“Hey! Nana!! Come join us!” Agatha called when she saw me.

I knocked at the door to Agatha’s dorm room at 9pm that night. I was half an hour late for our little party, because, being new to the school, I tended to get lost rather often, and honestly the dorms weren’t exactly easy to find your way around.

“Nana?” I asked Agatha, surprised, as Samantha opened the door for me.

“Don’t mind her,” said Ruth, who was sitting beside Agatha on the bed. “She’s gotten herself drunk already.”

“I’m just a little tipsy.”

Samantha beckoned me to walk inside, and closed the door behind me. “Glad you could make it,” she told me.

“I wouldn’t have missed this,” I said, looking at Agatha’s behavior. She was clearly more than just a little tipsy.

Agatha’s room was chosen for the party because it was the biggest one of ours. Samantha and Ruth both had narrow, tiny rooms like mine. Agatha had been fortunate to get one that was almost twice the size of ours. Apparently, that was due to an error in calculation from whichever architect had projected the building. It was just as well, though, because her room was big enough for a bed and a couple of mattresses that she had laid on the floor. Still, if we were all going to spend the night, that was three mattresses for four people.

“Ruth and I will share the bed,” said Samantha, basically reading my thoughts. “We’ve done this since we were in kindergarten.”

“You’re childhood friends?” I was visibly surprised. Samantha nodded, and patted the empty space on the mattress beside her, for me to sit down with them.

“Wine?” she offered me once I had sat down. She held the half-empty bottle in front of my eyes, swinging it as if to entice me.

“I… never had it before, actually,” I admitted. That’s what you get from being raised in a small countryside town filled with some of the most fervently religious people the North had to offer.

“Don’t feel pressured to accept it, just because you’re with us. Ruth over there only ever has water.”

I glanced at her.

“It’s true,” Ruth told me. “I dislike being drunk. Not a nice feeling. Plus, someone needs to take care of those two after they’ve had a whole bottle of wine each.”

“I think I’ll pass then,” I said, relaxing. I wasn’t sure about trying to drink on my first ever party with those three. And there was my curse too. I’ve learned too soon to avoid doing things that could end bad, because in my case, they often did. “Next time, maybe.”

Samantha nodded. “Next time,” she said. Then she placed the bottle on top of a little wooden disk, and her empty glass on top of another, similar disk. Suddenly, I saw Samantha’s glass slowly get filled with wine, as if it materialized itself from thin air. I realized, though, it was probably coming from the bottle, but however she managed to do that was beyond my imagination.

“Whoa!” I said, looking at it, baffled. “Is that a spell?”

“Yep,” Samantha said, smiling at me. “It’s just for show, though. You don’t really need a spell to fill up a glass when you could just do it with your hands, you know?”

“Pretty impressive,” I said. “I wish I could work magic.”

“You should join the elective,” said Ruth. “They have some pretty good teachers here at this school. I joined too, but then quit halfway through the basic class. Nothing to do with the teacher, though, I’m just really not fond of magic.”

“It’s too bad you won’t get Mr. Thomas, though,” said Agatha. “He’s a hottie.”

“Not just a hottie,” Samantha told me. “He’s a really good teacher.”

“We know,” said Ruth, with a devilish smile. “That’s why you’re getting the advanced class again this year, huh? Because he’s a… ‘good teacher’…” she said that quoting the last two words with her fingers. Samantha’s face turned red, and she sipped wine to hide her embarrassment. “Sammy has a crush on him,” Ruth explained.

“It’s not a crush!” she protested. “It’s just… admiration, really.”

“Yeah,” Ruth agreed, still sporting her devilish smile. “We’ve seen how you’ve been admiring his ass lately.”

“Shut up! You’re drunk!”

“I’m actually the only sober person in this room. Or was. With Ana here that makes us two.”

I was grinning.

“Is it true?” I asked Samantha. She averted her eyes, pretending to look at a flower vase by the window.

“Kinda,” she admitted it. “You’re going to meet him next Saturday. Take your own conclusions then.”

“What’s this about Saturday?” Ruth asked her.

“I went to the director’s office with Ana, yesterday. He’s appointed for her to meet him next Saturday, so he can assess that curse of hers.”

That again. I hated how I was never too far from it.

The girls must have noticed how sad I looked just then.

“Okay,” said Agatha. “New rule. The word ‘curse’ is officially banned from the girls’ nights. Whoever uses it has to drink a whole glassful of Nasty George.”

“Yikes,” said Samantha, squealing. The expression on Ruth’s face was of utter disgust.

“What’s a ‘nasty George’?” I asked them.

“It’s a drink we devised,” Samantha explained. “It’s basically lemon, ginger, tomato juice, and a lot of red pepper. Burns you deep down to your soul. It’s the ultimate punishment for whoever breaks the rules of our meetings.”

I nodded. “Scary,” I said. “But why the funny name?”

“Because George is Agatha’s ex, and he’s a pain in the ass,” said Ruth.

“Don’t bring him up,” begged Agatha. “He’s old history now. Let him be vanquished from the memories of our contemporary peers.”

Ruth didn’t seem impressed.

“You sound as if he’s something that happened two-hundred years ago. Didn’t I just see you talking to him yesterday?”

I stifled a laugh at that interaction between the two of them.

“What about Ana?” said Agatha. “She’s the only one you’re not mocking tonight.”

“It’s her first time, I’m taking it easy on her,” Ruth assured me.

“But seriously, Ana,” Samantha turned to me. “We’ve all been speaking of our love lives. You’re welcome to share yours with us too. Just rest assured that Ruth is going to turn it into a joke of some sort, sooner or later.”

