Winnie turned her fierce attention to Blair. “Too far!” she said. “That was MEAN.” Then she whipped out her wand, waved it, whispered something … and absolutely nothing happened. Blair grinned triumphantly – she’d got away with it.

  Or had she?

  “What’s going on NOW!” Binxy had come back into the room. “Honestly, you’re the worst Year Seven group I’ve had in years.” I had a bad feeling that might be my fault. “Somebody fill me in please… Amara?” Miss Binx picked on the nearest witch and waggled her wand warningly. “Spill.”

  Amara shrugged and snitched.

  “Explain yourself, Miss Smith-Smythe,” said Madam Binx and Blair tried. She really tried.

  “It wa—” Blair burped. “B—Burrp! B-Bea’s fa—” The lie got lost in another loud belch.

  “Stop making those disgusting noises and tell me why you took another witch’s private journal AND FED IT TO MY PET.” Binxy was cross.

  “BURRRRP,” protested Blair. “I mean—BELCH!”

  “You will write a four-hundred-word essay for me comparing the natural and magical diets of giant Venus flytraps and you will have it on my desk by first thing tomorrow morning.” Wow, really cross.

  “B-but, Mad—Burp! I—” Blair broke off and stared at Winnie, a look of complete outrage on her face. “Did you SP—Buuuurrrrrrpppp!”

  Winnie Ross is a GENIUS! It’s still making me snigger two days later, possibly because a) Blair was still burping today and b) my diary has finally dried out and (except for the flytrap toothmarks) is as good as new.

  Only ten days till Halloween and I’ve still got 976 cardboard bats to cut out (would have been 971 except I accidentally set fire to some of them in Physics).

  GO is a mad game. I fell down the chimney and when I rolled out, miraculously in one piece but covered in soot, all Winnie had to say was that I’d better get back out there because it was a tight match.

  Blair is still popping out mini-burps when she least expects it, which is the only possible excuse for the SHOCKING FOUL she did on Fabi.

  He’s covered in cat-shaped plasters but I don’t think he minds too much because WE WON!!

  It was Madam Binx’s turn to give the Friday lecture and, because of what she referred to as “recent events”, her chosen subject was WITCH JOURNALLING. It was, she said with a stern look in the direction of where Year Seven were sitting, an important witch skill that should be treated with respect.

  “A journal can be not only a written record of your path as a witch, however bumpy that path might be –” this time she smiled straight at me – “but a place you can record your thoughts and feelings, especially after rituals or any other special happenings in your magical life. Every witch should have one.”

  Blair, who was sitting right behind me (which was a shame because I’d been trying very hard to keep out of her way), leaned forwards and whispered in my ear, “Witch journal? Ha! (tiny burp) You won’t need one of those … just an ORDINARY (hiccup) journal for you, Bea Black.”

  Hunter, who was sitting next to her, laughed.

  And after that, even though Binxy was saying lots of really interesting things about mind maps and daily motivations and sticking in cake recipes and autumn leaves, etc. etc., I couldn’t concentrate. For someone who never asked to be a witch, I feel surprisingly BAD to be told I’m not one.

  Very busy day. Had my lunch in the dining room with the rest of the Committee. Obviously, I took in my own food because of my no-witch-food-ever-again rule and, even though they all thought my jam sandwiches were some kind of bloody Halloween prop, they didn’t FORCE me to share their sausages.

  Spent PD cleaning the Great Chandelier, again. It is getting very sparkly and although the spiders are a bit cross about having to move out of our way while we polish, and some of them are very large, I think it’s going quite well.

  Bat Bunting Tally: 921!!! Mr Zicasso let the whole class help in Art on Tuesday. Blair might not be my FAVOURITE person, but I have to admit she’s very quick at cutting out bats. (Hunter said it was a complete accident that he spilled glue on my seat. Sure.)

  WILD morning.

