The 12th Candle

by Kim Tomsic

  When we arrive at school, Bailee doesn’t go to our lockers with me; instead she hurries to PE on her own.

  A “One day until the solstice!” sign hangs sideways from my locker door. I’m ripping it down when Priscilla grabs my elbow and whispers, “Sage.” Panic flows from her voice. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Okay?” I say.

  We step to a less busy spot in the hallway, near the teachers’ lounge. I lean against the dove-white wall and students rush by, hurrying to class.

  “The police took my father back to jail this morning on additional charges.” Priscilla’s eyes glisten. “It’s just like you said about the curse-reverse going wonky on our families. I think the wishes messed us up.”

  “So, you believe in my magic candle?”

  “Our magic candles.”

  “Huh?” I say.

  She looks side to side and whispers, “I got a twelfth candle, too.”

  “From Minerva’s!” I holler. Passing students turn their heads toward us.

  “Shhhh.” Priscilla pulls me into the small teachers’ lounge that smells like roasted coffee beans. There’s a table, four chairs, and a counter with a coffeepot making brewing and dripping sounds, but we’re alone, standing inches apart.

  “You got a candle from Minerva’s?” I repeat.

  “Yes.” Priscilla shuts the door and leans against it.

  “Do you still have it?” My eardrums pulse.

  “No,” she says quickly. “My mother doesn’t save anything. She threw it away with the rest of my birthday candles, so I only had the chance to make one wish.”

  “Why would you let her throw it away!”

  The coffeepot hisses and steams.

  “I thought Minerva was a nutjob. I had no idea the candle was really magical until you told me everything that happened to you.”

  Beep. Beep. Beep. The coffee maker’s blue “ready” light blinks.

  “We should talk somewhere else.” I reach for the door handle. “Somebody is going to come for their morning java.”

  “We’re fine.” Priscilla locks the door.

  “All right.” I drop my arm to my side, heart racing. “What did you wish for?”

  “Almost same as you,” she says. “I wanted what you called it, a curse-reverse.”

  “Why would you want that?” Shock makes my voice rise. “You have everything.”

  “Shhh.”

  The door handle jiggles. Knock, knock. “Hello?” We hear Mrs. Rimmels’s voice on the other side of the door. “Anyone in there? I think you accidently locked the door.”

  Priscilla whispers, “Your mom is so nice.” A single tear trails down her cheek. “Your mom hugs you and laughs with you and doesn’t care that your hair looks like that all the time.”

  “Hey!” I run a hand over my hair and smooth down a lump in my ponytail.

  “My mom.” Priscilla drops her chin and lets out a big exhale. “She probably means well and has some good days, but most times she nags at me about anything and everything. It feels like no matter what I do, I’ll never be good enough. I try hard, trust me—making the basketball team, competing in math, keeping my room clean. I don’t even have time to read or do the things I want to do because I can’t keep up, and it doesn’t matter anyhow. I’m never good enough.” Priscilla sniffles. “Your mom is sweet and you get to ride the bus home with everyone, and you always win the chocolate donut. It’s not fair that the curse gave you the better deal.”

  “Whoa!” I take a moment to try and wrap my brain around what she’s saying. “You get loads of gifts, and ride around in a fancy car, and I’ll bet your refrigerator is always stocked.”

  “Yeah, so?” Priscilla looks confused.

  “Trust me,” I say, “when your refrigerator is empty, these things matter.”

  The bell rings.

  “Okay,” I say. “Regardless, you’re telling me you wished for a curse-reverse, too?”

  “Not exactly. I wished for pink lightning to strike again. I thought that would get rid of the curse for good.”

  “Oooooo, better! But wasn’t your party on Saturday?” I say, thinking about the rules of the candle and how Minerva said no wishing on Saturdays or Sundays.

  “Yeah?” Priscilla scrunches her eyebrows together.

  The door jiggles again. “Hello?” This time it’s Mrs. Downy’s voice. Keys jingle on the other side of the door.

  The doorknob twists.

  In walk Mrs. Downy and Mrs. Rimmels.

