Ridley sat up. A sub who isn’t going to just show movies? Fantastic!
The door opened and closed, and a girl rushed in. “I’m sorry, I got lost!” she apologized breathlessly to Ms. O’Shea. “I didn’t know that 232 and 232R were in different parts of the building.”
“No worries. Welcome, have a seat.”
The girl pushed a strand of honey-blond hair out of her eyes and glanced around the room. Her gaze landed on the empty seat across from Ridley’s. She hurried down the aisle, shrugged off her pink suede backpack, and sat down.
“Did I miss anything?” she whispered to Ridley.
Ridley shook her head.
“Oh, whew!”
The girl smiled at Ridley. Ridley smiled back. Was she new? Ridley didn’t recognize her.
Ms. O’Shea began taking attendance, calling out names from a clipboard. Halfway down the list, she said, “Penelope Hart?”
The girl raised her hand in the air. “Here! Present!”
Penelope. The name made Ridley think about the brave and clever heroine in The Odyssey by Homer. She’d read the ancient Greek epic at her old school back in Cleveland.
Penelope, Ridley scribbled in her notebook, then erased it. She brushed away all the rubber crumbs.
“Ridley? Ridley Stone? Are you here?”
Several kids had turned around in their seats and were staring and pointing at her. Oops.
“Yes, hi! I’m here!” Ridley said, rainbow-waving. Her mind had been on The Odyssey. Or maybe on Penelope.
After attendance came the distribution of the syllabus (was the plural syllabuses or syllabi?). As Ms. O’Shea handed them out, Ridley became aware that Penelope was trying to get her attention.
“Psst!”
Penelope slanted her notebook toward Ridley. On a blank page, she’d written:
I love your name! Were you named after Ridley Scott the director?
So Penelope liked movies; they had that in common.
I wish! I loved Alien and Alien Covenant.
Yeah, and don’t forget Blade Runner!
How can anyone forget Blade Runner? Wait, did you mean the original or the new one?
The original. The new one had a different director, right?
Right! I think his name was
Footsteps. Red Dr. Martens with purple shoelaces… Ms. O’Shea was walking down the aisle toward them. “Here you go,” she said, handing a syllabus to Ridley.
“Thank you, Ms. O’Shea!”
Ridley quickly slid the syllabus over her notebook. She realized that her heart was racing. Was it because she’d almost gotten caught writing back and forth with Penelope? Or was it because of Penelope, who was cute and nice and also a cinephile? Ridley made a mental note to ask her if she’d seen The Matrix, which was pretty much the best movie in the history of movies, in her humble opinion (plus it had been made by two of her heroes, Lilly and Lana Wachowski, both trans women).
Ridley forced herself to focus on the syllabus. Her lips moved silently as she read over the list of topics:
The European Colonization of the Americas
The Colonies
The War for Independence
A New Nation
Federalism and Slavery
The Civil War
Reconstruction and Jim Crow
The Birth of the 20th Century
She read over the syllabus again, then picked up her pencil and circled pre-Civil War history (which she’d always wanted to learn more about) and also circled federalism and scribbled in the margin: What other countries in the world have a government based on federalism?
She noticed Penelope noticing her marking up the syllabus, and smiling. Ridley smiled back and shrugged.
The rest of the period seemed to fly by as Ms. O’Shea read from a dog-eared paperback called The People’s History of the United States. Once in a while, Ridley paused in her diligent note-taking to glance over at Penelope. Penelope was not taking notes; instead, she was doodling… eyes? Yeah, definitely eyes. Eyes with curly lashes, eyes with dark, dramatic wings, eyes encircled with tiny moons and stars. What was her obsession with eyes? Whatever the case, she was a really good artist.
When the bell rang, Ridley hastily finished her sentence (“C. Columbus and his crew were responsible for enslavement and genocide…”), closed her notebook, and put it in her backpack along with her syllabus and mechanical pencil. Her phone, which was tucked away in an inner pocket on silent, glowed faintly and indicated that she had three new texts from Binx. Were they updates about the “fluffy bunny” from this morning and/or the shadow message?
Regarding the latter, Binx seemed to be convinced that Div, Mira, and Aysha were behind it and that their coven should call them out on it, respond with fire and fury. Sure… maybe? Ridley prayed that Binx was right about their authorship of the shadow message. Still, she wished that the two covens could just get along and stop with the back-and-forth pettiness. It was exhausting; plus Ridley had better things to do, like work on that new transformation spell (transformation was Ridley’s thing) and that other new spell, too.
“So, what class do you have next?”
Penelope was hovering beside Ridley’s desk. Up close, she smelled like roses. Was that her perfume?
“Um… uh… I have French. Room 291R. What about you?”
“Spanish. Room 284R. I didn’t realize before that R stands for rear wing. Do you want to walk together?”
“Sure!”
Ridley stood up, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. As she followed Penelope to the doorway, she thought: It’s been ages since I made a new friend. Mostly, her social life consisted of hanging out with Binx and Greta—mainly Binx, who had become her best friend despite the fact that they were both private people. Or maybe because of it? Being a witch necessarily meant that you had to keep a distance from others because you never knew who might figure out your identity and turn you in to the principal or the police. (Even worse, you never knew who might be Antima, which used to not be a problem here but now it apparently was.)
“See you tomorrow, Ridley. You, too, Penelope,” Ms. O’Shea said as the two girls passed
