We were in the library for several hours. We got the key to one of the study rooms, and there we worked on our project non-stop while reading and taking notes from at least five different textbooks Karen had selected from the shelves. At some point, I got hungry, and Karen expertly smuggled some apple pie from the canteen past the library desks and into our little cubicle. We shared the pie, and took a break from history to just chat with each other. Karen told me all about her hometown, and about her childhood there. She was really fun to talk to, just how I imagined she’d be. Really, thinking about it, then, it made no sense for me to avoid her all week long in class.

On the other hand, Ursula would probably mock me again if she saw me talking to Karen in a study room. Jess and Elise didn’t like her, either, and I was scared that if I got too close to the “new girl”, I’d end up losing my friends at school. But right then and there, studying and chatting together in a private library room, Karen’s company was really fun. I even began wishing I’d be paired up with her for school projects more often, just so we could keep meeting like that again.

As if to interrupt my daydreaming, the librarian saw us eating pie through the glass wall, and came to the study room to scold us for our behavior. She even threatened sending us to the director’s office. Like that, our little study session was over. We were chased out of the library, and then, inevitably, had to go home.

“At least we got most of it done,” Karen remarked, while we walked together to the school gates.

I nodded, in agreement. “I don’t feel like going back to the library anymore, though,” I told her.

“Me neither,” she admitted. “That librarian scares me sometimes.”

“Doesn’t she?!” I exclaimed, surprised that someone actually had the same opinion as me.

“And the way she stares at you,” Karen said, and then began to mimic the librarian’s famous “death glare”.

“It’s like she can see right into your soul,” I added.

“Exactly!” said Karen, and we both laughed about it for a little while.

By then, we had just arrived at the gates. Naturally, because I had spent so much time watching her, ever since she came to school, I knew that we lived in opposite directions.

“Well,” I began to say, “I guess I’ll… see you tomorrow, right?”

“Right,” said Karen, smiling slightly.

I turned to go away.

What was this murky feeling I was getting? It’s a bit like when you have a bad taste in your mouth that you can’t get rid of. My chest tightened and the odd feeling seemed to flood my insides. I took a few steps away, and was beginning to make my way home when, for the second time that day, Karen called me out.

“Hey!” she said. “Isabelle, wait up.”

I stopped and turned, and saw her walking up to me yet once more.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

Karen was fidgeting. She was nervous. Why was she nervous?

“I was… thinking…” she stuttered a little. “Do you… do you wanna go to my place?”

My eyebrows went up in surprise.

“Er, what?” I asked, embarrassed. I was remembering what Ursula had told me about witches, and what they do to other women. Did that mean Karen intended to use me for some ritual?

“To finish the project,” she explained, and I relaxed. Oh, so that’s what this was about. “There’s just a little more to go,” she said, “we could get it done already. And I live close by.”

I thought about that for a moment. A witch was inviting me into her house. Given all the rumors I’ve heard about witches, the sensible thing to do would be to decline her invitation. On the other hand, I had just had a great time talking and working alongside Karen, and she really was fun to be with. She was a great person, even if she was a witch. So there’s probably no harm, right? Besides, there was only a little more to do for the history project, we’d be done in no time.

“All right,” I agreed.

We began walking up the street together. We were a little more silent now than we had just been at school. I tried to come up with a topic for conversation, but nothing seemed quite right. And Karen herself seemed a bit more quiet, as if she was nervous or something.

Her house really was close to school, it was less than a ten minute walk there. It was a two-story white building with large windows and a charming front yard.

“Come in,” she told me, once she had unlocked the front door.

I walked in and looked around. The house didn’t look too different from mine, or my friends’. That was surprising. I was kinda expecting witch houses to be completely different than that. In my mind, I imagined a cauldron, living owls, black cats and stacks of old-looking spell books. But there was just a carpet, some couches, a fireplace, and pretty much everything a house usually has.

“Should I greet your parents?” I asked.

“My mother isn’t home right now,” said Karen, walking toward the kitchen. “My room is upstairs. You can go on, I’ll fetch us water and some cookies and I’ll be up there in a minute.”

“Hm, okay,” I said. The staircase was on the back of the living room. I walked up to the second floor, where there were three doors. The first one, I discovered, was the bathroom. The second was probably her mothers, judging by the large bed and the staid-looking furniture. Finally, the third door opened into Karen’s room.

I immediately noticed the music posters on the walls, the mess of clothes on the floor, and a bookcase with both her school textbooks and some fantasy stories. I took a few steps inside the room, feeling more at ease that there was nothing too odd about Karen’s house, but stopped once I spotted a chalk drawing on the floor.

It was a magic circle, or so I assumed, for my knowledge of witchcraft was pretty limited. There were triangles and stars drawn inside the circle, as well as writing in a language I did not know, but judging by the shape of the characters, was probably something eastern. So Karen really was a witch, like her mother. I felt tense. Should I really have come to her house? I was all alone with her there, and there was nobody to call for help in case I needed it. Did Karen really bring me over just to finish the history assignment, or was she planning on doing something else to me, for one of her spells?

I was so worried that I didn’t hear the door opening behind me.

“What’s wrong?” I heard Karen’s voice, and I jumped in a fright. I turned to look at her, she was carrying a tray with cookies, two glasses and a jar of water, and she looked really sad just then. She sighed. “It’s not true, you know,” she told me.

“What isn’t?” I asked.

“The rumors,” said Karen, after laying down the tray on her desk. She then walked up to the bookshelf to pick up her history textbook and some other study material. All the while, she was talking to me, without looking me in the eye. “I know people talk about me at school,” she said. “I’ve heard some really nasty stuff, like that I seduced men to kill and use their hearts for magic, or that I made pacts with demons and all that stuff. That Ursula, I know she’s your friend, but she’s really a little prejudiced. I just want you to know that whatever you heard about me, or about witches, isn’t true.”

