The Popularity Spell

by Toni Gallagher

  “No you don’t! I thought it was in there, but you never would have given it up that fast. I know where the doll is and I’m going to get him!”

  Madison doesn’t know what’s going on, but I don’t have time to explain. The closet doorknob is shaking and the door is making noise on its hinges.

  “Don’t worry, Sam,” I shout. “We’ll be back real soon!”

  “Back?” Madison asks. “Where are we going?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” I say. Samantha is shouting the whole time—she’s going to tell her mother; we’re going to get in trouble; I’m never going to have another friend again. But I don’t care about any of it; I’ve got a job to do.

  The banging of the closet door is getting louder. I don’t know if Sam will be able to get out, but I know we should hurry either way. “Follow me!” I shout to Madison as I climb through Sam’s bedroom window.

  Madison is right behind me—through the window, into the condo’s outdoor hallway, down the steps, and onto the sidewalk. We run for a block. I’m wearing sneakers so it’s pretty easy for me, but Madison’s high-heeled boots slow her down. When we get to the corner, we both stop, breathing heavy. “Crab soccer hasn’t trained me for this,” Madison says, pinching her waist and bending over. I have to laugh. She’s right!

  Instead of running down the next block, we just walk quickly—until I throw my arm out to stop Madison. “What’s wrong?” she asks.

  “My dad!” I whisper, but it sounds like a shout.

  We’re almost in front of Caffeine Craze—the exact coffeehouse where I told Dad to go! There’s a big window looking out onto the street, with tables and umbrellas outside where people are enjoying their iced Americanos or whatever their special order is.

  “My dad is in there!” I explain urgently. “What if he sees us?”

  I think about running to the other side of the street, but there aren’t any stop signs or traffic lights, so that seems like a bad idea. When I turn back around, Madison isn’t there. She’s on her hands and knees on the sidewalk, crawling past the tables and umbrellas and coffee drinkers, right under the front window. She doesn’t even care about her skirt getting dirty or her knees getting scraped. I get down and follow her, so we’re just two girls crawling on a sidewalk in the middle of Los Angeles. Not something you see every day.

  We get past the window and stand up. I can’t help myself, though; I have to peek inside. I only allow my forehead and one eyeball to lean in—and I see Dad at the counter, stirring sugar into his coffee. I pull my face away a millisecond before he turns around. “Run!” I shout to Madison, and we both take off down the road.

  I’m antsy waiting at the stoplight. I look behind me to see if Samantha is following us, but luckily there’s no sign of her. Madison and I take off as soon as the light changes, and I lead her to the entrance of the graveyard. She stops at the gate, huffing, puffing, and pinching her side again. “The doll’s here?” she asks. When I nod, she says, “This place is big. How are we going to find it?”

  “Oh, I know where it is—sort of.” Even though I’m tired, I’ve got the energy to keep running. I know Madison is following because I can hear the clicking of her boots on the paved path. I’m not sure exactly where Samantha and I turned onto the grass, but I make a guess and take a hard right. A second later, Madison yells, “Poop!”

  I turn around. Madison’s on the ground. I can’t help laughing because she said “poop” instead of a curse word—since I know she can yell every one in the dictionary and a bunch that aren’t! “Are you okay?” I ask, running back to her. She’s facedown in a pile of soft, thick dirt. She pushes herself up and I see black smudges on her hands, her clothes, and her knees. She sits up, not upset at all, and starts pulling off her boots.

  “I’m fine,” she says. “My heel got stuck in the dirt and made me fall over.” She puts both boots on the dirt and says, “Let’s go.”

  “You’re gonna leave them here?” I ask. They probably cost as much as all my shoes put together!

  “We’ll come back and get ’em. The guy under here isn’t gonna want them.” When Madison says that, I realize she didn’t just fall down in some dirt; she fell on a new grave!

  I can’t help squealing. “Ewww, there’s a dead person under there?”

  “There are dead people under everything,” Madison says, totally matter of fact. She’s standing up now. “Okay, where are we going?”

