The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor

by Jaclyn Moriarty

  “Okay. Well, that’s great. I think I should hang up now.”

  “Sure. That’s all I wanted to say anyway. Just that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, and Marbie, you’ve got to come by my place tonight and explain what you were going on about yesterday. You can’t tell a spy story like that and just leave me hanging. You hear me?”

  “I can’t?”

  “No.”

  “Because I was thinking that I could. I was thinking you could forget I said a word, and get on with your life. Okay?”

  “No, because I heard every word, and now I need an explanation or who knows what might happen? See you tonight. Another thing, if there’s anybody there with you now, just say that this was a wrong number.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “Righto, gorgeous. Bye.”

  Marbie hung up and clutched her pillow tightly to her chest. Quite simply, she did not know why she had slept with the A.E. in the first place, let alone told him the Secret. She looked around the room in confusion. The night before, she remembered, it had suddenly seemed clear that she must tell him, and that this would be the answer. But how could it have been? Here she was, Marbie Zing, embracing an irrational existence. She looked down at the pillow in her arms and thought, My existence is a pillow. She did not even know what she meant.

  She threw the pillow away and dialed Nathaniel’s number, but there was no answer. She left a message saying that she just wanted to wish Listen good luck again, for her first day at Redwood Elementary, and also, if Listen needed anything, well, she, Marbie, was right here in the apartment, except when she was at work.

  The seventh-graders were marching down the path at Redwood Elementary. They had been welcomed at the Assembly Hall, and now they had to go to the portable classrooms.

  “In pairs!” shouted the teachers. “March in pairs!”

  But actually the teachers did not care if they walked in pairs or not, and Chloe, who was next to Listen, faded back from her and joined the two behind. Listen had just said, “How was your holiday?” but at the same time someone had shouted, “GIVE ME MY HAT,” so Chloe had not heard.

  There were Redwood Elementary kids at the windows of classrooms, opening their mouths to stare. Listen tried to huddle with the pair in front, so the kids would not think she was alone, but she couldn’t because they patterned out and took the whole path.

  Two’s company. Three’s a crowd. She thought this sadly, and then there was a glint of sunlight on the buckle of her schoolbag, and she thought it again: Two’s company, three’s a crowd! Of course! Let’s say somewhere in her grade there was a group of three friends? Well, two’s company, three’s a crowd. So, they would need a fourth. She could be the fourth.

  The teachers tried to teach like a normal day, but the girls messed around like this was a vacation. It should be a vacation; it was the first day back and this was an elementary school.

  “That doesn’t mean you have to act like elementary students,” the teachers said, over and over. When the bell rang for recess, it was not a junior-high electric bell, it was a strange, clanking elementary bell.

  On the muddy grass outside the classroom, Listen pulled her sweater sleeves over her hands and said, “Hi, Kelly.”

  Kelly Favoloro, who was walking past, looked surprised and said, “Hi.”

  Listen said fast, in a metal-flat voice, “Can I hang out with you guys, maybe, just today?”

  Kelly looked around for her two friends, Amber Tang and Sasha James, and all three raised their eyebrows.

  Then Kelly said, “Sure, yeah, okay.”

  Quickly and politely, the other girls said it too: “Sure, Listen, yeah!”

  Listen said, in a serious voice, “Just say no if you want.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” Kelly twirled Listen’s ponytail around her hand. “Why would we say no?”

  In her bed in the campervan, Listen had a bumping heart of frightened happiness. This plan could work. She had sat with Kelly and the others at recess and lunchtime that day, and Kelly had admired her hair. “It’s so soft,” Kelly said. She suggested Listen wear it in a French braid. Also, Amber told a long story about how her father lost his job during the holidays, but then talked his boss into giving him a promotion instead. Sasha told ballet stories: She loved ballet so much that she carried her slippers around with her all the time, like a long, drooping bracelet.

  The second day of term, Listen felt both frightened and safe. At recess and lunchtime she sat outside in the winter sun and watched while Kelly Favoloro took turns arm-wrestling with Amber and Sasha. She passed around her bag of Valerio Honey-Mustard Chips, and everybody took one. She asked Amber two questions about her father’s promotion, and Sasha three questions about ballet.

