The Challenge Box

by Isobel Bird

  “Okay,” Kate said. She picked up a dish towel and dried her hands. “I have to go meet Sherrie now,” she said. “I’ll see you later.”

  She left her mother in the kitchen and went to her room, where she packed her things into her backpack. While stuffing her notebooks and rock samples into the pack, she saw the copy of the book Father Mahoney had loaned her. She tucked that in as well. Then she left the house and headed for the library.

  Sherrie was, as expected, not there. Since Kate had pretty much finished their science project, she took the time while she waited for Sherrie to arrive to look at The Seven Storey Mountain. She’d tried reading some of it the night before, but it had been very dense, and a little boring. Now she tried again.

  For some reason she found it easier to get into the book this time. It was an autobiography, and the author, Thomas Merton, had a very plain way of writing. Kate found it interesting to read about how Merton, as a young man, searched for some kind of meaning in religion. She didn’t read the book straight through, but skipped around, reading bits and pieces. She was anxious to see what became of the restless Merton, and had just gotten to the part where he decided to enter a Catholic monastery when Sherrie arrived.

  “Hey,” Sherrie said, as if Kate were the one who was half an hour late.

  Kate shut the book and returned it to her backpack. She doubted Sherrie would have the first clue who Thomas Merton was, but she didn’t want her seeing the book anyway.

  “Hey,” said Kate.

  “What thrilling stuff do we need to look up today?” Sherrie asked sullenly.

  “Nothing,” Kate said. “It’s all done. I’m just finishing writing it up. I thought we should go over it, though, in case Ableman asks you any questions when I turn it in.”

  Sherrie looked at Kate suspiciously. “It’s done?” she said. “How’d that happen so fast?”

  Because I did all the work, you moron, Kate thought. But what she said was, “Yep. I made the chart, wrote up the findings, and labeled the rocks.”

  “What did I do?” asked Sherrie. “Or are you going to pretend you did it all?”

  I did do it all, thought Kate. “You did research,” she told Sherrie. “I just organized it.”

  “Oh,” Sherrie said, sounding as if she actually believed the lie. “That’s right, I did.”

  For the next forty-five minutes Kate familiarized Sherrie with the results of their project. She went over the chart, showing her where the various rock samples matched up and what kind of geological changes they represented. She even gave Sherrie a list of words related to the project. “You might want to know what these mean,” she said.

  Sherrie looked at the list, then at all of the work Kate had done. “I don’t get it,” she said. “Why are you doing all of this? I mean, why are you doing it and letting me get a good grade for it? Did you find religion or something?”

  Kate laughed, making Sherrie look at her with even deeper suspicion. Sherrie’s question was more on the mark than she could possibly know. The fact was, Kate had realized that spending so much of her energy being angry at Sherrie simply wasn’t worth it. There were much better things she could be doing with it. Like figuring out my challenge, she thought. Letting Sherrie share in the fruits of her work was simply a way of using her energy for positive purposes rather than wasting time with negative feelings. Still, she wasn’t about to let Sherrie off that easily.

  “How do you know all the work I did is right?” she asked, gathering everything up and putting it into her backpack. She stood up, put on her coat, and turned to go. “I’ll see you in school on Monday,” she said. “We’ll hand this in then.”

  Sherrie just looked at Kate as she walked away. Kate felt like laughing. She knew Sherrie was wondering if Kate was serious or if she was having a joke at her expense. You’ll never know, Kate thought. Not until we get our grade, anyway. And that meant that for at least a few more days, Sherrie would worry about it.

  Kate had her own worries. Everything she’d thought she’d been sure of—everything she’d thought she’d wanted when it came to her involvement in Wicca—had been thrown into question. One big question, actually, she thought as she left the library. And if she didn’t figure out the answer to that question, she knew she wouldn’t be ready for initiation. It was time for her to do some hard thinking, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for where that was going to take her. But she knew that just as she’d taken the first step down the Wiccan path, it was time for her to take another step—what might be her last step.

