Almost Magic

by Kathleen Bullock

  Dear Journal,

  Tonight as I listened to the wind rustling through the trees, I thought about the party and how it turned into a wild and boisterous event—and for the most part, a lot of fun. It won’t kill me to say it—Corny’s friends are nice people.

  The happiest part of the day was finding a safe home for Watermelon. Imagine living in a painting! Mother even promised that I might get to visit him sometime.

  Things turned out for the best and yet I have this funny, empty feeling inside. Tonight is the last night Corny and I will share a room. She’s fixed up the attic with Oriental rugs and drapes to look like a sultan’s palace. I’ll be on my own now. Don’t get me wrong—I’m happy to get my own space after a lifetime of sharing, but…I’m going to miss her.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  One week to the day later, my dad dropped me off at John Quincy Adams Middle School for the big exam.

  I sat in an Ordinary classroom with a handful of others and braced myself. The booklet on my desk was blue and a peek inside showed equations on the very first page. Math. Oh, how I hate math. I placed my palms on either side of the blue book and let my thumbs just brush the edges. A creeping sensation, like a thousand tiny caterpillar feet crawling over my body, made me itchy. I gulped. Here I was, ready or not. No retreat. Middle school had better be worth it.

  I glanced sideways at the other students, three boys and one girl. They all stared down at their own blue covers, looking equally nervous. Beyond the tall classroom windows, heat beat against the panes, making them waver. The sun seemed to be saying, what the heck are you doing here? Summer’s not over yet!

  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember anything I’d been taught that year by Reynard or my mother. Anything. Anything at all. Come on, brain! I could hear crickets chirping in there and nothing else. Fearing failure, I dropped my chin and stared at the cream and chocolate-colored tiles on the floor.

  A voice called from the head of the room. “Will everyone hold up their sharpened Number Two pencils?”

  “Huh?” I looked up and focused. The other students held pencils. I shook my head. I had brought nothing. Besides, I’d never heard of a Number Two pencil.

  “Miss Bramblewood? Abigail Bramblewood? Please come forward.”

  Did he mean—moi?

  The test administrator, a man with a sunburned face and a flattop haircut, opened his desk drawer. I pushed back my chair and made the long walk to the front. Every eye watched my back. Oh, how I wished I could sink through the floor—singled out for reproof on my very first day.

  “I’m s-sorry,” I stuttered. “I-I didn’t know…”

  The man held a pre-sharpened pencil between two fingers. “Don’t worry about it, Abigail. I always bring extras. You’ll remember next time.” He grinned and winked good-naturedly.

  “Thank you, Professor,” I said, reaching for it. “But my name is Apple.”

  He looked surprised and crossed out something on his ledger. “I’m sorry, Apple. We’ll try to get it right from now on. And it’s just plain Mister Whortle. You may take your seat.”

  Mr. Whortle then stood and clapped his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen, this test has been designed for those who have been homeschooled. That’s all of you, isn’t it?” He chuckled at our nods. “I will take a quick roll. Raise your hand when I call your name.

  “Mr. Peter Cushpan—present.” He made a check on his clipboard.

  “Mr. Jacob Jobinski—also present, good for you.

  “Mr. Ondi Bott, a transfer student from—ah, Gabon, a beautiful place—welcome!

  “Miss Portia Meadows—it says you are testing for both the eighth and ninth grade. Is that correct?

  “Yes, sir.” The girl sitting two rows away from me leveled her shoulders and spoke calmly. “I had mono, acute asthma”—she wheezed for effect—“and sclerosis. I missed a lot last year. My counselor thinks I should take a combination of eighth and ninth grade subjects this year to catch up.”

  Her straight, shoulder-length dark hair was cut in in a blunt bang across her forehead. Gray eyes looked huge behind thick glasses. Her fingernails were chewed just enough to show a high-strung nature, but painted hot pink. She blinked rapidly and glanced sideways at me.

  “I am very sorry to hear that, Miss Meadows. I hope your health will hold up better this year. Good luck on the test. And finally, Abi—Apple Bramblewood—the last of our home-schooled students.” He nodded. “Good luck to all of you.”

