The Popularity Spell

by Toni Gallagher

  When I’m dressed and out of the bathroom, Dad goes right in so he can wash off. I start to walk out of the house, but I hear Toby bumping around behind the closed door of the laundry room. Dad must have put him there so he doesn’t get his smell all over more stuff. “Toby, are you okay?” I ask.

  Whimper whimper whine.

  “Did Dad put food and water in there for you?”

  Whine whimper whine.

  I don’t want Toby to spend hours in the laundry room without anything to snack on, so I open the door a teeny bit to look inside. In the one second it takes me to spot his bowls, he pokes his nose through the crack of the door; then pushes through and jumps up on me.

  “No, Toby! No, no, no!” I shout, pushing him back inside and closing the door. He definitely got a little more smell on me, but I zoom to the kitchen sink and wash my hands and arms with dish soap. Hopefully Dad won’t notice.

  I run down to the car and pretend like I’ve been there all along. Dad gets in a few minutes later. His hair is wet and he smells mostly like soap, but with a skunky aftersmell.

  “Well, that was an adventure,” he says. He actually doesn’t sound so mad anymore. “So how about we go to the store to buy tomato juice and vinegar so I can clean Toby up later, and then we go to Wingberry’s for breakfast?”

  This sounds great! “Okay!” I say, and Dad pulls out of the garage.

  At the grocery store, we push a cart down the aisles until we find what we need. When we unload the cans and jugs onto the counter, the lady knows our dog got skunked. “From what we’re buying?” Dad asks.

  “No, from the stench!” She laughs and we do too.

  We get to Wingberry’s, which is my favorite restaurant in all of California, at least since we moved here three months ago. It’s a diner with fun pictures and cartoons all over the walls, and waiters and waitresses who always seem happy. Wingberry’s has the biggest, most delicious juicy burgers and salty fries, and Dad once told me that it’s open all day and all night long. But I’ve never been here at this hour. It’s 5:52 a.m.

  The waiter at Wingberry’s knows we’ve been skunked too, but he thinks it’s funny and asks what we want. Dad lets me have a burger even though it’s breakfast time, and he orders cheesy eggs with onions and peppers. He also orders a ham, cheese, and egg croissant, and I figure that all the early morning excitement made him extra hungry. But before the food arrives, I see why he ordered so much. Of all the people in Los Angeles and the world, who walks past the front window and into the restaurant but Terri?

  “What are you doing here?” I ask as she sits down next to Dad.

  “Oh, I was just up at the crack of dawn and I got hungry and thought, Wingberry’s is open, I’ll go there.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  Dad and Terri stare at me like I’m a skunk at a tea party. “What do you think?” Dad asks.

  The answer is obvious but it seems too crazy to believe. What kind of lady comes out to breakfast at five in the morning with her boyfriend and his dumb kid? She must really, really like Dad. And after her text last night, I’m starting to think she likes me too.

  “Wow,” I say. “I wonder if Samantha’s mom would ever do anything like this.”

  “Why?” Terri asks, with a glance at Dad. “What kind of stuff does Samantha’s mom do?”

  “Oh, she orders dinner from fancy restaurants, and has long red nails, and wears high heels, and tells Dad his cooking is scrumptious and stuff. She’s got really pretty hair—I already told you about that—and all her clothes look like they’re from Beverly Hills. And she’s always wearing makeup, even at the pool.” Then I realize that Terri doesn’t even know Samantha’s mom, so what does she care? In Focus! class, Roberta teaches us to consider how what we’re saying affects other people, and to pay attention to whether they seem interested or not. So I change the subject back to Terri. “Why’d you come to breakfast?”

  “Well, I don’t have to be at work till nine, so maybe I’ll go back to sleep afterward,” Terri says. “After all, my house doesn’t smell like skunk!”

  “You’re lucky,” I tell her. “Because it stinks!”

  “Actually,” she says with a sniff, “I can smell it on you two a little.”

  “We know,” Dad says, pretending to be ashamed like Toby. “But do you still like us?”

