Magic in the Mix

by Annie Barrows

  “Yes.” Miri would never forget that scene. Molly’s grandmother, her eyes glinting like jewels, her worn hand cradling Molly’s cheek as she said, “Do you think a little thing like time can separate us?”

  Now, at the table with her brothers and sisters, her homework forgotten, Miri glanced around the old kitchen before coming back to Molly. They shared a long look, and each knew what the other was thinking: There is something funny about this house. Us.

  Chapter 2

  The next day, Shenandoah Middle School was exactly the way it usually was: okay. Miri and Molly were in the sixth grade now, moving from class to class—though never the same class at the same time (they suspected a grown-up plot, but they couldn’t prove it). As experienced middle schoolers, Robbie and Ray had given them many valuable tips the night before school began: “Don’t go to the bathroom alone,” “Don’t slam ketchup packets inside your books,” “Don’t let anyone stuff you in your locker,” “Don’t fart during science,” “Don’t talk to eighth graders, especially Daggie.”

  None of these tips had proved to be very useful, except maybe “Don’t fart during science.” Going to the bathroom alone was impossible. The place was always packed with girls putting on lip gloss.

  As her final class of the day, Health and Nutrition, inched toward its conclusion, Miri slid ever farther downward in her stiff wooden seat until only her eyes remained above the sea-level of her desktop. I’m sinking, she thought, into a shark-infested sea. She folded a piece of paper into a fin and bobbed it lazily across the sea. Blub, glub, “Glub,” she mumbled aloud.

  “Yes! Miri!” Miss Roos whirled around. “How many?”

  Miri shot upright. “Eight!” she cried, hoping her answer had something to do with the question.

  “Wow!” enthused Miss Roos. “Eight servings of fruit or vegetables a day! That’s great!” She smiled around the classroom. “Miri’s got the healthy eating habit, doesn’t she?”

  Everyone glared at Miri. Whoops, she thought, smiling apologetically at the girl sitting next to her. I’ve got to stop saying the first thing that pops into my head. She reflected that she probably did eat eight helpings of fruits and vegetables a day. But she wasn’t supposed to say so; it looked like sucking up. Middle school was complicated. A lot like a shark-infested sea, she thought, and slid sleepily downward again.

  At the day’s end, Molly was waiting for Miri outside the classroom. “Scale of one to ten?” she called when she saw Miri.

  “Six,” yawned Miri.

  “Same here.” Together, they gathered their books from their lockers, ran to catch the bus, and joggled along the highway to the town of Paxton. There, they got off bus number one, spent five minutes staring wistfully at the candy in Mike’s Snak-n-Go, got on bus number two, and set off down the long, zigzagging country road that led home. The nice thing about living so far out in the valley was how pretty it was—lots of trees, turning now to gold and red, and tiny creeks dodging in and out of rolling hills. The not-so-nice thing was how long it took to get there.

  But as soon as she rounded the hedge that bordered the driveway and caught a glimpse of her house, Miri decided, as she always did, that it was worth a bus ride of almost any length. Sitting on a slight hill above a sloping circle of lawn in the shade of an enormous elm tree, the house was big, old, shabby, and beautiful, with its lacy wooden trim edging the roof, its panes of colored glass bordering the door, and its curtain of vines shading the deep front porch. Miri loved everything about it, from the odd ten-sided room she shared with Molly to the wreaths carved into the mantelpiece in the living room. She loved the dust-smelling attic, she loved the hammock on the porch, she even loved the decrepit faucets that came off in your hand if you turned the water on too hard. It was rich with oldness, her house.

  “Home again,” murmured Molly, with a long, contented sigh. “Home.”

  Miri nodded. “Home—” She broke off, startled by the whack of a hammer resounding through the yard. Then came a long, wooden ripping noise. The two girls exchanged looks of alarm—earthquake? Tornado? Giants? Following the trail of sound, they ran up the lawn and veered around the side of the house to the backyard—

  Where they skidded to a halt, astonished by the wreckage. The back porch, which had that morning stretched across the rear of the house, lay in bits on the ground. Dark boards had been hurled into a mangled heap on the grass, while a tidy stack of fresh pink wood sat primly to one side. The destroyed porch had been almost a room, with shelves, cupboards, and windows on three sides. Now the windows, still in their frames, were propped against the side of the house for reuse. A pile of shelves and a stack of cupboard doors had been dumped helter-skelter into the weedy grass.

