The Spell Bind

by Barbara Brauner

  The girls flop Makayla into the porch swing as Katarina hovers nearby.

  “How long will she sleep?” I ask.

  Katarina says, “Don’t you remember ‘Sleeping Beauty’? A hundred years, of course.”

  “That’s AWFUL!” I shout.

  “Don’t be so gullible. For every flash of the Good Night Moonstone, Makayla will sleep a minute.”

  Makayla stretches on the swing and covers her eyes. “Let me sleep just a little more, Mom! I’ll get up soon!”

  Katarina’s wings shift into high gear. “I suggest we get out of here, now.”

  Katarina zips back in from the bathroom, ready for bed with her hair in little pink curlers and her face covered with shiny cold cream. (It’s just like having my aunt Ginny as a roommate.) She sees me turning on my computer. “What are you doing?”

  “I want to see if Makayla posted about me on her blog.”

  “A blog? Is that where ogres live?”

  “That’s a bog. A blog is where you talk about things that happen to you.”

  Katarina peers at my computer screen as it boots up. “Who’s she talking to?”

  “You know…the Internet. Anybody who clicks on it.”

  “And what’s she talking about?”

  I shrug. “School gossip, mostly. Yesterday she talked about Martin. She thinks she’s a big reporter. I want to make sure she doesn’t post any pictures of me in the dress.”

  “She took pictures of you in the dress?” She flies up and starts poking me on the nose with her wand. “This is horrible! Horrible! Horrible!”

  “Stop that!” I swat her away. “It’s not that big a deal!”

  “No, it’s not a big deal—it’s a catastrophic deal! Fairy godmothers have existed freely for thousands of years because most people think we’re imaginary. If the truth comes out, we’re done for!”

  “Why?”

  “People would be hunting us, trapping us, and studying us. That’s what happened to dragons.”

  “Reporters found dragons?”

  “No, people found dragons! And now there aren’t any more! There have been close calls with fairy godmothers over the years, but we’ve always managed to hush things up. Leonardo da Vinci even painted a portrait of his fairy godmother—that simp Mona Lisa Vermicelli. Thankfully, we finally talked him into painting out her wings and painting in a smile. The Godmothers’ League punished Mona Lisa Vermicelli by turning her into a dung beetle fairy.”

  “She’s a fairy who’s a dung beetle?”

  “No, worse. She’s a fairy godmother for dung beetles. And dung beetles only have one dream. Think about it.”

  I shudder.

  The computer finally finishes booting up (it’s a hand-me-down from the restaurant, and it’s slooooow), and I nervously click on Makayla’s link. I sure don’t want to be a dung beetle fairy.

  Eek. There’s a new blog post.

  Makayla faces the camera, “Fellow students! This is Makayla Brandice, your eyes and ears on the school. Tonight I want to report about what I saw outside my house this afternoon. Or, rather, who. Lacey Unger-Ware.”

  Double eek!

  Katarina clutches my arm so hard that I yelp.

  On the computer screen, Makayla pauses dramatically and I brace for the worst. Then she says, “You’re not going to believe this, but Lacey Unger-Ware…still plays dress-up!” She smiles a big, fake, smile. “Isn’t that sweet! Some of us are growing up too fast, but Lacey is still a child at heart! I was so very charmed that I took a picture for you all to see.…”

  Katarina grabs my arm again, even harder. “Dung beetles, here we come!”

  Then Makayla frowns. “Unfortunately, the picture didn’t turn out. But believe me, Lacey looked cute! Cute! CUTE! When you see her tomorrow, pat her on the head and tell her she’s all gwowed up now!” She uses an annoying fake little-girl voice that makes me rush to mute the sound.

  Katarina sighs with relief. “Well, you look like an unmitigated idiot, but we’re safe for now.” Then she snickers, flies up, and pats me on the head. “Wacey! You are all gwowed up now! Say hewwo to your wittle fwiends at school tomowwow.”

  Where’s her mute switch? “Nobody’s going to do that.”

  They all do it.

  “Hewwo, Wacey!”

  “Wacey’s all gwowed up now!”

  And even “How’s wittle Wacey-poo?”

