ALL NOVEL 11. Thousand Word Stare
Me and Kaylee both stopped in our tracks the moment we stepped into Miss Hawthorne's classroom. Instead of my favourite teacher and Club Luna sponsor, there was a strange man sitting at May's desk.
He had a scowl on his face as he was obviously watching the clock and waiting for everyone to sit down before the bell rang. The guy looked somewhere between sixty and a hundred years old, and even though he was seated I could tell he was tall and kind of skinny.
His short thinning hair was grey but light enough to be almost white, and there was a balding spot on the top. He wore silver wire-rim glasses, and his long narrow face was mostly shaved, with a few grey whiskers poking out here and there. He was wearing a button-down shirt and tie, dark pants, and a brown and grey tweed jacket.
The name 'Mr. Graves' was written on the blackboard, and as I finally moved to take my seat at the back I noticed every desk had a little pile of paper and a pencil on top.
Me and Kaylee exchanged a look, but neither of us said anything. And in the next minute or so, everyone else was in their seat too.
As soon as the bell rang the old guy at the teacher's desk stated "My name is Mr. Graves, I'll be taking care of Miss Hawthorne's classes while she's away. There are two things that I do not allow in my class, and they are talking and technology. If I see students using phones, tablets, or other electronic devices, they will be confiscated and delivered to the office at the end of the day."
He talked in a low gruff monotone voice, and I couldn't help but think of that school policy thing Kaylee mentioned earlier. Like every school had to have an ogre, and with Mr. Guthrie away they sent this guy to be our replacement ogre.
It also felt like there must be a policy that put a limit on cool teachers. Like we got Mrs. Reeves as a substitute math teacher, so they had to take Miss Hawthorne away or we'd have too many nice teachers.
There were a bunch of sighs and groans about the 'no tech' thing, but nobody tried to argue yet.
Mr. Graves continued, "As this is a Creative Writing class, you will spend it writing. I've provided paper and pencils, you will each pick an activity or event you did or experienced over the weekend and describe it in detail to the best of your abilities. One thousand words minimum, I will be collecting the papers at the end of the class. Begin."
That led to even more groans and a few surprised gasps. Like coming up with a thousand words in under an hour was bad enough. Having to do it without spell-check or undo or anything else seemed crazy.
"Dude," one of the guys spoke up, "If you want us to write at least let us use the tools we normally use!"
"The written word has been around for several thousand years," Graves said in his grumbly monotone voice. "Students in ancient Mesopotamia learned to write by marking clay tablets with reeds. The first typewriters only appeared a hundred and fifty years ago. If you can write, you can write with anything."
Someone in the far corner grumbled, "If we can write with anything then why can't we use our phones or tablets?"
Graves stated, "One thousand words, and I will be grading on penmanship and spelling as well as content."
Kaylee raised her hand and asked, "Mr. Graves sir? Do you know what happened to Miss Hawthorne?"
"No," was all the grouchy old substitute had to say on that subject. He added, "From now until the end of class the only sound I want to hear is pencils on paper."
There were more groans and a few grumbled complaints as everyone gradually picked up the pencils and got started. And Mr. Graves sat quietly at the teacher's desk and just stared at everyone.
At least I didn't have to put too much thought into picking a topic. I wrote about my mum's birthday and the fancy dinner on Friday. Coming up with a thousand words felt like a lot, but I padded it by describing everything I could think of in as much detail as I could remember. And for things where I couldn't remember all the details, I just made stuff up.
The toughest part about having to use pencil and paper meant we couldn't backspace and we didn't have auto-correct, so there was a lot of scribbling-out mistakes and making corrections in the margins.
The second-toughest thing was about halfway through the class I realized there was no way of knowing how many words I'd written or how many more I had to go in order to hit a thousand. Apart from actually counting them of course, but that would waste time that I needed to write. So I stopped worrying about the word count and just kept going, in hopes that I'd hit the requirement by the end of the period.
