Just Add Magic

by Cindy Callaghan

  Sam, the owner, said, “Hi girls. You know, Kelly, I’m thinking of taking Darbie’s advice and naming a grape Swirley after you: The Peanut Butter and Kelly Jelly.”

  “Really? That would be great. Do you want my picture?” I asked. “You can put it right here next to your postcard collection.” I pointed to the cards he kept under the glass at the counter.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said.

  I glanced at the postcard collection, noticing one I hadn’t seen before. “Where’s this one from?” I asked.

  “Oh, I love that one. A friend sent it to me from Mexico.” He wiped the counter with a towel. “Now, what can I get for you?”

  Darbie got a Rocket Launching Rainbow because it had, like, every flavor and every topping. I got a Black and White. (That’s vanilla and chocolate ice cream with chocolate syrup.)

  “Let me guess,” Sam said to Hannah. “Bowl Me Over Chocolate Brownie with extra fudge, and Snickers.” Hannah smiled.

  We got a table. I took my messenger bag off my chest and slid out the big book.

  Hannah asked, “What’s that?”

  I filled her in. “We found this when we were cleaning out my attic. On the outside it looks like an ordinary 1953 World Book Encyclopedia, Volume T. But on the inside . . .” I opened the book. “The encyclopedia pages have been pasted over with old stationery containing handwritten recipes. The recipes are hidden inside the encyclopedia. You know what that makes this?”

  Hannah looked at the book. “A recipedia?”

  “Exact-a-mundo,” Darbie said.

  Sam delivered the shakes and we thanked him. I dipped a long spoon into mine and savored the blend.

  “No. Look at the unusual names of these recipes. And look at these notes. It’s a Secret Recipe Book,” I said.

  Hannah nodded in agreement. She wasn’t as enthusiastic as I’d hoped. “Sure, okay,” she said.

  I turned each page slowly and carefully, so Hannah could read them. I thought that if she saw the papers herself, she’d understand how totally cool this was.

  Hannah pointed to the top of one page. “It’s faded, but do you see this logo? I think it’s from the Wilmington Library.”

  Hannah knew the logo because she studied there a lot. If my favorite place was the kitchen, then Hannah’s was the library.

  Hannah turned all the pages to look at the inside back cover. “Look at this stamp—WL. That’s definitely the Wilmington Library’s stamp.”

  “So?” Darbie asked.

  “So, at one time this encyclopedia belonged to the Wilmington Library. I’m guessing before it was a recipedia,” Hannah said as she stirred together all the chocolate elements in her Swirley.

  “Not recipedia, Secret Recipe Book,” I said. “You know what I’m thinking?”

  Darbie and Hannah shrugged.

  “I’m thinking this is the perfect time for me to start a cooking club,” I said. I had wanted to start one ever since my mom and I went to watch a live Cooking Network show starring a chef named Felice Foudini. Of everyone in the studio, she chose to bring me up on stage to taste her chili. Well, I knew a lot about chili because every year my mom and I enter the Alfred Nobel School Chili Cook-Off.

  So when Felice Foudini asked me if I liked her chili, I told her that I thought the cayenne pepper overpowered the cumin. She was shocked that a kid knew so much about spices. Everyone clapped for me, and at that moment I knew my future would be about cooking.

  Right around the time of the Felice Foudini show, my mom said I could start a club when I was in seventh grade. She probably thought I’d forgotten, but no.

  BTW, seventh grade was starting TOMORROW!

  Hannah said, “It’s about time you started that club. You’ve talked about it for long enough.”

  I ripped a blank sheet of paper out of the spiral notebook that was in my messenger bag.

  “Let’s start tomorrow,” I said, “with something from this book. It looks like we’ll need some ingredients. There are a few in here that I’ve never heard of.”

  “You?” Darbie asked. “If you’ve never heard of them, then maybe they don’t exist.”

  Hannah was still reading over my shoulder. She pointed to the word amor. “That’s Spanish. It means ‘love.’” She pointed to another word. “That’s Spanish too, it means ‘mix.’ This word here, that’s ‘bread.’” Hannah was practically fluent in Spanish. She was born in Barcelona, where her mother met her father. They lived there for a few years before coming to live in Delaware. At her house they speak Spanish and English.

