Just Add Magic (2 page)

Mrs. Silvers is my older-than-dirt neighbor from across
the street and she's as nasty as a witch. She's convinced that Rosey, our beagle, flies over, or tunnels under, our fenced-in backyard every day for the sole purpose of pooping in her yard. One day, when Rosey was a puppy, before we had the fence, she actually
did
poop in that yard and Mrs. Silvers saw her. Rosey hasn't left our yard since. Still, thanks to that incident, I scoop for every dog on Coyote Street that uses Mrs. Silvers's yard as their personal bathroom.

While scooping didn't thrill me, I was dying to get out of the hot attic to get some sunlight and fresh air. “Sure,” I said, and Mom vanished back down the stairs.

Darbie said, “She looks like she's arming herself to enter a chicken pox colony.”

“Unlike you, my mom hates bugs and spiders. She won't touch them. When she cleans, she's afraid they'll land in her hair or crawl into her ears,” I explained.

Darbie considered this. I could tell she was thinking about the bug thing.

“Before you ask, no. You can't stay and catch any. Besides, bats and rats hang out in attics, not bugs,” I told her.

When our attic work was pretty much done, we headed across the street to Mrs. Silvers's house. I walked, pooper-scooper in hand, while Darbie Rollerbladed. She blades pretty much everywhere. The crazy thing is that Darbie isn't a great blader. She's an okay blader who just manages to keep herself upright. (Of course, I don't tell her that.) She stumbled
to the driveway, to the sidewalk, to the street, to the grass. I held out my arm in case she needed it for balance.

I couldn't get the Secret Recipe Book out of my mind. “Why do you think they're hidden in the encyclopedia?”

“What? The recipes?” Darbie asked.

“Darb, not just any recipes,
secret recipes
.”

“Right. Well, they are probably hidden because they're secret.”

“Exactly what I was thinking.” As we got to the yard I warned Darbie, “Don't look directly into Mrs. Silvers's eyes. You'll turn to stone.”

Mrs. Silvers yelled from her front porch, “If I see that mutt again, I'm going to call the pound!” She was surprisingly loud for a woman who looked old enough to be dead. Besides the flabby wrinkles that hung from a face covered in a perpetual scowl, her white hair made her recognizable from miles away. It was short and somehow able to defy gravity by sticking straight up in the air. It reminded me of one of those toy trolls that sits on top of a pencil. And while I assumed she had feet, we couldn't see them under the weird muumuu/housedress thing she always wore.

“Man, Silvers is a grouch-a-saurus,” Darbie said under her breath.

“You would be too if you were a hundred years old and bent over all crooked,” I said. I didn't actually know how old she was, but a hundred sounded about right.

“Why do you have to scoop the poop?” Darbie asked.

“Since Rosey's mostly my dog, I have to be responsible for her.” I mimicked my dad on “responsible for her.” “And because, if I don't, I won't get my allowance, which I need to support my Swirley habit.” Darbie nodded understandingly. She and Hannah had the habit too.

Super Swirleys were the best milkshakes in Delaware, and possibly the world. They're ice cream and all kinds of other stuff blended into a heavenly frozen concoction. I can't live without them. They were made at Sam's Super iScream, which, luckily, was within walking distance from my house.

After a refreshing breath of mid-Atlantic air, we headed back across the street and entered my house through the garage. We stopped in the kitchen for ice water.

Our vegetable-themed kitchen was my favorite room in the house. The walls were painted artichoke green. Our plates were eggplant purple and stacked nicely in a tall glass-doored cabinet. The wallpaper border was a conga line of dancing carrots, cucumbers, bell peppers, radishes, and mushrooms, all with legs, holding pretty much every kitchen appliance, gadget, and accessory imaginable.

Mom appeared, thankfully sans her protective gear. Her spider-free blond hair was flipped up in a clip. She'd changed into a clean
LIFE IS GOOD
shirt, gray cotton miniskirt, and cute sandals: undorked. “If I pretend Darbie isn't wearing Rollerblades in my kitchen, will you girls load all the attic
stuff into the minivan?” she asked.

We kept quiet, not excited about loading.

“After that, maybe we'll get you two busy bees a soda.”

Silence.
No sale,
as my dad would say.

“Oh, all right. After we drop off all the attic stuff at Goodwill, I'll pay you for your work and treat you to Swirley's.” We smiled.

