Little Red Gem

by D L Richardson

  “Look at me. Look at me. For the love of god, LOOK AT ME!”

  One second I was admiring the top of Leo’s head and sending silent commands to notice me.

  The next second his head lifted and his eyes clocked mine.

  At the third strike he looked away.

  There were no words to describe the blackness. What had gone wrong? The love of my life had spoken to me yesterday, yet now I copped the cold shoulder. So did everyone else, I noticed, when Leo walked past his usual table and disappeared inside the boy’s toilets. I didn’t see him come out. Then the bell rang and lunch was over.

  The rest of the day was spent as if walking in a thick haze. The despair would not leave me, and by the time I got home Teri immediately noticed my forlorn expression.

  “What on earth is the matter?”

  Tears gushed. I let them. Teri devoured me in her motherly arms.

  “Is it school?” she asked. “You know a problem shared is a problem halved.”

  Shaking my head, I gently pried myself out of her grip. “School’s not the problem.”

  “Ah, so it’s a boy.”

  “It’s not just a boy, it’s—” Something warned me not to give away Leo’s identity. “It’s more serious.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” Teri gently pressed my head back against her bosom and she stroked my hair. “Boys can’t help but break our hearts. They don’t know any better. And I know you don’t believe this, but if this boy doesn’t like you, it’s not the end of the world.”

  “It is the end of the world, at least to me it is. Anyway, I have a solution to my problem. Do you know how to make a love potion?”

  Teri’s smile wavered. “I’m thrilled you finally want to learn magic, but there’s no such thing as a love potion.” I must have had a stricken look on my face because she quickly added, “There is, however, a love spell.”

  My eyes lifted in hope. “Do you know how to perform a love spell then? Please, I need to know.”

  “Of course I do. But, Audrey, I have to warn you, free will is impossible to control.”

  The butterflies in my stomach, earlier crushed beneath the weight of a deflated ego, began to stir with life once more. Hope. I clung to it like I’d never clung to anything before.

  “Please. I want to try.”

  Teri slipped off into the back room and returned carrying a handful of books which she placed on the counter. She then swept aside the curtain separating the store from a tiny back room. Inside the little room were a shelf with mugs and a bench with a sink and kettle. She filled the kettle, switched it on, and brought two mugs down from the shelf. I dragged a stool over from the corner, surprising Oleander who faithfully hissed at me. My confidence bolstered, I hissed back.

  “Oleander, stop being a brat,” Teri snapped, placing a teabag into each of the mugs and reaching for the pot of honey.

  “You really know how to do this?” I asked.

  “It’s been a while. You want honey or sugar in your tea?”

  Did I take sugar or honey in my tea? I was too flustered to really care. “Whatever.”

  Teri dipped the spoon into the honey pot and took her time to swirl the contents. She placed the mug in front of me and paused with her mug hanging a breath away from her lips.

  She tilted her head slightly, and said, “Some say a love spell is how I got your father to fall in love with me.”

  My insides chilled to freezing. The man she was talking about happened to be my dad. Simply because I didn’t know him very well, didn’t mean I was happy that he had left my mom for Audrey’s.

  Loosening my tight grip around the mug, I arranged a smile on my face and tried to make my voice light. “You cast a spell to make a happily married man fall in love with you?”

  Teri furrowed her brow, but a moment later her features softened and she gazed off into the distance. “Your father used to say I had him under a spell. I fought his advances as long as I could. Suzanne Parker was a friend. I did everything I could, but your dad can be charming when he wants to.”

  My mom and Audrey’s mom were friends? This was news to me. But I was overlooking the most important aspect of this announcement.

  “But. But he was married to another woman.”

  Teri took a casual sip of her tea which only enraged me more. I had to put the mug down for fear of throwing it in her face.

  She sighed. “Suzanne Parker had already filed for divorce by the time your father starting courting me. Of course, as her friend, I told her about your father’s attempts to convince me to go out with him. She said she was over him but things got weird between us after your dad and I got together. Anyway, it’s in the past. We talked a bit at Ruby’s funeral so we’re okay again. I should invite her over for dinner. What do you think?”

