The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  I see this, I see this, I see:

  Gosh!

  I see your face! Your own precious face!

  I see black cats, umbrellas, and streaks of spilling milk.

  I see a footpath crack, a burning ear, a ladder and a wooden door—

  A necklace clasp is glinting from beneath a dimpled chin!

  The second sticky note said, Tomorrow night. My place. Here’s your Second Chance.

  The next day, Thursday, Marbie sat at her desk and unwound paper clips. A little pile of ragged wires formed on her desk. Every now and then she took one from this pile and tried to bend it back into paper clip shape. It was never possible.

  The yellow sticky note was on her corkboard: Tomorrow night. My place. Here’s your Second Chance. Each time she read it, she felt a chill breeze waft through her mind: You must not go! You must not go! You must not go!

  Of course not! She gave a contemptuous laugh, but continued to unwind paper clips. The telephone rang. It was Fancy.

  “Marbie!” Fancy’s voice was urgent and breathless—and Marbie felt at once that Fancy knew. “You must not go!” Fancy would instruct her. “Of course not,” Marbie would reply.

  “Marbie, something terrible has happened! I left a phone bill of mine on the dining room table at the last Intrusion! I just realized! I have to go back in and get it! But what if it’s too late? I can hardly breathe! I’ve called Mum, and she’s put out an Urgent Request for a Distraction. So, if we get one, is tonight okay?”

  “Of course,” agreed Marbie. “I’ll leave work early and wait for your call. I’m sure it’s not too late, or we’d have heard something. Just calm down and breathe and have a foot massage.”

  Well, she said to herself, hanging up after several minutes of calming Fancy down. So that’s that then. But a phone bill! Why did she take a phone bill along to an Intrusion?

  She sent a text message to the A.E. (CAN’T MAKE IT), took down the yellow Post-it, and scraped the misshapen paper clips into the bin.

  Then she got on with her day’s work.

  Listen was allowed to do the next spell on the last Friday of school before the holidays. She would do it as soon as she got home: like a beginning-of-the-holidays reward. On that day, they had Science first, and the teacher made an announcement: “Guess what, girls, I’ve just got word that all seventh-graders are allowed to go home at the end of this lesson!”

  Everyone said, “Wha-a-a-at?!” and “No way!” and the Science teacher explained: “It’s obviously much too cold to take lessons outside”—he was interrupted by noisy agreement—“and the weather, as you will no doubt have noticed, has become, shall we say, quite strange. The bus companies have hinted that they may be shutting down in the next few hours, so—hush, hush, no need for hysterics—so, we’re arranging a staggered collection throughout the day, and you poor little homeless Grade Sevens—yes, yes, I know—you poor little homeless seventh-graders have been selected as the first lot to go!”

  After that, of course, the lesson was upbeat and hilarious, with nobody paying much attention to the teacher. At Listen’s bench, Donna and Caro passed each other’s homework diaries back and forth between them, writing the names of unlikely movie stars in large red hearts. Then each would show the other what had been written in her diary, and the other would shriek and try to scribble out the name. Well, really, thought Listen, why do you keep letting each other write in there if you know you’re both going to write something stupid?

  “Hang on, hang on,” said Caro, “I promise, this time, I promise I’m going to write something normal.” Donna passed her diary back, and Caro wrote, in large letters, “Be alert. The world needs more lerts.”

  Listen, reading over Caro’s shoulder, giggled. At this, Caro grimaced as if she had been asked to dissect a frog. She closed the diary and slid it back along the bench toward Donna, who gave her a sympathetic pat.

  “Excuse me for living,” murmured Listen, and shifted her stool a little farther from them.

  As the period drew to an end, the teacher’s voice rose again. “Okay, guys, the bell’s about to go, so, while I have your attention, two things! Obviously, I don’t need to remind you that you must all report to Redwood Elementary at the start of next term! I know! I know that it’s an elementary school, but I expect you will survive. And I also expect to see your assignments that very day! I assume you’ve already got it well under way!”

  Everybody laughed.

  “Well, who can remind me what the topic is? Nobody? Choose two creatures of the sea. They may be mythical creatures, and they need not be fish!”

