The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams

by Rhonda Hayter

  You know what? This stuff really was fantastical like Miss Overton said and dare I even say it??? Magical—in its own way. When all the lights went down in the auditorium and then came up on the stage, where I was in my costume pajamas, reading in my big cardboard bed, it was so exciting to me that it felt just like it does when the magic charge builds up in my fingers and starts buzzing all through me.

  Back at home, I told Tom all about how great rehearsal had gone.

  “That’s grand, Abbie,” he said, bouncing up from a book he was reading and giving me a high five like Munch had taught him. (By the way, the book looked about a thousand pages long and he was already three-quarters of the way through it.) “By Jiminy, I believe your performance is going to be a great achievement.”

  Of course, I started to think about some of the achievements I knew he had coming and how this big scientist once said that Thomas Edison basically invented the twentieth century, and I wasn’t so sure about that. Still, it was clear that Tom really meant what he said.

  “Well, gee,” I said, going all red in the face. “I could use a snack, couldn’t you?” Mom had mini pizzas in the freezer, and Tom loved pizza almost as much as sardines, so we went into the kitchen and I popped a couple in the microwave.

  Half in a trance from watching the pizzas turn round and round as the cheese started to bubble, he murmured, “Um . . . I can’t quite seem to recollect . . .”

  “Technology,” I answered.

  I was still thinking about that hug he gave me and how much I was going to miss him and I said, “You know, Tom, if it weren’t for a lot of the things you’re going to invent, most of these things we use every day wouldn’t even be around. Like if you hadn’t invented a system to get electricity into people’s houses, we sure wouldn’t be microwaving pizzas right now. And if you hadn’t thought up a way to record sound, we wouldn’t be hearing that heavy metal Munch is blasting upstairs.”

  “Oh. Bother,” said Tom as he winced at the loud thumping of the bass. “P’raps I ought to rethink that one . . . once I finally think of it.”

  So we had a chuckle, and it’s funny how this happens sometimes, right out of the laugh, I started to feel all sad and mushy. I just really wanted Tom to know how much I’d miss him once they located March Hare and sent him home to his mom.

  “Hey, Tom,” I said, looking down at my feet. “Thanks for teaching me that there’s no substitute for hard work and I promise I’m going to try to always remember it.”

  And I know what you’re thinking, but I will try too. But when I thought about how Tom wouldn’t be around to help me . . . I didn’t feel hungry for pizza anymore.

  Holding a microphone in his hand, Munch popped out of thin air onto my lap.

  “Abbie, have you seen my T-shirt with the chains on it?”

  I went up and found the shirt for Munch under his bed, which he’d transformed into a big amplifier for the heavy metal concert he was pretending to give. I zapped the dust bunnies off it, whispered a little quieting spell on the roaring crowd Munch had turned his stuffed animals into, and went back down to the kitchen, where the pizzas were ready. They just sat on our plates though without Tom or me taking a bite.

  Tom was looking really sad now too. He sat at the table with his knees jiggling. “Well, blame it,” he said. “Don’t I just wish I could remember you all after I go home.”

  Of course we both knew that there was no way that could happen, so I didn’t say a thing.

  “I do miss my mother though,” he said quietly, and his knees stopped moving. He glanced over at the photo of his mom he had downloaded from the Internet, which Mom had framed for him and put on the wall. Then he shook his head a little and bounced back up to his feet. “What d’you say we tackle a spell technique lesson now?”

  And so we did.

  Back at school, there were only two rehearsals left before Friday, when the play would finally be performed, and we had sets to finish building and a hard dance routine that I was still having a lot of trouble getting down.

  At lunch Callie took me out in the yard and drilled me on my dance steps, which she’d picked up in about a second from watching one of the rehearsals. It looked so great when she did it, with all her braids dancing around in the same rhythm as her feet. Some people just have a talent for that stuff, but I have these long, skinny legs that always seem to get tangled up with each other.

