A group of friends set out to bind themselves as witches based on the instructions in an inherited spellbook. But the results have unintended consequences.

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Author Note: Please email me at AngelJediGirl (at) gmail (dot) com before posting this story to any other site. Posting to a pay site is prohibited.

Comments and suggestions are also welcome at the above email address.

I want to thank Voldy for the wonderful editing. I couldn't have done it without him.

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Chapter 1

“Tonight’s the night!” Jaclyn exclaimed to Sophie as I put my tray on the table in the cafeteria next to the two young women. “It’s the last possible night before Halloween. We have to try tonight!”

I rolled my eyes and sighed as I sat down in front of my tray. Jaclyn was at it again. She had talked non-stop about what she wanted to do tonight for the last two weeks. I looked over at Sophie and it looked like she’d had the same reaction as mine.

“You still want to do this?” Sophie asked her.

“Of course!” Jaclyn replied. “Don’t you?”

The look on Sophie’s face told me she didn’t really want to. I didn’t blame her. It sounded far-fetched.

Jaclyn’s aunt died three weeks ago and had apparently left her a book entitled, ‘The Curious Tales of Witchcraft’. The cover made the book look like a collection of nursery rhymes. If either Sophie or I opened the book, that was all we saw inside. But when Jaclyn opened the book, it appeared to be an instruction manual on how to be a witch, including the binding ritual that was supposed to infuse a group of want-to-be witches with magical power. That was what she wanted to try tonight. The ritual required a full moon and there would be one tonight. The fact that it was two days until Halloween only increased Jaclyn’s excitement.

“But there aren’t enough of us,” Sophie argued. Sophie hadn’t made this argument before. Although she had argued using almost every other excuse, she always seemed to lose the argument with Jaclyn.

“We only need three,” Jaclyn countered, and then made a motion around the table that clearly showed there were three of us sitting there.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “But Barry isn’t exactly a girl. Don’t witches need to be female?”

“Of course,” Jaclyn replied smugly. “But the book is very clear that males can be involved in the binding. Haven’t you ever heard of warlocks? But he isn’t much of a male either.”

“Hey!” I shot back without even thinking. But the look on her face and her wink were enough to let me know she was joking. Nevertheless it still hurt.

Sophie huffed and sat back in her seat. Clearly, that was not the answer she wanted to hear. I knew from talking privately to her that she was worried that this was real. She had no desire to have magical powers. I was worried this might be real. The idea of being able to wield magic sounded fun and exciting, but it was scary to consider actually going through with this.

“Look,” Jaclyn continued. “The book says it is going to work and this is the last chance before Halloween. But it only requires there to be a full moon, so if we try it and it doesn’t work with Barry, we can always try again later with another girl.

“Sorry, Barry,” Jaclyn continued, looking at me. “I want you to be included, but if it doesn’t work I’m still going to do it without you.”

I shrugged at her. Despite the odd book and how it only worked for her, I still didn’t believe that magic was real. I wouldn’t be upset if I couldn’t have magical powers. Maybe I would be jealous, but if me being a guy kept me from having powers, then it was no loss to me. I enjoyed being male and was doing just fine without magical powers.

“Fine, whatever,” Sophie finally agreed. “I don’t like this, though.”

“You will later,” Jaclyn said in a way that teased she knew how happy it would make Sophie. I doubted that Sophie agreed.

I just sighed again and started to eat my lunch.

—

I stared in the mirror. The person looking back at me was still more of a boy than a man, unfortunately. Jaclyn’s poor joke at lunch wasn’t exactly inaccurate. At the age of 17, I had hoped that some of my lankiness and immature body would have filled out, but all I had really received was some height. I was 6’4” tall, but I was as skinny as a rail and my mom always complained I looked too frail.

I was dressed as a scarecrow. Jaclyn suggested that we pretend we were going to a Halloween party as a cover for sneaking out to do the binding. Surprisingly my parents bought the story, since parties were not the type of event I normally attended.

I liked the scarecrow costume I had selected for this year, however. It might have had something to do with the fact I got to stuff parts of my clothes with straw and I actually looked like I wasn’t a stick. The only visible parts of me were my face and a little bit of the light brown hair I sported that was not completely covered by my straw hat.

Two short beeps came from a car’s horn from the front of the house. I sighed. The closer we got to doing this binding thing, the more nervous I was becoming!

I walked out of my room and said goodbye to my parents as I passed the kitchen. They seemed to be making a nice smelling dinner together. Once outside I quickly walked down the driveway to the car that was waiting for me. Then I opened the back door of the small, older vehicle, slipped into the seat, and immediately buckled up.

“Hi, Barry,” Sophie replied from the front passenger seat. “I like that costume!”

“Thanks,” I replied. “You guys look good too.”

I couldn’t see Sophie very well from the back seat, but she seemed to be dressed up as a cowgirl, which didn’t surprise me as she was very much into horses. Jaclyn, surprisingly, was dressed as a cheerleader. The costume was very much out of character because she always criticized cheerleaders as she believed them to be vapid. There must have been some sarcasm in her costume I couldn’t see from the back seat.

“Let’s do this thing!” Jaclyn practically roared and nearly peeled out as we started away from my house.

It was a short drive to the Baxter House, but anywhere was almost too far in Jaclyn’s car because the back seat was not designed for a 6’4” person like me. But I never complained because I was just happy to still have friends like the two of them. Most people didn’t really talk to me. Jaclyn, Sophie, and I had been friends since before Kindergarten. We lived in the same cul-de-sac. We had always played together while growing up and we had never drifted apart. There wasn’t a time we weren’t the best of friends. They had other friends, but I didn’t have anyone else. Time and time again they proved they would rather hang out with me than with others. And I was extremely grateful for it.

Soon Jaclyn pulled the car up to the abandoned house that was commonly known as the Baxter House. It was the local “haunted” house, if it could be called that. It wasn’t really haunted, but it had been abandoned for several years. The house had not been taken care of in that time, and it showed clear signs of neglect. I doubted any of us would have chosen the Baxter House as the place to perform the ritual; in fact the book even described how to create a witch’s circle anywhere. But a note in the margins had also described a permanent circle in the backyard of the house. Jaclyn, being somewhat lazy, had decided that using it was better than making our own circle.

We climbed out of the car and Jaclyn led us around to the back of the house. Jaclyn continued leading us to the part of the backyard that had been described in the book. It was a patio in the far back corner of the yard. When we got there, it clearly had an embellished circle etched into it.

“Okay,” Jaclyn said, stopping just before crossing the line of the circle. “We’ve gone over this enough times, but do we need a refresher on what to say?”

“No,” Sophie replied while I shook my head to confirm the same answer. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to forget the chant now.”

She was right. Every time we got together for the last two weeks, Jaclyn made sure we practiced it until we all had it memorized. She wanted nothing to go wrong tonight. Initially, we had been surprised at how little effort was involved in the binding. The hardest parts were waiting for a full moon and creating a witch’s circle, and neither seemed difficult. We had all met Jaclyn’s aunt, and if she said this was safe - which Jaclyn told us she had - then how could we argue? We all liked and trusted Jaclyn’s Aunt Melody but I was becoming nervous.

“Okay,” she said happily and then skipped, literally skipped!, into the circle on the patio. More apprehensively, Sophie and I stepped into it. Jaclyn put the book in a square in the middle of the design etched into the patio and we stood around it in a circle, our hands clasped together. I was becoming more and more apprehensive by the moment.

Jaclyn looked both of us in the eyes, and then nodded. Unlike the two of us, she clearly wanted to do this as quickly as possible. I sighed, but started chanting with the others.

“Through thick and thin,
“The power within,
“Will bind us together,
“As sisters forever.

It seemed innocuous, and I certainly didn’t relish the idea of being a sister forever, but what was I to do? Jaclyn had made it clear, or had lied to me, that it was okay being a male during the binding. I still had my doubts, but I had convinced myself by that point that if this was real, that the chant was nothing more than the words needed to do the binding and it was semantics as far as what they meant.

We continued chanting the verse, and the night air seemed to chill around us. Suddenly, a cold wind seemed to rush in on us from all directions. I shivered. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but it clearly was not a natural breeze.

It was hard to describe the feeling of being affected by magic. The best thing I found to help describe the feeling was from the mechanical way that metal springs worked. Springs started to store a lot of energy when they were compressed, and energy was released when that compression was removed. That “boing” that occurred when a spring is released was the best way I can describe what being touched by magic feels like.

The first boing I felt started at the bottom of my left leg and shot up to my hip, and I suddenly found myself starting to fall to my left. Immediately there was a second boing but on my right leg, and I was once again standing straight and solid once more.

After that a much smaller boing occurred at the top of my left inner thigh followed by a similar one on the right side.

The boings repeatedly continued, one after another. There was a very strong boing that started at my crotch and shot up my entire spine and torso, ending around my neck.

Another boing then started at my left hip and shot away from me to the side, pulling me with it until my hips were cocked to the left leaving me standing in a weird stance. When the same thing happened with my right hip I found myself standing straight again.

A boing then ran down my left arm, ending at my fingertips. The same thing happened to my right arm.

A boing then started at my neck and shot up past my head.

A strong but localized boing then started on the left of my upper torso and seemingly pulled me forward with it slightly as it jumped in front of me. Another did the same as it jumped from my right upper torso ahead of me.

Then, a very large and strong boing seemed to start at the crown of my head and shoot straight down through my body, ending at the tips of my toes.

The wind I had felt then seemed to disappear, perhaps back to where it had come from.

The whole experience didn’t take any longer than 5 or 10 seconds. As I shook my head and tried to catch my bearings, I looked at my friends. Both of them were now wearing black, floor-length dresses and pointy black hats.

“Yes! It worked!” Jaclyn roared in triumph while staring at her hands as if she was seeing something there that wasn’t there before.

Sophie just stared ahead, wide-eyed for a moment before she looked at Jaclyn. Then she turned to look at me, and gasped.

“Oh, Barry, no!” she yelled. I hadn’t really had time to worry before that point, but the tone in her voice immediately caused me to start stressing.

I looked down at myself almost immediately after her outburst. The first thing I checked was that I still had all my limbs. Two arms, check. Two hands, check. Two legs…well I couldn’t see them because they were now hidden under a dress similar to what Sophie and Jaclyn were now wearing! I stepped from foot to foot for a moment to see if they were under there. The movement felt normal.

But it was quite disconcerting to realize that I was cross-dressing for the first time in my life! I’d never worn female clothing before! At first I thought that the dress might just be a wizard‘s robe, but it clearly wasn’t. The skirt of the dress fell straight down from my hips, but it tightly circled around those hips before clinching closer to my body through my waist and then up around my bosom and down my arms. It was the fact that it did not cover my entire bosom and there was some cleavage visible that I realized that I wasn’t actually crossdressed!

“Barry!” Sophie shouted. “Are you okay?!”

“I don’t know,” I said. The words that came out of my mouth sounded entirely different. They were much higher pitched, and clearly sounded more like an alto than a tenor! If I had hoped that seeing myself was an illusion, hearing myself made believing it was an illusion hard to swallow.

Sophie hugged me tightly and held me like she was going to lose me. She already had lost me, because I felt lost. The experience was nothing like I remembered from the other times I’d hugged Sophie. Hugging was hugging and that was no different, but the way our bodies pressed together was definitely a new experience. I was not familiar enough with my new self to know why it felt so different, but I knew anatomy well enough to understand why our torsos seemed farther apart even though they were still touching. Even worse, I was sure that she was now taller than me. It was very disconcerting because I had been nearly a foot taller than her moments before!

“I’m so sorry!” she sobbed. “I knew this was a bad idea!”

“It’s okay,” I replied numbly but I knew it wasn’t okay. I had no desire to be female, but clearly I was one! I didn’t need to look under the dress to confirm it. But I also didn’t want her to be crying. I was alive, I seemed to be healthy, and by all accounts I was now probably a witch, so maybe I could turn myself back. Either way, my life could have been a lot worse than the fate I now found myself in. In fact, I mostly felt relief that nothing worse had happened to me. I couldn’t guarantee that I was thinking straight, however. My mind felt like I was swimming in a cloud.

“Well,” Jaclyn said, pulling us both into a hug. “You really do look beautiful. This may not be what you wanted, but I think you will like it.”

I let her hug me, not sure how to respond. But Sophie stiffened in the hug. A moment later she broke the tender moment and turned on Jaclyn. We all took a step backward from each other.

“You don’t seem very upset, Jaclyn!” she nearly screamed. “Your best friend just went through a traumatic event, and you don’t even seem to care!”

“I care!” Jaclyn defended. “But I think we all know this might be an upgrade for Barry. It wasn’t like he had much going on anyway.”

That sent me reeling! It almost sounded like…

“Did you know this was going to happen?!” I blurted.

Jaclyn stared at me for a moment, and it was clear she didn’t know how to respond. Heat was rising within me.

“I thought it might be a possibility,” she meekly said. “I wasn’t completely sure.”

“What did it say about males entering the binding?” Sophie demanded. She had fire in her eyes too.

Jaclyn looked at us for a moment, and it was only then that she started to realize how upset we were. Upset was true, too. While I had not initially been upset when I found out what had happened, I was becoming more and more angry. Jaclyn seemed to be a big reason for that anger, too.

“It said that they would be bound into the coven,” she finally told us. “It didn’t say anything more or anything less.”

“Oh so you knew it was really, really vague and didn’t feel like Barry should be the one to make the decision about whether he wanted to do this or not?!” Sophie screamed. While I was angry she appeared even more upset than I was.

Jaclyn looked at us timidly for a few more moments, not quite sure how to respond. Finally, she seemed to land on an argument she felt she needed to give us.

“The note that came with this book - it was from my aunt,” she said matter of factly. “She told me that I should do the binding with the two of you. I thought that if that is what she felt was the right thing to do, it would turn out okay.”

Some of my anger dissipated at her words. Aunt Melody, as we had all known her, had been amazing and if she felt that I should be involved in this, I wondered if she sensed a bigger picture than I did. Right now all I could think about was the loss of my manhood, but perhaps there were some benefits in this, especially to our friendship.

On the other hand, Sophie screamed in frustration, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward the gate to the front yard. Sophie wasn’t just taller than me now, she was much stronger. I had no choice but to get pulled along.

“We’re leaving!” she screamed back at Jaclyn. “Don’t bother to follow us right now!”

I wasn’t sure what to do. I was still mad at Jaclyn. She may have just completely changed my life, and possibly for the worse! I was now a girl! But I couldn’t hate her. I knew it would eventually blow over. Our friendship was too strong to be hurt by this. But I had nothing else to say to her at the moment, and since I was being dragged along by Sophie, I didn’t resist.

When we reached the gate, I felt Sophie’s anger rising even more. I wasn’t sure why, but it felt like she was mad that the gate was in her way, and it would take too long to open. She made a swatting gesture in front of her, and the entire gate went flying into the front yard!

I was shocked! The gate was torn from its hinges and flung forward without anyone even touching it! I just stared, wide-eyed, as Sophie continued pulling me along and walking down the street back toward home. She hadn’t seemed to notice what she had done and she didn’t let go of me until we were three houses down the road.

“Sophie, calm down!” I was finally able to find my voice after the shock - of seeing her use magic for the first time – had worn off. The incident clearly involved a lot of power, and nobody who was that angry should be wielding a power like that.

“Calm down?!” she nearly screamed, turning on me as if it was my fault. “Barry, you look like a 15-year old girl! Your best friend just made life-altering decisions for you without even consulting you! Your entire world has changed and you don’t even seem to realize it! Why aren’t you even upset with her?!”

“I am upset with her!” I shot back. “She did some very stupid, unfriendly things! But she is still our friend!”

Sophie stared at me. It almost looked like she was getting mad at me now. But, after a few moments, her face seemed to soften and her tense muscles seemed to relax.

“Barry,” she mewled and wrapped her arms around me, dragging me into another hug. I wrapped my arms around her. I was disconcerted to realize my eyes were watering and I was crying too, something I never would have done before the ritual.

“I didn’t want this,” I told her. “I never, ever, would have asked for this. I am mad at her for not telling me. But if what she said is true, if Aunt Melody thought this is something I should do, then I have to consider there might be reasons why she would say that.”

“Oh, Barry!” Sophie sobbed into my shoulder. “She was just a grouchy old lady who did whatever she wanted to make herself happy.”

“You know that isn’t true,” I replied, trying to figure out why she would even suggest such a thing. “She was the same age as our mothers and she was one of the nicest people I have ever known. She went out of her way to help others.”

Sophie just cried on my shoulder in silence. I didn’t know if she believed what she had just told me or if she was just saying it because she was still upset.

A moment later I felt Sophie tense and then I heard a car stop behind me. I let go of Sophie and we separated, and I turned to look. Jaclyn had pulled up in her car. She looked very timid, but she opened her door, and came over to us.

“I’m sorry,” were her first words. She looked sorry, too. “My whole life my aunt had been telling me some stories that never really made sense until I inherited the book. Since then, I think I have been a bit…forceful in my desire to do this. I clearly should have involved you two more.”

I nodded. Jaclyn had been preoccupied with nothing other than becoming a witch for the last two weeks and had mostly dragged us along with her. But Jaclyn wasn’t a bad person. Maybe she wasn’t as upset with what had happened to me as I felt she should be, but she seemed to feel guilty because she avoided my gaze.

“Barry,” she said a moment later. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I didn’t mean for it to happen. I didn’t think it would happen. But, and I know you probably don’t want to hear this, I feel like I just met my long-lost sister for the first time tonight.”

Her words stunned me, but not for the reasons I would have thought. I understood what she was saying.

Sophie’s anger spiked again.

“You have no remorse!” she yelled at Jaclyn. “How could you do this and then say something like that?!”

Sophie’s hand started to move, and I immediately reached out to touch her shoulder. She stopped, but kept glaring at Jaclyn.

“Sophie, stop,” I told her calmly. “I don’t know how to explain this, but I think she is right. I will say it again and again: I do not want to be a girl. But…I feel like I am awake for the first time in my life. I don’t know how to describe that feeling, but it is there.”

Sophie turned and stared at me. It almost looked like she felt betrayed at my words, like I was siding with Jaclyn over her, but that wasn’t true.

“Look,” I told her. “It has been a long night. Why don’t we just go home and sleep it off and then regroup in the morning before school.”

I felt the best thing to do would be to let everyone’s emotions cool off. We were all too hot-headed and crazy right now. Jaclyn nodded, but Sophie just stood there.

“Come on,” I told her, then guided her to the passenger seat. She let me lead her, so I opened the door when we arrived and helped guide her into the car. After closing the door, I then opened the back door and took my regular seat in the back of the car. There was a surprising amount of room in the backseat now.

Jaclyn surreptitiously slipped into the driver’s seat trying to avoid Sophie’s gaze. It was quiet for a moment as Jaclyn and I shared a look, but Sophie stared straight ahead. Jaclyn started the car and headed for home.

I sighed, then bumped into something on the seat next to me. It was a purse. I’d never seen the purse before, but somehow I knew it was mine. It wasn’t that I had some magical insight that it belonged to me, but it was sitting exactly where I would have left it before we exited the car, if I’d had a purse to leave at the time.

“Oh!” I exclaimed at that realization.

“You okay?” Jaclyn called back and I saw her looking at me through the rear view mirror. She seemed worried.

“Yes,” I replied. “But I think I just found my purse.”

Her eyebrows shot up at that news, but she glanced back at the road before looking into the rear view mirror again. I didn’t want to, but I knew I had to: I opened the purse. There were all sorts of things in there, some of which I never wanted to see or think about ever again, but I grabbed the billfold and pulled it out. I opened it to find the picture of a young woman staring back at me! It was a driver’s license, not a mirror, but the effect was the same as I saw a glimpse of myself for the first time. She looked like she could be my sister, though I didn’t have a sister. She had long brown hair and green eyes and a face that could belong to a 15 year-old like Sophie said, but it was a good-looking face. She was not beautiful per se, but she certainly had attractive qualities. The freckles actually brought a smile to my face.

Once I had taken in the image, my eyes naturally studied the name next to the picture.

“Harper,” I said aloud, tasting the name on my tongue, hearing it in my ears for the first time.

“You’re Harper?” Jaclyn asked. Sophie continued to stare straight ahead.

“I guess so,” I told her. “Harper Anne O’Connell. Still 17, at least.”

Although I looked young, I was immensely happy that I was still the same age I had been. It was apparent that Barry hadn’t looked like he was 17 either, so it didn’t seem too much of a stretch to look young for my age now.

“Harper,” Jaclyn said, trying the name on herself. She smiled after saying it, and I smiled too.

“I am Harper,” I said, introducing myself for the first time.

“Stop,” Sophie said, almost deadpan. “You are Barry.”

“I wish I was Barry,” I told her. “But I’m not anymore.”

My words seemed to enrage Sophie more, so I shut up. The rest of the ride home was made in silence.

—

Chapter 2

I stared up the walk to the front door of my house. I did not want to go in. How was I supposed to tell my parents that I was now a girl? How would they even believe something so outlandish?

“Do you want me to come in?” a voice next to me asked. I turned to find Jaclyn by my side.

“I don’t know,” I said before turning back to look at the door. I certainly would have liked the support of friends, but I still wasn’t happy with Jaclyn, and Sophie had promptly jumped out of the car and run home the second the car stopped in front of my house.

“Okay,” Jaclyn replied, clearly hearing in my voice my trepidation, but also understanding I hadn’t completely forgiven her. “I’ll wait out here for a bit if you need me. If you don’t come back out I’ll head home.”

I nodded, but didn’t look at her. I took a deep breath and with trepidation started slowly walking toward the front door.

It felt like the walk was a mile longer! I wasn’t sure if that was because I was nearly a foot shorter, based on my driver’s license, or if I was just too nervous to go inside. Maybe the magic that had changed me had actually made our front walk longer than it had been.

Eventually, I reached the door. Reluctantly I opened the door and walked in. I had to show my family at some point. My older brother was at college and my younger brother had basketball practice tonight. I knew I would only have to convince my parents that I was really me. But I was terrified!

I’d only been gone for about an hour, and I heard my parents in the kitchen. They had probably eaten already and were cleaning up. I took a tentative step toward the kitchen and then stopped. Fearfully, I mustered up the courage to continue forward. I stopped again at the threshold of the kitchen and looked in. They were doing the dishes together with their backs toward me. They were laughing like a young couple in love. I was mesmerized for a moment and almost forgot about my own predicament until my dad turned around to put a dish in the dishwasher and caught sight of me.

He froze and stared at me, mouth wide open! Before I could say anything, however, my mom noticed and turned around to see what was wrong. When she saw me, instead of freezing, her eyes went wide.

“Oh, Barry!” she exclaimed, quickly put down the plate she had been holding, and rushed over to me and wrapped me in a hug.

I was speechless! The last thing I expected was for my mom to recognize me! But once her arms were around me, I broke down and started sobbing. I wrapped my arms around her and just held on. Shortly after that I felt another set of arms envelop us and through bleary eyes I realized my dad was hugging us as well.

We stood there like that for quite some time. Eventually, my tears seemed to dry up. The two of them held onto me until my grip started to lessen, and then they let go. They took a small step back to give me space, but they stayed close in case I needed them.

“How… How did you know?” I asked meekly.

“Because I’m a witch, too,” my mom replied. “We knew that this was something that might happen, but we didn’t think you guys would try binding tonight. Wendy and I were going to talk to you soon. But, I guess you were unaware this would happen, right?”

I felt tears come to my eyes once more, but I sniffed to hold them back.

“I didn’t know,” I told her. “There was nothing in the book other than I would be bound with Sophie and Jaclyn, but it didn’t say anything about this, not that Jaclyn really let me see what it said either. She just kept pushing and pushing for us to do it and then…”

The dam broke, I wasn’t able to hold the tears back anymore. Mom stepped forward and embraced me in her arms again.

“It will be okay, Barry,” she said. “It will be an adjustment. I’m sorry this happened without you being fully aware. But I promise you will be able to get through it. I knew we should have talked to the three of you before now. Wendy was sure it was too early. Clearly it wasn’t.”

I cried for a few more minutes before I was able to calm down once more, and she let me go. I didn’t realize that I had been affected so badly by the change until I was here, with my mom. My whole life had been turned upside down, but as long as I had her, I felt like I would be okay.

“Wendy is a witch, too?” I asked her the obvious question from what she had been telling me. Then I thought about it: my mom was a witch, and Jaclyn’s aunt had been a witch. Wendy, Sophie’s mom, was also apparently a witch. “Were you guys bound?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Wendy, Melody, and I were a coven. We weren’t sure when to talk to the three of you, but we knew we were going to need to before you all left for college. We were scared. When Melody passed away, we knew Jaclyn would get her book. We knew the conversation needed to happen quickly, but we clearly still waited too long.”

“Melody told Jaclyn to do the binding with us,” I told her. “She didn’t say this would happen and Jaclyn just assumed everything would be okay because her aunt said it would.”

“Melody wasn’t very good at thinking things through,” Mom sighed sadly as she replied. “We knew the three of you had a special bond ever since you met as kids and you would probably end up where you are now. But because you weren’t born a girl we knew it was going to require more discussion about if you wanted to do this or not. I was scared to talk to you about it. And now, I took away your choice! I’m so sorry!”

Mom was crying now, and I had to hug her this time. Dad stood by, watching us. He wanted to be involved, but this was clearly a moment between my mom and me. It took a bit, but she eventually stopped crying. I certainly hadn’t expected this night to be as emotional as it had been, but I felt closer to my mom than I had ever felt before. I didn’t want to be a girl, but now it felt so right. Not that I should be a girl, necessarily, but because I had to be female to follow my purpose in life, even though I didn’t yet know what my purpose was. Everything I had felt and experienced since the binding told me I was where I was supposed to be, even if I didn’t feel like I should be there.

