Westbridge was a small historic town about twenty miles south of Boston in the History Belt of the state. Known for its local cucumber, potato and corn crop, the small town had its share of history in the state. In the 1770s, its mayor sat down in the road north of town to promise no one in town would take up arms against the invading British of they promised not to burn down the town. For that reason, their city hall remained intact and was among the oldest structures in town. The hamlet lost just over a hundred men in the War of 1812, and during the Civil War, Colonel Hiram Chessler of the 16th Massachusetts Calvary lead over 300 men into the Civil War at the Battle of Poogan's Porch in 1861. It was more than obvious the town loved its history. From its place on the southerly route to New Bedford on the coast, travelers and motorists could see several of the most quaint New England homes in the area. Among them was the Victorian-looking Spellman House up from the corner of Elm and Broadhurst at 133 Collins Road and just a few blocks from Westbridge High School. Charles Spellman, a businessman and merchant up from Salem, had built it in 1793 on what was then wooded property but was now rows of several nearly matching Colonial homes on the north end of town. The family had lived in the house almost consistently ever since, but the closest neighbors always knew something was a bit off with the family. They apparently had some wealth, but they were always seeing and experiencing bursts of light and loud voices not to mention odd characters loitering around the back yard. To say the modern Spellman sisters were a bit eccentric was putting lightly. Zelda was an intellectual of some merit, and Hilda was a broad sometimes coarse character with the looks of a Forties screen star and the sense of humor of a sardonic comedienne, and then there was their cat, Salem, who tended to sit in the windows of the neighborhood houses and peer inside as if he somehow knew what was going on.
To add to this home was Sabrina. The daughter of their younger brother, she was beautiful, smart, funny and impassioned with the will of a politician and the heart of a poet. Sabrina dearly loved her aunts, but when she turned sixteen, she learned a secret about her family that had more than a bit surprised her: they were witches. Even more than surprising was the fact that she was also a witch and capable of doing magic in the form of witchcraft. She could conjure objects and alter the form of existing objects, which came in handy when she wanted a snack between classes at school. She could teleport herself from home to school in the blink of an eye by picturing her secret landing points in the school, and she cast hexes and spells with psychokinetic force which could cause good luck or bad luck depending on what she willed, but as much as it seemed, she was not all powerful. Her aunts were still trying to teach her the limits of her powers and the circumstances of them as well as warn her over using them in public. Despite how much some people believed in paranormal activity or strange forces in the universe, centuries of persecution had forced most witches to live in secret communities across the world, but there were still a select few who felt safe to live in regular society.
In England, most magic folk called non-magic people "muggles," but in Canada and the States, most witches and wizards called regular people "mortals." It was possibly due to the fact that several witches had mystically elongated their lives into a form of functional immortality and had mystically retarded their aging process, staying young and attractive for well over a hundred years. Another theory was that many of Sabrina's relatives were actually a separate line of humanity, a lineage of mystical human beings with both mystical and human traits. Unlike mortal witches who spent years mastering mystical arts just to cast spells, Sabrina was already casting and conjuring objects and taking lessons to better control her powers as mortal wizards and sorcerers went to secret magic schools to learn existing spells and mystical incantations. Since discovering her family secret, She had learned to make a copy of herself, affect the personalities of others and even alter he form and appearances into disguises. With a vial of mystical potion her aunts had nick-named "Boy Brew," she had successfully changed herself into her male counterpart, a teenage boy named Jack Spratsky, and infiltrated the garage hang-out near the school of her mortal boyfriend Harvey Kinkle to find out if he was thinking of her. Along the way, she had befriended Harvey's buddies from the football team, William Samms, Leonard Dalrymple, Mikey Ramage and Dale Baines. She also discovered that guys did not obsess that much over their girlfriends as girls did with their boyfriends. Without having to hold back their behaviors, they usually punched and slapped each other over, talked and discussed over horror movies and bodily noises and horsed around by testing each other's sensitivity by harmlessly impugning each other's manhood. It was sort of a wake-up call for Sabrina to see her boyfriend who seemed so sensitive around her to behave so masculine without her. After three doses of her formula, she had even had to briefly date her best friend, Valerie Birckhead, and even her high school antagonist, Libby Chessler, and with one dose of her potion still available, she thought she'd use it up and become Jack Spratsky once more to see what Harvey and the guys were up to without before mentioning that she as Jack would be moving on. Returning back to the garage off main street that Westbridge High School rented to teach auto repair to its students, Sabrina paused at the end of the driveway in her male attire, perfected her low guy voice again and then marched forward with a saunter to her step to see Harvey and the guys again.
