The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams

by Rhonda Hayter

  All the stuff I’d been keeping to myself all school year came gushing out of me like a river. I cried about how hard it was to keep my secret from Callie and how hard it was to cover up for Munch all the time and how Miss Linegar always seems to think the worst of me, and how worried I was about Tom and how sorry I felt for him and how really, really sorry I was for casting a spell on the ladies in the office.

  My mom pulled me into her lap. “I thought something was wrong lately,” she said.

  She rocked me back and forth like I was still a baby, and you know what? I didn’t mind that at all. And Dad sat on the bed beside us and stroked my hair as I sobbed.

  “Oh, my Abbie Dabbie Do,” he said. “Everybody makes mistakes. It’s all going to be okay.”

  This went on for a little while and I was just starting to feel like I could stop crying enough to start talking normally, when this big fly kept bumping up against my face. No matter how many times I brushed it away, it just kept coming back.

  “Okay, Munch,” I said. “I know it’s you.”

  The fly puffed out into a worried-looking, curly-headed little boy and Dad pulled him down onto his lap so we could all snuggle up on the bed and talk.

  Well, I won’t tell you everything that was said but I’ll just let you know that Mom and Dad started telling me stories about similar experiences they’d had as kids. They talked about mistakes they’d made and things they had done wrong.

  “So sweetheart, you can see we know a little something about what you’ve been going through,” finished my dad.

  Don’t think they let me off the hook about how wrong it was to do what I did. But they did manage to convince me that everything was going to be okay.

  Of course I promised never to do anything like that again, and especially not to lie to them, and I also promised to reread the chapters on witch etiquette in human/witch dealings . . . in all four basic witchy handbooks. I could tell Mom was thinking about asking me to write something about it. She does that sometimes, to make sure I understand something, but I guess, this time, she thought I was going through enough.

  Whew.

  Munch even promised to try to control his behavior better, so that I wouldn’t have to cover up for him all the time.

  Well, I guess I’ll believe that when I see it.

  Next morning before school, I went to visit Mrs. Oh (for the fourth time this year, but who’s counting?). I was supposed to apologize for not coming to her office when Miss Linegar sent me there. Okay, that was a little bit of a lie because of course I had come to her office, but I could hardly apologize for casting a spell on her, could I? And anyway, in chapter one of the first Witch Handbook, which I read after dinner the night before, there’s a whole page about how certain tiny lies might be necessary in dealings with humans. That’s as long as they’re only to cover up witchiness.

  Might be necessary? Who are they kidding? Much as I hate it, I’ve probably had to lie to Callie about a million and a half times.

  Mrs. Oh told me that she and Miss Linegar had been discussing me and had decided that I’d have to be benched during recess, for a week. I’d also have to write an essay on how bringing pets to school can be a big distraction for the other students. Oh yeah, in the essay, I was also to mention how pets at school might bother people with allergies like . . . you know who.

  Needless to say, as far as assigning me extra work, Miss Linegar had none of my mother’s qualms about how much I’d been going through recently. In fact, I got the impression that Miss Linegar would have liked to do something more severe (big surprise), like suspend me from school. Thankfully, Mrs. Oh wasn’t quite as strict. Hey, who is?

  Finally, the last and most horribly uncomfortable thing I had to do was go see Miss Linegar herself, before class started.

  I knocked on my classroom door at ten minutes to eight. I had to knock twice before she finally came to the door to unlock it, and then when she did, she just stood there silently with her arms folded across her chest. You know, some kids’ teachers greet them with a cheery “Good morning!”

  “Miss Linegar,” I said, looking down at my sneakers. “I’m really, really sorry for bringing my kitten to school and I know I shouldn’t have gone home without seeing Mrs. Oh and I’m really sorry about that too.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  I figured maybe something else was expected, so I thought a little harder. “I’m very sorry about your sneezes, too,” I tried.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Well then, you’d better come in and get started on your essay.”

  And that was it. I wrote my essay, and then she made me write it again, “. . . In your best handwriting this time,” and then the whole terrible incident was finally over.

