Chapter One
No one doubted that the town park in the center of Middleton Village was in desperate need of renovation, but no one ever had been ambitious enough to actually do anything about it, including the town’s wealthy benefactor Mr. Deacon. The billionaire had improved the roads, given out small loans for family-run mom-and-pop businesses, established the headquarters to Deacon Enterprises in that town, providing jobs for most of its citizens—and on good pay with all the perks. But the park he shied away from. Some said it was because it was attached to Wolf’s Wood, and therefore part of the wildlife reserve, best kept wild. But that wasn’t it.
The Ladies Aid Society also had ample opportunity to improve the park. But they only trimmed the edges, occasionally had the teeter-totter and swing set on the exposed corner repainted. And this past year they planted tulips in the recently unearthed stone pond-turned-flower-garden. But generally they let the rest be.
The Men’s Club was likewise negligent. It wasn’t worth their time, they said.
So when the two Eagle Scouts in the making, James Peterson and Peter McCabe undertook the renovation of the town park, everyone thought they were nuts.
The park was the kind of place where things happened. Dangerous things. Creepy things. It was the kind of place where ordinarily-small shrubs were allowed to overgrow so much that young nubile girls given to an attraction to the occult could dance naked under the full moon and no one would be the wiser. And it was most likely they had… many, many times before.
Such things were common in Middleton Village.
It was also one of the true reasons the Ladies Aid Society had neglected the rest of the park. Peter and James both suspected they frequented the place often—and in the dead of night. After all, they were witches.
“The dead of night,” James muttered as he carried sod from the flat of the truck to the muddy patch in the field they had laboriously cleared of weeds where he would lay it down. It took some effort as he was still chunky around the middle despite the increase in muscle mass from exercise over the past six months. “What kind of phrase is that? It isn’t like things can’t be dead in the daytime too. Plenty of battles happen midday where people die. More than when at night. I mean, you can see who you are killing.”
Peter groaned, heaving his armload of sod, followed by their other friends who had volunteered to help and had been helping for the past week. He was a leaner, more athletic sort, though his athleticism inclined towards kicking around balls with his feet and knocking pucks on ice with sticks. This heavy lifting was not his thing. And he really didn’t want to philosophize with James at the moment. His dark brown hair flopped into his rich brown eyes, obscuring his vision as sweat dribbled down.
Their friend Edward White—a skinny light-brown haired boy of sixteen who usually looked like he spent most of his time indoors in front of a computer—adjusted his mud-flecked glasses with an assessing glance at what they had left to do, ignoring James. It was almost finished, the sod-laying. But then, as the adage went, many hands had made light work.
Their other friends (Daniel Smith, Jessica Mason, Andrew Cartwright, and Semour Dawson), with Eddie, were helping out with the sod. Oh, and half the Medieval Club[1] agreed to help, though only a third actually came. It was a monster of an Eagle Scout project.
“The night lends to creepiness,” Daniel said, passing them in a trot back to the truck flat. The bespeckled, pimple-faced boy generally walked at a trot, always going quickly. It was just one of the reasons his friends had nicknamed him Swift. He heaved up another sod roll and carried it against his mud-stained Middleton Timberwolves sweatshirt with ease as his glasses slipped down his nose. “Creepiness is akin to death. So—”
“People are lame, get scared easily, and have to ascribe dangerous things to the night,” Semour dryly finished Daniel’s thought, dropping his sod load with a heavy thump against the muddy ground.
He wiped his sweaty forehead with his arm, taking off his glasses while emitting an old-man grunt. For a fair-haired freshman boy, skinnier and younger than all the others there, he talked a lot like he was an old man. His six friends usually ignored it, but the other volunteers from Medieval Club had a hard time doing so. They always thought Semour was the weirdest of the bunch… including the bizarre nickname his pals gave him—Sir Cooly. But, of course, this consensus possibly excluded Peter whom everyone at the school openly called the Zombie King. It had to do with Peter’s predilection for plastic, yet life-like, shrunken heads and faux voodoo dolls on key chains. But Semour felt freakier. He had that eerie older-than-the-hills stare.
Peter looked around the open area after unrolling his sod piece, surveying the scene while the others continued to work. He noticed Andrew was working with his girlfriend, Jessica, the pair of them covering up the lawn edge near the gravel-spread parking lot. They had laid that gravel the week before. It took less than two hours to finish, though, as Andy had brought the entire varsity basketball team to help them out. Andy said they owed Peter and James—and the team did not argue. They really did owe those two, big time. Never mind they also owed Daniel, Jessica, Eddie, and Semour as well. This was about the park not an old debt.
