The Popularity Spell

by Toni Gallagher

  I follow, but before I get there, Sam steps back out holding a hairbrush. “Do you see what’s in here?” she asks, pulling a clump of tangled hair out of the brush.

  “Ewww,” I say, but that doesn’t stop Sam from pulling strands of hair out of the clump one by one.

  “Black hair,” she says, letting it fall to the ground. “Gray hair,” she says next, dropping it. It’s followed by a black hair, another black hair, another gray hair…

  I watch as Samantha finds the one hair she’s looking for and tosses the brush back onto the counter. I look closely at her hand. She’s pulled a piece of long red hair out of the clump, and now it’s hanging between her fingers. “I don’t think this is Toby’s,” she says.

  She’s right again, of course. I wonder if I might get tired of that. Because I’m almost never right. “Let’s get started,” she says.

  I’m ready. And after how wrong it went last time, I am determined to do this hex perfectly. Then the doorbell rings.

  Toby barks and runs around in circles. “Ugh! Terri’s fate postponed!” Samantha groans in a joking way as she pushes the red strand of hair into her jeans pocket.

  “It must be the Thai food!” I say and run for the door, asking Sam to pull Toby into the bathroom and close the door so he won’t jump on the delivery man. And that’s who I expect when I peek through the peephole.

  That’s not who I see, though.

  Who I see is Terri.

  Terri is standing on our front step, holding a small pink cardboard box. It’s the kind that usually comes from a bakery, but I’m so shocked and scared that I don’t even care what kind of goodie she has.

  I open the door. “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  I must not say it in a very welcoming way, because she laughs and says, “Well, that’s a fine way to greet someone who’s stopping by to give you some cake!”

  “Yum, cake!” says Sam, who is suddenly standing right next to me. “I love cake,” she continues, sort of phony-sweet. “What kind is it?”

  “It’s birthday cake, left over from a party at my office.” Terri hands me the box and turns to Sam. “You must be Samantha.”

  “Yep, you’re a smart one!” says Sam, as cool and casual as if she were talking to a kid at school, not an adult she’s about to hex!

  “Well, nice to meet you,” Terri says. Samantha shakes her hand with the hand that was just going through the hair in Dad’s brush. Gross.

  “Nice to meet you too,” Sam says. “Thanks for the cake, but we’re busy, so we’ll see you later.”

  Samantha starts closing the door, right where Terri is standing! Terri holds out her hand and says, “Cleo, is your dad here? I’d like to say hi before I go.”

  “No, he’s out with my mom,” Sam says.

  I don’t know much—anything, really—about boyfriend-girlfriend relationships, but I don’t think Terri is supposed to know that Dad is basically on a date with Paige right now.

  Then I realize why Sam is saying it.

  “Yeah, they’re going for a hike and then having dinner,” I add. Like Sam, I’m trying to make Terri jealous too, though deep down I feel mean saying it. Being mean is the kind of thing Madison and her friends are supposed to be good at, not me.

  “My mom said they might get a drink too, but I don’t know if she meant coffee or wine or what,” Sam says.

  Terri’s face changes. She’s not her usual perky self. “Oh,” she says. “I thought he said he was working on a project here at home tonight.”

  “No, he’s out with my mom,” Sam repeats happily. My face gets hot and I cough a little. This is definitely mean, and I’ve never been mean to anyone, not even a bug. It feels weird. And not comfortable at all. But inside I tell myself we’re only doing this so Sam and I can be sisters, and then everything can be normal again. Even better than normal. Perfect!

  “Okay,” Terri says, her mouth so tight it barely opens. Then she takes a breath and says, “Well, Cleo, let him know I came by, and save a little cake for them.” I nod, though I know Paige wouldn’t eat it anyway. “Be careful here all alone, okay? You can always call me if there’s an emergency.”

  “Okay, see ya!” says Sam, all cheerful. “But we’ll call our parents if there’s a problem.”

  Terri says goodbye and walks down the same path Dad and Paige walked down just a couple of minutes earlier. Her shoulders look slouchy and I feel a little sick to my stomach.

