by Anna Meriano
“The third-born daughters have the power of communication. They can speak with the dead—that was Abuela, and Tía Paloma, and Alma and Belén both. Twins share a spot, I guess.” Marisol flipped her suddenly empty hands over and tapped her fingers against the shoebox. “First-borns like Isabel get the freakiest power: influence.”
Leo didn’t think anything could be freakier than speaking to the dead, but she listened anyway.
“They make . . . suggestions. They can change a person’s feelings, make you happy or sad for no reason. If Isabel ever tries to use it on you, you might not even realize it. In fact, she probably already has.”
Leo shrank away. She didn’t like the angry look in Marisol’s eyes or the thought of someone manipulating her feelings. But she took a breath, thinking about how Isabel could always calm Alma and Belén’s bickering matches and could sometimes even get Marisol to cheer up. Isabel was the family peacemaker, and that wasn’t such a freaky talent.
“What about me? What talent do fourth-borns have?”
“Well . . .” Marisol made a hair tie appear on her wrist and then pulled her loose waves into a bun. “We don’t really know. Each generation as far back as we can remember has had only three daughters. Nobody had ever had twins, but Alma and Belén answered the question of what happens in that situation. But you—you’re the real mystery.”
“There have only ever been three daughters?” Leo knew Mamá had two sisters (though Tía Isabel had passed away when she was young). She knew Abuela had had two sisters, both much older and gone long before Leo was alive.
Marisol nodded. “For hundreds of years. If you ever get a chance, check out the genealogy in the recipe book.”
Leo bit her lip. Hundreds of years, no fourth-born daughter until her. Talk about being the odd one out. “But I can do magic,” she whispered firmly. Just because her birth talent was a mystery didn’t mean she couldn’t figure it out. Maybe it would be cooler than her sisters’ powers. “I can.”
Marisol made an ugly noise in her throat, and Leo felt embarrassed again.
“Sorry,” Marisol said again. “For a bruja, I just don’t like magic very much.” Marisol turned to stare out the window so her back faced Leo. “Sure, I use it to make nail polish and little things—that’s just natural, I hardly even notice that I’m doing it anymore. But I don’t like using energy without knowing where it comes from. I don’t like the way Isabel always wants to use magic to fix everything. I don’t like the . . . big spells. They can have terrible consequences. And if I were you, cucaracha, I wouldn’t mess with any of this until I absolutely had to.” Marisol turned around, sat on the edge of the bed, and patted Leo’s shoulder.
Leo wasn’t used to comforting gestures from Marisol. She wasn’t used to Marisol talking to her in anything but sighs and eye rolls, at least for the past few years. If this conversation didn’t count as magic, Leo didn’t know what did.
“But if you’re going to practice spells, take some advice, cucaracha.” Marisol pulled her arm away and looked Leo straight in the eyes. “Follow the recipe. These little guys aren’t usually so hyper, but when you use a premade mix like this, you can’t really control how they’ll come out. And the more complicated the spell, the more one tiny experiment can mess things up, big-time.”
Leo stared. She couldn’t imagine not wanting to know everything there was to know about magic. “But Isabel said that people make up new spells. She made one.”
Marisol scowled. “Isabel shouldn’t have told you that. She shouldn’t have told you any of this. I’m supposed to be the one who rebels. Look, I don’t want to be a snitch and get Mamá involved, so how about this? Don’t let me catch you casting any more spells, and I’ll think about keeping this between us.”
Leo looked straight into Marisol’s angry, scary eyes. “Okay,” she lied, thinking about the spell book hidden under her feet. “No more magic.”
“Good.” Marisol stood up and picked up the shoe box. “And just in case you’re still tempted . . .” She balanced the shoe box on top of the Easy-Bake Oven and carried them both out into the hall. “Now, go to sleep, cucaracha. No more poking around.”
Leo turned out her light, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers up over her ears. She did not poke around anymore. She did not cast any more spells. But between everything Marisol and Isabel had told her, Leo had a lot to think about, and she stayed awake late into the night. She had no intention of forgetting all about magic for the next three years.