The tall, freckled redhead smirked in quiet conversation with the brown haired, fashionably eye-glassed girl who had moved into their town last fall. Occasionally he held hands with her in his increasingly flirtatious way. Andy had been Jessica’s first friend in Middleton Village, and all the girls in the school envied her because Andy liked Jessica more than anyone. And Andy was the only reason Jessica had stopped complaining about moving from big-city California to their small isolated town. Secretly, Peter envied Andy, as did their other friends. Jessica was, without a doubt, the most amazing girl they had ever met. They even called her the Chosen One, half in jest, half serious. The funny thing was, the rest of the town saw her as a freak. Even now those working with them were rolling their eyes with disgust that popular Andrew Cartwright had chosen the outsider freak girl from California to be his girlfriend. Already the couple had plans to go to Sadie Hawkins and the Spring Fling.
With things fine there, Peter’s eyes scanned next to where his group had set in stakes and string indicating the jogging path they planned to put in after the sod had settled. Tracing the route took only one day, with Daniel and James teaming up as they always did, using lots of string. Daniel had been the first to volunteer to help them on their Eagle Scout project. But then, Daniel would do just about anything with James—including break into schools, battle witches, and get into heaps of trouble while talking about adventures they had had somewhere else in another time. Currently, they were still carrying on that disconcerting conversation about how the phrase ‘dead of night’ probably referred to how everyone was asleep rather than about the death toll in night time hours. Kids from the high school Medieval Club were edging away from them.
Finally Peter looked to the area they had blocked off with large railroad ties. They still had to get the sand for the playground. But Mr. Deacon had assured them he would donate the jungle gym. It would be shaped like a pirate ship, including a crow’s nest, a climbing net, two slides, a row of six swings, and a fake giant squid made out of plastic and rubber. It would be wonderful when finished. But the park had already taken a lot of work, and Peter was tired.
Before they even started to lay the sod, they had also cleaned out the old fort near the scanty playground equipment of one swing set and a teeter-totter covered in years of rust and layers upon layers of lead-based paint. They raked up all the fallen leaves and piled them into mulch. And after tearing down and redistributing the overgrown hedges that surrounded the field, they had cleared out an almost endless infestation of thistles, deadly nightshade, monkshood, and other suspicious plants. And the rest cost money.
It took three months of popcorn sales, craft sales, Medieval Club service auctions and lots of petitioning to City Hall and Deacon Enterprises to raise the funds for just the sod and gravel. This didn’t count the playground sand they still needed to get, or the paving for the jogging trails. Luckily, both boys were able to convince Mr. Deacon, via Skype and lots and lots of letters and emails, to donate the playground equipment and help lay the jogging paths. Mr. Deacon’s only stipulation was that they had to map out the park first and show him what they had planned before he would agree. He also wanted to see photos of their progress.
Not a problem. James had an organized mind. And Peter insisted they needed as much physical input from Mr. Deacon as possible. A vested interest, so to speak. After all, once Mr. Deacon invested time and money in something, he made sure it stayed in good condition.
“Done!” Daniel declared, wiping his mud-mucked hands against each other with a that-is-that smack, grinning to all. “I say we go get lunch!”
James nodded, tromping over the barely laid grass, equally muddy in his dishwater blonde hair, along his cheek, and on his fat, square, plastic framed glasses from one unlucky swipe with his hand fighting sweat.
The others from the club followed in hearty agreement, glad indeed to be done.
Peter swayed there, broken out of his reverie as he stood in the middle of the field of checkerboard grass with a panoramic view of Wolf’s Wood and the road. He gazed around at the scene, taking it all in.
All of it. Finished. The hard stuff, done.
Now all they had to do was wait for the grass to settle and grow. Then they could use it for Medieval Club for jousts, fairs, and—oh—the mock war they were to hold between Peter’s ‘royal court’ and ‘Lord’ Milton[2] Coombe’s band of thugs.
The politics of Medieval Club were simple. Anyone who wanted to become king (their equivalent to club president) had to go through a series of duels with the current king, his champions, and then a mock war. So far, Milton had won the first duel, lost the second, and they were now down to the mock war. Whoever won that was king, and the loser could no longer challenge for the royal position the duration of his club membership. It was in the rules.