Still not looking me in the eye, Karen took the study material to her bed, opened her history textbook and started taking notes. For a moment, I didn’t know what to do, and I just stood there, close to the magic circle, looking awkward and out of place, while Karen worked on our assignment.

I have to say, I felt really horrible then. Because even though I should have known better than to believe stupid rumors, I still let myself believe them, and now I had just hurt Karen as a result of all that. I had never wished so hard that I could go back in time to fix things as I did just then.

I sat beside her on the bed. For a moment, none of us said anything. Karen kept her attention focused on the history book. Then I decided to do the only sensible thing that was possible in a situation like that, and apologize.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“It’s alright,” she said, still not looking at me. She was probably really hurt. “Everyone is like that,” she added.

I took a deep breath, wondering how to fix that situation.

“I’ll talk to Ursula,” I said then. “I’ll tell her that she’s wrong about you, and ask her to stop spreading rumors.”

Karen chuckled. When she spoke, she still sounded hurt, and her words stung. “Because that’ll definitely work,” she said, sarcastically, while still taking notes about the history project.

“Then I won’t be her friend anymore,” I declared.

For once, Karen stopped writing, and looked at me. Her eyebrows were slightly raised.

“What?” she said, sounding surprised.

I stuttered a little. “I-I don’t wanna be friends with someone who spreads rumors about you.”

To my surprise, Karen actually smiled. She chuckled, and went back to the history book.

“You’re weird,” she declared. “Hey, what do you think about this section here?” she pointed at one of the paragraphs on her book. “Should we add this to the presentation?”

I was relieved that Karen wasn’t sounding so sad and hurt anymore. She was just talking to me normally, like we’d done in the library earlier.

The rest of our history assignment took a lot longer than we had anticipated. This was because whenever we were done with one part, we remembered something else we still had to do, or we went back to fix our mistakes, or one of us had some idea to change the presentation, and so on. Still, working with Karen in the assignment was really fun, and before we realized it, it was nighttime already. They do say that time flies when you’re having fun.

Karen’s mother was back from work, too. Miss Sheila was a lovely woman, and treated me really kindly. I couldn’t help but notice that Karen was the spitting image of her mother, only thirty years younger, and with a bit of a rebel attitude on the side.

“There,” said Karen, sitting back on the bed to appreciate our work. In front of us were two carefully produced documents: one was our written report, and the other was the script for our presentation on the theme, next week. Each one had been revised so thoroughly that there was no way we’d get a bad grade in the history project.

“Here,” I said, and raised my left hand. We high-fived.

Then we heard Miss Sheila call from downstairs.

“Karen!” she shouted. “Dinner’s served! Ask your friend if she’ll join us!”

We both chuckled.

“Will you join us?” Karen asked me.

“I don’t know. My parents are probably waiting for me. What time is it?”

“It’s…” Karen checked her watch. “Wow, it’s eight-thirty.”

“Already?!” I exclaimed, almost jumping from the bed. “Shit,” I said, and hid my face in my hands. “My parents are going to kill me.”

“I’ll ask my mother to call them,” said Karen. “She’s good with explaining things, I’ll sure they’ll understand.”

Considering it was my parents you were talking about, nope, they won’t. But I agreed to it, halfheartedly, knowing that I’d be scolded at least a little less if another adult explains things to them before I got home.

We walked downstairs and went to explain everything to Miss Sheila.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll tell them,” said Miss Sheila. “But are you going to go home now? It’s already dark out, it’ll be dangerous. Why don’t you stay over tonight?”

That suggestion seemed absurd. It’s not that I was against staying over at Karen’s place: actually, I think that’d be pretty fun. The absurd part was convincing my parents to let me do that. They’d never agree. I tried telling Miss Sheila that.

Miss Sheila winked at me.

“Leave it to me,” she said.

She went to the phone in the living room and dialed my house number. Karen and I waited in the hallway while she spoke to my mom. After a minute or two, Miss Sheila called me to the living room, and handed me the phone. I tried to mentally prepare myself for the scolding.

“Belle?” asked my mother’s voice.

“Um… hi mom,” I said.

“What time will you be home tomorrow?” she asked. She seemed surprisingly calm, too.

“Err… after school?” I risked.

“All right,” she said. “Don’t bother miss Sheila too much, you hear? Thank her for letting you stay over. And tell me in advance next time you’re going to stay at a friend’s. Got all that?”

Did I mishear? Was she actually letting me stay?

“I… I got it.”

“Alright,” said my mother. “Have a good night, sweetheart. Stay safe.”

“Um… thanks mom.”

What the hell just happened here? Did someone kidnap my mother and replace her with someone who sounds exactly like her on the phone? There’s no way this was actually, really happening.

I walked back to the hallway in a daze.

“So…?” Karen asked me, expectantly.

“She said yes,” I told her, still unable to believe it.

“Woohoo!” she cheered. “So you’re joining us for dinner, right? Are you hungry? ’Cause I’m starving.”

Karen went ahead to the dining room. I actually pinched my left arm to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

“Strange,” I said, before walking to the dining room as well.

That night I found out Miss Sheila was a wonderful cook. It was just mushroom soup and a salad, but both things tasted surprisingly good. Karen, though, didn’t seem to be enjoying it as much as I did. She tasted one spoonful of soup, then complained:

“Mooooom!” she said, sounding annoyed. “You put spells on it.”

“We have a guest over,” said Miss Sheila, in a very polite manner. “I don’t want your friend to think your mother can’t cook.”

“I know that,” said Karen, still complaining. “But… spells!”

“Eat your soup, dear,” said Miss Sheila.