  Donna raised her hand and said, “How can they be creatures of the sea and not be fish?”

  With an elaborate sigh, the teacher declared: “Donna Turnbull. Is it possible that you have not heard a single word of what I have said today?”

  Donna shrugged and said, “It’s possible,” and beside her Caro made a snorting noise. Donna kept a straight face but it crinkled around the edges.

  “Donna,” said the teacher, “have we been talking, this lesson, about whales?”

  “Have we?”

  “And, Donna, is a whale a type of fish?”

  Donna stared, while Caro grabbed at her arm. The bell rang shrilly for the end of the lesson.

  “Okay! Nobody steps out of that door until someone has told Donna what kind of animal a whale is!”

  Then half the class shouted, “It’s a mammal,” while Donna opened her mouth wide, and Caro slithered down in shrieks of giggles. Next thing they were all tipping their chairs backward, talking, and reaching for schoolbags, and leaning for pens which had dropped onto the floor.

  Listen Taylor, however, sat at her desk for a moment, as if she had forgotten where she was, watching the girls packing up to go, and also watching Donna and Caro helping each other through the classroom door, both by now crippled with laughter.

  Marbie stood in the corridor with Tabitha, Toni, Abi, and Rhamie, and watched Tabitha talk about her pregnant sister. The other girls were shaking their heads, so Marbie joined in when they did. But what she was really thinking was: I am the luckiest girl in the world. I am so lucky that Fancy called yesterday and we had to do another Intrusion last night, so that Fancy could get her phone bill back. Because that meant I couldn’t go to the A.E.’s house. I can’t believe I was even considering it. Just because he sent me a vision about my superstitions. A lot of people are superstitious, you know. I am SO lucky.

  “That’s your cell, isn’t it, Marbie?” said Tabitha.

  “Sorry!” said Marbie, and slid into her office.

  She had missed the phone call, and there was no message. But as she stared at the I MISSED CALL, a text message arrived: 2DAY THEN, MY PLCE, 1 PM. LV WK NW.

  She stared at this for a while. LV WK NW. Lv wk nw. What did that mean? Love wake new? But what did that mean?

  Leave work now, she realized.

  At which moment, Tabitha leaned into her office and said, “Leave work now, Marbie! It’s all over the news! They’re expecting freezing rain or snow, and if we don’t leave now, we will never get home! They’re about to cancel all public transport!”

  HELLO AGAIN! said the Spell Book. “Hello,” said Listen automatically, and then stopped.

  Hasn’t it been ages? Well, and how do you feel today? I hope you feel fine. I myself feel JUST fine. Here is the next Spell.

  This is a Spell to Make Two Happy People Have a HUGE Fight over Absolutely NOTHING!

  Here are the instructions:

  1. Do twenty jumping jacks.

  2. Take some pieces of paper, write the heading “Things That Make Me Sad,” then fill the pages with the things that make you sad.

  3. Fold the papers, and bury them at the bottom of a full box of tissues.

  Close the book, put it under your pillow, and we’ll see you again for the next Spell TOMORROW!

  Listen lay on her bed, on her side, and read the spell over twice. And what she was thinking was that this spell wa
s easy and quite good exercise. She was thinking that she wouldn’t mind writing out the things that made her sad and burying them in the bottom of a tissue box. She was thinking that tomorrow was an unusually short time to wait for the next spell.

  But what she was really thinking was, Why would anybody do a spell to make two happy people have a fight?

  Before she got time to think of an answer she was already on jumping jack number five.

  Things That Make Me Sad. Listen poured herself a glass of juice, sat at her bedroom desk, and stared at the heading she had written on a blank piece of foolscap paper. Then she moved her pen to the line beneath the heading and began.

  “Donna has a table-tennis table in the basement of her house,” she wrote, “and once Sia’s mother made us all eat spaghetti squash. The first thing that makes me sad is that I’ll never get to play table tennis at Donna’s place again. Caro and I used to be the best team when we played doubles. The second thing that makes me sad is that they had a strategy meeting at Donna’s place without me.”

  She continued writing. “The 33rd thing that makes me sad,” she concluded, “is that there isn’t any point in my existence.”