  The next morning, while the History teacher read to them from the textbook, Judith Sierra, who had braces and ruler-straight bangs, turned around and whispered, “Listen?”

  “Yeah?” Listen whispered back.

  “Who d’you hang around with?” Carefully, Judith regarded her.

  “Kelly Favoloro and Sasha and Amber.”

  Judith looked concerned. “Um,” she whispered, “‘cause they were talking to me before school, and they’re really worried. They thought you only wanted to sit with them for one day—they didn’t think you meant, like, forever?”

  “It was just until today,” Listen explained. “They don’t need to worry, it was just until today, and that’s it.”

  Judith looked relieved. “I’ll let them know. They were really worried. See, Kelly likes you, but Amber and Sasha aren’t so sure because you kind of like just ask questions? Like you’re a schoolteacher or something? And they could tell you kind of wanted to buy them as friends, the way you kept offering food.”

  “Just the chips,” Listen said. “I only offered them honey-mustard chips.”

  Judith blinked. “So, anyway,” she said, “Kelly felt guilty about saying you could join.”

  “Okay,” said Listen. “Thanks.” She smiled for reassurance, and Judith smiled back.

  She would have to go to the A.E.’s place to begin repairing her mistakes. Maybe she could shout “April fool!” and pretend it had all been a trick? But it was not April, and when she arrived, she saw that it was too late to pretend.

  His eyes, when he opened the door, had a glittery, greedy look.

  So, sitting straight-backed in his lounge chair, Marbie explained the Secret again, more succinctly this time, and with emphasis on confidentiality. She spoke in a soft, serious voice, to show that reverence was the appropriate reaction, rather than feverish excitement. He assumed a grave expression. She concluded by explaining that the Secret was an honor which was rarely bestowed. He smiled and assured her he was worthy of this honor.

  Then he served the lasagna and things began to go wrong.

  She noticed that the A.E. was frowning. He was staring at his fork, and there were at least thirteen different cracks and creases in his forehead. It was unnecessary, that many cracks and creases.

  “So, basically, you spy on this woman without any kind of government authorization, or permit, or, I don’t know, police protection? Right?”

  “Right. It’s just us. But ’spying’ is the wrong—”

  “And this woman is not only a teacher, she’s also a lawyer, you say?”

  “Not a lawyer. She just studies law part-time.”

  His frown was like a freshly broken mirror. “Studying law part-time? I’ve got to say, Marbie, you’re playing with fire there. What happens when she finds out? Don’t think a lawyer’s going to pull any punches, do you?”

  “Who says she’s going to find out?”

  “Well,” said the A.E. with a maddening shrug. Then, as he reached for more lasagna, he said, “Come to bed with me?”

  “No,” replied Marbie, “thanks all the same.”

  Over the next few weeks Marbie’s days fell into a pattern. She would arrive home from work, phone Nathaniel, get his answeri
ng machine, and go over to the A.E.’s place. The A.E. would ask difficult questions about the Secret, and try to persuade her to go to bed with him. The next day she would go over to Fancy’s place to find answers to the A.E.’s questions, so that, on the following day, she could go to the A.E’s place again.

  It was exhausting, but she could not see how to stop. The A.E. had the Secret, and he kept setting little brush fires with it. She had to go over and put them out.

  Mopping the shop floor in the Banana Bar one late afternoon, Listen discovered that her mind was humming: Two’s company, three’s a crowd! Two’s company, three’s a crowd!—in a cheerful, mocking tune. All right, she thought, so the plan didn’t work. You don’t have to sing about it.

  She looked at her dad, who was counting money at the register, and thought, with a thud: Two’s company, three’s a crowd. That’s why Dad and Marbie broke up! Because I made them into a crowd!

  She mopped savagely for a few moments, tears in her eyes. Then she calmed down, because she knew what her dad would say if she mentioned that to him. She knew she was being stupid. She wouldn’t even waste his time by raising it.

