Witch - By Fiona Horne Page 0,19

get more information. This article is pretty average,’ sniffed Alyssa.

I nodded in agreement. ‘Let’s start there. Dean, you and I could go to the newspaper offices after school today and ask if they have archived copies.’

‘Deal,’ he said.

‘I could come with you, Vania,’ Bryce said.

I hesitated, and from the corner of my eye I could see the twins exchange a glance. They knew about my feelings for Bryce. No matter how far I tried to cram them inside of me, their psychic fingers managed to find them.

‘It’s cool, thanks Bryce. Dean is officially my assistant, after all.’ I smiled at Dean, who nodded in return, looking a little smug.

Bryce seemed disappointed, and I wondered for just a moment if he may like me as more than just a friend. But right at that minute Cassidy walked past wearing a super-short skirt, and his eyes turned towards her. I quickly dropped my head so that my hair shielded my face, hiding my disappointment. The universe wasn’t going to let me forget there would always be a prettier and cooler girl for him than me.

‘Hey, check this out,’ Amelia and Alyssa said in unison. I looked up and saw that the pen in front of me was slowly moving across the desk . . . and no one was touching it. ‘We’ve been practising!’ Amelia said.

‘How are you doing it?’ Dean was impressed – we all were. And it took Bryce’s attention away from Cassidy.

‘We’ve been researching psychokinesis. If you visualise an object as being weightless, and if enough people believe the same thing at the same time, the object will move where you want it to go,’ Alyssa said in a rush, her eyes never wavering from the pen.

‘Yeah, and we thought if the Egyptians could move stones with their minds to make pyramids, we could easily move a pen,’ Amelia said, her eyes focused intently like Alyssa’s.

I struggled to imagine those huge pyramids being built with the power of thousands of workers’ minds instead of with ropes, pulleys and animals. Even though I was exploring magic, my practical mind still held sway over my thought processes.

But I couldn’t deny that the pen was still moving – rolling back and forth across the desk as the twins stared at it.

‘You guys had better stop that in case someone sees,’ I whispered as, with dismay, I saw Mr Barrow striding across the library floor towards us. The pen shot off the table onto the floor.

‘What are you lot up to?’ Mr Barrow said in a suspicious tone.

‘Nothing, sir,’ Bryce said. ‘Just researching a topic for our elective.’

‘Well, that’s not nothing, is it?’ Mr Barrow sneered.

His eyes swept slowly around the library table. ‘I’ve got my eye on all of you,’ he said before walking away.

‘What a creep,’ Dean muttered under his breath.

‘What a weirdo!’ said the twins.

I just sat there mutely, feeling quite disturbed. He was getting worse and worse – but why?

‘So, why did your family move to Summerland?’ I asked Dean as we walked into town to visit the newspaper offices. I realised it was the first time he and I had hung out by ourselves. I didn’t know all that much about him.

‘We have land here. I’m actually part Chumash Indian, and our tribe were the original inhabitants of Summerlandhundreds of years ago, before the Spiritualists came.’ He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and let out a long sigh. ‘And my dad’s an alcoholic, and we had to get out of Los Angeles. There were too many temptations there for him. So when the opportunity came to move onto the family land here, we decided to take it.’

I had no idea what to say. I felt bad about Dean’s dad, but I felt worse – guilty – thinking about his people and what must have happened here when Indigenous people had been displaced. ‘I’m really sorry, Dean. Ummm, is your mum . . . ?’ I hoped my tone sounded sympathetic and not patronising.

‘My mom died when I was little,’ he mumbled.

I felt really guilty now. Dean had been at Summerland High for almost a fortnight now and not once had I asked him about his home life – I’d been too caught up with my own little dramas. Now I realised how good my life was, really.

‘Hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to dump all that on you,’ he started to apologise, but I cut him off.

‘Dean, please. I can’t believe how selfish I’ve been,’ I