A Dash of Trouble

by Anna Meriano

  But she could guess. Irresponsible, Mamá was probably thinking. Reckless and sneaky and disrespectful. Leo shrank into her seat.

  A million years later, they pulled up to the bakery. Leo climbed out of the car, backpack over her shoulders, and followed Mamá through the back door and into the bakery kitchen.

  Everything was dark and cold and quiet. Mamá flipped the office light and nodded for Leo to sit in Daddy’s chair. Leo squinted at the clock on the wall (she’d never mastered reading the nondigital kind) and worked out that it was already 10:25, way past the time Mamá went to bed, since she would have to be back here at 4:30 in the morning to open the shop. The realization that her mischief would keep Mamá from sleep was the very last bit of guilt Leo could handle. Tears prickled the back of her throat and started to leak into her eyes. She sniffed.

  “What’s wrong?” Mamá sat in her own chair across from Leo. “’Jita? What’s the matter?”

  “It’s late,” Leo whispered, since it would come out like sobs if she used her voice. Her chin wobbled and her nose scrunched and her eyes filled slowly with water, but she refused to cry.

  “Leo,” Mamá said.

  Leo looked up and felt one uncooperative drop spill over the edge of her eyelash.

  “Sweetie, what were you thinking?”

  At first Leo thought this was the beginning of Mamá’s lecture, but after another long silence, she realized that she really wanted an answer.

  “I was trying to fix things.” Leo brushed away the tear, even though she was sure Mamá had already seen it. She wanted to explain herself without tears. “I was trying to fix the shrinking that happened because I was trying to fix the love spell that happened because I was trying to fix things for Caroline.” Mamá looked confused, but she didn’t ask for more explanation, and Leo was tired of telling the story over and over anyway. “I found out that we have magic, and what’s the point of having magic if you can’t use it to fix things?”

  Mamá didn’t give an answer. “Do you have everything you stole?” She pointed to Leo’s backpack under the chair. “Take it all out, please.”

  “I didn’t steal it all on purpose. I was just trying to get the spiderwebs, but it all came off the shelf together.” Leo pulled out the strange items and spread them across the floor.

  “There it is.” Mamá reached for the object wrapped in dark silk. Leo had cut a corner off the silk, but the bundle remained intact. “This is important, ’jita. You shouldn’t have taken it. You shouldn’t take anything without permission, especially magic things.”

  “I know.” Leo sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “I hope you are, because we’re not going to keep any more secrets from each other, either of us. Agreed?”

  Leo blinked. It almost sounded like Mamá felt bad too. “Agreed,” she said.

  Mamá nodded and started unwinding the silk. “I’m upset that you didn’t come to me, Leo, when you first had questions about magic. I’m upset that you relied on stolen books and guesses even when the first spell went wrong. And I’m so sad that when you got into real trouble, you tried to hide it from me.”

  Leo sank into the cushion of Daddy’s chair, tapping her fingers and trying not to cry more. She had known all along that she was being bad and sneaky, but she kept doing it anyway, which was the worst kind of bad and sneaky.

  “But mostly I’m upset because I know where you learned to be so secretive. I’m sorry for keeping things from you.” Mamá pulled away the last layer of silk and exposed a small chunk of chalky white rock, about the size of a jagged marshmallow. “Now hold out your hand. I want to test something.”

  Leo held out her hand automatically, stunned by Mamá’s apology. Without ever touching the rock herself, Mamá lifted the silk and tilted it into Leo’s palm. The overhead lights flicked off, their glow replaced by a bright white glow coming out of Leo’s hand. The rock hummed, shooting out light in flickering bursts.

  “What is it?”

  “That crystal belonged to your great-great-grandmother. It measures the strength of a person’s magic. And that light means you have a lot more magic than most fifteen-year-olds when they begin their training.”

  Leo fought the urge to move the stone so she could itch her palm. “Why?”

  “Well”—Mamá shook her head slowly—“I don’t really know, ’jita. It might be because of all the illicit practicing you’ve been up to. It might be because you’re mature for your age, or because your Mamá is such a powerful and talented bruja that she rubbed off on you.” Mamá winked. “Or it might be because, ever since you were born, you’ve always been determined to keep up with your sisters, no matter what.”

