Chasing the White Witch (9 page)

"W
hat
in the world did you mean?” demanded Hollis.

“Well, you see, Sydney Crosby is number 87 …” I began, but she cut me off.

“No, no, no!” she shouted. “Not that! About my life! You said my life was boring. And bland. What exactly did you mean by that?”

My eyebrows tangled. Here I'd gotten the address — well, almost the address — of the White Witch and she gets all up in arms about some mindless little commentary. “Oh
thaaat
,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It was only an excuse to get us out of there —” I stopped and thought about what I'd said. “But now that you mention it …”

“Oh. So you
do
think that. You think my life is bland. Boring,” she spat. “Well I'll have you know that I happen to lead a pretty exciting life. Way more exciting than your pathetic little existence. Like the beauty pageants I'm in. They are totally exciting — no, thrilling. Yes. My mother says they are thrilling beyond imagination. She says they're suspenseful. And adventurous. And …”

“Hold on,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. Now, you'd think I'd have been angry at the
pathetic little existence
crack, but when I looked deep into her stormy-sea eyes, I saw more than just anger raging there. I think my comment hurt her somehow. Really hurt her. And then to make matters worse, I said something, that in hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have. Unfortunately I have this horrible habit of speaking first and thinking later. “Seems to me your mother ought to be in those pageants instead of you if she finds them so beyond thrilling.”

Her eyes were boring holes into my skull as she shrugged her shoulder away from my hand. If looks could kill I'd have been reduced to atoms. It was written all over her face. What I'd said was haunting her. For the first time, I began to suspect that Hollis didn't like those beauty pageants half as much as she claimed. Then she put a hand to her head and squinted and I could tell she was getting one of her headaches. I had to get her de-hexed as quickly as possible.

“Come on,” I said, my voice a little softer and a little gentler than usual. “I've got the address. So now all we need is a post office.”

“A post office?” she sighed, her menacing look transforming back to frustration. “Why in the world would we need a post office if we have the address?”

“Well, because it's not exactly an address,” I said, turning and scouting up and down the street for a drug store. Drug stores often had post offices within them. “It's a post office box number, remember?”

She sighed again and began following me up the street. “Nothing is ever simple with you, is it?” The venom had left her voice. She no longer loathed and despised me. She was back to merely hating me. I also wondered if she was beginning to see that complicated could be, well, thrilling.

“Excuse me,” I said to a man in a grey suit, hurrying past us. “Do you know where there's a post office around here?”

He stopped long enough to point a long arm toward the opposite side of the street. “Two blocks up. Beside a vintage clothing store.”

We walked along the busy sidewalk without saying another word. I was busy crafting my elaborate plan. I had no idea what Hollis was thinking about. Perhaps she was contemplating the latest fashion designs displayed in the shop windows — but I suspected she was still thinking about what I'd said.

The post office was on the far corner, inside a drug store, as I'd suspected. I think Hollis had pretty much resigned herself to the fact that I was, shall we say, a tad unorthodox in my approach to life. All right, she thought I was just plain nuts. She didn't even question me when I purchased a large bubble-padded envelope. Or when I took off my shoes and then removed my socks and placed them inside the envelope, sealing it shut. She seemed to be watching me helplessly as I slipped my shoes back on and then sauntered up to the counter. Using a post office pen, I wrote:
W. White, P.O. Box 8799, Toronto, ON, L8T 4S2
in the centre of the package. I left the return address blank.

I turned toward Hollis, holding the envelope up for her to see. I grinned. “You are as good as de-hexed.”

“I know I'm going to regret asking,” she said. “But why, Claire? Why are you sending the White Witch your stinky socks? And how in the world is that supposed to get me de-hexed?”

“Glad you asked,” I said. “First, I'm sending my socks because I needed to send something and unless you're willing to give up those lovely dangling earrings …” Her hands shot to her ears in defence. “Yeah. I thought so. And how is this going to de-hex you, you ask? Easy-peasy, cheddar cheesy.”

I placed the envelope on the counter and dinged the little silver bell once. A short, stocky clerk with mousy-brown hair appeared from the back room. She had a rather stern look about her.

“Hello,” I said, politeness dripping from every syllable. “I'd like to send this package special delivery. Same-day service.”

The clerk took the envelope and placed it on a scale. Next, she got out a measuring tape and calculated its size. “That will be twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents,” she announced in a monotone voice.