  “Follow me!” I say, and I start running. I’m not completely sure I’m going in the right direction; I’m just hoping for the best. It was pretty dark when Sam and I were here before, and the place looks different in the bright sunshine. Whenever we pass a flat gravestone, I read the name. I see a Dillenbeck, a Gerber, then a Rupelmyer and a Neff.

  “Where are you going?” Madison shouts from behind me.

  Right then I stop. I’ve almost run right on top of him. Harold Rocap.

  “The doll is around here somewhere,” I say.

  We split up and look around. I peer up into the big tree with the witchy-finger branches, but I don’t see any box or doll. Madison’s picking up flower arrangements on the gravestones nearby and looking underneath. It’s really lucky that she’s not scared of dead people! I walk a bigger circle around Harold’s stone, and then I see something unusual: a small square of fresh dirt. Not big enough to be a grave like where Madison fell, but the right size for a voodoo doll.

  “I think this is it!” I shout. She runs over, and without even talking we get down on our knees and start digging with our hands. Madison, who probably gets weekly manicures like her mom, is plunging her hands into this dark, soft dirt and totally ruining her fingernails!

  It doesn’t take long to hit something. I’m praying I’m right and that it’s the voodoo doll and not a skull or a bone or a murder weapon or something even scarier. “There’s something here!” Madison says.

  After a few more handfuls of dirt, I see him. The doll’s face is looking up at us, dirtier than ever before, but with the same stitched smile, same button eyes, same yarn hair.

  “Wow!” Madison says. She seems impressed, which is pretty unexpected considering what this little doll did to her.

  I pick him up out of the ground. “Let’s go,” I say. We stand up and turn toward the paved path, but something—or someone—is in our way.

  Samantha leans over us.

  Her hair is standing up like a crazed clown’s wig and her face is as red as a crazed clown’s nose. But this clown is also a thief—holding up a pair of short high-heeled boots that aren’t hers.

  “How…about…a…trade?” It takes her a long time to finish because she takes a breath in between each word.

  I look at Madison.

  “No trade,” Madison says, and starts walking away. Slowly. Coolly.

  “Madison’s got plenty of shoes and those won’t fit you anyway, Sam,” I say. “So why don’t you just hand them over?”

  “Only if you give me the doll! Come on, it’s ours!” Sam shouts, trying to grab it from under my arm. I hold it tight and start to run.

  “It’s mine, and it won’t be anyone’s soon!” I yell, running. Suddenly I feel something hit me in the back—not hard, but enough to make me turn around. I look down, and there’s one of Madison’s boots on the ground. “You’re throwing a boot at me?” I shout as the other one comes flying at my face. I duck out of the way.

  “You really didn’t think that through, Sam!” I say as I pick up both boots and run, catching up to Madison.

  I feel bad that she has bare feet but there’s nothing I can do besides hand over her boots. We make it through the gate and to the corner with the traffic light, where we have to stand and wait. And wait. The light across from us is red, but by looking at the green light in the other direction, I can see how long we have until it changes. Inside a square box on the traffic pole, a red hand is flashing and numbers are counting down. It’s the slowest counting I’ve ever seen. 10, 9, 8…

  I move
my weight from one foot to the other, bouncing nervously. Not talking. Just looking at the countdown, then looking behind us. That’s when I notice Madison has plopped herself down on the ground and is putting on one of her boots. Though this light is taking forever to change, I don’t know if she has time for that! 7, 6, 5…

  I see Sam in the distance, and she’s getting closer.

  When 2 flashes, I take a step off the curb. Madison stands up, one boot on, the other in her hand. Finally the countdown gets to 1, and then we have to wait even longer for the light to turn green. Then we run.

  As we’re crossing the big road, I hear Madison scream, “Ow!” I turn, hoping she hasn’t fallen down. She hasn’t, but she’s avoiding putting weight on her bare foot. Oh no. Maybe she stepped on something sharp. “What is it?” I ask when she meets me on the corner.

  She lifts up her foot. “Just a rock,” she says, picking it off her foot and throwing it on the ground. “Let’s go.”

  We run some more, Madison bobbing up and down like a creature in a horror movie because of her one boot. When we get halfway down the block, I turn and see Samantha stuck at the traffic light. Good. That flashing red hand will keep her waiting awhile.

