3 She Seems Sweet

Finnegan spent his last period thinking about his weird science partner. He had seen her in class, but he never really noticed her that much. She kept to herself most of the time, reading or working on her homework. This was the first partnered assignment that was given in Science class, and he was a little glad he didn't have to be stuck with a football player or a preppy girl who cared too much about her hair and her lip gloss. Elise, she said her name was. She wasn't unattractive, but he didn't really care about girls. Weston, his best friend, was always talking about how he wanted a girlfriend, but the girls in this town were either too easy or just not his type. He really wanted to meet an Asian girl, or a Black girl, or some kind of exotic girl. The girls who hung around them during lunch, Kimber and Ashley, were emo-scene type girls. Weston thought about dating one of them, but they weren't really very interesting. They just kind of went along and did whatever Weston and Finnegan were doing. Ashley once asked Finnegan if he wanted to go to the movies with her, but he didn't really want to be alone with her. So Weston and Kimber came along. Afterward, Ashley asked him if he liked her. He didn't want to hurt her feelings, but he didn't really like anyone. She pouted for a week or so, and then everything went back to normal. Finnegan didn't really hang out on weeknights anyway, so they went to the skate park after school to watch Weston, who loved the groupie attention. On weekends, they might all hang out at the park or go see a movie, but there was really nothing to do in this town. Finnegan suggested going to the lake a few times during the summer, but Kimber and Ashley didn't like the lake water or being in the sun too long. They wanted to stay pale like vampires and porcelain dolls. Weston didn't mind, but he preferred to swim at the city pool, and for half of the summer he went on vacation to South Carolina to visit his mom.

He thought about how Elise had first suggested that they work on the experiments at his house. He didn't try to hide the fact that he was pagan. He openly wore his pentacle ring everywhere. But he didn't try to advertise it either. This small town they lived in wasn't as welcoming to people who didn't believe in their Christian God and their Christian doctrine. It was hard enough to wear all black and look like a heathen. Most people avoided him and his friends, thinking they were too rebellious, which might have been true for Weston and Kimber and Ashley. But Finnegan was raised by pagan parents who were genuinely good people. Witchcraft is not what most people think it is. Witches don't make a pact with the devil or demons for their power, and there isn't only Black and White magic. At least not the kind of witchcraft Finnegan grew up with.

Even though there should be nothing in this for Finnegan to be ashamed of, he worried about anyone from school visiting his home and potentially getting the wrong idea and spreading rumors. Even Weston had never been to his home. The only people that came to visit were the other families in the Grove.

Most people confuse being pagan with being Wiccan, but they are not interchangeable. Wiccans have a specific order they like to see things done in. Pagans are a little more free-form. Finnegan's parents followed what they called the Elder-Blood Path. They belonged to a Grove of Druidic witches and wizards that met regularly on the sabbats and esbats, or full moons and solstices. Every weekday after school, Finnegan went home to finish his homework, and after dinner, his parents would either work with him on cultivating his craft by teaching him about herbs and crystals and their properties, how to prepare potions for different things, and how to enchant or charm items and focus his energy to see a spell through to the end, or he would go into his shed at the edge of the backyard and work on his own, putting together his book of shadows or crafting tools for rituals and cultivating his skill with things he's already learned.

His grandmother on his father's side passed away during the summer before the school year, and she left a small trunk of items to Finnegan. His father was her only child, so his parents got the inheritance money. They cleaned out and sold the house, keeping what they wanted or what was too sentimental to give away, but there was a letter with the will that specifically said she wanted Finnegan to have the trunk in the closet of her bedroom. When his parents went to clean out the house, they found the trunk tucked away under piles of fabric. There was also a small shrine to the Horned God and Triple Goddess. His parents already had several pagan items and offered the things from the shrine to Finnegan as well. He didn't know if he wanted all of it, but he took them and put them in his shed. He hadn't been able to bring himself to take them out and place them somewhere yet. His grandmother was a very interesting character. He had only visited her about five times while she was alive, but all of those times were in the past five summers. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer and given only three years to live. She outlived the diagnosis, but she knew she couldn't hold on for much longer than that.

