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“We need a crone,” Feferi says to you one day. The two of you have ditched fourth period to go look at the squirrel that died behind the gym. There are ants all over it. You think maybe you’re not going to be able to use this little guy for much of anything unless you want ants all over your hands.
“Jade,” Feferi prods at you.
“What?” you say. Then, after processing the last few minutes of words, you decree: “Gross. Why?”
“Like for a coven. You’re the maiden, and I’m the mother, right?”
“Like heck! How are you the mother?”
“I’ve had sex.”
“Feferi you told me yesterday that you got as far as making Sollux touch your boob and then he said he was gay.”
“Bisexual—”
“Whatever. The kind of sexual that involves dating Karkat after touching your boob all of once. You did not have any sex with anyone.”
Feferi puffs her cheeks up angrily. “Well, I have a lot more pets—”
“Fish don’t count.”
During the ensuing scuffle, Feferi cracks your glasses, and you rub her hair into the dead squirrel.
*
You approach Damara Megido that lunch, after spending the rest of fourth period combing ants out of Feferi’s hair and deciding you could both each be half maiden and half mother, and fish counted if you really cared about them and gave them names and everything.
Damara is sitting with half a lunch table all to herself, working her way through a pile of fruit cups. She has bruises on all her knuckles, a totally illegal cigarette tucked behind one ear, and is just basically incredibly scary.
“Hi!” you say, sitting down beside her. “Hello there. Good morning. I’m Jade. Nice to meet you. How about this weather, huh?”
“Join our coven!” Feferi says, because she is a prime time dorkus.
Damara looks down at the two of you. Gosh, seniors are big. You don’t normally go around thinking of yourself as little, but like... gosh. You are teensy.
“Choke on my clit and die,” Damara says.
“What’s a clit?” Feferi asks.
“I knew you didn’t have sex!” you hiss.
“Look, anyway,” Feferi says, and slaps her hands on the table. “We’re witches! You’re a witch! Come join our coven and we can do cool witch things together, like right wrongs, or beat up demons, or turn creepy boys inside out. Or whatever. We’re taking suggestions.”
“I’m not a witch,” Damara says.
“Everyone knows you’re a witch,” you say kindly, and dare to pat her arm. She gives you a look and you carefully take your hand back. “Hey, have you had sex?”
“Go away,” she says. She takes the cigarette down from behind her ear and lights it with a lighter, which is disappointing, because snapping a flame off your fingernails is so easy you could do it your first week of trying. She takes a long drag and exhales. You and Feferi watch her attentively, trying not to cough, until she points the glowing end of the cigarette at you and says, “I will put this out in your eye, baby girl. Leave me alone.”
Feferi leans forward. “Are you talking to Jade or to both of—”
“I will put this out in your asshole!”
You and Feferi clear out.
*
It turns out that you don’t know very much about Damara Megido. No one does. She’s eighteen and has a motorcycle. She has a boyfriend but no one’s ever seen him. He sells drugs or something. She used to date a guy in school till she caught him making out with some dude and then she ran him over in the parking lot, the guy she was dating, not the other guy, but that was last year. She also ran Feferi’s older sister over in the parking lot after a big fight, and Meenah had to go to the hospital with a broken leg and get like sixteen stitches on her face.
Damara has actually run a lot of people over in the parking lot, it seems like, but everyone is pretty sure she’s got blackmail material on the principal so he can’t expel her or she’ll go to the police. No one knows where she lives, or where she came from, or if she’s faking that accent, or what the blackmail material is, or if she does the drugs her boyfriend sells, or why she hasn’t just dropped out already.
“She’s really cool,” Feferi concludes, flopping her notebook over her face.
“Yeah,” you agree glumly. “We have got to be friends with her.”
“I’m gonna make cookies,” Feferi decides. “She was eating all those fruit cups, right? Maybe she has a sweet tooth.”
“You can’t just bribe people to hang out with you.”
Feferi looks at you pityingly. “Not with that attitude you can’t!”
“That’s not even—Okay, fine, whatever. Make gingersnaps. Everyone likes gingersnaps.”
Halfway through gingersnapping, Meenah comes home from her bakery job.
“Hey, squirts,” she says, and hip-checks Feferi out of the way to try the batter. “This is fucking terrible. What is this? Who are you trying to murder with your terrible-ass cookies?”
“It’s not terrible, it’s just fine!” Feferi says. “We’re going to give them to Damara so she joins our coven.”
“That is the worst idea I ever did hear,” Meenah says, and starts shaking extra spices and stuff into the batter. “Also always use a tablespoon of cinnamon when it asks for a teaspoon. You get a better bite that way.”
“Quit it! Those are mine! I was doing it!” Feferi protests, and get elbowed in the head.
“Why’s it such a bad idea?” you want to know.
“Damara is a stone cold crazy bitch and she will eat your insides out. She’s like one of those crazy wasps. You know, the kind that eat your insides out. You don’t want to get mixed up with her.”
“I think she’s cool,” you mutter.
Meenah laughs. “You would. You’re like, what, ten. You think any old psycho bitch is cool.”