  Darbie said, “Maybe it’s a Mexican recipedia.”

  Why couldn’t she call it a Secret Recipe Book? “Maybe,” I said. “But there are recipes that definitely aren’t Mexican, like these cupcakes. Anyway, you’ve given me an idea for where we can find the ingredients we need.”

  Strings of shells hung from the doorknob of La Cocina. They knocked together as the door inched closed behind us, cutting us off from the scent of Cup O’ Joe’s and the rest of Wilmington. A big stuffed bear welcomed us into an alternate universe. The bright sunlight was blocked by the tinted windows. It took a minute before the spots in front of my eyes went away. I didn’t know if it was the effect of the icy Swirley in my hand, or the coolness in the room, but I felt a frigid whisper on the back of my knees.

  Quietly I asked Darbie and Hannah, “Do you have the feeling you’re being watched?” The words made me shiver.

  Darbie followed the worn braided rug around the store and studied the animal heads mounted on the orange paint-chipped walls. “Maybe that’s because we are being watched,” she said, pointing to a moose staring at us with shiny glass eyes. “Creeeeepy.” She crinkled her nose.

  I scanned the shelves of spices. There were hundreds of little bottles. The ones pushed to the front seemed new. I could see they were filled with powders, elixirs, extracts, and syrups. Other little golden and greenish jars and vials capped with corks were pushed to the back. For some bottles, the glass was so thick I could hardly see through it. On the bottom of each container was a small handwritten label containing the item’s name and a price. I lifted several, and noticed they were organized alphabetically. I chose six items I needed. They were all from the back of the shelves. I gave them to Hannah and Darbie to hold.

  On the next set of shelves there were rows of see-through plastic bags of various sizes filled with all kinds of leaves, berries, stems, roots, and stalks. A maroon, star-shaped tag with a name and price dangled from each. I studied my list and took the bag I needed.

  A voice startled us. “Hola, niñas.” A woman had materialized.

  Hannah offered, “Hola, Señora—”

  “Perez, Señora Perez,” she said. Señora Perez was small—shorter than Darbie, who was the third-shortest kid in our grade. She had black hair streaked with gray and piled high on top of her head like a moldy pineapple.

  There was an awkward pause during which Señora Perez looked us each up and down, starting with the freckles on Darbie’s legs, up to Hannah’s wet hair, and landing on my brown eyes.

  “Ah.” She studied my face. “You are the daughter of Señora Becky Quinn.” She gave Darbie one more quick check from head to toe. “And you must be the one that roller-skates.”

  We nodded. This woman was good.

  “You are buying those?” She stared at the stuff we cradled.

  “Si,” I said, impressed with my Spanish.

  Señora Perez waddled on her short legs around the counter. She fumbled with the chain around her neck until it rescued a pair of reading glasses from her many scarves. She rang us up, pressing down hard on the old metal cash register keys. As she did, she peered over the top of her glasses suspiciously, like a detective might during an interrogation.

  She continued to stare as she put our purchases in a brown paper bag, careful to cushion the bottles with tissue paper. I paid her with my attic cleaning money.

  Finally Señora Perez spoke. “Would you l
ike me to read your palm?” Then, looking at Hannah, she said, “You do not believe in palm readings.” Hannah held a straight face—a poker face, as my dad says.

  Señora Perez wiped her hands on the apron fastened around her midsection and motioned for me to sit down on a stool. She inhaled deeply through her nose, forcing her nostrils open wide, and reached for my hand. The room was quiet. She gently dragged her long nails across my palm. Darbie sucked so hard on her Swirley that she reached the bottom and made a loud slurp! The sound vibrated off the walls. Señora Perez didn’t seem to notice. Her head tilted down until her chin was buried in the extra skin around her neck and she studied my hand. “Ah . . .”

  Darbie looked over Señora’s shoulder at my hand.

  “Si, si. I see, niña . . .” Señora Perez squinted at my palm.

  “See what? See what?” Darbie asked.

  She said, “I see a book.”

  I felt imaginary snakes crawl up the back of my shirt.

