just telling me about your situation,” he said, looking between me and the tall, princess-like girl that sat opposite him on the table. “Please take a seat. I’m afraid there’s no more chairs, but you’ll find a couple of stools behind the door there. Yes, that’s right, bring them over, Samantha. Thanks.”

Samantha and I sat down beside Claire, looking at the director.

“So…” he said, “the curse thing, is it?”

I nodded, averting my eyes. Samantha started talking, sounding obviously pissed off.

“They’ve been treating her like trash,” she told him. “It’s so unfair and cruel, and it needs to stop.”

“They?” the director asked.

“The other students,” Claire explained. I looked at her, surprised. “It seems everyone’s afraid that her curse might latch onto them. They’ve been spreading rumors, too. Some really malicious ones.”

“Such as?” the director asked.

“All sorts of things,” Claire said. “Stuff like her turning her previous schoolmates into lost souls, or bringing a troll down to the city.”

“What?!” I protested. “I never did any of that!”

“I see… I see…” said the director. “I believe there’s something we can do about this, yes.” He got up from his chair and went to the cabinet to look for a file. “Well, Anamaria, was it? I take it you’ve heard that this school teaches Witchcraft lessons? As part of our electives program.” I nodded. “Well, one of our Witchcraft professors is someone that’s really cherished by the student community, beside also being a phenomenal wizard. If you agree with my proposition, and I really think you should, given the severity of the situation, I would like to schedule you an appointment with him. This will be so he can assess that curse of yours. If you have one, that is.” He emphasized the “if”. That too was something surprising. I don’t think anyone’s ever questioned the existence of my curse before.

“I’ve… er, I’ve seen witches and physicians back home.”

“This is different,” he said, coming back to the table with a file and some sheets of paper. “Professor Thomas Williams is a worldwide renowned researcher. I’m sure he can help you with this situation. The thing is…” he looked straight into my eyes, with a saddened expression on his face. “I don’t want my students to go through those kinds of experiences. Nobody likes to be the one left out. At very least, having a professor everyone loves telling people they shouldn’t spread rumors about you is bound to have some positive impact in your school life. Give it a try, child.”

I took a deep breath.

“All right,” I said.

—

The following day, during breakfast, I sat at a table by my own again, not expecting anyone to come by. But someone did come by to sit at that table with me. Three “someones”, actually.

“Ana, these are Agatha and Ruth, from our class.”

I raised my eyes from my bland meal of bread and juice to look at the girls who’d just sat beside me at the table. Samantha had just laid down her food tray next to me, and the two girls she introduced me to sat opposite to us.

“Sammy told us about you,” said one of them. “I’m Agatha, by the way, and this is Ruth. I want to say I’m sorry for the way our stupid classmates have been treating you. They’re all jerks and they don’t deserve your company. Or ours.” She eyed the folks at the table nearest to ours. They had visibly felt uncomfortable ever since I came into the room.

I smiled, sadly. “That’s sweet of you, thanks,” I told Agatha. “Nice to meet you, by the way.”

“Don’t you think this food has way too much salt?” she said, gesturing at the stuff we all were given: bread, cheese, juice and a sachet of ketchup. “This has got to be bad for our health!”

I shrugged. I honestly had never thought about that before.

“Agatha’s parents are physicians,” Samantha told me. “She’s always fussing about the refectory food. You’ll get used to it.”

“You should be grateful I’m fussy,” she protested. “Thanks to me they don’t serve that horrible greasy soup from last year anymore.”

I giggled.

“I liked the soup,” said the other girl. Ruth, wasn’t it? “It was spicy. You could almost not feel the taste of boiled leftovers.”

Samantha laughed, and even I couldn’t help myself from smiling. Agatha, though, only glared at Ruth. “Tell that to your arteries once they’ve become clogged and ruined.”

“Oh please Agatha,” said Samantha. “Can’t we just enjoy eating supper at school without thinking about how it’ll eventually give us a heart attack?”

