Yesterday she'd been a Julia Roberts look-alike, but mom had got the proportions all wrong and Julia Roberts tiny head was stuck like a ping-pong ball on top of Julia Robert's enormous body. I said to her, 'Mom, you look too stupid for words,' and she told me off for being cheeky. It wasn't easy keeping a straight face when her voice sounded like Mickey Mouse.
This morning I encountered an ageing film star at the breakfast table. Even Merlina, our cat, who was silently sitting in the sugar bowl, seemed startled by the horrendous sight.
'This isn't right,' mom grumbled, staring at her wrinkled skin and greying hair in a gold hand mirror. 'I wanted to look like Bette Davies in her sophisticated forties style, not decrepit and old like this.'
I tutted and shoved a spoonful of cornflakes into my mouth so I wouldn't have to comment. Mom always asks me what I think of her different appearances. She gets upset it I admit that I just want her to look like my mom.
I wouldn't mind so much if she kept the same face for a few weeks, even a few months, so I'd have time to get used to it. I might even be able to recognise my own mother in the streets.
As it is, I often have to walk up to someone I think is my mother, and ask, 'Excuse me, are you mom?' Sometimes I get it wrong and complete strangers look at me as if I've completely flipped my lid. It's embarrassing.
Mom stared at her reflection in the mirror, huffing and grumbling a lot. Then she put the mirror down by her bowl of pickled spinach. That's another thing about my mom. Not only does she look different every morning, she also likes pickles for breakfast. Pickles with gripe-water. She says it gives her spirits a boost.
'It's no good,' mom said. 'I'll have to change it again.'
'Oh mom!' I groaned. 'What's wrong with you own face? It's pretty - '
'Pretty boring,' she butted in. 'I've had it for over two hundred years, Crystal. I like to have a new face every now and again.'
'But you do it two or three times a day,' I complained.
'So?'
'So, isn't that a complete waste of magic power?'
Mom looked at me with her baggy eyes and slashed red mouth. 'It's my magic,' she said, 'I can do whatever I like with it.'
I gave up. It was useless to argue with mom. The Chief Magician had already warned her to cut down on spells before her magic supply collapsed with exhaustion, but she kept on doing it.
Mom opened the newspaper and quickly flicked through the pages. I knew what she was doing. She was looking for a suitable photograph to copy.
'How about Oprah Winfrey?' she asked. 'She's a warm, funny, intelligent woman. It might be nice to be intelligent for a while.'
'You'd just have the looks, mom, not the brain cells,' I sighed. 'It would take more than a face change to make you intelligent.
'Don't be so cheeky, young lady. I have lots of certificates and diploma's - '
'They're all fake, mom.'
Mom tutted. I sighed again.
Apart from changing her face every ten minutes or so, mom's other favourite habit is collecting awards. Whenever she hears on the news or reads in the newspaper about someone winning a prize, she gets jealous and conjures up the same award.
There are boxes and boxes of them in the attic, along with medals and trophies, and even rosettes from horse shows. None of them are real. Mom just likes to show them off occasionally. I don't know what people must think when she puts fifteen Oscars on the living room window ledge for all the world to admire. She's never even watched a film, let alone starred in one.
I do know that our neighbours all think she's brilliant. They see all these trophies and awards on the living room window ledge, and assume she's some kind of genius. Little do they know that my mother has the memory of a goldfish and is totally incapable of performing the simplest spell without getting it wrong.
I'll never forget the day I came home from school once, and mom flew into a wild panic because my tea wasn't ready. I didn't mind, but mom was convinced I'd starve to death if I didn't have it right there and then.
She sprinted into the kitchen and told the cooker to prepare a cheese salad. A salad from the cooker, I ask you! Everyone knows that it's the fridge that makes salads.
Anyway, what she got out of the oven defies any sort of description. It was all black and crispy and looked more like a compost heap than a meal. Even Cuthbert, our hairy mongrel, wouldn't touch it.