  Señora Perez took her reading glasses off and shuffled toward a hallway at the back of the store. Instead of a door, long strands of brightly colored beads hung from the ceiling to the floor. Before passing through, she turned and said, “Beware: Quien siembra vientos recoge temtestades.”

  Then she disappeared into the beads.

  3

  Another Warning

  Question: What is the probability of

  getting two eerie warnings in fifteen minutes?

  Answer (using no math at all): Zero probability . . . probably.

  I was shocked, amazed, and totally freaked out at the same time, if that’s possible. Darbie sat on the curb in front of La Cocina and changed out of her flip-flops and back into her Rollerblades. We headed down Main Street toward my house. The only sound was the swoosh-swoosh of Darbie’s blades on the cement and an occasional passing car.

  “That was whacked out,” Darbie finally said.

  “How could she have known about the Book?” I asked.

  Hannah said, “She said she saw a book, not the Book. She could have meant any book. Besides, don’t get too excited, that palm reading stuff isn’t true.”

  “Don’t get too excited? On the very day I find an ancient book of hidden secret recipes, a bizarre fortune-teller looks into my hand and sees a book. As in, a book that will change my future, maybe the course of my entire life. That’s very exciting.”

  “Now it’s an ancient book of secret recipes? Come on, Kell,” Hannah said. “It’s some papers glued into an encyclopedia. It’s not like you discovered Santa’s Naughty and Nice List.”

  Darbie mimicked Señora Perez with mock exaggeration, “And what about BEEEEWAAARRRREEE, MooHaHaHah!” She rubbed her palms together like an evil scientist.

  I didn’t see the humor in a fortune-teller giving a warning. “Yeah. What was with that? What does it mean?”

  Hannah said, “I can’t translate it exactly, but it’s something like ‘you get what you deserve.’”

  “You get what you deserve,” I repeated thoughtfully. “What do we deserve?”

  “What’s this ‘we’ business?” Darbie said. “Don’t bring me into this. You get a corny warning from some kooky Mexican fortune-teller, it’s yours. It’s all yours, Kelly Quinn.”

  Hannah said, “Get a grip. Like Darbie said, it was just a weird comment from some senile old lady. Don’t let it get to you.”

  As I walked, I dug the Book out of my messenger bag and opened the front cover. A scrap of paper blew out. I tried to grab it, but the wind swept it out of my fingertips. “Get that! It’s from the Book.”

  Darbie picked up the pace of her swooshing and snatched the paper before it dipped into a storm drain.

  Hannah and I caught up to her. “Good catch. What does it say?” I asked.

  “It’s tough to tell because the ink is pretty faded,” Darbie said. “Something like, ‘Remember to Beware of the Law of Re . . . Re . . .’ I think it says ‘Rewind.’”

  “What the heck does that mean?” I thought out loud, “Rewind . . .”

  Darbie smirked. “What the heck does that mean? Rewind. What the heck does that mean? Rewind. What the heck does—”

  “I get it. You’re funny. But, seriously, let me see that.” I examined the note. “It doesn’t say rewind, it says returns. It’s ‘Remember to Beware of the Law of Returns.’”

  Darbie said, “Well, that’s just terrific. You know I’ve gone my entire life without ever getting an eerie warning, and now we get two in fifteen minutes. What are the chances of that?”

  4

  My Cooking Club

  Ingredients:

  3 twelve-year-old girls

  2 eerie warnings

  1 ancient book of secret recipes

  7 new spices from La Cocina

  Directions:

  Mix together to create an extraordinary type of club.

  I jumped high on my bed. On the first jump I slid the ceiling tile out of place. On the second I got my journal. On the third jump I slid the tile back into place.

  My journal was a superfat pink composition notebook. I’ve written in it for years—things like lists of my favorite Christmas presents, what I wanted to be when I grow up, names for future pets, and things I wanted to be sure to remember. But I had never written a warning until now.

  Warnings:

  Beware:

  1. Quien siembra vientos recoge temtestades.

  (Translation)

  Beware:

  You get what you deserve.

  2. Remember to Beware of the Law of Returns

  I also wrote about special memories in here. I’ve read the page about meeting Felice Foudini a hundred times. I turned to the page about the cooking club and made an important update of my plan.

