WITCHES and FREAKS

April 11th

(Sorry I didn't submit! I fell asleep before I remembered to submit yesterday.)

I guess even if I don't have any friends in real life, the writing is a good companion. Thank you, writing. I don't have any living people, but you're more than I've had in a while. I'm grateful.

But it still hurts that people treat me like that. I'm treated like nobody would care if I was killed in whatever accident people have here. Like if I just stopped existing, nobody would even notice. I would just be another empty seat at the back of the classroom. Because that's where I am in my class, I'm at the back. The teacher put me there because people wouldn't stop throwing things at me. I guess if I punched a few people in the face like Sandrily did when people made fun of HER I'd get left alone like she is now, but I don't want it to have to come to that.

I still see a long and painful future ahead of me though. There aren't that many people in Eviros, and I have more than six whole grades left to go before I can move away for university. Kids my age shouldn't even be thinking about university yet, but here I am. It's really sad. I've never had a lot of friends, but at least in Remaine I had Rona and Devin, my two besties. Rona was really motherly and took me under her wing on the first day of first grade, and we'd been super close ever since. And Devin played a horrible prank on me that went wrong and broke my leg, but he stuck with me through every day I was healing to make sure I was okay and we were best friends ever since. Nobody's done anything like that here. I don't think anyone would pull a Devin if they broke my leg with one of their jokes, though it certainly looks to be heading that way. They're all just bullies, all of them, even if they pretend to be nice to me sometimes. They only ever get a couple of days into their act before laughing and shoving me down again, and it's awful.

Verge got back last night, though. So I guess that's something. I hate him, I swear I do, and he's my opposite in every way except the good kind, but he's my brother and he's trying to be nicer now that he's heard what happened. Bastian's threatening him with death if he ever brings this up in a malicious way, and Verge is actually paying attention. He's been pacified by the museum trip so he's plenty happy with himself, and he's really trying to make me feel better even though he has no idea what he's doing. He's tried distracting me with facts about things I don't care about, and he even got me to play a boring, BORING board game he got at one of the gift stores for a while. I appreciate the effort a lot even though it hasn't been fruitful. Verge isn't good at interacting with people the same age or younger than him, so that he's trying says a lot.

And of course there's Bastian. He's a real gem even if he hasn't been around the last couple of days. He's started keeping his own journal filled to the brim with translations of the book we've found, and he's copied down some of the weird pictures inside. Every time he copies another one of those circles with the letters inside something strange happens around the house. One of the decorative candles Mom put in the living room will spark up a flame and then go out on its own, or the lights will flicker, or we'll hear some strange noise coming from the cellar. Even Bastian's afraid to go down there now, and there's no way anyone could get me to descend those stairs in a million years after some of the things I heard. I don't want to describe them here because that would involve remembering them, and I'm pretty sure some of the sounds were people getting murdered. Whatever they were, my childhood just took a spin in the wrong direction. Next time Bastian tried to copy one of the circles down I'm going to slap the pen out of his hand and the cheek off his face.

Chance has had as much of a freak as I did. He and our parents say they don't hear the sounds at all (Verge does, to our surprise, but he hasn't reacted at all except to wonder aloud what animal's gotten in) but he's scared himself silly thinking brushing his teeth has brought a curse down on him. He only just started brushing on his own, but today we found out he has a loose tooth. It's his first one. He's started later than any of the three of us did and he's been looking forward to it forever, but he's forgotten his excitement in thinking that brushing is making his teeth fall out. Mom's going to have a lot on her hands now that he's worked himself up into that frenzy.

Dad's gotten a few new books from the museum and Mom hasn't done much of anything special except clear away the garden and plant a few new flowers. Now that the inside of the house is how she likes it, she's going to start working on the outside. It's been a month since we moved in so it's about time. Other than that there isn't much else to say.

Do you have any advice, writing?

Do not let your mother touch the cellar. It should remain as unpleasant on the outside as it is on the inside. Things are rarely as they seem, but the cellar should keep close to reality. I believe you will find a key to the cellar doors in that drawer. It is shaped like this: [Insert Picture] Lock them and keep them locked until you can no longer avoid going in.