  I nodded back, still embarrassed that I hadn’t brought anything to write with. Corny should have told me.

  “Now students, pencils ready, open to page one, and begin.” He punched a small timer on his desk.

  The test, starting with math and moving on to language and social studies, was expected to last two hours.

  Halfway through, as I concentrated on the algebra, something bounced off my shoulder and thudded onto the desk. It was a lead stylus for writing, similar to those old-fashioned ones I’d seen in Mom’s books on the history of art.

  My head jerked up. Someone in that room was trying to be funny. Yet, as I furtively looked around at the other students, they all seemed deeply engrossed in their tests. Mr. Whortle had just stepped into the hall, leaving the door open, with his hand on the knob. I really hoped he hadn’t heard that thud!

  Mystified, I shrugged and tucked the object up my sleeve. One problem at a time, I told myself, resuming my torturous way through fractions and exponents. Immediately, something stabbed me in the head.

  I yipped. My hand flew up and pulled a sharp feather quill pen from the flesh of my scalp. That hurt like heck!

  This time, four heads shot up. My face burned. Something strange was going on, and of course I’d been told to leave Wanda at home. Across the aisles, Portia Meadows chuckled.

  I glared accusingly.

  The girl shrugged and slowly shook her head.

  Mr. Whortle, who’d only been out of the room for a minute, walked back in. I slipped the quill pen under the test booklet. “Miss Bramblewood?” he asked, skewering me with a look. “May I help you with something?”

  “Uh, no, sir. Just checking the time.”

  “Hmmm,” he said thoughtfully, looking at his watch. “Sixty-five minutes left.”

  I rushed through the remainder of the test, guessing like crazy. Something weird was going on and I had to get out of that classroom—the sooner, the better.

  But, with my brain, even guessing took time. Finally finished, I tiptoed to the front of the room and put my booklet on Mr. Whortle’s desk. Remembering just in time, I carefully laid his pencil on top, keeping the two particularly odd items that had fallen out of nowhere hidden in the sleeve of my shirt.

  “Excellent time, Miss Bramblewood. You may wait in the corridor until the others are finished. We have just about ten minutes left.”

  Seconds later, I dumped the awkward mystery items into a handy trash bin and seated myself on a bench in the hall. The classroom door opened and Portia Meadows clomped out. I tried not to stare at the brace on her left leg.

  “Don’t worry, I’m used to it.” The dark-haired girl with the thick glasses sat beside me and rested her crutch against the seat. She smiled and her eyes sparkled with humor. “I love your suspender-look. I’m gonna have to get me some.”

  I glanced down at the four-leaf clover-patterned suspenders I’d worn for luck, and my face heated. I didn’t suppose they had worked.

  “By the way,” the girl went on, “I’m sorry I laughed at you. You looked so funny pulling that feather thing-y out of your head. You shoulda seen your face! I hope it didn’t hurt too much?”

  I rubbed the spot. “It kinda did.” I wasn’t sure what to think about Portia. “Did you throw it?” I asked again, although I was certain she hadn’t.

  She wrinkled her nose. “No way! I’m guessing some smart aleck from the last test group threw those thingies up until they stuck in the tile ceiling. They just fell.” She looked at me oddly. “Stranger th
ings have happened.”

  Hmmm, tell me about it. Better change the subject.

  “Hard test, wasn’t it?” I said, slumping. My brain was still sweating.

  “Naw. It was a breeze. I was done ages ago.” The girl pulled a wayward strand of hair from behind her glasses. “I just didn’t want to come out here and wait by myself. I’m glad you finished early, too.”

  I took a deep breath and stared up at the glowing dust motes floating in a ray of sun below the skylight. Deep down, I knew I’d failed the test and would have to spend another year being tutored by Magdella. I sniffled. “I’m not very good at Ordinary subjects, Portia. I guessed a lot.”

  She waved my excuses away. “Call me Posey. And you’re Apple. I love that name! My brother Marsh is in your sister Cornelia’s class. He went to her birthday party.”

