Midnight Magic

Sarah, my best friend, passed me a note in Maths class. It read:

“Are we still on for tonight?”

I scribbled “yes” on the back, and handed it back to her. She smiled at me.
That morning, at break, we’d been reading a copy of our favourite magazine, when we’d found an article about spells. One spell that had caught our attention was one about changing peoples’ personalities. There were two types of spells, one only lasted for ten minutes, while the other was more permanent. We wanted to practise the spell on Britney Wilson, a really snooty girl in our class who was forever nasty to us, to make her nicer. We decided to practise the temporary spell on each other first, to make sure we could do it. The problem was, the spell could only be performed at midnight.
“Hey, Wailer, the class has ended!!!” Came the catcall of Britney Wilson. “Time to go!!!”

My parents had gone to bed by the time midnight rolled around, so there was no need to explain why I going out into the back garden so late at night. I closed the gate separating the yard from the garden, and saw that Sarah was already waiting at the top, waiting for me to unlock the gate that separated the garden from the outside world.
“I’ve brought the magazine,” she said, as I let her in. “Plus it said we need a lock of hair and a finger nail belonging to the person we’re performing the spell on,” she held up a small plastic tub, containing a lock of her hair, and a finger nail. “Plus I brought nail scissors, so you can chop off your hair and finger nail.”
“Thanks, Sarah,” I smiled weakly. I took the scissors off her, and chopped of a lock of my hair, and a finger nail. It was, sadly, from my sharpest nail. Sarah placed the nail and hair in a different tub, which was labelled “Kayla.”
“Right, the spell says you can’t perform on yourself,” Sarah read from the magazine. “So I’ll perform the spell on you first, and then you’ll perform the spell on me. Agreed?”
I nodded nervously.
Sarah pondered over the spell. “Right, it says here, you have to be sat down to do this spell,” Sarah promptly sat on the grass, even though it was really wet from where it rained just before I’d come outside.
“Right, I need your hair and your nail,” she picked up the tub labelled “Kayla”, and placed it front of her. She read some more from the magazine, and then she waved her hand over the tub three times. Sarah then chanted: “Kayla White”, three times, and then chanted: “I empower Kayla White to change her personality for ten minutes!!!”
I didn’t feel different to before the spell was performed. “I don’t feel any diff…” Then I caught sight of the really pretty girl with blue and purple streaks in her hair, sitting in my garden. I had no idea who she was, and I felt angry that she was trespassing in my garden.
I felt a deep growl in my throat, and lunged for the girl. I slapped across her face, and pulled out her hair. We engaged in a fight, slapping and pulling each others’ hair, and the strange girl shouting out: “Kayla!!! It’s me!!! Sarah Rock!!! I’m your best friend!!!”
I don’t know why she was shouting that out, I had no idea who she was.
After ten minutes, I started to feel dizzy, and everything went black…

When I came round, I was lying on the grass in my back garden, with Sarah looking worriedly at me. “Are you okay?” She asked.
“Yes,” I replied. I had images in my head of us two having a catfight on the grass. “Were we just fighting? Slapping and pulling each others’ hair?”
Sarah nodded. “Yes. But don’t worry, the spell reversed your personality, so I knew it wasn’t really you.”
I grabbed the tub that housed Sarah’s hair and nail. “My turn,” I said. I placed the tub in front of me, and did as Sarah had done. I waved my hand three times over the tub, and chanted out loud: “Sarah Rock Sarah Rock Sarah Rock!!! I empower Sarah Rock to change her personality for ten minutes!!!”
I sat looking at Sarah for a couple of minutes. She stared back at me, blankly. I decided to test her. Sarah was normally pretty smart, and did really well in maths.
“Sarah, what’s two times thirteen?”
Sarah shrugged her shoulders.
“Okay, what’s two plus two?”
Again, the shrug.
We sat like that for ten minutes, with me firing maths questions at Sarah, while she shrugged her shoulders. When the ten minutes were up, Sarah gave an involuntary shudder, and fell to the ground, unconscious.
After a minute or so, Sarah suddenly sat bolt upright, and started shouting out all the answers to the questions I’d been asking her.
“Yaay!!! She’s back!!!” I cheered.
“Yaay!!! The spell’s worked!!!” Sarah equally cheered. “Now we can perform the permanent spell on Britney Wilson.”

We performed the spell on Britney Wilson, the following night. After doing so, I went to bed, and waited anxiously for the next day.
Britney Wilson stopped being such a snoot, and started being nice to us. We liked it at first, but after a while, it got annoying. Britney actually worshipped the ground Sarah and I walked on. After a week, we started wondering if there was some sort of reverse spell.
“I’m going to find the magazine,” Sarah said in maths class, when Britney, for the umpteenth time, had offered us her book, so we could copy her work. “I think I actually liked Britney before we cast the spell on her.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “She used to be horrible, but at least she never followed us around and constantly pestered us.”
After school had finished, I went to Sarah’s house to help her find the magazine. We searched her bedroom from top to bottom. After half an hour, Sarah shouted out: “I’ve found it!!! I found the magazine!!!”
She flipped through it, until she found the page with the spell, and we both read it, very carefully, for the reverse spell. Then, at the very bottom of the page, the last sentence read:

“There is no reverse spell for this spell. Once the personality has been changed, there is absolutely no way it can be changed back.”

We both looked at each other, horrified.
“Now what?” Sarah moaned. “No what do we do?”
I took the magazine over to Sarah’s bed. I re-read the page we’d been reading. Then my eyes caught sight of the words: “BACKWARDS TIME”. I read the spell carefully. If you said the amount of time you wanted to go back to three times, and then the words ’Backwards Time’ three times out loud, then that’s where you went.
‘Worth a shot,” I thought. Out loud, I shouted: “ONE WEEK ONE WEEK ONE WEEK!!! BACKWARDS TIME BACKWARDS TIME BACKWARDS TIME!!!”
Everything around me started zooming out of focus, and I found myself in my own bedroom. I was in bed, and my mum was shouting at me to get up for school. I looked at the date on my alarm clock. 30.11.10. Exactly a week from now, Britney Wilson would be following me and Sarah around, annoying us with her puppy love. Unless I put a stop to it.

“Hey, Kay, I just brought this magazine,” Sarah told me at break. “It looks really cool, there’s loads of spells inside.”
I reached out my hand for it. “Let me have a look.”
Sarah gave me the magazine, and I tore it up, and threw it in the nearest bin.
“What was that for?” Sarah demanded angrily.
“You don’t want to go messing with spells,” I said. “They just cause trouble.”

The next day, at the beginning of maths class, Britney dumped her exercise book on my desk.
“Er, what’s your problem?” I asked.
Britney smiled sweetly. “I know sometimes you don’t do your homework, so I thought you could copy mine so you don’t get into trouble.” She sat down at her own desk, leaving me with her maths book.
Sarah, who had been sitting next to me, cheered. “Yaay!!! The spell worked!!!”
My heart skipped a beat. “What-What spell?”
“Well, after you tore up my magazine, I brought another copy after school. There’s a really cool spell on changing personalities. So last night, I performed it on Britney, to make her nicer. That would be great, wouldn‘t it? If Britney Wilson didn‘t bully us anymore. Don‘t you agree, Kayla? What‘s the matter, Kayla? You‘ve gone a funny colour.”