25th
When I Was A Teenaged Witch
The morning commute is still a bitch even if you are the most powerful witch in high school. The subway rocks her back into dreams still fresh with the scent of nail polish and séances. Hair is light, light brown — not blond, not gold — and as oily as cheeks flushed pink with the obnoxious blush of fifteen. Her face flushes through too, forming a tender promise to the future.
She’s already figured out that other girls are prettier, but that they are more ordinary. She also knows that one day she will be prettier than they are, and that this may make her more ordinary too.
All of the girls in the coven though are not ordinary, not really. Each have something to call their own – the apparition of endless limbs elongated by awkwardness, finding their sea legs at dive bars – a thick under lip that gives the lie to a still graceless nose and chin — a velvet band choking the dirty sliver of a neck. They dream of bedding bad boys with pinched bodies, holding silver cigarette cases and big-time deals in between jutting hipbones and gaunt, gaunt thighs.
But for now they’ve been up all night drinking black coffee on Avenue A and laughing at the scowling waitress with the beady eyes.
“Do you want something to eat?”
“No, we just want some more f—ing coffee.”
The collegiate “g” rolls off pink tongues in the staccato of money and private school. But to each other: “Where do you think you’ll be in 10 years from now? Where do you think I will be?”
For now they light candles, purple and gold, to engrave boys’ names upon with bitten French manicures. Emerging and terrible, their spells are powerful, but no doubt less powerful than the women that they will one day become.
But they cast the spells anyway. Just to make sure.