  “Look at the door,” Molly gasped.

  The back door, which had opened from the kitchen onto the porch only that morning, now opened onto nothing but air. The old white door, flapping six feet above the ground, looked silly now, like something in a cartoon.

  In the center of the emptiness where the porch had been stood Dad and Ollie, chucking rocks and hunks of wood on the mountain of remains. “Girls!” called Dad enthusiastically. “Isn’t this outstanding?”

  “You said you were just fixing the stairs,” Miri said, frowning. “You didn’t say you were going to tear the whole porch down.”

  He straightened, rubbing his back. “I didn’t know I was going to tear it down, either. But once we got going, Ollie saw a lot of dry rot. And wet rot, too, huh, Ollie?”

  “Lots of rot,” confirmed Ollie vigorously. He hurled a rock toward the pile. “Big-time rot.”

  “It had to come down before it fell down,” their father said.

  “But what about—history?” asked Molly. “What about heritage?”

  “Heritage?” Her father blinked at her. “Well, think about it this way: I’m keeping our heritage from rotting. I’m saving it from itself.”

  “Rot’s rot!” called Ollie with gusto. “You gotta dig it out. You gotta get it gone.” He gazed at the newly exposed wall of the house and smacked his lips. Miri could tell he was dying to tear it apart and find more rot.

  “Oh, hey!” said her father suddenly. “You want history? I found some old pictures and clippings when we were taking down the shelves. They’re historical. I stuck them—” He looked around absently. “Where’d I stick them, Ollie?”

  “On your new porch.” Ollie pointed to the stack of fresh pink wood.

  “Right! Go take a look. I thought your mom might want them. She likes old stuff.” He smiled, pleased with himself, and tossed a mushy-looking board on the junk heap.

  Miri turned away. She wanted to argue, to save the house. She imagined herself standing bravely between the porch and Ollie, her palm up, the protector of the past. She looked up at the lonely, ridiculous door. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  “This stuff doesn’t look right,” said Molly, regarding the pink wood critically. “It’s too new.”

  “Maybe the house will reject it,” Miri said. She pictured a bone-shaking crash and a pile of pink splinters.

  While Miri was having this pleasing vision, Molly was glancing through the little collection of papers. Suddenly, she giggled. “Check out this ad,” she snickered, holding out a yellowed scrap of newspaper.

  “‘F. Gibbons, Undertaker and Furniture Manufactory,’” Miri read. A handsome dining room table was shown at the top of the ad, a roomy coffin at the bottom. She picked up a brownish photograph printed on cardboard. “Wow. Look at her.” A scowling woman was packed tight into a black silk dress, her hair arranged in a mountain of oily curls. “I guess the smile-for-the-camera thing hadn’t been invented yet.”

  “These guys are smiling.” Molly tilted another photograph in Miri’s direction, and Miri gazed at two young soldiers in dark uniforms. Like the woman, they were trying to look serious, but unlike her, they weren’t succeeding. They’d pulled their caps down low over their eyes to look tough, but their mouths were bunched up, trying to hold ba
ck the laughter that was about to come bursting out. “Brothers,” said Molly. “For sure.”

  “Maybe even twins,” said Miri. She pulled the photo a little closer. “They look really alike.” If she could see their eyes, she’d know for sure, but the caps were in the way.

  Molly held up a picture of a tiny baby face engulfed in lace. “Boy or girl?”

  Miri put down the laughing brothers. “I dunno,” she said. “But whatever it is, it’s mad.” A piece of a board sailed past her head. “Dad!” she yelped, jumping back.

  “Sorry! Forgot to look!” he called apologetically. “Maybe you guys should go inside, huh? You’re probably supposed to do some homework anyway, right?”

  They gave him injured looks. “Anyone would think you didn’t want us here,” called Molly.

  “I don’t,” said Dad. “Go away.” He bent to pick up a rock.

  “You’ll miss us when we’re grown up,” said Miri, and with one last, apologetic look at the dangling door, they swept away.

