The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams

by Rhonda Hayter

  Let me tell you something I learned from having to go into the time warp myself on an occasion or two. (Mom tends to give us time-outs in the time warp as consequences for various things Munch or I might have done wrong.) Even though my dad doesn’t seem to mind them, those time warp study sessions are no fun at all.

  Listen to this:

  Picture having detention in a room where there’s nothing but a desk, a chair, and a ton of schoolbooks. Then picture yourself sitting there for days straight, studying. There’s no time out for eating, or drinking, or resting, or even for going to the bathroom, because time stands still there and you don’t have to do any of that.

  When any of my time warp time-outs were over—trust me—I always felt that I had made up for whatever I had done wrong and then some.

  At about noon on the Sunday after the posse left, my dad came out of the time warp to have lunch with us. Tom asked him a bunch of questions.

  “You don’t mean to tell me, Dr. Adams, that if I stepped into this time warp, I could get two weeks of study done while only a few seconds pass in the normal world!!???”

  “Yup. That’s about right, Tom.” My dad smiled.

  Well, Tom dropped the sardine sandwich he was eating, turned to my parents, and began to stammer.

  “Oh, jingoes, might I . . . do you think it might be possible . . . would it be asking too much to . . . to . . . spend some study time in this time warp myself?”

  So my parents put him in. And then, when he came out just as my mom was handing me my grilled cheese sandwich, he grabbed up a lot more books and asked if he could go in again . . .

  Then, as I was taking my first bite, he came out, packed up all my parents’ magic textbooks, and took them in with him.

  Then he came out and asked if he could bring a computer in. After that, he showed up long enough to ask if he could set up a little chemistry lab, got Mom to zap him up all the stuff he needed, and went back in again.

  The last time he popped out into the kitchen, he came tearing over to my dad, who was just finishing up his coffee and a last bite of brownie. Tom was so excited that he didn’t notice Munch pushing out his chair to get up from the table and he tripped right over him and went flying.

  “Oh! Bother! No, no I’m perfectly well thank you . . . I’m fine . . . Please don’t vex yourself, Munch, ’twasn’t anything at all,” he sputtered as everyone rushed over to help pick him up.

  “Dr. Adams, I’ve believe I’ve gotten results for your flu serum!!! Well, um, that is, at first I got about ten thousand results for things that don’t work, but now I think I found one that will!”

  All the rest of that day, Tom and my dad huddled together in my mom’s office and then Dad zapped them both over to his medical office, where they huddled some more. After they zapped back home for dinner, they spent the whole evening huddled together in front of the computer until my mom finally put her foot down.

  “Marley Adams, if you don’t let that boy get some sleep I am going to turn that computer into a feather bed and I am going to toss him right into it!” she said very sternly.

  Soon after, as Munch, Tom, and I stood together at the bathroom sink, brushing our teeth, I looked at the dark shadows under Tom’s eyes and said, “Well, you certainly put in a hard day’s work.”

  And you know what he said to me, with his tired eyes shining? He said, “Oh, Abbie. So far, I’ve never done a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.” And then he raced Munch down the stairs to say good night.

  Next day, the huddling and calculating and figuring went on for even longer and all I could really understand about any of it was that apparently Dad’s version of the Witch Flu serum was very, very close to what it should be but that it needed a little more something or other, a better balanced whatdoyoucallit and a dash less of whatever. Also, apparently, it needed to be refrigerated overnight.

  When they’d run all their calculations about a million times, Dad went into the time warp with Tom so they could run them a few million times more. Finally, Dad, ears chugging pink and white smoke, announced he felt confident that the cure for Witch Flu was really figured out and it would be okay to administer to people.

  It was decided that the Schnitzler boys and old Mr. Heatherhayes would be the first to receive the new, improved serum. Aunt Sophie popped in to share the great day. She zapped all Mom’s vases full of congratulatory flowers.