She’d just need to be quieter about it next time.
CHAPTER 10
ROLES DE CANELA
“Leo.”
A soft hand shook Leo’s shoulder and Mamá whispered again, “Hey, I want to talk, ’jita.”
Leo bolted up in bed, a sleep-muddled confession bursting out of her mouth. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t . . . what?”
“Shh.” Mamá laughed. “Calm down, sweetie. I just wanted to talk about yesterday.”
Leo reached up to rub sleep from her eyes and left her hands up covering her face. Mamá knew. Maybe Marisol had gone back to her usual mean self and tattled, or maybe Señor Gato really had spied, or maybe Mamá had just used the magic of being a mom. In a very small voice, Leo said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Leo. Daddy and I know you didn’t mean to knock into the table.”
Leo pulled her hands away from her eyes. Mamá was talking about the festival. She didn’t know anything about the magic. Leo took a breath to calm her racing heart.
“I know you feel frustrated sometimes,” Mamá said. “It’s hard to be little and have so many older sisters. Your tía Paloma used to feel the same way. But you’re worrying me, ’jita. Being rude and sulking around. So why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”
Leo hesitated. She thought that learning about the family magic would take away all her frustration, but even though she knew the secret now, her stomach still bunched up when she thought back to yesterday. “Nobody lets me do anything.” A pout crept into her voice. “You never let me help.”
Mamá hugged Leo around the shoulders. “We have a lot of helping hands in this family. I’m lucky to have so many wonderful daughters.”
“But you didn’t need so many,” Leo said, thinking about generations of three daughters. But of course she couldn’t tell Mamá that.
“Leonora Elena Logroño! Where did you get such a dead-wrong idea from?” Mamá jumped off the bed. “Get up. We have to do something about this.”
“About what?” Leo asked. She swung her feet to the floor and checked her alarm clock. It was 5:45 a.m., a late morning for the owner of a bakery who was used to starting the day well before sunrise, but early for a sixth grader who had stayed up past midnight casting cookie spells. Leo yawned until her eyes watered and brushed wild hair out of her face.
Mamá rolled up the sleeves of her checkered pajama shirt. “Brush your teeth and meet me in the kitchen,” she said. “We’re making breakfast.”
When Leo got to the kitchen, Mamá had shuffled clutter to leave the whole counter clear except for a silver mixing bowl and her box of index-card recipes. “What do you think, Leo?” she asked. “Crepes? Orejas? Tamales? Anything but pan de muerto—I’ve made more than enough of that in the past few days.”
Leo perched on one of the tall kitchen stools and thought hard. She couldn’t remember the last time she had gotten to decide the menu for a Sunday-morning breakfast. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Mamá had been by themselves in the kitchen, without Isabel taking over most of the work or Marisol taking over most of the attention.
“Can we make cinnamon rolls?”
“Of course.” Mamá reached for her box of recipes. “I have one in here with cinnamon and nutmeg, and it’s wonderful. . . . Here we go.” She held up a card that read Roles de canela.
Leo smiled. She recognized that flourished handwriting from the recipe book. Apparently Mamá’s family didn’t pass down only magical recipes.
Leo hopped off her stool and stood on her tiptoes to reach the spice rack above the stove. “Cinnamon and nutmeg. What else?”
Mamá read the rest of the ingredients and Leo collected them on the counter—flour, sugar, salt, milk, butter, eggs, yeast. The ingredients stood in front of the electric mixer, ready to create a sweet breakfast. Leo’s smile felt too big for her face.
“You know, Leo.” Mamá measured flour in the biggest measuring cup and held out the next-biggest for Leo to measure sugar. “I’m glad that you were honest about your feelings. Sometimes Daddy and I get busy, but we love you very much.”
Leo stopped scraping the top of her measuring cup flat. A familiar bad feeling bubbled up in her stomach. She hadn’t been honest with Mamá at all. She had sneaked and snooped and stolen and lied. She handed Mamá the sugar to pour into the bowl. She didn’t want her guilty conscience to sour the sweetness of the dough.
