The Challenge Box

by Isobel Bird

  But the head was something else. When it came time to eat it, Cooper could only stare at the crawfish’s beady black eyes. Why would anyone want to put that in their mouth? she asked herself.

  “You got to suck the head.”

  Cooper looked up and saw the man who had been playing the guitar watching her, along with the old woman. He had an amused but friendly look on his face. “Go on,” he said encouragingly. “Suck the head. It’s the best part.”

  Cooper turned the head around and looked inside of it. She could see some yellowish material in the crawfish’s cavity. She did not want to eat it. But the old couple were looking at her. Besides, she had agreed to take the adventure.

  Before she could stop herself or think about it anymore, she put the head in her mouth and sucked. Immediately her mouth was filled with something soft, almost like mashed potatoes. It had a salty taste that wasn’t at all unpleasant. Cooper swallowed and then darted her tongue into the head. Finding nothing left in there, she put the shell into the bowl.

  “That’s the way!” the old man said, clapping her on the shoulder. “Don’t tell me that was your very first crawfish?”

  “My very first,” said Cooper, wiping her mouth on a napkin and then picking up another crawfish. Now that she knew what to expect, she found she couldn’t wait to have another one.

  “Mind if I sit down?” the old man asked her.

  Cooper shook her head. “Go right ahead,” she said.

  He sat and picked a crawfish from the bowl. In a matter of seconds he had sucked the claws clean and eaten the tail. Then he put the head in his mouth and drew out the contents.

  “Nothing better than crawfish,” he said as he tossed the shell into the bowl. He took another, and looked at Cooper before starting on it. “What brought you in here?” he asked her.

  Cooper took the claw she was sucking out of her mouth. “The music,” she said. “I was walking by and I heard you playing. It’s great.”

  The man fixed her with an interested look. “Not many your age stop when they hear this kind of music,” he said. “Not many your sex, either, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “I know,” Cooper said. “You’re wondering why this little white girl loves old blues music.”

  The old man laughed raucously. “I wasn’t going to say anything about the white part,” he said. “But since you brought it up, yes, that’s just what I was wondering.”

  Cooper added another shell to the rapidly filling bowl. “I just love it,” she said. “I don’t think I can even tell you why. I just love the sound that guitar makes, especially the way you play it. I wish I could play like that.”

  “You play?” the man asked her.

  Cooper nodded. “Not like that, but I play.”

  “You want to play like that, you just got to open your heart,” said the old man. “You just got to feel.” He looked closely at Cooper. “Why’d you come here?” he asked. “To New Orleans, I mean.”

  “I came with a friend,” Cooper answered. “Her sister lives here.”

  The old man nodded. “Uh-huh,” he said, almost grunting. He dunked a crawfish tail in the hot sauce. “I think you came here for something else,” he said. “I think you came here to find the answer to a question.”

  Cooper took a drink of water. What the old man said was sort of true. She had come to New Orleans because of Annie, but she had been more than a little preoccupied with finding out what her challenge was all about.

  “There is something I’ve been trying to figure out,” she told him.

  “Thought so,” the man said. “You should ask Sunny about that.”

  “Sunny?” Cooper repeated.

  “Her,” the old man said, nodding at the woman who had drawn Cooper into the restaurant. “This is her place.”

  He waved Sunny over. “This child needs you to help her,” he said before Cooper could even say anything. “Maybe you make her a gris-gris.”

  A what? Cooper wondered. The word the man had said sounded like gree-gree. “What’s that?” she asked.

  “You don’t know crawfish. You don’t know gris-gris. What do you know?” the old man teased. “A gris-gris is a charm. Powerful voodoo magic.”

  “Oh, it ain’t voodoo,” Sunny said. “It’s just plain old magic. You believe in magic?” she asked Cooper.

  “Yes,” Cooper said. “As a matter of fact, I do. Very much.”