  The patients were supposed to come at four thirty, but at four o’clock Munch heard a muffled yelling from inside his toy box and the Schnitzler boys popped out of it, pounding on each other, as usual. Apparently, back at home, one of them had taken more than his share of a piece of cake they were supposed to go halvsies on.

  Mom separated them, gave them a little talking to about fighting, and then conjured up half a piece of cake each for them. Mrs. Schnitzler, their mom, zapped in shortly after, all out of breath and looking worried sick. She seemed relieved to see her kids and even more relieved to see that they weren’t fighting for a change.

  Mr. Heatherhayes’s son arrived a minute or two later, wondering if we had seen his dad. So a search was begun and we found Mr. Heatherhayes sitting in Mom’s pansy garden, looking confused. His son helped him up.

  “It’s all right, Pop. Everything’s okay. I’ve got you now,” he said tenderly.

  As my mom followed everybody into the house, I saw her give a backward glance to her flattened pansies and flip a little healing spell on them with a wiggle of her foot. They straightened right up.

  Inside the house, Dad introduced Tom to everybody and explained how Tom had finally figured out the right formula for the serum. The Schnitzler brothers couldn’t have cared less about meeting Thomas Edison. But they were absolutely thrilled to meet Aunt Sophie, who had starred in their favorite movie as a pair of twin superheroes. They kept asking when her sister was going to arrive, and even when Aunt Sophie tried to explain about split screens and special effects and computer graphics, they really didn’t seem to get it.

  Mr. Heatherhayes and his son, on the other hand, were absolutely floored to learn that Thomas Edison himself had helped to formulate the new serum. A tearful Mr. Heatherhayes kept shaking Dad’s hand.

  “You really shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble to get Edison himself in on this for us,” he said over and over.

  Dad made one or two attempts to explain, but Mr. Heatherhayes was so overcome with emotion that it seemed better to everyone to just let it go.

  Dad administered the serum to the Schnitzlers first, through a needle to the arm. They howled at the top of their lungs for a second or two, then they stopped abruptly and got very still.

  “I feel better,” said Phil.

  Then Felix shook his head a little. “I feel better too,” he said.

  Dad had them try a few simple spells, moving things around magically, turning objects into other things, and then finally zapping themselves in and out of rooms all over the house. Pretty soon it was obvious that all of their powers had returned. Dad asked them lots of questions and they both said they felt none of the faintness they used to feel when they lost their powers because of the flu, or the dizziness they’d feel just before they’d pop into places involuntarily after Dad’s old serum had returned their powers.

  Mom served cake to Mrs. Schnitzler and the Heatherhayeses while Dad and Tom stepped into the time warp with the brothers and came back a minute later saying they had passed every test and were definitely cured.

  First the Schnitzlers hugged each other, then they hugged their mom, and then they turned themselves into puppies and chased Munch all the way up to his room to play. Their mom couldn’t stop thanking everybody and crying and thanking everybody again, and crying some more. Mom and Aunt Sophie actually cried a little too, and I even felt my own eyes filling up. That kind of thing is sort of catching sometimes, don’t you find?

  Next was Mr. Heatherhayes, who, because of his age, was really in delicate health. Before he gave him the shot, Dad washed a
lot of healing and strengthening spells over him to make sure he’d be strong enough for what was going to happen next. Mr. Heatherhayes held his son’s hand while Dad gave him a shot in his other arm, and he winced a little as the shot went in. Within seconds though, a healthy pink flush came into his cheeks and he started to laugh.

  “I feel twenty years younger!” he yelled, and he actually got up and did a little jig.

  Off they all went to the time warp to run the tests and when they came back, there was no longer any doubt. Witch Flu was cured for good.

  CHAPTER 27

  A Few Ribbits Too Many

  Well, I could go on and on about all the celebrating that took place. That night, Mrs. Drake and Dean Wilkins held a special ceremony at Witch University, where they awarded Dad a lot of honors and zapped his and Tom’s findings into all the witchy medical books. They couldn’t give Tom a lot of credit though, because of course they didn’t want the March Hare to learn that he wasn’t still a little kitten. But Tom didn’t seem to care.

