That Witch! Read Free Page A

Her light-brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun as always, brown-eyed stare looking over the class, sizing up each and every student, even though she probably already knew who’d passed and who’d failed.
    The bell rang, and most of Brynn’s fellow classmates scattered like rats from a burning building. Brynn hung back to avoid the crowded rush and the lackadaisical bodies meandering through the halls. She quietly gathered her book and pen and the notebook that went everywhere with her. It was filled with all her silly, random musings—from things she loved to things that bothered her, and little notes about songs and bands or books she wanted to remember. The equivalent of a journal, she supposed.
    Brynn made her way out to the crowded hall, pushing past all the tragically hip and the devastatingly beautiful, through the nerds huddling around their comic books and the jocks who hit on cheerleaders every chance they got. She navigated through the masses and back toward her locker to grab the book for her next class.
    Lost in thought, she dug through her locker, oblivious to anything and everything around her. She kept her face hidden, just in case Cassidy wanted to taunt her again. She thought if she could just avoid any more confrontation today, everything would be okay, and she could go back to being another invisible blip far off Cassidy Rivers’s radar. She kept her head low until her bestie, Laura, popped up beside her.
    “So, how did it go?” Laura asked, plum lips spread in a smile as she tucked her purple-dyed hair behind her multipierced ear.
    “Good, I guess,” Brynn quietly responded as she slung her backpack over her shoulder. She had everything ready to go, all the books she needed for her homework, so when the last bell of the day rang, she could bolt straight out to her car without having to fight through the circles of all the other students. “There wasn’t anything I couldn’t answer.”
    “Awesomeness!”
    “Yeah.” Brynn laughed softly. “You coming over tonight for movies and pizza?”
    “Well, duh! It’s Friday night, right?”
    “True story. Mom wants to take me shopping tomorrow, but I totally don’t want to go.”
    As soon as Brynn turned from her locker, she spotted Cassidy charging her way through the crowd like a rabid beast. Okay, maybe that was a huge exaggeration. Maybe Cassidy was sauntering or taking light, even steps. But every time Brynn saw Miss Perfect Princess, her mind conjured images of evil witches with hooked noses and monsters from the great beyond. Though truthfully, Cassidy didn’t resemble any of those things. She was beautiful, too beautiful, and maybe that’s why Brynn painted a horrific picture of the girl most likely to become a supermodel.
    “What are you looking at?” Cassidy snapped, but she didn’t stop walking. She didn’t wait for Brynn’s response.
    Brynn would’ve lied anyway. She would’ve said she’d been checking out that crazy knotted necklace hanging from Cassidy’s neck, but truth be told, it was Cassidy she couldn’t take her eyes off of. As much as she hated Cassidy Rivers as a person, she couldn’t help the bizarre attraction she had to the other girl.
    “Earth to Brynn,” Laura said, waving her hand in front of Brynn’s face. “You in there?”
    Brynn shook her head. “Huh? What? Yeah, I’m here.”
    “God, why would you stare at her like that? Don’t you know better by now?”
    “I don’t know what came over me.”
    “Whatever it was, you’d better get over it fast before you end up as a big red dot on Cassidy’s radar.”
    True story. Very, very true. When Cassidy locked in on a target, she didn’t forget them until they were completely and utterly destroyed, and Brynn didn’t want to be a last-minute name added to Cassidy’s “pulverize before high school is over” list.
    “Can we just go?” Brynn said as she took her first steps away from her locker. Laura promptly followed, hanging tight to