  “You’re buying me breakfast, so I like you fine!” Terri jokes, messing up Dad’s wet hair with her hand. The food comes a few minutes later. I dig into my tasty burger as the sky gets lighter outside and it becomes morning for real. I’m having a pretty good time, but this is the opposite of what Sam and I concentrated on. In our hex, we wanted Terri to spend less time with Dad.

  Did something go wrong? Or do we just have to wait a little longer?

  —

  At school, Samantha meets me at our classroom door. “So, did anything happen yet?” she asks.

  “Not…exactly,” I say, speaking slowly because lots of thoughts are suddenly coming into my brain.

  “What does that mean? Has your dad heard anything from Terri?” Before I can answer, she keeps going. “No, wait, it’s better if he doesn’t hear from her. Do you know if he talked to her this morning?”

  “Yeah, Dad’s talked to Terri. We’ve even seen her.”

  “Before school? Why would you see Terri this early in the morning?” Samantha asks. “And why do you smell so weird? If you’ve started using deodorant, that is not the right brand. It smells like…”

  “Skunk,” I tell her. “Toby was skunked this morning. It woke me up at four-thirty. And Dad was mad at first, but then he invited Terri to breakfast and he felt better. But Dad is mad at Toby. He closed him in the laundry room so he can clean him up later.”

  “Did he jump on you after you got dressed?” Sam asks, picking something off my T-shirt. “You’ve got red hairs all over you.” She holds a strand up to her nose. “Oh yeah, that’s skunk!” she sneers, tossing it to the ground.

  At that moment, I understand what went wrong. It all comes to me like a light turned on in the middle of the night. We concentrated on keeping Terri and Dad apart, but instead Dad got separated—this morning anyway—from someone else whose name begins with a T.

  There’s someone in our bathroom a lot more than Terri is. Someone with long red hair…who lies on the floor…and sheds.

  The hair on the bathroom floor wasn’t Terri’s at all.

  Now I just have to tell Sam.

  I take a breath and work up the courage. “We used the wrong hair,” I say.

  “What do you mean ‘the wrong hair’?” Then she looks down on the ground where she threw the hair she picked off my shirt.

  Sam looks back at me. I can tell she understands.

  Before I can say anything else, Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae push past us to get into the classroom. They obviously get a whiff of me, because they each make a face and Lisa says, “The piggy from Ohio smells like a skunk today!” With Madison gone, I guess she decided to take over her duties. Great.

  “How did that happen? Toby’s hair?” Sam asks.

  “The bell’s gonna ring,” I say.

  “So tell me fast.”

  Talking fast is my specialty, so I do it. “I didn’t pick the hair off Terri’s head, I picked it off the bathroom floor. It was long and red like Terri’s so I thought it was hers, but it was Toby’s. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  Sam looks at me and doesn’t say anything. We both know I screwed up. Finally she says, “That sucks.”

  And before I can say anything back, the bell rings and we rush toward our seats.

  “Well, you’re going to have to get the right hair, and we’re going to have to hang out after school again this week,” Sam whispers as we sit. “I’ll text my mom and tell her to work on it.”

  Kevin starts talking, so I can’t discuss it with her anymore.

  But I’m not listening to Kevin. I’m busy wondering how I’m going to get a piece of Terri’s hair.

  Her
real hair.

  Before Kevin even tells us to get out our homework, there’s a knock at the classroom door. It’s Andrea, the principal’s secretary. She hands a note to Kevin, who reads it and then turns to me! “Cleo, your presence is requested in the principal’s office.”

  “Why? What did I do?”

  Kevin doesn’t know. “Maybe it’s an important message from home or something. Follow Andrea to the office, please.”

  Andrea walks way ahead of me, I bet to avoid my smell. When we get to Frederick’s office, I stand in the doorway.

  “Come in, Cleo,” he says from behind his desk. I take a step inside. That’s when I see three people sitting on some chairs to my right.

  Madison, her dad, and her mom.

  Now I’m worried. What am I doing here? Did they figure out that I did hexes on her? Why just me and not Samantha too?

  “Cleo, go ahead and sit down,” Frederick tells me. “You know Madison,” he says.

  Duh, I think, but of course I don’t say it. Madison and I nod at each other.