  Every kid in school has seen Makayla’s video, and probably a hundred people come up to me and pat my head. Katarina, who came with me today in my pocket, snickers every time. Every. Single. Time. You’d think she’d get tired of this joke, but she never does.

  On my way to the cafeteria, I walk past Principal Conehurt. At least I’ll be safe next to him. “Hi, Lacey!” he says. Then he pats me on the head. “Have a gweat wunch!”

  In my pocket, Katarina laughs so loud that I have to cough to cover up the sound. Martin’s life may be bad, but mine’s pretty stinky too.

  OMG! Martin! With all the head patting going on, I almost forgot that today’s the day that Paige is going to use her popularity powers to help him.

  I join Sunny in the cafeteria line, and we both get our glob of mystery lunch. The gunk on our plates might be spaghetti and meatballs; but then again, it might not.

  Except for me and Sunny, everyone in the room is glaring at Martin, who’s in the corner mopping up more “accidentally” spilled drinks. And I mean everyone. Between the water tower, carnival, and field trips, he did something to upset the whole student body.

  Sunny and I pay for our lunches and walk over to the table nearest Martin. As we sit down, the air seems heavy, as if there’s a storm coming. But then the cafeteria doors open, letting in a ray of blond sunshine. It’s Paige, looking perfect as always. Every head in the room swivels away from Martin and looks at her. Like Sunny said, popularity is her superpower.

  Paige walks to the drink machine, fills a large cup of lemonade, and approaches Martin, holding the too-full drink carefully in front her. There are snickers from the room, and expectation builds with every step Paige takes. Makayla yells across the room, “Don’t drop your drink, Paige! That would be terrible!”

  Taylor laughs. “Good one, Makayla!”

  When Paige stops right in front of Martin with the drink, everyone in the cafeteria holds his or her breath.

  “Here, Martin! I thought you might be thirsty,” Paige says. And then…she hands him the cup.

  The other kids gasp and look confused. She’s being nice to him? This wasn’t the splashy, humiliating end that everyone was expecting.

  Paige stands next to Martin and looks at the crowd. “Okay, everybody, I want to talk to you. Enough is enough! Martin didn’t mess things up on purpose. So let’s stop being mean to him, right now.”

  Martin looks up at the crowd, daring to hope. Paige sounds so sure of herself, and she’s so self-confident, that it really seems like this could work. Without taking her eyes off the other kids, Paige puts her hand on Martin’s shoulder. “Who’s with me?”

  There’s a moment of silence. If we’re lucky, it will be a Lincoln Middle School miracle and everyone will cheer and there will be a lot of hugging.

  Instead…

  …somebody throws a meatball right at Paige’s face. It bounces off her forehead and rolls down the cafeteria floor. Paige wipes off some tomato sauce and looks down at her hand, shocked.

  “That’s not funny!” she says.

  A moment later, there’s a hailstorm of food flying at Paige—and at Sunny, Martin, and me, too.

  There’s spaghetti and Jell-O and salad greens. There’s bread and carrots and half-eaten brownies. There’s yogurt and string cheese and juice boxes. I could go on, but I’m pretty sure that by now you’ve got the idea.

  Lincoln is a pretty relaxed school, but there are still loads of different groups that don’t like each other. On a normal day, the French Club squabbles with the Spanish Club. The football players fight with the marching band about field prac
tice time. Even Scott’s unicyclists compete with the skateboarders for sidewalk space.

  But at this moment, Martin has achieved the impossible. The school is totally united in one common goal: to throw as much food at the four of us as possible. You’d think there’d be somebody who’d be on Martin’s side, and maybe there even is. But throwing spaghetti is just too much fun.

  One of the PE teachers, Mrs. Brinker, runs in from the hallway blowing her whistle. It takes the kids a while to stop tossing food (once you’ve got a handful of green beans, it’s hard not to throw them), but finally there’s only the sound of goo dripping off the walls—and off me, Paige, Sunny, and Martin.

  Mrs. Brinker lets her whistle drop on its cord, her face angry and red. She points at us. “You four! Go get cleaned up!”