  A few minutes later, we see the coffeehouse umbrellas in the middle of the block. I stop Madison from running so I can look at the people at the tables. Luckily no one has Dad’s messy black-and-gray hair, which is easy to spot. We both take a breath. Madison sits on the curb to put on her other boot while I put the doll safely in my backpack and zip it up tightly.

  I’m sweaty and tired but I try to slow down my breathing before I walk into the coffeehouse. I see Dad’s head right away. He’s looking down reading a newspaper, wearing his thick round glasses and holding a big plastic cup half filled with ice and coffee.

  I wish he were here with Terri instead of alone.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  He definitely wasn’t expecting to see me. “Cleo! What are you doing here?”

  I have to think fast. “Ummm…”

  So much for thinking fast.

  “Ummm…,” I continue. Then I come up with something. “Oh! Samantha’s mom went down to the pool, and Samantha wanted to go too, but since Madison and I didn’t have anything to wear, we decided to come get you and go home.”

  “Where’s Madison?” Dad asks, looking behind me.

  “Oh…she saw a friend of hers, one of the kids sitting outside, so she’s saying hi.” I glance through the window, and of course Madison is nowhere nearby.

  “Would you two like a drink?” he asks, putting down his paper. “Iced tea? Juice? Smoothie?”

  A strawberry-blueberry-banana smoothie would be awesome right now, especially after all the running, but I know better. I want to get out of this coffeehouse and into Dad’s car. “Nope, nope, nope, I don’t want anything, and I’m sure Madison doesn’t either. Let’s go and have water at home. Lots of water!” I tug at Dad’s T-shirt sleeve. “Come on, let’s go.”

  He takes his time getting to his feet. First he has to fold his newspaper, then he takes off his glasses and puts them in their case, then he grabs his big messenger bag to put it over his shoulder, and I’m just thinking, Come on, come on, come on.

  “Madison, what happened to you?” Dad asks.

  I turn around, and Madison is standing there looking like a totally different girl from the one Dad met at our front door. Her hair is as messy as mine, her cheeks are red, and there are patches of dirt from her neck to her knees.

  “Oh, nothing. We were, um, playing in the dirt by Samantha’s house.”

  I can’t imagine many reasons for three eleven-year-old girls to play in the dirt, and I’m sure Dad can’t either, so he looks confused. “You guys crammed a lot of fun into such a short time. Are you done talking to your friend, Madison?”

  Madison has no idea what he’s talking about, but since she’s excellent at improvisation, she just says, “Yeah.” Then she looks at me like, What?

  I’ll explain it all to her later. Right now we’ve got to get out of here. We walk toward the front door, and when Dad pushes it open, there’s someone in his way.

  Samantha.

  She’s redder than Madison and breathing heavy.

  “Samantha! I thought you were at the pool,” says Dad, walking through the door and onto the street. Madison and I stay close to him.

  “Whaaaa?” she asks, but she can’t even pronounce the t because she’s wheezing like someone who really needs an inhaler.

  “What’s wrong?” Dad asks. “Are you okay?”

  “No!” she manages to spit out. “I’m not! I had to chase Cleo and Madison….”

  “Chase them? Why?” Dad asks.

  Madison and I look at each other. Will Sam really tell my dad what just happened? How could she? There’s way too much to tell and it’s way too unbelievable.

  Samantha breathes a few more times. “Um, I had to chase them because I had Cleo’s doll, but I…”

  She buried it in a graveyard! Is she going to share that with my dad?

  “What exactly is going on here?” It sounds like Dad is getting irritated. This is not going well.

  Madison jumps to the rescue. “It’s all part of a game we were playing, Mr. Nelson.”

  It doesn’t look like Dad believes her. He turns to Samantha. “So this was just a game, Sam?”

  Usually Samantha has everything figured out; she’s thought everything through way in advance. But not now. The look on her face is telling me she’s stumped. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her this way. She has no idea what she could tell my dad that would make any sense.

  “Yeah,” Sam finally says. “We were sort of, um, playing tag in the neighborhood.”

