The Witch by Jean Thompson Page B

she’d done with that music thing she was so excited about, Janice said she lost it.
    â€”
    Nana was sick. She went into the hospital and then she came home and then she went into the hospital again. All sorts of things were wrong with her, all her inside parts leaking andgoing flat. One of these days she would be dead but not right away. They had all gone to see her in the hospital this last time. The hospital was the kind of place that made you wonder if anybody got out alive. Nurses stalked the halls with carts full of blood and pee. The walls were tile and echoing. There was a smell of steam and fish sticks. Janice’s mother pushed Janice and her brother forward. “Mom, I brought the kids to see you.”
    Nana was bundled up like laundry on the bed. She opened her eyes and groaned. “They cut me all up,” she said. “Then they threw me away.”
    Now Nana was home from the hospital again. A nurse stayed with her nights, and Janice’s mother went over before and after work to take care of her. Her mother was too busy to pay much attention to Janice, and she could have done anything she wanted except there was nothing she wanted to do. Mostly she hung around the house and watched whatever was on television. Nobody called her and she didn’t call anyone.
    It was like her life was already set out for her. She was never one of the popular girls and now she had a reputation as a slut without even doing anything, at least nothing that ought to count. She guessed she was a slut, there was something wrong with her. Once school started she would have to try and be invisible, get through it all until she was old enough to find some kind of job. Then after a while she would be old and fat like her mother and then even older like Nana and then she would be dead.
    Janice’s mother called her from work. “I need you to take Nana one of the beef pot pies, the rest of the bakery bread, and the strawberry jam that’s on the counter. Don’t tell me you don’t have time because you do. Yes, cook the pot pie at home, what did you think, let it defrost and get ruined? I have to go to thebank and the drugstore, then I’ll worry about your supper. No, your brother can’t do it, I’m asking you. Now get a move on.”
    Her brother never had to do anything. If you were a boy you could run wild and people thought it was only natural. The pot pie was another one of her mother’s bad menu ideas. It cooked up with burned spots on the crust, probably from being in the freezer too long.
    Janice put all the food into a backpack, which was less embarrassing than plastic bags, and set off. There was a hot spot between her shoulder blades where the pot pie rested. The sky was dark in one corner and a wind pushed grit along the streets. It hadn’t rained for so long that you didn’t even think to worry about it anymore. The sky opened its mouth and thunder rolled out. Maybe she’d get hit by lightning and that would serve everybody right.
    The streetlights had come on in the early dark. Nobody was out walking but once in a while a car whisked along. The first rain tapped against the fabric of the backpack, then she felt it on her skin. Perfect. Great. She was still a long ways away, and either she’d get there with a lot of wet food, or she’d be late, and either way it would all be her fault.
    She ran across an intersection just ahead of the first sheeting rain. There wasn’t such a thing as a store open around here, so she ducked under the overhang of an apartment building’s parking garage. Wind blew the rain across the streets in a little surf. Her feet were wet. She thought about calling her mother but it would serve her right to worry a little. Anyway, you could kind of like being all alone and tragic in the storm, like somebody in a song.
    A car pulled up on the street next to her, an old beater with a dent in the fender. The passenger door opened