  With Terri gone, Samantha is ready to put our plan into effect. “That was a close one!” she says, pretending to wipe sweat from her forehead. “Come on, let’s do the hex!”

  Sam runs down the hall. I follow more slowly. “Maybe we should wait until the food comes; I’m hungry,” I say, though I’m really not.

  When I get to my room, Sam is sitting at my desk, poking around on my computer. I’m really starting to be glad I don’t have too much private stuff on there! “What are you looking for?” I ask.

  “I think we should call your uncle Arnie before we do this one.”

  “Really?” I never pictured Samantha and Uncle Arnie talking to each other face to face. My dad calls Uncle Arnie “an acquired taste,” meaning certain people don’t get him right away…and I think Sam could be one of those people. “Why do you want to talk to Uncle Arnie?”

  “Well, the last hex did not go well….”

  “But that’s because we used the wrong hair!” I have a feeling Sam is blaming me, without saying it, for the last hex. She acts like I don’t take it as seriously as she does, like it’s not as important to me as it is to her. But it is! Anybody could have made that mistake with the hair! Anybody with a dog whose hair looks exactly like the hair of her dad’s girlfriend who she wants to keep away by using a voodoo doll.

  “It’s time we got some professional input,” Samantha says.

  Though I have serious doubts that Uncle Arnie is a “professional” at anything, we decide to call him. Dad has set up my computer so I can dial him from my room now. After two rings, his screen comes on. If I wanted Sam to see him in his full weird glory, my wish has been granted. He must have just gotten out of the shower. He’s wearing a light-blue robe with yellow duckies, and his hair makes him look like a wet cat. Like his cat, actually. “What’s up, little niecey?” he asks, cleaning out his ear with his pinkie.

  “Hey, Uncle Arnie, this is my friend Sam.” Sam waves and Arnie waves back. “She and I were about to do another positive happy voodoo charm, but we wanted something extra special for this one. Like the time you sent me the recipe.”

  He thinks for a second, then snaps his fingers. “Okay, I know what you need.” He starts to talk, but I have trouble listening because I notice that he doesn’t have patches of hair on his chin or ears anymore, but there is a little bit growing out of his right nostril. With Uncle Arnie, it seems like hair doesn’t go away; it just changes location.

  When I pay attention again, he’s in the middle of explaining something. “An incantation is a chant used for magic and sorcery,” he tells us, “and when two friends use it together, the spell is certain to work better than ever before. After you put the pin into your doll, recite this five times, with more speed each time: ‘As the thorn pierces the poppet, the juju opens the locket. You are free. So mote it be.’ ” He pauses for a second, then grins like a goon. To my surprise, his teeth are gleaming white—no food particles in between! “I wrote it myself,” he says. “Come on, say it with me!”

  Sam joins right along immediately. It takes me a second, because (1) I don’t even know what “mote” means, and (2) I’m thinking about how our first hexes worked fine without cemeteries and incantations. Well, sort of fine.

  “Come on, say it!” Sam says. I feel uncomfortable but I do it anyway. What choice do I have? This hex has to work for Sam and me to be sisters. At first I mumble, but after a few times it gets kind of fun to say. We say it and say it until we’re giggling, then laughing, then making mistakes because anything can become a tongue twiste
r if you say it enough times in a row.

  Uncle Arnie cheers us on from his sloppy living room in Louisiana. “I think you’ve got it!”

  “Thanks, Uncle Arnie,” I say. “We’re gonna go now and try it out.”

  “All right, be careful, you two.” Uncle Arnie lifts his cat up to the camera. “I’ve got to give Fuzzer a bath, and it’s a perfect time. My tongue is perfectly clean right now!” He pretends to lick the cat and the screen goes black.

  “So, that’s your uncle,” Sam says uncertainly. “He’s pretty weird.”

  Well, she’s not wrong, but he is my uncle, and I like him. And now that I think of it, once Sam and I are sisters, he’ll be her uncle too. So she’ll have to accept him no matter how strange he is. I hope she can.