  Dad looks at the three of us one by one. So far he’s been told that we’ve been playing in the dirt, we turned down going in a pool, and now we’re frolicking on the city streets playing tag.

  “Cleo, is this true?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you wouldn’t want me to leave Sam’s house without permission. But her mom lets her.”

  Dad is skeptical. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I should call Sam’s mom and see what’s up.” He opens his big bag and starts rooting around for his phone.

  “No, Mr. Nelson, it’s fine. I’ll be home in one minute and thirty seconds. You can time me. See you!”

  And Sam takes off down the street, her sneakers pounding the sidewalk loudly, her curly hair bouncing up and down.

  Dad closes his bag and looks down at me and Madison.

  “I don’t know what went on today, girls, but I’m sure I don’t like it.”

  I look at Madison; then I look up at Dad. Finally I say something truthful to him, maybe for the first time all day.

  “We won’t do it again.”

  Dad must have enjoyed reading the newspaper at the coffeehouse because he doesn’t make a scene or yell at me in front of Madison; he just sighs. On the way home he asks us if any of this storytelling and running around had anything to do with boys. Madison and I squeal “ewww” and “gross” and “ick,” so he knows we mean it.

  “Well, that’s a relief,” he says, and turns up the radio.

  Back at the house, Madison and I go to my room. As soon as we close the door, we both fall to the ground laughing, groaning, and letting out all the stress our bodies have felt all day.

  “What now?” Madison asks.

  “We have to get rid of my little pal.”

  I unzip my backpack and pull out the doll. I hold him in my hand and look down at him. Aside from the wine and dirt, the smell of cinnamon, and the leftover oatmeal mix, he’s not that different after all of this. But I sure am.

  I look in the doll’s scratched button eyes and silently say I’m sorry for what has to happen next. But it’s what Uncle Arnie said we had to do.

  I find some music on the computer and crank it up loud. I grab the voodoo doll’s legs, Madison takes hold of his arms, and we
pull in opposite directions. He doesn’t rip at first, so we say, “One, two, three!” and yank even harder. It works. He tears in two and his insides fall to the ground, making a giant mess on the floor. It looks like corn and birdseed and kitty litter and the wood chips from the bottom of the guinea pig cages at Pets! Pets! Pets! There’s some fuzz too—stuffing or dryer lint, I can’t tell.

  I notice something bigger—I don’t know what—sticking out of a clump of fuzz. I get down on the ground and sift through the mess to pick it out.

  “What is it?” Madison asks.

  “A…heart,” I tell her.

  Between my fingers is a wooden heart, the size of a big marble and just as smooth.

  “What’s that for?” Madison asks.

  I hand her the heart. “I have no idea.”

  Madison looks at both sides, then makes a discovery. The heart opens into a locket, with a place for a picture in both sides. “Cleo, look at this,” she says, lifting a little slip of folded paper out of the middle and peeling it open. “It looks like a note. Maybe it’s for you?”

  She hands it to me. I open it, wondering what the heart of this voodoo doll could possibly have to say to me. Maybe it just says “Made in China” or something.

  “Well?” Madison asks.

  First I read it to myself. Then I read it again. It definitely wasn’t made in China. It was made by Uncle Arnie.

  “It says ‘Friendship is the meeting of love and magic.’ ”

  I can tell Madison likes the sound of that. “I think that’s true,” she says.

  We’re both quiet for a few seconds; then Madison speaks up again. “So, is it time for the scissors?”

  I look at the heart in Madison’s hand, the piece of paper in mine, the chunks of tan material and yarn, and the mess on the floor, and I say, “I think so.”

  I hand her my scissors and she starts snipping her half of the doll into pieces. I use my hands to rip apart the bottom half. It’s not easy, but I’ve got extra energy from the running and the music and the fact that it’s all over. Madison, cutting the hair off the doll’s head, says it’s adrenaline.

  I put my half of the pieces on my desk. Madison does the same with the yarn and buttons and material she cut. We mix it all together, and then Madison scoops up half and puts it in the outside pocket of her backpack. She’ll bury it somewhere near her house, far away from the other pieces—which I’ll put in the backyard next to Marty. Maybe I’ll write magic in stones by this grave.