How to Spot a Witch (Step 1: Deodorant)

It was a cool, late fall day when we met. The leaves were just beginning to litter the ground in a cascade of yellows, oranges, and browns, crunching under my feet as I walked to the high school’s entrance. It’s still hard to believe that we’re in high school now. Ninth grade. Young adults, young professionals, or whatever other bullshit the principal said to us at orientation.

It’s been like a month. I should be used to it by now. The intensive workload, the trauma of changing and showering after gym, and students with easily a foot on me and full-grown beards who were now my peers. It's all intense, but exciting, and also frightening to the point of paralysis.

“You should relax,” Kai says when he meets me at my locker. The hallways bustle with jocks, geeks, cheerleaders, wannabes, and all the other typical high school tropes that don’t matter anymore. Until they do. It’s all very confusing. No teen comedy flick or YA novel could have prepared me for this. I’m hunched against the lockers, toggling between pushing my glasses back on my face and trying to input my locker combination. My hands shake and I can’t remember if it’s 32 right or left.

Kai rolls his eyes in that loving-best-friend way he’s perfected over the years and nudges me out of the way. Kai got taller over the summer—he towers over me now at a staggering and athletic six feet. He said he’s only 5'11", but he’s lying. It’s six feet, at least. He sweeps his dark bangs out of his face and rolls the combination lock between his fingers, easily putting in the combination and tugging my locker open.

This time I roll my eyes as he grins triumphantly at me. “Yeah, yeah. You’re pretty and good at everything. You can shoot three-pointers in your sleep. Stop bragging,” I say, pushing my glasses up again as I gather my books for the day. Yes, all of them. I’m not befalling locker failures again today.

“I’m not bragging.” Kai shrugs, a ghost of a smirk on his lips as he brushes invisible lint off his sweatshirt. He’s definitely bragging.

He sobers up, leaning in to place a hand on my shoulder, and his eyes soften in concern. “Seriously, Lavon. You gonna be okay today?” he asks.

Ugh. Could he make me sound any more helpless and pathetic?

And the thing is, I could open my lock just fine with a little magic. It pricks at my fingertips like a sharp reminder that it’s there and can help me solve all my problems. Except one. Kai has no idea I’m a witch, and I can’t tell him.

I push a smile onto my face, shrugging like everything is fine and normal and cool. “Of course,” I say, trying to mimic the same easy confidence he had before. “With this winning personality? I’ll be more popular than you by the end of the day.”

Kai laughs. It’s a short, polite one—the kind people give when they’re not sure how else to navigate your self-deprecating humor. “Don’t worry, buddy. You’ll find your tribe,” he says, and takes off for his homeroom just before the bell rings.

He disappears down the hallway and I’m tossed around like a pinball as students rush to their homerooms before they’re late. I’m in a sea of shoulders bumping mine and elbows in my ribs as I “excuse me” and “sorry” and “pardon me” my way down the hall.

Entering homeroom and taking my seat is like a breath of fresh air. I inhale deep and sigh, sinking into my chair. Other students filter in, sipping iced coffees, hoods up to hide their earbuds, and chattering about their exciting high school lives. Lucky. Kai is my one friend in this lousy school and we’re separated for half the morning. He’s off cementing his reputation as an all-star athlete and friend to all, and I’m trying to disappear into my desk at the back of the classroom.

The guy beside me—tan and taper-fade haircut—sniffs the air before giving me a side-eye.

I try to brush it off. He must catch the scent of something or someone else lingering in the air, because I smell great. Fresh. Like a mountain in springtime. The label on the deodorant guaranteed it, and I used that mint green stick liberally.

He loudly sniffs the air again, deep and reverent, even leaning toward me, then straightens like he wasn’t just doing something strange as hell. I scoot my chair away and pray for an end to this day.

“Everyone listen up,” Ms. Gerald says over the noise of hyperactive teenagers talking excitedly about their plans, eating hot snacks and drinking soda, and texting—voice on a sigh like she can’t believe this is her life. “I have to do attendance. When you hear your name, say ‘here.’ Diego Alvarez.”

“Here,” says a guy in a letter jacket, slumped in his chair, lazily lifting a peace sign. The picture of a high school cliché.

Ms. Gerald checks off his name. She runs through the A’s, and I listen out for my name, only somewhat distracted by the guy who sniffed me. Now, he’s smiling at me, his leg bouncing. Oh no. My winning personality attracted a weirdo. Mom says that happens to witches. We attract the unusual, and sometimes that comes with the attention of a peculiar mortal.

“Cooper Baez,” Ms. Gerald calls.

The guy beside me raises an excited hand. “Here,” he says, then smirks, and adds, “You can call me Coop.” A wink.

Who the fuck is this guy?

Ms. Gerald only hesitates a moment before checking him off. “Lavon Braxton,” she calls.

“Here.” I raise my hand before letting it fall limp back onto the desk, the physical manifestation of my morning so far.

Ms. Gerald checks, then moves on.

Cooper—or Coop, I guess—leans toward me and whispers, “Are you wearing cologne?”

I edge away. “Um. No.”