  The two girls extended snack time to the farthest boundaries of the possible—apples and peanut butter with slow and refined chewing, chocolate milk with slow and unrefined slurping, an extended and unsuccessful search for cookies—but finally there was nothing left to do but sit down and face the bitter truth of math.

  Robbie and Ray called to say they had missed the bus. Then they called to say that they had missed the next bus. Then they called to ask Mom to pick them up. Then they called to say that they didn’t need her to pick them up, because the bus was coming. Then they called to ask if there was milk in the refrigerator.

  “Milk?” asked Mom in confusion. “Why are you calling about milk? Come home and do your homework!”

  Miri and Molly exchanged tiny smiles and virtuously factored polynomials.

  Time passed.

  The phone rang.

  “Why do you keep calling me about milk?” wailed Mom. “Yes! We have milk! We always have milk! Come home!”

  A few minutes later, Ray and Robbie shuffled into the kitchen. As usual, their jeans sagged, their sweatshirts were scrawled with ink, and their hair stuck out in stiff, dirty sprigs from under their hats. Not as usual, they were walking very slowly, almost gently. Weirder still, they weren’t yelling. They weren’t squabbling. They weren’t snorting or burping or grunting. They weren’t making any noise at all. Miri watched in amazement as they glided in ghostly silence toward the table. What was the matter with them? Were they sick?

  “There you are!” cried Mom in relief. “Now, I want you to sit right—”

  “Shhh,” murmured Robbie.

  “It’s sleeping,” whispered Ray.

  Mom froze. “Excuse me?”

  Robbie slid toward the table without replying, and Miri saw that he had the dirtiest T-shirt in the world cupped in his hands. His eyes were shining with pride. “We got you guys something,” he whispered.

  “Us?” Molly was whispering, too.

  He nodded. “A present. Because of yesterday.” He tilted his head ever so slightly in the direction of their mother. “You know.” Ray hung over Robbie’s shoulder as he carefully set the dirty T-shirt on the table and opened it. There, rolled into a ball, was a very small, very white, very fluffy kitten.

  “Ooooh,” sighed Miri. “A kitty.” Wonderstruck, she looked up at her brothers. “A baby kitty.”

  “Look!” Molly breathed. “Look at its baby paws.”

  As though it had heard, the kitten gave an arching, rigid stretch, and a tiny white paw quivered in the air. Miri couldn’t help stretching out a finger to touch it. Round green eyes flew open and regarded her with astonishment. This was followed by a sneeze. Exhausted by this whirlwind of activity, the kitten sank back into sleep.

  Mom peered around her sons. “You got them a kitten?” she gasped. “A kitten?”

  “Yuh-huh,” Ray said, beaming. “Pretty cute, huh?”

  Miri held her breath. Please, please, please, she begged Mom silently. Please let us keep it. I’ll be good for the rest of my life. I’ll be good and kind and hardworking—

  Then she saw her mother’s face and knew that she didn’t need to be good for the rest of her life. Mom bent over the kitten, enchanted. “Look at that little lovey,” she murmured. With a single finger she stroked the fluff at the kitten’s neck, cooing and clucking softly. Suddenly, there was a sniff, and Miri smiled as she saw her mother squeeze Ray’s shoulder. “You boys,” Mom choked, “you boys are sweethearts.”

  Behind Mom’s head, Robbie gave his brother a thumbs-up. Score! he mouthed as Ray patted his mother’s hand and tried to look sensitive.

  “It’s a girl,” explained Robbie, glancing between Miri and Molly. “Like you guys.” He pointed toward them, in case they hadn’t noticed they were girls. “We thought that would be good.” He gave the kitten a gentle pat. “That’s good, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Molly. “That’s completely perfect.”

  “You guys are the best brothers in the world,” said Miri, watching the soft fluff rise and fall.

  Ray and Robbie smiled at each other smugly. They were the best brothers in the world. “We paid four dollars for her. Of our own money,” said Robbie. They were generous, too.

  “Where’d you get her?” murmured Mom, reaching out to stroke behind the kitten’s tiny ear.

  “Paxton. There was a guy outside the Snakn-Go,” explained Ray. “They were five dollars, but we talked him down to four.”

