Chapter 1

I’m having one of those I-can’t-get-the-lid-off-of-the-stupid-peanut-butter-jar kinds of days.  Of course I could go beg my brother to get it off for me – but that would just be lame.  Besides, he’d probably come pop the lid off with one hand on his first try and look over at me with a smirk and some rude demeaning comment about girls and their lack of muscles.

            I might go so low as to call up my boyfriend if he weren’t off on vacation in California with his family right now, but he is, so I can’t.  Calling up anybody for help opening a peanut butter jar is probably a lame excuse for a phone call in the first place though – so it’s probably better that I can’t call him.

            So instead of doing something lame and sensible like asking for help I have a glaring contest with the peanut butter jar – which it ultimately wins because it can’t blink.  My eyes start burning and then tearing up, and I can’t tell if it’s because I haven’t blinked in a couple of minutes or because I’m so angry at that stupid lid that I’m crying about it.

            I glower at the jar and feel bad for myself for a few minutes.  Can’t I even have my own lame-o peanut butter sandwich without help?  - Apparently the answer is no.

            So I growl at the jar and then shove it back in the fridge, stomping out of the kitchen and over to the living room.  I glare at my brother, who rolls his eyes at me and then turns back towards the blaring TV screen, and then slouch into the sofa.  It’s not his fault that I can’t open the peanut butter jar, but I still feel frustrated all the same.

            I look up at the TV screen, my brother is watching a gross-o TV show where everybody slowly gets murdered – it’s one of those stupefying blood bath shows that boys like.  I take a swipe at the TV remote, but he must have read my mind because the remote magically disappears just before I can grab it.

            “Hey!” I yell at him, still trying to reach half way across the room and up about six feet to where my brother is holding the remote up in the air, “not fair!”

            “Is too,” he retorts, “I was here first.”

            “Well I’d share the TV with you,” I offer him; giving up on my attempt to steal away the remote and slouching back into the sofa with a grimace.

            “I’m sharing,” my brother tells me densely, clearly not getting the idea that my joy in life is not to watch everybody on the TV screen get blown up or shot.

            “Can’t you watch something else?” I sigh at him, trying not to listen as a skinny brunette starts screaming at the max volume on the TV set.

            “No,” he says, shaking his head without taking his eyes off the screen for even one moment – can’t even spare one moment of his gore and glory for little old me?  “It’s just getting to the best part,” he tells me, still staring in stupefied fascination at the blaring colors coming from the screen.

            I pout at him, which he doesn’t see, and then stand up.  There is absolutely no point in hanging around here any longer, he’s just going to drown himself in blood and gore for at least the next hour, I already can tell.  So I move on to the next best place in the house.

            My room is messy, as always.  As I open the door a kind of musty aromatic sent greets me, the musty is because of all the dirt and grime trapped in my room, the aromatic is the perfume I like to use whenever I do anything special.  There, beneath a pile of dirty and clean laundry, which I can discern between, but my mom can’t, is my disheveled, unmade bed.  For a moment I think maybe it would be easier to just conk out on the floor, but then I shrug and just push all the clothes off of my crumpled bedding and onto the floor so that I can crash on it without interruption.

            I look around for a moment to see if I have any good books or magazines conveniently stashed somewhere in my room, but the only thing I can find is a book I’m supposed to have returned to the library two months ago, sitting crumpled up in a corner staring dejectedly at me.

            I sigh loudly to myself and then let my head plop into my pillow in despair.  I’m bored – which is why I wanted to get the stupid lid off the peanut butter jar in the first place.  You see, I have this nasty habit of eating when I’m bored, and I’m extremely bored right now.

            Dad’s gone to work, mom’s gone to the store, my brother is drowning himself in screams and gun shots, and my other two little siblings are gone somewhere else.  So, like I so often do when I have nothing else to entertain myself with, I turn to my thoughts.

            Almost automatically my first thoughts go to my non-present boyfriend, Austen.  Austen is one of those ‘Freddy’ looking boys; he’s tall and gangly with glasses and more than a lot of freckles all over everywhere.  But, you see, I have this theory about him that someday he’s going to look real swell.  – Most of this theory comes from meeting his older brother, Andy.  Andy has a shade darker hair than Austen, an auburn shade, and wears his hair a little shaggy, as opposed to so short that the only hairdo plausible is the one centimeter of hair left sticking straight up in the air.

For a while I think I was in love with Andy and that’s why I hung around Austen, but I’ve got to give some credit to Austen – I mean after all, he’s the one I ended up with.  So, with my imagination and time, Austen will be gorgeous . . . in theory.

And then, of course, there’s my brother, Roger.  Well . . . there really isn’t that much to think about him.  He’s a bit of a bully, thinks a lot of himself, and probably for the most part is right.  Don’t you hate it when your sibling is perfect and wonderful and then you look at yourself and wonder what went wrong?  I mean, we have the same parents, so what happened to me?