  I flashed on the cute guitar player. “Oh, him.”

  Posey wrinkled her nose and leaned closer to whisper. “He thinks he loves her.”

  “Figures.”

  The friendly girl chatted on about her life and how she and her brother had moved in with their grandmother after their parents died in a car crash, and how Posey had been sickly all her life, but it didn’t bother her that much anymore.

  She fascinated me. I’d never listened to such a long conversation from a non-magical person before, and I liked it. I liked Posey.

  When a buzzer signaled the end of the test period, Mr. Whortle opened the door and waved the other students out.

  “You are free to go, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll get your test results and class assignments in the mail.” He grinned. “You look like a bright bunch, so I’ll go out on a limb and welcome you all to the hallowed halls of John Quincy Adams Middle School.”

  I stood. The rest might be bright, but I flunked. Cornelia warned me that they had special classes for dumb kids and troublemakers. Better to be home-schooled for another year than that. Glum as a plum on a numbskull’s thumb, I jammed my hands in my pockets and headed for the door.

  “Wait,” Posey called. “Let’s trade phone numbers.”

  A flush of warmth washed over me. My first day at what might have been my new school, and I already had a friend. Posey pulled a scrap off the bulletin board and scratched away with a number two pencil. I stammered out what I hoped was our home phone number (I’d hardly ever used it. Actually, never used it.) She ripped the paper in half. “Here’s mine for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, studying it. I liked the look of it, the feel of it. Someday I hoped I’d have a whole collection of phone numbers.

  Posey waved and yelled something I didn’t hear as she cheerfully clomp-clomped down the hall to her waiting brother.

  I saw my father standing outside on the steps, arms crossed and grinning. “How’d it go?”

  “Horrible.” I shrugged. “But I made a friend.”

  We walked together to the bright yellow 1979 Mazda hatchback my dad had found at a junk yard. It looked Ordinary on the outside, but it ran on enchantments. “I’m not a mechanic,” he’d admitted at the time. “The function of all those rusted gadgets under the hood is lost on me. This car is another case of playing the part, girls, and that’s what’s important.”

  On the way home, between sniffles, I told him how hard the test was and how I knew I’d blown it. “If those weird objects hadn’t fallen on my head, I could have done a lot better.”

  He turned to look at me, genuine alarm on his face. “What weird objects?”

  “A sort of stylus thing, and then a feather quill pen.”

  “Someone threw them?”

  After thinking about it for a moment, I said, “No. They fell from above, like out of the blue.”

  “Give me the objects when we get home.” His face looked serious. “I hope it doesn’t have anything to do with…that it isn’t connected…” He pushed his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “Well, let me do the worrying.”

  “I threw them away,” I admitted.

  “Too bad. They might have given me a clue.” My dad kept quiet after that and ruminated.

  I concentrated my own thoughts on Posey, and how nice and interesting she was. Would she still like me even if I wasn’t smart enough to get into the eighth grade? If Ordinary people discovered how backward I was, would they think I was a dork? Face it, Apple, you’re a dork in the magical world, too.

  No one was home when we got there. Dad quickly decided to make a quick research trip to the Library of Enchantments in Cairo. “Stay inside, honey. I won’t be gone long,” he promised, and disappeared.

  I went to my room to write about my day and add Posey’s phone number to my journal. Blazing comets! What was I supposed to say if Posey actually called me? Invite her to Bramblewood Heights for lunch with all the witches? Entertain her with stories about failed spells? Admit that I couldn’t even boil water for tea without supervision? I so wished I could cook like Corny.

  At that moment, a large copper teakettle dropped from the ceiling of my bedroom, bounced off my headboard, and crashed to the floor. I leaned over the side of the mattress and gasped.

  “Jumpin’ Genii. I’ve turned into some kind of freaky magnet.”

  I’d barely uttered the words before a hail of wooden spoons, three-pronged forks, pewter goblets, and silver daggers dropped like missiles past my nose. I leapt from the bed and dived behind a chair.

  “This is getting dangerous!”

