Bras & Broomsticks (24 page)

Humph. I’m about to take a seat by my lonesome when Doree gestures to me from the front row. Well, thank you, Doree. I’d rather sit with her anyway. At least she won’t lay on the guilt.

“Hey, sexy,” she says. She’s tearing out pictures of hairstyles from a magazine. “So is it true? Raf asked you to Spring Fling?”

This is more like it. Fun, girly conversation. “Yup. How’d you know?”

“Justin told me last night on the phone! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me earlier. Do you guys want to go together? We could rent a limo. Did you buy an outfit yet? I’m trying to decide what to do with my hair. How are you doing your makeup?”

Definitely more like it. “I don’t know. You?”

I feel Tammy’s eyes on me, but I don’t turn around. She can share her extra-extra-extra-buttered popcorn with Annie instead.

16

STB UNWITTINGLY SWEAR TO TELL THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

“So you’re leaving Sunday morning?” Miri asks. It’s Friday night, and we’re lying like two sardines in our shared room on Long Island. Miri wants to talk, but I’m exhausted after a hell week of rehearsals. I had practice every day at lunch and after school. The only number I’m in that still needs work is the freshman dance. Even though Melissa is choreographing it, I’m looking forward to it, because I’ll get to dance with Raf again.

I do feel a teensy bit guilty for leaving my dad’s early on Sunday, but really, it’s my only option. If I don’t, I’ll get kicked out of the show. I’m already annoyed that I’m missing a huge party at Sean Washington’s apartment tonight.
Everyone
is going to be there. Everyone except me. At least this time my absence isn’t because I wasn’t invited. “Why don’t you leave early with me?” I offer.

“Nah,” she says, raising her recently Band-Aided fingers to the ceiling so she can stare at them with disgust. “I want to monitor the spell and make sure this is it. I mean
really
it.”

Today’s pickup from the train was identical to the last one. Once again, STB pulled a Jekyll and Hyde. When Dad jovially took us to the car, STB was syrupy sweet. I told them I had to leave early on Sunday, and she said it was nice that I was involved in school activities. But the second he shut the car door to pick up the Chinese food (after her show-offy “Honey, don’t forget my chopsticks!”), she whipped her head around and glared at me. “Did you forget about our fitting appointment on Sunday?”

I withered into my seat.

“Now I’ll have to reschedule. Oh well. And Miri, how are your fingers? Any better?”

Miri crossed her arms and shoved her fists under her armpits. Not her most attractive position.

“The wedding is in three weeks,” STB reminded us, as if we needed reminding. “Here comes your father. Bet he forgot my chopsticks.”

What I don’t understand is why she doesn’t just buy chopsticks. Then again, there’s not much about her that I do understand. I mean, why does she even want to marry my father? She obviously doesn’t like his kids.

Dad got into the car, deposited the food in STB’s lap, and started driving.

“Did you remember my chopsticks?” she asked.

He slammed his hand against his forehead. “Oops. Should I turn around and go back?”

“Oh, don’t worry, sweetie. It’s not worth it.”

What is up with STB’s two faces? She’s like Frosted Mini-Wheats. Sweet on one side, crusty on the other. “I can’t wait to hit her with the truth spell,” I say to Miri, who is now making shadow puppets with her bandaged fingers. I close my eyes and flip onto my stomach. “He’ll soon see what a horrible woman she is, and that’ll be the end of those fake
oh, sweetie
’s! So when do we put our plan into action?”

“In about an hour.”

Ping. My eyes spring open. “What? I’m asleep here.”

“You’re not asleep. You’re talking.”

“I’m almost asleep.”

“The spell needs to be done at midnight,” she says. Her eyes are glowing in the dark.

“That abraca-sucks.”

“That’s what the book says. We have to do it then, or it won’t work tomorrow when we give it to STB.”

I pull the covers over my head. “Do you really need my help? Didn’t you say this one has no complicated fractions?”

Something heavy hits my feet. I think she just threw her pillow at me. “I still need you!” she says. “You’re the Cosmic Witness.”

Whatever. “I’m taking an hour’s nap,” I say in my most annoyed voice, and let my heavy eyelids close. “Wake me when it’s time.”

The next thing I feel is her shaking me. “It’s time.”

Groan. “There’s no way that was an hour.” I watch her open the blinds and move the glass of water she poured earlier to the windowsill.

She pulls the borrowed beaker, a handful of mint leaves, and two almonds from her knapsack, then proceeds to crush the nuts on a paper towel with a spoon. That done, she puts all these ingredients into the beaker, then goes back to the window. “At least it’s not cloudy outside. The spell won’t work if we can’t see the moon.” She clears her throat and whispers:

Honesty is clear at the midnight hour.
Let STB—

She slaps her hand against her forehead. “I meant Jennifer. I don’t know if I can use an acronym. I’ll have to start over.”

Double groan.

She scratches her head as though in thought. “But since we call her STB, maybe I should refer to her that way in the spell.” One of the Band-Aids comes off in her hair and dangles there, as if a spring has come loose from her brain. “But what if the spell gets confused because we don’t call her Jennifer? Why don’t I say She Who Drinks the Spell instead?”