  Then she looks at the rest of the kids in the cafeteria. “Everybody else…you’ve got cleanup detention for the next week! And this afternoon, the first thing you get to do is clean up this cafeteria. If I come back and see one speck of food on the walls, you’re going to clean it again on Saturday.”

  Makayla stands up and says, in her syrupy-sweet voice, “But Mrs. Brinker! I didn’t have anything to do with it. I’m just here reporting this for my blog.”

  Mrs. Brinker sneers. “Is that a fact, Makayla? Then why do I see green Jell-O in your hands?”

  Then Mrs. Brinker points at Paige, Sunny, Martin, and me again. “I said out!”

  I thought the kids hated Martin before, but as we slink out, the looks they give us are burning hot. If the food that’s stuck to us burst into flames, I wouldn’t be all that surprised.

  Sunny, Paige, and I take showers in the girls’ locker room. Every time I think I’m finally clean, I find a little more food—and believe me, tapioca in your ears is gross.

  Sunny and I dry off and change into our gym clothes, but Paige stays in her stall, the water going full blast.

  Sunny tells me, “When you see food fights in movies, they look like a lot of fun. But that hurt!” She rubs her cheek, which is still red from where an orange hit her. I feel awful; it almost looks like she got slapped in the face.

  I hear a little squeak from my food-covered sweater. I pick it up and scrape a big wad of applesauce off the pocket. Katarina squirms out, gasping. “Those children are criminals!” she wails. “I don’t know what this ‘cleanup detention’ is, but I sincerely hope there’s a firing squad involved!”

  When Paige finally comes out of the shower, her eyes are red from crying.

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  “No, I’m not all right,” she says. “Martin’s life still stinks, and now mine does, too.”

  Sunny tries to make a joke out of it. “Your life doesn’t stink. It’s just covered in spaghetti sauce.”

  Paige doesn’t laugh. “It’s not funny! That was the most humiliating thing to ever happen to me!” She pulls on her gym clothes as fast as she can.

  This day is getting worse and worse. “I’m so sorry. I never, ever thought that would happen. And I never should have asked you to put your popularity on the line.”

  Paige gives me an icy look. “No, you shouldn’t have. You used me, Lacey. It wasn’t my job to fix Martin’s problems, it was your job. Starting right now, I’m out of the godmother posse.”

  Paige storms out of the locker room.

  I’m too shocked to follow her. This is one of the worst days of my life.

  I manage to reach a toilet stall and close the door before I start to cry.

  As Martin and I sit on the curb waiting for our parents to pick us up, Katarina sticks her head out of my backpack. She tells Martin in a surprisingly kind voice, “The fairy godmothers have a saying that I’d like to share with you right now.”

  Martin looks a little hopeful. “Okay.”

  “You’re DOOMED!”

  “Shut up, Katarina! You’re not helping!”

  Principal Conehurst wasn’t much help, either. All he did was send Sunny, Paige, Martin, and me home. Since Paige (who didn’t say one word to me) and Sunny have already gone, now it’s just me here on the curb with a very sad-looking Martin.

  Very, very sad. No wonder—his life is wrecked and his fairy godmother hasn’t come up with a single magic thing that will help him. I wish the Godmothers’ League believed in teachers who actually told you what to do.

  When I feel sad, Sunny always gets me a cookie to make me feel better, and I wish I had a cookie to give Martin right now. It wouldn’t fix his life, but at least it would cheer him up a little. Hey! I could get him one!

  I pull out my wand and chant, “A big cookie would, make you feel good.” And then I toss the spell at Martin.

  There is a whistling sound from overhead…

  …and WHAMMO! A four-foot-wide cookie drops from the sky and whacks Martin on the head. He falls to the curb, the shattered pieces of the big cookie all around him.

  “Martin! Are you okay?”

  He sits up, rubbing his head. “Why did you just drop a giant cookie on me? That’s just plain strange!”

  “I thought a cookie would make you feel better.”

  “Well, it hurt! And I don’t need any more food thrown at me today.”

  “I’m really, really sorry, and the cookie was a mistake. But we’re just getting started! Sometimes it’s a little rocky in the beginning. Don’t worry—I’m not going to give up.”

