Times are Changing

As a child it had never really occurred to me that there may be something more to what my teachers had labeled as my skills. Throughout my early years I thought it was perfectly normal to be able to tie my shoelaces without touching them or to turn my light on while not moving from my bed. When my Mum started doing odd things like replacing my trainers with velcro shoes and putting a clapper switch in my room I did not think as to why she should change things that didn’t hinder me as they solved themselves anyway. As I got older I excelled at school, my grades were near perfect and I was pushed to the top of my class. When my parents were called in early on parents evening I expected to be congratulated for working at such a high level, and was instead told that I had to be more careful. ‘More careful of what?’ I remember thinking to myself. I was moved to a gifted and talented programme and the staff still struggled to keep up with me, my tutor named me her little Einstein. At no point through my childhood did it occur to me that I may not be the same as everyone else, and my parents apparently did everything in their power to make out like there was nothing out of the ordinary going on by changing my behaviours into things that were easily explained away. That was until I somehow got kicked out of school and had to be homeschooled, but that’s a story for later. Let’s start with today, my first day back at a real school in 5 years, with real people my own age, my first time being out on my own... and the first time I would have to knowingly hide my powers from everyone around me.

So you might be wondering, what powers? Well as it turns out my Mother and Father had neglected to tell me I had inherited a very unique family trait, magic. All my life I had thought that every child could shut their eyes tightly during the times tables quiz and open them to all the answers already written onto the page, I had never once thought to question this with anyone and why would I? It wasn’t until a few years later after a particularly rough day of GCSE further maths practice tests that ended in me screaming at the microwave to heat up all of my noodles and not leave the middle cold while I may have been shaking it and it might have caught fire, that my parents sat me down in our living room, 6 years after I was escorted from my school and put into a home schooling programme with my mother, was I told that I was a Witch.

‘A Witch? Like pointy hat and broom stick? Are you out of your fu-’

‘Morgan will you watch your language!’

‘Look, Mum, I’m sorry but did you not think this was something you maybe should have told me, I don’t know, years ago?’ I remember feeling my cheeks burning, I was desperately trying to hold back tears and I don’t even know why I felt like crying. Maybe I felt betrayed, like I had been lied to about who I was for my whole 17 years of life? It had all started to fall into place, not every kid could tie their shoes with their mind and that my mum had replaced them with velcro so that no one noticed my shoelaces flying around.

‘Did you know?’ I accused my father, who had stayed very quiet through this, but then he was always quiet and was mostly always in his office reading... ‘so that’s what you do there, you both play with your magic wands and your potions while I do algebra and read Frankenstein? All this time I’ve been learning how to cook and do the washing, when I could zap it with a magic stick? No wonder you both are so relaxed all the time, you’ve both been able to kick back while I-’

‘Morgan, please, you don’t seem to understand...’ I remember my Dad interrupting my brief meltdown, it may have been an attempt to defuse the situation but at this point I had got myself so riled up there was no way I would have been calmed down with rational talking.

‘So you both thought that hiding this from me would be funny? I bet you both laugh about it thinking I’m some kind of idiot? Why didn’t you at least try to tell me?’

‘You remember that book I got you for your birthday, the first birthday after you-’

‘Yes, expulsion- not my best moment, can we get to the point?’ How my parents used to put up with me amazes me to this day.

‘Did you read it?’

‘Yes. No. I tried. Okay, I read the first page and the last page. But it was a really boring book about knights and the olden days and Merlin and-’ And that’s when it clicked in my mind, I had run up to my room and started throwing books into the floor from my bookshelf looking for that old leather bound history book my Dad had gifted me. At the time I thought he was just trying to get me to do better in History, though I should have been skeptical as I was already getting straight A’s. Finally I found it, behind all the books I had actually read and even behind all my textbooks and school work. I started skimming through the pages until I came across a sentence that near enough screamed at me from the page. Even now I can’t believe I had been so oblivious.