  “Okay, time to get serious,” Sam says. So I do. I slide under my bed and take the doll out of his box. We sit on the floor, cross-legged as usual. Sam pulls Terri’s strand of hair from her pocket and winds it around a piece of the doll’s yarn hair. Then she pulls the pin out, holds it up, and asks, “Do you want to do it?”

  “Ummm…okay,” I say, slowly taking the pin from her. For a second I sit there, still remembering Terri’s face when she heard about Dad being out with Sam’s mom.

  “Well, come on, do it!” Sam urges.

  Deep down I don’t want to, but when I look into Samantha’s eager eyes, I know I don’t have any other choice. Since I don’t want Terri and Dad to see each other anymore, I decide to push the pin into the doll’s face. Then I pull my fingers away, happy to be done with it. All that’s left is for Sam and me to say the incantation together.

  “As the thorn pierces the poppet, the juju opens the locket. You are free. So mote it be.”

  As we say it, I concentrate on Terri walking to her car just now. That’s good—in my imagination, she’s walking away. She and Dad are apart. She’s wearing regular jeans and a T-shirt, not tight yoga pants and lots of makeup. Her red hair looks nice, but not perfect like Paige’s.

  “As the thorn pierces the poppet, the juju opens the locket. You are free. So mote it be.”

  I think about Terri and Dad laughing together on the beach and how Dad never laughs at the stuff Sam’s mom says. I know my brain shouldn’t be going down this path, but I can’t help it. Dad doesn’t laugh with Paige. He doesn’t want to have a drink with her or stay at her house when we hang out together. They only went on a hike and had dinners together because Sam and I forced them to, not because Dad wanted to. Dad likes Terri. Terri likes Dad. And now that I’ve seen Terri walking away from our house tonight, I feel bad for messing with that.

  “As the thorn pierces the poppet, the juju opens the locket. You are free. So mote it be.”

  I definitely want to be sisters with Sam, and live in the same house, and maybe share a room and spend all our nights and weekends and free time together, but is this the only way it can happen? Maybe Sam’s mom and my dad should get together if they want to, not because we make them.

  “As the thorn pierces the poppet, the juju opens the locket. You are free. So mote it be.”

  But even if it’s not what Dad wants, I want him and Paige to be together. I want me and Sam to be sisters. So I hurry and imagine Terri in her car, driving to a big house far away, with a new boyfriend and a great job, but I can’t concentrate because it’s the fifth time I’m saying the thing about the poppet and the locket and I know my time is running out….

  “As the thorn pierces the poppet, the juju opens the locket. You are free. So mote it be.”

  And then the incantation is over. Sam locks eyes with me and I force a smile. I’m relieved I don’t have to think about anything anymore—just fun. The Thai food arrives and Sam and I stuff our faces with noodles and shrimp and chicken and rice. Afterward, we eat two pieces of the cake Terri dropped off, and we play a game of Pig Mania. I feel guilty eating Terri’s cake and playing Terri’s game with Sam, but we still have a pretty fun time.

  An hour or so later, Dad and Paige come back. I tell Dad that Terri came over and brought cake and there are two pieces left. Dad looks surprised for a second, then says to Paige, “Would you like a piece of cake?”

  Like I predicted, Sam’s mom says no. “After that meal we had, Bradley, I may never eat again,” she says, holding her hands over her stomach.

  “Oh, you barely ate anything,” he says back, and she giggles. He doesn’t laugh.

  “Well, thanks, but I doubt the girls did any homework while we were gone, so we’d better go home and start on it.”

  Sam doesn’t complain like I would; she just says okay and runs back to my room. She’s ahead of me and by the time I join her, I see something I don’t like at all.

  Sam has the voodoo doll in her hand.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “I want to keep it with me for a while,” she says. “For safekeeping.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask. “It’s safe here.”

  “Look, if we’re going to be sisters, we’re going to have to share things, so I should get to keep the doll this time.” I have a hard time arguing with that, but still, it’s my doll, not hers.

  “What if your mom sees it?”

  “I’ll hide it. I’ve got a great place in the back of my closet under all the old baby dolls and toys I don’t play with anymore.”

  “But why? Why do you want it?”