After a while, Mom calmed down. Then she took time to really look at me again. She smiled as she said, “You’re very beautiful,” and I knew she was telling me how she really felt.

“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve only seen my driver’s license picture, but it could be worse.”

Mom immediately laughed, which caused Dad and me to chuckle too.

“Well, you are beautiful to me, um…” she said, and then seemed to struggle on what to call me.

“Harper,” I told her.

“Harper!” my mom and dad exclaimed at the same time. They seemed to know something that I didn’t. When I looked at them funny, my mom continued. “Harper is the name we had picked out for you if you had been born a girl. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I guess I am.”

That was interesting. The universe or whatever controls what had happened to me seemed to have a sense of humor, or at the very least, was lazy and didn’t make its own decisions.

“Come on,” my mom told me. “Let’s go find you something nice and cozy to wear, and I’ll teach you what you need to know.”

Her words alarmed me. I didn’t want to confront what had happened to me yet! I wasn’t ready!

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I pleaded with her. “I don’t.”

Mom chuckled, which didn’t help! In fact, it irked me!

“I meant about being a witch,” she said, which relaxed me. “But we will need to have other conversations at some point. The longer we wait, the more likely you will be unprepared.”

I shuddered. She was making me think about things I didn’t want to think about. She was technically correct, but I wasn’t ready!

“Is there no way back?” I had to ask as we headed for my room.

“Probably not,” she replied, which caused a pit to form in my stomach. “There are definitely spells to reverse your transformation, but because you are bound there can be complications. It is possible, but I’m guessing that you will not want to go down that path.”

That seemed ominous. It wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I nodded. What Mom was telling me, and what I was feeling in my heart, said that I was going to be Harper for the rest of my life. I should have been saddened but I wasn’t. I felt somewhat disappointed, but more than that I felt a sense of…anticipation about the future.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Mom asked as we continued down the hall to my room.

“I feel something,” I told her. “I don’t know what it is.”

She nodded. Clearly she had felt something like it in her own life.

“I still don’t know what it is, either. But while anyone can become a witch, there are some who are called. I didn’t believe my mother when she told me that, but I have come to realize it is true. I think what you are feeling is that calling. I have it. Wendy has it, and Melody had it. We knew the three of you have it. I don’t know where it comes from, and I don’t know what it means. But it is real.”

I nodded. I was feeling the same way.

“I still don’t want to be a girl,” I told her.

“I know,” she said. “I only know one other witch who started her life as a male. She has told us the same thing many times, but she also seemed to have the calling. I won’t tell you who she is because that is her secret to tell. But I will say that she is happy, has a loving husband, and has five children of her own. She would never go back at this point, even though sometimes she still feels the same way as you do now.”

Well that didn’t fill me with confidence! I didn’t want to be a girl! I didn’t want to marry a man! I certainly didn’t want to be the one who pushes out the children in the relationship! The thought of becoming like this woman was not comforting. Yet somehow, it also felt right for some reason I could not explain.

Entering my room, I didn’t initially see anything different. I stood in the center of the room and slowly turned around, looking for anything that had changed, but nothing appeared different. As I continued turning I gasped in shock as I stared into the mirror.

There, in the mirror, was the girl from my driver’s license! I stared at her for a long moment, then I slowly walked to the front of the mirror.

The young lady who looked back at me was attractive, but she wasn’t hot or beautiful. Her long light-brown hair cascaded down her shoulders in very light waves to just below her shoulder blades. Her green eyes were very vibrant, almost too vibrant. Her nose was slightly too big. Her full lips were parted in shock. She had freckles under her eyes and across her nose that I found very cool without being too prominent. It didn’t look like she was wearing any makeup which gave off some type of simple beauty that fit her well.

The largest thing that stood out to me was how short she appeared. I knew from the license that she was 5’4” tall, an entire foot shorter than Barry. My dad was 6’3”, my older brother was 6’6”, and my younger brother was already 6’2” and he clearly hadn’t stopped growing yet. Even Mom was 5’10”, which was 6 inches taller than the girl I was looking at! She was tiny compared to her family! I hoped she was still growing!

The young woman in the mirror was also wearing a black dress that was similar to what Sophie and Jaclyn had been wearing after the ritual. I couldn’t help but notice the way it clung to her curves and showed off her chest without being sexualized. She seemed to embody an innocent charm that made me smile. Her smile lit up the entire room. Then, it immediately soured when I realized I was looking at myself! I didn’t want to be her!

I turned away from the mirror and saw my mom watching me from the doorway. She was grimacing, likely at my reaction to seeing myself and turning away. She then sighed, and then came into the room and motioned me over to my dresser and pulled open my sock drawer. Inside were the same old socks that were always in there.

“Magic is somewhat lazy,” she said. “When you cast a spell, it will pretty much only do the bare minimum needed. For example, it changed you during the binding, but it did not change anything else around you, such as your room or your clothes.”

“It gave me a new identity,” I said, thinking of the purse and the license I had found inside.

“Yes,” she replied. “But only because that was the happy path. Magic does not want to leave the world in a broken state. If you had either no identity or your old identity then you would be considered ‘broken’.”

I just shrugged. Having an identity, even as Harper, was far better than either alternative. I hadn’t even considered what it would be like if I was still Barry, but with the body of a woman. I wasn’t even sure how we were supposed to explain what had happened to me, let alone something as crazy as having no new identity.

“Step one, then, is to get you some new clothes,” Mom continued. “We will start with these socks.

“Magic can range from very simple spells you can do with only a thought, to very elaborate spells that require odd ingredients and multiple witches to cast. A good way to understand how and what you can do is to think about what you are trying to accomplish. If it is something that only affects the world but doesn’t change it then you can likely do it yourself, at will. If it is a minor change you should be able to do that too. But any large changes are going to require more complex spells. Does that make sense?”

“Um, not really.”

“Ok then, here are some examples.”

Mom then moved her hand in front of her like she was closing my sock drawer, and the drawer closed without her touching it. My eyes bulged.

“Closing the drawer doesn’t change the world, it only affects part of it,” she explained. “In those scenarios, your thought and an accompanying action is all that you will need to cast the spell.”

Okay, that made more sense.

“Small changes can also be done in much the same way. For example,” she said while placing her hand on the handle of the drawer.

This time, when she pulled the drawer out, there were clearly women’s socks instead of the men’s socks that used to be in there! Most of my socks had been all white crew socks, but these came in all kinds of colors and sizes and lengths. If seeing her close the drawer without touching it had surprised me, this was on another level!

I stepped over and started touching them to make sure they were real. I didn’t care for the idea that all of my socks were now made for women, but they were definitely real to the touch. I picked up a hideous pair of yellow and purple socks that I would never wear and stared at them. Apparently I had a look that told Mom I didn’t like them.

“If you don’t like them, change them. Just shake them up and down and think about what you want.”

I nodded, but I didn’t really know what I wanted. I certainly didn’t want women’s socks. I shook them up and down like she asked and tried to think about the kind of socks I’d seen Sophie or Jaclyn wear, but when they fell straight after the last shake I was holding a pair of men’s white crew socks.

My mom guffawed. Clearly that was not what she had been expecting.

“Well, I guess that makes sense. This might be harder than I thought. Go ahead and throw them in the drawer for now and we will move on.”

She motioned to the drawer and pulled out a pair of white ankle socks, while I tossed in the crew socks into the drawer. She placed the ankle socks on my bed, then opened my underwear drawer.

“No,” I said immediately. “I don’t want to do this.”

“I know,” she replied. “But we need to. You need something to wear right now, not later.”

I sighed and looked at the myriad of boxers and pajama pants and tops that filled the drawer. I wore those boxers every day but I rarely ever wore any of the pajamas. I’d usually lounge around in my regular clothes and then go to sleep in my boxers.

“Here’s what I want you to do,” my mom said. “Try to follow along with what I say, okay?” I reluctantly nodded.

“Push the drawer closed,” she instructed. I complied.

“Now, close your eyes. I want you to think about that woman you saw in the mirror. Think about how beautiful she is. Think about how amazing she could be. Think about who you think she should be.”

At first, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to think about myself that way. But then I realized I didn’t need to. I could think of Harper and pretend she was somebody else. So, I closed my eyes and pictured her as if she was my sister. I pretended that she was bright and bubbly, and that the innocent beauty that she radiated was a manifestation of her personality and the type of person that she was. She seemed really cool.

“Now open the drawer,” Mom instructed.

Without opening my eyes, I pulled the handle. I didn’t know what to expect, but when I opened my eyes and looked into the drawer, I found panties and bras and other things that might be found in a woman’s underwear drawer! There were also all kinds of pajamas and night shirts! But what struck me most was the realization that everything I looked at seemed to embody the sister I had imagined in my mind!

“Very good!” my mom exclaimed proudly. “You did it!”

Still looking at the clothes in the drawer, I wasn’t as proud of the achievement as she was. Certainly, it was amazing to see myself do magic. But the end result was far from what I would want it to be. I had just converted a whole section of my wardrobe into girls clothes!

Mom continued my lesson. “Magic gets harder from there. As a complex example, say that you wanted to have blonde hair. There are two ways that you could go about using magic to make it happen. First, if you just wanted to change the hair that you have to blonde, you could simply do so with the magic that I have already shown you. All you are doing is a small change to make the visible hair blonde. But it will grow out the same color that you have now.

“The second method would be to change it so that it grows blonde. But a change like that means changing your DNA. That would require a more complex spell that would likely involve some kind of ingredients to accomplish. It is small enough that you could probably do it yourself, however.

“But if you wanted to change back to Barry, that would be even more complex. If you think about what was required to make you Harper you can understand what I mean. The ‘spell’ that changed you - in this case the binding - required a full moon, a witch’s circle, and at least two other witches. The spells that would change you back would require pretty much the same thing. You probably wouldn’t need a full moon, but it would definitely require the help of your coven.”

Well, crap. I had already come to the conclusion that I probably would not be turning back, but now my mom was explaining how hard it would be. Sophie would probably be willing to help me, but Jaclyn had been talking about how she felt like I should be a girl.

“I’m not trying to make you feel defeated,” Mom told me when I slumped. “I am trying to give you examples of how complex magic can be in ways that you could understand.”

I reluctantly nodded. But that didn’t make me feel any better about my current situation.

“If you want, we can convert the rest of your wardrobe, or we can leave it there for now.” Mom paused for a moment and then spoke, “I’m guessing that you want to stop. We’ll have to worry about it in the morning, but you have everything you need right now.”

I nodded again. I wasn’t quite sure what I was trying to indicate with the nod, but she seemed to understand. She grabbed a white pair of panties and a pair of green pajamas out of the drawer and then closed it before setting everything on my bed.

“That dress will come off easiest by stepping out of it,” she said. “Just pull your arms out of the sleeves and then pull it down and step out of it like it was pants.”

I just stared at her. Of course everything we had been doing was leading to me having to undress, but it was only at that moment that I realized that I was actually going to have to undress. When I didn’t answer, Mom looked awkward.

“Do you want me to step outside? I can understand if you don’t want to undress with me here. You are 17, after all, but you don’t have anything I don’t have now.”

“No!” I exclaimed instantly. “I can’t do this alone! But, I don’t want to do it at all!”

Mom nodded with a look of understanding.

“It will be okay, Harper. All you will have to do is take off the dress, take off your bra and panties, and then put these on, okay? They will be much more comfortable.”

“Do I have to take off my...um...uh…my underwear?” I asked, unable to speak the more feminine word for them. “Can’t I just keep wearing them? Then I don’t have to look!”

Mom chuckled, which didn’t help at all!

“You can,” she told me. “But based on the dress you are wearing I am guessing that you are also wearing some matching lingerie. While not uncomfortable, it is certainly more for show than it is for comfort. Something like these will feel better.”

She held up the white cotton panties, which only made me more nervous. I think I gulped in worry which made her chuckle again.

“Stop laughing!”

“I’m sorry. I know this is hard. I can’t imagine what you are going through because I have always been female. It seems like you are obsessing about things you have no control over. I get that it is scary, but it seems trivial to me. I am not trying to laugh at you.”

“That’s not helping!” I shot back, which only caused her to chuckle again before she made a concerted effort to stop.

“Alright,” she said calmly. “Here is what we’ll do. First, come over here and face away from the mirror. That way you will not see yourself in it. Second, you can look straight ahead; you don’t have to look down. I’ll help you get in and out of them tonight, but you are going to have to be able to dress yourself. Okay?”

She chuckled again at my misfortune, and her words. I sighed, but nodded. Then I approached where she was standing near my bed.

“Can I close my eyes?” I asked. I saw her roll her eyes before she responded.

“Yes,” she allowed. “But getting dressed with your eyes closed is probably going to be a lot harder.”

I closed my eyes, and then reached up with my left hand to help pull my right arm out of the sleeve of the dress. Then, I did the same thing with my left arm. I felt the fabric of the dress fall around my hips, and I reached down to pull it off like pants, as my mom had instructed. It stretched enough around my hips and then fell to the floor around my ankles. I smiled because my eyes were still closed and I had done it!

“Right foot up,” my mom said and I lifted it up. “Now left foot.”

I could feel her brush past me as she bent down to extract the dress from my legs. I felt proud that I had undressed without even looking.

“I was right,” she said, but I didn’t follow what she meant. “That is pretty lingerie.”

Oh! I clamped my eyes shut tighter. No way was I going to look!

“I’m going to undo your bra at the back,” Mom said, though I could hear the humor in her voice. “When it comes undone I want you to hunch forward with your arms in front of you and I’ll pull it off.”

I nodded. Then I waited. A moment later I felt a tightness around my chest - that I hadn’t noticed previously - disappear, and then weight I hadn’t paid attention to started moving around in ways that were unfamiliar. It didn’t take a genius to know what was happening, but I tried with all of my heart and mind not to think about what it was. I hunched forward, and that new weight moved again. I put it out of my mind as much as I could and felt fabric being pulled down my arms. Then, I was standing there, free, but somehow colder.

“You sure you don’t want to look?” Mom asked. “They are–”

“No! No!” I yelled back! There was no way that I was going to look! Unfortunately, my reply started a jiggling sensation I didn’t want to think about either!

Mom chuckled. It was almost as if she thought she could get away with making fun of me because I couldn’t see her, but I could still hear her!

“Reach down and take your boxers off,” she said when she stopped laughing.

I was just glad she had stopped, so I reached down and slid them off.

“Now put these boxers on,” she said, and I felt her placing them into my hand.

With my eyes still closed, I started to unravel them to find the waistband.

“These aren’t boxers,” I said when I came across a much tinier waistband than what I had expected.

“I know,” she replied. “Neither were the ones you took off. But these go on the same way.”

I sighed and then bent down to step into them and then pull them up my legs. They did go on the same way, but they felt completely different. They were softer and tickled a bit as I pulled them up, but then when I had them pulled up to my waist I could also feel them hugging my crotch instead of cupping it. That was not the same!

“Good!” Mom accoladed me. “Here are some pants, and when you have those on I will give you a shirt. All you have to do is slip it on and button it up.”

Pants were then thrust into my hands and I pulled them up my legs the same way as I was used to. Then, I pushed my arm through one end of the sleeves of the shirt she was holding out for me before putting my other arm through the opposite sleeve. All the while I kept my eyes closed and ignored the unfamiliar feelings that were coming from my body.

Once the shirt was on I pulled the two sides together, found the top button by feel, and then attempted to button it up. But as I did my hands brushed against parts of my body I did not want to touch and I couldn’t understand why the buttons were in the wrong places!

“Here,” Mom said, then I felt her take over, buttoning the pajama top around me.

When she was finished, I felt like I was wearing a set of pajamas. That was not an unusual feeling, so I ventured to open one eye. My mom was in front of me with a humorous grin on her face, but it was clear I was dressed again. I opened my other eye, and then without even thinking about it, I looked down to make sure my clothes were okay.

That was a mistake. Yes, I was wearing the pajamas. They also fit fine and I didn’t need to adjust anything. But they were very feminine and there were two bumps on my chest that I had been trying to avoid that were now staring me in the face! The pajamas covered everything, fortunately, but it was obvious the bumps were there! My head shot back up to look at my mom as fast as I could.

This time she belly laughed!

“Harper,” she told me through her laughter. “You are making this much harder for yourself. This would be easier if you would just take a chance to learn who you are now.”

“I’m not ready!” I nearly hissed in anger. I thought she was on my side!

“Clearly,” she said, then laughed again. “Come on, let’s go get some hot chocolate and talk.”

She turned and walked out of my room as I followed. The hot chocolate sounded great. It had been a long time since I sat with Mom and talked over hot chocolate. We used to do it all the time when I was younger.

As I followed her I was bombarded with a new set of feelings from my chest as it moved around unbound now. It was not a pleasant experience.

“These things are flopping all over the place!” I complained. That just made my mom laugh in front of me, but she didn’t say anything.

All right - it wasn’t that bad. They were just jiggling a bit as I walked, but it felt so different and I didn’t like it at all! I was not in the mood for this jiggling and I wanted it to stop!

When we entered the kitchen Dad was just about to leave through the door to the garage. “I’m going to go pick up Scott,” he explained as he left.

Dealing with my parents had been tolerable, but I wasn’t looking forward to my younger brother meeting the new me. Yet he lived here too and basketball practice had to end at some point.

“Have a seat,” my mom told me and pointed to the table in the small dining area between the kitchen counter and the door into the garage. “I’ll make the hot chocolate.”

I sat at the table where I always used to sit during these talks. Mom would end up sitting across from me when she was finished.

The first thing that I noticed was how much higher the table was now. I knew it wasn’t the table that had changed, yet I blamed the table anyway. I knew my missing height meant my head was closer to the table. And I resented my loss of height.

“Tell me about the binding,” Mom said while pulling two mugs out of the cupboard and then retrieving the ingredients she needed. “Where did you guys make the circle?”

“We didn’t make a circle,” I told her. She stopped what she was doing and looked at me, worried. “The book listed a permanent circle in the backyard of the Baxter House and Jaclyn wanted us to use it. She said it would be easier.”

Mom’s eyes widened. I wondered if that was the wrong thing to tell her. She walked around the kitchen counter she had been working at and over to me, stared at me for a few moments, and then shoved my left shoulder hard.

“Ow!” I exclaimed. I was stunned by her actions! “What was that for?!”

She continued to stare at me. I didn’t know what she was looking for, but I was becoming worried. Eventually she sighed in relief and her worry seemed to dissipate.

“I’m sorry, Harper,” she said. “I just had to make sure.”

“Make sure of what?” I asked.

“That it was really Gram’s essence that you got,” she said, like her words would make any sense to me. “I felt it when I first saw you, but when you said you guys used the Baxter Circle, I was worried.”

“Worried about what?” I asked. “What does Gram have to do with this?”

Mom went back into the kitchen and grabbed her phone without answering me.

“How were Jaclyn and Sophie acting after the binding?” she asked.

I was caught off guard by her question because she didn’t answer mine. I thought about it for a moment. I had been a bit preoccupied with what had happened to me and trying to deal with Sophie…

“Jaclyn was cheering,” I told her. “She was really happy it worked. Sophie was really surprised at first, but then when she saw me she got really mad. She blamed Jaclyn for my…my…you know, and then she grabbed my hand and pulled me back to the front yard. I think she used magic to throw the gate because it went flying when we got close to it. Then she dragged me down the block a ways before Jaclyn caught up to us in her car. Jaclyn was very sorry, and I was kind of upset with her. Sophie didn’t seem like she could forgive her.”

I said a lot and I hoped it was what Mom wanted to hear. She listened raptly, worried, then she nodded and looked down at her phone when I finished. She pressed the screen a few times and then held the phone up to her ear. I could faintly hear it ringing.

“Hi,” she said a moment later. I heard a voice, but I could not hear what the other person was saying.

“They did,” my mom said a moment later. She paused again to listen and then continued. “They used the Baxter Circle.”

The voice was a bit more animated, and it sounded like it was a woman’s voice, probably Aunt Wendy’s. Mom was clearly talking witch stuff, and Wendy was the only other surviving member of her coven.

“You didn’t get to talk to her at all?” Mom asked. “I see. Harper said–”

Mom fell silent as more talking from the phone cut her off.

“She’s my daughter,” mom replied to an obvious question. Apparently I guessed correctly as to whom she had called since she didn’t mention what had happened to me. Mom’s words were not only telling the caller who I was but that she now had a daughter. Only Wendy would have the kind of context for that to make sense.

“Uh,” Mom said, then looked at me. “Not very well. She is trying to ignore it as much as possible.”

Now she was talking about me. Mom’s smile clearly told me she was finding humor in my grumpy expression.

“Harper said that Sophie had been really upset, quite angry, and had possibly used magic within minutes to throw the Baxter’s gate across their front yard,” Mom told her. “Jaclyn seemed fine. If it happened to anyone, it was probably Sophie.

“I know,” she continued after listening to Wendy for a bit. “I’m not saying it did happen, and that is a valid reason she might be angry. I’m just saying that she seems to be the most likely candidate and we should watch to see.”

Wendy seemed louder and animated again at my mom’s words, but she didn’t seem angry.

“Ok. I hope so too, Wendy,” Mom confirmed what I already knew. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Goodbye.”

Mom hung up the phone and looked over at me. Then she smiled, placed her phone on the counter, and resumed making the hot chocolate.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“Did the book discuss why the ritual is called a binding?” Mom asked as she worked. “I admit, I haven’t looked in Melody’s spellbook in a while.”

“That was a spellbook?!” I asked. “Do you have one?”

“Of course,” she replied. I didn’t know which question she was answering but it seemed like it was the correct answer for both. “All witches do. I can show you mine later and we will need to get you one of your own.”

I nodded. That made sense. Melody had passed her spellbook on to her niece upon her death. She never married or had children. She must have decided to make Jaclyn her heir, at least when it came to magic.

“No,” I told her a moment later, answering her original question. “The book didn’t really describe what happened during the binding. I just assumed it bound us into a coven.”

“That it did,” my mom told me. “But there is more to the binding than just making a coven. None of you had magical powers before the ritual. You needed to be imbued with that power.”

“Oh,” I said. It was becoming very apparent that we really had no idea what we were doing.

Mom finished preparing the two mugs of hot chocolate and brought them over to the table. She placed one in front of me and the other at the seat across from me before sitting down. Then, she took my right hand in hers and smiled at me lovingly.

“A witch’s powers are generational,” my mom continued explaining. “My mom was a witch. Her mom was a witch. Et cetera. When we go through our first binding, we are imbued with magical powers by being claimed by an ancestor. In my case I was claimed, and then bound, by my great-grandmother’s essence because both my mom and her mom were still alive. You were claimed by Gram. I wish she were here to see how pretty you turned out, but it is an honor that my own daughter gets to claim my mother’s essence.”

I was speechless! I hadn’t considered where the power came from. That was just another example indicating how truly unprepared we were for what we had done.

“I have Gram’s?” I asked. I didn’t truly understand what that meant.

“Yes, Gram’s essence,” she answered. “Not Gram. Your grandmother has passed away and is not here. But her magical essence is here. By binding with that essence, you now have access to the magical powers that she wielded. That is how the power is passed down to new witches.”

“Ok, I guess I get it,” I said. It did make sense, at least. “So what, Jaclyn got Aunt Melody’s and Sophie got, um, her great grandma’s?”

“That is the hope,” Mom said, but the worry I had seen multiple times tonight returned. “But, because you used the Baxter Circle, it opened up the door that one of the Baxters could have claimed one of you instead of your ancestors. And that is a worrisome thought.”

Yes, that was a worrisome thought! I hadn’t known Jodi Baxter at all. She was always the old crone whom nobody wanted to interact with before she died and allowed the Baxter House to sit vacant for the last few years. I wouldn’t want to be tied to her in any way!

My eyelids shot up as I realized what my mom had been talking to Wendy about.

“Are you worried that Old Lady Baxter’s essence claimed Sophie?!” I half-asked, half-yelled in concern. I now understood Mom’s expression very well.

“Unfortunately, yes,” Mom replied. “Jodi always seemed to be angry with life and with her circumstances, and who knows what else. She was about as close to an evil witch as I have ever known. She was always trying to use her powers to further herself instead of others, to cause mischief, or to bring misfortune to those she felt had wronged her. In fact, she had been reprimanded many times by the local council. But she didn’t seem like an evil person.”

“What do we do if she did claim Sophie?” I asked, very worriedly. “Will she be okay?”

Mom smiled, then she reached for her mug, but it was still too hot to drink. I realized she was trying to delay her response. Maybe she didn’t want to tell me the truth.

“She’ll be okay,” Mom finally said. “But the essences that we are bound to have an effect on us. Oftentimes we start to mirror the people whose essences we are bound to, to an extent. That is one of the reasons why I am so happy that Gram’s essence claimed you. I’d hate to see Sophie become more like Jodi.”

I would too! Sophie was sweet and happy and kind. Jodi had seemed to be the opposite based on the little interaction I’d had with her and the stories that everyone always told. There was a reason that her house was considered the local ‘haunted house’ even though it was not haunted. People were still avoiding her even though she had been dead for years!

“It is possible to unbind yourself from your essence, though,” my mom explained. “But usually, witches don’t want to be unbound. The powers they know and are used to would be gone. It can be replaced by another essence. If Sophie has been bound by Jodi’s essence, it would be best to try to unbind her and get her bound to an ancestor sooner rather than later.”

I thought I was dealing with issues after the evening events! But my problem seemed way less of an issue when I thought about poor Sophie being tied to a bitter old hag! She had it way worse!

“Don’t worry, Harper,” my mom told me and started rubbing my hand which she was still holding. “This is not a big deal." Everything will work out if she was bound to Jodi Baxter. If she wasn’t, then there is nothing to worry about.”

“But she was really angry, and she threw that gate!” I argued. “That sounds an awful lot like Old Lady Baxter! Sophie isn’t that kind of person!”

