by Kim Tomsic
I catch Gigi staring at me. I look away.
Bailee trembles.
“It’s going to be all right, Bay.” I pick up her clothing and check through it, turning it inside out, checking hems, and pulling out pockets.
“Nothing.” I hold everything high. “Your shirt and pants are clean. No crickets.”
“You promise?”
“I swear.”
I scoop up my stuff, too. “Come on. I’ll piggyback you.”
She climbs onto my back, and I run us to the boys’ room and put her down in front of the sink. Bailee pumps soap into her palms and rubs it up her arms all the way to her shoulders. “Thank you, Sage. You’re the best friend ever.”
“Yeah.” A flush crawls up my neck. I scrub my hands at the sink next to Bailee, avoiding my reflection in the long mirror, not wanting to see the guilt smeared all over my face.
Priscilla stands by Coach, crying.
You’d think I’d be happy about Priscilla’s sobs, that I’d revel in them, but I don’t. Nobody is laughing at her. A few other girls are crying, too. There’s no “touché” ready on my lips. In fact, I feel small. Smaller than small. Whatever is tinier than a cricket’s burp, subtract ten and that’s how small I feel.
I remind myself that Priscilla never feels bad when she throws shade my way. She didn’t feel bad when she doctored my butt with pickles or drew a mustache on my photo or when she dad-shamed me on the bus. But those reminders don’t make me feel any better.
Coach pulls her phone away from her ear. “Nobody is answering,” she says to Priscilla. “I’ve tried calling both of your parents.”
“I . . .” Priscilla sniffs. “Bugs were all over my clothing. I can’t put them back on.” Her voice is a quiver. “It’s too gross.” Tears tumble down her face.
“It’s warm enough to wear your PE uniform for the rest of the afternoon. Would you like to do that?” Coach speaks in the softest voice I’ve ever heard her use.
“She can’t,” Bailee insists. “The crickets jumped over everything she’s wearing. There’s no telling what they could have left behind.”
“They’re just crickets,” Coach says, sounding tired from the effort of being nice.
Washing her hands has recentered Bailee. She puts on her lawyer voice. “It’s a well-known fact that crickets carry parasites and bacteria in their bodies, like E. coli and salmonella, to name a few.”
Priscilla shivers.
Coach’s face tightens, but she takes a breath and says, “I’ll try your parents one more time.”
While Coach dials, Bailee offers Priscilla a squirt from her keychain Purell. Priscilla accepts and scrubs it over her hands and arms, sniffling to hold back more tears.
“I’m so sorry that happened to you,” Bailee says.
Priscilla darts an angry glare at me.
“Nope. No way.” Bailee shakes her head hard. “Sage didn’t do this. Not in a million years.” Bailee’s certainty makes me wish it were true. She sets an arm around my shoulders and tells Priscilla, “I know you guys have your curse-feud, but Sage would never do anything with crickets, because she knows how much I hate bugs.” She looks me square in the face and smiles. “Right?”
I turn my back and change shirts. “That’s right.” My voice tightens. “Never.” She doesn’t see my eye twitch.
“I can’t reach your parents,” Coach tells Priscilla. “Come along. We’ll find something in the office for you to wear.”
Priscilla has to borrow something from the “ugly clothes” bin, just like she wanted me to do on Friday when she ruined my white jeans. For the briefest moment I feel satisfied. Until I look back at Bailee.
“Thank you so much, Sage,” Bailee says with a shudder. “That was awful.”
I put my arm around Bailee’s shoulders and walk her back to the sinks. “Let’s wash our hands one more time.” I turn on the water.
She gives me a quivering smile. “You’re such a great friend.”
My smile quivers, too. She can never know I was the one who did this.
Chapter 20
By lunchtime, the cricket saga has grown, and all I can do is pray Bailee doesn’t figure out I’m the evil villain in the story.
We are seated at the end of the bench at the same long table as Jada, Gigi, and a bunch of others, and guess who’s right next to us—Priscilla! Bailee feels sorry for her and wants to make sure she’s okay, and I’m too guilt-ridden to argue.