They would lose—Milton’s band that is. The war was just a formality. A formality of medieval fun.
The thing was, they couldn’t hold their mock war on the school campus. Otherwise, they would have done it two weeks ago. Middleton High’s sports teams occupied those fields almost day and night since the snow had melted. The club needed this field.
“Wake up, sleepy-head,” Eddie slapped Peter gently on the back of his skull. “You’re dozing.”
Glancing at Eddie, Peter sighed. And his stomach grumbled. “Yeah, lunch.”
They walked off the field together.
Most of the club members left the seven friends as soon as they could. Andy walked with his muddy arm around Jessica’s muddy waist, both of them laughing together on their way toward the town square as if they had just finished mud wrestling on a date. Daniel and James trotted right behind them, buddy-buddy chuckling as they suggested places they ought to go to eat—places where people would not peer at them as if they were creatures from the black lagoon. Eddie and Peter had taken up the rear though Semour marched right behind James and Daniel, more vigilant in his pace, especially when a car drove past carrying a prominent citizen like the mayor or his wife…or in this case, the head of the Ladies Aid Society.
Ms. Whittaker had halted on the curb, pausing to talk to Mrs. Kidby, one of the English teachers at the high school who had been watching the club members finish their sod-laying. Both women stared with narrow eyes at the muddy gang of seven teens who had, up until that semester, been seen as a the weirdest collection of freaks in that town. All seven of them stiffened.
It wasn’t uncommon in the past month to see members of the Ladies Aid Society stop to watch their progress on the park. None of the women smiled, of course. The Middleton Village witches hated every last one of the seven.
Once they passed the two women, Jessica drew in a deep breath, turned to walk backward, and hissed out to the others, “You know, they are not going to forgive us for destroying their ‘dancing lawn’. They’re going to give us some trouble.”
James snorted, imagining how the Ladies Aid Society used that ‘dancing lawn’.
“Get your mind out of the gutter.” Daniel slapped him on the back of the head.
“The witches are trouble,” Peter said, rolling his eyes.
“We’ve already interfered in their demon conjuring,” Semour interjected, agreeing.
“Human sacrifice,” Eddie added for clarification. “And they are still trying to curse you, Jessica.”
Jessica rolled her eyes with barely a thought over why the witches her in particular. “I am well-protected against them. We can feel it when they are carrying a spell.”
Andy heaved a heavy sigh, looking back at the two women. “But we don’t want any more trouble from them.”
“Too late,” Daniel said with his own eye-roll. “I’m sure we have already incurred their wrath. It comes from being the Holy Seven.”
All seven of them stiffened at that reminder. None of them liked the title Holy Seven. Besides not feeling particularly holy, the responsibility of the title handed off to them from Mr. Carlton Jones (a member of the last generation of God’s chosen warriors against dangerous supernatural creatures and events) was weighing heavily on them. That and they objected to the title Holy Seven on principle. There were in fact eight of them.
Michael Edmund Toms, who lived in San Diego, California, was also a member of the Seven, a good friend, and skilled ‘knight’ in his own right. But living on the other side of the country set him apart and he had his own problems to deal with.
“Yeah…” Jessica said, still thinking out loud. “The thing is, and I’ve been thinking about this since the whole cursed basketball incident[3], we really ought to lay low. You know, play normal, until graduation.”
“Normal?” Eddie grimaced as if the word tasted sour in his mouth.
“What I mean is, not draw so much attention to ourselves,” she said. “Our parents are getting really uncomfortable with us hanging out together because of all the trouble that has been gravitating towards us. We need to be doing normal teenager things, at least in front of them—you know, so they don’t worry.”
Daniel sighed. “Yeah…. I’ve been thinking about that as well.”
James raised his one muddy eyebrow at his pal.
Continuing, Daniel said, “My dad’s been edgy since he realized we’ve challenged a witch. And you all know my half-sister and ex-stepmom are witches, so he’s not so ignorant as—”
“My mom, you mean,” Jessica cut in with a sharp glare.
He shrugged and nodded, though his eyes turned to Andy who tried to avert his gaze. “Though I was thinking more about Pastor Cartwright. Red, your grandpa doesn’t know what we’ve been up to, right? Or your parents?”