I gulped. I knew my plan wasn't going to be cheap, but had had no clue as to just how expensive it was going to be. I dug into my pocket and pulled out a wad of crumpled bills and loose change. I calculated quickly. I had enough. Just enough. Enough to pay for the package and get Hollis and me to the next and final stop in our journey. I didn't necessarily have enough money to get us home, but I made two split-second decisions:

1. I'd worry about that bridge when it was time to cross it (even if it meant having to go for a quick swim).

2. I would not disclose our financial crisis to Hollis.

This plan was going to work, I told myself. It was foolproof.

“Great,” I said, handing over the money to the lady. I watched her place a computer-generated sticker on the envelope.

“No return address?” she asked. It sounded more like a statement given the lack of inflection in her voice. “It's always a good idea to include one in case the package gets lost.”

I shook my head. “No worries. I'll be seeing this package again soon enough.” She looked at me with a deadpan expression, shrugged her shoulders, and then placed the package on the counter behind her.

“So, um, when will it get sent out?” I asked.

“Shortly,” she said. “I can guarantee it will get to its destination today.”

“Perfect,” I said. “That's all I need to know.” I turned toward Hollis and ushered her a few steps away from the counter. “Now,” I said, digging out Jordan's phone from my pocket. “All we need to do is find the post office box location …”

“Um, Claire,” said Hollis.

“Not now,” I said, connecting to the Internet and bringing up my favourite browser.

“But, Claire,” said Hollis again, tugging on my sleeve.

I yanked it away. “Quit bugging me,” I said. “Can't you see I'm trying to discover the location of the post office box?” I typed in
Reverse Postal Code Locator
and hit Enter.

“Claire, I think you should see this —” said Hollis.

“Honestly, Hollis. I've almost found the location of the post office box,” I snarled. I quickly entered the postal code L8T 4S2 and pressed Enter again.

“Claire!” shouted Hollis, grabbing me by the shoulders and spinning me around to face the clerk at the counter. I looked up just in time to see her strolling out from behind the counter with my package under her arm! She held a set of keys. My jaw dropped as I watched her open a tiny metal door in the centre of a wall full of post office boxes.

I looked down at Jordan's phone. Post office boxes serving the postal code L8T 4S2 were in this very drug store!

Fuming, I jammed Jordan's cellphone into my pocket and marched, fists clenched, right up to the clerk just as she was locking the box.

“
This
is the location of the post office box?” I said, anger oozing from each and every pore. It was definitely meant to be a statement — a rather annoyed statement, I might add — but the clerk took it to be a question.

“I'm sorry,” she responded dryly, “but I'm not at liberty to disclose that information.”

“What? But I just saw you!” I said. “Do you mean to tell me that I just paid twenty-six dollars and thirty-five cents for you to walk five steps?”

“Five steps. Fifty kilometres. It's all the same to the post office, young lady,” she said. Then, for the first time, she smiled. It was the kind of smile you just want to slap off someone's face. “I told you your package would arrive today.”

N
ow
what?” asked Hollis, checking her watch. It was about a quarter to one.

“What do you mean,
now what?
” I said, rolling my eyes and shaking my head. To me it was as logical as lighting the fuse of a firecracker and then standing back and watching it explode. “We wait, of course.”

“We wait.” Hollis nodded.

“We wait.” I nodded.

“And how long do we wait, Claire? Hours? Days? Months?” Her voice was rising again. I was afraid if it rose any higher, it might start shattering glass.

“Oh don't be ridiculous,” I said. “The White Witch will come. She'll be here. She'll pick up her mail before the end of the day. I'm sure of it. I can feel it in my bones.” I shivered for effect.

“Before the end of the day …” Hollis echoed. She continued to nod. She was beginning to look like a little bobble-head. She also smiled sweetly — so sweetly I was lulled into a false sense of security. I almost didn't see it coming when she let loose and began attacking me. Her delicate hands flailed like a wild windmill. I had to grab hold of her wrists to stop the onslaught.

“Will you get control of yourself already?” I hissed. I motioned my head toward the clerk who was eyeing us and frowning. “You're going to get us kicked out!”

She broke free from my grasp. After several deep breaths and some kind of yoga-Zen calming technique, Hollis had settled down enough for me to explain. I told her that I'd seen a doughnut shop across the street. We'd go and sit there. We'd watch every person who entered and exited the drug store. The one carrying our package would be the White Witch. I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with such a perfect plan under such incredible pressure. Hollis was skeptical as usual.

“I need to be home before my parents, or they will kill me. What if this White Witch person doesn't show? What if she picks up her mail after work?”

The thought had crossed my mind, but I'd quickly dismissed it. “No way. She's a writer. She probably works from home. She probably doesn't keep regular hours. She's coming. I don't know how I know. I just do. Listen, we still have a few hours before we need to be home. And I say
we
, Hollis, because
I
need to be home too, remember?”