  Leo smiled at the light in her palm. Its glow reminded her of a candle, flickering slightly and giving off wisps of the cinnamon magic smell. “So if I have all this magic, what do I do with it? What . . .” She thought about Isabel’s and Marisol’s argument, about Abuela’s advice. “What does it mean to be a witch?”

  “A bruja,” Mamá corrected. “A witch can be anyone. A bruja is us. And what does it mean to be a bruja?” Mamá smiled. “That’s like asking what it means to be a Texan, or a girl, or curly haired. It doesn’t mean anything by itself. It’s part of you. Then you decide what it means.”

  Leo nodded, even though she didn’t quite understand. “So what do I do now?”

  “You have to be trained. As soon as possible. I’ll start scheduling you for shifts here at the bakery like your sisters, so you can have lessons. That includes lessons on how to run the cash register, help with inventory, boring stuff like that, as well as the spells, okay? If you’re here, you have to carry your weight.”

  Leo nodded, but something deep in her stomach flickered in time with the glowing crystal. Something felt not right about this. Too easy.

  “That’s it?” she demanded.

  “What’s it?”

  “I get to take magic lessons and I’m not in any trouble at all?”

  Mamá hesitated. “I’m not happy about what you did, Leo, and I really wish you had trusted me enough to talk to me. But . . . well, I understand, sort of. You’re growing up, figuring things out. When I was your age—”

  “Mamá! I am not a little kid,” Leo groaned. “If Marisol or Isabel stole things from the bakery, you would yell at them, or ground them.” Leo dropped the crystal into its silk wrapping and blinked as the office light came back on.

  “Do you want me to ground you?” Mamá asked with something that looked suspiciously like a smile hidden behind one hand.

  “Yes,” Leo snapped. “I shrank Brent Bayman!”

  “Okay, okay.” Mamá held up her hands in surrender. “For how long?”

  Leo thought about it. “How long would you ground Marisol if she did something like this?”

  “Hmm . . . probably a week. Do you want to be grounded for a week?”

  “One week? Alma and Belén were grounded for one week just for skipping school one day with no magic.”

  “Two weeks?”

  Leo paused. Two weeks was a long time to go without visiting Caroline’s house or watching TV. “Two weeks is fine, I guess.”

  “All right, Leonora Elena Logroño. You are hereby grounded for two weeks for sneaking and borrowing and spell casting all without permission. I’m very disappointed in you.”

  Leo frowned at Mamá. “You don’t sound very disappointed.”

  “I am. I really am. I’m just distracted by how proud I am that you cast a full reversal spell all by yourself.”

  Leo beamed. “Mamá, you’re supposed to be mad about that.”

  “Oh, I’m furious. And if you ever try to keep such a big secret again, you’ll be sorry. I’ll give you dinner that makes all your hair fall out the day before class pictures.” Leo laughed, and Mamá touched her cheek. “I’m serious, ’jita—now that you know about magic, you’re not safe from any pranks. You’ve opened the door for some very creative parenting.”

  Leo chuckled, and it felt good to let
her stomach unwind itself with a loud belly laugh. No more disasters, no more secrets. “Mamá?”

  “Mm-hm?”

  “How soon can I start learning new spells?”

  “You’ll have to be patient, because we need to initiate you. I’ll have to ask Paloma to wash the robes. . . .”

  “Mamá?”

  “Yes, Leo?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too, amorcita.” Mamá stood up, checked the clock, and yawned. “Now help me put away these stolen goods, and let’s see if we can get home before midnight.”

  CHAPTER 30

  BRUJA COCINERA

  It wasn’t Friday, but since Thanksgiving break started on Wednesday, the snack club had planned for their meeting to take place during this lunchtime. Leo passed around a plastic container of oatmeal-cranberry cookies that Isabel and Mamá had helped her make the night before. María Villarreal offered blob-shaped sugar cookies slathered with super-sweet pink frosting.