  From deep in the bottom of my backpack comes a muffled “Martin, you’re DOOMED!”

  He ignores Katarina and looks at me with a sad expression. “Lacey, this isn’t working. It’s not you—it’s me. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Wait—this sounds just like the kind of things guys say in those romantic movies my mom loves. “Are you breaking up with me?” I say. “I’m your fairy godmother! You can’t!”

  “Yes, I can. It’s hopeless. I’ve always been the weird kid, and I know it. I’m smart, and I wear glasses, and I’m interested in stuff that nobody else likes. My dad says my life will get better in college, after being horrible in middle school and even worse in high school.”

  His dad doesn’t believe in sugarcoating things, does he?

  “Right now a fairy godmother’s not going to help me much, unless you can put me in a time machine and make me a freshman at Cal Tech.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be horrible for you! I can help!”

  “Nerds don’t get fairy godmothers. Wedgies, yes. Fairy godmothers, no.”

  “We just have to keep trying!”

  “Look, Lacey. You can’t raise the money to fix what I did, and you can’t make the kids stop hating me. Go help some girl find a pretty dress like fairy godmothers are supposed to do and leave me alone.”

  A car pulls up, and there’s an impatient beep from its horn. Martin gets in, and the car drives away.

  Katarina reaches out from my backpack, grabs a chunk of giant cookie, and munches on it. “Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles,” she says. “Antarctica, here we come.”

  “We’ve got loads of time!”

  “Think about what he just said, Lacey. You got fired. Canned. Made redundant. Kicked to the curb. Oh look—we’re already on the curb. How very, very convenient.”

  “I’ll go talk to him.”

  She tosses a chunk of cookie at me and shouts, “And tell him what? You don’t have a plan!”

  And she’s right. I don’t.

  Mom takes me home to get a change of clothes, and then I spend the afternoon at the Hungry Moose, feeling miserable. (Katarina has had enough of pockets and backpacks, so she’s staying home.) At least it’s quiet here in the restaurant dining room—we’re closed for a couple of hours between lunch and dinner, and Mom has walked Madison down the street to her ballet class.

  What am I going to do about Martin? There’s got to be something. I just can’t think of it. My magic wand is in my pocket, practically begging me to use it.

  Except Katarina’s right. I need a plan. There are so many things I can�
�t do. I can’t make money. I can’t do spells that last past midnight. I can’t do something so big that people will figure out it’s magic. I can’t get godmother help from Katarina. I can’t get human help from Paige. I can’t even make Martin feel better with a cookie.

  It’s all can’t, can’t, can’t. I need a can!

  There’s gotta be something I can do! Is there a way I can change Martin for just one day that will make him popular? What if he saves puppies from a burning building? (Too dangerous.) Wins the Guinness World Record for Loudest Burp? (Too gross.) Becomes the world’s best tap dancer? (Too tappy.) What about turning him into a tapping, burping puppy rescuer? (Even thinking about this makes my head hurt.)

  Dad takes a break from toasting garlic bread and sits down next to me. “Principal Conehurst said that you and the girls were sticking up for a boy who was getting picked on. I’m proud of you.”

  “It was Paige, mostly.”

  “Ask her to come by with her dad and I’ll treat them to dinner.”

  That would mean that she was still my friend, and that she was talking to me. Neither of those things is true. So I just say, “Okay.”

  Dad says, “It’s really hard to stick up for the kid everyone thinks is a loser. But nobody’s a loser, really, and you’re smart enough to see that.”

  What Dad doesn’t know is that I’m not smart about anything.

  Just then, the latch on the locked door rattles. “We’re closed until five!” Dad shouts without getting up.

  There’s a tapping on the window near the door, and a round-faced old man wearing a green cowboy hat peers in at us.

  I instantly know who it is, but Dad looks confused. “Why does that guy look so familiar?” he whispers to me.

  “It’s the Abner’s Pickles guy,” I say. I know this partly because he’s on a zillion jars of pickles, and partly because I did a magic spell once that helped a girl from Lincoln Middle School get a part in one of Abner’s TV commercials. But that doesn’t mean I’m not amazed to see Abner himself tapping on the window of the Hungry Moose. What’s he doing here?