That pleases him for some reason, but he doesn’t say anything else during homeroom. We listen as Ms. Gerald gives the morning announcements about today’s lunch menu—brisket sliders and coleslaw for the seniors, and yesterday’s meatloaf for the rest of us plebeians—and the clubs and sports that are meeting after school. Basketball tryouts are today, so Kai will be there after school. I could try out for the debate team, but I’m supposed to have a magic lesson with Mom.

When Kai said “find my tribe,” he likely meant something like mathletes, student government, science club, or something equally as nerdy. Once again, I find myself thinking about how much easier life would be if mortals knew about magic, and there was a Witch-Mortal Alliance at school or something. Not just to get the chance to tell Kai about my powers and finally stop keeping the world’s biggest secret from my best friend, but also to meet other witches. Mom says they’re everywhere, and I just have to sniff them out, but I’ve known about my powers for a year, and I still haven’t met another—

“What are the odds I would meet another witch on my first day at a mortal school?”

Panic pierces through me like an arrow through its target because…what?

I whip my head to Coop, because I recognize his voice clear as day—as if he’s standing right beside me, or…inside my head. But when I look, he’s just sitting back in his chair, picking at his nails, unbothered. He’s not even looking at me.

I squint, and before I can question it, his voice rings through my head again. “Be cool. It’s a reverse telepathy spell. I’m not reading your mind,” he says.

Except he’s not talking. He’s still sitting like a bored teenager at his desk, pretending to listen to Ms. Gerald explain the importance of finishing your homework before homeroom. “I just wanted to talk witch to witch. No nosy mortals,” he adds.

This time he looks at me. Holds my gaze. Rolls his eyes—not at me, but like we’re sharing a secret joke. About them.

I laugh and then cover it up with a cough when Ms. Gerald pauses her rant and glances up from her clipboard to glare at me. I pretend to be fascinated by my geometry textbook until she looks away. When her focus is no longer on me, I look back at Coop. He’s hiding a dimpled smile behind an algebra textbook. Upon closer inspection, he’s hiding alchemical workbook equations between the pages. Wow.

I want to talk back—ask him how he’s already doing alchemy at fourteen, how did he end up in the mortal realm, how did he figure out I’m a witch?—but I don’t know how to cast a reverse telepathy spell. I just learned how to levitate two objects at the same time.

So, I do it the mortal way. I grab my notebook, scribble a note in excited and haphazard handwriting, and then fold it tight. I’m waiting until Ms. Gerald’s back is turned to pass it to him, but it floats out of my hand as soon as she does. I follow its path with my eyes as it levitates from my hands and into Coop’s as he points his casting finger to guide it. Insane.

The bell rings. Coop and I lock eyes as we scramble to gather our things, somehow leaving the room side by side, like we’ve been doing this forever.

“I can’t believe you passed me a note,” he says out loud with his mouth this time. His tone is low, just in case, but almost everyone in the hall seems more focused on getting from homeroom to first period without incident. He unfolds the note like it’s archaic, but he’s fascinated by it. His nose is wrinkled but his smile is impossibly wide. “That’s so…mortal.”

“Well, I thought I was mortal until last year,” I explain, pulling on the straps of my bookbag.

Coop gapes, eyes wide, and hand clasping my arm to stop me in my tracks. “No way,” he says. I nod. “Are your parents, like, old-school witches or something?”

“No, I…”

I trail off because how do I explain to a stranger that I’m a half-witch because my dad is mortal, my mom is a witch who gave up her powers to be with him, and I didn’t show signs of having magic until I turned thirteen? I guess if anyone would understand, it would be another witch. Holy shit another witch!

For a year, I’ve been carrying this secret like a second backpack. Too heavy. Too weird. Too magical for anyone else to understand. And now suddenly, here’s this grinning weirdo who just gets it.

“How did I know you were a witch?” Coop says, and for a second I think he’s reading my mind, but he’s reading off the note I wrote. He laughs, bumping me with his shoulder. “What do you mean? I could fucking smell it on you.”

I blink. “Smell it? For real?”

His expression turns disbelieving again with a dash of awe. “Your parents never taught you that magic has a smell?” he hisses.

Sniff them out. Literally. “I thought it was a figure of speech,” I say, almost laughing.

Coop grins, flashing his dimples as if it’s a well-practiced trick because it probably is. He places a hand on my shoulder. “With magic, it’s never just a figure of speech,” he says.

I grin back because the delight rising in my chest leaves me with no other choice. I shift my bookbag again, the weight of all my textbooks and binders almost forgotten as I feel my brain locking in this moment like a camera capturing a memory. It’s that feeling when you know in your gut that your life is changing.

“Need help with your locker?” Coop asks, pointing at the way my fists grip the straps of my bag.

I shake my head. “Those combinations are impossible.”

“I know a little trick.” Magic sparks on his fingertips, and his eyes twinkle with mischief, like he just knows we crossed paths for some deeper cosmic reason, and this is just the start of it all.

Kai said I’d find my tribe. I don’t think he realized I’d find it in someone like Coop.

He loops our arms together, pulling me close. His smirk is less chaotic-charmer and more friendly as he drags me away toward a locker that isn’t even mine, and I don’t think it’s his either. “You’re my new best friend-slash-magic study buddy-slash-platonic life partner,” he declares. “I’m going to teach you everything I know about making mortals’ ads louder than the content they’re watching.”

I frown, considering. “Do I want to know that?”

“Yes.”