Relief seeped into her expression. I think she figured if I needed to be home, too, she was safe.

“So we just hang out a while longer, okay?” I continued. “If we leave here empty-handed today, all we'll have lost is our time.” I wriggled my uncomfortable toes. “And my socks.”

I think she realized that at this point she had nothing left to lose. “You promise we'll leave no later than three o'clock?”

“Promise,” I said. And I meant it. I really did. The only problem was bus fare. We technically still had enough money to get us home — if we didn't eat anything at the doughnut shop.

I crossed the street, hanging onto Hollis's arm while walking backwards. Probably not the safest thing to do, but I couldn't risk letting the drugstore out of my sight for even a nanosecond. I had to scrutinize every woman who entered and exited the place. With my rotten luck, I'd probably end up blinking and miss the White Witch altogether.

Inside the doughnut shop I snatched a seat by the window where there were several old stools along a thin counter. Hollis insisted on having a pop and a cruller. I dug into my pocket and tried not to let her see I was counting. There wasn't enough money, and though visions of apple fritters danced in my head, I fought the urge to scarf one down.

“Here you go,” I said, handing her a couple of bucks. “Knock yourself out.”

“Don't you want anything?” she asked.

“Nah,” I lied. “I'm not hungry. That stromboli was really filling.” I patted my stomach.

For the longest time I sat gazing at the drugstore entrance. A few women came and went, but none that looked even remotely like a White Witch. I got excited at one point when this woman with long, blond hair wearing a red poncho walked in. I sprang from my seat and was poised to bolt out the door, but the woman exited the store empty-handed. I sunk back down onto my stool. I leaned on the counter, holding my head in my hands, trying to focus my mind on the White Witch. Maybe I could somehow channel her with my thoughts and drag her to her mailbox telepathically. Okay. I was getting desperate.

Hollis was sipping her pop and nibbling on her cruller. All the while, I contemplated exactly what a White Witch might look like. Was she tall and thin or short and stocky? Maybe she was tall and stocky. Did she have brown hair? Black hair? Chestnut hair with auburn highlights? For some reason, I kept thinking blond. No — not blond — silver-white. And old. Yes, she was very old. Maybe hundreds of years old. She would most likely be wearing Gothic-style clothing. Definitely something draping. A cape, of course. That was it. I had a clear vision of the person I was seeking and my posture swelled with new confidence.

Maybe it was this new confidence, or maybe it was that after a half hour of staring out the window I was slightly bored. Whatever the reason, I suddenly found myself blurting out, “So why exactly do you hate me, Hollis?”

“What?” she said, practically choking on her last bite of cruller.

“You heard me,” I said, keeping my eyes trained on the drugstore. “I know you do. I just want to know why.”

“I-I don't
hate
you,” she stammered.

“You're such liar,” I said, cutting her off. I could feel my cheeks getting warm, but I refused to look at her. I wasn't going to miss the White Witch, not even for the chance to watch Hollis squirm. “You have been on my case forever. You are always making fun of me. Don't you think I know what you and your gargoyle friends are all saying about me?”

I think when you have enough nerve to ask a direct question, you end up giving people the courage to give you a direct answer, because that's exactly what happened.

“Look, Claire. It's pretty hard not to laugh at you. You're always doing these really goofy things.”

“Oh, so I'm
goofy
, am I?” Deep in my gut, I knew there was some truth to what she was saying — knowing is one thing, but hearing someone actually say it out loud is another.

“Yes. Goofy,” she said. “Like that time you came to school speaking with a German accent.”

“You made me feel like a total idiot!” I said.

“Trust me, you didn't need my help. You were doing fine all on your own.”

I glared out the window. A little old lady with silver-white hair had just entered the drugstore. I barely took notice of her. How dare Hollis call me an idiot? Foreign accents were cool. What did she know?

“It wasn't German. It was actually Scandinavian, if you must know,” I spat.

“Vot vos zat?”
she said, breaking into hysterical laughter. I wanted to slug her. It took every last bit of energy in my body to restrain myself and keep watching the drugstore. A really tall, bald man entered. He was wearing a Miami Dolphins football jersey over a turtleneck sweater. He was so huge that he might have actually been a football player or basketball player — almost seven feet tall. He had to duck to pass through the doorframe.

“And what about that time you came to school wearing two different shoes?” she said. “Oh — and how about the time your eyebrows disappeared?”

Now Hollis was just plain asking for it. My fingers curled into a fist — my skin stretching white over my knuckles. But before I could raise my hand, she spoke.