Agatha sighed. “Fine,” she conceded.

“So… Anamaria’s a pretty name,” said Ruth. “Where are you from?”

“North,” I winced, suddenly reminded of my curse and of how everyone back home treated me because of it. “Small town, nothing but cows and pasture all around it. Even the people remind you of cows.”

That got a laugh from all three girls. “You don’t remind me of a cow,” said Samantha. Ruth intervened.

“Don’t you think Samantha looks like a sheep with that hair of hers?”

Agatha laughed heartily. I had to cover my mouth with one hand not to laugh as well. Samantha had this really curly hair which she dyed almost white. That did confer her some sheep-like qualities, or at least a vague resemblance.

“Ha, ha,” said Samantha, sarcastically. “Laugh all you want. Just wait and see if I’ll help you guys with the next Math exam.”

“Oh, sorry,” said Ruth. “Forgive us, noble lady. We shall not do it again…” then, after a few seconds, she added: “…today.”

I grinned. The three of them were really funny and interesting people. Would it really be okay for me to be friends with them? Wasn’t that just too good to be true?

It was. Just as I had finished thinking about it, wondering when was the next time my bad-luck curse would act up again, I saw someone walking up to our table. Oh bother, I knew that boy. He was the baker’s son, from back home.

“If I were you,” he said, talking to the girls beside me, “I’d stay away from that wench,” he looked at me. Wow. To think he had never spoken a word to me before then, and now he suddenly comes and calls me a wench. What a prick. But he wasn’t finished insulting me just yet. “She brings bad luck, with that curse of hers. My parents got separated because of her.”

Shit. I’d forgotten about that. I can’t say that I was entirely innocent, that one time. It goes like this: One day I went to the bakery to buy my family some bread, and I happened not to notice the “closed” sign on the door, so I walked right in. I found the baker and the hotel receptionist half-naked behind the counter. Not knowing what to do, I darted outside, and the passersby on the street went into the bakery to figure out what was happening. You can guess whom the baker blamed for the incident, right?

Surprisingly, Samantha stood up for me, even though she didn’t know anything about what had happened at the time.

“If your mum and pa decided to get a divorce, that would be their own fault, wouldn’t it?” she told the boy.

“No, it’s true,” said another person. A girl with braided hair walked to our table. Oh, not her too. I could never stand that girl. “She made the church ceiling fall just by walking into the church. And then the priest got rabies. She has the devil in her.”

I was ready to protest against that. The priest didn’t get rabies, for god’s sake, it was just a bad case of flu. And I hardly ever talked to the man, you can’t go blaming every bad thing that happened on my curse… although she really was right about the ceiling, though.

“You sure you didn’t just knock the ceiling down with that huge head of yours?” Ruth said, acidly. She had quite a sharp tongue, it seems.

Surprisingly, that actually had many of the students in the room laughing. They were laughing at Ruth’s joke, not at the girl from my town, but it got her really furious all the same.

“You can laugh,” she said. “See how you like it once her curse rubs off on you.” She was practically spouting those words at her. Then she walked out, stomping on the floor with rage. The boy gave me a nasty look, and walked away too.

“Woah,” said Ruth. “I can almost believe she’s the one who got rabies.”

There was another round of laughter around us. The atmosphere seemed to get a little less tense, especially after Ruth’s witty remarks.

“Thanks,” I whispered at them.

“Don’t mention it,” she told me. “Really, that girl’s just insufferable. And we’re on your side.”

I laughed. I was really grateful for that, I can’t remember the last time someone had stood up for me like this. I was so used to being abandoned, once people heard about my curse.

Samantha placed her hand on my arm, to comfort me.

“You know what?” said Agatha. “Let’s do something fun today, just the four of us.”

“I agree,” said Ruth. “We haven’t done anything like that since before the winter break. What are you thinking about?”

Agatha smiled. “How does a girls’ night sound to the three of you?”