Andy cringed. As the grandson of the most prominent and influential priest in the town, there was a lot of pressure on him to behave a certain way. There had been moments in the past when he had rebelled against it; like the time he hung around Howie Deacon and cracked eggs inside mailboxes. Back then he had been a well-known hellion. Currently he was playing ‘the good boy’, especially since Howie was now off at private school. Andy didn’t know how his grandfather would react to his grandson running around with a real sword dealing with witches.
Shaking his head, Andy said, “I’d like to keep him out of it.”
“But our parents found out,” Eddie said with a glance to Semour.
Semour hunched into his shoulders, emitting an uncomfortable grunt. “Not that it did any good. Dad’s been putting the screws into me to become more ‘normal’ as Jessica said. But what does that mean anyway?”
Jessica tilted her head and replied, “Show interest in teenage things. Join another club besides Medieval Club. Take up a sport.”
“Scouts,” James interjected helpfully.
Daniel shrugged. “I guess I could join track.”
Gazing dryly at her, Semour frowned. “A sport? My dad doesn’t even like sports. He’s been trying to get me to study computer programming—things he likes. He already got me a book on C++. I mean, I used to like that stuff. But now all I want to do have an adventure. You know? I—”
But he stopped as Ms. Whittaker’s car rolled by, her laser-sharp glare invisibly slicing them in half. Perhaps she was scheming something equally awful. All seven of them had stiffened. They exhaled heavy breaths after she had passed entirely.
“I see,” Semour muttered. “Play normal for our parents, the teachers, and the witches. Until when?”
Andy sighed, the one who everyone in the town considered the most normal out of the seven of them. “Graduation. We do what we can to survive to graduation.”
Semour groaned, tromping ahead of them. “But that’s three years from now!”
“Two and a half for us,” James said, grinning with a mischievous smirk.
Scowling back at him, Semour shook his head. To be the oldest, and yet also the youngest had always been for him the most vexing.
Peter chuckled, following after them with confidence that he didn’t need to pretend anything for the next three years, as he had a reputation of weirdness he didn’t mind keeping… leaving Eddie at the tail end of the group.
Eddie was walking slower, dragging his feet. His eyes were on the ground. His mouth set in a thin frown as he muttered the word ‘normal’ under his breath once more.
*
Sunday morning at Pastor Cartwright’s service in the First Church of Christ in Middleton Village, the priest extolled the virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity while most of the members of that congregation listened—or pretended to.
The McCabe boys were secretly playing little pencil and paper games to pass the time. Daniel’s sisters were quietly playing with finger puppets, as he sat on his father’s far side to keep him from looking back to James or Eddie. Semour sat between both of his parents, sandwiched really. His arms folded irritably while his twelve-year-old brother Felix folded several different cootie catchers out of that service’s program, making them into talking-mocking puppets at Semour, saying things like, “Have you been a naughty boy?” Eddie leaned back in his pew, counting the ceiling tiles. But James listened. He was that kind of boy. But he was also the kind of boy who liked to look for loopholes in a sermon, which was why he listened. And while Jessica watched all this from her pew, her eyes drawing back to Andy who sat in the front with his family, playing the part of the good example for the congregation, she kept wondering, if acting normal was enough. The witches wouldn’t just leave them alone after all.
Besides, Eddie had a point. She could hear it in his tone when he had muttered the day before. Acting normal was not the same as being normal. And none of them were normal. Each one of them had been changed by supernatural events in that town, and they were destined to become warriors for God. If anything, the witches would seek to destroy them as soon as possible.
Ugh. Jessica got chills just thinking about it. In the bottom of her thoughts, she had simply wished they hadn’t been identified as the Seven so early to their enemy. They just needed a little more time—more time to physically grow up. Most of the boys were emotionally and mentally older than they looked. But as a high school student, barely sixteen, it was incredibly inconvenient being identified as a warrior for God when she had classes and tests to take.
Which is what was taking place on Monday. Semester midterms. When not working on the park, she had been studying, studying, studying—though her mother thought she was just playing footsie with Andy underneath the kitchen table. She wasn’t…all the time.
Her eyes flickered to him again and she sighed. Andrew was sitting with a tilted head, listening with one ear, though his eyes flickered to something his younger sister Bethany was drawing in her lap. Huh. Even the priest’s grandkids got bored when their grandfather talked. And her mind wandered again….
Walking out of church, Mrs. Mason’s cell phone vibrated in her purse. Everyone had dispersed to their cars, the parents of the seven teens doing their best to separate them as quickly as possible, though James and Daniel chatted before their parents split them apart—James’s father almost grabbing his son in a head lock. Jessica stopped on the steps, waiting for her mother who had set the phone to her ear and answered it.