  CHAPTER 14

  “That’s the house where they shot a season of The Real World for MTV,” said Andre as they passed one of the mansions that lined the street they were walking down. “We gave those kids such a hard time.”

  “You should have,” remarked Cooper. “What a bunch of tools. It got so annoying hearing them whine about everything. ‘My hair isn’t blond enough.’ ‘Why can’t I go out with a frat boy?’ ‘How come she gets all the breaks?’”

  “Sounds to me like you watched every episode,” Andre teased.

  Cooper gave him a withering look. “I only saw it because it was on before Daria,” she said.

  Andre grinned. “Okay,” he said, winking at Annie and Juliet. “We believe you. Anyway, one night a couple of us from the theater came down here dressed as clowns. We hid in the bushes outside the front door and scared the juice out of those celebrity wannabes when they came home from one of their scripted ‘real-life’ adventures. You should have heard them scream.”

  “Too bad they didn’t air that footage on the show,” said Cooper. “It would have been the only interesting thing they ever did.”

  “The camera guys were laughing so hard they couldn’t even shoot,” Andre said, as if remembering a particularly wonderful moment in his life. “What a night that was. We struck a blow for quality television viewing.”

  “Don’t let him fool you,” said Juliet. “He watched that show religiously. He also watches Buffy, Popular, and Seventh Heaven.”

  “Seventh Heaven!” Annie and Cooper shrieked in unison.

  Andre pretended not to hear them. “Isn’t that Anne Rice over there?” he said, pointing to a woman scurrying up the walk to a towering brick mansion whose yard was filled with white flowers.

  The girls all laughed at his attempted diversion. Andre resumed the tour, telling them stories about the various houses and their residents. Annie listened for a while, but then she tuned his voice out. She was enjoying their last full day in New Orleans, but as the visit drew to a close the matter of her challenge was weighing on her mind more and more heavily. It was especially troublesome since the events of Tuesday night and her mysterious encounter with the voodoo dancers and the girl in white.

  Ever since figuring out that her most precious possession was her friends and family, Annie had been attempting to understand what her challenge could possibly mean. How was she supposed to give away people? How could she even think about that? It made no sense.

  For a while she’d thought that maybe what the challenge meant was that she was supposed to share her friends and family with someone. Perhaps, she’d thought, it was a reference to her aunt’s impending wedding and the fact that she was going to have to share her family and her friends with Grayson and Becka Dunning. That made sense, sort of. It was a way for her to share the happiness she got from being with Aunt Sarah and Meg—and from her friends and the people she practiced Wicca with. Bringing happiness into someone else’s life definitely seemed like a worthy challenge.

  The only problem with that theory was that sharing her family and friends with Becka and Grayson was a no-brainer. She’d been looking forward to doing that ever since her aunt and Grayson had shown the first signs of being serious about their relationship. In fact, she couldn’t wait to have them move in. Already she was planning stuff that she and Becka could do together, and she knew that her friends were almost equally excited about Becka moving to Beecher Falls. Annie wouldn’t
have to give up anything, except perhaps her own bathroom, to do that.

  So while she did it reluctantly, she’d ultimately decided that that interpretation of the challenge just wasn’t right. It had to mean something else. It was only a challenge if it posed a difficulty. Sharing wasn’t a difficulty, at least not much of one, so she had to figure out another meaning to the challenge. Time was running out, and if she didn’t figure out what to do, in five days she would have to stand up in class and admit that she’d failed.

  “Is he boring you yet?”

  Juliet’s whispered question pulled Annie out of her thoughts and back to what they were doing. Andre and Cooper were a little ahead of them. Andre was telling Cooper the story of some sensational murder that had occurred in one of the houses.

  “They found her head in a box,” Annie heard him say.

  “No, I’m not bored,” Annie said to Juliet. “I was just thinking. It’s Friday already.”

  “I know,” Juliet said. “This week has gone by really quickly. I’ve had a great time.”

  Annie smiled. “So have I,” she said.