“Of course, I don’t think that whining and stomping is a very mature way to get attention when you need it.”
“I know.” Leo stared at the beige linoleum floor tiles, suddenly wishing that the kitchen wasn’t quite so empty.
Mamá patted Leo’s hair. “I guess we’ll have to find better ways to tell each other how we feel.”
Leo nodded. The guilt in her stomach bubbled harder. “Mamá . . . ?”
“Yes, Leo?”
“I was wondering if you could teach me . . . I saw something that . . . Can you tell me . . .” Leo tried hard to get the words out of her mouth, but they stuck like cupcakes to an ungreased tin.
“What?” Mamá put down the milk carton and faced Leo with concerned eyes, which just made Leo feel worse.
“Can you show me . . .” Leo’s courage failed. “Um, how to break an egg one-handed?”
“Of course.” Mamá laughed. She grabbed one of the eggs from the counter and whacked it expertly against the edge of the mixing bowl, dumping out the insides in one fluid shake. “But it’s more about practice than teaching. Go ahead, try one. You’ll have to work at that if you’re going to be a baker.”
Leo picked up an egg and tapped it against the bowl, so lightly at first that it didn’t even crack. Mamá was right. She was going to be a baker like the rest of her family, and she was going to be a witch. A bruja, Isabel had said. She had to practice as much as possible.
Mamá watched Leo crack the rest of the eggs, and then showed her how to add flour to the batter slowly until it was real dough—springy and sticky and sweet. After they kneaded and set it aside to rise, Mamá made two mugs of hot cocoa with big puffs of whipped cream and cinnamon sprinkled on top, which they drank while preparing the second half of the recipe, the filling. Leo decided at the last minute to add a box of raisins to the cinnamon syrup, and she and Mamá stretched their dough out flat and covered it in filling before rolling the whole thing up into a swirly, gooey, spicy-smelling tube. Slicing the roll reminded Leo of how people sliced up store-bought cookie-dough tubes, except that no frozen dough could match the richness of the homemade rolls.
Leo didn’t even mind that Isabel woke up in time to take over the glaze, because nobody could make sugar frosting like Isabel. By 7:45, the smell of the cooling rolls drew Daddy, Marisol, Alma, and Belén from their beds. Daddy burned his tongue being impatient and then made a show out of wincing with every bite of his next two pastries. Alma and Belén ripped one roll into small pieces and left it on a plate in the middle of the table. They offered no explanation for the extra plate, but Leo didn’t have to ask what they were doing. She recognized an offering to the dead when she saw one, even without the Day of the Dead altar. Was Abuela enjoying the cinnamon rolls too? Leo smiled at the thought.
“What got you up so early, cucara—Leo?” Marisol switched nicknames when Mamá gave her a sharp look. “I thought you stayed up . . . reading . . . last night.”
“I asked her to help,” Mamá answered while Leo turned red and stared at the floor. “It’s time she got some baking experience under her belt. Besides, she was feeling a little left out.”
“Not too left out, I hope.” Isabel drizzled sugary white frosting into a snowflake shape on her cinnamon roll and winked at Leo.
“Well, nobody is left out today.” Daddy put his arm around Alma on his right and Leo on his left. “Today we celebrate a successful weekend, a bakery that actually earns money—”
“Enough money for a new house?” Mamá asked.
Daddy winked at Leo. “We also celebrate our beautiful house that shelters our family while we build up our savings—”
Mamá laughed and shook her head.
“—and a happy Día de los Muertos!”
Marisol rolled her eyes, Isabel laughed, and Mamá reminded everyone that they had Mass in a few hours and plenty of work waiting for them in the bakery on Monday. They all had sticky smiles on their faces. Leo licked cinnamon sugar off her fingers and smiled too, but her thoughts kept wandering to the recipe book under her bed. She didn’t know what was worse, the guilty feeling of a secret or the impatience of wanting to try her next spell.