  But she would ask something one more time. “Dad,” she said, and he looked up, mouthing twenty-three as he did. “What did you and Marbie fight about?”

  “Ab-so-lute-ly nothing,” he said with a smile, and returned to his counting.

  She squeezed the mop into the bucket. It was too much of a coincidence: A Spell to Make Two Happy People Have a Huge Fight over Absolutely Nothing. Even when she reminded herself that there was no such thing as magic, and also that, as far as she knew, the first two spells had not worked—A Spell to Make Someone Decide to Take a Taxi, A Spell to Make a Vacuum Cleaner Break—it was still too much of a coincidence.

  The only hope was the promise on the back of the book: This Book Will Make You Fly, Will Make You Strong, Will Make You Glad. What’s More, This Book Will Mend Your Broken Heart. As long as she finished all the spells, the book would somehow fix its own mistake.

  She wondered if the next three spells would work—as far as she could figure out, they were all supposed to happen at the same time in a few weeks. A Spell to Make Someone Give Someone a Rose (maybe Dad would give Marbie a rose?); A Spell to Make Someone Find Something Unexpected in a Washing Machine (hmm); and A Spell to Make Someone Eat a Piece of Chocolate Cake (maybe Marbie would drop by the Banana Bar for cake?).

  At least, if those spells worked, they wouldn’t hurt a fly.

  While she waited for the Spell Book to work, she just needed a new strategy for school. For a start, she would stop asking questions and offering honey-mustard chips. But it was more complicated than that. The fact was, she had never actually belonged to Kelly Favoloro’s group. She asked them questions, but they never asked her one. They arm wrestled, but never with her. Why hadn’t they included her in the arm wrestling? Or she could have held out her hand and said, “Now try me.”

  Waiting to start Tae Kwon Do the other day, Carl Vandenberg and some of the others had been having thumb wars. Listen had stood apart from them, watching. She could never hold her thumb out and say, “Now try me.”

  But then Carl had sidestepped toward her, fixed her with a fierce gaze, and grabbed her thumb with his own. Next thing, she’d been having thumb wars with them all.

  Whatever she had done at Tae Kwon Do that day must have been right; she must have been standing in a cool way while she was watching the others. Or she had the correct expression on her face. So, the strategy was: While at school, pretend you’re at Tae Kwon Do, and stand or sit in exactly the same way.

  Actually, the master at Tae Kwon Do had also said that day that she was stronger than she looked. She would have beat Kelly and Amber in arm wrestles. Maybe not Sasha. Sasha had muscular wrists.

  “Playing with fire,” the A.E. said, wanting to talk about the Secret again. “Crash down on you like a house of cards.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?” Marbie was slicing up an onion. “The house of cards will catch on fire? Or the house of cards will fall on our heads. Because guess what, a house of cards would not hurt a fly.”

  The A.E. sat on his kitchen counter, drumming his heels against the cupboards and watching as Marbie chopped the onion. The frown was in the center of his forehead again.

  “Ton of bricks then,” he adjusted. “Crash down on you like a ton of bricks.” Then: “Don’t think a lawyer’s going to pull any punches, do you?”

  “What’s the charge?” pounced Marbie. “What charge?” She spoiled the effect by sneezing seven times.

  “Hay fever?” said the aeronautical engineer.

  “So?” said Marbie spitefully.

  “You’ve probably got a cold. Not hay fever at all. As for the charge,” he continued, “ever heard of a particular little document known as the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data? Hmm?”

  “What in the world makes you think I’d have heard of such a thing!” cried Marbie with a flurry of onion skins.

  The aeronautical engineer simply breathed.

  “You made it up,” said Marbie.

  He turned his palms upward. “Did I?”

  There were disadvantages to being at Redwood Elementary. For example, there were no laboratories or kitchen facilities, which meant that, in Science and Food Tech, they did nothing but theory for the term. A lot of the girls complained about this and the effect it might have on their futures. Also, although Redwood was only a five-minute drive from Clareville Academy, some teachers could not make it there in time for a class. So they often had substitute teachers, and once, they even had a Redwood teacher step in at the last moment to teach Commerce.