  Finally, I got the routine down perfectly for the very first time and then I did it over and over, and over again, to make sure I had it.

  “Hey Abbie,” laughed Callie, throwing her arm around my sweaty shoulders. “I’ve never, ever seen you work so darn hard before. Good for you!”

  Of course I couldn’t tell her that Thomas Edison had been teaching me that there was no substitute for hard work—and for about the ten zillionth time, I wished I could share more of my life with my best friend . . . then I remembered that after Tom left, I’d have nobody to really talk with about certain stuff.

  It made me feel lonely.

  CHAPTER 29

  Stage Fright

  On Friday morning when I woke up, none of that was on my mind. There was a strange, prickly feeling in my stomach as if I was very hungry, but the thought of eating made me feel queasy . . . or squeasy, as Munch always puts it. All I could think about was the play, and how Aunt Sophie was coming to see it and whether I’d forget my lines or tangle up my legs in the dance routine. I guessed this was what Aunt Sophie meant when she talked about stage fright, which she warned me most actors get at some time or other. All I could do was hope it didn’t get any worse as the day went on.

  School seemed to take a hundred years, but finally the last bell rang and Callie gave me a big good luck hug and told me she’d see me later, before I rushed off to the auditorium for our last rehearsal. I ran so fast that I was the first one there and got a few minutes alone.

  I loved looking at the set that we’d painted ourselves and at the cardboard bed I’d be lying in when the curtains opened . . . even though when I thought about that particular moment—the curtains opening—my heart started to beat hard and the magic charge buzzed into my fingers again. Other people started coming in, and I stepped behind a curtain and shook it off really quickly so that nobody would start yelling about bees.

  Miss Overton got everyone quieted down and announced, “Perhaps it might be counterproductive to run the play in its entirety. So in the interest of maintaining its freshness, I believe that we should simply focus on a few of our ‘problem areas.’”

  Yes, yes, my dance was one of the “problem areas,” but because I’d done it a million times, I got through the whole thing with only one tiny mistake. Then Miss Overton ordered in pizza for the whole cast. Pizza twice in one week. Too bad my stomach was in a knot and I couldn’t enjoy it.

  While we ate, we all sat around talking about how nervous we were. I’d never actually seen Calvin or Dennis nervous before.

  “Hey, you guys are big athletes,” I said. “You get up in front of people on sports fields all the time, so what are you so nervous about?”

  Without even stopping to consider it, they both said at exactly the same time, “It’s not the same thing.”

  I figured it had something to do with knowing they’re really good at sports so it doesn’t bother them if people are watching because they’re not worried about making mistakes. I sure wished I could know if I was good at acting or not because I was really worried about making mistakes.

  The play was supposed to start at seven, so at six o’clock Miss Overton gave a very dramatic speech. “Now, my young thespians, are you ready to join the pantheon of those greats who trod the boards before you?”

  Aunt Sophie told me later Miss Overton was telling us that we’d be joining the ranks of all the great actors who had walked on stage before us. Those would be pretty big ranks, too, because theater’s been around for thousands of years. You can still go to the library and get some of those plays the Greeks used to do a
couple of thousand years ago.

  Later, as the auditorium doors opened and the people who were gathered outside started to come in, Miss Overton hissed, “Fifteen minutes!”

  Suddenly, an ice-cold stab of fear shot right through me. From the other side of the curtain, I could hear snatches of people’s conversations as they took their seats—stuff like “. . . had her for theater arts in 1982” or “. . . traffic was backed up for two miles.”

  Then my heart started to beat even harder because I could hear my own family walking in and Munch asking, “Where’th Abbie? Behind that curtain?”

  I stepped right up to the halfway mark of the curtain and held it together with one hand while I opened up a tiny parting to peek through. There were Mom and Dad leading Munch to a seat, with Tom coming in right behind them. They got good seats too, right in the middle, about four rows back, close enough for me to hear them. Mom put her jacket on the seat beside her to save a seat for Aunt Sophie.