  But things weren’t over for Tom. Not by a long shot.

  CHAPTER 20

  A Vermin-Free Home

  When I got home, the Schnitzlers and Mr. Heatherhayes were sitting on my bedroom floor, playing cards and looking depressed. The boys were accusing each other of cheating. They kept throwing cards all over the place, while poor old Mr. Heatherhayes tried to keep peace by saying, “Now, now boys. Now, now boys,” over and over.

  I offered everybody something to drink but nobody seemed to want anything, so I zapped them all back home. Mom hadn’t even known they were there because she’d been busy going through spell books in the kitchen while she zapped up dinner.

  I got as depressed-looking as the Schnitzlers and Mr. Heatherhayes when I heard Dr. March Hall was coming over again. Now I couldn’t even hang out with Mom because she’d be tied up, listening to stuffy old March Hare droning on and on and on.

  It wasn’t as if Dr. March Hall had actually been any help either. In fact, some of the counterspells he’d recommended had made things worse. Due to one of his bad ideas, I’d lost what little communication I had with Tom and never got his voice inside my head anymore.

  Half the time we couldn’t even find Tom when the doctor came over. He always seemed to be hiding under beds or inside closets with my mom’s little book light and a pile of books.

  Sometimes, while Tom was hiding, he performed small experiments. Once, when Mom and Dad sent me to find him, I hauled him out from under my parents’ bed to find that all his hair was standing right on end. It seems he’d been rubbing his fur along the carpet doing an experiment on static electricity. When my hand touched him, there was a big snap!! We both got shocked and I nearly dropped him. His hair flattened right out after that though. It looked pretty funny.

  At dinner, I happened to notice Tom sneaking in from the kitchen to slink under the dining room hutch behind old March Hare’s seat. From there, I could see his big yellow eyes staring out. He was listening to the doctor, who was in the middle of a long, dull talk about “the thermodynamics of applied alchemical physics” and other subjects I had hoped not to have to suffer through . . . at least until I got to Witch University.

  My mom and dad were trying to look interested, which almost required a special spell in itself, and Munch had fallen asleep in his peas. On the other hand, Tom looked fascinated (hey! I spelled it right) and snuck closer to Dr. March Hall’s chair, cocking his little ears, trying to hear better.

  Dr. March Hall kept his white hair pretty long and as I sat there beside him, I noticed that it started to rise up on the back of his neck, just like Tom’s fur had risen in his static electricity experiment. All at once, the doctor turned around and STAMPED his foot really hard, almost crushing Tom. Tom just managed to leap out of the way in time, though he banged his poor little head against the hutch.

  Tom went scampering out of the room as fast as his paws could carry him and Dr. March Hall turned back to my startled parents.

  He seemed flustered for just a second but then he said something really rude. “I believe there was a filthy spider right behind my seat, Adams,” he said. “And I must say, I’m surprised that witches with your family’s status aren’t able to keep their home vermin free.”

  I
had to look up “vermin” after he left, which I’m happy to say was shortly after this event. The dictionary described it as “noxious, objectionable, or disgusting animals” and listed a bunch of examples, like flies, lice, bedbugs, cockroaches, and mice.

  Well, if you ask me, a nice little household spider does not fit the definition of “vermin.” Actually, I’ve spent quite a bit of time as a spider and once, at Witch Day Camp, I got the blue ribbon in a web-weaving competition.

  There’s nothing noxious or disgusting about spiders at all. In fact, they’re some of the greatest creatures in the whole world and Munch thinks there’s nothing as much fun as turning himself into one and sliding up and down on a silken thread.

  All that’s beside the point though, because you know what? I’m pretty sure there wasn’t any spider behind Dr. March Hall’s chair. I had the creepiest feeling that he somehow sensed Tom watching him and tried to stomp Tom!

  Up in my room, under my pillow, with nothing but his tail sticking out, Tom was trembling all over. I took him onto my lap and wished that I could hear his thoughts the way I used to. Don’t ask me why I felt this way, but I was pretty sure Tom would have something to tell me about Dr. March Hall that my parents would want to know.

