A Dash of Trouble

by Anna Meriano

  Caroline wiped her nose with her soggy tissue. “It was my fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have written a note like that. What was I thinking?”

  “Caroline,” Leo said, “it is not your fault. You did a nice thing, and you were honest about your feelings, which is a very adult thing to do. You are awesome.”

  “Thanks,” Caroline said into her lap.

  Leo pulled her backpack up from the floor and hugged it to her chest. She could feel the magic recipe book inside. The beginning of an idea formed in her mind. “And don’t worry about Brent. . . . I’m sure he’ll apologize. Maybe it was an accident, or a misunderstanding.”

  “Maybe.” Caroline shrugged and brushed her bangs out of her red eyes. “Thanks, Leo.”

  Caroline wasn’t her normal self during the daily math warm-up, mixing up parallelograms and quadrilaterals. She didn’t raise her hand during language arts at all, even though Ms. Wood kept looking at her expectantly. Leo planned to sit with Caroline in the cafeteria and try to cheer her up, but Caroline was nowhere to be found.

  Leo searched each row of gray plastic tables, double-checked the hot-lunch line, and even poked her head out into the hall without a hall pass, but in the end she was forced to sit down at her normal spot at the very end of her usual lunch table. From her seat she could smile at Tricia Morales and Mai Nguyen, but as usual she was left out of the conversations at the center of the table.

  Today, Leo didn’t even try to pay attention to the laughter about whatever had happened on TV this past weekend. She was so busy checking the cafeteria doors for signs of Caroline or peeking at the spell book in her lap that she hardly even managed three bites of her sandwich, even though the long bolillo bread was fresh and fluffy. She did notice Brent sitting right in the middle of a group of boys, instead of hanging on the edge like normal.

  “Looks like Brent finally stopped hanging out with Caroline.”

  Leo would recognize that nasal voice anywhere. Emily Eccles. Leo’s classmate leaned crookedly over the middle of the table so everyone could see and hear her.

  “Brent is cool, and Caroline . . . well . . .” Emily shrugged and flipped her curly red-blond hair. Morgan Wolfe and Taylor Rowe giggled behind their hands, nodding in agreement.

  Leo clenched her fists under the table. She wished her magic powers included conjuring lightning bolts or scalding water. Across from her, Tricia shook her head, slicked-back curls bouncing, and Mai gave a sympathetic smile before the two girls turned back to their own conversation.

  “Caroline is nice,” María Villarreal said. The laughing stopped and the nods froze in place around her. It was the same power that had gotten her elected class president: when María talked, people listened.

  “Oh, I know.” Emily Eccles backtracked when she saw she was losing her audience. “She’s just always been so shy. I think Brent was mostly hanging out with her to be nice, since they grew up next door to each other.” A few of the other girls nodded hesitantly, but María just shrugged.

  Leo took an angry bite of her ham sandwich, flipping through the pages of the spell book, hoping to find a way to turn Emily Eccles’s curls into snakes and worms and creepy-crawly things. Emily Eccles didn’t know anything about Brent or Caroline. She didn’t know about Brent cheering up Caroline with his silly experiments, or Caroline breaking off her pan dulce for Brent, or the two of them excitedly explaining the square footage and layout of their tree-house fort.

  Leo stared at the sixth-grade boys at the other table and watched Brent laugh at something Chris Robbilard had said. Emily Eccles didn’t know what she was talking about. Brent might be friends with some of the worst boys in the sixth grade, but he wasn’t mean like them . . . was he?

  When the cafeteria started to empty about ten minutes before the bell, Leo followed the crowd to the courtyard behind the cafeteria and looked for a quiet spot to translate the spell book. Instead, she found a quiet spot that was already occupied by a quietly crying Caroline.

  “Hey . . .” Leo edged her backpack onto the maroon wooden bench. “I was looking for you.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t want to be in the cafeteria,” Caroline said.

  Leo nodded.

  “I think everybody knows.”

  Leo didn’t want to tell her friend that she might be right. Caroline twisted the straps of her backpack and kicked at a tuft of grass growing out from a crack in the concrete. Her eyes were still red and puffy.

  Leo’s fists clenched around her spell book. She didn’t want to betray the family secret. Mamá and Isabel and Marisol would all be so disappointed if she told anyone, even Caroline. Not to mention what they’d think if they found out she was trying to work spells on her own.