And then there was the time mom decided our house was looking a little dull, and tried to redecorate. Not just one room at a time, like normal people, but the whole house all in one go. She overloaded her magic, and her spell casting went haywire.
We had a bright orange living room, complete with bright orange furniture, dark purple bedrooms, and luminous green moss growing on the kitchen walls. Mom attempted to reverse it all and change it back, but she got her spells wrong again and everything turned as black as night - even the light bulbs!
In desperation, she blasted a handful of magic into the air, and turned the entire house into pink cardboard. The walls buckled, and the roof caved in.
We eventually got our brick walls back, but we now live in a crooked, multi-coloured house which looks like a battered birthday present. The wallpaper gives me headaches.
Mom interrupted my thoughts by making by breakfast bowl disappear before I'd even finished my cornflakes.
'Crystal,' she said, in the kind of voice that meant she wanted me to agree with her about something, 'Do you like Pocahontas?'
I told her there was no way I was having a cartoon character for a mother. She pulled a face, which wasn't easy with Bette Davies' face.
By the time I left for school that morning, Mom was floating down the hallway in a stunning designer outfit trying to act like Joan Collins. Unfortunately, she hadn't concentrated hard enough, and was wearing Mavis Riley's face out of Coronation Street instead. I hadn't the heart to tell her.
It was raining outside. The sky promised thunderstorms and real bucketing weather. I stood on the doorstep, and sighed.
I no longer owned a raincoat. Not one that fitted, anyway. Mom had shrunk it down to toddler size in her one attempt to work the washing machine. I didn't have an umbrella either. Merlina had used it to sharpen her claws so it now looked remarkably like a Hawaiian grass skirt.
The rain pelted down. I was going to get soaked. Unless ... ?
It wasn't allowed but, after checking no one was around to see, I magicked up a brand new umbrella - one of those massive ones they use to walk around golf courses.
I stepped into the downpour, dry and well-pleased with myself. Unlike mom, I usually get my spells right.
A few doors down the road, I stopped to call for Dayle. Dayle is my best friend and we always walk to school together. I like her because she's normal. She has normal parents, too, and lives in a normal house.
It wasn't until I met Dayle and started going to ordinary school that I realised how strange and unusual my parents were. Before that, I'd attended The Infant School for Witches Offspring, which had goblins and elves and fairies for pupils. The lessons were easy. We learned how to make magic, and never did any boring stuff like maths and English. It was fun.
Then mom decided I wasn't getting a Proper Education and wasn't mixing with the Right Sort of People. So we left our Welsh cave in the Black Mountains and moved into a council house on a big estate. It was a bit awkward at first because a family were already living in the house at the time, but mom gave them a big suitcase full of money and they went away quite happily.
I remember my very first day at the local comprehensive school. Miss Evans, my form teacher, made me stand up in front of the whole class to introduce me to everyone. She asked what my hobbies were, if I had any pets, what job my father did for a living.
'Oh, he's not living,' I said. 'He's dead.'
Miss Evans face went as white as a ghost, which seemed appropriate. 'I'm so sorry, Crystal,' she said, 'I didn't know.'
The entire class made sad noises, like the mooing of cows.
'But he visits us quite often,' I added.
The class fell silent. Miss Evans looked embarrassed, then confused, then annoyed. It wasn't until later I discovered that other children didn't have ghosts for fathers. Nor did they have mothers who made things appear out of thin air, who told stories with ghostly pictures floating around the room, or who slept on the ceiling at night. Other children's parents didn't seem to do anything interesting at all.
Dayle rolled miserably out of her house with her head hanging down. Without saying a word, she dragged her feet along the pavement, splashing her shoes in the puddles and not looking at all bothered by the waterfall of rain cascading down on her head. She refused to share my bright new umbrella.
'What's up?' I asked.
Dayle thrust her hands into her soggy blazer pockets, and mumbled, 'I've got Biology this morning.'
'I thought you liked Biology?'
