by Lois Metzger
“A rat” was all she said.
Long afterward, folk told the story of Lizzie and her ghost, and how she saved the Red Drake twice over that night—from haunts and thieves. It’s hard to say who told them the tale, though, since Lizzie wasn’t the sort to spread tales or spin a tall yarn.
It might have been Pa; he always liked to boast about an adventure, whether he’d taken part or not. He’d no doubt have had a thing or two to say about how his Lizzie convinced the Drakes that the Penny gang had just gotten lost trying to find lodgings for the night. People did wonder, though, about the way Lizzie’s pa would always pull his sleeve down low and rub his wrist, like a nervous habit.
Still, that gash in the tabletop was real as real, and Red Drake folk had to admit they slept uncommonly fine the night the Royal Mail came through. And it did seem strange how, soon afterward, Jem Penny went and got himself honest work as a field hand up Trawney way. Loose tongues had lots to say on the matter, all over town. But Lizzie, she’d just smile and heft that axe over her shoulder, like an old friend.
GROWTH SPURT
by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
When my best friend, Reed, came home after a summer on the East Coast with the other half of his family, he was six inches taller. We were both about to start seventh grade, and it wasn’t fair. I hadn’t grown at all that summer. Reed had spent the summer with his cousins—hiking, canoeing, and riding horses. I spent the summer reading manga, playing video games, and going to early showings of second-run movies, which only cost a dollar. Guess who ended up with muscles and a tan.
I saw Reed exactly one time before our first day of school. I had called him as soon as he had gotten back home, to ask how his summer went and when we could get together—there was an early show of Bloodzilla the next day, probably our last chance to see a movie on a weekday.
He told me about the outdoor life he’d been leading, but even then I couldn’t imagine how much he’d changed.
“I don’t have time for a movie, Mike,” he said. “Mom has to buy me new clothes for school. But I’ll ask her to break for lunch at the mall’s food court. Meet you there around noon?”
The mall was full of kids and parents shopping for school stuff. I saw a million kids I knew who didn’t know me back. I’d always been more of a watcher than a joiner; at least that was what I told myself when nobody except Reed joined me for anything.
I didn’t recognize Reed. If I hadn’t noticed his mom, I would have walked right by him.
“Hey, Mikey,” Reed said as I approached their table. People had called me Mikey before, but Reed never had. I hated that nickname and he knew it. He stood up and up and up, and looked down at me with a big smile, his teeth white against his tan. He looked like he’d changed species.
“Hi, Mrs. Tedesco. Hi, Reed. How was your summer?” I said.
“Better than yours, looks like,” replied Reed. Another flashy smile.
I wondered if my old friend was still inside this new Reed package. I’d been waiting all summer for him to get home, and now—
“Knock knock,” I said, my ready-made escape for all occasions.
Reed sighed. “Who’s there?”
“Carlotta.”
“Carlotta who?”
“Car gotta lotta steam. I gotta go,” I said, waved at him, and ran. Okay, not one of my better efforts, but I hadn’t known ahead of time I’d need a good knock-knock joke for a quick getaway.
Mom had taken me to the mall two weeks earlier. She’s a great one for wanting to get things done before everybody else. She hates crowds and noise.
So I already had my new school clothes. But clothes weren’t my problem. Reed was my problem. First day of school, there he was, taller than most of the guys our age, although two girls had gotten tall over the summer, too. The tall girls were on the fringe of the crowd around Reed. He was laughing and joking with a bunch of people we never talked to. The stuck-up people who had called us nerds and losers the year before.
Nope, I decided my old friend Reed was nowhere inside that package anymore. I hitched up my backpack, pulled up my hood, and eased past them.
With school started, I knew I’d see a lot of Reed because we were taking all the same classes. I couldn’t avoid him if he wanted to talk to me.
He didn’t.
It was my worst first day of school since first grade. (I didn’t meet Reed until the second day of first grade—he’d been sick that first day.)