“I’m almost fourteen!”
“Oh, almost fourteen, my bad. Almost fourteen! That’s near old enough to file taxes and shit, right? Almost fourteen, Jesus. I’ll fetch your flipping cane, granny!”
You glare, and snatch the bowl out of her hands and give it to Feferi, who clutches it to her chest.
“I think this conversation is over,” you say sternly. “It was nice seeing you, Meenah. Goodbye.”
“I’m still standing here,” she says, grinning.
“Goodbye!”
She laughs at you, but she does go away.
“We should have asked her what a clit was,” Feferi observes.
“It’s the little thing that hangs down in the back of your throat,” you say. “There. Now you know.”
“I know,” Feferi says. “I mean, I knew that already. We could have just made sure.”
“Shut up and finish the damn cookies.”
“Suck my clit!”
The cookies turn out delicious.
*
Damara considers the box of cookies. She considers Feferi standing hopefully in front of her. Then she hoists Feferi up under one arm, makes her way to one of the big lunch room trash cans, and dumps her in it.
“Choke on a million rotten dicks, girlies,” she grunts, carefully crushing the cookie box under her heel, then stomps off.
“You know,” you say thoughtfully, helping Feferi out of the trash can, “I think maybe this is all part of the thing.”
“What thing,” Feferi grumbles. She has slimy chicken stuff like all over. The cookies are a completely lost cause. “Like a crazy insides sucking wasp thing? It feels like that kind of thing! Maybe we should find another crone. Like, a nicer one.”
“No, but that’s the thing. That thing! Crones aren’t supposed to be nice, are they?”
Feferi huffily tries to brush goop off her skirts, but she’s listening.
“Crones are the mean ones,” you say. “Right? They’re all old and wise and they have lessons and stuff, but like, why would they be nice about it. They’re too old to be nice. They’re the ones who take care of like, death, and—nasty stuff. Curses. All the bad things. I think this is like that.”
“You think she’s trying to like… teach us stuff?”
“Yeah.”
Feferi grins. “She is part of our coven!”
“Yeah!”
You high-five. Something horrible goes splap between your palms.
You wipe your hand off on the last clean bit of Feferi’s shirt. “Go put on your gym clothes,” you decree.
*
You track Damara down just after school in the parking lot, sitting on her idling motorcycle like a lipsticky crow and smoking. So actually, maybe more like a demon, with a lot of hair and not much skirt.
She is so cool.
She sees you coming and snarls, but she doesn’t ride away.
“We’re not gonna give up, you know,” you say, and cross your arms.
Feferi puts her hands on her hips. “We’re stubborn! And we’re mean too. And we can make other kinds of cookies if you don’t like gingersnaps, you should have just said.”
Damara shifts around in her seat, so her feet are on the pedals and her hands are on the handle bars, and then she does something vicious and twisting. The motorcycle roars like a monster, amazingly loud in the quiet of the parking lot, and for being three in the afternoon it feels awfully cold and dark. It startles the two of you into clutching one another’s hands.
You raise your chin angrily, and Feferi draws herself up tall and regal. This is part of the thing. You know it in the roots of your teeth: crones aren’t for being nice. They’re for scaring children.
“Leave me alone,” Damara growls, low as the motorcycle. “I will fuck you in every hole, babies. I will grind your bones.”
“No!” Feferi shouts.
“Final warning,” she growls.
“No!” you shout.
Her red nails tap and skitter across the handlebars of the motorcycle, her red lips part in sneer, and then she guns the engine and charges towards you all at once in a terrible loud scream. You spread your arms wide and scream back.
You think, just before she hits: Crones are for being brave.
*
“You blew up the fucking motorcycle?” Meenah asks. “Wish I’d thought of that.”
“Jade did it,” Feferi says, kicking her legs excitedly. “She was just like grr, blammo—Ow! Tarter sauce!”
“Stop squirming, smallfry,” Meenah says, and pours more antiseptic over her sister’s skinned up knees.
“Then Feferi put our bones back where they should be,” you volunteer. “It was super heroic. Damara had bones coming out of like, her whole arm.”
“And Damara, then, what’d Damara do?” Meenah demands of the brooding, angry witch slouched against the fridge.
“I told the cops where they could stick it,” Damara says, and flicks her cigarette butt onto the floor. “You’re welcome, cunt.”
“Yeah, well.” Meenah looks away, and starts peeling gauze pads out of their box. “...Thanks.”
You look at Damara fast enough to catch just the last little bit of surprise on her face before she goes back to glaring at stuff. You pump your fist and go yessss but then everyone looks at you, and you have to pretend like that was an invocation or something.
“Anyway!” you say. “When shall we three meet again?”
“I’m still here,” Meenah points out. “All like, being not a huge witch, thanks much.”
Feferi elbows her in the head.
Damara is very interested in her cigarette carton. Damara pulls one out, and puts it between her messed-up blood-stained lips, and lights it with a snap of her fingers.
“I could do next Tuesday,” she says quietly. “If there’s cookies.”