  “Was it what you expected?” Juliet asked her. “Was I what you expected?”

  “I tried not to expect anything,” answered Annie. “So it’s all been better than I expected.”

  It was Juliet’s turn to smile. She took Annie’s hand and the two of them walked in silence for a minute or two, listening to Andre go on and on about the murder. Annie felt her sister’s fingers wrapped around her own. She’d held Meg’s hand like that probably thousands of times. Doing that, she’d always felt as if she were somehow protecting Meg, keeping her little sister safe. Now she felt as if Juliet was the one keeping her safe. It felt good to have an older sister looking out for her. It was a feeling she’d never really experienced before, and now that she had she never wanted to give it up.

  Give it up. Suddenly the words of her challenge slammed into her thoughts like a speeding train. Was Juliet the person the challenge referred to? Was Annie being asked to give up the relationship she’d only just begun? The thought made her sadder than anything else she could think of. But maybe that was it. Maybe she was being asked to give up the precious gift she’d received when she’d found out about Juliet and then actually located her.

  She couldn’t. For one thing, how was she supposed to do it? Was she supposed to return to Beecher Falls and never see Juliet again? Was she supposed to cut off contact with her? Again, she couldn’t believe that she would be asked to do something like that for the sake of her involvement in witchcraft. It just didn’t make sense.

  Even more important, she knew she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t give up her sister for anything or anyone—even if it meant never being initiated and never being part of a coven. She loved Wicca. She loved participating in circles and rituals. She loved discovering how to use energy more successfully. She loved the chants and songs. Most of all, she loved the people she’d met because of her participation in Wicca. But she wasn’t willing to sacrifice her relationship with Juliet for all of that.

  No, she told herself. It has to be something else. But as hard as she tried to think of something else, the more convinced she became that Juliet really was at the center of her challenge. Somehow she was the key to solving it, and to either passing it successfully or failing it miserably.

  “Hey,” Juliet said to her, completely unaware of the turmoil going on inside her little sister’s mind. “Why don’t we have dinner tonight, just the two of us? I’ll take you to my favorite restaurant.”

  “What about Cooper and Andre?” Annie asked. Although she loved the idea of having a last night in New Orleans alone with Juliet, she didn’t want her friend and Juliet’s boyfriend to feel left out.

  “I’m going to suggest that Andre take Cooper on the haunted riverboat tour,” Juliet said. “That should more than make up for missing out on a few hours of our company, don’t you think?”

  Annie nodded. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “Put Cooper together with anything haunted and you pretty much have a happy girl.” Andre had just better hope that none of the ghosts decide to have a chat with Cooper, she thought to herself.

  When they got back to the house, a quick conversation in the kitchen between Juliet and Andre set Juliet’s plan in motion. Cooper was more than willing to go on the riverboat tour. “I can have dinner with Annie anytime,” Cooper said when asked about going. “But how often do you get the opportunity to see ghosts in hoop skirts?”

  Shortly after, Cooper and Andre headed out, promising to meet up with Annie and Juliet later. Annie and Juliet walked to the restaurant, which turned out to be a small place almost totally hidden in a courtyard down a narrow side street and behind a gated wall. After knocking at the gate, they were greeted by a solemn-looking man. Juliet took what looked like a silver coin out of her pocket and handed it to the man, who examined it closely. He then smiled and opened the gate for them to enter.

  Inside the courtyard, tables were set up beneath several large trees that grew up between the stones. The branches of the trees were strung with tiny white lights, and the effect was magical. Annie felt as if they had entered some kind of enchanted place as they were led to a table in a quiet corner and sat down. It reminded her of the banquet room from the tale of Beauty and the Beast, where all kinds of marvelous things appeared each night for Beauty to enjoy. The waitpeople, dressed all in white, only added to the effect as they moved around filling glasses and carrying out plates of food that smelled absolutely wonderful.

  “Isn’t this something?” said Juliet. “It doesn’t even have a name.”