Darbie asked Mom, “Can we maybe meet Hannah-Hoobi-Haha at the pool after her laps?” Darbie loved to add a little jazz to Hannah's name.

Mom said, “I think we can do that.”

SOLD to the lady with the minivan!

Darbie and I looked at each other and did our happy dance by swiveling our hips in a small circle and shifting our bodies from side to side. We sang, “Oh yeah. It's your birthday, it's my birthday.”

Darbie switched to flip-flops and we loaded the van. I worked quickly because I was anxious to fill my belly with a Super Swirley and read the Secret Recipe Book. When we were done, I stuck the book in a canvas messenger bag that I wore across my chest.

As luck would have it, my little brother, Buddy, tagged along. He was five going on annoying. The only thing good about having Buddy with us was that he couldn't be rummaging through my bedroom and smearing his boogers on the wall. (Seriously, I actually caught him doing it.) Before we
were even out of the driveway he was singing “The Wheels on the Bus” painfully loud. Darbie and I put our hands over our ears. As we drove off in the noise-polluted, air-conditioned van, I saw Mrs. Silvers looking out her living room window.

Buddy sang, “ALL THROUGH THE TOWN!”

Soon after pulling out of the driveway, I saw a familiar, tall, skinny, long-haired figure wearing a loose bathing suit cover-up and dripping with water as she walked down the street. It was Hannah Hernandez, the third of our BFF trio. Like Darbie, she lives in my neighborhood. We all met each other on the first day of kindergarten, when we sat together on the school bus in terrified silence. We've been best pals ever since.

Darbie hung her head out the window. “Hey there, Hannah-Heidi-HoHoHo. Done swimming?”

She nodded and got into the van, careful to sit on her towel. “Done for the season. I'm gonna miss it.”

“We're heading somewhere that'll cheer you up,” I said.

“Sam's?” she asked. We nodded. “Awesome! A Swirley is exactly what I need right now.”

The minivan pulled into the strip shopping mall, which had three stores: Sam's, Cup O' Joe (my mom goes there a lot for coffee), and La Cocina. La Cocina was a Mexican cooking store, but they have some other stuff too, like Mexican clothes, candles, and homemade arts and crafts. I walked past it all the time, but I'd never actually been inside—our regular supermarket had everything I needed. Also, for some unexplained reason, the place gave me the willies.

Maybe because the windows were so heavily tinted that all you could see when you looked at them was your reflection. I saw my mirror image standing between Hannah and Darbie. I was shorter than Hannah, but not as short as Darbie. My hair was light brown, wavy, and touched my shoulders, while Hannah's was light, straight, and long (like her mom's), and Darbie's was dark brown, short, and sort of mussed-up.

I have big, dark, chestnut brown eyes that people always complimented. One front tooth slants so that it slightly crosses the other. The orthodontist promised she could fix it, but sometimes I wasn't sure I wanted it fixed.

My skin was smooth and naturally tan—in the summer it gets pretty dark. Sometimes I'd study my face and body in the mirror, and I know a lot of girls don't say this about themselves,
but I liked what I saw. I wasn't joining the pageant circuit, but there was nothing I looked at and said ‘I hate it.'

The front door of La Cocina is regular glass, so I could see inside. It was dingy and dark.

Bud continued to sing, and literally
marched
into Sam's.

“He is totally embarrassing,” Darbie said.

I said, “Welcome to my world of
Life with Bud
.”

My mom tried to be patient with him. She got him ice cream and a minute later said, “You girls can walk home, right?”

I nodded. She handed Darbie and me envelopes with our pay (Thirty-two big ones! EACH!), and an extra ten-dollar bill to cover the Swirleys. Then she took Buddy by the hand and marched him right out the door and back into the van.

“Thank goodness,” Hannah said. “He was giving me a headache.”

Sam, the owner, said, “Hi girls. You know, Kelly, I'm thinking of taking Darbie's advice and naming a grape Swirley after you: The Peanut Butter and Kelly Jelly.”

“Really? That would be great. Do you want my picture?” I asked. “You can put it right here next to your postcard collection.” I pointed to the cards he kept under the glass at the counter.

“I don't think that will be necessary,” he said.

I glanced at the postcard collection, noticing one I hadn't seen before. “Where's this one from?” I asked.