  “They’re all yours,” Mrs. Downy says to Mrs. Rimmels. She drops the keys into the pocket of her tan pants. “I need to inspect bags at the gym. I’ll be waiting for you two.”

  “Girls?” Mrs. Rimmels crinkles her eyebrows together.

  We gulp.

  “Care to explain?”

  The door clicks shut and Mrs. Rimmels turns up her hearing aids.

  “It’s about the Contrarium Curse,” I say.

  The wrinkles on her face soften.

  “We want it to end,” Priscilla says.

  I add, “Will you please help us?”

  Mrs. Rimmels grabs each of us by a hand and squeezes. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter 32

  We’re already late for gym, but we don’t care. Priscilla and I stay in the teachers’ lounge with Mrs. Rimmels.

  She squeezes our hands again and says, “The curse has gone on long enough. I’m so delighted you two want to put it to rest.” She lets go of our hands and pours coffee into a bone-white cup; steam rises from the center. “As you are aware, I have known your mothers since they were young girls, and I have seen this curse since its very beginning. It has been sad to witness their actions, two sweet friends turning against each other.” She adds cream to her coffee. “Forgive me for saying so, but instead of your mothers showing their usual generosity, they turned quite selfish in the Contrarium race.” Mrs. Rimmels tsks and scoops sugar into her coffee. She stirs, the spoon clinking on the edge of the cup. She places her cup on the table, slides out a chair, and sits. “Join me.”

  Priscilla and I sit side by side across from her.

  Mrs. Rimmels sips her coffee, her lipstick leaving pink on the rim. “I have spent years and years researching the curse, until the key to ending it finally occurred to me.” She takes another sip, her hands a bit shaky. “Contrarium is the Curse of Opposites, so what is the opposite of selfish?”

  Priscilla and I stay quiet and wait for the answer.

  “Well, come on, girls, this is not a rhetorical question. Give me an antonym for ‘selfish.’”

  “Um, generous or kind,” I say.

  “Yes. Exactly, Sage! Generous. And I love that you’ve added kind in there, too.” She sets her cup on the table. “That’s good for extra points—however, not enough to reach Priscilla’s tally.” She smiles at Priscilla. “You’ll see in class you’ve won this week’s Friday donut. I brought it today since school is closed tomorrow for the solstice celebration.”

  “Nice job, Priscilla,” I manage to say.

  Surprise glows across Priscilla’s face.

  “Since generosity and kindness are opposites of selfishness and mean-spiritedness, I believe you’ll need to show a generous act of kindness in order for the curse to break.”

  “Not to brag, Mrs. Rimmels,” I loop an arm over Priscilla’s shoulders, “but I was kind to Priscilla yesterday.”

  “She was!” Priscilla nods fast. “She paid my bill at the café!”

  “I’m so happy to hear this, girls. Did anything change with the curse?”

  I think of Priscilla’s dad’s arrest and my momma’s snippy tone. “No.” I set my hands back in my lap. “Unless by ‘change’ you mean has it gotten worse. Then the answer is yes.”

  Mrs. Rimmels’s face pinches like something’s not right, and then she says, “Perhaps if your mothers had chosen a kind act like that years ago, the curse would’ve been easier to break.” She picks up her cup again. “But I suspect since this cur
se has been going on for more than a few decades, you’ll need several kind acts to solidify the job.”

  “Anything else?” I ask.

  “Hmm.” Mrs. Rimmels sips again. “I’m sure you two are smart enough to figure it out.”

  Priscilla and I exchange looks. It’s almost like Mrs. Rimmels knows more than she’s saying.

  “So we don’t need any magic or special weather?” I ask. “You’re saying just be kind?”

  “You’ll only know if you try.” She sips. “I do hope you’ll get busy. You only have until the solstice to figure it out.”

  “Until the solstice?” Priscilla says. “As in, tomorrow’s solstice?”

  “That’s right,” she says. “Otherwise, you’ll have to wait until you have children and then wait until it’s your son’s or daughter’s twelfth birthday, and hope they can eliminate the curse. This is your in-between year, so it’s your one chance.”

  Priscilla looks as confused as I feel. “Are you serious? We have to break the curse by tomorrow or we’re stuck with it for decades?”

