Page 86 of Big Little Spells

It’s all there. My attempt to show my grand power, the way it all got out of control, and how it would have burned down the whole town if Nicholas wasn’t there to stop it.

To stop me.

Then we cut to the hurt and shocked Joywood, my horrified and appalled parents. They don’t show my grandmother’s reaction when Nicholas delivered me to her, but they don’t need to. I see it in my mind’s eye, my reel of shame.

And that’s all bad enough. I might survive this, but Emerson is here in this gym with me, hands covering her mouth like she’s watching a horror movie, waiting for the monster to jump out of the dark.

When the monster is me.

Her little sister breaking all those sacred bonds. It doesn’t matter why I did it. It only matters that I could have killed people. That I look like I wanted to kill people. That I broke the law and deserved to be exiled.

If not worse.

“Shit, Rebekah,” Ellowyn mutters.

And it’s not the shit, we’re in this mess together again type of mutter either. She might not look as horrified as Emerson, but she’s hurt.

“You see,” Felicia intones as the images fade away. “This young person tried to thwart the ruling of the Joywood. She thought because she felt power, she should wield it. And she almost destroyed all of us in the process.”

I know it doesn’t matter what the teenagers around us think. It doesn’t matter what the town will think when they hear about this, and likely see the little monster movie themselves, as I’m sure they all will. This isn’t for them.

This is for an audience of five, and they’re all sitting around me, stunned.

Because they thought that I’d run away in exile, the same way Emerson was mind wiped. That these were things that happened to us, that we were both victims.

And I let them think that.

I wanted them to think that.

The Joywood close the assembly with words of “wisdom” and a rousing speech by Carol about potential and cream rising to the top.

I’m numb, and I can’t bring myself to do anything but look forward and sit in that numbness. As the teenagers file out. As my friends get stiffly to their feet.

Emerson and Jacob file out one side of our row, Zander, Georgie, and Ellowyn the other. Leaving me alone there in the middle.

But the Joywood sit on the stage, watching us too closely. Even through all the throng of teenage bodies. I have to get up. I have to prove they didn’t get to me.

Even if they did.

I wish I had it in me to think I can fix this or prove them wrong, but they’ve turned me into a weapon against my friends and it’s my own fault.

I don’t pretend otherwise.

They couldn’t have used this against me if I hadn’t done it. If I’d told my friends what really happened.

I walk slowly out into the cool spring night. Clouds have rolled in, so the only light out here is the fluorescent kind at the doorway and the occasional beam of light from young witches trying to light their path with weak luminescence spells.

We walk. No one flies. I follow slightly behind the group, and it’s not until the teenagers have thinned out that I realize I have no idea where we’re going. Somehow we’re in one of the empty parks alongside the river.

My friends stop. And turn to me.

I stand there, even though I want to die rather than do this, and face them all.

Because that’s the least I can do.

Literally.

Emerson is crying, though trying very hard not to. Jacob has his arm around her. Zander’s hands are jammed in his pockets. Ellowyn and Georgie are gripping each other, hard.

---