At one point Mr. Graves spoke up again, "Make sure to write your full names at the top of every page, and put the page number at the bottom of each page."
Other than that, the room was almost completely silent apart from the sound of everybody writing. It was actually one of the quietest classes I could remember, outside of writing exams.
When the bell finally rang there were more groans, and some relieved sighs. Our new temporary teaching ogre stood by the door and collected our papers as we all filed past him out into the hall.
As usual I ended up walking next to Kaylee as the two of us left class. She gave me a worried look and said, "Let's get to the cafeteria. Hopefully Paige has heard from Brooke by now."
I nodded in agreement as the two of us headed off for lunch.
One of the benefits of a small school was the cafeteria never got too busy. The downside was they never had a great selection of food and it was almost always the same handful of choices. So a lot of students like me and Kaylee brought lunch from home instead. Or sometimes students would leave and go grab something to eat elsewhere, but we didn't have a lot of nearby options for that either.
The two of us visited our lockers and grabbed our packed lunches, then hurried to the cafeteria to find our friends.
A minute or so later we were sitting with Paige, who'd bought a chicken-wrap and a bottle of spring water from the cafeteria. Meanwhile I had a bottle of juice and a tuna sandwich my mom made me this morning, and Kaylee had a little plastic container full of pasta salad.
"Did you talk to Miss Hawthorne?" Paige asked as soon as we joined her. "What did she say, did she know where Brooke is?"
Kaylee sighed and shook her head, "Miss Hawthorne wasn't there, we had another substitute teacher. I guess you haven't heard back from Brooke yet?"
"Damn," the tall brunette sighed. "Nothing at all yet from Brooke. No texts, no emails."
The cute redhead frowned as she opened the lid on her salad. Before she started eating she pulled her phone out of her backpack and said, "I'll text May. Even if she's not at school today, she might still know something."
Kaylee dropped her voice to a whisper and added, "Or maybe she can scry for Brooke."
I swallowed a mouthful of tuna then asked quietly, "Can't either of you do that scrying stuff?"
Paige sighed again, "We can try, but neither of us are very good at it. It's actually Brooke's specialty. Scrying is a kind of divination, and she's really good at that."
She grinned slightly and added, "Kind of silly but Brooke will never loose her keys or her phone or anything else like that. Or if she did misplace something, she could find it again in an instant."
I smiled as well, "That's pretty handy."
"Even though we aren't as good at it as her," Kaylee said softly, "We should still give it a try? As soon as we're done lunch, before the next period starts."
Paige agreed, and as the three of us ate we quietly discussed where would be the safest place to go try some scrying. It didn't take long to settle on the library, since it was quiet and there were study cubicles at the back that I knew were usually empty.
When we were finished eating we all got up and headed to the library. There was one detour, our trash went into a garbage bin and Kaylee's plastic dishes and stuff went back into her locker.
As I led my two friends into the library Ms. Sutton greeted me, "Hello dear."
"Hi Ms. Sutton," I responded, then I motioned Kaylee and Paige to follow me through to the far end.
Sure enough the study cubicles were empty so we pulled chairs out of two of them and all three of us squeezed into one at the end.
I looked at the others and asked, "So how do we do this?"
Kaylee replied, "There's actually a few different ways to do it. Paige? What do you want to try?"
After a few seconds to think it over the tall brunette half-whispered, "If it's the family thing again, there's a few places she could be. Or she might still be at home? Either way, the method I know best requires a map. The spell will point to her location."
"Do you mean like the map app on your phone?" I asked. "Actually isn't there already an app for that? Like to find where your friends are?"
Kaylee smiled, "Spells like this are from long before there were smartphones Cass. We need an actual physical map for this stuff."
"And those friend-tracking apps are an awful security risk," Paige added.
A moment later she got a thoughtful look, "Mind you, if I could replicate that with magic it might work better for me than traditional scrying. I'll have to look into it, but I might be able to come up with a spell that interfaces with the wireless network."
