WITCHES and FREAKS

March 29th

Bastian and I went to the store today and bought candies for Chance. None of the good ones were there. All they had were boring chocolates and gummies, though I really doubt Chance is going to care what we get him so long as it's sweet and our parents pitch a fit when they find out. Of course they will. Chance never brushes his teeth. The gummies are going to stick like rainbow bits of gelatinous cavity. If he doesn't start brushing himself, Mom's going to do it for him, and I know he'll kick and scream to get out of her clutches. Like all kids, he doesn't want anything to do with things that are good for him, and Mom knows how to deal with that. Poor Chance.

Verge is, as usual, an insufferable, stuffy lickspittle. He's such a liar. He's always trying to make Dad happy. He just finished reading a compendium of Shakespeare's plays and he keeps fawning over it like it's the accomplishment of a lifetime. As if Romeo and Juliet is ever going to be important to anyone. Dad's the only one who cares, but Verge still won't shut up about it. He says he's going to be a scholar just like Dad. He even wears one of Dad's old coats everywhere now, the one with all the pockets. I'm not one to argue that pockets are really helpful, but this is that scruffy, icky old white one that's stained with who knows what and smells like dead cats. I'm not ever letting him get near me again. That smell doesn't wash out. He can take two showers a day as long as he wants, but dead cats are dead cats, and he's going to bring in the vultures if he doesn't rethink his clothing choices. I mean, there are actually vultures here. I saw them. They were in the woods a mile from the house, eating a deer. I scared them off and put some leaves on the poor thing to hide it from them, but Verge is going to be that deer if he doesn't throw that coat away. And as much as I hate him I really don't want to see him become bird food.

I got myself a new piece of clothing today, actually. I was at school and sitting on my own like I've made a habit of doing. None of the other kids will talk to me because they say I'm too weird, so I was talking to the janitor Charleston. He's a really nice guy, though all the kids who are from here treat him like dirt. Or treat him like me. It's really sad, because he's super good to me. He always makes time to talk to me. Maybe he's a bit old, and he looks really tired and has a lot of wrinkles, but he laughs at all my jokes and he always gives me a bit of his lunch when I forget mine. I brought him a cupcake that I made today and his smile shone like the sun, and he gave me a sweater that used to belong to his little girl back when she was as little as me. He says she's all grown up now and has kids of her own. He said he never got rid of the sweater because there wasn't any point in wasting perfectly good clothing and she barely wore it anyway because it was always too hot where they lived before to put on a sweater, and he was waiting for the right person to give it to. I guess I was nice enough to him that he thought I deserved it. It's really pretty. It's purple (he knows it's my favorite color!) and has a rainbow on the front of it made of sequins. The clouds on the ends are really fluffy white cloth and under the rainbow is a pot of gold, which is also made of sequins. There's a four-leaf clover above the pot of gold and between the clouds of the rainbow. I guess that means this is a lucky sweater. I haven't taken it off since Charleston gave it to me, and I really have been lucky. I found a really pretty green rock that Dad says is a crystal, and I also found a spirally shell fossil in a rock when I went into the forest, right by where I found the fallen tree that makes the bridge over the stream.

Also, I found my old pen! It was the one I used back when I was ten and I had that coloring book that I completely ruined with my scribblings. I wrote a story for every picture in that book, and I finally have the pen I wrote them with. It's the pretty wood one Dad gave me, and its ink is so smooth and so dark and doesn't smudge when I accidentally rub my hand on the page. Look, its not smudging no matter how hard I rub! Rub rub rub. I should stop or I'll put a hole in the page, and that will bother me a lot.

I don't really know what else to put here. Keeping a journal is still really new, but I'm glad Mom suggested it. She's really smart, even if Dad's the one who's all about the books. Oh! I know what to write! I finally managed to find a good place to hide this journal! I put it under the rock next to the tree bridge! The boys will never think to look under that, and Chance isn't allowed to wander away from the house anyway. And I'm allowed to wander in the woods for exactly three hours every day (okay, so Mom makes me) so I can use all of that time to get the journal and write in it like I'm doing now. And maybe I can even keep cool things in here, like leaves. Or dead worms. I heard from one of the boys in school that if you put a worm in between the pages of a book and close it and put it under a stack and leave it, then you can dry it out flat and it'll stay. All of the girls were grossed out but I thought it was really cool. He was probably lying, though. This was Jackson talking. He's the boy who put a crayon so far up his nose he had to go to the hospital to get it taken out. I think it was drawing on his brain or something, and that's why he's so dumb. He's probably unreliable when it comes to anything you can do with worms except for eating them, because he did that too. He puked. It was nasty, but really funny. He deserved it.

I can hear Bastian coming. He's probably going to complain at me about Verge. Verge is about as stupid as Jackson even if he pretends to be smart. Bastian's the only decent person around here except for Dad, who's also pretty great. And Mom's okay too. But they can come later. Bastian is really close and I should hide my journal before he finds it.