  “It’s amazing,” Annie said. “How did you find out about it? And what was that thing you gave the man at the gate?”

  “That was a token,” explained Juliet. “Once you’re brought to this place for the first time, you can apply for tokens. If they accept your application, you get six tokens. You have to give up one every time you come here.”

  “That’s so cool,” said Annie.

  Juliet nodded. “They only give them to people who actually live in New Orleans,” she said. “And they’re very strict about how you use them. You can’t give them away or sell them. If you do, you’re not allowed back in. I was brought here by a friend of mine who works for the symphony. I couldn’t believe it when he told me how it worked. Then I applied for tokens of my own, and they accepted me.”

  “It’s like your own secret club,” said Annie.

  Juliet nodded. “And the best part is that it’s not snobby at all. It’s mainly artists who belong. The owners wanted to create a place that was fun and a little weird, but they didn’t want it to turn into a tourist trap or a country club type of thing. This is what they came up with.”

  “Well, I love it,” Annie said. “And I can’t wait to taste some of this food.”

  “The jambalaya is out of this world,” Juliet told her as they perused the list of offerings. “Then again, so is the rosemary chicken, the haddock with wine and cheese sauce, and the seafood risotto.”

  “Let’s just get one of everything,” Annie suggested, unable to make up her mind. “Plus some of that bread pudding I see under the dessert section.”

  Juliet smacked her lips. “That bread pudding is the closest thing you’ll come to paradise in this world,” she said. “Definitely save room for that.”

  By the time the waitress came to take their order, Annie had settled on the jambalaya. Juliet ordered the chicken, and they asked for some oysters to start with, since Annie had yet to try that particular New Orleans delicacy. As they waited for their food, they sat sipping their drinks and enjoying the beautiful evening.

  “I have something for you,” Annie said after a minute.

  “Something else?” Juliet replied. “You’ve already given me so many things—the painting, the photo album. What else is there?”

  “It’s another photo,” said Annie. She reached into the bag she’d carried with her and brought out a small wrapped gift. “I
t’s one I left out of the photo album.”

  She handed the present to Juliet, who quickly unwrapped it. When Juliet saw the photo in the frame, her smile faded and she put her hand to her mouth.

  “Is this—?” she asked, not completing the question.

  Annie nodded. “That’s you and Mom and Dad right after you were born. They weren’t supposed to take any photos of you, but Aunt Sarah snuck one anyway. I thought you might want it.”

  Tears slid down Juliet’s face as she gazed at the photo. She reached across the table and took Annie’s hand, holding it tightly.

  “Thank you so much,” she said. “I can’t tell you what this means to me.” She looked at the image again. “They look happy,” she said.

  “They were happy,” Annie told her. “They loved you very much.” She thought about the journal her mother had kept during her pregnancy, a journal that Annie had found and read. In it, her mother had talked about how she knew that the baby she carried inside of her was meant to have a wonderful life, and how it was her responsibility to provide that baby with a way into the world. Annie knew that while her parents were sad to have to give up Juliet, at the same time they were happy that they could be a part of her life.

  “I always wondered,” Juliet said. “You know, how they felt about me. I love my adoptive parents. They’re wonderful. But there was always this part of me that wanted to know why. Why did my birth parents give me up? What did they think when they saw me that first time and knew they would probably never see me again.” She looked at Annie and smiled, the tears on her cheeks making her even more beautiful. “Now I know. And best of all, I have you in my life. It’s like having two families.”

  Annie understood exactly what Juliet meant. In some ways she felt the same way about Kate and Cooper. They were a second family to her. She understood what it felt like for people to love you for who you are. And she understood what it was like to finally connect with something that had been taken from you. She’d felt the same way when she’d been able to speak with her parents’ ghosts at Samhain the year before, and she felt the same way whenever she looked at the painting hanging in her bedroom, the painting her mother had done of herself holding Annie. It was an amazing feeling, one that comforted and empowered her, and she hoped Juliet was feeling some of that as she looked at the picture of their parents holding her in the hospital.