  The entire sixth-grade class crowded around the table to taste the cookies, and plenty of seventh and eighth graders lingered nearby in case of leftovers. Mai, who turned out to be just the organizer the club needed, reminded Tricia and Emily Eccles that they were due to bring something delicious on the Friday after break. Leo looked around the cafeteria table, grinning hugely, amazed that the club had become a success so quickly. She caught Caroline’s eye across the table and made a cross-eyed monster face. Caroline, who was busy stealing Brent’s cookies whenever he turned his head, stuck out her bright-pink tongue and giggled.

  Mamá only let Leo put a very tiny spell on the oatmeal cookies, a good-luck charm so simple that it hardly felt like real magic at all. But Leo grinned as she watched her friends and classmates eat, glad that the cookies carried a charm. She wanted everyone to have a happy, lucky holiday.

  “Leo, your club cofounder is behaving very unprofessionally,” Brent complained, reaching for another oatmeal cookie after Caroline passed his down to a waiting eighth grader. “Some of us aren’t getting a chance to snack at this snack club.”

  “Oh, hush. She’s going to give you all the leftovers at my house, anyway,” Caroline said. “You’re still coming over, Leo, right? My dad needs to ask you questions about the pumpkin pie we’re supposed to bring to my grandma’s.”

  “Yep!” Officially ungrounded now, Leo couldn’t wait to spend the crisp afternoon on Caroline’s trampoline. “But I have to leave by five. I have . . . that thing at the bakery.”

  “What thing?” Brent asked.

  “Oh, right.” Caroline winked exaggeratedly. “The thing.”

  “What right? What thing?” Brent looked nervous. “Leo! It had better not be the kind of thing I think it is. I thought you weren’t going to do that kind of thing anymore.”

  “Actually,” Leo said with a smile, “today is my official initiation ceremony into the family business. After today, I’ll really start learning the thing.”

  “You mean . . .” Brent’s groan was muffled by a mouthful of cookie.

  “That’s right.” Leo licked a dollop of pink frosting off her finger and smiled at the sweetness. “I’m just getting started.”

  “Cookie cutters!” Leo cried. “Mamá, where do we keep the cookie cutters?”

  The Saturday morning sun peeked through the bakery windows, and Leo’s time ticked away. Only one hour until the bakery opened.

  “I’ll get it, Leo.” Isabel dug through one of the cabinets while balancing a tray of unbaked bolillos. Marisol and Mamá worked in the front of the bakery, decorating the front windows with Christmas wreaths and colorful lanterns and paper stars. Tía Paloma and Isabel filled and emptied the big ovens in the back of the bakery. Alma and Belén quibbled over the perfect arrangement of goods in the display cases.

  In her own corner of counter space, Leo separated a fistful of her dough and rolled it out flat on the floured surface. She liked the weight of the dough in her hands, and the smell of flour and ginger and molasses. Leo had developed a fondness for molasses.

  The cookie cutter was solid and silvery and almost as big as Leo’s hand, and she pressed it into the rolled dough and lined the shapes on her waiting tray until it was full—a dozen perfect puerquitos, ready for baking.

  “How do they look?” Mamá peeked over the swinging blue doors to check on the back of the bakery.

  “Perfect!” Leo hoped her answer was true. She still wondered if she had added just a little too much flour, or if she had grated the hard cone of piloncillo sugar fine enough. She checked her recipe for the thousandth time, squinting at the familiar cursive on the faded index card.

  Mamá joined Leo at her workstation and kissed the top of her head. “Good work. You’re not sleepy, ’jita?”

  Even though she had woken up at four, Leo didn’t feel at all sleepy. Excitement buzzed through her. For the first time, Mamá’s bakery staff schedule included Leo’s name.

  “She’s doing a lot better than I did on my first day.” Marisol leaned against the swinging doors and yawned. “Or on any day. In fact, since she’s doing such a great job, I nominate Leo to take all my shifts from now on.”

  “Do you want me to pop those in the oven?” Isabel reached for Leo’s tray.

  “No, wait!” Leo spread her arms to protect her cookies. “I . . . um, I haven’t finished the egg glaze. I’ll do it.”