  Puck said he’d teach me the hair-colour-changing trick spell. I wanted to go temporarily yellow for PE because I’m very committed to being a Dodo, but his demo went wrong. I didn’t even have a chance to get my wand out before he’d given me one cat-shaped patch of neon GREEN on my head. He offered to fix it but a) I thought I might end up with no head at all and b) Ms Celery was calling us on to the pitch.

  Also … I don’t exactly hate it.

  Best game ever. I scored SEVEN goals! Puck put it down to the ‘lucky cat’ on my head. Obviously, that had nothing to do with it (but, just in case, I’m keeping it).

  Dad is freaking out about my hair. He’s mostly annoyed that I denied dyeing it, which was not fair because I was actually telling the truth!

  “Well, how else did it turn that interesting shade?” he asked. I couldn’t come up with a fib on the spot, so instead I reminded him he’d said it was good to stand out. That went down as well as could be expected.

  Ash came over with some biscuits his mum had baked. I think she worries about us.

  I wonder if she’d teach me how to make these biscuits. They’re called koloocheh and they’re very pretty but more importantly VERY delicious.

  Ash couldn’t stop snorting every time he noticed my hair (it’s hard to miss).

  Koloocheh for tea. Brilliant.

  Bat Bunting Tally: still 921. Never ever want to see another bat in my life and I’ve got 279 more to make before lunchtime tomorrow!!

  School feels so odd at the weekend! Fewer witches but more cats.

  Today’s the last day the Junior Committee are allowed into the Great Hall. At midnight, the students and teachers on the Senior Ball Committee take over and add what Winnie calls a “few surprises”. So we’ve all been polishing and sweeping and stringing bunting* since DAWN and, not gonna lie, I think we’ve done an AMAZING job. The hall is SPARKLING, with every single cobweb intact. All the polished cake stands and shiny punchbowls have been delivered back to Sir Scary Cook, Zephyr’s gold throne is by the fireplace and the Great Chandelier is blinding! But we’re all FILTHY and STARVING so we’re off to Taffy Tallywick’s to recover.

  Nervous but also more excited about the party tomorrow than I thought I would be. I hope everyone likes the bunting. As long as nobody forces me to dance, it should be fine.

  I’ve got the weirdest feeling I’m forgetting something I should be worrying about…

  * 1, 188 bats, which is close enough for even Winnie to be pleased.

  “Ta-da!” says Dad. “Look what I made!”

  I don’t say anything, mostly because my jaw is on the floor.

  “It’s for YOU!”

  NOOOOOOOO! I’ve remembered what I should have been worrying about. My costume.

  “Stop scribbling in that diary for once and say something!”

  Er…

  “It’s … WOW!” I managed at last. “It’s so GREEN!”

  Dad nodded happily. It was VERY green.

  “It’s a FROG!” He was so proud. “Because I know how much you like them.”

  I gulped – ‘it’ was a very BIG, suspiciously spacehopper-sized FROG costume. Dad set it down on the floor and, with a flourish, produced a bright green T-shirt and a pair of tights, neon-green face paint and some goggly, froggy eyes boinging around on a headband. “The finishing touches!”

  He was not wrong. I was FINISHED.

  “And I know it’s not anatomically correct,” he said, as if the rest was, “but I added a handy pouch to the front for snacks or whatever you carry around with you … a hairbrush? Lipgloss?”

  A hairbrush wasn’t going to help. Lipgloss wasn’t going to help! To be fair, snacks might. Where were the emergency biscuits?

  I am standing by my bed, DESPAIRING. I would be lying face down on my bed, DESPAIRING, if it wasn’t for the sad fact that I can’t lie down.

  I am IN the frog costume. I am Bea-frogged.

  What. Am. I. Going. To. Do? This is one of the most serious and terrible crises of my entire life (which is why, even in the DEPTHS of my despair, I am writing it all down).

  If I wear this costume, it will mean social death.

  But if I don’t wear it, I might make Dad CRY.

