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displayed above my parents’ fireplace. That was me. I know for sure because one day -sometime in the summer when I was seven or eight-I was playing on the floor in the living room and I looked up and asked my mother: “Who’s that little girl mommy?” I’d been hurt when she laughed at first, pointing at me as if I’d just said the funniest thing. But then it was my turn to be shocked when she finally answered: “Why honey…that’s you!”
    At the time I’d weighed around eighty or ninety pounds, but being that large compared to a classroom full of fifty and sixty pound kids… and a girl no less…I was already starting to get teased. I looked nothing like that pretty little skinny girl in the picture. But she was right… That was me. And that was the girl I saw reflected back at me now.
    Much older of course… Taller… Definitely more mature… God she was gorgeous…
    The little indent in a slender woman’s tummy, leading in the center from the breastbone just down to the belly button…she had it. Defined, but still soft abs led down into a toned V shaped pelvis and that’s where my gaze hovered. If I didn’t believe it before , I believed it now. My birthmark, I could only remember seeing in my baby and toddler pictures. By the time I wa s old enough to wonder where it was, my tummy had hi dden it from sight . I could see it perfectly now. It was just inside the top crease of my inner thigh.
    I was almost embarrassed to be looking at this woman’s private area… But… It wasn’t as if she were a stranger… This was me ....somehow…
    I shook my head in hopes that it would bring something explanatory to mind…but nope… nothing. Even retracing my steps, I got as far as putting the first beautiful slice in my wrist and that’s where things went fuzzy.
    “ Ok…” I sighed in determination , my eyes fixed on the ones reflected back at me in the mirror.
    My fi st s were clenched, my lips drawn into a tight l ine. I had to snap out of this…fast….
    “ Your name is Evelyn Renee Barns. You are nineteen years old. Your parents are Joel and Cindy Barns. You were born and raised in Pickens, Alabama…”
    See… I knew who I was. I didn’t feel crazy… But… There was no denial in those features either.
    She looked at me in awe… No one had ever looked at me like that before… Not even my own mother.
    “You r name…” I started, and then froze, June’s voice reaching to me through the door again.
    “Evelyn…it’s me… June… If you’re in there…I just wanted to say goodbye, and…don’t forget to request the same room for fall semester. I…I don’t know how I would get through this without you as my study guide. Thank Ev…” she paused, sighing and then growing quiet.
    I almost jumped out of my skin when a tiny slip of paper swished under the door, landing harmlessly on my welcome rug. Was it even locked…?
    “See you next year…” she murmured just as Cassie –one of our other roo m mates-called her name.
    My heart was about to explode. I could feel it thumping way up into my throat, my neck hot and my palms suddenly sweaty. The witch. It was coming back to me now.
    “ Your wish has been gran ted…”
    But I hadn’t made a wish… Or had I?

Chapter 4*
    I bolted from my bedroom exactly forty-five minutes after waiting for June and her parents to leave with all her stuff. Out the inner door and down to the end of the hall, I burst into the stairwell like a rabbit on speed. My feet were going so fast that they slipped from under me around the bend leading to floor five, and I rolled the rest of the way down, banging my elbow on the iron banister, and getting h opelessly tangled in the size twenty-four nightdress I’d found buried in my ‘small drawer’. Most of the dorm suite doors were open, indicating that the students were already packed and gone. The witch lived down here somewhere….
    I turned backwards and then around full circle as I ran down the right side of