“That’s true,” she agreed. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it happened. She might have been angry for other reasons.”

“Like what?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen her get that angry before!”

Mom sighed. It seemed like she knew something that I didn’t, and she didn’t want to tell me about it. Instead, she reached for her mug again. This time she felt like it had cooled enough and took a drink, delaying her response.

Frustrated, I did the same. The wonderful chocolate melted in my mouth the way I always remembered it doing. Mom always made the best hot chocolate. It was always…magical.

Well, maybe it was! Tonight had shed a whole new light on what makes something magical!

I was about to ask her about it when the door to the garage opened. I was sitting in a seat at the table where my back was to the door, and I turned around to see who had come in.

Scott looked at Mom and then at me, and his eyes went wide. He seemed shocked, but not stunned, which probably meant that Dad had already told him.

“Hi,” I said meekly.

“Hi,” he replied. He looked really awkward, and I felt the same way.

He continued walking like he was just going to leave the kitchen and not deal with me right now. I fully agreed with that plan! So, he kept walking while looking over at me in curiosity, and I smiled back at him and let him leave the kitchen.

My dad had followed him in, and just before Scott left the kitchen Dad placed his hand on my shoulder lovingly.

“Hi, Princess,” he said, causing Scott to choke as he exited the room and me to laugh as I looked up at him.

“Princess?” I asked.

“Not the right one?”

“Not the right one, what?”

“Every dad has to have a nice nickname for his beautiful daughter. It’s in the manual.”

I immediately laughed.

“Well, we will figure it out,” he told me with a smile. Then, seeing we were in the middle of a ‘Choc Talk’ as Mom often referred to them, he also left the kitchen.

“Apparently I raised a bunch of avoiders,” Mom joked when they had left, causing me to laugh again.

“It’s definitely easier,” I replied, returning the favor because that made her laugh.

“What were you going to say about Sophie?” I asked, turning her attention back to the conversation we were having. “Why would she be that mad?”

“Honey,” she sighed. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to tell me. “I think it is something that you will need to ask her. It isn’t my place to tell.”

I grimaced, then took another drink of my chocolate. Whatever it was, it had to be something big.

When I sat my mug back down on the table I yawned. Suddenly, I felt very tired.

“There it is,” Mom said. “I thought you would crash way before now.”

I looked at her. For a second I wondered if she had drugged my hot chocolate. But Mom would never do that.

“Why am I tired all of a sudden?” I asked. It didn’t seem natural.

“Your body went through a lot of changes this evening,” she told me. “Most witches crash a few hours after a binding and have to sleep it off.” Whatever it was, it was no joke. I was ready to fall asleep at the table.

“Come on,” she said, standing up and motioning me to follow her. “I’ll help you get ready for bed.”

I stood up and began to follow. It was clear I needed to be in bed soon.

When we exited the kitchen we saw Dad on the sofa watching TV. He looked up and smiled.

“I’m going to put her to bed,” Mom told him. “She’s crashing.”

“Good night, Pumpkin,” Dad said to me with a cheery smile on his face.

“Pumpkin?” I asked, still confused, or sleep deprived.

“Well it is Halloween,” he explained. “I thought it might fit. I’ll keep trying.”

I just shook my head and then followed Mom down the hall. Instead of heading to my bedroom, she stopped at the door of the bathroom. I did not want anything to do with that room, but I realized that I did need to go. Dangit!

“There are a few things you need to do to get ready for bed, now,” Mom explained and then ushered me into the bathroom. She came in and closed the door behind us.

“Do you want to go first or do your nightly routine?” she asked.

“Neither,” I replied. None of what she might be describing sounded like something I wanted to do.

Mom chuckled again, but she looked more weary than the last time she had laughed at my situation. She was probably becoming tired of me avoiding everything, but she was going to have to deal with it!

“Harper, I understand your reluctance,” she told me. “But your life has changed, and it is time to change with it. I know you don’t want to, but you have to. Pull your pajama pants and panties down, and sit on the toilet. Then let go. That is your first task.”

“No, I’m not doing that,” I told her, but the feeling in my bladder seemed to be stronger now that I was inside the bathroom, and I clearly needed to do what she was saying. But no, I couldn’t do that! I just couldn’t!

“I’m not asking you anymore, Harper,” she said in a sterner tone. “This is something you will have to learn how to do. You cannot escape it.”

I just stared at her.

“I’m serious, Harper,” she told me. “You have to do this now or we are going to have to go out and buy you some diapers. Is that what you want?”

Absolutely not! But the alternative of coming face-to-face, so to speak, with my new nether region seemed almost as bad! I stared at her some more. I really, really, didn’t want to do this!

“I’m not going to do it for you!” Mom exclaimed. I wasn’t entirely sure what part she was referring to, but I couldn’t blame her. I had no desire to help anyone expel waste from their body either.

I sighed. I was so tired. I just needed to do this and then I could go to bed.

In defeat, I went to the toilet and pulled up the lid. Then, I had to put the seat back down because I had pulled it up with the lid out of habit. Then, I turned around with my back to the toilet.

I wasn’t sure I could do this. Mom was watching, which was weird, but it was also comforting to have her here. It was her loving smile that she was giving me, forced or not, that finally made up my mind.

I didn’t want to see, so I just stared straight ahead at the shower door while I pulled down my pants and underwear. Then I sat back and onto the toilet. It was depressing that nothing got in the way as I sat down. But since I wasn’t looking down there it made things somewhat easier.

I sat there for a few moments because I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next. It was probably pretty similar but I was too afraid to use the muscles I thought would start the process. Eventually, the need to go and the thought that “peeing was peeing” and things wouldn’t be that different, caused me to let go.

Everything that happened next was completely alien to me! Things were a lot different than before! It felt like the pee was coming from way further down and much closer to my body! When it left my body, it didn’t really “leave” because it seemed to hit areas of my body around it I’d never felt before and then sprayed all over the place and seemed to cling to everything! The sound it made as it hit the water in the toilet bowl was also much higher pitched than what I was used to!

I just sat there, letting my body do its thing. I tried not to think about what was happening, but the sounds and feelings made that impossible. There was nothing in my life that compared to what I was feeling right then! What was happening was something that only women would ever feel, and if I was feeling it, then I must be a woman. Logically I knew that already, but emotionally I didn’t want to face that fact!

Eventually, things seemed to come to a stop down there, and the only thing I could feel was dripping coming from all over the place in my pubic area. I didn’t know what to do next. I had no desire to have urine splattered all around down there! It was gross! I knew girls and women had to wipe but I never realized why! Now I knew it was because it was so messy! And I certainly did not want to wipe, either! That would mean putting my hand down there and feeling the truth!

“Wad up some paper and then wipe from the front to the back,” my mom said, breaking the stupor that I seemed to have fallen into. “When you are at the end, just drop it into the toilet.”

Without thinking about it I unrolled some toilet paper and then held it in my hand. I placed my hand on my lower stomach without looking down. Then, I started slowly pushing it down further. There came a point where I felt like I should have run into an impediment, but it wasn’t there. Moments later the paper seemed to press into a cavity and I felt more strange feelings as it was clear I was now wiping what I had no, I repeat, no desire to ever acknowledge.

The feelings continued as I kept going. It felt like I had wadded up paper and was trying to kill a spider in the corner of two adjoining walls. My fingers were pressing into the area and were rubbing against both sides. The whole ordeal felt like the toilet paper was moving over and in between all kinds of bips and bops down there I only vaguely remembered from health class textbooks. I knew the general layout, but I didn’t know any specifics and the feelings I was generating didn’t have any corresponding relationship to anything that I was used to and I didn’t know how to describe what was happening.

Moments later I seemed to get to the end as the odd feeling of the paper rubbing areas that were somehow on the inside of me seemed to dissipate. I let go and pulled my hand away as quickly as I could.

“Good job!” Mom congratulated me like I had just won some reward. “I knew you could do it!”

“Am I done?” I asked, ready to stand up and pull my pants up to hide it.

“Do you feel done?” she asked in return. “Is anything still wet?”

I had no idea, truthfully. Everything down there felt weird right now. Was it wet? Was that just some odd feeling I had never felt before and only thought it felt wet? I just stared straight ahead for a bit trying to decide, and then ultimately gave up and shrugged.

Mom busted out laughing.

“You don’t know?!” she asked, incredulous.

“Everything down there feels alien to me!” I exclaimed back. “How am I supposed to know?!”

Mom continued laughing. This was a comedy to her, but for me it was a tragedy. I couldn’t wait any longer. I just stood up and pulled up my underwear and pajama pants. I was half afraid that liquid would start running down my legs, but nothing like that happened.

Frustrated, I just turned to and stepped over to the sink, but then almost choked as I came face to face with the girl from my license again. This time she was wearing a very feminine green pajama set that clearly proved she was a member of the fairer sex. I dropped my eyes and stared at the sink as I washed my hands. Then I turned to leave the bathroom, but my mom blocked me.

“You aren’t ready for bed just yet, Harper,” she said.

I hadn’t brushed my teeth, I knew, but I just wanted to go to sleep. One night wouldn’t cause a cavity.

“We are going to learn a bit of magic,” Mom continued. “One of the nicest benefits is that you don’t have to deal with makeup if you don’t want to. I suggest you learn so you understand what you are doing better, but let me show you how to remove it quickly.”

“I’m not wearing any makeup,” I told her, and glanced at the girl in the mirror. She certainly didn’t seem to be wearing anything either.

“Trust me, Harper, you are,” she told me. “Now, hold up your hand like you have a facial wipe in it.”

She was mimicking her words with her right hand, and I tried to do the same with mine.

“Bring it in front of your face and wipe in a circular motion like this while thinking about removing your makeup,” she instructed while going through the motions herself. Her makeup did not change, however, so clearly she wasn’t casting a spell.

I did what she asked. When I was done I looked at License Girl in the mirror, and she looked different. I wasn’t quite sure what was different, but the girl that I saw now seemed more raw somehow, or that something was missing.

“See what I mean?” Mom asked. “You were only wearing a little makeup and it was applied to make you look natural, but it was still there.”

I stared at the girl in the mirror. Without her previous face to compare the differences with I had no idea what had changed, but there was no denying that something had changed.

“You will need to learn how to deal with your hair, too,” Mom told me. “But you’ve been through a lot today. I’ll do it for you.”

I didn’t understand what she meant, but she made a motion like she wanted me to turn around. When I had complied, she gently grabbed my hair near my scalp, slowly pulled on it and yanked my head around. I could kind of see what she was doing in the mirror but didn’t really have any clue why she was doing it. When she was done my hair seemed to be in one of those single braids that I’ve seen women wear, though it seemed very loose.

“Come on,” she said and tapped me on the shoulder. “You are about to fall asleep standing. I’ll explain more tomorrow.”

I followed her out of the bathroom and then to my room. She pulled the covers down and helped me get into the bed, then she tucked me in.

“Good night, Harper,” she whispered to me and then kissed me on the forehead.

I didn’t remember her turning out the light.

—

Chapter 3

I scrambled to hold onto the dream I was having when my alarm clock woke me up the next morning. Of course the dream was gone before I could even remember what it was about. All I remembered was a warm feeling.

I groaned as I reached over to turn my alarm clock off. I didn’t relish the idea of another day as a girl. One night had been bad enough. I knew and still felt like I was on the path that my life was supposed to take, but it was hard to be excited to take any steps down that path.

I slowly climbed out of my bed. Immediately I noticed that I had to pee again, which only deepened my sour mood. Confronting the changes I had endured this early in the day was the last thing I wanted to do.

I sighed and left my room. Mom wasn’t in my parents’ bedroom, so I went to the kitchen to see if she was there. She wasn’t. I looked into the living room. She wasn’t there either.

I sighed again. I was going to have to do everything by myself this morning. I couldn’t hear anyone in the house with me. Scott had an early morning weightlifting class every weekday and Dad drove him to school on his way to work. That usually just left Mom and me alone almost every morning, but without her around I felt extremely alone. I had questions I couldn’t answer myself. I had things I needed to do that I didn’t know how to do. I needed support right now. I couldn’t face what had happened to me by myself. But it looked like I would have to.

I headed back down the hall to the bathroom door. It was open. The light was off, but thinking about entering the bathroom elevated my stress. I reached in and turned on the light. It didn’t really help alleviate the fear I was feeling at facing the new world I was living in.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. There was nothing I could do about what had happened to me. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. But I had to deal with it.

I entered the bathroom and closed the door. I then went to the toilet and lifted the lid. Turning around, I pulled down my pajama pants and underwear and took a seat.

I tried not to think about the changes that had happened to me as I did my business. The experience felt a little less alien than it had last night, but it would be a long time before it would ever feel “normal” to me, if ever.

Once I was done I stood up, lowered the lid, flushed the toilet and washed my hands. Last night, the image in the mirror had surprised me. This morning, I expected to see License Girl and looked closer while reaching for the soap. She looked much like she had last night, though her loose braid was a bit mussed up.

I felt a bit like a voyeur as I watched her wash her hands, then she proceeded to start undressing. I felt like I should be looking away from this girl, but my eyes were locked with hers as she took off her pajama top, bearing her chest to me while placing the garment on the bathroom counter near the door. She then stood there, daring me to look. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

She was much smaller than I expected in the chest department. I hadn’t seen many breasts to compare with what she was showing to me, but I was surprised that they weren’t bigger. I didn’t know if they were normal sized, smaller than average, or even oversized for her age, but they were definitely smaller than the few I had directly seen in the past and even smaller than what I had imagined many of the girls at school had. But the size seemed to fit with the innocent and friendly image she seemed to portray, and that seemed like a good thing.

I watched as she became even more daring and removed her pajama pants and panties and also set them on the counter. Naturally, my eyes went to look between her legs. I’d had even less glimpses at that forbidden anatomy than I’d had of a woman’s chest. But she was too short, and the only thing I could see was a tuft of light-brown hair barely visible before the entire area was blocked by the bathroom counter. She stood up on her tippy toes like she knew I wanted to see more, but the majority of the pubic area was still blocked by the counter. This was frustrating! The bathroom was too small to show me anything else. When she realized that, she lowered herself down until she was once again standing straight.

Never had I ever seen a naked girl this real or lifelike in front of me before! Then I realized as I looked at her that the feelings I was expecting to have were missing. Many times before in my life just the thought of seeing an image like I was now seeing would lead to feelings that would cause specific parts of my anatomy to–

Oh no! Oh no no no! I started thinking about the ocean, about lavender fields, helicopters, the contrails from planes in the sky, bookcases! Anything that was going to stop the odd, alien, and unwanted feelings that started to course throughout my body!

Gradually, my body seemed to calm down. I looked at License Girl, and she seemed flushed. Her face was red and the color seemed to follow down her neck to her chest, which looked like they were standing more at attention than they were before, somehow. I couldn’t see anything happening down below the bathroom counter, but she was holding her legs tightly together, almost crossing them. She was also breathing heavily. A moment later, she looked away and I found myself staring at the shower door.

I did not like the connotation of what had just happened. I had been expecting to feel something at the sight of a naked woman in front of me, but it never occurred! But one tiny little thought about who I used to be and what used to be down below started a whole host of feelings that, while different, were clearly the reaction I had been expecting earlier!

That could only mean one thing, and it was a horrible thought! Harper was clearly attracted to a certain type of person, and it was not the type of person I wanted to be attracted to!

I stepped into the shower.

My fugue over the next few minutes was only broken when I realized that I was holding onto mounds of flesh that I had never held before but had fantasized about many times! I had always thought that this would be an amazing experience. But the reality of feeling them coupled with the realization that I could feel them being held depressed me more than excited me. Immediately I dropped my hands. They were clean enough.

I stared straight ahead for a moment as the water pattered down on my head and back. I didn’t want to do this anymore. I thought I could grin and bear it, but it was so depressing. I just wanted out of the shower to where I could cover up my body with clothes. I didn’t even want to think about any of this anymore.

I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure how much of my body I had washed but I didn’t really care. Instead, I grabbed the shampoo and started lathering up my hair. It was only when I got to the back of my head and felt the braid that I realized I maybe should not have started washing my hair if I wanted to get out of here quickly. I sighed in frustration, reached back to where the hair tie was, pulled it off, and continued washing my hair as it fell around my shoulders.

Instead of drowning out what was happening and forgetting about what I was experiencing, the sheer amount of hair I now had did the opposite as I tried to get it clean. Lathering it was a stupid idea! I was going to be in there all day! Finally, it seemed like I had taken care of all of it, and managed to rinse it all out. The whole reason I had been looking for my mom was because I didn’t know how to take care of this new me and I needed instruction, and now I wasn’t sure if I needed to waste another half hour on conditioner.

I was so over trying to do anything else that I decided I was done. I turned off the water, tried to ring out my mass of hair as much as possible, and then grabbed the towel and started drying off.

What a naïve thought! As if I thought drying off would be any better than showering, it proved to be just as triggering since it required moving the towel over my chest and between my legs to dry everything. I just did it as quickly as I could while trying to ignore the odd way the towel moved about my body now and the unique way it felt compared to what I was used to. Once I was finally done I wrapped the towel around my waist and stepped out of the shower.

Immediately, I knew something was wrong because License Girl was in the mirror in front of me once more, but her chest was still on display. I watched as she removed the towel from around her waist and then struggled to figure out how to tie it under her arms like women do. I almost laughed at the comedic attempts she made before she seemed to figure it out. When she was done, she looked like any other woman I’d seen with a towel wrapped around her.

The girl in the mirror then stepped over to the counter, and it was clear she was trying to figure out what to do with her hair. It was a wet mess. She ran her fingers through part of it, and they came away soaked. She then looked around the counter for something, and when she didn’t find it she started looking through the drawers. She didn’t find what she was looking for in the drawers either and stared at me like she didn’t know what to do next.

Then, she clearly came up with an idea and a smile came to her face! She reached down to the counter and picked something invisible up and then started waving it around her head. I wasn’t sure what she was doing for a moment until I realized she was pretending to blow her hair dry. I almost laughed at the odd-looking attempt until I realized her hair was now dry! It was a lot puffier than it had been a moment before and was clearly no longer wet, but it was also pretty unkempt.

License Girl set the fake hair dryer down and then seemed to pick up a fake brush before she started to run it through her long locks. It was when her hair went from looking like a mess to appearing like the hair I had first seen her with last night that I remembered she was a witch and she must have been using magic to do what she didn’t know how to do otherwise.

She looked pretty pleased with herself when she set the brush back down on the counter. She was smiling like she had just won the lottery. She then picked up another invisible item off of the counter, but I had no idea what it was. She held the item in front of her lips and then moved it in a circular motion like she was applying lipstick.

Almost immediately, her face changed! Her face went from the one I had seen this morning to the one I had seen last night the first time I had looked at her! She must be wearing makeup again, but I still couldn’t tell what was different!

She smiled at me, picked up her dirty laundry, and left the bathroom. I found myself walking down the hallway toward my room.

When I entered my room, it had changed since I had left it. The bed was made and there were two outfits sitting on top of it with some underwear in between them. It was obvious my mother was back. I paused and listened, but still did not hear her anywhere in the house.

I threw my pajamas into the hamper next to my door and then removed my towel and did the same. Instead of moving to my bed to get dressed, I walked to my mirror. I was curious enough about what I couldn’t see in the bathroom to take another look even though all I really wanted to do was get dressed and hide it all from view.

License Girl was staring back at me in all her glory. There was no bathroom counter in the way now. Oddly, she looked even shorter than she appeared in the bathroom mirror.

My eyes naturally traveled to the area between her legs again. I was quite curious about what I was looking at, but in reality it was hard to see anything. I took a step closer, but it didn’t really help. Her pubic hair was covering most of what I could see. The faint outlines of what made her a woman were somewhat visible through the soft tangle of hair, but I could only see part of it with the rest being further back between her legs than I thought it would be, where it wasn’t easy to see from my angle.

License Girl stared at me as I stared at her. She seemed to be daring me to look closer; to better understand what I was looking at. But I was too scared to do anything more. Instead, I turned away and walked toward my bed.

A dress and a pair of pants and a shirt were my choices. Before deciding, I reached between them and picked up the underwear that was on the bed. I slipped the panties up my legs like I had before, but I didn’t close my eyes this time. It made for a strange experience to see them moving up my legs because my legs were so different from what I remembered.

I then unfolded the bundle of cloth that was the bra and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do with it. I’d seen pictures of women in their underwear before so I wasn’t completely lost, but it was still a daunting task to figure out how the mess of fabric went from what I was holding to being around my chest.

Based on what I remembered feeling last night when Mom helped me take one off, it was clear that I just needed to put my arms through the arm holes and then pull the clasps together behind my back. Unfortunately, my attempts to do that came up short. I got it on easy enough, but trying to line the clasps up behind me was a near impossible task!

After a few minutes of struggling I let go and tried to think about what I was doing. Clearly, this couldn’t be the right way because it was too hard. After a few moments of thought I realized that I could close the clasp around my torso while the clasp was in front of me, and then all I had to do was rotate it and get my arms through the proper holes. It turned out to be easy enough to do. I wasn’t sure if that is how women put these things on or not, but it was certainly easier than the contortions I had been doing to try to close it behind me!

I then grabbed the white ankle socks that were on the bed and slipped them on my feet before turning back to the decision I had to make.

I had no desire to wear a dress. I’d done that last night, and while it was easy enough to wear and move in, it was too feminine. I knew that I had just put on two other clearly feminine items I didn’t want to wear, but I wanted to minimize how much I felt like a woman, and the dress was just too much. The pants and shirt were good enough for me. Besides, Halloween was tomorrow, but since it was on a Saturday, today many students would be wearing their costumes at school. Very few would be wearing a standard outfit like the two that were on my bed.

I reached over and grabbed the pants. There was a sigh of disappointment in the room, but when I looked around I was the only one there. Was that my sigh of disappointment? Was it me who was disappointed in my choice? Did I really want to be wearing a dress?

I wasn’t sure. Intellectually I had no desire to wear a dress, but I had certainly been surprised by a lot of things this morning.

I pulled on the pants and then pulled on the shirt as well. The last item in the outfit was a pair of shoes that I slipped onto my feet. Then I stepped over to the mirror to take a look.

License Girl was standing there fully dressed now in a cute top and bottom combo that really accented her girlish figure and green eyes. It was a mesmerizing sight. She seemed to turn around in the mirror to let me look at her from different angles, and I admired what I was seeing. She looked very nice.

After she stopped showing off for me, she reached into her pocket and pulled out an invisible wand. Then she twirled it about like she was a fairy godmother, and the clothes changed. Instead of the cute girl that had been standing there, I was now staring at a proverbial farmer’s daughter!

Her hair had been pulled back into a similar braid as the one I had seen her wearing last night when she was getting ready for bed, though it was tighter. Her pants had been changed into a pair of jeans that hugged her closely but loose enough that she would be able to move around well enough to tend the farm in them. They were also held up by a pair of brown suspenders that went up and over her shoulders on top of a white cotton blouse that completed the country bumpkin look she was portraying. The costume was finished with a pair of brown work boots, sturdy but feminine, that she would need to complete her chores for the day. Her next stop was probably to milk the cows!

There was a gasp nearby that I couldn’t be certain was from me, but it certainly portrayed the way I felt.

The costume she was wearing now was similar to the scarecrow costume I had been wearing last night, but this one was clearly made for a woman and didn’t contain any straw. She was smiling at me like she had found the perfect costume and I nodded along with her at the realization that she had.

“Mom?” the girl called out and then turned away from me. I walked out of my bedroom searching for my own mother moments later.

“Mom?” I called into her room, pausing to see if she was in there. There was no response, but there was a rush of wind behind me. It felt like someone was walking past me. I turned hoping it was she, but nobody was there.

I walked toward the kitchen. Halfway there my nose was assaulted by a mix of breakfast smells that seemed to come out of nowhere. It was almost like they weren’t there, and then suddenly they were.

I found my mom in the kitchen making breakfast, apparently. I say ‘apparently’ because she almost looked like she was pretending to make food, but there was a platter of food on the counter. Something weird was going on.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Of course!” she replied, almost out of breath. “I’m just making breakfast!”

She had a mixing bowl in her hands, the one she usually used to make pancakes. It was empty and clean, though she was holding it like she had been stirring inside of it. There were pancakes on the counter already. A pan was on the stove like she was making bacon, but there was bacon already on the counter, and even I could tell from the doorway to the kitchen that the stove wasn’t even turned on.

“Did you just magically conjure breakfast?” I asked.

She looked at me like I had lost my mind.

“Of course not!” she told me, and tried to hide the mixing bowl behind her.

I stepped over to the counter and attempted to pick up a piece of bacon, but my hands went right through it. I just looked up at her questioningly.

She smiled at me for a moment, and then her whole body just collapsed in defeat when she realized I wasn’t buying whatever she was doing.

“Fine,” she conceded. “I haven’t made any breakfast.”

She waved her hand like she was trying to clear the air of a bad smell, and the breakfast disappeared.

“What were you…” I started. Then I looked at her suspiciously. “Have you been spying on me?”

She looked guiltily at me almost immediately.

“Uh, huh,” I said, realizing what was going on. The sigh, the gasp in my room, neither of those was me. My mom had been watching. “What are the police going to say when I tell them an old lady was peeping on me, an innocent teenage girl, while I was getting dressed?”

Mom just laughed and I promptly joined in.

“I’m sorry, Harper,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to do anything weird. But look at you! Look how well you handled this morning!”

“Don’t change the subject,” I said, trying to steer the conversation back. “It is more than a little bit weird to have my mom turn herself invisible and watch me get dressed. Can’t you see that?”

“Of course,” she replied. “I just can’t believe my little girl is all grown up now!”

“Mom!” I sighed, rolled my eyes, and then groaned at her. “You are incorrigible!”

She laughed again.