  It was time to do the final round of nagging about starting my cooking club.

  With journal in hand, I was lured to the kitchen by the smell of roasting garlic. Mom was singing the jazz song, “With a Wink and a Smile.” She thought she sang well, but . . . let’s just say that the truth was written in my journal.

  “Is that your favorite song? You know you sing great.” I buttered her up. “Whatcha making? It smells really good.”

  “Chili, what else? The contest is in a week. Are you in?”

  “You bet,” I said. The annual Alfred Nobel School Chili Cook-Off is a major big deal in our town. Everyone who likes to cook enters with their own special recipe. The Cook-Off is held at Alfred Nobel School the first weekend after school starts. All the kids attend in their sports uniforms: the soccer team, cheerleading squad, football team, bowling team . . . I wondered why we didn’t have a cooking team and made a quick note in my journal. The winner is named Wilmington’s Chili King or Queen and gets to wear the cherished chili pepper necklace and matching crown.

  Mrs. Rusamano, Frankie and Tony Rusamano’s mom, is the reigning four-year champion. Last year, Mrs. R. wore the chili necklace to back-to-school night, and to the Alfred Nobel School Halloween and Christmas socials. (I think this made my mom a little jealous.) Mrs. R. is an amazing Italian cook, and she also makes really good chili that the contest judge, our principal, Mr. James G. Avery, loves.

  Mom continued, “I heard there’s a new judge, some fancy schmancy new teacher at your school.”

  Mr. Avery isn’t judging this year? “Mom, that changes everything,” I said.

  “I know! We’ve got to get to work. I made a schedule for the week so we can prepare.”

  “Cool. I have a good feeling about this year, Mom. We’re going to smash Mrs. R. like a clove of garlic.” I punched my fist on the kitchen counter for emphasis.

  She stopped chopping a green pepper and looked at me with narrowed eyes and a tilted head. “You know, Kelly Quinn, I can always tell when you want something.”

  “That’s because you’re the smartest person in Delaware, possibly the whole world.”

  She smiled. “That’s probably true. But did you know that I can tell fortunes?” She scooted a slice of p
epper across the counter for me.

  “Oh, really?”

  “Of course. I can see into the unknown, the beyond.”

  “No you can’t.” I crunched on the pepper.

  “Well, let’s just give it a try and we’ll see.” My mom wiped her hands on a napkin and got a big green honeydew melon from the refrigerator. She took a clean dish towel out of a drawer and hung it over her head. She rubbed her hands all over the honeydew like it was a crystal ball. She thought she was so funny. I rolled my eyes.

  “Oh, lovely green melon that shows me things that I can’t see. Show me Kelly’s bedroom floor.” She studied the melon. “I see it! It’s covered with dirty socks, a wet towel, and M&M’s wrappers. Can that be right, green melon? That must be another girl’s bedroom. Please check again.” She gazed at the fruit. “Nope. Same dirty bedroom floor. Thank you, green melon.” Mom said, “So, you didn’t clean your room, but you’ve written in that pink journal of yours.”

  “You’re right, Mom. You are an amazing fortune-teller.” My dad had taught me that the first rule of selling is to find out what someone needs. And he’s a salesman, so he knows what he’s talking about. “You must get tired from working so hard to make nice dinners for us,” I said. “Wouldn’t it be nice for someone to cook for you?”

  “Okay, tell me what you’re cooking up, Kelly Quinn.” Mom took a teacup out of a cabinet and a mesh metal tea ball off a hook.

  I showed Mom the page in my pink journal with the change I’d just made:

  SECRET Cooking Club

  Members: Kelly Quinn, Darbie O’Brien, Hannah Hernandez

  Place and time: Kelly Quinn’s kitchen, 3:15 p.m.

  “Why is it secret?”

  Oops. I should’ve made that update after showing Mom, but I thought fast. “Because, it’s more fun that way.”

  “So, Darbie and Hannah are going to come over and cook in my kitchen?” She sprinkled different colored tea leaves into the open mesh ball, snapped it shut, and dangled it into her mug by a slim silver chain.

  I nodded with a smile.