  “Oh, Lord, she probably has some horrible disease,” sighed Mom, but Miri could tell she didn’t need to worry. Her mother had begun to love the kitten, and once she started, she would never stop.

  “The guy said to give her milk,” said Robbie. He stared at the kitten and gave her another soft poke. “And jeez, me too. We spent all our money on the kitten, so we didn’t get anything after school, and I’m gonna die of starvation in, like, four seconds.” He moved toward the refrigerator.

  Ray lunged after him. “I call the cereal if there’s not enough for both of us.”

  “Pfff,” snorted Robbie, elbowing his brother in the ribs. Ray flicked his head. They were back to normal.

  At the table, Molly and Miri hunched over their precious bundle, their brown hair falling together to make a little house for three.

  It was hard to concentrate. Inside the dirty T-shirt, the kitten snoozed, first on Miri’s lap and then on Molly’s. Polynomials, factors, kitten, what should we name her, polynomials, what should we name her, look at her nose, it’s so cute, factors, look at her ear, it twitched, what about Milly, sort of a combination of our names, that’s cute, but would it be too confusing, maybe you’re right, factors, what about—oh, look at her stretch!

  “Mom better hurry up with that food,” said Molly, glancing at the clock.

  Kittens, it had turned out, needed other things besides milk. Including kitty litter. Miri and Molly had heroically volunteered to be peed and even pooped on while Mom took a quick trip to the store.

  Ray looked up from his Spanish book. “You should call her Snowy. ’Cause see? She’s white.”

  “Wow,” said Molly. “That’s really original.”

  “You like it?” he said, pleased.

  Miri’s eyes strayed to the cupboards they had unsuccessfully ransacked for cookies. “What about Cookie?”

  “Cookie,” said Molly experimentally. “That’s kind of cute.”

  Miri stroked the warm bundle pressed against her stomach. “I think so, too. Cookie. Cookie,” she cooed, “Cookie, Cookie-Wookie.”

  “How about Corn Chip?” said Robbie. He was hungry.

  “No,” said Molly. “Corn Chip sounds like we’re about to eat her. Cookie.”

  “Cookie,” agreed Miri, gently rubbing Cookie’s chin. A small, rattling motor came to life in Cookie’s throat.

  “Or Burger,” Robbie went on dreamily. “Or Pizza.”

  “No,” said Miri. “Cookie.”

  The front door opened. “Guess what!” called their mothe
r’s voice. “I have, in one short hour, solved all of my children’s problems.” She clattered into the kitchen. “I solved yours.” She smiled at Miri and Molly and dropped a pile of cat food, box, and litter onto the kitchen table. “And yours.” She turned to Ray and Robbie.

  “Our problem is we’re hungry,” said Robbie.

  “No,” said Mom. “Your problem is you’re flunking history.”

  “It’s called social studies now,” said Ray.

  “I call it history,” said Mom. “And I just found a way for you to raise your grades.” She looked energetically from son to son. “I ran into Mr. Emory at the grocery store”—Ray groaned—“Stop that. He seemed very nice. And he said that you can get extra credit by doing a Civil War reenactment this Saturday! Isn’t that great?”

  More groans.

  “Now stop that! You don’t even know what it is!”

  “Yeah, we do,” said Robbie. “It’s this totally lame thing where a bunch of old guys get together and pretend that they’re still fighting in a war that happened, like, two hundred years ago.”

  “A hundred and fifty years ago,” corrected Mom. “A war that’s extremely important in American history.”

  “They dress up.” He snickered.

  “You’ll get extra credit,” coaxed Mom.

  “No,” said Ray.

  “You’ll learn about the battles that happened around here.” She smiled encouragingly.

  “No,” said Robbie.

  “You’ll get lots of exercise,” she said.

  “No,” said Ray.

  “You’ll get guns,” said a man’s voice.

  Ray and Robbie looked up. Ollie was standing in the doorway. “For real?” asked Ray.

  “Yep. Course, they’re not loaded, just with powder. Makes a pop, though.” Ollie grinned as though this was good news. “You could get sabers, depending which company you’re in. Probably you’ll be Yankees. We never have enough Yankees.”

  “We don’t mind being Yankees,” said Ray. He looked at Robbie. “Do we?”

  “Which ones are they?” asked Robbie.