  All the witches who got cured from the new serum that had been zapped out all over the world started sending thanks. Hundreds of presents and cards and various other tributes kept materializing all over our house so that you couldn’t take a step without tripping over something. Soon they had started to take up so much room, Mom had to miniaturize them all so they could be stored in a box in the basement and looked at later.

  Even though Dad kept telling all our visitors that Tom really came up with the final formula, Tom always argued that he never would have been able to do it if Dad’s original formula hadn’t been so close to start with.

  I watched Tom during these conversations (and there were a lot of them because we had dozens of happy and excited visitors). His slightly oversized head always had a huge smile on its face. It looked as if he was just glowing with happiness—but there was something sad behind it all too.

  Meanwhile, the witchy posse was still hunting the March Hare so Tom could go home to his mom.

  Back at school, I was happy to see Callie but it felt crummy too because there was so much I wanted to tell her about and I wasn’t able to share any of it. It was kind of depressing, actually. What’s worse, in all the excitement I had forgotten about a couple of pages of math work that I hadn’t finished at school on Friday and was supposed to do on my own time.

  You know what? My feeling is that even if she did know a terrible disease was being cured at my house over the weekend, Miss Linegar would still have assigned me four extra pages for homework as a consequence for not finishing the work. I mean, what are saved magical powers compared to making sure Abbie Adams never gets out from under her homework load????!!!!

  It turned out Munch was having a few of his own adjustment problems after such a wild few days. From what he told me, I guess he wasn’t able to sit still in his seat in class for most of the morning. Mr. Merkelson put him in another time-out, but I’m happy to say that Munch was able to control himself. Well, except for turning Mr. Merkelson into a frog very, very briefly.

  “It was really quick, Abbie. I swear,” claimed Munch.

  Well actually he said, “I thwear,” but you know Munch.

  “I’m pretty sure he thought he just was having a dizzy spell or something and nobody else even saw it!” he vowed, his eyes all round and innocent.

  The only reason Munch was even telling me about it was because Mr. Merkelson still kept saying “ribbit” at odd times throughout the day and Munch couldn’t figure out how to fix it. I’d have to imagine that by the end of the day, that little “ribbit” thing was getting kinda confusing to poor Mr. Merkelson.

  So, after school, Munch asked me what he could have left out of his retransformation spell to leave the “ribbits” behind like that. I easily helped him fix it by firing an anti-vocalizing spell in through the window at Mr. Merkelson as he was tidying up his desk before going home. A couple of clicks and a whistle and no more “ribbits.”

  Munch was looking upset because he figured he was in trouble again, but he perked up when I said, “Don’t worry, Munch, since you fixed it right away, I don’t see any reason to tell Mom and Dad about what you did.”

  After all, I thought Munch had done pretty well at controlling his anger for once and we can’t really expect him to be perfect.

  Mr. Merkelson smiled at us as he came out the door and ruffled Munch’s curls for a second. You know, he really is a nice guy. Hopefully, the next time he gives Munch a time-out, Munch will just go outside quietly and think about his behavior like he’s supposed to—although I wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it, would you?

  We had a nice surprise when Tom turned up looking slightly stiff and awkward in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt my mom must have zapped up for him. When he saw us, he ran over excitedly and started bouncing up and down on his new sneakers.

  “Hello, Tom,” I said.

  “Hello yourself! Munch! Abbie! Would you look at these? What a bully idea to give shoes rubber soles! And to think of giving them treads, too! I’ve been sky-larking all over the streets in them. Have you any idea whose notion it was?” he bubbled as he bounced.

  I noticed a couple of kids giving him a strange look, so I hushed him up the best I could.

  “Hey, you wanna take a look around?” I asked.

  I figured he hadn’t seen too much the last time he was at the school, being stuck in my pocket most of the time. Munch grabbed his hand and hauled him off to the tetherball pole.