“Hey! Jessica,” Peter jogged to her with an open grin while the rest of his brothers ran about the parking lot expending pent up energy. “Tomorrow, club meeting. Ms. Swaddon’s Home Ec. room. Doing posters for the mock war on Saturday. And I think we are also opening the event up to feasting with costumes on.”
Jessica chuckled with a nod. She was the club’s magician, though Peter called her the wizard. He had been joking that she ought to fashion a long white beard and a pointy hat to wear since she took up the post.
“You’d better tell the herald,” Jessica said, noticing her mother’s eyes flickering disconcertingly towards Peter.
The McCabes unnerved her mother. It was only natural. Mr. McCabe had inadvertently assaulted their car the first week they had arrived in Middleton Village—or that was how her mother saw it. At the time the man had been distraught because Peter had gone missing and he was trying to warn then about the library curse, so it was explainable. But Mrs. Mason also thought Peter was mentally disturbed.
“Uh,” her mother leaned over and pulled Jessica closer to her, “Jess-baby, something just came up. You might not be able to go to your meeting tomorrow.” She leaned towards Peter with a pained grin. “Excuse us.”
Practically dragging Jessica several yards away, Mrs. Mason said in a hush, “Mr. Deacon just called me. He needs me to travel with him out of town for a few days to help with some translation….”Jessica brightened. A chance to leave Middleton Village for a few days sounded good. “…But I feel a uneasy about leaving you home by yourself….” Jessica wilted. She was not included in her mother’s travel plans? But it wasn’t the first time she had spent a weekend alone, though that was back in LA. She was more than capable of taking care of herself—but left alone in a town full of witches? Bad idea. “…Then Mr. Deacon suggested that you stay at Deacon Manor—”
“Deacon Manor?” Jessica straightened up again, immediately excited. No one had been in Deacon Manor since Mr. and Mrs. Deacon had divorced and Howie had gone off to private school, something Andy complained about once at around Christmas time. Apparently Mrs. Deacon used to host these amazing holiday parties.
Her mother nodded, relaxing with a smile. She didn’t want to leave Jessica alone in that town either, though she didn’t believe in the witches no matter how many times Jessica said they were real. Her worry was that a hormonal sixteen year old boyfriend would try to spend the night and then she would have to take care of their love child as Jessica struggled to get her GED. Jessica thought it irksome how her mother imagined her future so dismal every time she factored Andy into the picture.
“Yes, Mr. Deacon said you can stay in the guest room,” Mrs. Mason said. Then she added, carefully, “And his driver will pick you up after school. You should pack today so you don’t have to bring anything on Monday. He’ll pick it up this afternoon.”
But Jessica stared dryly at her mother. “A driver? Can’t I just walk to Deacon Manor? I walk to school every day.”
Her mother nodded with a cringe. “I know, but… he said there is something you have to do with the dogs. You have to be introduced, or they might, I don’t know, bite you.”
Jessica stared.
“The driver will get you in the gates safely and—”
“Dogs?” Jessica shivered. She wasn’t exactly fond of big dogs. She was more of a Scottish terrier fan. Already she could imagine a pair of Dobermans attacking her as soon as she stepped into the gate.
“He’ll make sure the dogs get to know you,” her mother said again. “It will be ok, as long as you are with the driver. If you come and go with him—”
Jessica rolled her eyes. “If I come and go with him, it will be like going to prison. Mom, you just don’t want me spending any free time with Andy while you are gone.”
Sighing her mother shrugged. “A mother can’t be too careful.” And she trotted quickly down the rest of the steps to their car.
Jessica moaned, hung back her head, and dragged her feet after her mother.
Monday dawned. Each in the Seven had so much on their minds—most of it being the mock war with Medieval Club, though Jessica came in to school with the news that her mother was off with Mr. Deacon on business, and she would be staying at Deacon Manor starting that night. But she didn’t get to tell her friends until lunch. Andy was the first to get excited.
“Really?” He was practically bouncing in his seat. His grin was incorrigibly boyish.
Peter rolled his eyes. Daniel and James snickered. Eddie and Semour sighed.
Nodding, Jessica stared bemused at their various reactions. She knew Andy and Howie Deacon had been best friends…but Howie wasn’t going to be at Deacon Manor.
