The Popularity Spell (2 page)

B
ack home after school, I tell Dad he forgot to pack my snack, and he says exactly what I expect. “You can always pack your own lunch then.”

“No, that's okay,” I say right away. “You make the best turkey, lettuce, and butter sandwiches in the universe. I could never make them as delicious as you do.”

Dad laughs and says that flattery will get me everywhere, whatever that means. And I'm happy I won't have to pack my own lunches when I have much more important things going on, like my science project!

Dad seems excited about it too. He's a website designer so there are lots of computers in our dining room, and he brings one of his laptops into my bedroom while I look online on my own computer. Toby, our Irish setter, sits at our feet with his tongue hanging out. He's got the cutest, furriest face and the worst breath in the world, but I don't care because I love him.

One of Dad's brilliant ideas is for me to write a musical about the inner life of the Costa Rican three-toed sloth. He's being a dork as usual, but I
do
like the idea of picking an animal nobody else would choose. Dad and I find a lot of odd creatures online, like an insect called a walking stick that actually looks like a stick and a hilarious-looking bird called a blue-footed booby, which I'm sure I couldn't say in front of the class without being embarrassed.

Then I find African millipedes, and they look pretty cool! They're sort of like worms, but bigger and more exotic. They're dark and shiny and pudgy, and some can be over ten inches long. They have anywhere from thirty-six to four hundred legs, though it seems like a thousand! I like that they look totally slimy but also weirdly adorable. And according to one website about millipedes, they're not too hard for a kid to take care of. Dad agrees to buy me one at the pet store Pets! Pets! Pets!, so I can live with it, learn about it, and take it to class. I wonder how Madison Paddington will feel when I do my presentation and I hold up the longest, fattest millipede with its millions of little brown legs and its slimy-looking skin as it squirms between my fingers.

I hope she
hates
it.

From the end of our hallway, I hear the doorbell ring. Toby doesn't run or bark; he just looks up at me and Dad, wondering who's going to answer it. I'm enjoying my millipede research, so I stay put. Dad looks at us both. “Don't bother yourselves,” he says, kind of like a joke. “I'll get it.”

Dad answers the door and I can hear him talking to a guy, but I can't tell what they're saying. A minute later, Dad yells down the hall, “Cleo! There's a package for you!”

Wow. That's something I've never heard before. I haven't ever gotten a package, and that's how I know it's a major event. Important people get things delivered to their door, not eleven-year-olds like me. It's not like I'm a famous artist…yet.

Toby barks and jumps around, almost as happy as I am. We both tear down the hall, his smooth red fur and my messy yellow hair flying, and find Dad standing in the doorway. He's holding something about the size of a shoebox and wrapped in light-brown paper. I grab it from his hands, sit right down in the middle of the floor, and rip it open.

Inside the box is a bunch of crumpled newspaper. I throw that to the ground and finally get to the good stuff. What I find is a little bit…weird. But cool. But strange. Lying in the bottom of the box is a rag doll, but not like any rag doll I've ever seen before.

The tan material feels scratchy against my hands, and the filling isn't soft and cuddly like a teddy bear; it's hard like corn kernels or birdseed. The edges of the doll are sewn together with thick brown yarn, and the same kind of yarn is on the doll's head, sticking out at different angles like my dad's does in the morning. Its button eyes are scratched and chipped, and the doll isn't wearing any clothes except a pink tutu around its middle, which looks majorly out of place. There's also a pin with a little black ball on top poked into its shoulder area. That's it.

I hold it up for Dad to see, and he sighs. “Oh jeez. I only know one person who would send you a voodoo doll.”

Ohhhh, it's a
voodoo doll
! I think I read a story about those one time. They're for putting charms and hexes on people you don't like. You poke the pin into a part of the doll where you want the bad thing to happen, and then it does. Spooky!

“Who sent it?” I ask Dad. “Do you know?”