I didn’t like the idea of my mom watching me as I got dressed this morning. But I managed to accomplish my morning tasks by myself. I hadn’t been able to ask her the questions I’d had, but I still found the answers I’d needed. It showed me that I wasn’t as reliant on her as I’d thought.

“Please don’t do that again,” I told her.

“I won’t,” she replied. “I didn’t mean to do it this time. You just came in while I was laying out your clothes and I didn’t want you to see me.”

Well that made me feel better. I suspected that she was spying on me, but I had actually been the one to surprise her. I still thought she shouldn’t have hidden herself, but I was glad I hadn’t seen her. I felt like I grew as a person, as, dare I say it, as Harper, to know I was capable of handling the changes myself.

I looked at my mom. She was smiling at me, looking for forgiveness, which I was readily willing to give her. But that didn’t mean I had to make it easy.

“So no breakfast?” I asked her, smiling coyly.

She snorted, not expecting the question, and then smiled more genuinely at me.

“I can make whatever you want,” she replied, knowing I had forgiven her.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “I only have a few minutes, I’ll get some cereal.”

Mom nodded. She usually didn’t make me breakfast, so it wasn’t like I was disappointed or anything. We usually ended up eating cold cereal together, or she sat with me while I ate if she had already eaten.

I walked over to the cupboard where we kept the cereal and picked out what I wanted. Mom turned and pulled out a bowl and spoon and set it on the counter. I grabbed the milk and took a seat in front of the bowl.

“I wasn’t expecting so much magic this morning,” she said while I poured the cereal into the bowl.

“I wasn’t either,” I replied truthfully while picking up the milk and pouring it on top of the cereal. “It just kind of happened when it made sense.”

She nodded, like it was normal. I had no idea if it was normal. Do witches just know what to do the morning after their binding?

“Well, you certainly seem to be a quick learner,” she told me. “I don’t think most witches would have reached for magic as easily as you have. When you changed your clothes into that costume, which is very awesome by the way, I was astounded.”

“I heard,” I told her and smiled wryly before taking a bite of the cereal.

She laughed heartily at that response, the lines at her eyes showing her mirth. I loved her, and I was so glad she was my mother.

She watched me in silence for a few moments as I ate. A moment later, I remembered one of the questions I had, that I wasn’t sure I could answer on my own.

“How do I explain this to everybody?” I asked her and gestured down at myself, then I took another bite.

Mom nodded, as if she had expected the question and as if she had already thought about it.

“I think there are two options. First, you can tell everyone the truth. You can say that you were turned into a girl by a magic spell and now you are trying to figure out how to cope with the changes.”

I nodded. That was the only thing I had been able to think of, but it didn’t seem like a good scenario. I wondered what her other option was.

“Second,” she continued. “And what I think you should do is pretend that you have always been a girl.”

I stopped eating at her words, unable to fully comprehend what they meant! I swallowed.

“What do you mean?” I asked, looking for clarification.

“I mean, that either you let the world know you were turned into a young woman, or you pretend like you think you were always one,” she told me. “By acting like you have always been Harper, I think you will cut down on the harassment and other antics that teenagers would likely do when they realize you don’t remember who you used to be, and it will make your life easier later.”

“But I do remember who I used to be!” I told her. “And I don’t want to be Harper!”

“I know,” she replied and reached across the table to take my hand in hers. “This isn’t the easier option, but I think it is the option that will make your life better. Kids can be really mean in scenarios where things are not normal, and if you make it seem normal I believe they won’t tease you as much as they otherwise would have. You will be able to live a more normal life than just being the girl who used to be a boy.”

That did seem like a better option, but there was no way I was going to be able to act like I had always been a girl. I just didn’t have those memories.

I opened my mouth to tell my mom I wouldn’t be able to pull something like that off, but she had been ready for me to say that.

“Can I teach you a spell that will help?” she asked, before I could say anything.

I nodded, and she came around the counter and sat down beside me. She then took my hands in hers, turning my chair toward her at the same time.

“Repeat after me, with the intent to cast,” she said.

I nodded, not sure what was going to happen.

“I remember it all,” she started.

“I remember it all,” I repeated.

“The old and the new,” she continued, and I repeated.

“The good and the bad,” we continued. “The pink and the blue.”

When we were finished I felt a boing that seemed to jump around inside my head for a few moments, before everything seemed to settle down. Nothing seemed to have changed, but I was certain something must have.

“Do you remember when I took you shopping on your 10th birthday?” Mom asked me.

“Yeah,” I told her. “That was when I got my first training bra.”

“That’s right,” she replied. “You were so happy. I was scared because you were finally becoming a woman, and I wasn’t ready.”

I smiled, remembering that day. It was a wonderful memory spending time with her.

What?! No!

“No Mom!” I told her. “We went shopping for a new bike!”

“Yes, we did,” she agreed with me again. It couldn’t be both!

Or could it?

I felt a headache coming on as I clearly remembered shopping for the new blue bike I had enjoyed for only a few years until I outgrew it because my quickly lengthening body grew to be over 6 feet long before I was 16. But I also remembered when she took me to get that training bra. I felt so grown up that day!

“What is going on?” I asked, worriedly. I didn’t like whatever this was!

“We just cast a spell that will let us remember both of your lives,” she told me. “Right now, you will naturally start to remember your life as Harper, but a little more thought will bring back the real memories, okay?”

I just stared at her. I didn’t want to remember Harper’s memories! They weren’t real!

“I know, I know,” Mom said, reacting to what must have been clear displeasure on my face. “This is temporary, unless you choose to keep them. If it is too much, you can break the spell at any time by repeating this mantra: “What once was one, but now is two, combine the pink, back to blue.”

“Is this a real spell?” I asked, dubiously. I wanted to recite the words immediately.

“Yes,” Mom told me. “These are both spells that I have been working on since it became apparent to me that you may end up in this scenario. I am not trying to rewrite who you are or were, but I am trying to help you to adjust in a way that will be beneficial.”

I sighed. But she was right. I had inadvertently started thinking about some of my favorite memories: that time I went fishing with Dad and caught not only my limit but the limit of everyone that was with us; the time Mom and I had gone to a ballet together; the time Andy, my older brother, had shown me a girly magazine.

Each of those events had happened in both sets of memories, with only slight differences. In the new set of memories I also had I remembered using a pink fishing pole when I went fishing with dad. I was wearing a dress and a tiara when I went to the ballet with Mom. It had been a bit awkward when I had caught Andy looking at the magazine instead of him showing it to me, but I remember being enamored because I was starting puberty myself and was waiting for my own chest to grow, but hopefully not as big as the lady he was looking at!

The memories were confusing, since they were new, but they weren’t overriding the old memories, they were just giving me a different perspective to what I had already experienced, so to speak. If I was going to pretend that I had always been a girl, having this other set of memories would definitely make that easier.

“There is another benefit, too,” my mom told me with a smirk that worried me.

“And what is that?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

“If you keep these memories, then you will already have learned everything you need to know to be the young woman you are now,” she told me.

I looked at her, confused. We had already established that through her thought experiment and through me roaming through these new memories.

“I mean,” she continued. “We won’t need to have the talk you so vehemently didn’t want to have last night.”

‘The talk’. What talk? Oh! Oh crap! Oh no! No! No! No!

I didn’t want to be female! I didn’t want to think about any of the things that females have to deal with that I never had to before! But now, unbidden, memories flashed through my mind of how to do my makeup, the proper way to put on a bra, how to sit in a skirt, and, above all, how to deal with a period that wouldn’t be coming for approximately a week and a half!

I found myself hyperventilating, trying to find an escape, and then I started speaking.

“What once was one–” I started, but Mom covered my mouth with her hand. I tried to mouth the words, but it just didn’t feel like the spell would work that way and I stopped, slumping in defeat.

Moments later, my mom removed her hand.

“It’s okay, Harper,” she told me. “I’m sorry to surprise you like that. Don’t undo the spell just yet. You will have plenty of time to undo it if this isn’t the right way, but you also need to take the time to figure out if this is a blessing or a burden to you.”

“I don’t need to take that time!” I exclaimed heatedly. “This is a tragedy!”

She laughed, which didn’t help. That was her reaction to almost every detrimental thing that had happened to me since last night!

But, I knew she was right. If I didn’t think about that stuff, it stayed out of my head. And, it would have been very helpful to have had these memories earlier when I had been trying to get ready! For example, I knew now that putting my bra on the way I did was not wrong, but I also had many memories of accomplishing what I had been trying to do when attempting to close the clasps behind me. I also knew that I wouldn’t need to wash my hair for a few days now and how to keep it from getting wet when I showered each morning. I also realized that the outfits my mom had picked out for me were so wrong! Her generation just did not know how to pick out an outfit correctly for somebody my age!

I sighed, more so in contemplation than in defeat because I could find the answers to those questions that I had about what was occurring now.

“You’d better hurry,” Mom said as she glanced at the wall clock. “The girls will be waiting for you. We can cast the spell with them later if they want to have the memories too.”

I nodded and glanced at the clock to confirm that it was time for me to go to school. Then I looked at my mom. I surprised myself by hugging her before I got up from the table.

I walked down the hall to my room to get my backpack. When I got to my desk where I had left it after school yesterday afternoon, I had another one of those weird feelings as my memories fought with each other.

The backpack that was sitting on the desk was the drab, black backpack I’d had for the last two years. But in my head I had been expecting to find a green one. Green, I now remembered, was my favorite color, not the blue that Barry liked.

I twirled my index finger and pointed it at the backpack. The green backpack I was expecting appeared in place of the one on the desk. I grabbed it, slung it over my shoulder, and then walked toward the front door. It was only then that I realized I had just changed my world to conform to Harper’s memory instead of my real memory, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I left the backpack green, however.

“Bye, Mom!” I told her while passing the kitchen door. She was inside cleaning up my breakfast dishes.

“Have a good day, Harper,” she replied, turning and smiling for the brief moment I saw her.

I entered the living room. There, sitting on the table next to the front door, was the purse I had found on the backseat of Jaclyn’s car last night. I picked it up and stuffed it into the top of my backpack, then I opened the front door and journeyed out into the unknown for my first day of school as a coed.

Jaclyn’s car was parked where it always was, across the cul-de-sac from my house and between her home and Sophie’s home. Neither of the girls was at the car. By the time I arrived at the car they still hadn’t appeared and I began to worry.

Moments later the door to Sophie’s house opened and Sophie and Jaclyn came out of the house and walked toward me. Jaclyn was dressed in a different cheerleader outfit than what she had been wearing yesterday. Sophie was wearing the same costume I had seen her in last night. They were talking and giggling and didn’t even notice me until they were halfway to the car.

“Harper?” Jaclyn gasped when she finally saw me. She was staring at me like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but she had been there last night when I had changed.

“That is an amazing costume!” Jaclyn continued. “Where did you get it?!”

I smiled. I was rather proud of this one, and not just because it looked good. I was excited at the knowledge that I had actually created it from magic.

I bowed to them. But when I came back up Jaclyn was staring at me with her eyes wide open.

“Did you just curtsy?” she asked.

Had I? I thought I was bowing, but thinking back on my movements, I clearly curtsied. The spell was affecting my movements just like it had made me want to change the color of my backpack to green! I was going to have to watch what I was doing! I didn’t want the spell taking over my life!

“I made it!” I answered her first question, and ignored the second.

“You made it?” Jaclyn looked at me incredulously. “When?”

“This morning,” I told her, then winked at her. She didn’t seem to understand and looked at me with a confused look.

“I used magic,” I said, trying to make it clearer. Her eyes lit up in understanding. Based on her expression, it seemed that my willingness to reach for magic was abnormal, since she clearly hadn’t thought about recreating her look the same way. The fact she was wearing the same, yet different, costume made me think she found a similar outfit instead of using magic like I did. Sophie, on the other hand, was wearing the exact same costume and probably used magic to bring it back into existence as well.

I looked at Sophie. She hadn’t said anything, but she was smirking at my explanation. She looked much happier than she had when I had seen her last night.

“Morning, Sophie,” I said. “Feeling better?”

She sighed, and then looked at me a bit closer. It seemed like what she saw depressed her, even though she nodded.

“Morning,” she replied. “It’s better, but I still feel upset about what happened to you.”

I nodded, because I felt the same.

“I understand,” I told her. “I’m not exactly thrilled about it either. I don’t really understand why you were so upset, though. My mom said it might be more than what happened to me, but she wouldn’t tell me why.”

Sophie’s face went red almost immediately, and she turned to look away from me. I didn’t know what that meant, but I wondered if it was related to what my mother had described about Jodi Baxter.

“It’s…complicated,” Jaclyn answered for her. “We can talk about it later. Did everything go alright at home?”

“Yes!” I replied excitedly. “My parents weren’t even that surprised!”

“They what?!” Jaclyn exclaimed. “How?! Why?!”

“Apparently they were expecting it would happen at some point,” I told her. “They just didn’t think it would be last night.”

“They were expecting it?!” she said, confusion dominating her expression.

“I guess they were pretty sure we were going to form a coven,” I told her, which only increased her confusion more.

“They?” Jaclyn asked.

That's when I realized that Sophie and I had an advantage that Jaclyn did not have. We had people who could help us cope with what had happened. Jaclyn was alone.

“My mom and Sophie’s mom are witches as was your aunt,” I told her. “They were a coven.”

“Oohhh!” Jaclyn exclaimed as the pieces felt into place. I watched her face as she processed this, and I knew that Jaclyn had learned more about this new world from my statement than anything she had done last night after we had parted.

“We’d better get going,” Sophie said and gestured to the car. “We can talk and drive.”

Jaclyn nodded and we climbed into the car. Moments later we were on the way to school.

“How are you dealing with all of the…you know,” Jaclyn asked, looking at me through the rearview mirror.

“Honestly, I’m trying to avoid it,” I told her truthfully. “But I am going to need your help today.”

“Of course!” Jaclyn said. “Anything you need to know, we can teach you!”

“Not about that,” I told her. “That is taken care of, sort of.”

She looked back at me through the rearview mirror with a mixture of surprise and sadness. She must have been hoping to help me adjust, but the spell Mom and I had cast this morning pretty much solved all of my issues about how to comport myself.

“My mom suggested that I pretend that I have always been Harper,” I told them. “To help explain why I am a girl now, I mean. She thinks we should pretend that a spell changed me, but that I don’t even remember being Barry anymore.”

“What?! Why?!” Sophie asked, alarmed.

“Because if I act like I have always been Harper then people will just have to accept it,” I told her. “They can’t really make fun of me, tease me, or do anything else if every time they do I just look at them like they are the crazy ones to think I had changed.”

There was silence for a few moments. Then Jaclyn spoke up.

“I guess that makes sense,” she said. “Do you want us to pretend you have always been Harper too?”

“I don’t think so,” I told her. “I think it would work best if it seems like I was the only one affected by the spell and it turned me into a girl and made me think I had always been one, but it didn’t affect anyone else’s memory. The two of you would know I had changed.”

“Confusing,” Jaclyn replied. “Are you sure that is the best way to do this?”

“No,” I told her honestly. “But it does sound like it might be the better way to handle this. I don’t think we want to tell them that we all became witches last night and that required me to become a girl and now I have to deal with coping with all of those changes and I would appreciate it if they would stop treating me like I am some kind of lab experiment.”

“Touché,” Jaclyn responded. Sophie remained mostly silent, much like she had last night, but fortunately she didn’t seem angry.

“I think if you guys just explain it away as somehow I was turned into a girl by magic but don’t remember it, it will answer questions without me having to live both lives,” I said. “We don’t even have to pretend we know how the magic worked or why, just that it happened.”

Jaclyn nodded, but I didn’t know how Sophie felt. I was about to ask her what she thought, but the tire of a truck, which was stopped at the crossway of the intersection we were going through, suddenly blew out as it sat at the red light. All of our attention turned to it as the front of the truck sagged in one direction. I’d never seen a tire blow like that in real life, and based on the expression on the driver, neither had he!

“I can do that,” Jaclyn responded after a few moments. “Sophie, can you?”

Sophie nodded, but all that she said was a weak “Yes”.

“My mom and I cast a spell that gave me all of Harper’s memories,” I told them. “I’m going to use it to pretend like I have always been Harper and reply to people that way.”

“What?!” Jaclyn asked, confused again. “You replaced your memories with Harper’s?!”

“No,” I told her. “I remember both sets of memories - Barry’s and Harper’s - but right now I remember Harper’s memories first. That’s also why I know how to cope as a girl, so to speak.”

Jaclyn was looking ahead at the road, but what I could see in the rearview mirror showed that she was still confused.

“For example, do you remember when we went to the pool for James’ birthday party a month ago?” I asked them. They both nodded. “Jaclyn, you wore that purple bikini. Sophie, you wore that pretty yellow one-piece, and I wore a green tankini.”

“What?! No!” Sophie exclaimed. “You wore that blue bathing suit that you look really good in!”

“Well, yeah,” I told her. “I did in reality. But in Harper’s memories it was a green tankini. I’m going to describe stuff like that all day because it is what I remember of Harper’s life now. And I might end up changing things around me because I want them to be the way Harper remembers them. I already changed my backpack to what Harper has been using for the last two years.”

“That’s stupid!” Sophie said, and was clearly frustrated with my explanation. She wouldn’t elaborate.

“And then we all got stuck in the changing room afterward,” I continued, ignoring her. “Because Jaclyn couldn’t get out of the bathroom stall when the door handle fell off.”

“What!” Jaclyn exclaimed. “We never told you that!”

“Ah!” I replied excitedly. “So that is what had happened!”

“You remember that?!” Jaclyn asked.

“I do,” I told her. “I also remember sitting outside waiting for you guys for 20 minutes at the same time, also.”

“Wow!” Jaclyn said, amazed at my new memories. “I guess you aren’t lying. You said we can have these memories too?”

“Yes,” I told her. “I’m not sure if I want to keep them yet or not, but my mom said we can do the spell with you guys this afternoon if you want them too.”

Jaclyn nodded, but Sophie seemed to be fuming in her seat. She wasn’t as mad as she had been last night, but she was certainly upset now. I still didn’t know why.

We drove in silence for the remainder of the ride. Even with my prepared explanation, I wasn’t looking forward to what was coming next, especially with interacting with my classmates.

When we walked into the school doors, everybody stopped talking. Clearly, people were noticing me.

I didn’t let it phase me, though. I’d be super interested in me if I wasn’t, you know, me.

I continued walking down the hallway, aware of the conversations and looks that I was getting, but I ignored them and pretended that I was just a regular school girl walking down the hall toward her locker. I had committed to this story that I didn’t remember anything else, and that was what I was going to do.

Sophie and Jaclyn were walking a bit behind me, and I could hear them quietly whispering to those around us trying to explain what was going on. I just smiled inwardly and continued forward.

When I reached my locker I felt a measure of relief. Nothing had happened in the short walk from the doors.

“I’ll see you two at lunch,” Jaclyn told us and then continued down the hall to where her locker was. Sophie’s was near mine, though it was on the opposite side of the hall.

Because it was a “B day” today, Sophie and I shared our morning classes, and then I shared my afternoon classes with Jaclyn. It was a scheduling quirk, but I was glad I would have one of them with me all day.

When I opened my locker, I was caught off guard and growled in anger.

“What’s wrong?” Sophie asked, close enough to hear but not to see what I was angry at.

“Somebody stole all of my decorations!” I complained loudly.

I was fuming for a moment before the reality of the situation hit me. Truthfully, I had never hung anything up in my locker before. But my memories from Harper told me that there should have been a picture of the three of us right in the center of the door with some other assorted items taped around it. Yet, there was nothing but bare metal there to greet me.

The lack of decorations had literally surprised me and made me angry for a moment before I realized they were Harper’s memories and not mine, but it was a good opportunity to drive home the story that I had always been Harper. I continued to act frustrated, looking around the edges of the locker to see if it had been tampered with, and then looking around the area to see if anyone was playing a joke on me. I knew the answer was ”No” to both of those things, but I still played the part.

Sophie stared at me, as were a number of other students around us. I opened my backpack, swapped my “A day” books for “B day” books, left the former books in my locker and then shut it in frustration.

I then gestured at my locker like I was angry at it, but in reality I cast a spell that would put the decorations I had expected inside of the locker right where I expected them. Next time I opened it I would happily see what hadn’t just been there.

Once I was done I turned and headed over to Sophie. She was still looking at me and not getting her own books, but as I approached she shook her head and opened her own backpack.

“Was that real?” she asked.

“At first,” I replied, softly so those around us wouldn’t hear. “It actually surprised me they weren’t in there.”

“This is going to be a long day,” she sighed.

“Why?” I asked. I knew the answer, but it seemed like the appropriate response that Harper might ask to that question since she didn’t know the “full” truth of who she used to be.

She shook her head in frustration and then closed her own locker. Then she turned and started to walk down the hall to our calculus class. I hurried to catch up and walk beside her.

“Are you okay?” I asked her as we walked toward class. “You don’t quite seem like yourself.”

“I’ll be fine,” she told me. “But you are the one who isn’t yourself.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “I’m who I’ve always been.”

I was of course sticking to my plan to explain what had happened to me. But the words were real anyway. I was still me. I was still the Barry she had always known. I had just changed a little. I didn’t want to be changed, but I also couldn’t ignore those changes, unfortunately.

Unfortunately my words to her seemed to have the opposite effect of what I wanted. Instead of hearing the true meaning, she seemed to take it at face value and her grimace of frustration seemed to deepen.

I opened my mouth, but I wasn’t sure what I should tell her. Instead, our attention was drawn to Mario and Luigi. Well, it was the “Twins” dressed as Mario and Luigi, at least. They weren’t really twins, but the two boys had been inseparable since elementary school, just as I was with Sophie and Jaclyn.

That was why it was completely out of character for Jonathon to shove Eric as hard as he could, causing Eric to tumble to the ground, nearly in a faceplant. He looked confused, just like Jonathon.

The whole incident had happened in front of a teacher, who immediately asked, “What is going on here?”

The two boys looked at each other for a moment, seemingly confused about what was happening. Then Eric stood up and swung at Jonathon. Eric’s fist connected directly with Jonathon’s nose, and blood spurted everywhere. But instead of rage on Eric’s face, he was shocked!

“That’s enough!” The teacher yelled at the two of them, grabbed each of them by the upper arm, and then started moving them toward the Principal’s office.

“I’m so sorry!” Eric called out. “I don’t know what is happening!”

“Me too!” Jonathan said. “I didn’t mean to push you!”

“You aren’t getting out of this,” the teacher silenced both of them. “I saw what happened. You will be lucky if you both don’t get suspended!”

I just stared as they were moved to an adjoining hallway.

“What was that?” I asked. I wasn’t really directing the question at anyone in particular; it was a general thought that I had suddenly expressed. As such, nobody answered me. That was the second odd event that had happened this morning around me. Was my magic, or even my memory spell, leaking and affecting other people around me? Both clearly didn’t want to do what they had done, based on their words!

It took me a moment to realize that I had stopped in the middle of the hallway. It was only a light jostling as someone tried to move around me that reminded me to start moving again.

I noticed that Sophie hadn’t stopped, and was now quite a ways ahead of me. I hurried to catch up, but she ducked into the classroom before I could catch up to her. When I reached the door she was just sliding into her seat.

I walked into the classroom and then went to my seat, which just happened to be between Sophie and a princess.

“Hi, Kate,” I said while sliding into my desk.

The princess looked up from her phone to see who had greeted her, likely because she didn’t recognize my voice. Seeing me only caused her brows to furrow.

“Hi?” she replied, but it sounded more like a question than a greeting. She looked over at Sophie, maybe for an explanation, but Sophie was staring straight ahead like she had been doing in the car last night and again this morning. Sophie wasn’t taking my change very well.

Kate looked back at me when she was clearly not going to get anything from Sophie. She looked confused, but intrigued. I knew I was recognizable. Although I was way shorter than I had been, I did look like Barry’s sister.

“Who are you?” she finally asked.

I laughed lightly.

“That’s funny, Kate,” I replied. “I’m Harper, we’ve known each other since middle school.”

While my statement was true, she clearly hadn’t met Harper before, which caused a quirky, playful smile to appear as she tried to digest my words.

Before she could respond, however, the bell rang and Mr. Pritchet, our Calculus teacher, stood up from his desk at the front of the room.

“Welcome everyone,” he said while holding a tablet. “Darrin Anderson?”

“Here,” a boy on the other side of the room replied to the roll call Mr. Pritchet started. He then continued calling out names until he got to mine.

“Harper O’Connell?” he asked, confused. Then he looked directly at me.

I had the same last name, and since he was taking the roll alphabetically by last name, he was used to calling me at that moment in the process. But clearly he wasn’t expecting to see me, or at least Harper me, sitting in Barry’s seat.

“Here,” I called casually, like I did every “B day”. He stared a bit longer, looked down at the tablet he was taking roll on, and then looked back at me. A moment later he continued.

Class after that was a bit weird for me, and probably very weird for everyone else seeing Harper there instead of Barry. But I was surprised to learn that Harper was a math wiz.

I wasn’t bad at math but I had never cared for it either. Nothing about my brain, or the way I thought, had changed with the binding other than the memory spell Mom and I had cast this morning. Yet, math came more naturally to me now than it ever had in my life, and I enjoyed doing it!

I had all these new memories of enjoying math and numbers and how everything interacts together in a way that I had never even considered before. I was sure the only thing that had changed were my memories, but it had made a big difference!

Mr. Pritchet certainly was surprised when I started answering questions he asked in class that Barry never would have attempted. Jerry Atwall, who was a self-proclaimed mathlete, kept looking back at me and sneering when Mr. Pritchet called on me instead of him to answer questions. Jerry was usually the one who answered when nobody else in the class would or even could. That was the best math class that I had ever had in my life and I couldn’t wait to go home and do my homework!