  Then, as the Spell Book requested, she buried her sadness in a Kleenex box.

  The aeronautical engineer met Marbie at his doorway with one red rose and a kiss. He was on his front veranda, waving at the bus. Marbie was skidding on the icy path to his doorway. The red rose was waving in his hand, clutching at rain and dipping at wind. The kiss was quick, and met Marbie’s lips.

  Too soon! thought Marbie.

  He took her by the hand into his hallway, where she sat on the cold, tiled floor to unlace her boots.

  He murmured in her ear, in a tickly way, “You are cold, my princess, let us to the fire!”

  “Oh, well,” Marbie explained, “I haven’t taken my other boot off yet, you see?”

  “Come along!” he said, shrugging expansively at her one boot, and took her tripping to the fireside, where he made her sit on the floor.

  Too soon! thought Marbie. Too soon!

  He seemed to sense her owlish tune, and paused now, kneeling at her feet. Marbie sat, demure by the fireside, her arms around her knees. He unlaced her boot, crisscrossing down amongst the eyelets. He went too far. He slid the entire lace out until it leapt from the boot. Surprised, Marbie said, “Do you not understand how shoelaces work?”

  But he had taken a glass of champagne from the mantelpiece, and in one smooth move had the cold glass in her hand.

  “Champagne?” said Marbie. “What’s it doing on your mantelpiece?” She took a sip while he hit the PLAY button on the CD.

  “Jazz,” said Marbie. “A lot of people like jazz. Not so much myself. I’m not what you’d call a jazz kind of person. Fancy is. My sister, Fancy? You wouldn’t think it because—”

  “All right,” interrupted the aeronautical engineer, leaning back to the CD player, “no jazz then.”

  The CD tray slid open slowly, presenting the CD like a waiter with a plate.

  “Marbie,” said the aeronautical engineer, sitting cross-legged next to her. “How long do you have?”

  “Just the lunch hour, really,” she lied. “I’ll have to go back to work.”

  He moved toward her, in a sort of slide across the carpet on his bottom.

  She felt alarmed.

  He said, “Let’s take these stockings off, no?”

  She was not sure if that was possible. “You mean without me taking my skirt off first?”

  “Lie down,” he suggested.

  She was worried she would knock the champagne over, and hovered it about in the air until he took it and placed it back on the mantelpiece.

  She lay down flat on the carpet and sneezed once.

  “Perhaps I’m allergic to the rug,” she chatted.

  He unbuttoned the skirt, at the side.

  “Yes,” she agreed. “That will make it easier.”

  He reached both hands underneath her skirt. He looked at her face as he did so, and concentrated, his head tilting, reaching along the sides of her thighs as if he were a burglar working in the dark, reaching for the wires to cut off the alarm. He found the waistline of her stockings, and began to roll them down, with great caution, over her hips, across the knees, down to the toes. “There!” he said, holding up the crumpled stockings.

  Marbie lifted her head and saw her legs looking white on the carpet. “Shall I sit up?”

  “No.”

  The carpet felt prickly on her back, and she believed it would make her sneeze. Her throat itched too, and she clicked at it, once.

  “Well—” she began.

  But he leaned down and stopped her with a kiss.

  He had his shower and bathtub all in one, which is common, he said, or did she not know?

  “May I watch you shower?” he asked.

  “Oh well, if it were a normal shower. But this is a shower in a tub, you see?”

  “Ah then. Shall I make us an omelet or some bacon and eggs?”

  She said, “That would be breakfast, and this is afternoon.”

  “Ah then,” he agreed, and: “Must you really go back to work?” And she said, “I know. It’s terrible. Have you got a towel for me?”

  He had a towel for her, a great, soft, white towel, a cozy, hotel towel, the sort that Marbie always dreamed of, for burying her face in, or for drying herself.

  “I can’t watch you shower then?” he tried again.

  “Oh well,” said Marbie, “not really,” and she closed the bathroom door.

  She stood in the bathtub and filled up the room, which was pink, with steam.

  “Look at it on the trees.”

  He stood at his door with a towel around his plump waist, and a cold and hairy chest, and pointed. “That’s freezing rain is what that is.”