“I don’t really have much of a love life nowadays. Not anymore.” I admitted to them. “I mean… there is this one girl I kind of like, but she’s taken, so there’s really nothing I can do about it.” There really wasn’t much point in continuing to lie to myself now, was there? Best I can do is admit it and try to move on from it soon.

They all looked at me expectantly, wanting to hear more about it.

“Wow, a girl!” said Agatha. “I knew you were special, Ana, I just didn’t know you were that special.”

I made a face, disconcerted. “It’s… not really anything special, where I’m from.”

“Don’t mind her,” said Samantha. “She’s from the South. They’ve had laws against same-gender relationships up until very recently. She’s not used to how things are, North of the border. So… this girl, what is she like?”

I looked up at the ceiling, trying to put in words a way to describe her.

“She’s… kind, funny, really beautiful… She has these princess-like airs to her, but once you get to know her, she’s really a bit of a tomboy. She likes arts and says her spells are all over the place, that they never obey her, or do what they’re supposed to.”

Samantha took a sip of wine. “Sound like you’re describing Claire, to me.”

“You know her?” I asked, surprised. I mean, it’s true Sam and I had stumbled at Claire yesterday, at the director’s office, but back then they had barely even spoken to one another, if at all. It didn’t feel like they were friends or anything of the sort.

Samantha’s jaw dropped. “No way,” she said. Then there was an awkward moment of silence. I shifted in place, nervously. Samantha shook her head, then spoke again. “I mean, you… I… wow, you like Claire? For real?”

I felt my cheeks turn slightly red. “I do, kinda,” I said, still having trouble admitting it out loud.

“I agree with the beautiful part,” said Ruth. “And the kind part too. I just never thought she was funny.”

“Then you have to talk to her for a while,” I said. “She really is, in an odd sort of way.”

“Well, I mean,” Ruth continued. “She’s the president of the student council. And she barely ever speaks out in public. I’ve always thought of her as some sort of workaholic. Nice to know she has an undiscovered fun side to her, too.”

She was the president? I had thought the tall boy from yesterday morning much more fitting of the job. And I was right about her speaking out in public, that’s probably why she was so nervous when she walked into our classroom, then.

“Way to go, girl,” Agatha complimented me, while drinking another glass of wine. “That Claire chick is quite a catch, if you ask me.”

“I told you before, she already has someone. And I don’t think she’d look my way, even if she was single.”

“I don’t see why not,” Ruth said, frankly.

“Well, I mean, I’m cur—”

“One Nasty George, coming right up!” said Agatha.

I stopped myself in time, then tried again.

“I’m boring,” I said. “I wanna be a witch, but I can’t work magic, how lame is that?”

“It’s not,” Samantha said. “You just haven’t found the right teacher yet.”

“Yeah, right…” Somehow, I thought that finding the right teacher wouldn’t help me in this case.

“You really should value yourself more, Anamaria.” This was Ruth speaking again. I liked how she was always entirely honest and direct with everything she said, that kind of made me trust her more. “You’re not boring, not at all. You’re really interesting, and fun to be with. I mean, when we first met Agatha, it took us a whole couple of months before we invited her for a night like this with us, and yet here you are, our guest of honor, and we only just met you for real this morning. Doesn’t that speak volumes about the kind of person you are?”

“Aren’t you just taking pity on me?” I asked them, worried. “Because of my— because of the way the other students treat me?”

“Honestly, Ana, that’s kind of offensive,” Samantha said. Suddenly I realized it was a mistake to say that. “We’re here with you because we want to be. We wouldn’t be offering our wine to someone we were just taking pity on.”

I felt miserable, regretting what I just said.

“Right, I’m sorry…” I took a deep breath, then decided to say something in the spur of the moment. “I think I’d like to try that wine, now.”

Samantha and Agatha laughed. Ruth just rolled her eyes at me, smiling.

“Oh bother, now it’s three drunken girls I’ll have to take care of.”

“Shut up, shut up,” said Samantha. “It’s her first time, not to mention her first time with us. Just let us do this tonight.”

Samantha filled me a glass of red wine, using her two hands instead of her fancy wood disk spell this time, then handed it to me. I took a sip, and instantly felt like spitting it out.

“Argh!” I said. “It’s horrible.”

Everyone, even Ruth, laughed at my reaction to the wine.

“Seriously, how do you even drink this?”

“It takes some getting used to,” said Samantha. “I only began to enjoy it after the sixth or seventh of these meetings. Now it’s kind of a staple. Can’t have a girls’ night without red wine.”

“I think I might have to go without the staple.” I said, making a face.

“That’s right, Nana!” said Agatha, smiling, as she leaned her back against the wall, eyes half-closed and slurred speech. “Alcohol is bad for your health.”

“That doesn’t sound very convincing coming from you,” said Ruth. And she was right, Agatha was far too drunk for her own good, even if what she said was true.

“By the way,” said Samantha, replacing my glass of wine with one of water (which I thanked her for). “Sorry if I overreacted with the whole thing about Claire. She’s a nice girl. I just… wasn’t expecting it,” her face looked a bit desolate, for some reason. “But you see… you’ve said yourself that she’s taken and all, so… don’t worry, okay? You’ll find someone else soon enough.”

“I’m not worried,” I said. I really wasn’t. I had kinda given up on whatever feelings I was starting to have toward her. She had a girlfriend, and a hot one at that. She wouldn’t look my way. “Thanks, Samantha.”

“Just Sam is fine,” she said, gazing at me with drunken eyes.