“...Morgana, a powerful enchantress...”

‘Motherfu-’

‘MORGAN!’

And that brings us nicely up to speed, welcome to my first day back at school as a Witch. Now you might be thinking, ‘Well, Morgan, why don’t you just go to Witch school and learn magic, what’s the point in going to a real school if you can just magic everything you will ever need?’ and you would be perfectly right to think like that thanks to all the fiction that’s been published about us magic folk. If I could go to a magic school at night and learn spells with my cat then do you not think that’s what I would be doing? I don’t think that Daisy, my beautiful chocolate Labrador, would like me bringing a cat home anytime soon. I hate to tell you this but it’s not that easy, we walk among you everyday. We could be your neighbour, your friend, that slightly weird looking girl in the local coffee shop with the nose ring. And there’s more of us than you think, from having a few healing crystals to full blown rituals in the woods with bonfires and cloaks. It’s all right under your noses, and I bet you feel really paranoid about it now? Well imagine how I would feel walking into my first class and sitting at my desk, knowing that if anyone were to glimpse into my bag they would see my spellbook. Except they wouldn’t know that, because I had bewitched it into a Hello Kitty notepad. Maybe if I make myself an obvious outcast i’ll be socially rejected anyway and I won’t have to pretend to be normal for any longer than I have to when I’m confined in the walls of the Duchess Grammar School, here in the slightly-grey-but-occasionally-sunny county of Kent.

As I waited in the reception to be collected for my tour of the school I would have to study my A-level in and sit real exams in with other human beings, I noticed myself nervously shifting my weight from side to side, my worn out vans made a quiet squeak on the shiny floor. I wasn’t sure if anyone else could hear it or if having magical powers had somehow improved my hearing, regardless I stopped anyway to avoid being stared at again by the receptionist from behind her big wooden desk. Her computer screen covered her face up to the bridge of her nose, I could see her routinely looking at the clock above my head, at me, and then back at her screen every few minutes. I think she was hoping I would go away soon so she could get back to her important conversation with her boyfriend that she was having on the reception phone before I had interrupted to start my two years of presumed hell.

After what felt like hours a tall, slender girl in tailored black trousers cut above the ankle and a floaty crimson blouse approached me. Her dark hair billowed behind her like she was walking in slow motion, if I had stared any harder I probably would have started drooling, so I quickly fixed my gaze on my feet.

‘Hi Morgan, I’m Isla. I’ll be showing you around.’ A ghostly white hand extended towards me, her silver charm bracelet hung off her bony wrists like the weight of it could topple her if she let it. I looked up at her while shaking her hand sheepishly. ‘Do you have your timetable?’

‘Erm, yeah, it’s in here somewhere...’ I trailed off as I started rummaging through my bag until I found a crumpled piece of paper that I’d stuffed into one of the side pockets. Before I had the chance to open it, Isla grabbed the paper from my hands and skimmed over it, then placed it back in my hands where she had plucked it from.

‘So... History, English Literature and Psychology. That’s a weird mix... but you do have a free period before you have to meet your tutor group so we can unpack that while I show you around.’ She’d already turned around and was walking away before finishing her sentence, she flicked her head back at me and I caught a glimpse of the bluest eyes ive ever seen, not that id seen many people or their eyes in the last few years. There’s also the whole heightened senses thing so maybe her eyes just seemed out of the ordinary to me. But I hadn’t had this reaction to the receptionists muddy brown eyes. I think I was over thinking this as I felt both sets of eyes begin to pierce through me like daggers. ‘Are you coming or not? You might get lost.’

And so I scuttled after her, while she pointed out different parts of the school she threw in what she kept referring to as ‘fun facts’ that were not in the least bit fun. Yet, somehow, she was endearing and I found myself hanging onto every word. I barely made a sound until we reached our final stop on the tour.

‘So this is our common room, it’s basically where we dump all our books and stuff between classes and sit to eat lunch if we have nothing better to do. I prefer to walk into town and grab something there, you’re welcome to join me if you’d like?’