CHAPTER 11
CAROLINE’S NOTE
Before she went to bed on Sunday night, Leo climbed up on the desk part of her bookshelves and searched the highest corner, where Daddy’s books from business school were lined up. She found a book on the top shelf that was thick and tall and had a dark red cover. It wasn’t leather, but Leo thought it would fool a casual glance. She put the business book, the spell book, and the Spanish-English dictionary all in the inside pocket of her backpack, cramming it almost too full to carry. She would replace the empty space in the bakery office with the decoy business book as soon as possible, and keep using the recipe book to practice magic and baking. Leo packed the rest of her school things into the stuffed backpack, pleased with her plan, and went to bed.
Monday morning was hectic. Mamá left early to open the bakery, Isabel slept through her alarm, and Marisol held everyone up with an outfit emergency. Leo barely caught the school bus on time.
The bus clattered along its familiar path, and Leo reviewed her plan for the week. She would read the spell book at school, where none of her family could catch her, and translate the recipes into English in her notebook so she could try them out whenever she wanted. Leo wasn’t worried about getting caught with the book at school. Ms. Wood didn’t speak Spanish. She only had to worry about keeping the secret from Caroline, and that was going to be tricky.
The bus stopped at the last pickup spot. Leo looked up and spotted Brent first, then a sullen Caroline.
“Um . . . hi.” Caroline slipped into the seat with Leo without glancing at Brent, who sat down at the front of the bus. She slumped into the cushion and buried her face in her hands.
“What’s wrong?” Leo asked.
“I did something bad.” Caroline groaned.
“What do you mean?”
“I did something weird and now Brent’s not talking to me.”
Leo raised her eyebrows. She couldn’t imagine anything Caroline could do that would shut Brent up. “What happened?”
Caroline sniffed and dropped her hands. “It’s really nothing,” she whispered, spinning her green-and-white beaded bracelet around her wrist. “It’s not a big deal.”
Leo stayed very still and quiet, a classic Mamá technique to get people talking.
“It’s just . . . ,” Caroline said after a moment. “He didn’t have to be so mean about it. I thought he was my friend.” She buried her head in her hands and sniffed loudly.
“It’s okay,” Leo said. “Just tell me.”
Caroline fished in the pocket of her jean overalls to pull out a crumpled piece of paper, as well as a tissue into which she blew her nose. Leo took the note (careful to avoid touching Caroline’s snotty tissue), unfolded it, and read:
Dear Brent,
This maybe seems weird, but I was just thinking that I am really glad we’re friends. Today is supposed to be for celebrating the dead, but I also wan
ted to celebrate the living and tell you that I appreciate you. Thanks for always knowing how to cheer me up.
Love,
Caroline
Someone (not Caroline) had underlined the word “love” three times with a smudged pencil, and the same pencil scrawled a response underneath the note:
ROSES R RED
VIOLETS R BLUE
GIRLS SMELL LIKE FARTS
ESPECIALLY YOU
“I was going to write one for you too,” Caroline said. “I didn’t mean I loved him. I just meant . . .”
Leo couldn’t believe it, even though the note was right in front of her face. Brent might be a gross boy, but he wasn’t mean, not that Leo had ever seen. “This isn’t right.” She looked at the note again. “He couldn’t have written this.”
“I know.” Caroline sniffed. “It isn’t his handwriting. I think it must be one of the boys he plays soccer with. Randall O’Connor or someone.”
“Well . . . that’s good, right?” Leo asked. “If he didn’t write it, then there’s nothing to be sad about.”
Caroline shook her head, her hands rising to cover her face again. “I saw them put it in my mailbox yesterday, Leo. A bunch of the boys. Brent was there too. That means he showed it to them. He let them write it. He knew.” Tears leaked down her red face, and her hunched shoulders shook. “I’m so embarrassed.”
Leo crumpled the note in her fist and threw it out the window. “Brent Bayman.” Each syllable of his name dripped with as much hate as she could inject into her voice. “Is a big jerkface with no personality and . . . and . . . ugly teeth!”
Caroline peeked out from between her fingertips. “His teeth are okay,” she said quietly. “I mean, his braces are going to fix the gap.”
He was supposed to be Caroline’s friend. It made Leo’s stomach churn like an electric mixer. It made her want to scream.