  “I thought as much,” said Sunny. “What kind of problem are you having?”

  Cooper thought about the best way to explain her situation. “I’m supposed to be figuring out a problem,” she said vaguely. “Kind of like the answer to a question.”

  Sunny regarded her for a moment. “Come in back with me,” she said.

  Cooper stood up and followed Sunny, leaving the old man at the table, happily sucking crawfish heads. Sunny led her through the swinging doors into a small kitchen. Huge pots of water boiled on the stove, and bowls of crawfish—both cooked and still crawling around—stood everywhere. Sunny passed by them and into another, smaller room. This one was lined with shelves containing glass jars filled with what looked like herbs. There were also bunches of dried plants hanging from the ceiling, as well as assorted strange objects sitting on the long table that was pushed against one wall.

  Sunny went to the table and opened a drawer. She pulled out a small black cotton drawstring bag. This she pulled open and set on the table. Then she took down several jars, pausing momentarily before selecting each one, until she had five of them on the table.

  She opened the first one and took out what looked like a dried root. “A little High John never hurt nobody,” she said as she put it into the bag. “And I think some bay leaf and some devil’s weed.”

  She added more things to the bag, including what looked like several green peppercorns and a small nail. Then she opened a small jar and dumped something odd-looking onto the counter—something that looked like it had a lot of legs.

  “Is that a spider?” Cooper asked Sunny.

  “Used to be,” Sunny said, picking the dead spider up and adding it to the bag. “You’ll be wanting its weaving powers.”

  She looked around for a moment then, seeming satisfied, pulled the string on the bag shut. Holding it in her hands, she said some words Cooper couldn’t hear. Then she turned and held it out.

  “Keep this with you,” she told Cooper. “It will help you solve your problem.”

  Cooper looked at the bag. She was thinking particularly about the dead spider. It all seemed a little creepy to her. But Sunny seemed like a really nice person.

  “Take it,” said Sunny. “It will work. Trust me. It worked for my mother, and for her mother before her, and her mother before her.” She was grinning, and her happiness was infectious. With a smile, Cooper took the bag from her.

  “Thank you,” she said. She started to reach into her pocket for some money.

  “No money,” Sunny said, waving her hands. “It is a gift from me to you, a gift for coming into my restaurant and trying my crawfish. Those, though, will be five dollars and ninety-nine cents.”

  Cooper laughed. She and Sunny returned to the main room, where the old man was polishing off the last of the crawfish.

  “Sunny,” he said. “Bring us another bowl.”

  “Oh, I can’t,” Cooper said. “I have to meet my friends. But thank you.” She turned to Sunny. “Thank you for everything.”

  “You’ll see,” the old man said to Cooper. “Sunny’s gris-gris will work like no magic you’ve ever seen. And you remember what I told you about those blues—listen to your heart. If you hear what it’s saying, you’ll be able to play it.”

  “Thanks,” said Cooper. “I’ll try.”

  She left the restaurant and walked back toward Juliet’s house. It had been a strange afternoon—a very strange afternoon. She’d sucked on crawfish heads, listened to some great music, and now she was heading home with a bag containing a dead spider. But somehow it all made sense. The
re was a reason she’d been drawn to Sunny’s restaurant. She didn’t know what it was yet, just as she didn’t know what her challenge was. But she was getting closer. She could feel it.

  CHAPTER 9

  “How are we supposed to know which rock goes where?” asked Sherrie impatiently.

  She and Kate were once again in the Jasper College library. This time they had laid out the rock samples—seven in all—on one of the tables. They were attempting to put them in order from the oldest to the most recent.

  “This handout tells which one is which,” Kate told her. “Look for the igneous one first.”

  “The ignorant one?” said Sherrie, making a face. “What’s that?”

  “Not ignorant,” Kate said. “Igneous. It means a rock formed from fire or volcanic activity. One of the rock samples is from the period when there was a lot of volcanic activity in this area.”