"Hey…" Sabrina sauntered in from behind her masculine disguise and looked the garage over from the dingy cluttered walls to the high rafters of the bare ceiling. "Whoa…" Where were Harvey, Dale, Mikey and Leonard? This place was crowded with five to six guys yesterday and now it was empty except for William from school. Looking into the storeroom and back, Sabrina turned round to William sweeping the floor, collecting the debris in a shovel and dumping it in the trash. "Where is everyone?" She mustered her best masculine voice.
"I drew the short straw." William glanced to the guy he knew only as Jack Spratsky and replaced the broom to the corner behind the plastic trash barrel. "There's a building being demolished over on Third, and they went to watch, but I had to stay behind and clean the garage." He collected the loose tools to return to the tool case.
"A building coming down?" Sabrina's normal voice returned briefly and William turned to look at her. "Oh, yeah, that's cool…" She changed it back.
"Want to help me with this door?" William had grabbed and pulled on a worn-out leather jacket and strolled out of the garage to pull on a rope hanging from the garage door. Sabrina helped him pull it down into place to the floor to seal it up and then lock it from the inside of the place. Clanking down with a worn out pulley system, it thundered shut and William flipped a metal lock to seal it up.
"I was kind of hoping to hang with Harvey again." Sabrina continued her façade and gestured a bit much trying to act like a guy. "He's kind of cool."
"Yeah, he's got a lot of friends." William headed out the entrance and pulled out a key to lock it and the exterior weather door. "I've known Harvey since kindergarten, and he's a great guy." He locked the heavy steel door then the glass exterior door. "And I hate his guts."
"What?" Sabrina's voice returned again.
"I'm sorry, Jack…" William hid the key for the guys under a fake rock off to the side then continued on to the street to head home. "I don't really hate Harvey, it's just…" He sighed… "There's this girl at school… she's blonde, beautiful, funny, smart and…" He grinned to think about her. "I'm crazy about her. I can't get her out of my dreams…" He paused again. "But she's dating Harvey…."
"I knew it!" Sabrina forgot to sound like Jack. "He is cheating on me!" Her male form stepped away and back trying to control her new male aggression. "Is it Valerie? Melissa? Audrey? Mandy? Please tell me it's not Libby!" She grabbed William by his jacket. "Who is she?!"
"Sabrina Spellman…" William finally announced. The disguised witch in the mystical male disguise froze and did a double take to hear her own name. Her mouth even dropped open in shock.
"What?" Her "Jack" voice returned.
"Do you know what it's like to be in love with the most incredible girl in school only to have her dating your best friend?" William headed out to the curb and crossed before the video store next door to head down to the local Burger King on the first floor of a row of two-story brownstone buildings. "Worst part… I don't even think she knows I'm alive…"
"Oh, I think she knows…" Sabrina did her male voice from behind a veil of stunned silence. She looked at William and back. She wanted to catch Harvey and Valerie together, not uncover one of the biggest secrets in her class or discover a secret admirer. "Well, uh, hey…" She tried to change his feelings to another girl in their class. "How about Valerie? She's cute."
"Sorry, dude…" William shook his head and pined a bit over his broken heart. "I guess I'm just going to die lonely and alone." He entered the Burger King. "Come on, I'll get you a hamburger…"
"Is it going to make me forget the last hour?"