Oh, wow! It was at that point that I understood that Harper cared a lot more about school Barry did. I actually wanted to get good grades, and I was suddenly worried that I would be stuck with Barry’s laziness and indifference instead of the near 4.0 average I remembered having as Harper. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Allison’s stupid science class where she was determined to mark everyone down in grade for something, I would have a perfect A in every class!

As I was putting my math book and other supplies back into my backpack, I heard a voice nearby.

“I don’t know who you are, but I’m the math expert around here,” the voice said. “Just remember that.”

I looked up to see a skeleton standing there, glaring at me. He was so skinny and the costume made him look even more frail.

“Still upset I got the highest score on the last test, Jerry?” I asked. This was a memory that I now had as Harper, but based on how all physical documents in this new world matched Harper’s memories and identity, I was confident that it was a true statement.

“Whatever,” he said, clearly annoyed, then walked out of the classroom.

“That was impressive, um, Miss O’Connell”, Mr. Pritchet told me. “Jerry is an amazing math student, but you were quicker to provide almost every single answer today.”

I found myself beaming at his compliment while I continued packing up. “Thank you.”

“Where did you come from?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well I have never seen you before, but you are clearly Barry, are you not?”

“Who is Barry?”

“You are not Barry?”

“I don’t know a Barry,” I stated. I looked around for Sophie, hoping she could help me in this odd situation, but she had apparently already left without me.

“Hmm…” Mr. Pritchet said. “I don’t know what is going on, but I was happy to have someone with your talent in this class today. I hope we get to see you again.”

“Um, I’m here for every class,” I told him. “Like I have been all year.”

He chuckled, clearly not believing my words, but nodded nonetheless.

I just grabbed my backpack and went looking for Sophie.

I couldn’t find Sophie anywhere on my way to our history class, but once I entered the classroom I found her sitting in her assigned seat already. Since the seating was done alphabetically, I sat nowhere near her. I put my backpack down on my desk and then walked over to her.

“You didn’t wait for me,” I said. She always waited for me, Harper me, that is. But she usually waited for Barry me also. Either way, I hadn’t expected her to leave math without me.

“I can’t do this, Barry,” she said to me, using the wrong name. “I just can’t.”

“Why is everyone calling me Barry?” I asked her. “I don’t understand. We’ve been friends since we were little girls. Nothing has changed. Why are you pulling away from me?”

“Stop it!” she told me. “I know you remember! Stop it!”

There were quite a few students around including Mrs. Banks, our history teacher. I had to do this for my own sake. I wasn’t caving in to what Sophie was trying to do. This was my life and I had made my own decision, with the help of my mom, and (I thought) my best friends, to pretend I had always been Harper. Now here Sophie was trying to undermine my future.

“Remember what?” I asked. “What is wrong with you today?”

“It’s not me that is the problem!” she snapped back.

“What is that supposed to mean?!” I shot back.

“I don’t know who you are anymore,” she said. “Barry, Harper, whatever. Just leave me alone!”

“I’m sorry, Sophie,” I said, truthfully. “I don’t know what I've done to upset you. You’ve been my best friend since we were three! I’m sorry! I wish I could make whatever it is better!”

“Just give me space!” she nearly yelled back, and made a shooing gesture in my direction. I felt a nearly overwhelming force try to push me away from her, but I held my ground, protected by my own gesture holding my hand up in front of me like I was holding it back. I saw her eyes widen while hearing papers and other items blowing behind me. I knew that she had tried to cast a spell on me and I was saddened by it.

I nodded then returned to my seat and sat down.

“Friends, am I right?” a boy said next to me. I looked; it was Tommy Oliver. He was dressed as a Power Ranger, of all things. That seemed a little too on the nose to me. Tommy was one of the last people I wanted to talk to. He was always picking on me, or at least Barry me. He was pretty much the antithesis of a Power Ranger.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I told him, truthfully.

“Come on,” he told me. “Cute girls like you shouldn’t be so upset. Maybe I can cheer you up!”

He was leering at me, which was very disconcerting. Especially since I could remember all the other times he had done it to Harper.

“Tommy,” I said sternly. “Are you coming on to me again?! Didn’t I make myself clear the first three times you tried that we are never going on a date! Why are you trying again?!”

He looked confused, which was probably to be expected.

“What?” he asked, staring at me like I had lost my mind. “I’ve never even seen you before.”

“Tell yourself whatever you need to,” I told him. “But leave me alone. I’ve already made my position clear. I am not going to be dating a boy who humiliates his dates, leaves them stranded on the side of a road, or sticks them with the dinner bill for all of his friends.”

He was staring at me, but it was clear that the memories I had of stories from other girls in my class were true, because he was definitely worried.

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could.

“Do I need to spell out what you did to Nikki, Carol, or Jana?” I asked him, which made his face drain of color. Whether he had thought I was lying or making something up or even just bluffing, invoking the names of his dates seemed to tell him that I knew the truth. “Or will you leave me alone?”

He turned away from me and seemed to be wholly interested in the wall on the other side of the room. There were a few chuckles from around us, which made me smile. It was nice to get back at Tommy, especially in a way that didn’t involve any violence. I glanced at Sophie, and she had a look of both humor and proudness on her face, but she looked away from me when our eyes connected. I turned back toward the front of the class, disheartened.

When the bell rang and the teacher started the class I found I was not interested in history anymore. At first I thought it was because I was upset about Sophie, but I quickly realized that history was Harper’s least favorite subject. It had never been a subject Barry particularly cared about either, but Harper had a distinct dislike for the class.

Instead of paying attention like I should have, I found my mind wandering to figure out why Harper didn’t like it very much. I discovered that my love for science fiction and space and the future in general had actually increased with the Harper memories! I had always loved spaceships and high tech science and cutting edge breakthroughs. Now, Harper seemed to enjoy them even more than Barry did!

My new reality led to Harper enjoying the future more than the past. She didn’t hate history, but she certainly liked thinking about the future instead. That had an impact on the class. I still had an A in Mrs. Banks’ history class, but I realized it took more studying than some of my science and math classes did.

When the bell rang I was saddened to see Sophie get up as quickly as possible and rush out of the door. Since we were on our way to lunch, I knew I could catch up with her at our regular table.

Instead, after packing up and exiting the classroom I had the now familiar issue I had to deal with: the restroom. I was even less excited about doing it here at school than at home.

I sighed and walked down the hall toward my locker. When I reached it and opened the door I smiled to see the picture of Sophie, Jaclyn, and me in the door. It felt right for my locker to be decorated.

I put my backpack inside, closed my locker door, and then started toward the cafeteria. The restroom was on the way.

As I was walking I started to feel nervous. I’d never been in a female restroom before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. If I had always been female, as I was trying to portray, then that meant I had been in one many times. I even had the memories telling me that was true! But hesitation might just make people second guess that I couldn’t remember who I had been.

When I reached the door to the restroom I just pushed it open, trying not to think about anything else.

Whatever I thought going into the women’s restroom would be like was immediately forgotten as I came face-to-face with Sophie inside the door. She looked like she was leaving, but stopped in her tracks when she saw me come in.

I smiled when I saw her, but she frowned.

“I can’t do this,” she said, perhaps more to herself than to me. Then, she just pushed past me and out the door.

My smile turned into a frown.

What was wrong with Sophie? She didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me today. What had I done to upset her? It really hurt to see my best friend trying to avoid me.

I must have been standing there too long, because another voice spoke up from nearby.

“I never thought I would see you two fight,” the voice said.

I looked over to see a vampire standing in front of one of the sinks with a mascara wand in her hand and her teeth on a paper towel next to her on the counter. She was looking at me instead of the mirror she had clearly been using before I walked in.

“I don’t think we are fighting, Kamryn,” I told her, more to reassure myself than to explain it to her. “She just seems to be avoiding me for some reason.”

“I guess I would be too, under the circumstances,” Kamryn said. “She must be hurting.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Oh, that’s right,” she replied. “You don’t remember. That must make it worse for her. Just give her time then.”

Kamryn turned back to the mirror. I stood there for another moment. Her words didn’t make any sense to me. I remembered everything, yet clearly I did not know what she was talking about.

I stepped over to one of the stalls, went in, and locked the door behind me. The solitude of closing the door seemed to bring some relief.

More than one person was talking about how upset Sophie was at my change, and yet I had no idea why.

A few moments later I was halfway through doing my business when I realized that peeing as a girl was no longer the horrific experience it had been the last two times I’d done it. In fact, it felt normal.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Of course, it was because Harper had been peeing that way since she was born and I now had all of those memories myself. Yet, that seemed like cheating, somehow.

Even worse was when thinking about it further - and memories of how Barry used to pee - came into my mind and the thought of standing at a urinal to do the deed felt very wrong and weird to me.

But, ultimately, I decided this new realization was a blessing, not a curse. I would gladly take feeling uncomfortable at the thought of peeing “normally” as a girl if it meant that I wasn’t afraid to actually pee like a girl! And what I was doing at the moment was completely routine to me. In fact, when I went to wipe, it felt completely different than when I had wiped earlier. Why? Was I doing something wrong before? Clearly what I had done before had been different from how Harper handled it, but now with Harper’s memories it just felt like I was doing it correctly now. I was okay with that.

I didn’t want to be a girl. I didn’t want to have to do things this way. But it was no longer the ordeal it had been last night. With my new memories it was just routine now. I was starting to feel grateful for these memories for more than just having the different perspective they gave. They were making it possible for me to live this new life I had been given.

Nevertheless, the thought of having a period was still just as horrible. It took me a moment to realize that Harper felt the same way about having a period as I did. Clearly, it was not a great experience for her either, but having prior experience of what it was like to actually have one reduced the horror a lot. I didn’t want to have them, but “years” of having them had shown me that I would be okay.

Once I had spent the five minutes required to get all of my clothes back into place after using the restroom - a definite difference in how long it takes men - I left the stall and approached the sink to wash my hands. No one else was in the restroom with me, which gave me the opportunity to watch Harper as she got her hands wet and then lathered up with soap.

As I was watching her it struck me as odd that I was washing my hands at the same time that she was, and then moments later I saw myself, in the mirror, rinsing my hands off.

That might have seemed obvious, but something had drastically changed. I felt like my mind had just taken two steps sideways and now I could no longer see Harper in the mirror. I only saw myself!

Since I first looked into a mirror last night, I saw License Girl, not me. I had watched her and it felt like it was somebody else. Now, I saw my long brown hair, my bright, green eyes, the freckles that adorned my young face, and I could see my breasts pushing out the top of the really cool costume I had chosen this morning.

I saw me.

I broke eye contact with my reflection. I wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but I felt like I had somehow accepted a part of myself I had been fighting since last night. Since the binding, I had felt like I was at war. But now I was at peace. That didn’t mean that I had suddenly decided that being a girl was right, but I accepted that I was now changed from who I had been.

I was Harper. I would always be Harper. I knew, with certainty, that I would never be going back. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go back; it was that I knew I no longer could. This is now who I am. I knew there were spells that could reverse what had happened to me, but I no longer felt like I would be investigating those options. I was who I was supposed to be, even if it was not who I wanted to be.

I wasn’t sure if it made sense, but it was the new truth of my life. Now, if only I could understand why that life made Sophie so upset.

I turned to dry my hands, but stopped suddenly at an alarming realization. Memories of time I had spent with Sophie flooded my mind at the thought of her. I watched as we played, both with and without Jaclyn, as little girls. I watched us learn to ride bikes, how a computer works, and different movies we had gone to see. I saw trips to the waterpark, lunch with friends, and even school dances. But, as I compared these new memories with Barry’s, I suddenly understood why Sophie was having a hard time with my change.

Sophie had been in love with me!

I had never known! I had never realized it! But it was clear as day when I compared Harper’s and Barry’s memories of the recent years. She would touch Barry differently, smile at him more, and look at him in a way that she did not do with Harper. That didn’t mean that she was not one of Harper’s best friends. But there was something extra in the memories of Barry that I never noticed in real life but could see when comparing them to Harper’s memories now!

I caught myself staring at the wall, water dripping from my hands onto the floor. No wonder nobody wanted to tell me!

Quickly, I dried my hands and hurried out of the restroom. I needed to find Sophie. I turned the corner toward the cafeteria and had to come to a quick and sudden stop, almost slipping on the large puddle of water that covered the entire hall.

It was raining in the school! I had no doubt that magic was somehow involved and I fretted at seeing another bout of magic causing chaos in my vicinity. Was I somehow causing this? I had just been dripping water all over the floor in the bathroom and now it was raining in the hallway! Had that whole realization about Sophie caused this?

A second later I realized that it wasn’t literally raining. One of the fire sprinklers was going off and spraying water everywhere, but the result was pretty much the same. Everything was soaking wet and the ground was a small lake in what should have been an otherwise dry hallway. There were two teens scrambling to get to the other side, one of them almost slipped and fell to the ground only barely catching herself before rushing to the dry floor on the other side.

Without even thinking, I gestured toward the sprinkler, and the water stopped. I wasn’t entirely sure what I had done to stop the water, but I also wasn’t complaining.

The few students who had been waiting slowly started forward now that the water had stopped, and I followed them.

Once I reached the cafeteria I looked around for Sophie. First, I looked at the table where we usually sat, but only Jaclyn was there. A quick scan of the main food line showed that Sophie was already getting her food. I considered skipping food to talk to her more quickly, but ultimately I decided that I should get my lunch first. I grabbed a tray and then joined the line for the main option.

Standing in line, I watched as Sophie finished getting her food. I was bursting with anticipation to talk to her, but my stomach was also very empty. When Sophie was finished she turned toward the table Jaclyn sat at and started walking that way. When she was part of the way to the table, she saw me and nearly scowled.

I was surprised by her vehement expression! She clearly was not happy with me. Before anything else could happen, however, there was a commotion ahead of me in line and then out of nowhere a pot of chili exploded!

Chili went flying everywhere, covering monsters, ghosts, students and faculty alike. Even Superman wasn’t spared by the carnage. I raised my tray up to try to block the projectiles heading my way and heard it being pelted by the flying food.

When the commotion seemed to die down I lowered my tray. The entire area was a mess! Many of the people around me were covered in chili, and everyone was unhappy. The lady who had been ladling it out to students stood there motionless. It was clear that she was unsure what had happened.

There was no doubt that magic was somehow involved. Just like all of the other odd things that had been happening around me, I stared in confusion.

What was wrong with me? I had just been anxiously wanting to talk to Sophie, almost bursting to tell her that I knew why she was so upset, and then the pot of chili exploded everywhere. Once again my emotions seemed to have caused trouble for my fellow classmates.

My magic was faulty, it seemed. Unsure of what to do, I looked down to see how badly I was covered by chili only to find out that none of it had hit me. I sighed in relief before realizing everyone around me was covered in food. I must have cast some kind of protection spell when I raised my tray.

The people around me were staring at me.

Not wanting to stick around to deal with what had happened or answer questions about how no chili had gotten on me, I stepped out of line and headed for the alternate food option line. It was quickly getting bigger because of what had happened. Today’s alternative appeared to be pepperoni pizza. The pizza didn’t sound as good as the full meal, but it was fast to get. The main line needed to be cleaned up before it started moving again.

With food in hand, I turned toward the table Jaclyn and Sophie were sitting at. There were a few other girls there, but Jaclyn and Sophie were alone, engaged in conversation.

Their conversation seemed to die as Jaclyn saw me approaching the table. Sophie scowled again as I placed my tray down.

“Hi,” I told Jaclyn.

“Hi,” she replied with a smile. She was happy to see me, unlike Sophie.

I sat down and looked at Sophie. Her head was down and she seemed to be trying to avoid looking at me.

“Sophie...” I started but trailed off.

“I’m sorry,” I finally managed to say. “I just realized what I never saw before last night.”

She looked at me, worried.

“I was apparently blind,” I continued. “I never saw the way you looked at me. I never realized it.”

She started to look upset again. Clearly an apology was not what she wanted, either.
I was about to continue - either digging myself into a hole or out of one - when she looked away from me and made an odd gesture with her hands.

At first, I didn’t know what she was doing. Then I felt a small tickle around my temples. I thought she was casting a spell on me, but a few moments later I realized that it wasn’t on me, but she was clearly casting magic. I had never felt it being cast before, but it was obvious to me that somehow magic was being used around me.

I followed Sophie’s gaze to find a penguin, who had just collected his own tray of pizza and started toward a table, trip over some kind of invisible obstacle. The sophomore seemed like he was going to fall flat on his face.

Almost on instinct, I reached my own hand out in front of me and grabbed at the air in front of me, as if I was grabbing a falling Barbie doll. Then, I set it down on the table, feet first.

I wasn’t sure of what I was doing, but the boy seemed to catch himself and he kept his food from falling off his tray then continued his somewhat adorable waddle to the table where he was headed. He quickly looked behind to see what he had tripped over, but then shook his head when he couldn’t see what it was.

“Wait!” I said, putting more pieces together in my mind. “It was you all along?!”

I turned back to Sophie, but instead of finding her looking sorry for what she had done, she was glaring at me.

“Sophie, what are you doing?!” I asked. “You are hurting other people!”

Without saying a word, she just stood up and walked away, leaving her food on the table. Jaclyn and I watched in shock as she walked out of the cafeteria and out of our sight.

“What just happened?” Jaclyn asked.

“My mom was right,” I said, dejectedly. “I think Sophie was bound to Jodi Baxter’s essence!”

“What?!” Jaclyn nearly shouted. “What do you mean?!”

She looked very worried now. She was also confused because she had nobody to tell her how this new witch world worked.

“Come on,” I told her. “Let’s find somewhere quiet and I’ll tell you what my mom told me last night.”

She nodded and then stood up. She had been here before any of us and had already finished most of her lunch. I grabbed one of the two pizzas on my plate and then stuffed as much as I could into my mouth and took a big bite. This was more important than food.

I put the contents of my tray on Sophie’s, picked hers up, and then started toward the exit, sneaking small bites of pizza as much as I could before we left. Once our food was in the garbage and our trays and dishes had been returned we walked out of the cafeteria and outside to find a nice quiet tree to sit under.

There I told her everything that I knew about witches and what my mom had told me last night.

“So she is acting just like Jodi Baxter?” Jaclyn asked. She looked overwhelmed. I understood. I’d had more time to process it, but it was a lot of information to learn.

“Well she certainly isn’t acting like the Sophie that I know,” I replied. “My mom said that there is a way to unbind her and then bind her again with her grandma’s essence. She told me everything would be alright, but what she is doing has some pretty bad consequences for people.”

“Like what?” Jaclyn asked. “What did she actually do today?”

“Remember the tire this morning?” I asked her. “I’m pretty sure that was Sophie. Also, the twins might be suspended now since she somehow got them to fight each other. There’s likely water damage in the hallway near the restroom where she caused one of the fire sprinklers to go off too.”

“Geez!” Jaclyn exclaimed. “That does sound like Old Lady Baxter. At the very least it does not sound like Sophie.”

We both fell silent for a bit. I hoped Sophie would be okay.

“I never knew she loved me,” I said quietly moments later. “I never saw it.”

“You were pretty blind,” Jaclyn told me. “I thought it would have been obvious. What made you realize it?”

“After running into her in the restroom, she just left without saying anything to me,” I replied. “Kamryn commented that she never thought she would see us fight. That got me thinking while I was in the bathroom. I compared the two sets of memories I now have and it was pretty obvious. She treated Barry differently than she treats Harper. It was clear that she felt something for Barry.”

“I’m sure she still loves Harper,” Jaclyn said, trying to placate me.

“Oh, no doubt,” I told her. “But the love she had for Barry and the love she has for Harper are two different types of love.”

Jaclyn nodded.

“That has to be hard on her,” she told me. “She really did love you for some weird reason.”

Jaclyn playfully hit me in the shoulder, and we both chuckled.

“Honestly, I was just happy that you two still wanted to spend time with me. I never thought that I would have a chance like that with either of you. In fact, I was worried that if something like that would happen I would lose one or both of my best friends!”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense. We just kept wondering how long it would take you to notice.”

“That’s a good question,” I laughed. “I’m not entirely sure I ever would have! It took becoming a girl to realize it!”

Jaclyn roared with laughter. Then we descended into silence again. Poor Sophie.

“I can see how losing any chance with me and dealing with those emotions from Jodi Baxter would set her off,” I told her.

“I don’t know - what if she’s into girls?” Jaclyn replied with a sly grin.

I laughed.

“We both know that isn’t true,” I replied. “And even if she was...I’m not.”

Jaclyn’s eyebrows shot up at that revelation and she covered her mouth with her hand.

“You’re not?” she squeaked. “Really?!”

“Not anymore,” I told her. “This body is definitely turned on by a male.”

Jaclyn burst into laughter. I knew she wasn’t trying to be rude, and it was funny. I laughed with her.

Jaclyn’s phone bleeped, and she looked down at her watch.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “My mom just texted me. She said she would meet me at your house after school. I guess everyone is going to be there.”

“Ok,” I said, not as surprised as she was. “Does your mom know about witches?”

“I don’t think she does. She has never said anything to me about Aunt Melody being a witch or not. I didn’t say anything last night.”

“Well, she probably will know tonight if she didn’t before.”

Jaclyn sighed.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m not sure if this is good or bad. She is probably going to be mad at me for doing something so big without telling her.”

That didn’t sound like Jaclyn’s mom to me, but Jaclyn did have a point. Then the bell rang to indicate the end of lunch.

“Yay, English,” Jaclyn said sarcastically. She didn’t like the class, but I always found it fascinating. Both Harper and Barry did. I found words to be cool. I was glad to see I hadn’t lost that as Harper. It was a lot like math where the interaction between the numbers was akin to how words interacted to create interesting and unique sentences and phrases.

We were most of the way through our English class when the fire alarm went off. Immediately I thought that it was not a drill. One look at Jaclyn showed she agreed with me.

“What did she do now?” Jaclyn asked, worriedly.

“I don’t know,” I replied, but I too suspected that Sophie was involved.

As we exited the school and headed for our assembly area, I quite literally ran into the Incredible Hulk because I wasn’t paying enough attention to where I was walking. The Hulk was wearing a pretty cheap costume and a lot of his bulk was fake, but the person underneath was quite solid, because I instantly stopped when we connected. I wasn’t sure how, but it seemed like I had walked straight into him.

When he turned to look at me, however, instead of saying I was sorry or even being afraid that he would be upset, I instead wrapped my arms around him in a hug!

“I’m sorry,” I was able to mutter while holding on to him. It was not the interaction I had been expecting to have after my faux pas, but the feelings that ran through me, while clearly being caused by Harper’s memories, weren’t alien or unexpected to me.

The Hulk just stared at me for a minute, and then smirked while he wrapped his arms around me too, albeit hesitantly. His friends, who were nearby, began jeering at him and this awkward interaction. It seemed that they did not expect him to have some girl drape herself on him, although that wasn’t the reason for my hug.

Scott stared at me like a deer in the headlights when we separated. He was way taller than me now, and much bulkier, and not just because of his costume. But I was still very happy to see my younger brother. We had avoided each other last night and I was okay with that. But now, I realized that my relationship with him, at least in Harper’s memories, was quite different than it had been just 24 hours earlier.

I could, however, feel my cheeks redden in embarrassment. Part of that embarrassment was the reaction of his friends who clearly had no idea who I was, and also partly because Barry’s memories came to me halfway through the hug. Harper’s instinct had been to hug him.

When we separated shortly thereafter, I smiled at him and he smiled at me, and then I walked away. Neither of us wanted to say anything anyway. Jaclyn and I were supposed to muster with other members of our class at another part of the field, and so we headed that way.

“That was different,” Jaclyn said, with a quirky smile on her face.

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

Moments later, I found the right words to describe what I was feeling.

“Harper and Scott have a different relationship,” I said. “Instead of Scott trying to stand taller than me, so to speak, he seems to look up to Harper instead.”

“But you’re like a foot shorter than him now,” Jaclyn replied, deadpan.

She couldn’t hold it in for long, however, and she burst out laughing. I couldn’t help but join.

“Either way, I like Harper’s memories of Scott better,” I said when our laughter had died down.

As we walked, we noticed a small pillar of smoke rising from part of the school, which silenced any other laughter that we might have had.

When we reached the area where the Senior Class was supposed to gather during emergencies, we looked around for Sophie. We started worrying that she wasn’t there. Her absence did not leave us with hope, as she might be in a lot of trouble. But we finally found her sitting under a tree far enough away from the impromptu Halloween parade that the fire alarm had created, yet close enough that members of the faculty wouldn’t require her to come closer.

It wasn’t until we neared her that I realized that she was crying. Immediately Jaclyn and I rushed toward her and wrapped our arms around her.

“Are you okay?” Jaclyn asked, worried.

Sophie just put her head on Jaclyn’s shoulder and started to sob harder. There wasn’t much we could do other than hold on to her while she cried.

After a few minutes, she finally seemed to cry herself out, but she continued to rest her head on Jaclyn’s shoulder.

“Are you okay?” Jaclyn asked her again.

“No!” Sophie exclaimed, and it looked like she might start sobbing again, but she just mewled a bit instead.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her. I had hesitated to speak up in case it made her upset again.

“It’s all my fault!” she exclaimed. “Everything! Something is wrong with me!”

She began sobbing into Jaclyn’s shoulder again. When I looked at Jaclyn she had the same worry in her eyes that I’d had since my mom told me about how she might be bound with Jodi Baxter. Acknowledging a problem may be a good first step, but it isn’t what I wanted for my friend! I wanted her to be happy and bound to her loving grandmother, not a batty old hag who wanted nothing to do with anyone else!

“It’s okay,” Jaclyn cooed. “We are supposed to meet with our parents at Harper’s house after school, and we can get any help you need there. Harper’s mom said that it will all work out.”

Sophie kept sobbing for a bit, but then managed to ask the question I was dreading that she would ask.

“What will work out?” she asked. “Do they know what is wrong with me?”