  “How do I know which one it is?” Sherrie said, her voice whiny.

  Kate sighed and silently counted backward from five in her head. It was her latest trick for dealing with Sherrie. When she reached one she said, as patiently as possible, “It’s the black one. See how it looks like it’s smoother than the others? That’s because the fire melted the minerals that it’s made of.”

  Sherrie picked up the rock and looked at it. She ran her fingers over the smooth surface. “Oh,” she said, putting it down again. “Whatever.”

  “Okay,” Kate said, looking at the lineup of rocks. “I think we’ve pretty much got it. Although we might want to switch the sedimentary rock with the metamorphic one.”

  Sherrie sniffed. “You don’t have to show off for me, you know,” she said. “I don’t care whether or not you know the difference between concrete and Italian marble.”

  “I’m not showing off for you,” Kate answered as she shuffled the rocks around a little. “I happen to think this is interesting.”

  “Right,” Sherrie said. “I guess it’s all part of the new Kate, huh? You know, the one who decided her old friends weren’t good enough once she got all into the hocus-pocus stuff.”

  Kate looked at Sherrie with a bewildered expression. “What are you talking about?” she asked.

  Sherrie gave a sharp laugh. “Please,” she said. “I know all about it. You and your little friends who think you’re witches. Everybody knows, Kate, and everybody thinks it’s ridiculous.”

  “Is that so?” Kate asked. “Just what is it that everyone knows, Sherrie?”

  Sherrie looked away for a moment, then looked back with a sour expression. “I don’t know how you can think any of that stuff is real,” she said.

  “You don’t even have the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” Kate informed her. “Why don’t we just stick to the assignment. That way you can avoid looking like an uninformed idiot.”

  “First that Rivers freak tries to show up my dad,” Sherrie said, clearly not intending to stick to the assignment. “Then that Crandall girl writes that article for the paper. And Alissa Coker said she saw the three of you doing some kind of sacrifice down at the beach one night. She said she heard a cat screaming.”

  Kate laughed despite herself. “Oh,” she said. “I see. Alissa heard us skinning that cat. Next time we’ll have to make sure we do it in a basement.”

  She watched Sherrie’s expression turn from one of condescension to one of disgust. Then she rolled her eyes. “Witches don’t sacrifice animals,” she said. “Or people,” she added when she saw Sherrie start to say something. “If Alissa Coker saw anything, it was us doing a full moon ritual. And if she heard anything making noise, it was probably a seagull. They sound a lot like cats.”

  “So you were doing something,” said Sherrie, as if she’d won a major point in the argument.

  “Yes, we do rituals,” Kate said. She hadn’t intended to get into the subject with Sherrie, but now that she had she figured she’d set the record straight. “And yes, we go to a Wiccan study group. But we aren’t witches. Not yet.”

  “What?” Sherrie said. “You’re waiting for your brooms to arrive?”

  “Yeah,” Kate said, tiring of the conversation. “And our hats. You can’t graduate without the hat.”

  She returned to looking at the rocks. Now that she had the samples pretty much dated, it was time to link them to particular types of geologic activity. She had begun to sketch out a timeline for the changes that had taken place in the surrounding area, beginning with the time when the forests around Beecher Falls were just beginning to grow.

  “No, really,” Sherrie said. “What makes someone a real witch instead of just a pretend one—you know, what you and your freaky friends are.”

  Kate counted backward again, this time from ten. When she reached the beginning she still wasn’t as calm as she wanted to be, and her voice carried more than a hint of irritation when she said, “I really don’t think this is any of your business.”

  “Fine,” Sherrie said. “I’m just trying to understand it is all.”

  Kate almost laughed. Sherrie trying to understand something about someone else was like a terrorist claiming he always checked to make sure there were no kittens inside a building before blowing it up. It just wasn’t plausible. Kate’s first instinct was to just ignore her and get back to work. But she knew Sherrie would consider even that reaction a victory. She would think that Kate was admitting that Wicca really wasn’t something legitimate. And that made Kate mad.