  His name was Mr. Bel Castro. His own class, he said, was doing gym.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Donna Turnbull, pretending to be polite. “Can I just check with you about something?”

  “Of course,” said Mr. Bel Castro, also polite.

  “What grade do you teach normally?”

  “Fifth grade,” he said.

  “So,” Donna continued, slowly, “don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but could I just ask, have you ever had any, kind of like, experience with teaching junior high—I mean, students like us?”

  Anxiously, she looked around the room as if concerned about the fate of her class. Beside her, Caro giggled.

  “Teaching students like you?” said Mr. Bel Castro, pausing as he picked up a marker. “Well, I don’t know about students like you. I did spend five years teaching Economics to twelfth-graders at Riverview before I came to Redwood. So, I don’t know, which would you say are more like you—my senior students from Riverview, or my fifth-graders here?”

  Everyone laughed, and someone said, “Haaa, Donna, he got you good.”

  Then Mr. Bel Castro wrote his name on the whiteboard and moved straight on to teaching. Afterward everyone said he was better than their regular teacher. In fact, he seemed to have a whole lesson stored in his head, which he taught by asking questions.

  “You’ve been doing advertising?” he began. “Consumer awareness and so on? Well, who here thinks that the Valerio Empire is messing with our minds?”

  He smiled when everyone said, “Huh?” and soon had them shouting out Valerio products from their homes and their days, including Valerio toys, pies, cars, computers, TV shows, and cleaning products. Then he waited while they began reciting Valerio jingles, and lines from the recent Nikolai Valerio biography, which had outsold the Harry Potter series in the first two weeks of its release.

  “Okay, you’ve got Valerio jingles jumping around in your minds, and Valerio’s book on your shelves. You’ve got Valerio films on your TV screens, and Valerio junk mail in your mailboxes. Who thinks the Valerio empire might be invading their privacy?”

  This led to a discussion about whether you could invade somebody’s privacy by getting products and words inside their mind. Also, whether it made a difference if people chose t
o buy the products and watch the movies. Kelly Favoloro pointed out that you sometimes couldn’t choose because Valerio shows were the only things worth watching on TV. “Good point,” said Mr. Bel Castro.

  Then Angela Saville said, “But isn’t it really the other way around, and we invade the Valerio family’s privacy?”

  “Ah-hah!” said Mr. Bel Castro. “Interesting! Well, let’s see how much we know about the Valerio family. Who’s in the family for a start?”

  Of course, everyone knew the Valerio family: Nikolai, his wife Rebekka, and their three handsome, grown-up sons. Nikolai and Rebekka had now retired of course, and liked to play tennis and gin rummy in their South Carolina mansion. They had their own bowling alley! Nikolai had been a beautiful young motor mechanic, working in New York with a smear of motor oil on his nose, when he was discovered by a movie producer. His seven films were generally considered the best ever made. He became an icon and a sex symbol immediately after his first film. He designed a line of Valerio underwear, which was an instant smash. When he married Rebekka, a Romanian model, after his first film, women all over the world threw themselves off buildings. There was a famous photograph of Nikolai and Rebekka dancing in a buttercup meadow, in bare feet. Bees buzzed close to their naked toes.

  Nikolai and Rebekka’s three sons, although still young, ran the family empire. Each of the sons had been troubled by drugs and shoplifting in the past, but had recovered after treatment in a Swiss resort. The eldest was only twenty-one, but was always Bachelor of the Year.

  “So,” said Mr. Bel Castro. “Do you think Rebekka can paint her toenails without somebody noticing? Can Nikolai buy a hamburger? Could any of the three Valerio sons take up guitar without you finding out?”

  “Yeah, that’s a true point,” said Donna, “but I’d put up with being watched all the time if I had about one quarter of the money they’ve got.”

  “It’s because they’re like the royal family of the world,” said Angela, “because Nikolai made his seven movies in seven different countries, so it’s like he spread himself all over the world, like peanut butter, and now everybody loves him.”