  But Brent Bayman needed a magical kick in the rear. What was the point of having magic powers if you couldn’t use them to help your friend?

  “Caroline,” Leo said, her voice squeaking, “what if we could get revenge?”

  Caroline only sighed. “It’s really nice of you to be angry, but . . . I don’t want you to take it out on Brent. Please. I . . . don’t want revenge, really.”

  “But . . .” Leo frowned. “Aren’t you mad?”

  Caroline ducked behind her bangs. “I don’t want either of us to end up in trouble.”

  “But that’s just it! There’s no way anyone would know it was us.”

  “Leo.” Caroline’s sad voice took on a tiny bit of the confident tone she used when answering questions in class. “There’s no such thing as a perfect crime. People always get caught. That’s what my dad says, and he watches a lot of truTV.”

  “But,” Leo whispered, “I bet none of those people had a top secret weapon.”

  “Uh-oh.” Caroline’s smile was tiny and watery, but it was there. “Should I be worried?”

  “You shouldn’t.” Leo gave her best evil grin. The bell to signal the end of lunch rang. “Do you think it would be okay with your dad if I came over to your house after school?”

  CHAPTER 12

  VISITS AND SCHEMES

  “Yes, Daddy can pick me up before dinner. Yes, Mr. Campbell will be home. Yes, I’ll call you if I need anything.” Leo hunched over and cupped a hand over her mouth. “No, I’m not being a bother,” she whispered, sure her face turned red. “No, they don’t need any scones. Well,” Leo corrected herself as Caroline waved a hand, “if you want to give Daddy some scones to bring when he picks me up, that might be okay.”

  After answering a few more questions, Leo walked slowly with Caroline toward the curb, where their bus had just pulled up. As they reached the steps of the bus, several bodies barreled past them, a group of sixth-grade boys racing each other with no regard for safety or school rules. Randall O’Connor crashed right into Caroline’s shoulder, shoving his way past her and onto the bus without an apology. Leo and Caroline glowered after him when someone else’s voice said, “Oops, our bad, I—oh . . .” Leo and Caroline turned to face Brent.

  He gulped, suddenly looking anywhere else. “Sorry.” He stared at his shoes, then looked up at Leo, who returned his quick glance with a death glare that had him ducking his eyes right back to his sneakers. “They were just . . . sorry. I . . .” His mouth hung open until Randall O’Connor called his name, waving wildly from the front row of the bus. Brent turned and fled up the bus stairs, anything he was going to say drowned in the shrieks and laughter of the other boys.

  Leo put a hand on Caroline’s backpack and led her to their seats. They rode home in silence while Leo daydreamed ways to make Brent sorry he had ever messed with Caroline.

  Caroline’s house was only five minutes from school, and Leo was happy to get off the bus almost twenty minutes earlier than she normally did. She and Caroline worked hard to ignore Brent as he walked behind them for a block and a half, until they turned up Caroline’s driveway while Brent continued to his house next door.

  Caroline’s house was made of red brick, newer than most of the other houses on the block, and it had two big blooming oleander
bushes, one on either side of the front door. If there had been a second story, it would have been Mamá’s dream house.

  Leo followed Caroline through the back door and stopped.

  “It’s sort of messy.” Caroline flipped on the kitchen light instead of opening any of the window blinds. Leo nodded and stepped around a pile of cardboard boxes sitting in the middle of the floor where the old green table normally stood. Plastic bags and Styrofoam cups from fast-food restaurants covered the counters, but Leo didn’t see any pots or pans, any spatulas or knives, any spices or salt shakers.

  “Dad’s been doing some remodeling and changing the furniture,” she said, “and we left some things in Houston.”

  For a second, Leo felt something prickle at the back of her throat and behind her eyes. She imagined Mamá stepping into this sad kitchen, tearing down the blinds, and rolling up her sleeves to fill it with the smell of flour and cinnamon, replacing to-go containers with pots and pans hanging from the ceiling, swapping plastic-wrapped sporks with an old cookie jar stuffed with wooden spoons, whisks, and ladles. Mamá could set everything right.

