Page 96 of Haunting the Deep

“Not if you plan on passing this class,” he says.

The last bell rings, and I make my way through the hallway. Two girls ahead of me whisper behind their hands and look in my direction. The weird thing is, they don’t laugh. They frown.

I unload my books into my locker. Please let Elijah have made some headway. His not coming back to school is a good sign. I click my locker shut and turn around. Mary, Alice, and Susannah are standing right behind me.

“Whoa,” I say. “Way to creepily sneak up on someone.”

“I’m so glad you think so,” Alice says. “I worked long and hard on that technique.”

Mary bounces slightly and grins at me. “Give it to her, Suze.”

Susannah pulls a small black velvet box from her Victorian jacket. She holds it out to me in her palm. “From us.”

I look at each of them. “What’s this for?”

“Just open it,” Mary says, clasping her hands together with all the enthusiasm of a kid at a birthday party.

I flip the lid. Inside is a delicate silver broom necklace. It looks handmade.

Alice pulls her own broom necklace out of her blouse.

“It’s our personal symbol for our circle. It binds us. Alice chose it when we were kids. We all wear one,” Susannahsays.

“It’s silly,” Alice says. “But at eight, I thought it was super cool.”

I open my mouth to say thanks, but my voice catches. Elijah was right. I do belong in Salem. And all of a sudden, I want to cry.

“Well, it’s notthatbad,” Alice says, but she’s smiling.

“It’s not bad at all,” I manage, smiling too.

“Consider yourself official,” Susannah says, and links her arm through mine as we head down the hallway toward Wardwell’s.

I slip the necklace over my head just as we pass a couple holding hands. They look from the Descendants to me and frown.

“I think we can definitively conclude that whatever gossip Niki and Blair spread today was related to me,” I say.

“Agreed,” Susannah says. “Normally, I would be annoyed. But I’m actually relieved.”

I nod. “The only strange part is that whatever they said isn’t getting me judgy looks but sad ones. Have you guys heard anything about it?”

“No,” Alice says. “But people wouldn’t tell us rumors about you. They know better.”

“Let’s be honest, Alice,” Mary says. “People don’t usually talk to us at all about anything. Not if they have to meet that death stare of yours. And I don’t know what you saw today, but we got just as many looks as Sam.”

They got looks, too?I stop in front of my history classroom. “I’ll be fast.”

“We’ll wait here,” Susannah says.

I push open the door, and Wardwell looks up from a stack of papers. “Please sit.”

I plop down in a chair next to his desk.

He clears his throat. “I’d like you to complete the remainder of the work you missed by writing a five-page paper.”

“Sounds good. I can do that,” I say quickly.

“I want you to use the research you’ve done these past weeks on theTitanicto create a fictional narrative,” he continues.