  “Mamá!” Alma called from the front of the bakery. “Tell Belén you can’t mix chocolate croissants with regular ones in the display. Everyone will get confused.”

  “No, they won’t, because the chocolate ones are covered in chocolate,” Belén snapped.

  Mamá hurried away to settle Alma and Belén, trailed by sleepy Marisol. Leo leaned over the tray and smelled the pigs. She kept her eyes shut and her head focused until the spicy scent tickled her nose. Then she added the finishing touches, brushed beaten egg over the tops of the cookies, and slipped the tray into the oven before anyone could see.

  “Have you finished memorizing the table of herbal ingredients?” Tía Paloma asked after Leo added her next two trays of puerquitos to the oven line. “I can give you a quick quiz.”

  “No boring stuff on her first day.” Marisol appeared behind Leo and tweaked her carefully slicked-back ponytail. “Come on, Leo, I need help setting up the nativity.”

  Leo didn’t think her magic lessons were boring, but she wanted to avoid a quiz. (Ginger and cinnamon both amplified magic, Leo remembered, but was it heather or lemon verbena that strengthened protection spells?) Tía Paloma shrugged and winked, and Leo let Marisol drag her to the front window, where she unpacked the nativity figures for eleven and a half minutes until the ding of a timer signaled that her tray was done.

  “I’ll get them!” Leo leaped to her feet and almost knocked the angel off the stable roof.

  “Don’t worry, ’jita. I’ve got it,” Mamá called. “They smell wonderful.” Leo dashed into the swinging doorway just in time to see Mamá set the tray on the counter and lean over it with a smile. “These look perfect, Leo, really. Oh, um, but these ones in the back, what do they have— Oh.”

  With several tiny pops, the six winged cookies shot off the tray and sailed over Mamá’s head. Two invaded the front window, making Marisol yelp and shoo them away. Two knocked against Alma and Belén’s display case, trying to reach the pan dulce inside. One settled happily on top of the miniature Christmas tree in the corner. And one, the cookie from the very back of the pan whose thin back leg had baked a crispier dark brown than the rest of its body, hovered around Leo’s head, crumbs falling into her ponytail.

  While Mamá chased the naughty cookies and Tía Paloma laughed, Leo held out her palm for the burned puerquito. “Hello, bonita,” Leo whispered. “Welcome to the bakery.”

  The cookie spiraled into the air, raining happy cookie crumbles. Leo bounced with joy at the completed spell, the morning sun, her bustling family, and the sweetness that tied them all together.

  Leo’s Lucky Pigs didn’
t actually fly off the shelves, but they sold so quickly that Leo stayed busy, baking all day long.

  LEO’S LUCKY PIGS

  Makes 24–28 cookies. Be careful, because these little things fly.

  INGREDIENTS

  1¾ cups dark brown sugar, firmly packed

  ¾ cup water

  1 cinnamon stick

  ½ pound unsalted butter cut into small pieces, plus a little extra for greasing the pan, then left at room temperature

  2 tablespoons honey

  4¼ cups all-purpose flour, plus a little extra for dusting

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 teaspoon baking soda

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 large eggs at room temperature, lightly beaten

  1 large egg for the glaze, lightly beaten

  powdered sugar for dusting

  DIRECTIONS

  In a medium-sized saucepan, combine the brown sugar, water, and cinnamon. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Lower the heat and simmer until the brown sugar has dissolved and the liquid thickens to a light syrup. Turn off the heat and remove the cinnamon stick. Add the butter and honey and stir the mixture until they’re melted.

  In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the brown sugar mixture. Fold in with a spatula until well combined. Add two of the eggs and stir. The dough will be very sticky.

  Place two long pieces of plastic wrap over the bowl so that it is completely covered. Carefully flip the bowl and let the dough fall into the plastic wrap. Scrape out any remaining dough. Wrap up the dough and refrigerate for at least two hours.

  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter two cookie sheets. Sprinkle flour on work surface. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick. Use a three-inch piggy cookie cutter and press it down on the dough to cut out the cookies. Gather the scraps and roll out again, then press out more cookies until all the dough is used.