  My mother had always painted the picture of their relationship in shades of envy and lust, yet somehow I knew Teri was speaking the truth. I felt terrible for this slight shift in loyalty. How could I stay angry with her when she was just as much as victim to Dad’s abandonment as Mom and I were?

  “Yeah, dinner sounds like a good idea,” I lied.

  Teri hopped off the stool and banged the mug into the sink. “So you want me to teach you how to cast a love spell. They don’t work like on TV. You can’t make someone fall in love with you. You can’t go against free will.”

  What about what I wanted? “That’s fine. I still want to know how to create the spell.”

  Teri set aside a few items occupying counter space and opened the largest of the books she’d retrieved. “Right. For this to work you need a bunch of ingredients, and then you need to take a long bath and infuse your body with rose water.”

  “Great. What are the ingredients?”

  Teri read from the book. “Rose water. White cord. Green candles. Charcoal. Pink candle. Rose petals. Rose essential oil. Cinnamon stick. Gold pen. Glass bowl of spring water.”

  “We have everything here in the store, don’t we?”

  Teri spent a few minutes rummaging around in drawers and cabinets. “Drats. I’m out of cinnamon sticks.”

  I hopped off the stool, suddenly anxious to walk off the inner turmoil resonating in my bones from Teri’s announcement that my mother was the one who’d orchestrated my parent’s separation. “No biggie. I’ll run to the shops to get some.”

  “Make sure you go to the supermarket at the west end of Main Street,” Teri added. “They have organic products.”

  “Sure. Organics. Want to make sure this spell isn’t harmful to the environment. And afterward, the guy I’m hot for will notice me?”

  Teri scowled. “Audrey, this isn’t like giving someone a magic potion. You send the request for love out to the universe and you wait for the universe to answer. If the answer is yes, then this boy will notice you like he’s never noticed you before. But magic can’t make someone love you.”

  “But it’ll work, right, otherwise, why have the spell in a book?”

  Teri slammed the book closed with a loud thud. “You haven’t listened to a thing I’ve said, have you? I’m not sure I should let you do this.”

  “You have to. My very existence depends on it.”

  “Oh, sweetie, if this guy doesn’t notice you he really isn’t worth the trouble.”

  She was wrong about that.

  I grabbed the car keys from the bowl shaped like a cat on the bench behind the counter.

  “What are you doing?” Teri cried out in alarm.

  “Huh? Driving to the supermarket to get organic cinnamon sticks like you said.”

  Even though I was supposed to drive with a full licensed person in the car with me, all the teenagers in town drove around on their learner’s permits.

  She stood with her hands on her hips and I immediately saw the error. “I mean, how exactly do you propose to drive to the store when you don’t have a driver’s permit. Go upstairs and change into pants. You can ride your bike.”

  The escaping groan was one hundred per cent mine
, nothing to do with being inside a younger teen’s body. I stomped up the stairs, hurling a nasty look at the phone the moment I stepped into the bedroom because it still was not fully charged, threw on a pair of leggings, and stomped back down the stairs. When I made it outside, I glared at Audrey’s bike, innocently leaning up against the wall in the garden, yet it caused all sorts of cuss words to whirl around inside my head. No motor, no radio, no comfy chair – it sucked to be fifteen.

  After I’d slipped the helmet on my head, Teri appeared. She leaned up against the wall and folded her arms across her chest.

  “You’ve never wanted to do magic before. This boy obviously has something to do with kindling your interest. Magic isn’t something you do casually. You have to totally embrace it.”

  I snapped the helmet’s buckle under my chin. “I’m totally embracing it.”

  “Really? I never would have guessed. You hardly come into the shop. You stay up in your room doing goodness knows what.”

  “It’s called life.”