'I do, but I've got Haig Mullins sitting next to me this term.'
'He's not still picking on you, is he?'
Dayle nodded her dripping head, and sniffed.
Haig Mullins is the school bully. He picks on anyone who dares cross his path, and looks like one of those pictures you see of Stoneage Man. He acts like one, too.
Last term he'd made Dayle’s life a misery, pinching her books, tripping her up in the corridor and taking her dinner tickets off her until she almost starved to death. The teachers didn't do much to help. They're scared of him, too.
I guess that was why Dayle was so determined to walk in the rain all the way to school. She wanted to catch a cold, or flu, or some other damp-related disease, so she wouldn't have to go to school and face Haig for a while.
I attempted to cheer her up by telling her what my mother had done over the weekend. Dayle knows my mom is a witch. It's our little secret.
But she didn't crack a smile when I told her mom had argued with the cat about a missing tin of pilchards, and had turned Cuthbert into a jellyfish just to see if her would like it.
The closer we got to school, the more depressed Dayle became. By the time we stood outside our form class waiting for our teacher to arrive, she was almost in tears. Haig glared at her from the other side of the corridor.
'You got my money, pale whale?' he grunted.
Dayle glowed like a red light bulb and tried to look invisible.
'Why don't you leave her alone?' I snapped. 'And stop threatening to hurt people if they don't give you money. It's called blackmail, and it's against the law.'
Haig grinned. It wasn't a nice grin. 'Why don't you mind you own business, Glassy,' he spat.
'My name is Crystal,' I spat back. 'You only call people nasty names because you can't remember their real names.'
The grin dropped from Haig’s face like a rock. He stepped forward across the corridor, his eyes squinting, his mouth making a zigzag pattern across his chin. I almost ran off to hide in a dustbin somewhere, but my legs felt like lead and I couldn't move.
Stuck to the spot with what seemed like superglue on my feet, I pretended I was brave. Inside, a little coward started screaming for help.
'You saying I'm stupid, or something?' Haig demanded to know.
My mouth opened of it's own accord, and started talking without my permission. 'Just don't leave your brain to medical science,' it said, 'Unless they have a good microscope to see it with.'
The rest of the class drew a sharp intake of breath and shuffled to the furthest end of the corridor. My entire life flashed before my eyes. It didn't take long.
Haig frowned. He clenched his fists and made a noise like he was a human bomb about to explode, and ...
And then Miss Evans arrived. My heart stopped struggling to get out of my chest, and I heaved a huge sigh of relief.
As I darted through the door into the classroom, Haig grabbed hold of my hair and snarled, 'I'll get you later, Glassy.'
My heart started to dig an escape tunnel again.
We sat down at our desks. Dayle put her head inside hers and tried to close the lid. 'You shouldn't have said anything to him,' she said, 'You've made it worse. Now he'll never leave me alone.'
'No need to thank me!' I said. 'I'm always willing to help a friend when she needs it.'
Dayle was silent all through registration, and didn't emerge from her desk until the bell rang for first lesson. Dayle's first lesson was Biology, and she shuffled miserably out of the form class like a woman condemned.
It wasn't a very good morning for me, either. I had two periods of English with a teacher who was madly in love with Shakespeare. She kept rattling on and on about how much Romeo loved Juliet, and didn't seem to notice that several people were slumped in a deep sleep across their desks.
At break time, I met Dayle in the girls toilets. She was still in a bad mood.
'Haig prodded and punched me all lesson,' she said. 'I told Mr Wallis, and he moved Haig to another desk. But then Haig kept flicking locusts at me. He said if I don't pay him fifty pence by tomorrow, he's going to get me ... and it's all your fault, Crystal.'
'Why don't you tell him to get lost?'
Dayle huffed loudly and put her hands on her non-existent hips. 'Because I like living, that's why,' she said. 'It's easy for you to give advice. You're not the one he's got it in for, are you.'
'Only because I stand up to him,' I told her.