  I held Tom’s furry little self up to my cheek and got a brief image of the teenaged boy who lived inside of him. That boy looked very worried and very sad.

  After that, I had to go downstairs to help Dad with the dishes and . . . oh, I’ll bet you’ve got to be wondering why witches would bother to do dishes when they could just zap them clean. Well, sadly, my mom has this theory that since we live in a non-witch world, she’s going to have to teach us non-witch ways. And that, I’m very sorry to say, includes doing dishes and making beds and picking up toys and books and clothes off of bedroom floors. Sigh.

  It’s lucky for me that my mom’s so busy and has to zap things herself pretty often, so just to be fair, she lets me zap my room clean and hex my bed to make itself at least some of the time. This wasn’t one of those times though, and while she was picking peas out of a sleepy Munch’s hair and putting him to bed, I had to do the dishes with Dad.

  Now, my dad is not quite as strict as my mom with certain things, and after we’d washed and dried about half of the dishes, he grinned and said, “That’s enough non-witchiness for one night, don’t you think, Abbikins?” He wiggled his fingers at the rest of the mess, and the kitchen became sparkling clean, with everything nicely put away.

  Even using magic, it would have been harder work for me than that. I’m embarrassed to admit, I would have had to chant for the washing, incant for the drying, and done a whole other finger-snapping hex for the putting away. For about the hundredth time that week, I promised myself to work harder on my spell technique.

  Dad sat down on the window bench in the kitchen and slapped the seat beside him. I snuggled in next to him, which is something I’ve been doing since I was a little kid.

  What I really like to do is lean against Dad’s chest while he sings to me. He’s got this big, deep voice and you can feel the vibrations of the sound in his chest when he sings. But he wasn’t in a singing mood tonight.

  Tonight he told me how sorry he was that we had to have Dr. March Hall over so often and how he missed hearing about my day while we had dinner.

  I was really happy he brought up Dr. March Hall, because I wanted to tell him how creepy I was finding him. Dad said that sometimes people just act badly and we can’t control that. All we can control is how we react to it and try not to let it bother us.

  “You know, Dabbs, at first, I got so annoyed about that ‘vermin’ remark that I had to hex my ears to keep them from smoking. But then I thought about how poor March Hall has never been able to sense what impact he’s having on people. Why, he can’t even tell how boring he is. Back in college, I used to have to zap myself with excess magic charge just to stay awake in his class. I had stings all over me. So I can hardly expect him to realize how rude his remark was, can I? After I thought about it that way, I actually felt a little sorry for him and I decided I might as well choose not to let his remark upset me.”

  Well, I wished I could have felt sorry for March Hare too . . . but I just didn’t.

  CHAPTER 21

  It’s Not All Bad Being a Witch

  The next day was Saturday (FINALLY) and I got to sleep in late. Then I stayed in bed rereading Judy Blume’s Superfudge. Every now and then, I like to take a look at it again just to remind myself that I’m not the only one with little brother troubles. Tom was snuggled up to me reading a twelfth-grade physics textbook Dad found in the basement. After a while, Mom called us to breakfast.

  After we ate, Tom got right back to his book.

  Mom said to Munch and me, “Kids, Daddy and I have been talking and we feel bad that we haven’t had much time to do things together as a family lately. So, since Tom’s doing okay for now, we’ve decided to leave him here for today, while we take a little break from figuring out how to reverse his enchantment.” She smiled. “We have a special expedition planned.”

  Dad swooped in from the living room with a big grin on his face. “Oh magical offspring of ours,” he announced, “we think that it’s time to remind you about all the good things about being a witch.” (He was looking directly at me as he said it.)

  “So,” he went on. “You will have to use your excellent young minds to guess what we are going to do today. I will kindly provide you with clues.”

  POOF!! He turned into a coconut.