“Nobody has ever seen so many bugs.” Jada’s arms fling this way and that as she tells the cricket drama to the crowd of boys. “There were hundreds of crickets and grasshoppers and ladybugs flying everywhere.”
Gigi nods, and the boys say, “Ooooooooh.”
Bailee says something to Priscilla and offers her more keychain Purell.
Priscilla takes some and smooths it over her hands.
“You’ll probably want to use a Clorox wipe on your phone and the table, too.” Bailee hands over a wipe.
“Thanks.”
All the niceties between my BFF and my archenemy twist the nerves in my stomach, but maybe if Bailee stays focused on helping Priscilla, she won’t stop to think about who’s to blame for the prank.
Priscilla sponges down her cell phone, sets it on the cleaned table, and opens her copy of The Outsiders. “This book is actually really good,” she says to me. “I need to catch up to the rest of the class.”
“Oh . . . kay?” Peculiar, because reading is exactly what I would do if I were her.
Jada stands, pounding her hands on the tabletop. “There were too many to count!” When Jada tells a story, she’s all in. She’s the best in our class at theater. Her eyes grow round, like she’s seeing it all again. “You could barely see the floor, there were so many bugs.”
“Cool!” Ryan leans in. “And then what?”
Curtis bites into his ham sandwich and glances my way, and I’m paranoid that he’s giving me some sort of look. Could he have heard something on the bus?
“And then Gigi . . .” Jada pauses dramatically as only people who are onstage do.
Gigi’s eyebrows pop up. Her grilled cheese is already wedged in her mouth, so she crunches into its buttery-gold crust and nods as if she knows what Jada is about to say, even though none of us who were actually there know what Jada will say next.
“Yeah?” Steven says, his eyes wide.
Jada sets a hand on Gigi’s shoulder. “Well, Gigi, who had already changed into her regular clothing, used her PE shorts to bat the bugs away.” Jada begins miming like she’s a bug-batting matador and hollers, “Olé! Olé! Olé!”
Hudson, Steven, and Ryan eat it up, laughing with each olé.
Gigi finishes chewing her sandwich, and a smile spreads across her face.
Jada adds, “It was Gigi who cleared a path for the rest of us to run to the boys’ side before the spiders—”
“¡Ay, bendito!” Steven says. “There were spiders, too!”
“Yes! And other creatures, but since I’m not a bugologist—”
“Bugologist!” Gigi laughs. “You mean entomologist?”
Jada beams. “Thank you. Yes. Since I’m not an entomologist, I can’t name every insect we saw, but let’s just say it was a regular bug version of Jurassic Park.”
“Whoa,” Ryan says to Gigi. “You’re like an action hero!”
Gigi glows. She’s had a crush on Ryan since fourth grade. At least I think she still likes Ryan.
Priscilla stares down at her book like she’s unaware of all the oooohs and ahhhs. Super strange. The normal Priscilla would have planted herself next to Jada and taken over by now, but she stays seated at the end of the lunch table and turns another page. Maybe she’s embarrassed about her clothing from the ugly bin. Instead of her cute jeans and new blue shirt, she’s dressed in gray sweatpants paired with a slouchy tan top.
But here’s the thing—I don’t think she cares! Maybe because she’s traumatized, or maybe because she’s reading and lost in a story wh
ile I sit here worrying my best friend might discover I’m the worst person ever.
After Jada finishes her version of what happened, Steven informs everyone that crickets can tell you the temperature outside. “Yep,” he says. “Just count how many times they chirp in fourteen seconds, add forty, and that’s the temperature.”
“Dude, you should be president of the science club,” Ryan says.
Curtis marches to our end of the table and says, “Curious how so many crickets showed up out of nowhere.” He’s speaking to all of us, but I swear he’s looking right at me.
My throat dries. “Yeah, curious.”
He squats down beside Priscilla and Bailee. “Are you guys okay?” Curtis is not only funny, but he’s also one of the nicest kids in Goldview.
Priscilla lifts her chin from her book. “Huh?”
“You okay?”
She takes a breath. “I’m good now. Thanks.” Her phone chimes, and she reads the screen.
“How about you, Bailee?” Curtis asks.
Bailee grimaces. “I can’t even talk about it.”