  The auditorium was about three-quarters full by the time my aunt came dashing in. All conversation stopped and everybody in the whole place turned to stare at her. Aunt Sophie’s pretty famous, you know, and people in my town don’t often see very many famous people, I guess, so she was making a big impression. She stopped for a second as she was making her way into my family’s row of seats and noticed everyone staring at her, even though they mostly ducked their heads down and pretended they weren’t looking.

  Aunt Sophie looked around, gave a sigh, did the little shimmy that goes along with a lightweight transformation spell, and turned herself into a very plain-looking lady who bore no resemblance to the very glamorous actress that she really is. Then she did a quick wave over the audience, skimming a forgetting spell over them, and took her seat. My mom gave her a big smile and patted her knee.

  They were close enough for me to hear them.

  “Thanks, Soph. For letting this be Abbie’s night,” she said.

  Aunt Sophie hugged her and did a little finger wiggle again, and when Mom drew back out of the hug, she was wearing an entirely different, much dressier dress. Nobody was looking in their direction now though, so it went unnoticed.

  “I just saw that on Rodeo Drive and I knew it was perfect for you, Matty.” Aunt Sophie giggled.

  Kind of a lot of my mom’s chest was showing though, and the moment she looked down and saw that, she zapped her own dress back on and waved another little forgetting spell around for anyone who might have seen the switch. Aunt Sophie rolled her eyes and Munch, Dad, and a red-faced Tom all snickered a little.

  It seemed like no time at all passed before Miss Overton ran around whispering, “Five minutes! Five minutes!”

  All at once, my mouth dried up so completely that when I started to stretch my mouth for some of Miss Overton’s warm-up exercises, my lips got stuck to my teeth. I stepped into the wings and swigged from my bottle of water, but the second I did, my stomach clenched up and made me feel sick again.

  I tried to remember why I wanted to do drama club in the first place, but nothing came to mind. Right now I wanted to be anywhere else in the world but here in the wings of this stage, and I deeply regretted having told Aunt Sophie, a real-life professional actress, about my stupid fifth-grade play.

  Over and over, I muttered the first line of the play so that I couldn’t possibly forget it. “Why would someone write a book about a boy who can fly? Boys can’t fly. Why would someone write a book about a boy who can fly? Boys can’t fly.”

  And then . . . Miss Overton loomed up out of the darkened wings, saying, “Places, please.”

  Well, my place was dead center in the middle of the stage, in my cardboard bed. Quickly, I got into it, flipped away the magic charge from my fingers, grabbed my prop book, and lay back against my prop pillow . . . shaking all over with stage fright.

  The auditorium lights started to dim down to blackness and the audience quieted so that there was soon absolute silence. I turned my eyes down to look like I was reading and then I could hear the curtains sliding open.

  BAM!!! The stage lights went up.

  Have you ever felt as if your brain has just seized up on you? You’d like to be able to think and you know there’s something you really need to be thinking about but nothing happens up there in the old noggin at all?

  Nothing at all.

  That’s what was happening to me just then. I couldn’t remember one thing that I was supposed to say. It was as if there had been a paralysis spell cast right on my brain. No words came into my head. One second went by, then two, then three, and the play didn’t start because I was the one who was supposed to start it, with my first line.

  What was that line?? Oh no! What was it?? What was it??!! Four seconds, then five . . . and then a little flurry of tiny, silvery sparkles fluttered up from somewhere around the fourth row of the audience. They were so small that if anyone in the crowd had noticed them, they would have just thought they were dust specks sparkling in the lights. I knew what they were though, and that they were coming from my aunt Sophie to save me. I took a deep breath, my fear broke, the lines came back to me, and I started the play.

  “Why?” I asked, snapping my prop book closed the way I was supposed to. “Why would someone write a book about a boy who can fly? Boys can’t fly.”