“Anyway,” she said, her laughter dying and her expression morphing into something serious, “I guess that's what I hate about you …”

My fingers slackened and my brow furled. Three more people entered the drugstore, but I couldn't begin to tell you what they looked like, I was so taken aback by Hollis's comment. I forgot what I was supposed to be doing and turned to face her.

“… the fact that you not only were
allowed
to come to school looking like that, but the fact that you actually
did
.”

Something had changed — but I wasn't quite getting it yet. Why in the world would Hollis hate me for going to school eyebrowless or wearing two different shoes? Laugh at me? Sure. Tease me? Okay. But hate me? I didn't get it.

“First off,” she continued, “my mother examines me tip to toe and has to approve every single strand of hair before she lets me out of the house. Wearing two different shoes? Ha!” Hollis scoffed. “She'd sooner lock me in a closet for the rest of my life than to let me out of the house looking like that.”

I was beginning to understand. Hollis's mother was a control freak. She forced her to enter those beauty pageants. She made her dress so perfectly. Act perfectly. It wasn't so much that Hollis never did anything wrong — it was that she wasn't
allowed
to do anything wrong!

“And maybe even worse,” Hollis said, her voice dropping to a whisper, “is that, even if by some bizarre fluke my mother actually let me go looking like that, I just couldn't. I'd die a thousand deaths. The other girls would never let me live it down. They watch me like a hawk, just waiting for me to mess up so that they can pounce on me.”

For a second, Hollis looked almost sad — helpless — then her expression changed again. “… and there
you
are,” she said, her voice now thick with resentment, “walking around without a care in the world. You do whatever you want without a thought as to what others think or say.”

And there it was. Hollis didn't hate me — she resented me. She was not this stuck-up snob all full of herself. She was insecure. Deathly afraid to fall off her high pedestal.

“I don't get it,” I said. “Why would Tiffany and Tenisha want you to mess up? They're your friends.”

“Friends?” She gave a wry chuckle. “Is that what you call them?”

Hollis had lost me again. Why wouldn't they be her friends? They were always around her giggling and gossiping. They did everything together at school. Isn't that what you call friendship? Paula-Jean and I hung around because she was my BFF. Even when she was madder than spit at me, deep down I knew Paula-Jean was still my best friend.

“You're so naive, Claire,” said Hollis. “Tiffany, Tenisha, Cheyenne — they only hang around me because I'm popular. It makes them popular, too. They suck up to me like there's no tomorrow. But they don't mean any of it. And I know it. They'd love to see me go down. And like a bunch of vultures they'd be all over me picking my bones clean.”

The image was vile. But I kind of liked thinking of those girls as vultures — a bit of a change from gargoyles.

“So why do you hang around them?” I said.

She rubbed her temples with her fingertips. Headache, I thought. A big one.

“Who else do I have?” she asked.

My silence spoke volumes.

“Exactly,” she said. “You say,
I
hate you, Claire — but you're the one who hates me.”

I was fighting myself. I didn't want to admit she was right. Maybe it wasn't just that she hated me — maybe I was part and parcel to all the hating. And maybe it was time I admitted a few things to Hollis and to myself.

“Okay. Maybe there's a crumb of truth in what you're saying. Hate is a strong word. Maybe I, well,
dislike
you. A little,” I said. “But it's because you're so perfect. And you're so pretty. And popular. And I'm …well, I'm … I guess I'm just not.”

“Look, Claire,” said Hollis, “sometimes, you've just got to make peace with reality.”

I frowned. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Well, accept the fact that you're not the most beautiful girl in the world, for starters.”

My jaw felt limp. I heard her, but I couldn't believe what she was saying. She was horrible. Awful. The meanest person I'd ever met. “Easy for you to say, since you are.”

“Me? Are you kidding?” She laughed. “If all those beauty pageants have taught me anything, it's that there is always, and I mean
always
, someone prettier out there. It's like I said, you just need to make peace with reality.”

I looked at Hollis. And then I knew. She wasn't so different from me, after all. In fact, I think we were a lot alike.

I opened my mouth to say something. Then I closed it. This time, I was actually going to think before I spoke. Should I apologize to her for all the nasty things I'd ever thought and said about her? Should I tell her I finally understood her? Should I tell her I was happy I'd cursed her — since it gave us a chance to get to know each other? I decided to just reach over and give her a great big Claire-bear hug.

I flung my arms around her. At first, I could feel her body bristle, but then she let loose and hugged me back. It was a great moment and it may have actually led to some sort of lasting friendship-type-thing, if I hadn't looked over her shoulder and out the window. At that very moment, I saw something that turned my entire world upside down — someone was leaving the drugstore carrying my big bubble envelope.