The Tuesday morning was like any other. The sunlight seeped into the classroom and warmed everyone physically and emotionally. After the strenuous winter, no one wanted to see another snowflake or cloud ever again. So, we each took in the beautiful day with delight.
I was in chemistry class doing a lab with a group of students I don’t exactly socialize with. Besides neutral greetings, we kept to ourselves… I kept to myself. I never tried to even orally say hello. They were a clique that I had to be within a few feet of four the last half hour of class. All we had to do was study the reaction of aluminum when introduced to hydrochloric acid. We weren’t even going to have eye contact. Or so I thought.
The boy beside me was giggling about something another boy said. Apparently the pun conjured up anger in a girl at another table; she pouted for them to stop and a cute way and then the boys laughed even louder. I didn’t know what they were saying because I didn’t care. I felt too different from them… from everyone, like I was the rat in a cage of mice. The only way I knew how to deal with my utter differentiation at that moment was by following the arabesque shadow of the heat of daylight. I watched it waver on the forest green laboratory table like a river… no, a delta of shadows just flowing out to something bigger, something beyond. Rushing, like the souls of Cocytus – a voice echoed. I turned sharply, glancing over my shoulder in search of the person who had uttered that bizarre phrase. No one was there.
My breath was suddenly heavy. Heaving, I inspected the room for a possible audience that accompanied my schizophrenic behavior. Luckily, no one was looking at me. Not yet, anyway.
I tightly grasped the bracelet on my left wrist. I had gotten it from my great-grandmother who died of an unknown illness. She told me never to remove it, that it would serve me one day. Maybe it was her morbid state or maybe it was all the medicine that inspired those words of mystery. Still, I was left with a sterling silver bracelet embedded with one sphere emerald.




I always touched it when I was feeling uncomfortable. Lately, I had been grabbing it a lot. The bracelet always made me feel better; it was the most important possession of mine. All I had to do was brush over it with my index finger and continue with my day. This time, that was not the case. This time, the bracelet broke.
“No, no, no.” I whined, trying to put the silver pieces back together as if they would just morph into each other. How could silver brake so easily? In all my years of wearing the bracelet it never once got loose or twisted, so how? I was verge of tears. My favorite thing in the entire world just… broke. With the stroke of a delicate finger, it just broke. I laid the bracelet onto the lab table, coming up with a reason not to sob like a kid who had just dropped their ice cream. I could get it fixed. I wouldn’t want my classmates to see the quiet girl cry. It’s too much of a nice day to let a snapped bracelet get me down. I agreed to just put it in my pocket and deal with it later. Like a big girl.

I traced my finger over the sterling silver once more before attempting to forget about it. Nonetheless, what happened next was something I’d never forget. Along the silver, where I had brushed, there were words forming – inscriptions that just… appeared. The words sparkled, reminding me of the starry night-sky, it was dark purple and glistened navy blue like the deep ocean. Within a few seconds of appearing, the scintillating words went dull like ordinary etchings in the silver. The words weren’t English. They read ut videant me. I mouthed the words, I swear, I not a sound escaped my lips. Then, it happened.

A hush fell over the classroom like a parachute. I cleared my throat to break the quiet but the sound only added more awkwardness to the moment of silence. Slowly, I rose my eyes to see what was so baffling that it deserved absolute muteness.

It was me.

The first thing I saw was the boy who sat next to me intensely staring into my eyes… as if he were searching for my soul. He was still like ice and his expression was completely dead. That was uncharacteristic. I hadn’t known much about the guy but I knew he was always smiling or laughing about something. Whatever was happening was totally against nature. He just looked so distant, like my presence caused his aura of being to depart from his body.
My heart dropped like a stone and I felt it shatter like thin glass. Jerking backward, I got on my feet, snatched the bracelet, and stumbled away from him. Hyperventilation filled the quiet room, my own breath sounding like the bells of an abandoned city.
Then I felt myself crash into a tall body and glass shattered loudly onto the tiled floor. Quickly, I pivoted to see who had been in my way. A stocky young lady stood stiffly as I backed from her. She too stared into my eyes with absolute lifelessness; not even reacting to the fact that she’d just dropped the graduated cylinder. Her pale blue eyes ate away at my comfort.
Finally, I said “What?” The pitter-patter of my sandals suffused to the room. “Stop,” I pleaded. “Please.”
Tears had already begun streaming down my cheeks.
I aspired to bolt for the door, but when I shifted toward it, there were more of them.
Glarers, I call them. Every person in the classroom peered into my eyes vigorously -- there bodies motionless and paralyzed -- they were Glarers.
“Please,” black tears settled onto my bottom lip. “No more.” They were zombies. So god damn lifeless and I couldn’t take it. I ran out of the room without even taking my backpack.


That wasn’t the end of my torment. The entire school suddenly found me the most interesting person in the world. They were all zombies. They were all Glarers. It’s like they forgot they had their own lives… their own bodies! All they wanted was to watch me until they no longer could. And the only thing that would stop them was death.
One student who was drinking from the water fountain stared at me. He let the water run into his mouth just to spill back out.
Another student who was lifting an Algebra 2 book into his locker stared at me. I’m sure his arm was tired, he didn’t look very muscular, but he didn’t even falter.