“They have a guess,” Jaclyn told her. “But you might not like it.”

Sophie lifted her head from Jaclyn’s shoulder and looked her in the eyes.

“Tell me,” she said more forcefully than Sophie normally would.

Jaclyn’s eyes broke contact with Sophie and searched me out for a moment, perhaps for strength. A moment later she looked back at Sophie.

“Harper’s mom said that doing the binding at the Baxter’s house might have had some consequences,” Jaclyn replied.

I could see Sophie stiffen, and she inhaled a large breath. It seemed that she had no inkling of what might have happened, but without even being able to see her face I knew that she was even more worried at Jaclyn’s words. Sophie continued to look at Jaclyn, waiting for an answer, but Jaclyn seemed to be at a loss for words.

“You might have been bound to Jodi Baxter’s essence,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I didn’t know if the bad news would be worse if it came from me.

Sophie stopped breathing for a moment. Then she hyperventilated for a moment more. Finally, she seemed to calm down some.

“What does that mean?” she asked, turning to look at me. “Is that bad?”

“It isn’t ideal,” I told her. “My mom said that we tend to take on the traits of the essences we are bound to. That doesn’t mean that they control us, but they do have an influence on us.”

Sophie’s eyes widened at my words, and she looked scared.

“But don’t worry!” I quickly exclaimed. “She also said that we could unbind you from her essence and bind you to your grandma’s!”

I expected those words to soothe Sophie, but instead she looked even more worried and scared. She shot straight up to her feet, and I thought that she was going to start running away from us.

“No!” she practically screamed. “Whatever essence this is, it is mine!”

Jaclyn and I were shocked at the vehemence in her voice! I thought she would be happy to know that there was a solution to this problem.

Jaclyn opened her mouth, but she still seemed to be at a loss for words.

“You can’t take it away from me!” Sophie yelled. It also looked like she was ready to take off again.

“Nobody is going to do anything against your will,” I promised her, and she seemed to calm down some. “My mom seemed to assume that is what you wanted, but there have to be other solutions.”

I hoped I hadn’t misled her. I definitely wouldn’t let anyone hurt her or do anything that would upset her. If she didn’t want to be unbound from her essence, then I would do everything in my power to help her learn to control her new urges, or to deal with any other problem that would arise because of it. But I really didn’t want her to be bound to Jodi Baxter’s essence!

Sophie sat back on the grass and we sat beside her. She seemed more like the Sophie I remembered now, rather than the Sophie who had been inherently sulky and upset that had been around since the binding.

“What happened?” Jaclyn asked.

Sophie looked over at her questioningly for a moment, unsure of what she was talking about. But Jaclyn gestured to the school and Sophie nodded in understanding.

“Chemistry gone wrong,” she said. “I’ve had these...urges I guess you could say, to cause things to happen around me.”

She looked at both of us, hoping we would provide some support. I didn’t know if she felt happy or upset when she saw us both nodding.

“Anyway, I was in Chemistry, and Gerome was busy ogling Kelsie like usual,” she told us. Gerome was madly in love with Kelsie, but she never even looked at him.

“Jonas was dressed up as Cupid,” she continued. “He had a bow and these little arrows that were tipped with hearts. I thought it would be funny if Cupid shot both of them to help them fall in love.”

She looked embarrassed, then sad again, before continuing.

“Well, he did,” Sophie told us. “With a little help from magic. Suffice it to say that Jonas is not a very good shot. The wrong pair were brought together. Some chemicals were never meant to start a relationship, and then...and then...”

She started crying again.

It was clear she felt responsible. She might not have started the fire directly, but Jonas probably wouldn’t have been firing arrows around if it wasn’t for her. I felt sorry for her, but this was also the only time today she seemed to feel sorry for her actions.

While she was crying on Jaclyn’s shoulder, I looked around. There was a fire truck near one of the doors to the school. Nobody seemed to be running around like there was a fire, perhaps meaning the fire had been put out.

School buses also seemed to be arriving at their dedicated spots near the car park, even though we still had another period to go before the school day was over. That was unusual.

Toward the front of the area where we were gathered, the assistant principal was saying something to the students gathered there. We couldn’t hear what she was saying from here, but the students nearest her seemed to turn and head away from the school. As they got closer they appeared to be passing along a message to other students. We soon heard the message: “The rest of the day is canceled. They are dealing with a real fire. It wasn’t a drill.”

“Come on,” Jaclyn said behind me. “Let’s get out of here.”

---

Chapter 4

When we walked into my front door fifteen minutes later, we were surprised to see all of our parents sitting in our living room. Several parents who were here normally worked at this time of day.

“You guys are home early,” my mom said, standing up and coming over to us. She hugged me. When she released me, I noticed that many of the other parents were staring at me. It was technically the first time they had ever met me, even though my memories said otherwise.

“There was a fire at the school,” Jaclyn said. “They sent everyone home early.”

All of the adults were alarmed.

“Is everyone okay?” Jaclyn’s dad asked.

“Yes,” Jaclyn replied. “Two chemicals came together in the chemistry lab and there was a small fire, but I don’t think it was very big. Nobody got hurt.” I was very happy that she had kept Sophie out of her explanation.

“Well, we are glad that you are here,” my mom told us. “We have been discussing the situation and bringing everyone up to speed. I thought we would have more time before you guys got here, but we can move on to the next phase.”

“Next phase. What does that mean?”” I asked worryingly.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We just want to make sure that you guys are doing okay, answer any questions you may have about being witches or about magic, and help you with any problems you may be having.”

The word “problems” sounded ominous. I was sure she meant that they were here to help us unbind Sophie and rebind her to her grandmother. I wasn’t sure it would go well with her.

“Afterward,” Mom continued, “We can share Harper’s new memories with anyone who wants them. Hopefully Scott will be home by then too.”

That sounded like a good idea. Today had certainly proved that I enjoyed having Harper’s memories much more than the time I spent as Harper without them. It would be even better if everyone I knew closely and loved had those memories too.

Of course, Andy, my older brother, was still at college and wouldn’t be able to get them until later.

“Take a seat, and we can get started,” Mom told us, and motioned to the couch. Everyone else seemed to be in chairs in a semi-circle facing the couch, around our coffee table.

I wasn’t sure how Jaclyn or Sophie felt, but I was uncomfortable as I walked over to the couch to take a seat. I’d never been a part of an intervention before, but I imagined while looking around that this felt a bit like that.

“Hi, Munchkin,” Dad leaned over to me and whispered.

“No,” I replied immediately. That one made me feel really small, especially compared to how tall the rest of my family was.

“I’ll keep trying,” he said, smiling. He didn’t seem bothered by my dislike of the nickname.

Mom began by relating everything she had told me last night and this morning. Jaclyn had nobody to teach her, because her parents had just learned that witches were real. Sophie had apparently locked herself in her room last night and her mom hadn’t had a chance to teach her anything either.

But, based on Sophie’s prodigious use of magic all day, she seemed to be doing alright without any instruction. Jaclyn listened with rapt attention to everything my mom said.

Occasionally, Sophie’s mom would chime in and the two of them made prodigious use of examples. Then they answered all of our questions. Finally Jaclyn and her parents asked several questions.

Toward the end of the Q&A, my dad got up and left the room. When he returned, he placed a box on the coffee table.

He opened the box and reached in, then he pulled out three generic-looking journal notebooks and handed one each to Sophie, Jaclyn and me.

I looked at the notebook. It looked like the kind of notebook that I used at school nearly every day for notes and homework. Why was he giving these to us?

“These are your new spellbooks,” my mom told us. “But there are a few things that we need to do to set them up.”

I stared at the notebook again. It looked nothing like the spellbook Jaclyn had inherited from her Aunt Melody.

“I already have one,” Jaclyn told her.

“Yes you do, but every witch needs her own spellbook,” Sophie’s replied. “While you can use Melody’s as a reference, you won’t be able to add any new spells to it.”

“Step one,” my mom continued. “You have all seen how Melody’s spellbook looks like a book of nursery rhymes.”

She then reached down next to her chair and retrieved a book that had been sitting there. Sophie’s mom did the same thing.

“This is mine,” my mom said and showed us a book I had seen many, many times in my life. It was her prized cookbook. But when she opened it this time, instead of the many recipes I had watched her follow throughout my life, it had different kinds of recipes inside. Spells!

“This one is mine,” Sophie’s mom added, holding up a travel journal that I had seen before on tables at her house but had never thought it was anything but.

“As you know already, and can see here,” Sophie’s mom continued. “Spellbooks are often disguised, and only the owner of the spellbook can truly see what is inside.”

That certainly explained why Sophie and I could only see nursery rhymes if we opened the book Aunt Melody had given Jaclyn!

“Now you get to disguise your own book,” my mom told us. “Each of you is holding a notebook that will become your new spellbook. I want you to think about what kind of book you want to disguise it as. If you can’t think of something good, think of something that you would like it to be. You can always change it later. This book certainly did not start out as a cookbook.”

“Also,” Sophie’s mom continued the explanation. “Your spellbook is two books in one. You can open either book, and it is a wonderful place to store other knowledge, such as recipes or travel experiences.”

“Okay,” Mom said. “Close your eyes and concentrate on the notebook in your hands. Think about how it can be a repository for your knowledge throughout your life. Then, repeat after me.”

I gripped the notebook in my hands and tried to follow her directions, but that was a vague concept to think about. Nevertheless, all of us repeated back her words after she spoke them:

“May this book be the repository of the knowledge of my essence”, we all proclaimed.

“That doesn’t even rhyme,” Jaclyn blurted. It seemed like she said it without thinking.

“The words of a spell are much less important than the intent,” Sophie’s mom replied. “Lots of spells rhyme and/or are beautiful incantations. But many are also practical or concise. The beauty is that you get to decide how and what you want your spells to be.”

“As you think and ponder on a spell you want to cast,” my mom added. “It will be recorded in your spellbook. You will see what I mean soon. Now, show us what you have created.”

I looked down at the book in my hands. I had been thinking that a textbook would be easy to hide and would let me take it to school. But I let out a small laugh when I saw the new book in my hands. It certainly looked just like any other textbook that I would find in my backpack on any given school day, but it had a funny name.

“This is ‘Newton’s Laws of Motion: Mostly-Accurate (and Occasionally Helpful)’,” I read the title and showed the dark green book to them. On the front was a picture of someone under a tree getting hit in the head by a number of apples at once.

There was laughter all around, and then Sophie showed us her book. There were, unsurprisingly, many pictures of horses on the cover.

“I have ‘101 Things You Always Wanted to Know About Horses (But Were Afraid To Ask Because They Might Judge You)’,” she told us, causing more laughter.

“Well, I wanted to hide mine in a how-to book,” Jaclyn said. “But I’m not sure that ‘Do-it-Yourself Brain Surgery: A Beginner’s Manual (For Advanced Beginners)’ is going to stop people from wondering what is inside.”

More laughter filled the room.

“There seems to be a spirit of jovial amusement in the room with us today,” Mom laughed. “But it will work. Take care of these books. They will be with you for the rest of your lives. We can go into detail later, but they cannot be destroyed. Even if the book you are holding is stolen or destroyed, you will be able to summon it back to you.”

i was amazed!

Then, the discussion turned to a topic that was starting to scare me.

“Now, how are the three of you doing?” Sophie’s mom asked. “Did anything out of the ordinary happen today? Anything that might worry you guys?”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know she was asking about Sophie. I didn’t know if she already knew that Sophie had bound with Jodi Baxter’s essence or if she was still trying to determine whose essence she had been bound to.

But, Sophie’s reaction at lunch to me talking about rebinding her clearly told me that she had no desire to give up her binding. I didn’t want to be the one to bring up that she was bound to Jodi’s essence, with that in mind.

“I’m okay,” Jaclyn said, declining to reveal Sophie’s secret too.

“Me too,” I replied.

Both my mom and Sophie’s mom looked at Sophie. Sophie looked stunned, but she just nodded her head.

“Me too,” she told them.

They both frowned. Clearly they both did not believe her, based on their looks with each other. I still wasn’t positive that they knew for sure, but either way they clearly believed that she had been bound to the wrong essence.

“It’s okay to talk about it,” Sophie’s mom told her. “There are...remedies.”

That was the wrong thing to say. It clearly upset Sophie. She just stood up, grabbed her new spellbook, and walked out of the house. Everyone but Jaclyn and I were stunned because we had already seen it before.

“She doesn’t want to be unbound,” I told Sophie’s mom. “When I mentioned that at lunch, she did the same thing. She walked out on us.”

“But she has to be unbound!” Wendy replied. “She has to!”

Wendy looked ready to cry as she realized the magnitude of the trouble her daughter was in. I didn’t know what we needed to do, but I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.

For several minutes nobody spoke as people tried to digest what had just happened. Nobody wanted to see Sophie hurting, or even worse, feeling like she needed to go through this alone.

“Well, we can figure out what needs to be done to help Sophie later,” Mom told everyone. “She will be fine for the time being. But the other major reason everyone is here is to receive Harper’s memories if you want them.”

“Her actual memories?” Jaclyn’s dad asked. He looked worried. Maybe he thought he was going to get the memories of a teenage girl rummaging around his head. Good thing he had misunderstood.

“No,” Mom told him. “Not her memories, but memories of her. Each of your memories of Barry will have a second memory of Harper associated with it. In essence, you will remember both Harper and Barry in those memories. It gives all of us a chance to know Harper and the young woman she has grown up to be without losing the memories we have had with Barry throughout his life.”

Jaclyn’s dad looked relieved but also confused. Jaclyn’s mom took his hand in hers and smiled in comfort to him. She seemed to understand what my mom was telling them.

Since everyone was still sitting in a circle, she directed us to take the hands of the people on either side of us. Mom came and sat next to me, in between Jaclyn and me, where Sophie had been sitting previously.

“Now, this is a spell that is better cast by Harper,” she told everyone. “I have been working on this spell since last night, but I am going to tell Harper what to say to cast it herself.”

My mom then leaned over to me.

“Repeat what I say out loud,” she whispered to me.

I nodded. She then gave me a line of the spell, and I repeated it out loud.

“My life is new.
My memories are too.
You remember the old.
Now remember the new.”

There was a rush of magic around us. I didn’t feel any boings myself as I already had the memories, but I felt it in those around me. Mom was also unaffected, and I leaned over to whisper to her.

“Did you really just rhyme the same word together?” I asked.

Mom smiled.

“It is more about the intent than the words,” she told me. “I like my spells to rhyme, but they don’t need to. Don’t complain.”

I smiled back. I wasn’t complaining, especially if this spell meant that those in this room would now remember me the way that I wanted to be remembered now.

I looked around, and everyone had their eyes closed. Was it part of the spell or a way to cope with the extra memories that they now had?

When some of the people around us opened their eyes, they looked at me differently. Before the spell, I was the girl they didn’t know, even though they knew what had happened to me. Now they knew me as well as they had known Barry.

Sophie’s mom smiled at me.

“All I remember now is the three of you running around in tutus all of the time,” she said.

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about for a moment, and then a memory popped into my head of the three of us wearing our dance clothes, playing after dance class. Three little ballerinas!

Of course, I also had the memory of going to dance class with the girls when I was younger, in both sets of memories, but only in one set had it been by choice.

Dad was beaming at me. He now had had a lot of memories that were different, but if anything, he was looking at me with more love than he had ever looked at me with before. He had loved me before, but clearly he felt differently about his new daughter.

Everyone else now was smiling as they remembered Harper in their new memories. I beamed as I saw them smiling.

Until I saw the look on Jaclyn’s dad’s face. Two years ago, when I was 15, Jaclyn’s dad had accidentally walked in on me in the bathroom of their house when I was naked. I had been a muddy mess after we got trapped in their backyard during a downpour one day. Jaclyn’s mom forced me into their bathroom to take a shower while she called my mom to bring me new clothes. While I was exiting the shower, without wrapping my towel around me, Jaclyn’s dad had come in, not knowing I was in there.

Unfortunately, Harper’s memory of the event was far more distressing than Barry’s memory. I knew from the sour look on his face that somehow that was one of the memories that had jumped to his mind, and it made me feel as bad and objectified as the day he stared at me for a full five seconds - with his mouth wide open - before his wife finally pulled him out of the bathroom.

Neither of us had ever said anything about the incident, in either sets of my memories, but it was the only time a grown man other than doctors had ever seen me naked.

I forced myself to turn away from him. It was clear that neither of us enjoyed those memories. But something about being Harper now made them even worse.

The next half an hour or so turned into a small reunion of sorts. It wasn’t that we were seeing each other after a long time, but everyone wanted to share their new memories with me as if I didn’t already remember them. I smiled, nodded my head, and let them tell me all about what I was already remembering based on what they were saying. This experience was new to them, but I’d had all day to get used to it.

After all of our guests left, Scott said, “Well, I know why you hugged me so hard at school, now.” I promptly laughed out loud.

It was certainly nicer to be Scott’s ally instead of his rival.

I then turned to Dad who was smiling at me.

“Hi, Pip,” he said to me.

I beamed. It was perfect! I hugged him as hard as I could.

Of course, he had gotten the nickname from his new memories. Suddenly I remembered it too. I didn’t know if the magic was still working and changing my memories, or if I hadn’t remembered it before now, but it was the nickname that my dad had given me when I was a little girl. It
was short for Pipsqueak, and I certainly didn’t like Munchkin because of those connotations, but Pip was me, and I was Pip.

The rest of the evening was a wonderful time with my family. We made dinner together, ate together, and even watched a scary movie together. Eventually, I picked up my new spellbook and retired to my room. I was surprised to find a number of spells already in my spellbook when I laid down on my bed and opened it up.

Mom had told us that we were bound to our spellbooks now, and any spells we cast would automatically show up in the books. Spells we were contemplating or trying to figure out would also appear.

Still, I was surprised that I found a spell that would protect against strong wind, a spell that would mend small items (such as a fire sprinkler), a spell to stop falling objects, and also spells to create new memories and to share them.

But most intriguingly, I also found an untitled page that had a lot of notes on it. It only took reading a couple of the notes to realize that they were all thoughts that I’d had about how I could help Sophie. Apparently, there was a spell that would let me help her in some way. Or at least I thought there was and the spellbook was obliging me.

Reading through the notes surprised me, because I didn’t remember all of these thoughts. Many of them revolved around unbinding, but a few had some alternative ideas that did not involve unbinding Sophie from Jodi Baxter’s essence.

The notes that resonated with me the most were notes that I did not remember thinking. I must have had those thoughts at some point today, because they didn’t feel like they were alien or somebody else’s thoughts. I suspected that they had been fleeting thoughts. But now they were very enticing possibilities, particularly because they were possible solutions that Sophie might accept. Instead of unbinding Sophie, those notes mentioned that it might be possible to either prevent Jodi’s essence from affecting her as much as it currently was, or to find a way to “soothe” the essence in a way that would make being bound to it more palatable.

With these thoughts in mind, I set the book down and picked up my phone. By all accounts Jodi Baxter had been a horrible old woman. But I had never heard anyone say why she was the way she was. What had made her the “crazy old lady who lived in the haunted house”?

My online search didn’t find anything useful. Her obituary came up, but it was a small blurb likely written by somebody at the funeral home. There were a couple of other articles talking about incidents with the police about neighborhood disorder, but the only thing that suggested that Jodi had been involved was the fact they appeared in my search. The articles never even mentioned her name; only the comments did, claiming she was involved. Why?

She didn’t seem to have any social media presence at all, either.

For someone who had been living here for as long as I had been alive, I was surprised to not find any information about her. I was stumped.

Not sure what else I could do at the moment, I set my phone and my spellbook on my nightstand, turned off the light, and closed my eyes.

---

Chapter 5

When I woke up the next morning there was a text on my phone from Jaclyn asking me to wear the black dress I had been wearing after the binding for Halloween and to come over to her house. If it had been yesterday, I would have balked at the idea, but with my new memories in, well, in mind, I guess, I was more than happy to oblige her request. We would be three witches for Halloween this year, apparently. In more ways than one!

After I returned to my room after showering I opened my closet and pulled out the dress. Then I added black lingerie to the ensemble sitting on my bed before dumping my towel in my hamper.

After I was dressed I went to the kitchen to find some breakfast, and hopefully my mom. However, nobody seemed to be home. So I grabbed a bowl of cereal and sat down at the counter.

While eating I started another search on my phone. This time, instead of looking for info about Jodi Baxter, I searched for ways that I could find more information about somebody. There were certainly a lot of websites that claimed they could give me more information...for a fee.

With another sigh of frustration I put my phone down and concentrated on breakfast. Somebody had to know something!

Just as I was finishing eating, the door to the garage opened and Mom walked in with bags of groceries in her arms. Dad soon followed her, answering my question of where they had been.

It was rare that they went grocery shopping together. I could probably count the times they had done that together on both hands.

“Pip, could you help us bring in some bags?” my dad asked. His use of the nickname seemed almost automatic now. I knew it was likely because of the memories. My own memories had completely changed how I acted, and I assumed that the same was true for both of them.

“Yes,” I told him. I left my bowl on the counter for now, and walked toward the garage.

“You look lovely,” my mom told me, smiling.

I smiled back. It was good to hear her say that.

Mom was unpacking the bags and putting the groceries away. After I finished bringing in the rest of the groceries, I sat down at the counter once more and watched her for a second before garnering enough courage to ask the question I needed to ask her.

“Do you know why Jodi Baxter was so horrible?” I asked.

That question caused my mom to stop what she was doing and look over at me questioningly.

“That is an interesting question,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

I was about to tell her the truth, that I wanted to help Sophie without unbinding her, but something held me back. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my mom, but I didn’t think she, or Sophie’s mom, would approve of what I was exploring.

“Something had to make her so unkind,” I replied. “Nobody ever says why.”

Mom studied me. It seemed like she was trying to understand my question better, but she definitely looked suspiciously at me. I was not sure if she felt I had an ulterior motive or not.

“I’m not entirely sure. I’ve heard things, but I don’t know if any of it is true.”

“Like what?”

The question seemed to frustrate my mom, for some reason. Eventually, she sighed.

“I’ve heard everything from she was born in hell to more realistic possibilities like her husband died and she was alone for too long,” she told me. “None of it really seemed plausible.”

I nodded. It didn’t seem like my mom would be a good source of information, sadly.

“Do you know of anyone who would know?” I asked.

Her eyes narrowed, which was not the response I was expecting.

“Why?” she asked.

“I figured that the more we knew about Jodi Baxter, the more it would help Sophie,” I told her truthfully. She didn’t have to know what that help entailed, yet.

That seemed to mollify her a bit. She didn’t look as suspicious anymore, at least. My explanation seemed to alleviate any worry she seemed to have Because she seemed to think about my question.

“There is one person. Maybe.”

“Who?”

“She had a niece who lives nearby, I think. Nancy something...”

She trailed off in thought. I waited for her to come up with her last name, but it didn’t seem to come and she eventually shook her head.

“I’m not even sure if she is still around,” she said. “Just forget about it.”

“Okay,” I told her, but I had no intention of doing any such thing. “Can I go over to Jaclyn’s or do you need me for anything?”

“That would be fine,” she said, unloading another bag.

---

“I don’t see a Nancy Baxter,” Jaclyn told me half an hour later. We were both searching on our phones.

“I don’t know what side of the family she was on,” I told her. “I don’t even know if Baxter is a married or maiden name.”

“There is surprisingly little information about her,” Jaclyn agreed, referring to Jodi.

“There has to be something that we can use,” I replied. “Jodi existed, therefore there must be some record of what caused her to be such a horrible lady.”

Jaclyn sighed, and dropped her phone on her bed beside her.

“I don’t think Sophie is coming,” she told me. She had texted Sophie to come over wearing her dress, too.

“I think you’re right,” I agreed. “She would have been here by now.”

“Well, if she isn’t coming over here, let’s go over there,” Jaclyn suggested.

I nodded, and we both got up from her bed.

We walked next door and rang the doorbell for the Laumont family, and Sophie’s mom answered the door.

“Trick or treat!” both Jaclyn and I said together, though we hadn’t planned it. We started giggling afterward.

“Hi girls,” Wendy told us, a smile on her face too. “Perfect outfits for today, I think.”

“Is Sophie available?” Jaclyn asked her.

Sophie’s mom looked surprised and looked around. She did not find what she was looking for, however.

“I thought Sophie was with you,” she told us. “She left a while ago, saying she was going to your house.”

“Oh,” Jaclyn replied. “We haven’t seen her.”

Sophie’s mom looked worried at those words.

“We’ll keep a lookout for her,” Jaclyn said. “She must be around here somewhere.”

Sophie’s mom nodded, but she still looked worried.

“Thank you,” she said and went to close the door.

“Do you know Nancy, Jodi Baxter’s niece?” I blurted out, not intending to broach the topic with her.

The door stopped, and Mrs. Laumont seemed even more upset. She looked at us almost like we had told her that Sophie was dead.

“I know of her,” she told us. “But I don’t know her. Why do you ask?”

“We are trying to find out more about Jodi Baxter,” I said. “We figured that the more we knew about her, the easier it would be to help Sophie. My mom mentioned she had a niece, but we couldn’t find any information about either Jodi or Nancy online.”

Sophie’s mom hesitated at the door for a moment. It almost looked like she was going to shut the door on us. But she spoke instead in a stern tone.

“Let bygones be bygones. Leave Jodi Baxter out of this and get me my daughter back!”

She closed the door quickly when she was finished speaking, leaving us stunned.

“I get the feeling that our parents know more about Jodi than they are telling us,” I said to Jaclyn as we turned and walked away from the door. “That’s how my mom was acting when I asked her too.”

“That, or they think we are trying to help her in a way they don’t want,” she agreed. “Either way, it isn’t helping Sophie at all.”

I nodded.

“What do we do now?” I asked her. “Any idea where Sophie would be?”