Pagans believe that death is not the end of us, and that we live on. There is a veil that separates the living from the ancestors who have passed, and though we do not see the deceased, we can still feel them and sometimes communicate with them. Finnegan's father took his mother's death pretty hard for the first month while he had to deal with the reading of the will and settling her estate, but he grieved appropriately, and the family held a special ritual on Samhain, the holiday that comes in October more commonly celebrated as Halloween.

...

When the final bell rang, Finnegan decided to see if he could find Elise before she left and follow her home. He would say that he didn't like using GPS and would prefer to know the way before Saturday came. It was Thursday, so there was still time, but really Finnegan wanted to see if Elise was the type of girl to jump to conclusions about his faith and lifestyle and spread rumors.

He didn't really know where her locker would be, but he got lucky and saw her walk out of the library. He blended into the crowd of students and followed her to her locker, but her friend came up to her before he could get close enough to her. He moved close to the wall and pretended to rifle through his backpack for something until they started walking again, heading in the direction of the gym once they got outside.

Finnegan put his backpack back on and walked to his car, since the gym doors could be seen from the parking lot. There was a crowd of students around the gym entrance, so he had plenty of time to get to his car and pull closer to the parking lot exit.

As soon as Elise and her friend parted ways, Finnegan was going to wait for her to walk by and he would call out to her. He didn't know what she drove, or if she even had a car. Most of the students did, but some of them walked to school or rode the bus.

...

She seemed unsure about getting into the car with him at first. He thought maybe he was being too forward. He almost regretted deciding to catch up to her, but once she had her seatbelt on, she looked a little...happy? She was smiling and looking out the window. She put her bag in the floor and kept her feet tucked underneath her with her hands in her lap. Was she just shy?

"Um, so which way should I go?" Finnegan asked her.

"Oh, oops, sorry. Just go left up here and then right at the light."

It took about a quarter of an hour to drive all the way to her house. There was beautiful scenery along the way, mostly of cow fields and forested areas once you got off the main highway. He tried to make her more comfortable by playing the popular radio station rather than his metal CD he usually listened to. She relaxed a little as he drove, and he noticed her hair was long and looked dark brown in the sunlight. It looked black under the fluorescent light at school. She wore glasses which she kept pushing up her nose when she wasn't tucking a defiant strand of hair behind her ear or resting her hands in her lap. She only spoke to give him directions, and when she told him to turn down her driveway, she seemed to tense up again.

Her house was small indeed, but it had a sort of cottage charm on the outside with a green roof and green shutters and yellow siding all the way around. The detached garage matched the house and there was a wooden bench facing a couple rows of fruit trees. All of it was enclosed in a chain-link fence with a broken gate that rested permanently open.

"Just stop here. When you come on Saturday, you can just park over there next to the fence. The ground is level there and it will be easier for you to turn around. Thanks for the ride, Finnegan." She gathered up her bag as she was saying this.

"Uh, yeah, no problem. You know, this is a really beautiful area. My house is pretty far from town too, but it's really rocky and more densely forested than this. You have more to see from here." Her face brightened a little.

"Thanks. And forests are pretty cool. Lots of shade."

"Ha, yeah I guess so. Well anyway, I'll see you Saturday if I don't run into you tomorrow."

"Ok," she waved to him after closing the car door. "Oh, wait!" She knocked on the window. He rolled it down for her and she leaned down to ask, "What kind of sandwiches do you like? For the picnic."

"Oh, uh anything but liverwurst or tuna. Do you want me to bring anything?"

She smiled. "Ok, got it. Just bring whatever you think we'll need for the experiments and don't forget the bug spray. And wear boots or closed-toe shoes."

"Ok, see you." He pulled out of her long gravel driveway and thought to himself, "She seems really sweet."