  A door slammed from somewhere in the house and a voice called out, “Caro-lion, is that you?” Caroline’s dad clomped into the kitchen, wearing a smile brighter than the ceiling lamps. “You’re home!” He wrapped Caroline up in a bear hug and lifted her feet off the ground. “Love you, sweetie. How was your day?”

  “Da-ad.” Caroline swung her feet until she was set back down to stand on them. Her embarrassed grimace didn’t completely hide her smile. “I brought Leo home, so you have to act normal, okay?”

  Leo looked up—way up—at Mr. Campbell. “Hi, Mr. Campbell.” She waved. “Is it okay that Caroline invited me over?” She smiled too, and the kitchen didn’t seem like such a tragedy now that it was full of smiling faces.

  “Of course! Happy to have you.” Mr. Campbell held out a huge hand for Leo to shake. Caroline got her height from him, and her blond hair and big hazel eyes. “It’s been too long.” He smiled. “And how was your Monday, Caroline? Any news?” He smiled at Caroline, whose face fell almost immediately.

  “No, Dad, nothing,” she said in a voice that begged not to be asked anything else.

  “Nothing?” he asked, eyebrows scrunching to match Caroline’s frown.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I . . . I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Oh.” Mr. Campbell hesitated, then patted Caroline’s shoulder. “Well, things will look up, I’m sure. What are you two up to this afternoon?”

  “We’re not up to anything,” Caroline answered too quickly. “Just doing stuff. For class. Homework things.”

  Mr. Campbell looked from his daughter to Leo and raised an eyebrow. “All right. Have fun. And please don’t burn the house down with any of your . . . homework things.”

  Leo giggled, remembering the time they had tried to roast mini marshmallows over matches in Caroline’s backyard. She followed Caroline out of the kitchen and into the hall, but not before she saw Mr. Campbell open the refrigerator to reveal an assortment of to-go containers, tapioca pudding cups, and a bag of preboiled, prepeeled eggs.

  The hallway was too quiet. Would Caroline’s home ever feel right again without her mom? Maybe it took more time to fill up a house with new memories. Maybe in a few years, the kitchen and hallway wouldn’t feel even the tiniest bit sad anymore. Leo hoped not, anyway.

  “I moved my bedroom,” Caroline explained when Leo turned the wrong way down the hall. She led Leo to the right and down the hallway to the old guest room, which now had a bright-pink butterfly painted right on the door. “My dad has gotten into art,” Caroline said with a shrug, and then she opened her door and waved Leo into her room.

  It was bright, and messy, with pale-pink walls and a creamy yellow ceiling. The white lacy bed looked like a perfectly frosted tres leches cake. Caroline’s walls held real paintings that had the same rounded shapes and bright colors as the butterfly on the door. On her bedside table stood a picture of her dad with a huge smile and huger glasses, standing next to her mom with a hospital gown and a tiny pink baby in her arms. Leo couldn’t help staring at how much Mr. Campbell’s face had changed in eleven years.

  “So . . . do you like it?” Caroline asked.

  “Yeah, of course!” Leo said. The only thing she hated more than feeling sad was having other people feel sad for her, and she didn’t want Caroline to know how sad Leo felt for the small Campbell family in the picture. Leo let herself stare at the picture for three seconds. One for Mr. Campbell, whose smile had no lines of worry; two for tiny baby Caroline, who was sound asleep and smiling; and three for Mrs. Campbell. Then she turned and looked at real-life Caroline and refused to let any sadness into her voice. “It looks great.”

  “So, what’s your plan?” Caroline asked. “You said you had a secret weapon.”

  “Yes, I did.” Leo took a deep breath. It wasn’t so bad to reveal the secret, she tried to convince herself. After all, some people in town had to know already, so they could call and order special spells. So telling Caroline was really just finding new customers, which Mamá had to approve of . . . right? Besides, Caroline could keep a secret. That’s what friends did.

  “Caroline,” Leo said, leaning close to her friend and using her most serious and important announcement voice. “There’s something you need to know about my family. We don’t just bake. We also . . . do magic.”

  “Huh?” Caroline asked.

  “Uh . . . magic,” Leo repeated. “My family does magic. We’re witches. Or, um, brujas.”

  “Oh.” Caroline tilted her head. “Okay. You mean that religious thing? My aunt lights candles for us, and she gave my mom oils and stuff to help with the chemo sickness.” Caroline shrugged. “It’s nice.”