  “I’d never joke about something like this,” Mrs. Rimmels says. “It’s just the way of curses. Families are given one chance per generation to fix the disasters of the previous generation. I hope you don’t blow your opportunity.”

  “You think we can break it without pink lightning?” I ask.

  “I can’t say for sure. Life doesn’t come with guarantees.” Mrs. Rimmels taps her gold watch. “Oh, goodness me. We must have missed the bell.”

  “But—” I say.

  “You’re very, very late, girls. Hurry to class before you get detention.”

  “Can’t you write a late pass for us?” I ask.

  “Well, of course I can, but I won’t, since you chose to help yourselves to the teachers’ lounge and lock the door rather than coming to me in the first place.”

  Mrs. Rimmels points a crooked finger to the door. “Run along, now.”

  Priscilla and I scoop up our bags and rush to the gym.

  “What do you think?” Priscilla asks, fast-walking beside me.

  “I think Mrs. Rimmels is the smartest person in town.”

  “Me too.”

  We run around the corner. Mrs. Downy is still waiting outside the gym door. She checks our bags and then we speed into the locker room, change, and hurry out to the basketball court. Bouncing balls pound the floor. Bailee turns away when she sees me.

  “Welcome, ladies,” Coach says, and even though it’s noisy, her sarcasm is loud and clear. “Glad you could join us.” She looks at her sports watch. “You two are unreasonably late. That will cost you fifteen burpees each, and after-school detention.”

  “Coach,” Priscilla says, “it was my fault. Not Sage’s.”

  I gulp, thinking how a detention will disqualify me from the Noodler competition. I’ll lose my chance of going from infamous to famous. “Please, Coach. How about thirty burpees instead of detention?” I say. “And don’t punish Priscilla. I’m the one who took so long talking to Mrs. Rimmels.”

  “No,” Priscilla says, “I’m the one who caused the delay.”

  Basketballs have stopped bouncing and the gym is silent. Everyone is looking at us. Jada and Gigi prop balls against their hips and stare. Even Bailee can’t help but watch.

  “Honestly, Coach, I’m the one who’s always late,” I say. “Maybe instead of detention I could run laps—”

  Coach blows her whistle. “Fine. Laps! Both of you. Until the end of PE.”

  “But—”

  “Go, or I’ll make everyone run.” Gigi and Jada shoot us looks that beg us to Move it!

  Priscilla and I start running around the perimeter of the basketball court, and Coach blows her whistle at the rest of the class. “Everyone else, back to drills.”

  Bailee turns her back to me and dribbles.

  “We can do it,” I say to Priscilla. “We can do kindness.”

  “Yeah,” Priscilla says in between breaths. “But how will we know when it’s enough?”

  Tweeeeeet. Coach’s whistle dangles at her chest. “Petty. Sassafras. No talking! You don’t get rewarded with social hour when you’re late.”

  We clamp our mouths shut and run in silence, me wondering if little acts of kindness will be enough after so many years of meanness. How do we make up for a generation of evil looks, exclusion, and pranks?

  Thirty-two minutes later, sweat dots my chest and forehead. My underarms feel damp. Our running has slackened to a slow jog-walk and I’m breathing hard. We continue making laps around the perimeter with our lips sealed. I keep wondering how we’ll fix the curse.

  When the whistle blows to end PE, Priscilla and I are on the far end of the gym. I let out a huge breath and sink to the floor. “Finally.”

  Priscilla folds forward and dangles her arms to the ground. “It feels like we ran twelve miles.”

  “Yeah.” I laugh. “At least.”

  I watch as Bailee and the rest of the girls pick up loose balls and put them away; still no eye contact from my BFF.

  After taking a few more breaths, Priscilla stands and offers me a hand up. I look at her outstretched palm. Two days ago, there’s no way I would have taken it, but now I grab it, and she helps me to my feet.

  “I feel so gross.” I tug my damp shirt away from my neck.

  “Yeah.” She fans herself.

  “Hey,” I say as we walk across the gym floor, “I was thinking maybe our kind acts alone won’t be enough.”

  Priscilla cocks an eyebrow. “Okay?”