  At last, Teri released me from her scrutiny and I pedaled furiously toward the west end of Main Street. Walking from the bike rack into the store, I froze when I spotted my mother – my real mother – stepping out of a black BMW. Her face was greyer than the concrete sidewalk. Her eyes lacked their usual shine. Aside from the moments when my mom had sat in her room reminiscing about my father and hating him at the same time, she was the happiest person I knew. Now, she looked like a melted wax version of herself. Stranger still was my mom’s presence on this side of town. She wasn’t exactly fond of the organic supermarket, complaining that the prices were too high.

  I slowed down to a crawl, unsure why I should avoid her when I ached to be held in her arms.

  Her head shifted as if she’d sensed something. Was my mom the only person with the power to recognize the real me?

  “Audrey? Audrey, it is you.”

  Mom rushed over and wrapped her arms around me. Tears threatened to burst from me and I managed to hold them back by digging my fingernails into the palms of my hand.

  Mom stroked my hair. “If you need anything, anything at all, you just ask me. You’re not just Ruby’s half-sister, you’re like a second daughter to me.”

  Mom released me and over her shoulder I spied my dad sliding out of the car. So this explained my mom’s presence. My dad was the type to pay a few hundred bucks more for groceries simply because he could. But what was he doing in Providence? Shouldn’t he have flown back to Japan by now? Or was he staying for his art exhibition which was still a few weeks away?

  Dad ran toward me and swept me up in his arms. “Audrey. Thank god I still have you. I don’t ever want to let you out of my sight.”

  “What are you doing here?” I muttered into his chest.

  Dad released me and took my mother’s hand in his. “Mrs. Parker and I have rekindled our love. Isn’t this fantastic news?”

  Maybe not to Mishi.

  As if reading my mind, Dad’s Hollywood smile faltered. “Mishi. Well, Mishi got a transfer to Alaska and you know I don’t like the cold. Paint takes forever to dry.”

  “So, what are you up to this afternoon, Audrey?” my mom asked, deftly changing the subject.

  Guilt warmed my cheeks – no doubt from my inbuilt I’m-lying-to-my-mom radar – but I was also taken aback that my own mother, the woman who’d supposedly suffered thirty hours of labor to bring me into this world and then suffered another seventeen years of my willfulness, didn’t recognize me.

  “Um. Getting stuff for a school project,” I said.

  Dad stood there with an expectant look on his face. He could stand there all day for all I cared. As much as I missed him, he’d lost his right to receive the finer details of my daily comings and goings a long time ago. Although the truth was it had been Mom and me for so long that I didn’t know how to talk or act around him.

  “This seems like an ideal time for a family get-together,” he announced. “Come around for dinner tonight.”

  I panicked. “Can’t tonight.”

  Maybe not any night. Teri seemed convinced I was Audrey, but I didn’t know how long I could fool my mom or even that I wanted to. Usually she saw right through every one of my cover ups. Like when I’d accidentally dropped her perfume decanter and tried to seal the crack with clear nail varnish. And the time I’d ‘borrowed’ her cashmere sweater and spilled mustard sauce on the cuff and dropped it off at the dry cleaners; Mom had gone to the store to pick up a pile of other clothes and the dry cleaner had inadvertently gotten me into deep trouble by including her sweater in the pile.

  I even had trouble convincing her I wasn’t hungry when I felt fat. The woman knew my every little secret. And what she didn’t know, she usually had a knack of finding out.

  Dad placed his arm around Mom’s waist and pulled her to his side. “How about tomorrow? Mrs. Parker will cook her magnificent lasagna.” He turned to Mom. “Do you still make it with extra cheese?”

  Mom giggled. Her happiness was obvious. But not lasting. Her eyes glazed over and I got the sense she was conflicted between emotions – should she be happy she’d found love again, or should losing her only daughter cement her heart to any future elation?

  “Dinner will give us a chance to talk. I’ve a lot of catching up to do with my baby girl,” Dad said to me.

  I groaned inwardly, knowing I’d have no choice but to play the dutiful daughter to the grieving father. Provided it didn’t interfere with me giving Leo his love potion, I’d oblige his whims. So I promised to come for dinner and headed into the store.