  “Oo, oo, I got it!” yelled Munch. (He loves this game.) “You’re a rock! You’re a rock! We’re going to a rock concert!”

  Then my dad popped back into human form. I could see that he and Mom were trying not to laugh at Munch’s guess.

  “Nope, I’m not a rock, buddy. Here, let’s try this one,” and then he turned into a palm tree.

  “A palm tree! We’re going to California to see Aunt Sophie,” tried Munch, only not quite as excitedly because he really likes rock concerts. Once he nearly gave himself a concussion after he turned into a drumstick to get on stage with his favorite heavy metal band.

  Dad popped back into human form again and said, “Good guess, buddy, but that’s not it either. How about you, Abbie Dabbie?” and he turned into a pineapple.

  “Hawaii?” I asked. I was really, really, really hoping that I was right because the last time we went to Hawaii, we went snorkeling, and snorkeling is one of my favorite things to do in the whole world.

  “You got it,” said Dad with a big grin. And in less time than it would have taken me to hex my bed to make itself, Mom and Dad had zapped us into bathing suits, Hawaiian shirts, and flip-flops and left extra food out for Tom. In the next moment, we found ourselves on Hanalei beach, on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

  It was beautiful there, with silky sand and bathtub-warm water. We spent half the time swimming and I even tried surfing, but the waves were really big. Surfing was so hard, I figured I’d really need a few days to get good at it and we had to go home that night, so I decided I’d save my strength and look for sand crabs instead. Plus I was getting tired of falling off and getting bonked by my board.

  Munch didn’t give up trying though until he got so tired that he couldn’t get on top of the board at all. Dad fished him out and carried him back to shore.

  Then we stepped out of sight of the other people on the beach and zapped to another place. It was a coral reef in a quiet little bay with no waves and you could put on snorkels and fins and swim around in the shallow, warm water seeing every kind and color of fish you could ever imagine.

  Okay, so maybe it’s not all bad being a witch. Munch was swimming around in front of me, pointing at all the fantastic colors of the fish he was spotting. Even though he’s my annoying little brother and gets on my nerves a lot, there, drifting in that silent, watery world, with his curls floating around his head, he looked like one of those little Valentine’s angels . . . that is until he turned himself i
nto a great white shark and started chasing me.

  CHAPTER 22

  Things Get Scary

  We ended a perfect day with fresh fish for dinner, Hawaiian shaved ices, and sweet milk from a straw, which was stuck right into a fresh coconut. By the time we all agreed we were ready to go home, Munch was asleep in Dad’s arms, and Mom and Dad zapped us back.

  Back at home, it was after midnight and I was looking forward to just toppling into bed. But when we materialized in our living room, suddenly I didn’t feel tired at all. In fact, I felt as awake as if someone had thrown a bucket of cold water in my face. One look around showed that something was really, really wrong.

  Furniture was upended, my mom’s favorite vase was smashed on the floor beside the broken coffee table, and the carpet was pulled up. In the dining room, the hutch was dumped right over onto its face. Dad quickly zapped an invisible safety shield around us, laid the still sleeping Munch on the couch, and told me to wait there with him while he and Mom looked around the rest of the house.

  I had a horrible, prickly feeling all over and I didn’t want to let Mom and Dad out of my sight, but I knew I’d better stay there with Munch, in case he woke up and got scared. At this point, I think we were all too shocked to think straight.

  From what Mom and Dad said, upstairs was just as bad as the first floor, with rooms tossed, drawers emptied, and bookcases overturned. All at once, I got a horrible, stabbing feeling in my heart as if somebody had just jabbed an icicle right through it.

  “Mom! Mom!!” I screamed. “Where’s Tom? Find Tom!!”

  Mom gasped and she and Dad started calling Tom and carefully lifting up heavy furniture to make sure he wasn’t crushed underneath anything.

  I started calling to him too, and looking under things in the living room. “Tom!! Tom!!”

  It didn’t take long until all the noise woke Munch up. His eyes got big and round as he looked around at all the destruction. Without a word, he came over and stuck his hand in mine.