“Oh, I love that one. A friend sent it to me from Mexico.” He wiped the counter with a towel. “Now, what can I get for you?”

Darbie got a Rocket Launching Rainbow because it had, like, every flavor and every topping. I got a Black and White. (That's vanilla and chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup.)

“Let me guess,” Sam said to Hannah. “Bowl Me Over Chocolate Brownie with extra fudge, and Snickers.” Hannah smiled.

We got a table. I took my messenger bag off my chest and slid out the big book.

Hannah asked, “What's that?”

I filled her in. “We found this when we were cleaning out my attic. On the outside it looks like an ordinary 1953
World Book Encyclopedia, Volume T
. But on the inside . . .” I opened the book. “The encyclopedia pages have been pasted over with old stationery containing handwritten recipes. The recipes are
hidden
inside the encyclopedia. You know what that makes this?”

Hannah looked at the book. “A recipedia?”

“Exact-a-mundo,” Darbie said.

Sam delivered the shakes and we thanked him. I dipped a long spoon into mine and savored the blend.

“No. Look at the unusual names of these recipes. And look at these notes. It's a Secret Recipe Book,” I said.

Hannah nodded in agreement. She wasn't as enthusiastic
as I'd hoped. “Sure, okay,” she said.

I turned each page slowly and carefully, so Hannah could read them. I thought that if she saw the papers herself, she'd understand how totally cool this was.

Hannah pointed to the top of one page. “It's faded, but do you see this logo? I think it's from the Wilmington Library.”

Hannah knew the logo because she studied there a lot. If my favorite place was the kitchen, then Hannah's was the library.

Hannah turned all the pages to look at the inside back cover. “Look at this stamp—
WL
. That's definitely the Wilmington Library's stamp.”

“So?” Darbie asked.

“So, at one time this encyclopedia belonged to the Wilmington Library. I'm guessing before it was a recipedia,” Hannah said as she stirred together all the chocolate elements in her Swirley.

“Not recipedia, Secret Recipe Book,” I said. “You know what I'm thinking?”

Darbie and Hannah shrugged.

“I'm thinking this is the perfect time for me to start a cooking club,” I said. I had wanted to start one ever since my mom and I went to watch a live Cooking Network show starring a chef named Felice Foudini. Of everyone in the studio, she chose to bring
me
up on stage to taste her chili. Well, I knew a
lot
about chili because every year my mom and I enter
the Alfred Nobel School Chili Cook-Off.

So when Felice Foudini asked me if I liked her chili, I told her that I thought the cayenne pepper overpowered the cumin. She was shocked that a kid knew so much about spices. Everyone clapped for me, and at that moment I knew my future would be about cooking.

Right around the time of the Felice Foudini show, my mom said I could start a club when I was in seventh grade. She probably thought I'd forgotten, but no.

BTW, seventh grade was starting TOMORROW!

Hannah said, “It's about time you started that club. You've talked about it for long enough.”

I ripped a blank sheet of paper out of the spiral notebook that was in my messenger bag.

“Let's start tomorrow,” I said, “with something from this book. It looks like we'll need some ingredients. There are a few in here that I've never heard of.”

“You?” Darbie asked. “If you've never heard of them, then maybe they don't exist.”

Hannah was still reading over my shoulder. She pointed to the word
amor
. “That's Spanish. It means ‘love.'” She pointed to another word. “That's Spanish too, it means ‘mix.' This word here, that's ‘bread.'” Hannah was practically fluent in Spanish. She was born in Barcelona, where her mother met her father. They lived there for a few years before coming to live in Delaware. At her house they speak Spanish and
English.

Darbie said, “Maybe it's a
Mexican
recipedia.”

Why couldn't she call it a Secret Recipe Book? “Maybe,” I said. “But there are recipes that definitely aren't Mexican, like these cupcakes. Anyway, you've given me an idea for where we can find the ingredients we need.”

Strings of shells hung from the doorknob of La Cocina. They knocked together as the door inched closed behind us, cutting us off from the scent of Cup O' Joe's and the rest of Wilmington. A big stuffed bear welcomed us into an alternate universe. The bright sunlight was blocked by the tinted windows. It took a minute before the spots in front of my eyes went away. I didn't know if it was the effect of the icy Swirley in my hand, or the coolness in the room, but I felt a frigid whisper on the back of my knees.