  Where I’d find cinnamon sticks was a mystery to me. By scent alone was I familiar with the spice and only when it was sprinkled on donuts. I reached into my pocket to grab my phone to use the inbuilt internet to see what they looked like when I noticed the screen was blank. The battery was flat. Again. This was ridiculous. I’d have to do something about getting Audrey a decent phone as payback for locking her in another realm.

  By the time I tracked down a store person to ask what cinnamon sticks looked like I stumbled down an aisle filled with baskets of fresh herbs and packets of dried spices. At least the baskets and packets were labeled. I grabbed the first packet of cinnamon sticks I found, paid for them, and pedaled home.

  By now, Teri had closed the shop and the rest of the items were laid out on the dining room table upstairs.

  “Did you know Dad and Ruby’s mom are back together?” I blurted, suddenly angry with my parents for sneaking around behind my back. I guess I was looking for an ally in Teri.

  Teri smiled wistfully. “Tragedy has a way of bringing people together. They must need each other to get through this terrible time.”

  What did anyone know about ‘this terrible time’? I was dead, my parents were back together, Leo was slipping out of my grasp with every passing minute, and the freaking wrapping around the cinnamon sticks wouldn’t pull apart.

  “By the way, my phone battery keeps dying,” I said. “I wanted to call you from the store to ask what cinnamon sticks look like. What’s the chance of getting a new phone?”

  Teri widened her eyes. “It’s brand new. Guess I’ll have to take it back. And they’ll say it’s our fault the phone broke and they’ll fight tooth and nail not to honor the warranty. In the meantime you can have mine.”

  She handed me her archaic flip-top phone that didn’t have a touch screen or Wi-Fi, and my disappointment was epic. “Don’t you need it? I can go to the mall after school tomorrow. Save you the hassle of fighting the store manager.”

  “This or nothing.”

  “Thanks, I suppose. Now, can we do this?”

  Teri laughed and adjusted the items on the table. I swear she must have been born with obsessive compulsive disorder; she was always straightening things that were in no apparent need of straightening.

  “Ah, young love,” she said smiling. “I keep forgetting how much of a hurry teenagers are when it comes to love. Now, before we do anything you need to
prepare. I’ve already run the bath, scented with rose petals as per the spell book.”

  I didn’t have time for a bath. I needed to cast this spell before every schoolgirl’s attempts to woo Leo succeeded. “Can we skip this part?”

  She steered me toward the bathroom. “No. Before performing any magic you need to be ready, which means your mind needs to be calm so you can focus. Bathing washes away bad energy. Now, soak.”

  Teri left me alone to undress, and I was grateful for the privacy. The idea of standing naked and vulnerable in front of her sent goose bumps everywhere, plus maybe she’d notice something odd – like Audrey’s tiny fists pummeling madly against my chest to be let out – and my game would be up.

  I slid into the bath and couldn’t help but admit that the candlelight was charming and the aromatic perfume of rose petals was delicious.

  I was surprised when Teri knocked on the door. I’d fallen asleep. The missing hours rushed at me. I didn’t know about cleansed, but I felt super relaxed. Dressing in the light cotton pants and top Teri had folded over the chair for me, I only had to shake Audrey’s short hair like a dog and it was practically dry. I walked barefoot into the dining room to find Teri seated at the table fiddling with the items. I noticed she’d kicked the rug away to expose the wooden floorboards underneath. There was a ring of rose petals wide enough for a person to sit inside.

  She handed me a length of white cord. “Take this and make it into a circle around the rose petals.”

  I did as instructed. “Now what?”

  “Take the items off the dining table and bring them with you into the circle.”

  “Can’t you bring them here?”

  “No.” She tilted her head to the side. “I’m having second thoughts. I shouldn’t let you do this. You’re too young.”

  I shrugged. “I’d do it anyway. Only I’d probably get the spell wrong so at least this way you’ll be here in case I unleash demons or something.”

  “There will be no demon unleashing. Now, light a green candle in each direction.”