  Leo hadn’t expected a shrug.

  “I’m not talking about that.” She frowned. She knew about veladoras—friends and relatives from both sides of her family always had several of the tall glass candles burning somewhere in their houses. Those were good for prayers, but they weren’t a secret. They also didn’t short-circuit lightbulbs or make ghosts talk. “It’s not like—well, we do use candles, but . . . it’s baking, and it’s different, and it’s awesome and . . .” Leo stopped waving her hands and took a breath. “And I can show you.”

  Leo took a seat at the edge of the bed and pulled her backpack off her shoulders and onto her lap. She carefully unzipped the inside pocket of her backpack and pulled the spell book out. She spread it open on the bed between them, the title page releasing the familiar smell of flour and old paper. A crackly thunderstorm feeling settled into the room. The curtains stopped fluttering. Everything went quiet.

  “Wow,” Caroline whispered. “What is that?”

  That was the reaction Leo had been looking for. “It’s a spell book,” she whispered back. “It’s really old, and it has all the magic recipes invented by my great-great-grandma and lots of people in my family, all the way down to my sisters. Our own special magic. Recipes of Love, Sugar—”

  “—and Magic.” Caroline clapped her hands. “Can I touch it?”

  “Sure.” Leo leaned back and let Caroline flip through the yellowed pages. “Just be very careful,” she couldn’t resist adding. She liked having something special that other people had to be careful with. It made her feel special too.

  “This isn’t exactly proof.” Caroline paused to inspect a page with her eyebrows drawn together. “But it’s really cool, Leo. Is it true?”

  Leo searched her brain for a way to get Caroline to believe her. “Do you have any flour?”

  “Um . . .” Caroline glanced toward the hallway, and Leo remembered the empty kitchen. “I don’t think so.”

  “Sugar?” Leo asked. Caroline shook her head. “Or maybe bread?” According to Isabel, the snowflake spell was easy to modify, and Leo had already succeeded in making cookies fly without the proper recipe.

  “We ran out this morning. I think there’s leftover crusts in my
lunch box.” Caroline pulled the soft purple bag onto the bed and fished out the edges of a sandwich made on store-bought white bread.

  Leo frowned. As ingredients went, dried up and factory made didn’t sound promising. But crumbs could work, maybe. They sort of looked like snow.

  “Okay.” She crumbled the crust into smaller and smaller pieces in her palm. “This . . . should work. Um . . . prepare to be amazed.” She closed her eyes, grasped at the feeling of snow and magic that had carried her flour snowflakes, and blew on her hand. The crumbs flew up into the air and then down onto Caroline’s bed, exactly how crumbs would without any magic whatsoever.

  “Um.” Caroline frowned and brushed the crumbs into a pile. “Was that supposed to . . . ?”

  Leo’s face heated. “Wait, wait. One more time.” She gathered up the crumbs, cheeks burning under Caroline’s confused stare. Come on. She glared at the crusts in her hand, concentrating on the spark she had felt with Isabel, the feeling of magic lighting up her breath. This time, she imagined a winter blizzard, the biggest snowstorm anyone had ever seen. Her body tingled as she blew on her palm again.

  The crumbs shot into the air. Caroline, who had been leaning closer with her eyebrows scrunched skeptically together, toppled backward as the clumps of dried bread exploded like fireworks in bright red and yellow pops of spicy-scented magic. A sticky warm hail pelted the bed, the floor, and the girls. Leo clapped her free hand over her mouth to cover her squeak.

  “Oh my . . .” Caroline gulped and wiped her face.

  “I’m sor—”

  “Leo, this is amazing!”

  “It is?” Leo closed her hanging mouth and swallowed. No need to explain what the spell should have done. The important thing was that Caroline had her proof. She smiled. “I told you so.”

  Caroline reached for the spell book, touching the pages carefully now, as though they might explode at any moment. “Well,” she said after a few tense breaths, “what were you thinking, exactly?”

  “I was thinking,” Leo said while Caroline continued to flip through the pages, “there’s a recipe to grow hair in here. . . . I bet we could try doing it backward to make all of Brent’s hair fall out.” That would mean more experimenting, though, and her pulse was still racing from the accidental explosion. “Or we could look for other recipes that do bad things. There must be some good curses in here—”