  From that moment on, I started to have so much fun, I couldn’t imagine what I had ever been afraid of. After I delivered my line and pretended to fall asleep, Caetano came swooping in through the fake window in his Peter Pan costume and I gave such a startled reaction that people laughed out loud. In fact, as I went on playing my part, people laughed in all the places they were supposed to laugh. Do you have any idea how great that feels? Then they got very quiet during my sad song. For the caterpillar scene, they laughed so hard that Calvin and Dennis and I had to wait for all the noise to die down before we could deliver our next lines.

  There was one bad moment when Aunt Sophie’s cell phone went off and everyone’s attention turned to it, but she zapped it away immediately and did another quick forgetting spell so it wasn’t even noticeable to anyone but me and my family.

  And okay, yes, I did trip very slightly during one extremely complicated step in my dance, but I was having so much fun that I actually turned it into another laugh for the audience.

  Time never flew so fast as it did during that one hour that we were on the stage. You’d have sworn somebody had put an accelerator spell on it. When it was over, every single person who had performed was smiling as wide as the Cheshire cat himself.

  When the play ended, Caetano, Calvin, Dennis, and I were the last to take our bows and then we all pounded each other on the back and told each other how good we were. Finally, all the bowing and back pounding was over, and Principal Oh gave Miss Overton a bouquet of flowers and Miss Overton made a big swooping curtsey and the house lights came up so the audience could see to leave.

  You want to know something funny? The truth is, even though it was so ironic to be playing a girl who didn’t believe in magic, I felt as if I actually did learn the same thing that my character learned during the play. For the first time, I realized that there are all kinds of magic in the world. And that’s with or without witchcraft.

  I went racing down from the stage to everyone who was waiting, and the first thing I did was throw myself into Aunt Sophie’s arms and whisper, “Thank you.”

  She pulled me back so she could look right into my eyes and she said, “Abbie. There’s nothing to thank me for. You started your lines before my spell had a chance to reach you. You know that, don’t you?”

  And I realized she was right. Not one of those little silvery sparkles had landed on me before my brain finally started to work and that first “Why?” came out of me.

  Knowing that made me feel better than ever, and when Aunt Sophie hugged me to her and whispered, “You, my love, are a born actress,” well, there really wasn’t any way in this world for life to be any better.

  Callie ran up and hugged
me and Munch gave me a very affectionate punch in the arm and Mom and Dad threw their arms around me. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with two actresses in the family,” sighed my dad with a big grin on his face.

  Then Tom, who’d been standing to the side, looking sort of sad and wistful about all the family stuff, stepped over with his eyes all shiny and whispered, “You were bully, Abbie. Just bully. Crikey, I can see you playing Juliet next.” (That would be Juliet of Romeo and Juliet, in case you’re not a Shakespeare fan, and just so you know, that’s a pretty big compliment that Tom gave me there.)

  I hated for the night to ever end but of course it did. Later, I lay awake in my bed for hours, thinking about two things: how much I loved every second of doing that play . . . and wondering if they were ever going to locate Dr. March Hall so my poor, sad Tom could finally get home to his mom.

  CHAPTER 30

  The Posse Locates Marach Hall

  The morning after the play, the witchy posse showed up again and told Mom and Dad that they’d finally located Dr. March Hall.

  Using some special incantations that had been formulated by Dean Wilkins at Witchy U, Mrs. Drake found March Hare in 1848, which was twelve years before he had kidnapped Tom. Already, time had shifted and wavered so that Tom, who should have been a year old at that time, wasn’t even born yet.

  Mrs. Drake had zapped herself into the leafy boughs of a tree big enough to hide her, right in the small Ohio town where Tom was born. She told us she’d sensed the bad magic right away, like the powerful stench of a rotten egg.

  While Mom and Dad summoned Aunt Sophie to come keep an eye on us, Mrs. Drake turned to Tom and gave him a sweet little pat on the arm. “I promise you we’ll have you home soon, dear,” she said. She even zapped up a few chocolates for him, but she made them appear in his hands instead of his ears.