On the way home, I skipped my usual route down Grace Street, the one Reed and I had walked all last year, where we stopped at the library and went to the 7-Eleven. Instead, I went down Burns, and that was when I saw the sign over a narrow brown door squashed between two brightly lighted antique shops.
FORTUNES TOLD
PROBLEMS SOLVED
IDEAS HATCHED
It could be just what I needed!
I peeked through the door’s window. All I saw inside was a narrow green staircase with two brown walls on either side. A small sign on the door read:
COME IN AND COME UP
I opened the door and heard a jingly wind-chime sound. Some kind of incense smell, like a forest, puffed out as I stepped inside.
This was so dumb. I should just go home and live with the fact that I’d lost my best friend and would never find another. I could watch the world go by. I already knew I was good at that.
“Close the door,” someone yelled from upstairs. The voice wasn’t high or low, somewhere in the middle, and it made me think of butterscotch.
“Huh?” I said.
“Come in or go out. Either way, close the door.”
I gripped the doorknob, ready to leave. Instead, I shut the door behind me with another jingle—the wind chime was bolted near the inside top of the door—then turned to climb the stairs. What the heck, I could at least find out what was up there.
The landing was dim. To my right was a closed door with a line of light shining under it. A small sign on the door read:
THE SECOND ANSWER
Faint music sounded. The door opened a crack, and a woman peeked out. She looked about twenty, though it was hard to guess her age when I only saw half her face and a lot of wavy blond hair. She gave me half a smile and closed the door.
To my left stood an open door, and beyond the threshold was a nest. Or maybe it was a spiderweb? The floor was covered by a spiky green-and-brown rug. It looked like something that could swallow you up.
Velvet ribbons in different dark colors lined the walls. Two shadowy glass-fronted display cases faced each other, with fat pale candles burning on top of them and lots of dim objects crowded inside them. Between them stood a low round table with more lit candles on it, plus an oversize deck of cards and a crystal ball. Beyond the table, a big chair was piled with little square and star-shaped pillows, and in the middle of the pillows sat a woman.
She was spider-leg skinny, lost in a dress that wrapped her up in shades of gray from her neck to her wrists and toes. Her hair rayed out around her head in shades of gray and silver, too. Her face looked young and old at the same time, soft but not wrinkled, like an overripe peach.
She didn’t look anything like my mom’s mom, Gran, my least favorite grandparent, who came into the house once a year around Thanksgiving and reorganized everything without asking, including my room. But there was something about the woman in the chair that reminded me of Gran. Maybe her dark eyes, which stared at me as though she were figuring out all the ways I was wrong.
“Knock knock,” I said in a shaky voice. I glanced back at the stairs. I could still leave.
Maybe she could solve my problem.
“Take off your shoes and come in,” said the woman. She had the butterscotch voice I’d heard from below, smooth and somehow soothing.
“I don’t think you want me to do that,” I said. “My feet stink.”
“That’s all right.” She waved a thin hand toward the counter on the right. “I have incense.” Two sticks burned there, sending u
p swirls of pale gray smoke.
I slipped off my canvas shoes. My feet did stink but, hey, she said it was okay. I left my shoes by the door and stepped across the threshold. She pointed to a spot just the other side of the table from her. “Come. Sit. Tell me what you need.”
Okay, so I had to walk across the creepy carpet. In my socks. I stepped on it. It was like walking on woven sticks, or dried finger bones. It crackled under my feet, but it didn’t eat me.
I made it to where she had pointed, slid off my backpack, sat on it, and looked at her.
She wrinkled her nose. My feet had more power than her incense! Then she made some signs with her fingers and waved her hand. My feet tingled.
The stink was gone.
The back of my neck buzzed like I had Spidey sense. Weird had just gotten weirder.
Okay. Maybe she was a witch.
Panic!
If she was a witch, though, maybe she really could fix things. I took some deep breaths to slow my heartbeat.