“You'll see,” he says. “Is there a note or anything?” I put down the doll and look. Inside the box, sort of lining the bottom, is one piece of white paper. It's hard to pull it out with my uneven, bitten nails, but I finally do. The writing is definitely not from a computer or even a typewriter; it looks like it was handwritten by a crazy person or wacky cartoonist. It turns out to be the instructions.

For a second I sit and stare at the scribbled instructions.
Juju, mojo, gris-gris,
and
hoodoo
are words I've never even heard before. They sure sound interesting…but there's no way this voodoo doll can be real. It's probably something to play with, a joke. I mean, it'd be cool if it actually worked, but the idea of putting charms and hexes on people sounds like it was made up by some old-time writer of horror stories.

But what if it
is
real? Then what could happen? I reread the instructions, and I quickly realize that while getting a lock of hair from someone wouldn't be easy, step four would be the hardest part.
Concentrate on the intended person and result for at least five minutes.
Me—I can't concentrate on anything for very long. I guess this is a big problem in life, and it's part of the reason I'm at this goofy school where we call teachers by their first name. Friendship Community is a private school (which means it costs money), and it has a class called Focus! (exclamation point and all), where a teacher named Roberta helps some of us kids set goals and get things done and, yes, focus better. The kids who are in it—like me and Samantha and Scabby Larry—have to leave Kevin's classroom twice a week to go to another room across the courtyard, and everybody sees us go. Sometimes I hear kids say it's for slow people and dummies, but Dad says they'll all be working for me one day. I like that idea. And best of all, I wouldn't let Madison and her friends work for me in my fun, fantastic animation factory—ever!

“Did you find a card yet?” Dad asks, which makes me stop thinking about Focus! and instructions and my future factory. I look around in the crumpled newspaper and find a piece of scrap paper with a couple of sloppy drawings of smiley faces and the words “Happy 11th Birthday, Cleo! Love & magic, from your good ol' Uncle Arnie.”

So that's how Dad knew who it was from! Uncle Arnie is his brother—and he's definitely the kind of person who would send a birthday gift seven months late. Dad says they're complete opposites, but not in a good way like me and Sam are.

If I could have a brother or sister, I'd want a sister, and I'd want her to be exactly like Sam. And when we grew up, we'd live in the same house or nearby, or at least talk to each other every single day. Dad only talks with Uncle Arnie on the computer every month or two. They like each other okay, but they're not super close like brothers or sisters should be.

I guess that's why I usually just wave to Uncle Arnie from the background when he's on a video call with Dad. Dad has made him sound like kind of a weirdo, and the stories he writes in his emails and old-fashioned letters are sometimes bizarre. He lives in the state he pronounces “Looooosiana,” in an area called the bayou. It's full of creepy dark alleys and mysterious strangers who know all about things like voodoo—and probably juju, hoodoo, and gris-gris too. They cast spells and do bad things to people without even touching them.

Uncle Arnie said someone had done that to him years ago, and that's why he has a big icky burn across the inside of his right hand. He said that even though no one was around, an “unseen force” pushed his hand onto the burner of his stove. Dad laughed when he heard that, and told me there were lots of other ways Uncle Arnie could have burned his hand. Maybe he tripped or something…but maybe it
was
a voodoo spell. Who can say?

Dad walks toward his dining room office, rolling his eyes and pulling at his black-and-gray hair. “Your uncle,” he says. “What a goofball. He
would
think that was a smart gift for an eleven-year-old.”

“What's wrong with it?” I ask.

“Oh, nothing, it's only a toy. But a slightly inappropriate one.”

“Why is it inappropriate?”

“Well, Cleo,” Dad says kind of seriously, “your uncle Arnie is…an unusual person and he gets mixed up in things that get him into trouble.”

“Like his hand!” I say, excited to have an example.

“Kind of. Let's just say he's a free spirit who doesn't pay a lot of attention to the real world around him. And he believes in dopey things like voodoo.”