  “You’d better get inside,” Marbie told him. “You’ll freeze.”

  He said, “Look at the ice on the trees. Have you ever seen Sydney look like this? No, you wouldn’t have. Nobody has. That’s your bus now, at the lights on the corner. I think they should cancel the buses. I bet they do any moment now.”

  “You’d better get inside,” Marbie said again. “What happens if the freezing rain hits your chest? The hair will turn into curly icicles, and you’ll have to snap them off.”

  “I’ll watch you onto the bus,” he said. “You be careful on that ice, won’t you? It’ll be a skating rink out there. Deadly.”

  “Don’t wait for me,” said Marbie. “You’d better get inside.”

  “Kiss me,” he said.

  This was only fair.

  Freezing rain crackled on the edges of the twigs, and shark-toothed its way along the turrets and the grooves. The ice was like lace, or like Spanish moss, or like handblown glass on the trees.

  Marbie sat at the kitchen table and waited for Nathaniel to get home. He was driving Listen to Tae Kwon Do. When he returned, she would tell him. She was surprised at how simple this was. She had thought it would be anguished indecision: Should I tell him, should I not, should I tell him, should I not? But at once, as she stood in that pink bathtub shower, at once as she filled up the room with its steam, at once as she reached for the change for the bus, as she stepped from the bus to an iced-over puddle that soaked through her boots to her toes, at once! she had known.

  She sat at the kitchen table with a Twix chocolate bar and a glass of lemonade. These were for Nathaniel.

  After a moment, she opened the wrapper and ate the Twix bar. She had never eaten a whole one like that before, in big greedy bites, like a starving Charlie before the Chocolate Factory. Then she drank the glass of lemonade in one thirsty, greedy gulp. She had never done that before either. The fizziness, for a start, would have stopped her in the past. Now her mouth was chocolate sugar, and her eyes were startled red. She was so frightened it made her want to giggle.

  She reached into the kitchen drawer and took out the corkscrew, and then she began to play with it, rotat
ing the top so that its arms rose up and then down, up and then down, like a person crying out for help. Giving up, crying out, giving up, crying out, the long thin body in an anguish of perpetual twisting.

  There was the sound of a key in the door. She dropped the corkscrew with a clatter. But then there was a tumble of voices in the hallway: Listen was home.

  “What happened?” Marbie called down the hallway. “What happened to Tae Kwon Do?”

  “Canceled!” cried Listen. She danced, excited, and Nathaniel seemed excited too.

  “Teacher left a note on the door,” he explained, opening the fridge. “We should have thought of it. Traffic was hell. We were skidding all over the road. There’s ice out there, Marbs, you should go have a look. Still, we weren’t the only ones, were we, Listen? There were other kids hanging around there waiting. They hadn’t seen the note. They were all trying to hit on Listen. Hey, Twix. I love Twix.” He was staring at the wrapper on the table.

  “I know you do.” Marbie felt terrible guilt. “I’m sorry. I ate it all. I’ll get you another one tomorrow.”

  “Ah well.” Nathaniel turned back to the fridge.

  “I’m hungry,” Listen danced. “They were not hitting on me, Dad.”

  “Well, that kid with the giraffe tattoo on his wrist was,” said Nathaniel, pulling up a kitchen chair. “He’s got it for you bad, kid.” To Marbie, Nathaniel indicated how the giraffe’s neck ran from the boy’s wrist to his elbow.

  “That’s Carl Vandenberg. He’s going for his black belt. No way he likes me.”

  “What say we go out for dinner,” Nathaniel said. “We can walk down to that new Indian restaurant, to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “The ice storm. And the Zing Family Secret Meeting being canceled. Not that I don’t enjoy the meetings, Marbie, of course. It’s just a reason, see. And Tae Kwon Do being canceled,” suggested Nathaniel.

  Listen pirouetted. “But I like Tae Kwon Do.”

  Alone in the kitchen again, Marbie thought sadly about buying another Twix for Nathaniel, only it was too dark and icy outside. She had pretended she was too cold to join them at the restaurant, but now she was too frightened to do anything. She couldn’t even make herself a curried egg sandwich for dinner.