“How may I help you?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I wasn’t sure I wanted witch help. Maybe that was the only thing that could help me, though. I had a thought. “Does this cost money? All I have is one fifty.” I had planned to spend it on a Coke at the 7-Eleven on the walk home with Reed.
“There are other ways to pay,” she said. She smiled. Some of her teeth were pointed, like a shark’s.
“Like how?” I said. What if she charged an arm or a leg? And made me watch her eat it?
“Tell me your problem, and we’ll discuss.”
I thought about my problem.
I had lost my best and only friend, and I didn’t know how to get him back.
Should I ask for Reed to be shorter again? No. He was enjoying his tallness. There was no guarantee he’d like me if he were short again.
“I need to be taller,” I said.
“That will likely happen in time,” she said. Now her smile looked like any grown-up’s does when they tell you that. Really irritating.
“I need it to happen sooner.” I squeezed my left hand in my right. Dad said it didn’t help to ask the right questions if you were asking the wrong person. What if she was the right person, and this was the wrong question? My stomach churned.
She closed her eyes. A wrinkle appeared like a slot above her nose, and then she nodded. She slid off the big bowl of a chair, went to one of the glass cases, and opened a door on the back. “You’ll need this.” She pulled out a little crystal bottle with a yellow glass stopper.
“What is it?”
“It will make you taller.” She set the bottle on the table in front of me.
“How?” The liquid inside the bottle was silvery green, and it glowed a little.
“One drop in a glass of milk three times a day will do it.” She nodded.
“How long will it take?”
“I can’t tell you for sure. Everyone reacts differently, some people much more quickly than others. It shouldn’t take longer than a week.”
I picked up the bottle, pulled out the stopper, and sniffed. The potion smelled like summer, mowed lawns, sunlight, barbecue. Summer, back before I knew Reed was going to leave me behind. Or maybe it was next summer, when we’d be together again, running through backyards, through sprinklers, pretending we were avoiding an alien invasion, planning our next adventure. Longing twisted in me. I wanted this.
I put the stopper in the bottle and set it on the table. How could I afford it?
The witch cocked her head, studying me, then gave me another smile. She went to the other glass case and pulled out a small, flat, purple pillow. She set that on the table in front of me, too. “In return, I would like three hours of uninterrupted sleep.”
“What? How can I give you that?”
“You’re young. You have lots of nice sleep in you. Put your head on the pillow and say, three times, ‘I give up an hour of my best sleep.’”
Even though I wasn’t sure I believed any of this, I was still worried. I checked the potion again, with its promise of summer and size. I studied the pillow. It was shiny and soft, and gave off an herb smell, like the dried leaves my mom crushed and sprinkled over chicken before putting it in the oven. I looked at the witch.
I didn’t always sleep all that well. Nightmares were kind of a specialty of mine. Every once in a while, though, I did sleep okay.
“The choice is yours,” she said as she settled back onto her chair.
Put my head down and say a stupid sentence. I could do that. I laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes. Its smell made me hungry. “I give up an hour of my best sleep,” I said. The pillow rustled under my ear. It felt like something drained out of my head.
Spooked, I lifted my head and stared at the witch. She raised her eyebrows, shrugged, and reached across the table for the potion bottle.
No. I needed it! I put my head on the pillow again. “I give up an hour of my best sleep.” A rustle, and the sensation of an ocean stirring in my head, then some of it pouring out of my ear into the pillow. My eyes burned a little, and my stomach lurched.
Creepy! I lifted my head.
The witch leaned forward again, her hand outstretched toward my potion.
“Wait!” I was so close! I’d already paid for two-thirds of the potion. I could do the rest.
“I give up an hour of my best sleep,” I said a third time. The room whirled. I had to close my eyes or I’d be sick. I groaned and lifted my head off the pillow, then sagged back onto the bristly rug, feeling like cooked pasta.
“Thank you, young man,” said the witch.