The entire trip home was a nightmare. Everybody was staring at me. Drivers, joggers, and businessmen. All but the animals. The animals continued with their lives. Glarers could learn from the animals. I wondered how many dog owners lost their pets that day. So many of them were prancing around the city as if they were still taking their regular morning walks.
When I got home, my mother was sitting on the couch, wearing her favorite peach sweater and reading a Lifetime magazine.
She wasn’t a Glarer.
“Mom!” I ran to her side but ended up kneeling to her halfway to the cushion. I folded my arms on her lap and sobbed. “I don’t know what’s going on. Everybody is just staring at me. I hate it. Please, please make it stop!”
I felt her fingers rest onto my spine. “What’s wrong, honey? Why are you here so early? What are you talking about?”
She always did ask too many questions at once.
I told her about my experience with the bracelet and the Glarers. “Oh,” she said like she had made a simple mistake.
“What?”
“You have scopophobia, a fear of being stared at. It runs in the family. Your Uncle Vern has it.”
“Mom! You don’t get it. Everyone was looking at me. That’s freaky and that’s why I’m crying. Not because of some stupid phobia that runs in the family.”
“Sorry, honey.” Her voice was so casual, I felt offended. “I wanted to tell but I couldn’t. It’s tradition.” She rolled up her sleeve to reveal her own bracelet that she had gotten from her great-grandmother. Hers and mine looked similar but not identical. While mine was sterling silver, hers was bronze and where I had a green emerald, she had a blue sapphire. “This is a talisman given to me by my great grandmother. Every few generations, a talisman is passed onto another generation.”
I was quiet even though I wanted to scream at her.
She continued. “When the keeper of the talisman is ready, its great power will be given to her. But for that to happen, the talisman must unbind, or break. The keeper will then read the etched words inside of the bracelet. And then… things happen.” Her voice went null.
I sniffled and raised a brow. My tears still sat on my ducts.
“It’s a spell. A magic spell. Sorry, I’m not good at beating around the bush.”
I hoisted myself up a little too fast because my vision went askew. “I’m going to bed. This is obviously some kind of sick lucid dream.”
“Stacey!” That’s my name. It comes from my great-grandmother’s name, Staciella. My mother’s voice was firm, the rarest voice of hers. I fell to my knees out of sheer weakness. My eyes drifted to my mother, but I wasn’t being a bad-attitude-teen. I was exhausted and honestly wanted to sleep. Honest. “Every three generations, a child is born with a unique ability that must be capped by the bracelet. That ability doesn’t manifest until a late age, but it must be sealed until the appropriate time.” She sighed. “Stacey, you weren’t suppose to have these abilities. You were suppose to be completely mundane. You were suppose to live a normal life like a human.”
Like a human. What was I, then? I didn’t have to ask her.
"Stacey, you are the reincarnation of Hecate, the mischievous goddess of witchcraft. She is very mischievous. . . So much so that she tricked the gods and the made them think she was a goddess. But actually, she’s the demon of deception and magic.”
My mother had just told me I’m a demonic goddess. My mother just told me I’m a demonic goddess. For Christ’s sake, my mother just told me I’m a demonic goddess!
My breath eased out my my lungs, my sigh was calm and easy. “Okay. So what happened earlier with the Glarers… I mean, staring people?”
“Let me see your bracelet,” she perched her lips as I reached into my back jean pocket and handed her the broken silver. She flipped to the inside of the chain and immediately said “It’s Latin. It means ‘let me be seen’.” Noticing my confusion, she continued. “It’s a sight spell. The spells show up when you most want it.”
“But I didn’t want to be stared at!” My voice cracked and tears sprouted once again. I just wanted the damned dream to end.
“Maybe not you, Stacey. It was your inner Hecate; she yearns for attention. She hasn’t… been for hundreds of years. She was locked away and prophecies predicted she’d be resurrected in the body of a Bl--” She trailed off and her face went pale. Clearing her throat, she set her hand onto my shoulder. “My daughter is the reincarnation of Hecate.” Tears of happiness filled her green eyes.
I wasn’t proud. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t anything! I was human -- a student of Beaver Hill High with a two point five grade average. A student with an overdue book. A girl with a life… why would I give that up for some crazy dream? That’s right, it’s just a dream. Or so I told myself.
“And you conjured your first spell!” She began to shriek with excitement and reached for the home phone even though it was twenty feet away “Oh, I need to tell Aunt Jade, she’d be so proud.” When she had finally trailed off, I started to my bedroom.

I sat alone on my bed and tried my hardest not to hear my mother’s conversation with my Aunt Jade. But I couldn’t find my headphones and my pillow just wasn’t thick enough over my ears. Still, I couldn’t help but listen when I heard her voice suddenly drop into a tone of sadness.

“I know, Jade.” She sighed. “The Blackwell coven, the enire family, will be pissed…. But now that Hecate was been born into our family by our blood, we have an advantage over the war. We won’t loose…. Ha, they’ll have no chance against her dark magic. She won’t even need the bracelet…. come over and we can teach her all we know, then we can summon…. huh? Oh, alright, finish your peach cobbler.” She put the phone onto the hook.

How could she talk about me like that? Call me “Hecate”? I’m Stacey Thornwood, a seventeen year old girl who doesn’t even read fantasy novels. I don’t even like Harry Potter.

Nonetheless, I had just discovered I am the reincarnation of the goddess… er, demon, Hecate. And today, on a Tuesday, I had conjured my very first spell.