Leaning closer over the lunch table, Andy grinned wider. “So, you’ll stay in the guest room. And I can come over and—”
Jessica groaned. “Andy. I think I’m being made to stay there to keep you from coming over. Besides, you aren’t seriously thinking straight.”
The other boys rolled their eyes all together this time, as Andy snickered.
“How can they keep me out?” he asked.
“Well, they’ve got these big dogs and…”
“Freddy and Brando?” He kept grinning, waving the idea away with a snort. “Softies. You just know how to talk to them.”
She peered at him dryly. “And you do?”
With a shrug that was too sly, slier than usual for him, he said, “Yeah, sure. With snacks.”
“Never worked for me,” Daniel muttered, looking the other way. His father was one of the many in town who worked for Mr. Deacon.
Andy glanced at him from the corner of his eye. “They are particular about what snacks they like. Besides, Howie introduced us. Once they trust you, they’ll let you by.”
“You used to sneak over to the Deacons’ a lot, didn’t you?” Peter leaned over the table with a smirk.
With a sheepish shrug, Andy just kept smiling. “He was my best friend.”
“Wait a minute!” A girl Jessica didn’t even know suddenly pushed in between Jessica and Eddie, staring wide-eyed and gaping-mouth at Jessica with three girls in tow with the same expressions on their faces. “Did you say you are staying in Howie Deacon’s house tonight?”
Shrugging, with glances to her friends to know the identity of this strange girl who was now elbowing Eddie aside with incredible pushy force, Jessica hesitatingly said, “All week, actually.”
The girls’ mouth gaped wider. “Get out of town! No way!”
“I am so jealous,” the girl right behind her said. Jessica recognized her. Becky Spillinger—a junior on the cheer squad who often hung out with Amy Paige.
Amy Paige stood right behind her. Amy held back from the table, mostly because Andy had made it absolutely clear that last month that Jessica was his girlfriend and Amy didn’t have a chance, even if Hell froze over. Most at the school thought Andy was nuts since Amy was a pretty, perky blonde with perfect spiral curls and the example of goddess in a figure. She was also popular, whereas Jessica was not. But Amy looked just as jealous as Becky in that moment in regards to Howie Deacon.
Jessica tilted back her head and asked, “Why?”
Andy chuckled.
She looked to him.
With a shrug, he said, “Howie’s house is awesome.”
“Mansion,” Becky corrected with stunned awe.
Amy set a hand to her forehead. “Not even that. Jessy-pooh, nobody goes to Deacon Manor—ever.”
Jessica blinked, sure she had heard of people going to parties at the Manor house. But Andy chuckled and shook his head.
“She means,” he said with a crooked smile, “it is very rare that anyone gets to see Deacon Manor since the Deacons got divorced.”
Amy scowled at him. “No, that’s not what I mean. Even before—you and, like, nobody else really went over there.”
The other three girls nodded, and Becky cut in, “Though there was the Christmas parties they had.”
“But that’s not the same!” Amy earnestly snapped. “Everyone went into the game room or their ballroom. She’s, oh-my-gosh, gonna get to see Howie’s bedroom!”
The girls squealed together with thrilled excitement.
Jessica just stared at them.
Andy did also, dryly. “Give me a break. I’ve seen Howie’s bedroom. What’s the big deal?”
Rolling her eyes with effort over at the boy she had practically haunted and flirted with since forever, Amy said, “You’re a boy. It’s different for girls.”
He rolled his eyes towards Jessica who was now shaking her head at the ceiling. So were the other boys listening in on this hormonal teen conversation. None of them had been regarded as if existing, though the trio of girls in Medieval Club nodded to Peter in deference.
Peter sighed loudly and said, “I’m sure Jessica is not going over to the Deacon’s big house to check out Howie’s bedroom.”
“I hardly know the guy,” Jessica murmured, glancing once to Andy who snickered.
Amy with Becky, rolled their eyes sarcastically at Peter. Amy said, “Well, I’d like a look. It’d be great to see what makes that guy tick. You know, one day he’ll be running Deacon Enterprises.”
And she walked off. Her gaggle followed after her.
Jessica and the group watched her. It was silly, really. Peek into the bedroom of a boy she had only heard rumors about? Her boyfriend’s best friend? Honestly, she had better things to do. How old did they think she was anyway? That was the kind of thing a sixth grader did…like peeking into the boys’ bathroom.