  “I just do. Are you going to share or not?”

  I don’t know what else to do, so I just say, “I guess so.”

  The doll disappears into her open backpack. And though I haven’t liked the feeling of having the doll in my room ever since I saw Madison and her parents together, I also don’t like the feeling of it being somewhere else.

  The next week at school, something new is happening. There’s going to be a play. Our Focus! teacher, Roberta, wrote it, and it’s called Healthyland—about a girl who goes to sleep one night and wakes up in a magical land full of people who love health and nutrition and movement and art and music. It sounds weird but fun. Roberta tells us that everyone in school can audition for the play, but she’s hoping Focus! students will participate, because it would be a great learning experience for us and an opportunity to meet new people and make new friends.

  “Ugh!” Samantha whispers to me. “Why would I want to be friends with any of these kids?” I don’t really know what she means by that, since we were both happy for the five hours we were popular. “You and I have each other, and we don’t need anybody else!”

  I agree with her, but I don’t think that’s a reason not to try out for the play. I’m actually excited about the idea. Being in a play would be fun. I mean, I’m probably not pretty enough to be an actress in real life, and I might talk too fast for people to understand me, but I know I’m loud enough for sure!

  Roberta says we’re allowed to skip our last class on Thursday to come try out, and whoever wants to audition can get a description of the play and a list of the characters from her. Lots of people raise their hands, including Scabby Larry, but I don’t want Samantha to know I’m interested, so I keep my hand down. But when we walk out of class, I sneak over to Roberta and quietly ask if I can have some pages.

  “Of course you can, Cleo! I was hoping you’d raise your hand. You’re pretty quiet in class, but I have a feeling there’s a big personality under there that would be great onstage.”

  “Really?” I ask. I don’t think anyone has ever said something like that to me before.

  “Yes, but I can’t make any promises. Read this information before the audition, and if you make it through that one, you’ll have to memorize a few things and try out a second time. That’s called a callback.”

  “Cool, I hope I get a callback,” I say, feeling very theatrical already.

  I can’t keep my secret from Samantha for long. At lunch she’s in line getting macaroni and cheese while I sit at our table opening a sandwich called a panini that Dad bought at a Cuban café. Across the room I see Madison at her usu
al table with Kylie Mae and Lisa Lee, but things look different. Lisa Lee is the one gabbing and gesturing, flashing a big fake smile, and talking to boys, while Madison quietly looks out the window. For a second I think I know how she feels. Before Samantha and I became friends, I always felt alone at lunchtime, even when there were people all around me.

  “What are you reading?” Sam suddenly asks, dropping her tray on the table. Her big square mound of bright-yellow mac and cheese wiggles but doesn’t fall apart.

  I’m caught. I can’t come up with a lie, so I have to tell her the truth—sort of. “Well, I’m not sure, but I thought, just thought, that maybe I would try out for the play.”

  “What?” Samantha shouts, and I’m afraid a piece of the mac and cheese might fly out of her mouth and hit me in the face. “It sounds so stupid!”

  “I probably won’t get a part anyway,” I say. “But it’s not a bad way to get out of forty-five minutes of social studies.”

  “So you want to be an actress now? Like Madison Paddington?”

  Even though Madison apologized to me, I don’t want to be compared to her. “No, I just think it’ll be fun to try.”

  Samantha leans back and takes this all in. “Okay,” she says, but I can tell it’s not okay. “If you need to do something like that, then good for you. Even if it’s without me. Go ahead and meet new people and make new friends, and don’t worry about me at all.”

  “You can try out too, Sam. I want you to!”

  “No, it’s fine.” She takes a few more bites of her mac and cheese. I poke through my panini to see if there’s anything in it I won’t like, but it’s just ham and cheese flattened on toast. It’s weird for things to be so quiet between us.

  Finally Sam says, “Hey!” and I jump back a little. “I wonder if anything’s happened to Terri yet. When do you see her next?”

  “I’m not sure,” I say, chewing.

  “You’d better text me the second something happens. And remember every minute of these auditions you’re going to. I want to hear how dumb everybody looks.”