“Sounds good,” I mumble. Who cares? I want to go back to sleep.

Miri clears her throat again.

“It’s clear already!”

She scrunches up her face and purses her lips in concentration.

Honesty is clear at the midnight hour.
Let She Who Drinks the Spell show her
true colors.
This I command as I stand in the
moonlight,
Let her words ring right and true.

Despite being under the covers, I feel the rush of cold. She shakes the beaker, plugs it with its stopper, and lays it on the floor beside her bed.

Was that the spell? That couldn’t have been the spell. “That didn’t even rhyme,” I say.

“Not all spells have to rhyme.”

“I kind of like them better when they do. And that would have been so easy to rhyme, too. Whoever wrote it was just being lazy. All you had to do was switch
right
and
true
.” Raf’s poetry skills must be rubbing off on me.

“Yeah, what about
hour
and
colors
?”

I rack my brains for a rhyme, but come up empty. “Hey, I can’t do all the thinking around here.”

She gets back into her bed and pushes her hair out of her face. “Send your comments to the complaint department.”

“There’s a complaint department? Where is it? In a cave somewhere?”

“I’m kidding,” she says.

“Well, duh,” I snap. It ticks me off that she gets to do the fun part while all I get to do is be the Cosmic Witness. Where’s the cosmic justice in that?

“Girls, wake up!”

What is that noise? Why is there a screaming in my head?

I open my eyes slowly to see STB looming over me. “I’ve scheduled an emergency fitting for your bridesmaid dresses at eight o’clock.”

Eight o’clock? That means it’s—I lift my head only high enough to see the bright red numbers on the clock—7:05. 7:05 on a Saturday?

She has got to go.

“It’s too early” I hear from Miri’s bed. She must be hiding, because all I can see of her is a mass of wavy brown hair.

STB’s hair is perfectly straight and slinky, and her makeup is flawless. She probably goes to bed fully made up. “It’s the only time Judy could fit us in,” she explains. “So be thankful. Now get up. The bus leaves at seven thirty.” By
bus
she means her Lexus purchased with my father’s money. Maybe Miri should turn her into a real bus driver. As if working for her money would ever occur to her. I can just imagine her in a fluorescent yellow driver’s vest.

“And I would appreciate it, Rachel, if you would tidy your side of the room before the departure,” she says as she storms out the door.

She wants us to get up, eat breakfast,
and
clean? In twenty-five minutes? “You need to take care of her now,” I hiss at Miri. “Just rub it all over her.”

Miri sticks her bare feet into her slippers and shakes her head. “She needs to drink it, remember? Don’t you pay attention? The spell was for She Who Drinks the Spell.”

“Then we need to get it into her coffee,” I say.

“When we stop at Starbucks, you’ll run in and dump the potion into her cup.”

“Why can’t you do it?”

“Because I do everything else.”

True. “Sounds fair. But why am I offering to get her coffee? She always gets it.”

She fingers the Band-Aid on her pinky. “Tell her you want a cup of coffee too. Tell her you’ve started drinking it.”

I take the fastest shower recorded—how many drops can fall in three seconds? And by the time I come out, both my and Miri’s beds are perfectly made. I don’t know if she did it manually or magically, but either way, I approve. Two pieces of toast and twenty minutes later, we’re set to go. As soon as we pile into the car, STB says, “We’re making a quick stop at Starbucks.” When I tell her I want some too, and offer to run in for her, she looks surprised. She shrugs and hands me a twenty. She’s paying for her own downfall! I love it; it’s so sneaky. “I want an iced caramel Macchiato with soy milk and half an artificial sweetener,” she says.

“Me too!” Prissy hollers from the backseat. “Can I have one too?”

“No, dear,” STB says. “Coffee stunts your growth.”

I look at my chest. All kinds of growth? I can’t really afford to take chances.

I order two of the coffees that STB asked for from a supershort woman with a skunklike white stripe in her black hair. Might as well go with what STB asked for, even though I have no idea what it is.

“What cup size?” Skunk Woman asks.

Tee-hee. She said “cup size.” “Small.” Unfortunately.

“A tall?”

Maybe she didn’t hear me. “No,” I say. “A smaaaaaaall.”

“A tall is a small.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.” Besides, if she knows that small is tall, why even ask?

She sighs. “Do you want coffee or not?”

“Yes, please.” The world of coffee is more complicated than I thought.

I pay her, and she tells me to wait at the end of the counter. After I watch a gazillion other people order— “Skim caffe latte!” “Cappuccino!” “Frappuccino!”— mine are finally ready. I gingerly remove the beaker from my purse and pour a smidgen of the potion into STB’s cup, then return the rest to my purse. Then I add artificial sweetener to both.

Back in the car, as I’m about to hand her a cup, I’m paralyzed by my own carelessness. Our two coffees look exactly alike. Which one did I put the potion in?

Miri watches my hesitation and drops her head into her hands in despair. Me blabbing the truth all over town could pose a problem. Must think. I try to remember which hand is holding which coffee. . . .