'That's only because you're too afraid to move,' she said.
Sometimes it's not good to have a friend who knows me so well.
We stood in silence for a while, in the girls toilet, picking at a swollen toilet roll in the sink. Then Dayle turned to me and smiled this really gooey smile.
'Could you do me an enormous favour, Crystal?'
'I can't,' I said, shaking my head, 'You know I can't.'
'Please, Crystal, old pal,' she begged. 'Just one tiny, itsy-bitsy spell to make Haig leave me alone. Turn him into something harmless, like a frog, or a bowl of custard.'
''I'm not allowed, Dayle. I'm not supposed to perform magic spells on my own. My mom would go mad if she found out - '
'She won't know, will she? Oh, go on, Crystal. Please.'
I felt my face twitching. It would be so easy to do, and mom wouldn't find out unless she inspected her magic bank, which she hardly ever did.
But then, if I did one favour for Dayle, she'd be pestering me for more until the end of time.
Last week she'd wanted me to make Christian Slater appear in her bedroom. The week before that, she'd wanted a stretched limousine to chauffeur her to school when it was too wet and cold to walk.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I can't do it.'
Dayle stormed out of the girls toilets yelling, 'Some friend you are!'
I felt terrible.
To complete an already grotty morning, I had History. Normally I like History. We were doing Medieval times, with all those glorious costumes and castles and great feats of bravery.
But, that morning, Mr Fripps, our History teacher, decided to do a lesson about Medieval witches. My stomach did a double back-flip as soon as he mentioned the subject.
'Ignorant people in those days believed in witches and curses,' he began, as my stomach knotted and tied itself up into a neat little bow. 'If a farmer had a bad crop, or a child suddenly fell ill, the whole village would march up to the nearest old-age pensioner and accuse her of being a witch.'
It was all a bit too close to home. .
'There were two methods of dealing with witches,' Mr Fripps continued. 'One was to tie them up and throw them into deep water. If they drowned, they were innocent. But if they floated, it was proof that they possessed evil powers. Seems a little unfair to me.'
The class laughed. I felt all my internal organs slide down to my feet like an avalanche. Grandma had once been thrown into a river when she was young. She'd turned herself into a fish - a salmon, I think - and had swum six miles upstream in order to escape. Grandma had hated water and fish - particularly salmon - ever since.
Mr Fripps opened a book and showed everyone a full-colour painting. 'This was another method of dealing with witches,' he said. 'They burned them at the stake.'
I fell off my chair and crawled out of the classroom on my hands and knee's. When I refused to return, Mr Fripps made me write out three hundred lines of I must not cower in the corridor during History lesson.
The day dragged on. At lunch time I ate what the canteen laughingly called food, and tried to get Dayle to speak to me. She only sat at my table so she could practice her dirty looks. Her dirty looks made her look silly. I didn't help matters by telling her she looked silly.
In the afternoon, I fought with chronic indigestion, and had my brain pulverised by the new maths teacher. He asked me what a square root was. I told him it was a freak of nature as beetroots and other root vegetables were usually round. He called me an Imbecile. I looked it up in the dictionary later. I don't think I made a very good impression on him.
Finally, the home time bell rang out, and two thousand children poured down the school driveway. I saw Dayle being attacked at the gates - not by Haig Mullins, but by a first year wanting a kiss. This first year has an enormous crush on Dayle, and follows her around like an adoring puppy begging for kisses. Dayle thinks he's Gross.
Anyway, this little kid was bouncing up and down in front of her with his lips puckered, and Dayle was making wretching sounds and pushing him away. It looked so funny, I laughed.
Big mistake. If there's anything Dayle hates more than being told she looks silly, it's being laughed at. She grappled the first year to the ground, snarled at me, and stormed off in a huff - for the second time that day! I had to walk home alone.
Feeling miserable, I took a detour across the park. I like the park. It's full of birds and animals and children screaming on the swings.
My friends live there, too. I found them pecking for worms on the football pitch.