  When a large cauldron, blackened with soot and still smoking, fell and crushed Great-Aunt Wisteria’s heirloom cedar chest, I streaked for the closet and cowered.

  There was no one home but me, so no one came to see if I was okay. Corny was in Haiti being tutored in the ancient art of Voodoo. Mom was in Colorado making individual portraits of the baby dragons at the request of SPAS. (Gad, they were pumped up about those dragons!)

  Dad was still at the Library in Cairo, where the world’s largest collections of wizarding records, magical histories, and enchantments were housed. So I decided to stay put in the safety of the closet until someone older and wiser came home. I opened the door a crack and reached for my journal and a flashlight.

  Dear Journal,

  I think I have a friend!

  CHAPTER NINE

  When my father returned from Cairo, arms loaded with rare books, I met him at the door wearing Corny’s motor scooter helmet and the upper part of a suit of armor I found in the basement. The house itself was strewn with objects that were odd, sometimes bewildering, and to me, unrecognizable.

  Dad plunked his books on the sideboard and named items in amazement as he stepped over them—a butter churn, a hurdy-gurdy, a scythe, and a dozen other strange objects. Finally he just threw up his arms and stared.

  “It looks like Bogill Bedlam in here!” he declared, fiddling with his glasses and brushing his tan mustache with a thumb. “Are you all right, Apple?”

  “Yes.” I blinked my eyes at the lie. Alone, I’d endured a barrage of mystery items, some falling close enough to threaten decapitation, or at least a severe concussion. So naturally, I was unsettled and a little numb. “I don’t really want to talk about it,” I added.

  My father threw his jacket on the sofa. “Just answer one question—did these things appear in the same way as the writing implements this morning?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you wish for them?”

  “No! Not specifically. Sort of, maybe, in a roundabout way. A very roundabout way. I was thinking about tea and cooking, and a teapot fell, and other cooking utensils…it was sort of like that.”

  Grizzwald, ever cautious, snapped his fingers and conjured a helmet for himself. “How hard would it be for you to stop thinking? About things, I mean. Just for a while. Make your mind a blank.”

  “Hard.” I looked around at the mess. “But the worst seems over now.”

  He scribbled in a notebook as he walked. “Come to the kitchen with me, Apple. We have to talk.”

  My father made a meal of cinnamon toast a
nd applesauce. He’s not a maestro in the kitchen, but it smelled good to me.

  “Bad news, Apple. Cornelia might be right.” He dropped heavily into the chair beside me. I was too famished to pay close attention until I’d devoured my first piece of toast. I wanted to get as much down as I could before Dad’s bad news ruined my appetite.

  “Corny’s always right,” I muttered, sputtering crumbs.

  “When Watermelon traveled through the time machine, he probably created a rift, a small tear, in the dimension of time. That darn machine! I ought to have my head examined for thinking I could fool around with one of the basic principles of the physical universe.”

  I agreed, but kept my trap shut because I loved the nutty professor I called my father. I swallowed the last bit of the first piece of toast. “Everything turned out okay though, didn’t it? Watermelon came back five days later, as good as new. What possible connection can you make to this other weirdness?”

  “The connection is you. It appears that some of your subconscious needs or desires are randomly attracting items through the rift that Watermelon, unfortunately, left wide open.”

  “My subconscious desired a goose feather pen?” I nibbled at the second piece of toast, letting the creamy butter and the cinnamon taste linger on my tongue. “Doesn’t make sense. Why didn’t it send me a pencil? That’s what I really wanted.” I snorted. “It’s that Attractor thing again, isn’t it? Like today—stuff I didn’t even know existed, much less wanted, came crashing down around me. Goofy things. I’m cursed, Dad! I’m a freak of nature!”

  My father tipped his head. His eyes looked tired behind his glasses, but he smiled. “This isn’t a curse, Apple-pie, it’s a rare gift. You just need to develop some control.”

  Seriously? I quickly blotted a tear. “I can’t afford to wait until I learn ‘control.’ What if I’m beaned by a coconut, or squashed by a freight train? What if the rift never closes, but follows me the rest of my life? What then?”