But rumor had spread after that. Not only did the entire sophomore class of girls hear about Jessica staying the week at Deacon Manor, casting her jealous looks over it, but also the witches in school were watching her with envious flickers in their eyes. The witches and the Deacon family famously did not get along. Of course that was understandable since Howie Deacon, when he hit double digits in age, started to pull pranks on almost every lady in the Ladies Aid Society, from soaping car windows to pouring molasses into mailboxes. They claimed it was Howie that led Andy ‘to the bad’ rather than the pair equally wreaking havoc. So it did not make complete sense for the witches to be jealous, unless they wanted to do something nasty to the house. By sixth hour, when Jessica sat in Mr. Yates’s English class, everyone was whispering about it.
It was silent reading time. Mr. Yates was silently reading his book, while they were supposed to be silently reading their copies of Silas Marner. So far, very few people got farther than the same paragraph, over and over again. Jessica certainly couldn’t get beyond a few words before somebody kicked the back of her chair and hissed, “Lucky!”
Marta Lindon, an ordinary looking girl who also happened to be a witch who had ‘befriended’ Jessica around Christmas time scowled at Jessica from across the room. So it wasn’t her. Amy Paige also sat too far away. And though Megan Dalane, another of the witches and a girl with a pixie haircut who dressed a little looser than her more plain counterpart, stared in shock across the aisle near the window, she twitched as if the very thought of Howie Deacon made her skin crawl. It probably did. Rumor had it that Megan had briefly attended the private school Howie was going to in New York and he with his pals there pulled a life-scarring prank on her and she hadn’t been normal since. All Jessica knew for sure was that if she ever mentioned the word deacon, she flinched and rushed away.
“You aren’t special, you know,” the person behind her hissed under her breath
Jessica moaned. It was a wonder Mr. Yates hadn’t blown his top with all the chatter. Then again, it was possible he didn’t have anything planned for that day and he didn’t want to play disciplinarian. Everyone needed a day off once in a while.
“Mr. Deacon is nice to everybody,” that person continued.
Sighing, Jessica tried to focus on the words on the page. At least she knew the girl sitting behind her wasn’t a witch. She would have said something dirty otherwise.
She hadn’t gone more than three words when the person behind her hissed, “You’re a charity case.”
Jessica stiffened.
The person behind her kicked the underside of her seat again.
“You’re not worthy to lick their shoes.”
That was it. Jessica lifted up her head and turned around to face whoever was talking. Behind her sat a girl she didn’t even know at first glance. But after a few seconds she realized it was one of Mary Pransford’s lackeys. Mary Pransford was a girl in Jessica’s first hour—a popular brunette with perfect hair and teeth who led most of the fashion trends in the sophomore class as well as all the other trends. She was also Milton Coombs’s girlfriend. Mary would be prom queen their senior year, Jessica was sure. But this girl was a little fatter clone, Traylor Davis. Jessica hardly noticed her because Traylor was Mary’s shadow, and you hardly noticed a shadow.
“Get over yourself,” Jessica said then turned back around.
Megan, who had been watching, ducked down and snorted. So had Marta and a couple others. Despite being witches who swore to hate Jessica and her six boy-pals until the day they died, they had to respect a good come-back. And none of them liked Traylor either.
Traylor kicked the underside of Jessica’s chair again.
Jessica would have turned around and given her what for, but Mr. Yates lifted his eyes just then.
“What’s that sound?”
Everyone stiffened. Who would fess up? The room had been buzzing with whispers for the past half hour.
Yet, as the room silenced, they could hear another sound—the sound he had detected. It was distant, yet high in pitch, like the piping of a piccolo and drum with cymbals. Everybody craned their necks to listen.
Darryl rose from his seat, turning his head towards the window. Then Andy did, rising from his chair, which was on the far side of the room to keep him from holding Jessica’s hand during class[4]. Then Marta stood, her stare going wide as she looked out the glass to the outside.
“No way.”
Then everyone rose, rushing to the windows.
Squeezing to an open space against the glass, Jessica stared out into the street. She saw the bright colors first, then the shapes of a series of large trucks driving past the school, hearing the familiar trumpets of elephants, cries of monkeys, lions, and people in vibrant clothing in all colors and shapes. Flashy, sparkling, and very, very many trucks with equipment.
“What is that?” someone said, sounding so young and amazed.
Jessica laughed, pressing against the glass. “It’s a circus!”
“A circus?”
