haunted

"So you like, um lived in a haunted house?"  my sister's oldest step son (she's got four step kids) asked last night, stuffing a handful of chips into his mouth while he waited for my sister to finish getting a pair of pants hemmed. Mom is always having to refit the length on stuff for her.

Me-:"Yes. Why?"

Mom-:"Get out of here. Our house wasn't haunted."

My sister looked at mom and rolled her eyes. "Yes it was! You just refuse to admit it."

Mom-:"You just think that cause you were scared of the basement. Nothing wrong with our old house. No such thing as a haunted house, being ridiculous."

Sister-:"Explain the electric heater coming on by itself while it was unplugged that one time? You can't can you. The house was haunted."

Me-: "The whole street was.  Remember our neighbour's dad across the street who kept hearing the scratching from inside his freezer."

Sister-:"Didn't he end up buying like four new ones thinking it was broken or something?"

I nodded. "Okay, so what brought all this up anyway?" 

Kid#1 -:"Hum, J.J. said something about it."  he blushed.  J.J. is the oldest son of one of our cousin's, and this kid's best friend. Kid#1 looked at our mom then started to fiddle with the kitchen cupboards, almost like there was more he wanted to say but wouldn't. "You've seen the movie the Craft right?" 

Sister-:"Okay I think I know where this is going. Say no."

Me-:"If you want to borrow my copy the answer is no because that would mean she'd have to go to my apartment and hunt through four boxes of movies to find it and I have no idea which box to tell her to look through."

He shook his head still blushing. "That's not what I was wanting. Forget it. Nevermind."

Me-:"How could I nevermind it if I have no idea what the thing was to begin with in order to nevermind it?"

Kid#1 -: "Huh?"

My sister was actually laughing at that one.

Kid#1-:" But you've got books on that sort of stuff right? I mean, J.J. said you're like a white witch, right, like more like... like that one from The Craft who has the real powers, not the goth chick, the other one."

Me-: "Okay now I'm confused. Start again, slowly in English please."

The kid gave a big sigh and just shook his head swinging on the cupboard door, which mom told him to stop cause he might break it.

Kid#1 -: "Can I borrow one of your books, for a ... I need to make a spell." he was still blushing.

Me-:"No. And there is no such thing as a white witch. Either you work with magick or you don't. Magick is neutral. It can go either way because that's just how life is, sometimes it works out the way you hope, sometimes not so much."

Sister-:"Just like TunaGirl."  she started to snicker for a moment.

Kid#1-: "TunaGirl?"

Sister-:"Friend of mine back in like grade 8 and in high school.  She did a love spell on one of the guys in our class.  It worked, they dated for awhile, then he started to get abusive and cheated on her. We ended up having to help remove the spell."

Me-: "Yeah, took 5 of us to do it. You, me, Sophia, her sister and TunaGirl."

Mom-: "I don't remember that."

Sister-: "Cause you never pay attention.  Come on mom, you're going to sit there and tell me that you didn't notice that the guy was abusive? You can't!  He hated her like all through grade 8 and suddenly he was madly in love with her? She was gross, her teeth were fuzzy."  

Me-: "and one of the many reasons I don't lend out my stuff anymore. Still can't believe you two stole my books."

Sister-: "Didn't steal, we put them back."

The kid left pissed off that I said no.