Rhymes With Witches Read Online Free Page B

and there was nothing in her manner that suggested she was kidding. Despite myself I got a chill.
    â€œThe school covered it up, but everyone knows,” she said.
    â€œNot me,” I said.
    Rae gazed at me. “There was a girl. Her name was Sandy. She cared too much what people thought of her, because she was super needy. She really, really, really wanted to be popular.”
    Yeah, well, who doesn’t?
I thought. Although the term “needy” made me shift uncomfortably.
    â€œShe joined with three others,” Rae went on. “One from each grade.”
    â€œThey were losers, too,” Alicia put in. “Right, Rae?”
    Rae plowed on. “But Sandy was the one who did it.”
    â€œDid what?” I asked. I plucked at my jeans, then made myself stop. I told my body to relax.
    â€œThey went to an empty storage room in Hamilton Hall,” Rae said. “One of those rooms where no one ever goes—”
    â€œUp on the third floor,” Alicia contributed.
    â€œâ€”and performed a ritual in the dead of night.” Rae leaned forward. “They offered a sacrifice, and the sacrifice was accepted.”
    â€œWhat … was it?” I said. I couldn’t believe I was asking.
    â€œThey awakened some weird creepy power—and I’m not making this up,” Rae said. “That shit is out there, like when you feel someone watching you, only when you turn around there’s no one there. Or like when you do the Ouija board, and it really does work.”
    â€œThat happened at Lisette’s slumber party, in seventh grade,” Alicia said. “You remember, Jane. It said that a boy whose name started with a C was going to ask Lisette out, and one week later she was going steady with Casper Langdon.”
    Rae silenced Alicia with a look of disdain. To me, she said, “I’m telling you, it’s out there. Shit that no one sees.”
    My heart was doing something I didn’t like. I swallowed and repeated my question. “What did they sacrifice?”
    Rae pressed her oversized lips in a line. “A cat.”
    â€œA
cat
?” My tension broke, and a laugh, or something like it, squeezed out of me. For a second there … all that bullshit about deserted schools and the dead of night … but Rae’s whole story was ridiculous. Next she’d be telling me that’s why the feral cats had taken over the school. As payback, or because they were spooks, or because they now had to haunt the place where the first had been slain. Demon cats. Devil cats.
Ooooo-oooo.
    Rae got angry. “They slit its throat. Or rather, Sandy did. You think that’s funny?”
    â€œYes,” I said.
    â€œAnd then she died.”
    â€œWell, duh, that’s what happens when your throat gets slit.” I felt buoyant. My lungs had lost their tightness.
    â€œNot the cat,” Rae said sharply. “Sandy.”
    Nuh-uh, she wasn’t getting me again. “Oh, please.”
    â€œAnd her soul … it fed the power. Made it grow stronger.”
    â€œYou are so full of it,” I said.
    â€œAnd
that’s
what created the Bitches.” Rae got to her feet. “That’s why you like them, because you have no choice.”
    â€œWhy wasn’t it in the papers?” I asked. “Why wasn’t the school shut down?”
    She looked at me in a way that was supposed to make me think she felt sorry for me. She huffed out of the room, taking Alicia’s brush with her.
    â€œIt’s not funny, Jane,” Alicia said angrily. “It’s, like, witchcraft.
Real
witchcraft.”
    â€œOnly it’s not
witch
craft, it’s
Bitch
craft,” I said. I giggled at my wit, but Alicia didn’t crack a smile.
    â€œYou need to stay clear of them,” she said.
    I leaned back on my elbows and crossed one foot over the other. I let my head drop back so that the ends of my hair grazed the carpet. “Thanks,