Without missing a beat I nodded vigorously, like my brain was worried she would instantly retract the offer if I let her ponder on it for long enough.

‘Cool. We still have a bit of time before I need to drop you off, got any questions?’

So. Many. Why is this place so big? Why do I need 8 folders for three subjects? Where was everyone now as we were alone in the common room? Why was Isla giving me the tour? Was she some kind of special tour guide for new students who happen to enroll a week late because they had accidentally zapped their phone into a magic mirror that kept talking loudly at inopportune moments?

‘Big school...’ Smooth. She smiled and nodded while stifling a giggle.

‘It is, yeah. But it’s easy to get used to. Was your old school small then?’

‘Yeah, really small.’ Do I tell her I hadn’t been to a school in half a decade? Will she think I’m some kind of freak that doesn’t know how to interact without other human beings? Well if she didn’t already from my awkwardness and terrible social skills, I must be blending in better than I thought. ‘I’ve been homeschooled since I was 11. My Mum doubled as my teacher, not as fun as it sounds.’

‘It could be worse, she could be a teacher and also work at your school.’ said Isla, she pulled her planner out of bag and opened it to the first page where I instantly connected the dots.

‘Ah, so you’re the headmistress’ daughter, that explains the tour and the fact that you seem to walk around her like you own the place.′ She slammed the book shut and smirked.

‘There has to be some perks or what would be the point in suffering? I like you. And because of that, were going to hit one last stop on the tour, one that I don’t normally show to all the newbies.’ Before I could protest I was being dragged wrist first out the door and back though the school towards what I think was the car park. We walked into an older looking building that we had not been in when she showed me around, but I saw a sign on one of the classrooms with a treble clef on it, so I assumed this was the music building. We took a set of stairs up three floors until we were at the top, walked down a narrow corridor that was painted off-white and was cracked and peeling from wear and tear of being hit by school bags and folders. Isla pushed a door open at the end of the corridor, the glass in it had was almost opaque through the thick dust and dirt. We took a left down a smaller, darker corridor that had a large brown door at the end labelled ‘fire exit’, but the door handle was broken off and the door itself had seen better days.

‘Don’t worry, no one ever comes up here. I think there’s like one class a week that uses the room on this floor, and it’s right by the other stairs anyway.’ I think Isla sensed I was feeling uneasy, even magical beings fear the unknown, and strangers taking them into abandoned places that are not frequented by people who can hear you scream.

She pushed gently on the door and revealed another staircase, that I assumed went down to the bottom floor. The walls in this landing were bright white, untouched by schoolchildren, and the carpet was a crisp baby blue with barely a mark on it at all. It was a stark comparison to the rest of the tired and worn out music building. In the corner furthest from the stairs I noticed some pillows and a small pile of books.

‘I come here sometimes to work or just to relax, you know? I prefer it to all the communal spaces around this place, and like I said they hardly ever use this place so your not likely to get bothered by anyone. So... yeah. Feel free to share my safe space if you need to get away for a bit. I guess it will be quite overwhelming starting a new school let alone not having been to one before.’

I had missed out a key detail, but I wasn’t going to correct Isla while she was being so kind towards me. I may have not been to a secondary school, but I remember my years at primary school vividly, and lets just say they were not memories I look back on fondly.

We sat in the stairwell for a few moments, talking about school and other teenage girl things that I had missed out on while being homeschooled like gossip and parties. Isla tapped her phone number into my phone, her long nails clicked on the screen with every digit. She told me the text her later in the day for lunch, and I did. I met some of her friends while we sat in the late september breeze, eating donuts we had picked up from the corner shop on the way into town. There was Gail who was a bubbly brunette, Holden who had a sharp bleached blonde pixie cut and a diamond nose stud on her left side, as well as piercings all up her ears on both sides, and Dorothy, who instantly insisted on being called Dottie and batted her long dark eyelashes at me. These girls were like the group of friends the protagonist in a teen comedy has, they’re all generic with a slight defining feature so you can tell them apart for the purpose of the story, but other than that they blend together in a haze of giggles and teenage girl cliches.