Kaylee smiled, "That's a great idea! Except we usually turn our phones off or leave them behind when we're doing magic stuff. You and May both said electronics can interfere or distract when we're working on spells."
"I know," Paige shrugged. "I'm still going to work on it later. But for now, I guess we need a physical map so I can try some old-school scrying."
"Just a sec, I'll be right back."
I knew where Ms. Sutton kept the maps, so I quickly navigated through the stacks and aisles to the right spot. It only took a few seconds to grab a map of the town, and just in case I also took a map of the whole region too. Then I hurried back and rejoined the others.
I handed over the two maps, "Here you go."
"Thanks Cass," Paige grinned.
She unfolded the town map and spread it out on the cubicle desk, then reached up around her neck and took off a necklace she was wearing. It was a small polished green rock in a little gold-coloured setting, hanging from a simple gold chain.
As she removed it she blushed slightly and said, "Brooke gave me this back around the end of September. It should help me focus on her."
Kaylee explained, "Scrying works best when you have a focus that's connected to the person or thing you're seeking. That's why you sometimes see in movies or TV shows where a medium will ask for something belonging to the missing person?"
Paige was still blushing as she added, "The necklace was a gift from Brooke, so instead of being a direct connection to her I'm going to tap into the emotional connection between the two of us. The necklace will help me focus on the emotions which should strengthen the connection. Then the spell uses that to tell us where she is."
I nodded quietly and watched as she held the necklace over the map. The polished stone was sort of gently swaying or swinging in a little circle.
She whispered quietly as she used the Word, and when she used the Way I felt a very faint flutter in the air and saw a soft purple glow around the necklace.
Even though I'd been a witch for a whole month now, I still thought it was really cool seeing and experiencing magic. Like we were three real live actual witches, doing a real magic spell in the school library during lunch.
Or at least, we were trying to do a real magic spell.
The necklace kept swaying in a gentle circle, but it never seemed to point in any particular direction. Paige was continuing her focus and whispering and everything, and I could see the purple glow so I knew there was still magic happening, but it didn't appear to be working.
After a couple minutes she sighed and her shoulders slumped in defeat. She dropped the necklace onto the map and said in a dejected voice, "It's not working. I'm not getting anything."
With another sigh she added, "This is why Brooke's so much better at this stuff. She'd have figured it out in ten seconds flat."
Kaylee told her, "Don't get too down on yourself Paige. Why don't you try again? I'm going to try calling Miss Hawthorne."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" I asked.
Paige gave me a sad smile, "Not really Cass. Thanks for offering though."
She took a deep breath, then picked up the necklace and started over. Meanwhile Kaylee pulled out her phone and tried to call our missing teacher.
The cute redhead listened to her phone for a half minute then spoke into it, "Hi May it's Kaylee. If you get this message, please check your texts and emails. We're trying to find Brooke but no luck yet."
"Voicemail?" I asked as Kaylee tapped the red button on her screen.
"Yeah," she sighed.
After another minute or so Paige gave up again on the scrying. "I can't do it. After school I'm going to go over to her place and see if she's home, or if her family knows what's up."
"Ok Paige," Kaylee said. "We should probably get going, lunch is almost over."
All three of us got to our feet, then the athletic brunette gave me a wry grin and asked "Hey Cass? Are you actually coming to gym for a change?"
We were both in the same gym class, though I didn't actually realize that till about two weeks ago. Neither did she, since I skipped so much she hadn't even known I was supposed to be there. Kaylee wasn't taking gym, she was smart and took music instead.
I blushed, "No. I was just going to put the maps back, then see if Ms. Sutton needed any help this afternoon. I'll see you afterwards at the computer lab."
Kaylee added, "And I'll see both of you after school."
She wasn't taking programming with me and Paige, she had history after her music class.
"Right," I nodded.
As they headed for the exit I put the two maps away, then I went to check with Ms. Sutton to see if there was anything she needed me to do.