Everyone turned to stare at her. She understood at once the meaning of their expressions. They had never seen a circus before. And how could they have? Their town was cursed. No one could go in without an invitation, and no one could leave without dangerous repercussions.
Nodding, Jessica stared out with a hunger, a longing. She knew lots about circuses. She had been to several. “Of course. And I think it is attached to a carnival. Look at those trucks. That looks like a tilt-a-whirl. That could be a carousel. And look, they’ve got a house of mirrors. I love those.”
Everyone listened eagerly and with even more envy. It was even more apparent to them all, the only reason they didn’t like Jessica was that they were so jealous of her.
“I wonder how they got into town,” someone murmured.
Andy nodded, biting his lip yet just as hungry as the rest of them to see the circus.
“Maybe they’re just passing through,” someone else replied.
Marta snorted. “Don’t be stupid. Nobody passes through our town.”
That was true. There wasn’t even a road to pass through; just one that led in to it as the only way in or out. Jessica discovered that last January when she and three of her guy pals left town to hunt down a cursed basketball. Long story.
“So who invited them in?” Andy asked, glancing once to Jessica.
She shrugged.
“Maybe it was Mr. Deacon,” Daryl suggested.
Jessica shook her head. “Nah. He’s off on international business. I’d doubt he’d invite in a circus and not go to it.”
“He hasn’t been back to Middleton Village since summer,” Marta snapped with a dirty look. “And how can you be so sure it is a circus. Maybe it is the new playground equipment for that park of yours.”
That park of hers? As if she owned and controlled Peter’s and James’s Eagle Scout project. Rolling her eyes, Jessica said, “I know plenty about circuses. My dad, as you know, is a magician who by-the-way, often performed with circuses. I’ve been to many of them. Many. So I know what I’m talking about.”
She didn’t often talk about her father to anyone besides her six boys. It always felt awkward, as her father was also a petty crook and scam artist. She had been on stage with him as soon as she would walk. And he had taught her every small trick he knew, including how to pick locks, pick pockets, and disengage house alarms. It was the main reason her parents divorced. She was sure he had been picked up and jailed by now.
“I think we ought to check this out…” Mr. Yates murmured aloud without meaning to.
Everyone’s eyes flickered towards him, the realization of what he said dawning on them. Then, with shared looks between themselves, they all let out a whoop and charged from the window for the door. Mr. Yates tried to shout out for them to stop, but then he glanced back out the window, shrugged his shoulders and followed them into the hall.
And theirs wasn’t the only class. Almost half the students at Middleton High rushed out of the front doors of the school and followed the circus trucks parading through town. Andy jogged to the street with Jessica, reaching out his hand for hers. They hurried after the performers trotting in on dappled ponies and strong Clydesdales. Clowns tooted horns behind the long caravan of trucks.
“What is going on?” Daniel rushed up to them, followed closely by Eddie.
“A circus!” one of their classmates shouted, chasing after the trucks almost in a skip.
Peter jogged into the crowd, joining Daniel and Eddie with looks to Jessica and Andy. “A circus? You mean like on TV?”
“Only live,” Jessica grinned back at him.
And more people joined the crowd, gathering from their homes and businesses. And they all followed, going through the town square, past City Hall, rounding the corner to the usually not-so traveled road into the newly opened space of the town park. Rolling in, onto the freshly laid sod, the circus parked and ‘unfolded’. Peter halted on the curb staring.
James jogged up, breathless. “What is this all about?”
Semour rushed up, eyes open wide and staring.
“A circus,” Eddie murmured, his eyes following the horses, almost hungrily. His heart beat excitedly in his chest. Everyone’s did, really.
Except…
James walked up to where Peter stood on the sidewalk, staring at the tire tracks in the muddy grass as the circus performers unloaded everything with haste. Peter had been swaying there, almost blankly. His shoulders hung.
“The grass…” James murmured.
Peter nodded.
Their friends turned with a look at the pair then opened their eyes wider at the scene before them. A new perspective—all awe gone. Of course.
“The witches invited them in.”
[1] Peter was king of Medieval Club—the largest and most active club at Middleton High. He could order some of the knights to come.
[2] Milton Coombe was Peter’s first cousin, the captain if the ice hockey team and a ‘popular’ bully in the sophomore class.
[3] See book 4, Team Sports for the full story.
[4] Mr. Yates had a rule against public displays of affection and Andy had crossed that line too many times in the last month for him to tolerate the couple sitting even two rows close.