  “Think about it,” I say. “A lot of people in Goldview have either taken a side in the curse, gossiped about it, or at least have an opinion about it, so maybe we need to involve the community to help fix it.”

  Priscilla picks up a rolling basketball and sets it on the shelf with other balls. “How would involving others help us?”

  I stoop and pick up a stray ball. “I’m not exactly sure.” I remember what Miss Tammy said about making my own magic and say, “Here’s the thing. A lightning bolt is energy, right? It’s what sparked the curse, but we’ve kept it alive. And so has the town. Maybe a bunch of community kindness will give us enough energy to help lift it.”

  “Um?” Priscilla says, and in that single word I can tell she’s not convinced. She picks up another ball and sets it on the shelf.

  I gently grab her arm and say, “It’s like Mrs. Rimmels said: there are no guarantees. We’ve got to try.”

  Priscilla shrugs. “Okay.” With more enthusiasm she adds, “And we have my wish for pink lightning as backup.”

  “Yeah.” I try to sound positive, but I can’t help but think Priscilla didn’t have Bailee by her side listening to the list of rules. “Did you use your candle on Friday for your real birthday, or Saturday at your party?”

  “Saturday,” Priscilla says. “Why?”

  “Just curious.” I try to sound casual instead of deflated. But who knows if Priscilla got the same instructions as me. Maybe she was allowed weekend wishes. I force a smile to my face and say, “It’s going to work out for us.”

  I set the ball on the shelf, scanning the gym for Bailee, and see the back of her head as she goes into the locker room. Jada and Gigi walk over. “What’s up with you two?” Jada asks.

  Priscilla throws a sweaty arm over my shoulder. “We called a truce.”

  “Yep,” I confirm.

  Gigi’s eyebrows pop up.

  “Thank goodness!” Jada flings her arms in the air and does a cheerleader jump. “Finally! All your bickering has been making me so uptight.”

  “I knew it!” Gigi says. “I mean, I’m surprised, but I still knew it! Didn’t I predict this, Jada?”

  “Yep!” Jada says.

  “I saw you guys duck into the teachers’ lounge, and I just had a good feeling!” Gigi says.

  “Okay.” I chuckle, except she’s right. She was usually right about stuff when we hung out.

  The four of us are smiling as we walk into the locker
room. Bailee is already changing, so I sit near her, hoping for another chance to talk. But Bailee scoops up her clothing and moves around the corner, disappearing behind a new aisle of lockers.

  My heart fills with inky blackness.

  “You okay?” Priscilla says to me.

  I shake my head.

  “Is there anything I can do?” she asks.

  “I need a minute.”

  Priscilla, Jada, and Gigi take their washcloths to the sinks.

  I grab my towel and head to the shower room. I almost never shower after PE, but running laps and my momma’s talk about deodorant have me self-conscious. I push aside the plastic curtain, turn on the water, and wait for it to warm. Only one other girl showers, Shanie, and we each pick a stall far apart. I use rose-scented soap from the dispenser, and five minutes later I’m done and drying off. Shanie is already gone.

  When I return to the changing room, it’s empty except for Gigi.

  “Hey.” Gigi hugs her royal-blue sweater to her chest. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

  I turn my back to give her privacy and open my locker. “I needed to smell a little better.”

  “Yeah.” She laughs. “For Justin?”

  “No.” I laugh, too, because I think she’s right.

  “He’s cute and a seventh grader!”

  “We’re going to the dance together.” I’m not sure if that’s exactly true, but I like saying it. I pull on my underwear and new jeans.

  “That’s great,” Gigi says.

  It feels good to be talking like we used to back when we were friends.

  “Um,” she says. “I know it’s been a while, but do you want to come over on Friday? To get ready.”

  I slip on my bra and shirt. “Really?” I turn toward Gigi.

  “Yeah.”

  “I guess that means you heard about my daddy’s appeal.”

  “What?” Gigi brushes her long dark hair.

  “My daddy’s appeal with the courts. How they’re probably letting him out of . . . you know.”

  “That’s cool. No. I hadn’t heard.” She brushes through her hair one more time and then sweeps up the left side, clipping it in place with a barrette.