“No,” she replied. “She hasn’t responded to me all morning. I don’t think she wants to be found.”

“Alright,” she agreed. “Maybe we should go to the library then. Use one of those machines where you can see old newspaper articles on people using the fishy film. They do that in the movies all of the time.”

“Maybe. But I think it is a lot of work searching through microfiche."

“It’s for Sophie!”

“I didn’t say not to do it. I just meant that it might take a while.”

Jaclyn rolled her eyes at me. “Come on,” she gestured and walked toward her car. I sighed, and followed along.

The drive toward the library was nice, since I got to sit in the front seat for once. But I would have much rather had Sophie with us. I tried texting her again while we were driving, but by the time we were getting close I still had not heard back from her.

“Do you feel that?” Jaclyn asked, breaking my attention away from my phone.

“Feel what?” I asked, but my question was answered almost immediately by an odd feeling.

It wasn’t overwhelming in any way, but it wasn’t quite like any feeling I had ever had before. It was kind of like being pulled toward something, yearning for something, and knowing that something was there, all at once. That wasn’t entirely accurate but it was probably the best way to describe it.

“I think it is coming from over there,” Jaclyn said, pointing in the direction of a strip mall across the street from the library.

I knew she was right. I didn’t know why, but I was absolutely positive I knew right where to go. I nodded and said, “Yeah.”

Jaclyn changed direction and headed for the strip mall. When she turned into the parking lot, it was immediately obvious where we were going.

“Since when did they cut the size of Jerry’s?” I asked.

One of the best pizzerias in town was Jerry’s Pizza Pies. Our families had been going there since we were little kids. Now there was another store in the corner of the strip mall, taking up half of the size of the restaurant that we knew so well. What we were feeling was obviously coming from there.

“It doesn’t look new,” Jaclyn replied.

”No it doesn’t,” I replied. Even though we had never seen the store before, it looked like it had been there even longer than Jerry’s.

Jaclyn pulled into a parking spot in front of the store. There was no sign on the side of the building, but on the door there was a sign that said, “The Secret Apothecary”.

“What’s an Apothecary?” Jaclyn asked. I hated to admit it, but I wasn't sure either.

“I think it is like potions and stuff,” I replied, hesitantly.

Jaclyn’s eyes lit up.

“Do you think this is a witch’s store?” she asked. “Has it always been here but hidden by magic?”

I lit up at her questions. Maybe she was right! Maybe somebody in there could help us find more information about Jodi Baxter!

Without any words between us I grabbed my spellbook and we left the car and approached the door to the store. Clearly, we both still felt some trepidation because we both hesitated, hands on the door, before we pulled it open.

Jaclyn entered first, and when I followed her my eyes were opened to a strange new world! This was definitely a witch’s store. There were cauldrons and ingredients on one side of the room. There were shelves with all kinds of gizmos and whatsits in the middle. There was even a whole bunch of the notepads that had become our spellbooks last night on one of the shelves!

“Welcome, welcome!” a friendly voice called out.

An old woman was sitting at a counter nearby. She had been looking down at a book, but smiled when she looked up at us.

“Oh ho!” she exclaimed. “Two new witches! And in your binding dresses no less! How did you find this place so quickly?

“Um,” Jaclyn started, but was clearly nervous.

“It’s been a few days,” I told her. “Jaclyn thought it would be funny to wear them for Halloween.”

The lady chuckled, but smiled brightly.

“Jaclyn Moore?” she asked. “And you are either Sophie Laumont or Harper O’Connell, correct?”

“Harper,” I answered, surprised.

“You know who we are?” Jaclyn asked, equally as shocked as me.

“Only by name,” the kind lady replied. “Sophie’s mother was in here yesterday morning to get some spellbooks.”

Jaclyn and I shared a look. Everything about this visit was completely unexpected.

“My name is Hazel Crowley,” she introduced herself. “I have been the proprietor of The Secret Apothecary for nearly 50 years now. “I was not expecting to meet you so soon. No Sophie with you today?”

Everything about this woman exuded kindness and warmth. Even though we had just met her I had a warm feeling that she was a wise and trusted elder. She had helped guide and shape many young witches in her time, and she was a true friend.

Seconds after having those thoughts I second-guessed myself. Those feelings seemed unnatural. Was she making us feel that way with magic?

No...no. Then it dawned on me.

“You knew Gwynnifred!” I exclaimed, happy at the realization! She knew my grandmother!

“I did,” Hazel replied, with happiness and a touch of sadness. “I do miss her. We were in the same coven, you know.”

“I do,” I replied with the same emotions.

“I have been waiting to meet whoever inherited her essence,” she told me, smiling. How did she know I had inherited her essence? “She was the type of woman whom you could never forget.”

I wiped away tears I didn’t know I was crying. It had been a few years since Gran’s funeral. I had not expected to feel Gran’s love coming from someone else. It was obviously the essence that was making me feel like Hazel and I were old friends, but that didn’t change the way I felt about Hazel at all.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk to your mother since the binding,” Hazel told me. “But I don’t seem to remember her having any daughters. I take it you are a convert?”

“What’s a convert?” I asked. The term seemed to have a negative connotation to me.

“Ah, so you didn’t know,” Hazel told me. “I’m sorry if it is upsetting for you. A convert is a witch who did not start life female. There is nothing wrong with being a convert. It is just a way to describe where your life has gone. Please take no offense at the term.”

It was like she could read me!

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” I stumbled over my own thoughts. “I’m okay with it, at least now. It was touch and go for a bit.”

“I can imagine,” she replied, smiling at me in a way that felt like the sun was shining. “It is hard enough when you know it is going to happen. I have never met anyone who converted unknowingly until now. What made you change your mind about how you feel?”

I paused to think about it for a moment. My new memories certainly were the biggest factor that had led to me accepting who I was. But that wasn’t the right answer.

“It is who I am,” I told her. “Who I am supposed to be. I didn’t know that before this happened, but it is clear to me now.”

“You have the call,” she said, mirroring what my mother had told me.

She was right, however. When I said that I’m “who I am supposed to be”, I meant that I was supposed to be a witch, not female. But if being female was the way to be a witch, then it was the correct path forward for me.

“Yes, I do,” I replied. “What is it?”

“Nobody knows,” she said lovingly. “Some witches have it. Some do not. But it is much like what likely led you here today. It is clearly some outside force beckoning to us, for some purpose we may never know.”

Despite her words not being an answer, they also seemed to be exactly the correct description of what the calling was. What a weird feeling that invoked!

“What is this place?” Jaclyn asked, looking around once again. “It kind of feels like a Halloween shop.”

Hazel erupted in this tinkling laughter that was both contagious and soothing at the same time, if that was possible.

“Well, I can see why you would say that,” she replied to Jaclyn when she had finished laughing. “A lot of what the outside world believes about witches is at least partially accurate.”

“Do we have to learn how to make potions in one of those?” Jaclyn followed, pointing at one of the cauldrons.

“Heavens no!” Hazel told us, smiling from ear to ear and laughing again. “But if you want to, you can. Not many witches these days are into the alchemical side of things. But we stock supplies for those who are.”

I looked around the store again. It was true that one section of the store was filled with items that I would expect a witch to need, based on everything I had seen in media over the years. But it was a small part of the store. The rest of the store seemed to be more dedicated to papers and books, and there were even a few electronic tablets for sale on one of the walls.

“Now,” she said, smiling at us again. “What brings the two of you in today? I can tell that there is something that you need help with.”

Jaclyn and I both hesitated at that point. It would be hard to ask for help without divulging one of Sophie’s biggest secrets. Finally, I gathered enough courage to speak.

“Jaclyn’s aunt left Jaclyn her spellbook,” I started. “We didn’t really know anything about witches before that, and apparently our mothers didn’t talk to us soon enough.”

Hazel nodded like she knew this already, but if she knew everything she wouldn’t have asked us the question that she did.

“We used the Baxter Circle,” I blurted out. “Sophie is bound to Jodi.”

Hazel’s eyes widened at my words, and she looked worried for the first time since we had met her.

“And you want to know how to unbind her?” Hazel asked, warily.

“No!” I replied back, perhaps more forcefully than I had meant to. “I’m sorry – that was too strong. Sophie doesn’t want to be unbound! We want to learn more about Jodi so that we can help Sophie somehow!”

My words seemed to be exactly what Hazel wanted to hear. She exhaled in relief and then smiled at us once more.

“That’s good to hear,” she said. “Unbinding a witch from her essence is extremely unkind, both to the witch and the essence. People seem to think it is like trading in their car for another, but it is really more like separating a deep root from the ancient earth it has always known. The root is exposed and withers, and the earth is left with a wound that takes a long, long time to heal.”

“Oh!” I said, even more worried about going down that path. “That does not sound good at all!”

“What do we do?” Jaclyn asked, even more worried.

“What do you think you should do?” Hazel asked.

I felt the weight of the world press down on my shoulders. For some reason, I had the inexplicable feeling that I needed to help Sophie even more now!

“You can’t help us?!” Jaclyn nearly cried. She must have been feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders too.

“I can,” Hazel replied kindly. “And I will. But any ideas her coven sisters come up with will be more effective than the options that I can provide.”

Hazel looked right at me, right into my eyes. It felt like she was looking into my soul.

“What ideas do you have, Harper?” she asked.

I gulped. I didn’t know why she was singling me out. But a moment later, I realized somehow she knew I had been thinking about a particular idea.

“In my spellbook,” I said, lifting the physics book in my hand. “There is a page about it. Um.”

I started thumbing through the pages.

“Bring it over here,” Hazel told me and motioned toward a round table in one corner of the shop.

I nodded, and followed her over to the table. I took a seat next to her and Jaclyn sat down next to me.

“Some of these notes probably aren’t relevant,” I told her. “Since they were about unbinding.”

I looked down at the book, stunned, as many of the notes seemed to disappear right off of the page.

“You are bound to your spellbook,” Hazel told me, clearly understanding my reaction. “Since you have dismissed those ideas, the spellbook is removing them from your notes. Now, what ideas do you have?”

“Well,” I said, reading some of the notes. “We have been trying to find more information about Jodi so we know how to help Sophie better. But nobody wants to talk about her.”

“We were going over to the library to look at fishy film,” Jaclyn added. “Then we found your store.”

“Microfiche,” I supplied to Hazel’s confused look at Jaclyn’s description. Hazel nodded as she understood.

“Most witches find this place when they need it,” Hazel smiled. “Looks like the two of you are no exception.”

Hazel motioned for us to wait for a moment, then got up and walked over to a wall with a number of photos on it. She took one down, and headed back to the table.

“This is a picture of my coven the night we were bound,” she told us and then handed us the picture before sitting back down.

Jaclyn and I looked at the picture, and my eyes widened immediately! She had already told us that she was in a coven with my grandmother, but I did not expect to see a young Jodi Baxter in the picture with them and two other girls whom I did not know!

“Jodi was in your coven?!” Jaclyn spoke before I was able to find the words.

“She was,” Hazel confirmed. “Before…it...happened, she was a very good friend. She pulled away from everyone after that.”

“It?” I asked.

Hazel grimaced. Clearly she did not want to talk about whatever had happened. She looked conflicted for a moment and then continued.

“Jodi married a young man whom she loved completely,” Hazel told us. “Everybody liked him and thought that Jodi had won the lottery. But, it turned out that he wasn’t the person everyone thought that he was.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Jaclyn said.

“It wasn’t,” Hazel agreed. “When he found out about Jodi being a witch, things changed. He became intent on using her powers to better himself. He tried to make her do things she didn’t want to do. He hurt her, her family, and the coven, at least emotionally, before the divorce was final. Even afterward, it took the coven ‘convincing’ him that he needed to leave her alone before he finally left.”

Hazel sighed.

“I hope he isn’t out there somewhere manipulating some other witch,” she told us.

“That’s horrible!” I exclaimed.

“It is,” Hazel agreed. “It was. Jodi was never the same after that. We tried to help her the best we could, but the betrayal she felt was greater than almost anything. She closed herself off from the world and became a shell of the person she used to be.”

“Is that why she was the kind of person nobody wanted to be around?” I asked.

“She felt deeply betrayed, and I could see the hurt in her eyes whenever we ran into each other,” Hazel told us. “But she didn’t want any help and turned away from everyone and everything she knew.”

“And she took it out on everybody else,” Jaclyn said.

“Not at first,” Hazel told us. “But over time, the bitterness that had invaded her heart needed an outlet, and she found it in making other people miserable. It was not the Jodi that your grandmother and I had known.”

I sighed. “And now she has Sophie.”

“No. That isn’t how essences work.”

“Huh?”

“Most witches think that their essence is of the person who last had it,” Hazel smiled as she explained. “But in truth, it is the combined magical essence of every witch who was previously bound to its power.”

I must have still looked confused, because Hazel chuckled lightly before continuing.

“We don’t really know what the essences are. But they are not the people we knew. Your essence is not the essence of Gwynnifred, it is the essence of all the witches before her who had been bound to that essence. But because she was the last witch bound to it, her influence on the essence is palpable. It is that influence that leads witches to believe it is the essence of their dearly departed, but that is not correct.”

“So the essences aren’t really the people we knew, but they were ‘touched’ by them?” I asked.

“That’s fairly accurate,” she said. “Sophie is not bound to Jodi Baxter, but to an essence that has been molded by Jodi’s emotions and actions. It is up to Sophie to remold that essence into something better now.”

“That’s why unbinding the essence is such a bad thing,” I said. “We wouldn’t be unbinding her from Jodi, we would be hurting an already hurt essence.”

“Yes!” Hazel exclaimed excitedly. “That is it exactly! This is a chance for Sophie to make a difference! A chance for her to heal a wounded essence!”

“So, it doesn’t really matter what essence a witch is bound to?” I asked.

“Technically that’s correct,” she replied. “But each essence is different. They also seem to prefer being bound to the family members, too, since we don’t get to choose which essence we are bound to. However, it is common knowledge that a witch will likely be bound to a recent family member who has left us. It’s usually but not always the case.”

“So how do we help her?” Jaclyn asked, worried. “How do we help the essence?”

“Again,” she told me. “The answer should come from the two of you. If you do not have an answer by this evening, then I have a few ideas. But, since the three of you are bound, that answer will come to you, not to me. However, I suggest that whatever you come up with you do tonight, under the full moon.”

“But the full moon has already passed!” Jaclyn cried out, worried.

“It is full enough,” Hazel told her. “I suggest that you find Sophie, and ask her what she thinks should be done. Between the three of you, and your essences, you will find the answer to help soothe Sophie’s essence.”

“We don’t know where to look,” I told Hazel.

“Did you try Jodi’s house?” she asked me.

I opened my mouth to reply, but closed it quickly. We hadn’t checked the Baxter house. But I already knew we would find her there because Hazel had asked the right question.

---

Chapter 6

“Are you sure?” Jaclyn asked.

“I know it,” I replied.

“Then why won’t she answer?” she asked.

Admittedly, I didn’t know. We were standing outside of the Baxter house, and had knocked on the door and rang the doorbell without any response from inside. If Sophie really was here, she clearly didn’t want to open the door for us.

“Open sesame!” Jaclyn waved at the door, then frowned when nothing happened. She apparently believed that would be enough to open the door with her magic.

“That’s the best you’ve got?” I asked her. Her intentions were good, but she clearly didn’t have someone to teach her how to cast properly.

“I’d like to see you do better!” she shot back, sticking her tongue out in the process.

“Concentrate on what you want to do,” I told her. “You have to have intent.”

I motioned to the door.

“Open sesame!” I said, and this time, there was an audible click and then the door started to open.

“Show off!” Jaclyn stated, sarcastically.

A moment later, the door slammed shut. It didn’t take a genius to know that my spell hadn’t backfired. Somebody had shut the door.

“Sophie!” I cried out in frustration. “We don’t want to unbind you! We want to help you soothe and heal your essence!”

Everything was silent for a moment, and then the door opened slightly. Sophie was staring out at us suspiciously.

“Why would you want to do that?” she asked skeptically. “Didn’t our moms make it clear that I need to be unbound from it?”

“Oh, yes, they did,” I told her in a manner that made it clear I did not agree with them.

“But we didn’t feel that way, and Hazel helped us understand why,” Jaclyn added.

“Who’s Hazel?” Sophie asked, keeping the door shut as much as possible.

“Let us in and we’ll tell you,” I told her. “In the little time that I have known her, she has proven to be a better expert on witches than our parents.”

Perhaps it was a slight exaggeration, but I didn’t care as long as she opened the door.

Sophie sighed, then closed the door. We heard the sound of a door chain being undone, and then she opened it again and beckoned us in.

The inside of Jodi Baxter’s house, was like any other regular domestic dwelling place. The decoration and furniture were somewhat dated, but overall the house was nice and cozy.

Sophie led us into a sitting room off the front door and took a seat on one of the couches that were facing each other. Jaclyn and I sat on the opposite couch.

“I’m listening,” she said, slightly irritated. She didn’t believe us.

Jaclyn spoke up and recounted our adventure of the morning that led to finding The Secret Apothecary. Sophie looked both intrigued and less defensive when Jaclyn finished her story.

“Okay, if that is true, what do we do now?” Sophie asked.

“Hazel suggested that we ask you,” I told her. “Chances are that you would know, but overall she was pretty certain that between the three of us we would find the answer.”

“I think we need to show your essence that being kind is a good thing,” Jaclyn told her.

Sophie nodded.

“All morning I’ve been thinking of holding a Halloween party here to try and help my essence see that the people around here are nice people. But I don’t know how to do that properly. You are on the right track, Jaclyn.”

We dropped into silence for a bit as everyone tried to absorb what Sophie had said.
“What if we have a festival instead?” I asked. “We could use magic to get everything ready and maybe even have magic things there that people could believe are magical but could also be written off as something else.”

“Like what?” Sophie asked, very intrigued at my suggestion.

I pondered for a moment.

“Well, we could turn the backyard into a maze with walls that close or rearrange behind people,” I suggested. “Maybe we could make the elm tree “whisper” when people walk by. Or maybe we could have some treats that shimmer with magic while they are on the property somehow.”

“Ooh, ooh!” Jaclyn said excitedly. “What if we had a pumpkin patch with jack-o-lanterns whose faces changed expressions or something when you look at them?!”

That was an intriguing idea! Plus, it would help with one of the more intriguing ideas in my spellbook.

I opened my spellbook and turned to the page with the notes about how to help Sophie’s essence. The others watched me and I pointed to the note I was thinking about.

“The Rite of Illuminated Compassion,” I told them, reading the note's title. “I’m not quite sure where the name came from, but I had a note here wondering if we could do something that would take some shared joy from a community event like we are describing, and channel it to Sophie’s essence, bathing it in happiness and love.”

I read through some of the other notes.

“There are some thoughts here that say we could capture that joy and love with a candle and then use its light to power the Rite,” I told them. “Between the two, I think we could have a big impact on your essence and show it the way back from the downward spiral that Jodi led it down.”

The other two agreed.

“But how do we throw together an entire festival in less than one day?” Sophie asked.

I looked at the time on my phone. It was only around 9:45 AM. We had time to pull something like this off, most likely. Part of me wanted to call my mom for help, but I doubted that she would think highly of our attempts to help Sophie without unbinding her.

Sophie had a large smile on her face, and it was clear that she was warming up to the idea and was very happy that someone wanted to help her without trying to unbind her.

“With magic,” I told her. “And help.”

Sophie looked at me, suddenly worried. She probably thought I meant our mothers.

“Hazel will help,” I told her, alleviating her concern. “And she will probably bring others. She’ll probably bring the rest of her coven. They knew Jodi and would want to help too.”

I wasn’t sure if she would actually bring other help, but I hoped so.

“Okay!,” Jaclyn exclaimed. “Harper, you let Hazel know what we are doing. Sophie, you and I will start thinking about what we can do at this festival that will make the whole neighborhood want to visit.”

All three of us agreed and with smiles on our faces we set to our tasks.

---

The rest of the morning and much of the afternoon was a blur. There was so much to do and little time to do it in. But with Hazel’s help, magic became our best friend in accomplishing our goals.

Hazel was very happy when I told her about our plans. She suggested that we invite our parents to the festival later and then include them in the rite. They needed healing too.

Hazel arrived a couple of hours later with the two remaining members of her coven, a few friends, and a lot of ideas and know-how to accomplish them. Between what the two groups had come up with, the festival took shape quickly.

The harder part was in conjuring up what we needed. Hazel was more than capable of doing it herself, but she felt that Jaclyn, Sophie, and I needed to be the ones to cast the spells to bring the festival into existence. She directed and guided us as to what needed to be done, but it was the responsibility of the three of us to do it.

By mid-afternoon it was clear to the neighborhood that something was happening at the Baxter house; we kept receiving glances of confusion and interest from others in the neighborhood and people who were passing by. Fortunately we had set almost everything up and didn’t have to perform any magic in front of them.

One of Hazel’s coven members, Rose, had even created some flyers and somehow had distributed them around not only the neighborhood but also a large portion of the surrounding area. If only a small portion of the people who had been “invited” showed up it would still be a lot of people.

When we were finished, I was tired! A lot of the heavy lifting of putting everything together was accomplished by magic, but I learned that using magic was almost as tiresome as if we had done it all physically ourselves!

At four o’clock, Jaclyn, Sophie, and I arrived back in our cul-de-sac. The festival was slated to “open the doors” at five, giving us just enough time to invite our families.

“Sophie, go with Harper,” Jaclyn told her as we exited the car. “Let her family know while I let my family know. Then we will meet up at your house and support you as you tell them.”

Sophie, who had been looking a bit squeamish at the prospect of confronting her parents, nodded more happily at that approach, and then turned with me to head for my house.

It was quiet when I opened the door to my home. I heard noises coming from the kitchen. When we reached the entry to the kitchen, I found my mom busy baking.

“Mom?” I called out, cautiously. I wasn’t sure how this conversation was going to go.

“Almost done!” she called back, curiously.

She looked over at me and smiled, and then pointed to some containers on the counter. I walked over and took a look.

Inside were some frosted cookies on which the frosting was swirling around the cookie in a slow, but hypnotizing way.

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Hazel said you needed cookies for the festival,” my mom told me. “Wendy and I are making them.”

After a few moments my mom started chuckling as I realized that Sophie and I were staring in shock.

“Do you like them?” she asked. “Not too flashy, right?”

I looked down at the mesmerizing shifting frosting before looking back up at her.

“I thought...” I started, but wasn’t able to complete my sentence.

“That we would try to talk you out of it?” Mom asked. “I admit, we weren’t too pleased when we heard that you were trying to help Sophie this way at first, but we want to support you guys. A coven knows best how to help their coven.”

I still stared at her in shock! This definitely wasn’t what I was expecting when I walked through the front door!

“Are you guys wanting to take these now or can I bring them over when they are done?” my mom asked.

I was still speechless. Hazel had said that she would take care of the treats that would be at the festival, but I had no idea she would ask our parents!

“You can bring them...” I said, trailing off. “We just wanted to...”

“It’s okay, Harper,” Mom told me. “I understand. I know that Wendy is somewhat upset, but even she knows that the three of you will do what is best for your coven.”

I looked at Sophie. Her house was our next stop, and I still wasn’t sure what to expect after my mom’s words. Would Wendy, Sophie’s mom, still try to talk her out of it?

“We’ll see you at the festival,” Sophie said, then grabbed me by the arm and pulled me toward the front door.

I complied, and followed. Although I’d known my mother for my entire life, I was still surprised. I had been certain this would be a battle between them and us.

Once we were outside of my house we started walking toward Sophie’s, where Jaclyn was waiting for us.

“Is your mom okay with this too?” she asked us. “My mom isn’t entirely sure what is going on anyway, but she didn’t like the idea of ripping a part of Sophie away from her.”

I nodded, not quite capable of putting my feelings or what had happened into words yet.

“Apparently Hazel has convinced them,” Sophie told her. “Or at least Harper’s mom, and she supports us.”

There were a set of looks traded between us. It seemed apparent that at least two of our mothers were onboard with what we were trying to do, but would that include Sophie’s mother?

When we stepped into Sophie’s home, I was expecting...well, I didn’t know what I was expecting. But the smell of baking cookies gave me hope.

“Sophie?” an excited voice came from the kitchen. “Is that you?”

A second later her mom came around the corner. When she saw Sophie she lit up, walked over to us quickly, and enveloped Sophie in a hug.

“Oh, Sophie!” she exclaimed. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to make you feel bad or drive you away! I thought it was what would be best. I couldn’t imagine you not being bound to your grandmother’s essence!”

Sophie sort of hung on to the embrace. She didn’t look completely comfortable hugging her mother, but at the same time she clearly was glad to have her mother hugging her.

“Hazel talked to us,” Sophie’s mother continued. “We didn’t really know. About the essences, that is. I understand better now.”

She did seem to be happier with what was happening than the last time I had seen her. Perhaps she was telling the truth. Maybe understanding the nature of essences better helped her to realize that who the essence had been bound to was less important than who they were bound to now.

Jaclyn and I felt awkward as we watched them. It felt like this was a private moment, but we were here too.

“I’m sorry too, Mom,” Sophie replied. “I would have loved to be bound to Gram’s essence, but I feel like being bound to Jodi’s is more important. It needs our help!”

Her mother was nodding, and they kept hugging each other, making Jaclyn and I feel even more awkward. Eventually, they let go of each other.

“You’d better get back,” Sophie’s mom stated. “We have the sweets taken care of, but I know you will want to be there for the beginning. The essence should be there.”

Sophie nodded. They smiled at each other, and then very quickly we were on our way back to the Baxter house.

---

Once all of the preparations had been made and just before we “opened”, the three of us, our mothers, and the other witches who were helping us - mostly older ladies that Hazel had brought - all gathered in the driveway. Against the garage door was a small shrine with pictures of Jodi along with many of the witches who were here. There were also stories and memories that they had provided that would help the festival attendees see other sides of Jodi than just the miserable old lady they had probably known for most of their lives.

