Free Bitch Witch by S.R. Karfelt

hand-me-downs,” said Mindy, “and stopped eating baby mice at lunch.”
    “Seriously girl-crushing on you right now,” Sarah said as her normal voice returned.
    Mindy waved bye with her middle finger. “You left your cell phone on your desk. It’s been ringing for the last two hours. What nerd outside middle school uses Taylor Swift’s Shake It Off as a ringtone?”
    Paul! Sarah’s mind shot to him like a compass returning north.
    “I might have looked at it and noticed you have calls from the Shrewsbury Police Department. Second hand clothes, huh, shyster?” Mindy marched off, tossing over her shoulder, “If they give you the chair for stealing, will me your clothes? I’ll pretend we were friends posthumously.”

 

     
     
    S arah, thank you for getting me out!” Paul’s voice faltered as he swept his eyes over her dress, but he wisely said nothing about it. The cops didn’t seem to notice. Paul signed his release papers and Sarah ran her debit card to pay the fines, and they stepped out the front doorway of the station.
    Sarah grabbed his arm and hauled him off to the side. “Now will you admit you feel the draw? Or do you have another reason for sleeping in the park by my house?”
    Paul couldn’t quite meet her gaze. “Actually, I had nowhere else to sleep.”
    “Why didn’t you get a hotel room?”
    He waited for several cops to pass them and go inside before replying in a low voice, “Not enough cash.”
    “What? You drive a BMW convertible! Why can’t you afford a hotel?”
    “The car is my father’s. I was supposed to pick it up for him. I have no money because I left Afghanistan four months ago. Apparently nobody wants to hire an EMT who spent the past three months in a psychiatric hospital in Dallas.”
    Whoa.
    Psychiatric hospital? And I showed him I was a witch!
    “Why were you in a psychiatric hospital?”
    “Are you going to judge? I mean as a woman claiming to be a witch, who thinks she’s caught up in a love spell, I don’t think you should be casting any stones.”
    “I’m not judging. It was because of the war, wasn’t it?”
    Paul didn’t answer. He still wore the polo shirt and jeans he’d had on the last time she saw him, and dark circles ringed his eyes.
    “How about I feed you? You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”
    “Nothing weird? I am ravenous.”
    “No. I promise.”
    On the way home Sarah swung by Chick-Fil-A and picked up too much food. They ate sitting on the sofa with the Weather Channel on mute. Paul devoured two sandwiches and two orders of waffle fries. He picked at Sarah’s fries until she surrendered them, wondering when he had eaten last. He fell asleep on the couch without having said much more than, “Do you have any more ketchup?”
    It was eleven o’clock in the evening before Sarah remembered to change out of the wretched dress. Ten minutes later she stood in the backyard in her favorite pajamas and lit the dress on fire. It took three bottles of charcoal lighter to get rid of it and left a two foot in diameter scorched circle in the grass. When she turned around, Paul stood on the back porch leaning against the railing, watching.
    “Didn’t like that one so much?” he asked.
    “No.”
    “Yeah. Me neither. Thanks for dinner, Sarah, and for bailing me out.”
    “You’re not leaving?”
    “Yeah. I have a bus ticket to get back up to New Hampshire. I’m pretty sure I can change the date on it, and I’ll wait for the car up there.”
    “You’re welcome to stay with me, Paul. You’ll get arrested sleeping in a park up there too.” Am I in-fucking-sane? I can’t have him staying here!
    “I thought you were trying to limit our time together. I’m supposed to call instead of coming over, remember? Don’t feel sorry for me, Sarah. My family has money oozing out the ears, oil and fracking kind of money. All I have to do is toe the line for my share. I’m just not a cooperative man.”
    It sounded familiar. The murky