I opened my eyes and saw her rise and take the pillow. She tucked it among the others on her chair. I wondered if they all had people’s sleep in them, or if she collected other things. She left and came back with a plate, which she set on the table. “When you feel up to it, here’s a cookie,” she said. “It will make you feel better.”
I lay there. When the room stopped spinning, I sat up. The cookie was shaped like a cat. All my mom’s advice about not taking sweets from strangers went through my head, and then I thought, I just gave this woman three hours of my best sleep so I can drink something she made. If I survive the cookie, maybe the potion won’t be poisonous, either.
I took a bite. It tasted great, as good as the smell of fresh bread when you walk by a bakery. I wolfed the rest of the cookie and felt a lot better.
I managed to get to my feet. “Okay, then,” I said, and pulled my backpack on. I reached for the potion and tucked it into my pocket.
The witch smiled. “Good luck.”
I put on my shoes and raced down the stairs and out into the chilly evening, slamming the jingling door behind me. I checked my watch. It was almost suppertime. I should have been home two hours ago. How long had I lain on the rug? Mom would boil me in oil.
Luckily, Mom thought I’d been out for a walk with Reed. She wasn’t mad, even though I’d missed homework time. “I’m glad you guys got back together,” she said. “I know you had a lonely summer.”
“You should branch out,” Dad said. “Reed’s a great guy, but you need more friends.”
I gnawed on a chicken leg so I wouldn’t have to answer. Easy to talk about making more friends. Not so easy to find them if nobody liked you. Being taller would fix that, I figured—it sure worked for Reed—but I didn’t drink my first drop of the potion until bedtime. I didn’t want to suddenly get taller in front of my parents.
I woke up in the middle of the night when I bumped my head against the wall. I reached for the bedside light and knocked it right off the table. My feet were sticking off the end of the bed. Something gripped me around my stomach. I sat up and heard cloth rip. The bed creaked under me. I flailed around until I found the lamp on the floor. I switched it on. Luckily, the lightbulb hadn’t broken.
I could see why I’d knocked the lamp over. I wasn’t just taller. I was bigger in every direction. The waistband of my pajama bottoms had stretched as far as
it could. I edged a thumb under the band, and it broke. I’d already ripped out of my top.
I wrapped the bedspread around me and stood. My head brushed the ceiling! I took a step and the room shuddered. My second step was softer. I had to duck to get through the doorway. I tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom. I ducked in, shut the door, and switched on the light.
With my eyes near the ceiling, I looked down on a lot of things I’d never seen the tops of before. Mostly what I noticed was dust, layers of it, in all the places nobody ever looked. Everything was so different.
I had to bend down to see myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked stretched out and strange. I totally didn’t make sense. I didn’t look like a grown-up; I looked like a giant boy. A freak. No way was this going to win me any friends, especially not Reed.
“Knock knock,” I muttered.
“Who’s there?” asked the giant boy in the mirror.
“Despair,” I said. I left off the punch line about the spare tire being flat.
None of my clothes would fit me. Not even Dad’s clothes would. I couldn’t go to school like this! My parents might take me to the hospital to find out what had happened. I didn’t think doctors would know how to deal with witchcraft. Nobody did. Except the witch.
The witch! I didn’t know her name or phone number. I would have to go to her place and get her to change me back! Right now, before dawn, while most people were asleep.
I stopped in the hallway at Dad’s tool drawer, fished out bungee cords and twine, and went to check my closet and dresser. I was right. Nothing I owned fit me now. I had no shoes big enough for my feet, so I wrapped towels around them, tied them on with twine, then bungeed blankets around me the best I could. I wore the darkest one like a cape.
The walk down Burns Street was creepy. Everything was dark and quiet, which I liked, but I was still scared. Every time a car drove by, I squashed into a doorway. My one happy thought was that no one would try to hurt me—I was bigger than anybody I’d ever met.
Luckily, I made it to the witch’s place without running into anyone. Of course the door was locked. I looked for a doorbell, but there wasn’t one. Even the sign had disappeared from over the door.
