Free Year of the Witch by Charla Layne

 
    Chapter One
                I was born in the year of the witch.  My family anxiously awaited the next sixteen years to see if I would truly submit to my calling or just be another disappoint to the Sayter family name.  My mother and my sister had resisted this calling, or so it seemed to the rest of the family.  While my grandmother always insisted that my mother lacked the focus needed to call the arts as a teenager, I truly believe my sister just ignored the calling out of embarrassment.  It was hard enough to be a teenager and go to high school.  Who needed the additional transitions of managing that with learning to cast spells and control powers?
                I will turn sixteen in three months.  My mother’s side of the family watches me like some sort of science project, hopeful that I will display the family traits they all value so much.  My father’s side of the family has religiously attended church four times a week since the announcement of my mother’s pregnancy, asking the heavens above to spare me from the wicked sentence.  I feel like no matter what happens at this point, I will sorely disappoint half of my family.
                In traditional fashion, I am marked as a fledgling with the Sayter family crest on a medallion that I am to wear at all times.  It had annoyed my grandmother to no end when I had turned the ancient necklace into an updated and modern bracelet.  What difference did it make, I had argued.  I still wore the darn thing at all times, as mandated by the Council.  My mother had merely chuckled and reminded her mother that I was just expressing my individuality.  She’d said the same thing when I’d dyed my hair maroon just last year.  Since, I had let it return to it’s original dark blonde shade that I despised.  What witch didn’t have some dark, foreboding shade of black hair?  It almost seemed a joke that as a fledgling, I was cursed with blonde hair and sky blue eyes.  We won’t even discuss the sprinkle of freckles that covered the bridge of my nose and my cheeks.
                I only know two other girls at my high school that wear medallions similar to mine.  At least they both have been blessed with dark hair and dark eyes instead of toting these baby doll looks like mine.  It strikes my family as odd that the three of us choose to avoid each other instead of uniting in an attempt to try to understand our budding gifts in the arts.  Well, my family will certainly be thrilled to learn that last Friday when I checked the sign-up sheet for my driver’s education class, fate had placed the three of us together in a car with the instructor.  I’d had to scan the list twice, but there it was—Rachel McAlister, Devon Black, and Trina Sayter.  I was destined to spend the remainder of the school year in a car with the only other two witch fledglings I knew.      
                I remember when I met Devon Black in the second grade.  I’d been strangely impressed that even back then she had never strayed from her consistent wardrobe of black from head to toe.  I think she just liked the shock effect it had on everyone.  When I’d seen her medallion, I’d asked my grandmother to take me to the Council’s hall of family records.  I couldn’t believe that her last name was actually Black, but there it was in the records.  I’d thought surely she’d changed it simply because what cooler name than Black could there possibly be for a witch’s family?
                Rachel McAlister sat behind me in English class.  And, as everyone else at Canter High did, the only reason to befriend Rachel was to get closer to her brother Jake.  Jake McAlister was the bad boy personified.  I’d almost give up every chance of being a witch just to ride on the back of his motorcycle snuggled up to him.  Hey, I said almost.  I’m pretty excited at the prospect of being the newest witch in the Sayter