But even more importantly, on the table, was the candle with a thorough description of what it was. It was currently unlit, inside of a small open enclosure, but it was very intricate and ornate.

“Thank you all for coming,” Hazel told those who had gathered. “When I first met these three wonderful young ladies this morning I had no idea what this day would become. But today is a day of healing, not only for Jodi’s essence, but also for those who are attending.”

She motioned to Sophie, who was standing next to the candle.

“I’m honored to be bound to Jodi’s essence,” she told us. “Today, we start to heal the damage that Jodi caused. She wasn’t a bad person, but had ended up in some bad circumstances. You all have been invited to a rite this evening that will help. Harper, do you want to do the honors?”

“Yes,” I told her, stepping forward.

Because this rite had come from my spellbook, and therefore had been one of my ideas for helping Sophie, I had been designated as the one in charge of performing it. It was a daunting task, as I was too new to being a witch to fully understand what I would be doing. But if it helped Sophie, I would do it.

“This candle will play a part later this evening,” I told those gathered. “It will burn all night, capturing the love and the warmth of those who attend this evening.”

I placed my right hand over the candle.

“We call upon the gathered to testify of the love and light that is shared here this evening,” I said, talking to the candle. “Burn brightly, share your light with others, and when the time comes, help us to heal and cleanse what has been harmed here.”

I snapped my fingers, and a flame burst into being on top of the candle. It was small, and didn’t seem like much, but it would grow with the happiness that guests would have this evening.

There were smiles all around as I looked at the other witches that were gathered. Sophie was nearly crying.

“Let’s get this show started!” Jaclyn yelled, and the festival was open.

---

Chapter 7

“It’s your turn,” Hazel told me a couple of hours later. “I’ll help your mother until you get back.”

I smiled in thanks and stepped away from the refreshments table that I had been manning with my mother. The festival was a big hit, based on the number of people who had come by this evening. It was only 7:30 PM, and we had agreed to keep it going until at least 10:30 before we stopped. If people kept coming, however, I was quite sure that we would keep it operating past midnight. We weren’t planning to perform the ritual until after 1:00 AM since the moon wasn’t going to rise until then.

However, one of the requirements of everyone who would be participating in the ritual was that they needed to experience the entire festival. They needed to add their own joy to the shared experience of the evening. They needed to ‘walk the road’, as Hazel had put it. Now it was my turn.

I studied the candle. The flame was longer and brighter as it danced in the waning light, yet the candle seemed frozen in a perfect state. Its wax was as pristine as if it had never been lit. Clearly, there had been much mirth that had been shared tonight around the Baxter house.

I smiled and walked toward the start of “The Road”. The way we had set up the festival was to have all of the games and the refreshments table in the driveway. That was where many of the people had congregated throughout the night. But we did offer another experience that required visitors to follow along a path that meandered through the front yard, the backyard, and even the garage before returning to the driveway. It was this area where many of our attractions could be found.

I’d already seen most of the attractions and games individually as we had set them up and made sure that they were working, but I had not travelled down The Road yet nor seen some of the exhibits that the older witches had designed with either Jaclyn’s or Sophie’s help.

“This is so cool!” A young girl, perhaps 13, told some of her friends as they stepped under the archway that denoted the beginning of The Road. “How did they put all of this up in one day?”

“I have no idea...” another replied, but I stopped listening as I paused for a few moments to let them walk down the path a ways before I followed.

Maryanne, one of the older witches who was helping us tonight, found it hilarious that we were forcing unsuspecting attendees to travel a Witches Road. I chuckled to myself at that thought as I stepped under the archway.

Almost immediately, the sounds and the clamor of the games and the excitement on the driveway became muffled and muted compared to a moment before. It was very clear that I was now embarking on a journey.

I continued down the marked path toward the Whispering Willow. It was technically a large elm tree that was growing in the front yard of the Baxter house, but the name we had given it was much more appropriate for the night.

As I approached, I watched as a subtle, glowing wisp of light fell from one of the taller branches, swirled around the tree, and then disappeared on the other side of the trunk as it rose once more. A second one seemed to be dancing on one of the lower branches for a bit before it too took flight around the tree.

“Thank you for coming tonight,” a faint feminine whisper billowed from my left. Instinctively I looked that way, but there was nothing there.

“We are glad that you are here,” a second soft voice came from my right.

A soft tinkling of laughter spilled toward me from ahead, followed by faint, soft music and some hushed conversations that I couldn’t make out.

I continued around the tree, smiling at the music, the conversations, and the soft whispers that continued to enthrall me as I walked. Whispering Willow, indeed.

On the other side of the tree the marked path continued toward some kind of tent that was in the corner of the front yard, up against the fence. Between the tent and me were a number of jack-o-lanterns arrayed on the ground around the path. They were staring at me as I walked. I was staring straight at one of them, when it winked at me.

I smiled in amusement. These had been fun to watch when we were setting them up. I looked over at another pumpkin at random, and this one seemed to yawn before going back to its initial expression. I looked at a few more while I walked, smiling as they changed in front of my eyes before reverting.

When I reached the tent, which was labeled as a Fun House, I stepped inside. I was greeted by a number of mirrors, each with a small sign above it telling me what I would see if I was to look into it.

I stepped in front of the first one, and my eyes fell upon a plump young woman who looked a lot like me. Unlike most fun houses, however, this wasn’t a trick of the mirror and actually showed me what I would look like if I weighed significantly more than I did! The next mirror made me rail-thin. The mirror after that showed me as an old lady, and I was actually surprised to realize that this mirror might actually be showing me my future. The next one made me look like I had a young daughter, which I was holding in my arms even though my hands were free.

Stepping in front of the last mirror, however, was surreal. The label above this one told me I was looking at my other self. I stared at the young man that was reflected back at me. It hadn’t been long since I had last seen Barry’s reflection in a mirror, but it seemed so long ago...and wrong! I wasn’t that person anymore, and looking at him in the mirror clearly proved that I was now Harper, both in body and in mind!

I turned away and quickly stepped outside the tent to get away from Barry’s image. I knew that mirror had been one of the mirrors that had been created. But I had no intention of ever looking into it again! I was startled at how vehement I was toward seeing Barry in the mirror, especially since I had felt this change was so wrong just two days ago!

I sighed, and continued down The Road.

When I reached the gate that led into the backyard, I was met with a fork in the road. A sign told me to continue into the backyard, while a smaller message below the first said I could skip the fun by going the other way, which just led back to the driveway.

I followed the directions and turned into the backyard.

Immediately, I entered into a maze with walls of hay bales stacked up on either side of me. Not two steps in, there was a sound behind me and some of the light in the area disappeared. I turned around to see a wall of hay blocking the way I had just come.

I reached out to touch it and found it solid to my touch. I continued through the maze, not quite remembering exactly which way to go. When I reached my first dead end, I turned around to go back only to be met with another solid wall of hay. Even knowing what was happening I felt a surge of adrenaline, and perhaps fear, that I might be trapped! Turning around once more, I found the path now continued through what had been a dead end a moment before. I continued forward until I came to a dead end. Backtracking, I went down the only other way until it too turned into a dead end. I backtracked once more. There was nowhere else to go until a wisp, similar to the ones I had seen earlier, came out of one of the walls and stopped in front of me.

The wisp sat there for a moment, and then, somehow, seemed to be beckoning me forward. I took a step toward it, and it melted into the wall once more. I smiled. I really enjoyed coming up with this maze. Knowing the answer of what to do, I followed it through the wall until I came out the other side into a large open court with a lantern in the middle, sitting on a stone dais. Even from as far away as I was I knew that it had been intricately carved. A gentle, soft light was emanating from it and lighting the area in a way that almost made the area feel sacred. This was the Lantern of Echoes.

Approaching the Lantern of Echoes, I was unsure of what to expect. This attraction, and the one that would follow, were created by Jodi’s coven’s members with Jaclyn’s help. I was too busy to see what they had created.

The group of girls I had seen start on The Road before me were standing around the lantern, and they looked entranced. They seemed to each be staring at the ground before them, and it looked like at least one of them was crying.

When I approached the lantern, I was surprised to see an image form on the ground in front of me, seemingly projected from the lantern. At first, I was mesmerized by the clear image. It took me a moment to really look at it.

The image on the ground in front of me appeared to be a chrysalis of some sort with a small crack running down one of its sides from top to bottom.

At first, I wasn’t sure what the image meant, but as I stood there staring at it, I began to realize that it could be symbolizing where my life had gone recently. I had just been through a profound transformation. It was the type of transformation that nature accomplished inside of a chrysalis. In that sense, the image seemed to represent my recent metamorphosis, both physically and mentally.

But what about the crack? What did that signify? I mulled this over for a moment before the thought came to me that it could be the struggle I had been going through, that I had been “broken” when it had happened.

As I was pondering this in a more internal and retrospective nature than I had imagined when approaching the lantern, I was surprised when the static image started to change.

At first, I thought it was just the flickering of the lantern. But soon it was apparent that the crack was beginning to emit a soft, radiant light. It started in the middle of the chrysalis, and then continued to spread out along the entire length of the crack.

When the entire crack was aglow, the chrysalis started to unfurl. Slowly, each side peeled back to reveal what was inside. I expected to see the wings of a beautiful butterfly, signaling who I had become. But instead, inside the chrysalis, was a budding fern frond.

A fern frond? What on earth did that even mean? Where was the butterfly?

The fern frond was gracefully curling open, blossoming into something new from inside the chrysalis. Clearly, the fern represented a new beginning. It seemed to me like it might be a symbol of life unfolding into a new identity. I was impressed with the beauty of the fern growing and showing me a natural part of the new me. I had known almost since the change had occurred that it was right for me, even when I didn’t want it. I had been hit hard with something that I had thought I would never recover from, even though the magic was also telling me that being a woman was the right thing.

That was why a fern had been inside the chrysalis!

I felt a tear rolling down my check at the realization of what I was looking at. I had to rub my cheek to wipe it away.

Ferns were remarkably resilient plants. I was no botanist, but I suddenly remembered a lesson from school about how ferns had survived extinction level events that should have wiped them from the face of the earth. But instead they were able to tolerate extreme conditions, all thanks to physiological adaptations!

I was a fern because I would survive, no matter what happened to me! Becoming a girl wasn’t the horrible event it had first been. It was a step in my life that would lead me to survive the harsh world I was now a part of!

Many more tears were streaming down my cheeks now, as the image faded away, and I looked toward the next part of my journey.

I am who I was meant to be.

At the exit of the open court where the Lantern was an older lady. I had met her earlier, but I could not remember her name. She was a member of the same coven as Jodi and my grandmother. Behind her was a doorway that was covered in mist flowing down from above. I knew that it was the entrance to the garage, but it was hard to tell with how the area was decorated to appear hazy and hidden behind the fog.

“Hello, Harper,” she greeted me as I approached.

She held a small, smooth stone out toward me. I took it from her.

“Welcome, traveler,” she told me, beginning what she must have told everyone at this point on The Road. “Beyond this veil, echoes of time long past linger. Sometimes, deep pain leaves its mark. As you walk through what comes next, know that your compassion and your quiet presence helps those echoes find peace. Perhaps, as you walk, you might find a quiet release for any echoes you carry within yourself this evening. Keep this stone with you until you reach the other side.”

She smiled at me, and motioned toward the entrance barely visible beyond the fog.

I didn’t know what to expect. At first, we had thought we should make a haunted house in the garage, but Hazel and the other members of her coven told us they had a better idea.

Stepping through the “veil” I was surprised to smell fresh-baked bread. I looked around for the source, but could not find it. The room was softly lit with warm lights that flickered periodically. On one of the walls there were two silhouettes dancing around to some gently playing romantic music, clearly in love with each other. The only other thing in the room was a lantern like the one I had just visited outside.

I felt love and joy, and even hope for the future, as I watched. I was sure those feelings were spurred on by magic, but I felt them all the same. Oddly enough, it felt like Jodi was here, though I had never spent enough time near her to know why I would feel that way. Probably more magic.

After a few moments I felt an urge to move on. I walked toward the exit of the small room which was also hidden behind a “veil” of mist.

Stepping through the mist, everything changed as I walked into another similar room. The light was no longer soft, but was instead fractured, flickering more often and leaving the room darker. Long, distorted shadows could be seen all around the room. The music, while still the same song, was now slightly dissonant from where I had just been. A faint, unsettling hum beneath the music itched at my brain. It smelled almost like damp grass, or at least some kind of wet outdoorsy, almost acrid, smell I couldn’t quite place. The silhouettes on the walls were of the same couple, but they no longer seemed as happy or connected as they had in the previous room. I felt uneasy immediately and wanted to continue forward. I quickly walked past another of the lanterns to get to the exit.

Stepping through another “veil” I found myself in a third room like the others I had just visited. This place, however, was worse than the last!

A sharp, cold gust of air swept through the room, causing me to shiver. The music, playing the same song, was now sharply discordant, almost unrecognizable from the first room. The room was dimmer than the last, as the only light came from another of the lanterns that barely illuminated this room. There was a second table in here with a broken locket on it, laying next to a withered rose. The silhouettes on the walls were unmoving but were positioned in what was clearly a tense, emotional confrontation. Faint, almost subliminal whispers of broken promises and accusations came from all around me.

I hurried through this room also, barely able to see the “veil” on the other side.

Stepping through did not provide any relief, however. The fourth room was almost pitch black, with only a faint, flickering light illuminating the room briefly amid long intervals of darkness. There was a lingering coldness here, possibly from the wind that had swept through the previous room. Every once in a while there was a distant, lonely sigh as the only sound able to be heard. The music was gone. The darkness was almost claustrophobic, and the short, brief flickers of light only illuminated a silhouette of a lone, hunched figure who looked to be in pain. More importantly, the silhouette was immediately recognizable to me as the old hag Jodi Baxter whom I was familiar with.

I wanted out of this room just as quickly as the other two, but with only brief bursts of light it took much longer to reach the other side and throw myself through the “veil”, worried about what would come next.

The sound of birds chirping and a soft breeze greeted me on the other side as I stepped into what appeared to be a small forest clearing. Sunlight was filtering through the trees around what had to be the side yard of the Baxter house, but there was not this much space there. The warmth of the sun hitting my skin was a stark contrast to the cold and the emptiness I had just come from.

On the other side of the small clearing I saw Rose, the other older witch who was part of Hazel’s coven. She was standing next to a small fountain that somehow did not look out of place in the forest clearing. On the other side of the fountain was an easel holding the kind of picture of Jodi that you would expect to see at a funeral.

Taking a deep, fresh breath of the forest air, I walked toward Rose.

“Thank you for walking with the echoes,” she told me as I approached. “Please, cast your stone into these waters. Let its ripples carry away what no longer serves you. Let the light of this festival fill the spaces they leave behind.”

She motioned toward the fountain, and I noticed many rocks like the one I had been holding adorning the bottom.

I smiled, and tossed my rock. Almost immediately after it left my hand I felt a rush and a relief that I had not been expecting. I felt lighter, and happier, and...female! I had already come to the conclusion that I would always be and was always meant to be Harper, but it almost felt like I had just thrown Barry into that fountain with the rock!

I hadn’t thrown Barry away, however. I had finally let go of the burden of once having been him.

It almost felt like going through darkness and finally realizing what I needed to give up to continue forward...almost like Jodi must have felt when she was finally able to move on from what she had become!

The realization of both of those thoughts compounded in my chest, and I gasped audibly as the stone hit the water and subtle shimmers pulsed out from it as the water rippled away.

I looked at Rose, unsure what to say. She smiled at me, clearly having seen my reaction many times this evening, and motioned to another “veil” on the opposite side of her to the fountain.

With a newfound surety, I passed through the last veil and found myself back in the driveway. The bustling noise and the cheerful laughter was a welcome sound, despite the night air that had returned.

“I had no idea!” one of the girls I had been following said from nearby.

“Me either!” another replied. “She must have been miserable! I wish I could have known her happy!”

Before I could do or say anything, I heard a splash coming from the dunk tank nearby. I looked over in time to watch the large, animatronic skeleton finish falling into the water. Inside the water, however, there was a pretty woman in a red swimsuit floating around inside. Moments later, as she climbed back out of the water, the skeleton emerged and hoisted itself back into the seat.

It was nearly November, and too cold to dunk anyone, but the excitement of seeing what the skeleton would turn into made the dunk tank quite popular. So far this evening I had seen everything from a fat old man, a toddler (which got some gasps), and even an alien!

I looked around at some of the other games. There was a ring toss game in which the rings often blew off target unless the thrower was genuinely concentrating on what they were doing. There was a “skee-ball” game where the ball often went straight to the hole that the player was hoping for. There was an interesting maze set vertically against the garage door in which players held a magic wand and used it to “magically” move a colored will-o’-wisp through it, often to disastrous results because the will-o’-wisps usually followed directions, but they also had a mind of their own and would purposefully go down the wrong paths.

There was also a small shadow puppet theater in which the puppets appeared to be ghosts, seemingly uncontrolled by any puppeteer as they pranced around the small stage and told a few different stories. Another booth was set up not far away from the stage where attendees could enter and get their photo taken, but when they retrieved their photos outside they were often sitting with ghosts they could not see inside the booth.

And of course, there was the Dream Weaver’s Confections table, where I had spent most of the night helping my mom give away the cookies (with the swirling frosting she had made), candied apples that shimmered with subtle, changing iridescence, and drinks that seemed to glow from within.

If any of the guests brought a winning ticket from any of the games (which weren’t hard to win), they could redeem them for the grand prize of “Memory” Truffles. These truffles, when bitten into, tasted faintly of things long past that invoked memories in those that ate them. They might taste such things as fresh-cut grass that reminded them of their childhood summers; cinnamon and firelight bringing to mind cozy winter evenings; pine and moss that reminded the eater of camping trips or being in the outdoors; vanilla buttercream and fizzy pop that kindled memories of blowing out candles and birthday wishes; or ginger and cinnamon that evoked a sense of adventure or the excitement of starting a new journey.

One of the reasons that I had volunteered to help at the sweets table was to be able to see the reactions of all those who were visiting. Everyone had seemed to have a good time when they left, and after walking down The Road myself, I began to understand why.

I looked over at the candle that was hanging above the garage door where all could see it. The flame was longer and much brighter now. The cheer, the amusement, and even the healing that was taking place were powering the candle and would help us to heal Sophie’s essence later tonight.

I looked around once more at everyone having fun, smiled, and returned to the refreshment table to help my mom.

---

Chapter 8

“Does anyone have any questions about what will happen or what to do?” I asked the others as I stepped past Jaclyn and into the small circle of women sitting on the floor of Baxter House’s living room. I was holding the candle that had been burning all evening at the festival.

Nobody spoke, and a quick pan around the circle showed most of them shaking their heads no or smiling at me.

I handed the candle to Sophie, who was sitting in the middle of the circle, and sat back down next to Jaclyn.

This rite had come from my spellbook, and according to Hazel that meant that I had to lead it.

I looked around the circle once more. There were nine of us in the circle facing Sophie, so it wasn’t as intimate as I hoped, but it was still a fairly tight circle and I could see everyone clearly. Each was holding a small unlit candle. The full moon was shining through the nearby glass door that led into the backyard, illuminating them all in a soft glow.

I took a long, deep breath, let out the worries and the cares I had brought with me. Jaclyn did the same to my left, and then the other witches, and Jaclyn’s mom, did the same in turn.

A silence seemed to envelope us as Hazel, who was on my right, finished her breath before Sophie did the same from the center of the circle.

“The Rite of Illuminated Compassion draws on the collective positive energy that was generated this evening at the festival,” I told them, repeating the words that were in my spellbook. I had been thinking through how to properly perform this rite all evening, and every thought had been captured in words in the magical book. I could no longer imagine being without it.

I turned to Hazel, my co-collaborator, for the next part. In a soft, steady voice, she spoke.

“The festival tonight was more than I could have ever dreamed of,” she said. “It felt like Jodi, the old, happy Jodi, was there tonight. It was a fitting memorial and provided wonderful healing for Jodi, for us, and for those who attended. I think everyone who came this evening left happier and more at peace than when they arrived.”

She reached for a small candle that was laying on the floor in front of her, and then pointed it toward the burning candle in the middle of the circle.

“This collective light, brought and shared by everyone who came this evening, holds the peaceful healing, the joy, and the wonder that we seek,” she continued.

She then reached forward with her candle, and Sophie held the large candle with all of that captured joy, healing, and wonder out to her. Hazel held her candle up to it until her own candle lit. Then she sat back and looked at me.

She held her candle out for me, and I lit my candle from hers, then I turned to Jaclyn and offered it to her. Once Jaclyn’s candle was lit she turned and passed it on, until the flame had been passed around the entire circle.

When everyone was settled with their flames in front of them, I turned my attention to Sophie, and nodded to her.

She looked nervous but nodded in return. Then she began to speak.

“Essence of Jodi,” she said. “I know you are hurting. I know you were mistreated by your previous binding. I am sorry for the pain that you have felt. I am sorry for the suffering that you have witnessed and helped cause. I'm sorry I let myself fall into the same pattern. You deserve more, and together, we will work to bring healing, love, joy, and compassion to you and to all those we meet.

“Be at peace,” she continued. “The day of pain is over. It is time to move on. Don’t forget, but forgive.”

“You are loved, not broken,” I told the essence.

“Let go of the weight of the past,” Jaclyn said next to me.

The whispers of compassion continued around the circle.

“The wound can heal.”

“Freedom awaits.”

“Your worth is not in others.”

“Forgive your anger.”

“You are enough.”

These gentle, affirming words created a wave of positive energy directed toward the essence. The love and the healing from earlier tonight could be felt by all as we tried to let the essence know that brighter days were ahead, that it would not be abandoned to the darkness that it had known.

When everyone had spoken, I placed my candle in front of me, so that it was between Sophie and me, and then I stood up. She did the same, placing the large candle next to mine, and stood facing me.

With a smile, I reached out and placed my right hand on her shoulder. Jaclyn placed her candle in front of her, between Sophie and herself, and then stood too. She reached out and put her right hand on top of mine, and let me put my left hand on her right shoulder.

This act was repeated around the circle, with the witch placing her right hand on one of Sophie’s shoulders and her left on the shoulder of the witch next to her. Once complete, we were all connected with each other and with Sophie.

I closed my eyes, and visualized the warmth from the festival. I visualized the accumulated joy, the awe, and the compassion that had occurred here this evening. I knew the others were doing the same.

Then, when I felt that warmth surrounding me, I focused that energy, channeling through my arms, to pass through the others and ultimately to be directed to Sophie’s essence. I continued this way for a few minutes, willing the essence to feel soothed, understood, and healed.

Eventually, when the residual turmoil in the room had become calm, I took a deep breath. Then another. The more breaths I took the more witches joined me, bringing awareness back to the room and to where we were.

I released my arms from the others, breaking the circle that we had formed, and opened my eyes.

It was dimmer in the room. The candles were only softly burning now, their light muted as we directed the energy from this evening toward Sophie’s essence.

There were smiles on all the witches around the room. It seemed and felt like the rite had worked. Only time would tell.

The Rite I had devised had been designed to be intimate but not elaborate. It was also designed to channel the festival energy in a way to try to soothe the pain of Sophie’s essence, instead of trying to force it to change in any way. Having everyone here, from Sophie’s coven to the living members of Jodi’s coven to the other witches, was meant to help convey the strength of the collective support we offered the essence.

I hope it worked.

Nobody spoke, but instead everyone seemed to bask in the afterglow of the Rite of Illuminated Compassion. There was a power in the air that could not have come from anything other than the magic within all of us.

Witches hugged and embraced each other silently for a while, and then one by one they left to return to their homes. As they left, each of their candles went out, yet the larger candle that Sophie picked back up burned brighter.

Eventually, it was just Sophie, Jaclyn, and me standing in the room.

“Thank you,” Sophie said. “I can already tell that the essence has been healed, at least some. It will probably take time, but this is exactly what it needed.”

I smiled, and then Jaclyn and I wrapped Sophie in a hug.

---

Chapter 9

Jaclyn pulled her car into her usual spot in front of her house. It was 3:46 AM, and we were exhausted. The night had been great, but it was tiring.

“I think I’m ready,” Sophie told us when we had all exited the car. “Can we do it before bed? I want to start the new day the right way.”

Jaclyn and I both glanced at each other, unsure what she was talking about. Sophie must have understood our look.

“I want the memories,” she explained. “I’m ready now. I don’t need the other ones.”

My eyes opened wide in understanding as I saw the same look of understanding on Jaclyn’s face. I had forgotten that Sophie wasn’t there when we gave everyone else new memories of me.

“You don’t lose the old ones,” I told her, smiling in what I hoped was a comforting look. “You get new ones, but you can still remember the old.”

Sophie looked relieved.

“I’m sorry I never noticed,” I told her. “I’m sorry I was a blind little boy.”

Sophie chuckled this time.

“You were pretty naïve,” she told me, chuckling lightly. “You couldn’t see what was right in front of you. But tonight I have realized that Harper is a true friend, and the whole healing process tonight has made me realize that you are who you are meant to be and Barry was never meant for me.”

I stood there, mouth agape, unsure how to respond.

Sophie laughed and hugged me. Jaclyn wrapped her arms around us too.

“Do it,” Sophie said in our embrace.

“My life is new.
My memories are too.
You remember the old.
Now remember the new.”

We continued in our hug, but Sophie pulled us in tighter, kissing me softly on the cheek. It was a sister’s kiss, not a girlfriend’s kiss.

“I missed you guys,” she cried into our shoulders, and I did the same thing.

I had known Jaclyn and Sophie my entire life, and I couldn’t imagine a day without them. We were true sisters now, connected by more than just our friendship or our love for each other.

We were a coven, and we had broken the darkness and found the light.