  Now, Munch is pretty good at tetherball but Tom, not being a particularly athletic sort, didn’t show a lot of talent for it. He kept getting bopped in the head and yelling “Confound it!” until he grabbed the ball, started experimenting with different angles of hitting it, and testing various speeds and heights.

  Soon he’d figured out exactly how hard to hit it and where to put his hand on the ball. He was excitedly explaining it all to Munch using all kinds of ten-dollar words. To Munch I think it sounded like this . . .

  “Blah blah blah, trajectory, blah, blah, blah, momentum, blah, blah . . .” It wasn’t long before a bored-looking Munch grabbed Tom by the hand again and hauled him off to his favorite anthill instead.

  A baseball practice was going on at the field, and on a water break Callie came over to see who Munch and I were hanging out with. Thinking quickly (and lying to my best friend yet again) I introduced them.

  “Oh hey, Callie, I want you to meet my cousin Tom who’s visiting. Tom, this is my very best friend, Callie.”

  As she smiled at Tom, Callie’s expression changed.

  “Tom,” she said with a perplexed look in her dark brown eyes. “Have we ever met before?”

  I actually thought it might have been funny if Tom had said, “Oh yes, but I was a kitten at the time,” but of course he didn’t.

  He just said he didn’t think they had met and started peppering her with a whole lot of questions about the rules of baseball. I guess it was a fairly new sport in his day. The whole time, he was talking so fast that Callie could hardly catch up with him and all at once, she just erupted in giggles and offered to come over and give him a few lessons while he was still visiting. I knew she’d like Tom. It’s hard not to.

  We left Callie to her practice and headed on home. As we opened up our front door, we spotted a man across the street, getting into his car. He had one of those little receivers stuck in his ear, and was talking to someone over his cell phone.

  “Um, Abbie . . . I know I ask you this heaps of times,” whispered Tom to me, sliding glances over at the man as we walked in the door. “But sometimes it isn’t so easy to sort out. Magic or technology?”

  “Technology,” I answered, with a wink over to Munch. “But here’s a little magic for you.”

  And with that, Munch and I each grabbed one of Tom’s arms, flew him three feet into the air and up the stairs, with him screaming “Oh here, now!! Jingoes!! Oh jingoes!!” all the way up.

  CHAPTER 28

  Inspiration versus Per
spiration

  Upstairs, in my room with Tom, I threw my backpack on the bed and groaned. “Six pages of science, three math sheets, and one short story synopsis. Let me tell you something, Tom, I wish I was a genius like you, so all this stuff wouldn’t seem like such hard work.”

  Tom’s face was still flushed from the excitement of his flight up the stairs. “Rubbish,” he grunted, excitedly pulling out my textbooks from my backpack. “Let me tell you something, my bully girl. Genius happens to be one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. You know, for two cents, I’d do all your homework for you, but then your mother would skin me alive. So what d’you say we just have ourselves a gay old time doing it together?”

  He plopped himself down on my desk chair with his arms behind his neck and his feet on my bed. “And now, please be a brick and define what a food chain is for me.”

  And you know what? It was kind of fun, because he got so excited about explaining things to me whenever I didn’t understand. And when we were finished, he dug out my play script and ran lines with me, and raced all over the room, playing all the other parts. Which got kind of hilarious when he tried playing the mushroom and the caterpillar that was sitting on it—at the same time.

  Next day at drama club, I had my part down so well I didn’t make a single mistake in my lines. By now we were working with some of the lights and Miss Overton’s “fantastical effects.” There was this big screen called a scrim, which came down and pictures got projected onto it and you could see us walking around in front of it, looking as if we were in this weird, mystical place. There was also eerie music now and this really cool effect where a light turned off and on, really fast. It’s called a strobe light and when we moved while it was working, it looked as if we were moving all choppy like robots or like we were in a strange dream. For the scene where the mushroom keeps coughing over the caterpillar’s pipe smoke, the stage filled completely up with dry-ice smoke as if we were moving through a cloud.