You’re probably thinking that I didn’t have any friends because I was homeschooled, and you would be wrong to assume that. I studied at home but I still had a life, albeit one that I had to hide from my new friends. After finding out I was a Witch just over 6 months ago, my parents began introducing me to what they referred to as my long lost family, which was code for other witches my age who they told me were experiencing the same emotions as me.

To say that was all we had in common is putting it nicely, every single Witch they introduced me to was snobby, elitist and not the least bit interested in being my friend, all they wanted was to have a look at the freakshow that was my life now, and then go back and tell all their friends about what an outcast I am.

All these other girls had known they were witches all their lives, and had grown up surrounded by people who taught them how to master their gift and be open. Basically they all got to go to Witch school, and I didn’t, because my parents wanted me to have an authentic childhood. It was a nice thought of them, but it’s really backfired.

Remember how I said Witch school isn’t a thing? Well it isn’t, but there are schools across England that have small Covens of witches in them, and these schools have special clubs for our kind that are kind of like extra-curricular but not the kind you can put on a CV or university application. If you didn’t know about these clubs you would never notice them, and they are not exactly subtle. They will be the girls who dress up as sexy witches at Halloween, the girls who wear those pointy black kitten heels to school and have coffin acrylics in colours that are definitely against the uniform policy. They will be the girls who never go to parties or social events, but not in a social outcast way, more in a way that makes you think they are too good to interact with mere mortals. The girls who get a brand new BMW on their 17th birthday and pass their driving tests first time, claim the best parking spots at school and never have a spec of dirt on anything from the car to their shoes.

I’m getting a bit carried away about the cars, but I’m not bitter. Okay, I’m a little bitter. All these girls my Mum had tried to palm me off to as a new friend flashed their Witch perks all over social media, every day a new fancy car or a spotless set of acrylics, while I drive my silver ’08 plate Golf to school with my Mum in the passenger seat because I am nowhere near passing my test yet, with or without the help of some convenient magic.

Maybe I didn’t have any friends because I’m a bit judgemental, like how I’d written off all these new Witch friends because they were too out there and stuck up, and was now writing off Isla and her friends because they appeared to be too normal.

Well, not Isla.

Maybe I’m the problem? Should I give them a try?

That can’t be it, I am a delight... nope, it’s definitely me. I’ll try to be nicer from now on, even if I have to magic myself a more pleasant personality. I will make some friends.

‘Morgan?’ Isla’s hand gently touched my wrist, and I noticed jam starting to trickle down my thumb and forefinger like blood where I had squeezed my donut slightly too hard, ‘you okay?’

‘Yes, sorry, I um- I think I just zoned out a bit, probably just overwhelmed...’ I fumbled for an excuse for getting lost in my own thoughts, but Isla smiled reassuringly and lightly tapped the back of my hand as I returned to the conversation, they were talking about heading back to school as Gail had a meeting with her mentee, Quinn, who was struggling with her ‘Medicine through time’ history project.

‘You guys go ahead, we’ll catch you after class’ Isla’s had moved away from mine as she spoke, and the girls started packing up their stuff to head back. ‘Give them a chance, they can be a bit abrasive at first, but they’re sweet girls’ she said softly as they walked out of earshot.

‘No, they seem nice.’ I looked down at my hands and started picking at the navy blue polish.

‘Do you want me to re-do those? I’ve got a polish in my bag.’ before I could say anything, Isla was gripping my hand like she had a steel grip, going over what was left of my polish with a metallic black. I noticed her nails again then, a dark burgundy to match her red blouse, my heart started to beat slightly faster as I studied them. Oh thank god, their oval shaped not coffin. I exhaled and gave in to my new makeshift manicure, and started to give in to the idea of having a friend.