  “Madison is coming back to school today, but I wanted her to talk to you first.”

  “And he wanted to have her parents here,” Madison’s dad says rudely. I don’t know why he’s mad at me. I didn’t ask him to come.

  “I’ve asked Madison to say a few words to you before she goes back to class,” Frederick says.

  Madison looks over at me and turns her chair a little. It makes a loud scraping sound that makes me jump.

  “Ummm, well, Cleo…,” she starts slowly.

  “Madison, I have a meeting at ten over in Santa Monica and traffic is brutal,” her dad says. “Please don’t draw this out.”

  Madison takes a breath and looks like she’s thinking for a second. “I’m sorry, Cleo.”

  Wow. I don’t know what to say. One word does fall out of my mouth, though. “Why?”

  “I’ve been mean to you since you got to our school,” Madison says.

  “Unfair, not nice,” Madison’s mom whispers.

  “I know, Mom,” Madison whines; then she turns back to look at me. “It was unfair and not nice. I had a lot of time to think while I was away from school, and I’m going to be nicer to you from now on. It’s not your fault that you’re new and you don’t have the coolest clothes or friends. You can’t help it.”

  Well, she is right about all those things.

  “I’m not going to say bad things about you anymore. And I’m sorry.”

  She’s sorry? This is crazy. I’m sorry for her! She farted up a storm in Focus! and then went crazy in science class, all because she said I had a clown’s name and made a bunch of piggy jokes about me. She missed almost two weeks of school, and she had to stay home with her unpleasant and overtanned parents. And now, she’s being nice. Maybe she’s being forced to do it, but she’s actually being nice.

  It took a while—a week and a half, to be exact—but now I know for sure: the hex worked! So if I manage to really get a piece of Terri’s hair this time, and Samantha and I concentrate and focus super seriously, we’ll be able to get Terri away from Dad for real. Then we’ll all be happy and we won’t even have to do hexes anymore because life will finally be perfect. Everything can go back to the way it used to be before Terri—except for one extra-awesome addition: Sam will be my sister! I’m so full of positive juju that I want to jump out of my chair!

  “So Madison is going to make the same apology in front of the class today,” Frederick is telling me. I wasn’t even paying attention, but I use one of Roberta’s Focus! tips and try to fill in the blanks of what he was saying.

  “You mean Madison is going to say the same kind of thing she just said to me? To the whole class?” I ask.

  “Yes, that’s what he just said,” Mr. Paddington says in a jerky tone of voice.

  “Oh, she doesn’t have to do that.” She’s been through enough, having to stay home with that dad for more than a week. Plus, she’s given me the best gifts of all time—more proof that voodoo works and the chance to have Samantha as my sister. Eventually.

  “Cleo, are you sure?” asks Frederick. “We want to put this all behind us, once and for all. If that means Madison needs to apologize in front of the whole class, she will do it.”

  Madison looks at me with an expression I’ve never seen on her face before. Not snotty. Not scowling. She looks like she’s making a wish. Like she’s hopeful.

  “I’m sure,” I say. “I’m okay with her if she’s okay with me.”

  Madison smiles—the first nice one I’ve ever seen. “I’m okay,” she says.

  Frederick stands up. “Then I suppose we’re done here.”

  “Thank God!” Mr. Paddington says loudly as he gets out of his chair, which makes a louder noise than Madison’s did. He walks out the door without even saying goodbye to Madison. Her mom follows but turns around.

  “Bye, honey,” she says, leaning down to give Madison a kiss on the cheek. “You did that really well. I’ll have Sonia make a special snack for you at home.” As her clicking heels get quieter in the distance, I hear one more comment from her.

  “What was that smell?”

  Ha! I almost forgot about my skunking. Well, at least I made Heather and Henry Paddington sit in a room with me and suck it all in! I hope they take the stink home with them.

  Frederick calls for Andrea to take me and Madison back to class. Madison and I walk next to each other but don’t say anything. I go into the classroom first, and when Madison comes in after me, everyone gasps in surprise, even Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae. Didn’t they know she was coming back today? They’re her friends. If I had been out of school for over a week, you can bet Samantha would know when I was coming back.