Roger somehow manages to be extremely annoying and gorgeous all the time!  Me, I probably annoy him to death and look . . . well, not gorgeous all the time.  And then there’s Sam, she’s my little sister.  She’s at that ‘I want everything now’ stage.  She usually gets everything she wants, or else there are complications.  I’ll explain that later.

Lastly there is my little brother, he’s six and, well, cute-ish.  Robert is, well . . . hmm, I’m not quite sure how to describe him, I’ve never tried before.  The best way to describe him is that he’s Rob.  He’s zany and wacky and he likes to talk scientist – only he’s six so it all comes out sounding funny.  For example, the other day he told me, “do you know that if the atoms that made up our carpet were as big as a quarter then the air around it would be as big as a football stadium?” – I mean what kind of weird stuff is that to tell a person?

The only other member of my family is a cat.  He’s a big fat black cat, about the extent of his exercise program is to jump up on his favorite patio chair to lounge around on for a while.  We call him BT, which eventually mutated into Beet, because that was the first and last letters in the word black-cat.  Not a very creative name, but better than his first name.  My little brother was all for naming him panther (which would work fine if he wasn’t so fat) and then my father (always the logical member of the family) proposed simply naming him ‘black cat’ when we couldn’t agree on a name immediately.

We have no dogs, no birds, and (ironically) lots of mice.  Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering, I live on a farm.  This is not one of those huge well-to-do farms that you see in the movies, it is one of those run down can-you-really-even-call-that-a-barn kind of farms.  What we have is more of a ‘retired’ farm. 

My parents bought this place as a rundown farm with the intention to build it up, but that never happened.  We don’t have any livestock, except for two old cows and a very fat cat – of course if you count my siblings that’s three more animals running around. 

There’s a loud bang as the back door slams open and then yelling as my little sister runs into the kitchen, ‘singing’ her favorite song at the top of her voice, trying to compete with the screams still streaming out of the TV set.  “Samantha, stop yelling,”

“Singing,”

“-and come help me bring the rest of the groceries in, will you sweetie?” mom asks.  Sam’s voice fades as she probably dances out of the kitchen and back out to the car.  I can practically feel mom put her hands on her hips as soon as Sam’s gone.  “Roger,” she says, a frown in her voice, “what in the world are you watching?”

I’m sure that Roger answers her, but I can’t hear him over more screams and gun shots.  The TV remote clicks loudly and a ferocious roar is cut off.  I grimace, wishing mom would just have the decency to ground him from the television for a week.

“Is Nichole home?” my mom asks, not giving anyone enough time to answer before you yells through the house, “Nichole.”

“She’s probably in her bedroom,” Roger says, the tattle-tale.

 I roll over in bed, wishing I’d gone out to a movie, or to the mall or something.  I look at my bedroom, suddenly remembering a list of chores I was supposed to have done before mom got home. 

The room is a mess, the lunch dishes are piled up in the sink, the front room’s carpet is not vacuumed, and the cat is unfed – although I think he could probably do to skip a few meals every once in a while anyways.

My door handle twists and I grin to myself as the lock shakes back and forth, then frown as the lock twists to unlocked.  Mom steps into the room.  “Oh, hi mom,” I say, sitting halfway up in my bed. 

Her eyes graze the room, her frown deepening.  “Nichole,” she begins.

I hurry out of bed, “I can have it clean in two seconds flat.”  I look at her, trying to decide whether I should bat my eyes or not – probably not, I already have a boyfriend and she’s my mom to boot.  She stares at me.  “Please?”

“No, you’re going to take the normal two or three hours to clean you’re room – just like every other normal person.”  She starts to turn away.

“Being normal is–” I stop myself before I can say stupid, already tasting soap suds in my mouth, “uh, lame.”

She shrugs, unsympathetic.

I fold my arms, turning away from her, determined not to do a stich of work – at least not until she’s out of my room.  As soon as my door shuts behind me I turn to my clothes, lying scattered on the floor, and snap my fingers.  Pants and shirts go skittering all over the place, bumping into clean socks and a pair of old shoes as they try to race into my drawers.

            A pair of black pants fly into my face as they try to avoid a balding green sweater.  I land on the bed, making it squeal in protest.  As I pull off the pants I look up, realizing my door is open again.  Before I can jump up to close it I see mom, she’s standing in the doorway, watching as my dirty socks load themselves into a hovering dirty laundry basket, trying to find their pairs (and sometimes succeeding). 

            She raises her eyebrows at me, “I told you no.”  I cringe and she clicks her fingers.  My clothes disappear, presumably into the washing machine – dirty and clean since she can’t tell the difference.  I groan to myself, looking at my bedroom, the dust balls on the floor now obvious since they are no longer hidden under cloths.

            I look up at mom, wishing I had big blue eyes like Sam does when she’s in trouble.  Mom doesn’t melt under my repentant gaze.  “Well,” I say, throwing my hands up in exasperation, “what’s the use of being a witch anyways if I can’t even use any of my powers?!”

            My frowns, turning and pointing down the hall.  “To the dirty dishes,” she informs me, “march.”
(Explanatory post)