  Through my sweaty panic, I could vaguely hear someone calling my name and a second later a football WHOOSHED through my open window. Ash was trying to get my attention. I’d definitely got his attention – he had tears running down his face.

  “It is NOT FUNNY!” I yelled, lobbing the ball back and narrowly missing him. Shame.

  “It sort of is,” he snorted. He laughed so much he nearly fell out of the window (which would have served him right). “Have fun though!” he shouted and grinned, and I couldn’t help but grin back even though IT IS NOT FUNNY.

  Right. I have a solution.

  I will leave the house in Full Frog and get changed in the forest. I can hide some leggings in the pouch (and diary too!), although even if I had to go to the ball in my underwear that would be an improvement.

  Dad is driving me to school! He is being completely UNREASONABLE – no matter what I say I can’t persuade him to let me walk through the forest in the dark dressed as a frog.

  My life is over.

  I’m having a little moment in a cupboard while I calm down. The last five minutes have been TRAUMATIC.

  We pulled up in front of the school and Dad (who was overexcited because there was a minor meteor shower over the chimneys) rolled me off the back seat like a … well, spacehopper. Sadly, we were not alone. There were orange bubble cars everywhere dropping off witches. Witches ready to party, witches in perfect costumes that can only be achieved with some serious wand-work … witches in perfect witch costumes…

  Nooooooo.

  Slinky witches and fluorescent witches and witches in saris, crinoline-wearing witches with pointy hats and witches in velvet flares and witches in head-to-toe black Lycra with stripes on their capes. Everyone was wearing black – shiny black or glittery black or black with feathers, but only black. Even all the cats were black. There were witches on roller skates and witches on stilts. There was even a small witch in a ragged cloak with very realistic warts.

  What there wasn’t was a single witch-as-a-FROG – or witch-as-anything-but-witch. And nobody was green.

  Dad and I looked at each other. “Oh well,” he said with a guilty shrug, turning the key in the ignition. “It’s good to stand out.” And then he was off!

  He wasn’t the only one who made a speedy getaway. I took one look at the growing crowd of witches-as-witches, pointing and oohing at me, and ran as fast as I could – not that fast in this costume – to the nearest available broom cupboard.

  Wait, I’ve got my wand in my pouch! This would be a really good time to discover if I can finally do magic…

  OK, I still can’t do magic, but I now have a small singed hole in the middle of my massive frog bum and I’ve eaten all my snacks.

  I’m not having a good time.

  Maybe I could steal one of these broomsticks and fly away to somewhere like the Galapagos Islands (??) where they might appreciate human-sized frogs? No one will miss m—

  It was Winnie and Puck who came to get me. They nearly fell over at the FROGGINESS of me, but they recovered quickly and then literally took the pen out of my hand and dragged me out of the broom cupboard.

  “You’re not missing tonight, Bea,” said Winnie so fiercely that several of the floofy things decorating her witch’s hat fell off.

  “Wouldn’t be the same without you, Hoppy!” shouted Puck, tugging me in the direction of the party, the music getting louder as we approached.

  Oh my broomstick! Being on the Junior Ball Committee had not prepared me for THIS!

  “Apple and toffee?” Unless I was going mad,* two of the silvery birch trees that usually stood at the entrance to the school had … somehow … relocated to stand at the entrance to the Great Hall and were … serving drinks. “Or strudel and coffee?” The nearest tree adjusted one of the bow ties attached to his lower branches.

  “U-u-mm, apple and t-toffee?’ I stammered and he ladled punch from a bowl hanging off another of his branches into a small red crystal glass.

  “Happy Halloween!” He presented the cup to me with a flourish and ushered me into the hall. “I’m sure it will be a night to remember.” He was not wrong.

  It was like walking into a CAULDRON!**

  The Great Chandelier was gleaming and glimmering with zillions of tiny red candles, and the spiders we’d very carefully not dusted away were busy weaving and re-weaving their silk threads in intricate patterns between the layers of lights so that new pictures constantly appeared and disappeared in shadows on the walls – leaping cats and duelling vampires and prancing unicorns and more!

