Witch - By Fiona Horne Page 0,42

sucking up to me.’

‘Geez, Vania, I never realised you were so shallow,’ Bryce said. ‘I think I liked you better the way you were before.’

His words shot through me like a bullet. I ran out of the building.

I went and sat under a tree outside, my head buried in my hands. What a mess everything was. Being cool had only made things worse with Mr Barrow and got all of us detention, Bryce had made it clear he didn’t like the cool me and now I was back where I started – feeling like a freak.

I hadn’t realised how much I’d secretly longed to be popular. The purpose of the spell had been for everyone to get on – to be equal – not for us to become the cool group. Had I somehow tainted the intention of the spell? Was that why today had gone pear-shaped?

I went over the words I’d written for the incantation: We know who we are / No longer hidden / we reveal our true selves. These were positive, good ideas about being the best we could be. I didn’t limit it to appearances . . . The problem must be in how I was viewing things. Well, I told myself, I’ll just have to stop focusing on that part of the result and work harder to live up to our intention.

Turned out Bryce had been right – being cool was proving not to be as great as I’d thought it would be.

My heart sank as the final bell rang for the day – time for detention with creepy Mr Barrow. Still at least we were all doing it together.

When I arrived at the chemistry lab, Dean and Bryce were already there. Mr Barrow wasn’t.

‘Hey guys, I’m sorry I freaked out before – I think being cool went to my head briefly. I went a bit nuts!’ I laughed a little, hoping they’d chuckle, too.

‘I should apologise, too,’ Bryce cut me off. ‘I didn’t think enough about your perspective on the spell. I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge.’

Dean nodded. ‘I’m enjoying this spell, but we didn’t intend for it to cause us more problems. If you guys want to reverse it, I’m happy to. I don’t need it. I feel the same on the inside. And it would probably be simpler to just stop eating crap to lose weight and fix my skin.’

We were all laughing together as the twins walked in.

‘This is a first – laughing during detention!’ they both said.

And now there was just one thing missing – Mr Barrow.

Half an hour later he still hadn’t shown.

‘Did we get the day wrong? He did say we had to start this today, right?’ Dean said. We had all been sitting there fidgeting, growing more and more uneasy.

‘I feel like I’m being watched.’ Alyssa took the words right out of my head.

‘Can you sense him?’ I asked.

‘I’m not trusting my psychic powers right now,’ Alyssa whispered. ‘Not after what we did with that shield. This is just my gut telling me – he’s messing with us.’

‘Maybe we should just leave?’ Bryce stood up. ‘I’m over it. Barrow had no good reason to give us detention anyway.’ He said the last words loudly and defiantly, as if daring Mr Barrow to confront him.

‘Yeah, I vote we leave,’ Dean said loudly too, pushing back his chair.

We were gathering our bags when the door slammed shut behind us. I jumped and turned to see Mr Barrow standing there.

‘Detention is cancelled,’ he said coldly.

None of us moved.

‘Get out of here before I change my mind,’ he snapped. ‘And if I catch any of you so much as even causing a whimper among the other students I will have you back in here before you can blink.’

We grabbed our bags and walked towards the door. Dean reached it first, but Mr Barrow just stood there, blocking it with his stocky frame.

Dean stood in front of him uncertainly. ‘Sir, can I pass?’

Mr Barrow took his time looking Dean up and down and then slowly stepped to the side.

I was next, with Bryce close behind me. He virtually pushed me past Mr Barrow and out the door, and the twins followed in hot pursuit. We got out of the building as fast as we could.

‘What the hell was that about?’ Dean said.

Standing outside in the afternoon sun, I looked around at everyone and saw that they all looked as unsettled as I felt.

‘Why say we have detention and then cancel