“Hey, my mom just texted me,” Priscilla says. “She’s picking me up so I can shower and change at home. Do you want to call your parents, Bailee? We can give you a ride.”
Huh? Does Priscilla think they’re besties now? I don’t think—
“Yes, please!” Bailee says. Zero hesitation.
What?
“Here.” Priscilla passes her phone to Bailee.
I spend a moment lifting my jaw off the table until—Clang! Clang! Clang!
“Students!” says Mrs. Downy. She bangs a metal spoon against a pan. Clang! Clang! “Attention, students.”
The cafeteria quiets.
Mrs. Downy steps to the center of the room. “As most of you have heard, there was a cricket incident in the locker room during gym class today. Now, there are many conspiracy theories circulating around the school about where these crickets came from.”
“Cricket-gate,” Jada whispers dramatically, forgetting that Mrs. Downy has bat-like hearing.
“That’s right, Jada,” Mrs. Downy says with a clang. “Cricket-gate. Let’s be clear. I will not be blamed nor have my standing as a JOTY contender put in jeopardy.”
Curtis raises his hand. “What is joty?”
“Janitor of the year.” Mrs. Downy points the metal spoon at her row of JOTY plaques hanging on the wall. Her eyes glisten. “I have won JOTY four years in a row, and now those janitors in Denver think they’re going to take it from me.
“No!” She bangs the pot for emphasis. “I will not be blamed for this fiasco!” Bang! “I will not have our school’s cleanliness questioned, and I will not be accused of doing a poor job as your janitor, so let’s get to the bottom of this right now.”
I swallow down a gulp the size of a storm cloud.
“Who brought . . .” She scans the cafeteria crowd.
I sit on my trembling hands. I made a huge mistake, and if anyone finds out it was me, I’ll need to win a hundred Noodler contests to fix my infamous reputation.
“Who brought,” she repeats, “food into the locker room?”
Everything is quiet except for the pounding in my ears. Then a small boy sitting at the table for first graders bursts out crying. “I’m sorry, Mrs. D.,” he says with a lisp. “I ate a Fig Newton in there. I won’t do it again.”
I feel sick.
“Thank you for your honesty, Ahmed,” Mrs. Downy says, “but this is not your fault. The outbreak began on the girls’ side, and one cookie one time would not cause a problem of this magnitude. There are hundreds of crickets.”
Hundreds? Did my quadrupling wish keep going hour after hour? Like did 10 go to 40 and then 40 to 160?
My panic rises.
Bailee nudges me and whispers, “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.” My eye twitches.
“I know, bugs. Gross.” She shivers. “You need some Purell? Do you want me to break out the pink pomegranate?”
“Um, thanks.”
She pulls out her special pomegranate gel, the gel for special circumstances and emergencies only. I rub it into my palms, and I watch a first-grade teacher kneel beside Ahmed and dry his tears. Tears I caused.
“I will get to the bottom of who caused Cricket-gate.” Mrs. Downy scans the crowd again and my pulse quickens.
“Furthermore, Principal Bateman has informed us we will do without free frozen yogurt for a month, since we now need to pay Goldview Pest Control to handle the problem.”
An eruption of moans and complaints explodes around me.
The guilt is crushing. I wish I had the guts to confess like Ahmed did, but I have too much to lose. I’m trying to stay calm by convincing myself no one will ever find out it was me, until I see him . . .
Justin Li!
I had assumed he was going to continue with homeschooling. But noooo. He’s enrolled at Goldview K–8, and he’s sitting on the far side of the cafeteria at one of the tables full of seventh-grade boys. My heart falls to my shoes—he knows about me and he probably knows about my cricket purchase. What’s worse—I’m pretty sure he just gave me the stink eye.
In this moment, I’d trade all my remaining wishes to have my daddy pick me up from school the way Priscilla’s mom is coming for her. Daddy is who I’d confess to. I’d tell him everything the second I saw him. He’d drive us to Sonic, and we’d order lemon-lime slushes, and he’d help me figure out how to fix Cricket-gate.
See, Momma is great fun when it comes to singing and laughing, but it’s Daddy who knows how to listen. It was Daddy who used to answer my questions and understood when I was sad or mad or embarrassed. If he were here right now, I’d tell him about the pickles, the cricket fiasco, and Justin.