  A DJ booth was floating on a magic carpet above the dance floor, surrounded by glittering disco balls twirling in mid-air. Behind the decks, Mr Muddy in a scary-scientist-witch costume, assisted by Indiana Bones, was busting out ‘Thriller’.

  In one corner of the hall, some crab apples were fluttering about on tiny leaf wings (“the witch version of apple bobbing,” explained Puck) and on the other side of the room a small gaggle of witches and their cats were toasting marshmallows over one of the flaming torches attached to the wall.

  Up above, the bat bunting, my bat bunting, was hanging in loops criss-crossing the ceiling, swaying gently in a breeze no one could feel, so that it really did look like they were flying! Not gonna lie: I felt PROUD, but … while I might be looking at strings of paper bats, I was suddenly very aware that everyone else was looking at me.

  There were at least a hundred costumed witches in here and I was still the only FROG. There were actual frogs of course – the class frogs were doing an acrobatics display on a golden table under the chandelier and Stan, hiding at the back, was looking from the costume to me, and back again, with a look of HORROR on his little froggy face.

  “I’m sorry,” I mouthed at him, trying to ignore the fact I was now surrounded by a small crowd of pointing witches.

  “Wow!” It was Hunter’s voice. I had literally stopped a conga in its tracks. “That is some costume.” I had a feeling that was not a compliment. Hunter poked me in my papier-mâché stomach. “WOW!” he said again. “I don’t know how you did it, but … cool.”

  Then someone started to clap. And, one by one, all the other witches – in their annoyingly perfect WITCH costumes – joined in.

  I was DEAD.

  “That. Is. Amazing.” Fabi broke out of the conga line and loped over. “And it matches your hair! What spell did you use?”

  I mumbled that I hadn’t spelled it, that my dad had made it.

  There was a collective gasp.

  “He MADE it?!” Fabi’s eyes widened. “Like, with his hands? And, like, not a wand?”

  I went red under the green face paint and shook my head.

  “No magic at all?” Hunter raised one eyebrow. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Is he an artist?” whispered a small witch in a black lace cape, with a glittery witch’s hat over her headscarf.

  “So cool, so avant-garde.” Mr Zicasso (in black sequins) had whizzed over now and was considering me from every angle like I was an original work by Da Vinciwick.

  “And there’s a pouch!” squealed Madam Binx, floating over to have a closer look. “I do love a costume with pockets.”

  “You’re the first witch who’s come as something other than A WITCH for a hundred and thirty-three years.” Gilbert Swizz, the actual head boy, sauntered over and nodded approvingly, sending a ripple of impressed whispers round the crowd. Approvingly?

  Wait … it was dawning on me … my costume was a HIT!

  “Would your dad make one for me next year?” asked a random Year Ten.

  “Can he do any other animals?” asked another. “Like an elephant?”

  “A slow-worm?”

  “A duck-billed platypus?” Suggestions were coming thick and fast.

  “An axolotl?” That was Puck.

  I nodded manically, goggly eyes boinging around on my head.

  “Right, witches!” Mr Muddy came out from behind the decks. “Let Bea sample the delights of her first Halloween Ball!”

  “Dance with us, Bea!” Amara (who had gone full witchy witch with long golden chin hairs and stripey socks) was already pulling me towards the throng of witches in the middle of the room.

  “Maybe later?” I hung back. Unless I was alone in the forest in the dark, I found dancing challenging and they all seemed to know the complicated steps to a song I’d never heard before.

  “Cakes then,” Amara said happily and, before I knew what I was doing, we were heading at speed – Puck and Winnie and Fabi too – towards a long table at the side of the hall set with our 107 gleaming, towering cake stands, the 33 punchbowls, candelabras, flowers and glimmering crystals and surrounded by a little crowd already munching away. Everyone looked happy enough, but what I wanted to know was why was there smoke coming out of their noses and ears??

 

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