  “Okay,” she said, setting down the metamorphic rock. “Do you really want to know what makes someone a witch?” She didn’t wait for Sherrie’s answer before continuing. “A witch is someone who has dedicated her life to learning about the connections between things. She studies the different cycles and her place in them. She learns how to use the energy in herself and in the world to make changes. And most of all, she tries to make the world a better place for herself and other people.”

  She stopped. She’d never put her views about being a witch into such a concise form. In fact, she wasn’t even sure where the words had come from. She certainly had never organized her thoughts like that. But listening to herself speak, it was as if she was reciting a rehearsed speech.

  “Make the world a better place?” said Sherrie sarcastically. “I suppose that’s what you all were doing when Annie pushed Terri Fletcher down the stairs, or when Cooper demanded to be able to wear her stupid necklace to school, even though it bothers a lot of people.”

  “Annie never pushed Terri,” retorted Kate. “And yes, Cooper made things better by standing up for her beliefs. Just because you don’t agree with them—or with what she did—that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with being a witch.”

  “I think you’re all just trying to be different,” Sherrie said, as if explaining something to a small child. “You just want to shock people.”

  Right, Kate thought. I spent five months in therapy because I wanted to shock people. We all got attacked by those college guys because we wanted to shock people. This is all just us having a lot of fun. But she didn’t say any of that. What she said was, “Like I said, you don’t have to understand it. None of us are doing this for your benefit.”

  She turned her attention back to the rocks. She opened a reference book and started to look up information about the effects of volcanic activity on the vegetation of a region. Sherrie watched her for a minute, not saying anything. Then she said, “I feel sorry for you, Kate. You used to be popular. Now look at you. You’re hanging out with losers and getting into rocks. I wouldn’t want to be you for anything in the world.”

  Kate’s blood was boiling. She wanted more than anything to give Sherrie a piece of her mind. She wanted to tell her that she was the loser, that she was the one everyone felt sorry for—that is, when they weren’t busy wishing she’d fall off a cliff or choke on a chicken bone. How dare Sherrie think for one minute that Kate was the one who should be pitied, when everyone knew that Sherrie Adams was the saddest, the most pathetic, the most obnoxious girl i
n all of Beecher Falls and possibly in the world?

  All of these things raced through Kate’s mind as she pretended to be studying the book in front of her. All of these things and more. She was just trying to decide which of them to begin with. By the time she was done with Sherrie, Sherrie would be sorry she had ever even brought up the subject of Kate’s involvement in Wicca.

  But then, just before she opened her mouth to begin her full frontal assault on Sherrie, something came over Kate. It was a sense of calm, the feeling that everything was okay. She didn’t need to explain herself to Sherrie. Sherrie didn’t matter. What mattered was how she herself felt. Sherrie could think whatever she wanted to.

  “I have to go look for another book,” Kate said, completely ignoring Sherrie’s remark. “Why don’t you see if you can find something about how old the forests are around here?”

  She turned and left, not waiting for Sherrie to answer. She knew Sherrie would be annoyed by the fact that Kate had let her remark go by without getting upset about it. Everything Sherrie said was designed to make people unhappy, and by not letting her comments get to her, Kate had succeeded in doing exactly what Sherrie didn’t want. That was even better, she thought, than if she’d come up with some witty retort.

  She really didn’t have another book to look for. She just wanted to get away from Sherrie. So she spent a few minutes looking through the shelves and then returned to the table. To her surprise, Sherrie was looking at the book and writing something down. She’s doing work, Kate thought as she approached. I might die of shock.

  “I was just writing you a note,” Sherrie said when Kate arrived at the table. “I have something to do, so I’m leaving.”

  “Oh,” said Kate. Of course she wasn’t doing any work, she thought. She was just trying to make a getaway.