  “Welcome back, Madison,” Kevin says. “Please take your seats. We’re in the middle of the math homework from last night. The assignment was emailed to you.”

  I sit down. As Madison opens her backpack and pulls out her books, Sam gets my attention. I can tell she wants to know everything, but Kevin begins talking about fractions so she’s going to have to wait. Inside, I laugh a little. It’s kind of fun to know something she doesn’t for once.

  —

  Over the next couple of days, Madison gets back into the school routine. I guess the only difference is that she doesn’t call me a piggy or a clown. Sam thinks it’s the coolest thing ever that Madison had to become nice and apologize to me, but she doesn’t focus on that for long.

  “You know what you’re doing tonight?” she asks me Friday after school as we’re waiting for our parents to pick us up.

  “Dinner. Homework. Internet, I guess.”

  “Nope!” Sam says, excited. “My mom and I are following you and your dad home, and we’re going on a hike and having dinner and then we’re going to figure out a way to hex Terri. For real this time. I mean, now that Madison is back and nice, we know the doll is really, truly working. We’ll be sisters…who knows how soon?”

  “Maybe by summer!”

  “We could go on vacation together!” Sam says.

  Though our charms have put me in close contact with bad things, like smelly skunkings and parents like the Paddingtons, when I picture a trip to a Mexican beach or Disneyland or Africa, where African millipedes come from, I’m ready to do our next one. Our last one and our best one.

  It’s hard to believe that Dad agreed to me and Samantha hanging out again, but when he pulls into the parking lot he shouts through his open window, “Hey, Cleo, are you ready for a fun night?”

  “Yeah!” I say, getting in the car.

  “Sam, do you know the way to our house from here?” Dad asks.

  “I sure do, Mr. Nelson,” Samantha says with a super-sweet look on her face.

  Sam and her mom get to our house a few minutes after we do. Paige walks in like a supermodel in her hot-pink zip-up hoodie and tight matching yoga pants. Dad asks me if I want to change into shorts before our hike, and before I answer, Sam interrupts. “Hey, Mr. Nelson? I was thinking on the
way over here that maybe you and Mom could go on the hike by yourselves.”

  I look at Sam, my mouth wide open.

  “Cleo and I have a lot of stuff to do for school, and I’m sure we’d be okay on our own if you were only gone for an hour or two.”

  Not only did Sam manage to create this date for Dad and Paige; she’s getting us time to be on our own. She’s so good at planning ahead. I need to focus on learning more from her.

  “I don’t know, Sam,” Dad says. “I’ve never left Cleo alone like that.”

  “But she’s not alone,” Sam says. “We’re together. We both have phones and you’re not going very far, right?”

  Dad looks at Paige, who says, “As young as Samantha is, she benefits from a strong independent streak that will make her a formidable young woman.” I’m not sure what all that means, but I hope Paige lets me be independent and whatever formidable is when she’s married to my dad! Paige keeps talking. “So maybe we take a short walk instead of a full hike…”

  “And you can still go to dinner too!” Sam adds. “You can order food for me and Cleo.”

  Dad and Sam’s mom talk it over for a minute, and though Dad doesn’t seem very sure, he eventually says YES! He calls our favorite Thai food place and asks for delivery, and leaves me money to pay. Before he and Paige leave, they give us a million other instructions: if anyone comes to the door, look through the peephole before answering…call one of them if we have a question…call 911 if it’s life or death…tip the Thai delivery guy five dollars…blah blah blah. It’s all pretty boring and stuff we already know, but I can’t help but be excited because Dad’s letting me stay alone—well, almost alone. When Sam and I are sisters, this will happen all the time!

  Finally they tell us to be good, and they leave. I watch as they walk down the path to the garage, Paige’s butt swinging from side to side in her hot-pink yoga pants.

  “Woo-hoo, they’re gone!” Samantha shouts, running down the hallway toward my bedroom, her arms shooting out in all directions. If a spaz contest were being held right now, she might actually beat me. “And I have a great idea!” Her sneakers squeak as she slides to a stop by the bathroom door and runs inside.