A Sunday call doesn’t have space for all that. I don’t have time to tell him about the Noodler contest and how bad I want to win to fix the Sassafras name. I don’t have time to tell him about Momma’s tears or about Gigi dropping me or about Godzilla. I don’t have time to ask him what if Bailee and Momma find out I’m the worst person ever for bringing crickets to school? I don’t have anyone to help me with the colossal mess I’ve created. Thinking about it drops a boulder-sized lump in my throat, and I sniffle back some tears.
And oh, sepia! If 160 crickets quadruple, it’s going to add up to 640 . . . and then to more than 2,500, and then to over 10,000, and then 40,000! What if the quadrupling never stops!
That’s when I know what I need to do.
I need to make a visit to Minerva’s.
Chapter 21
Bye, Mr. Melvin.” I climb off the bus and convince myself that I’m not sneaking to Minerva’s. That I’m going alone because Bailee went home after lunch, and I can’t call her to meet me here since I don’t have a phone.
Cars roll by. A cool, light breeze blows across my face. I rush past the graffitied walls and barred windows. At the city bus stop, I cross the street to the lavender building with the Hansel-and-Gretel red door.
Just as I get there, Minerva steps out of the store with a huge purse on her shoulder, holding the largest key I’ve ever seen. The key is shiny and black and has a lavender silk ribbon looped through the end.
“Well, hello again!” She sings her greeting. “Don’t tell me you’re here for another candle. You can’t get greedy. It’s one per customer, you know.” Her eyes shine.
“No. I’m here to ask more questions about the magic.”
“Shh shh shh shh shhhhhhhhhh.” Minerva looks side to side.
“Umm, sorry,” I whisper.
“Just kidding!” Minerva laughs and slaps the side of her leg. “I’m practicing my joking skills. Pretty good, huh?” The red-raspberry leaves on the maple tree rustle and a dozen or so float to the sidewalk.
“Uhhh?”
“Come in, come in.” She drops the key into her purse and opens the door. “Quickly, though. I have just a few minutes before I need to dash.”
We go inside, and the li
ghts automatically turn on their warm golden glow. The store smells of vanilla spice, and once again a feeling of enchantment glides across my skin. Minerva sets her bag on the counter and sweeps her long red hair from her shoulders to her back. “What brings you in today?”
“I’m here because I need to . . . to unwish a wish.”
“Oh my!” Minerva takes hold of my wrist and checks my pulse: “Seven, eight, nine.” She releases my arm and leans close, inspecting my eyes. “Please don’t tell me you wished you could fly.” She places a hand on my forehead. “That would take quite a few lessons, plus there’s rumors about an incident in 1973 when a boy who received a candle—”
“No,” I say. “I wished to quadruple the number of crickets I brought to school.”
“Mm-hmm.” Minerva folds her hands together. “And?”
“Well . . .” I stare at the “Be Kind” button pinned to Minerva’s collar. “Um, I would like the quadrupling to stop.”
“To stop? Did you not designate an end? Quadruple one time or quadruple until noon? Please tell me you designated an end time for the wish.”
“No.” I gulp. “I didn’t.”
“Oh dear. Ohdearohdearohdear!” Minerva walks round and round in a circle. “At least you said quadruple the number; the magic could have quadrupled their size. That could have been a disaster. But still, what shall we do? What shall we do? I thought you understood the rules.”
My shoulders sink lower. “I know I’m not allowed to unwish a wish, and since I’ve already used up my one wish today I can’t wish for an end time.” My voice goes up a notch. “This definitely can’t wait until tomorrow, otherwise our school will turn into Cricketville! Will you please help?”
Minerva pulls a stethoscope from under her shirt, plugs the ear tips inside each of her ears, and plops the cold round listening part against my forehead. “Shhh, for real this time.” And then, “I see. I see,” Minerva says to herself. She listens again and then wraps the stethoscope over her shoulders.
“Are you able to fix this?” I squeeze my interlaced fingers.
Minerva sighs. “I suppose we don’t want Goldview to turn into Cricketview, so I will handle what must be done.”
