by Kim Tomsic
I hug her again. “It’s too much. Thank you.”
Miss Tammy laughs and checks the time on her watch again. “Alrighty, I need to scoot so I can catch that five-fifteen bus.”
I nod, placing a hand on top of the warm pizza box. It’s really real!
“Happy birthday, Lil’ Spice. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
She pops in her earbuds, and the door clicks shut behind her.
Bailee now clamps two hands over her mouth. I keep mine closed, too. I lift five fingers to the air and do a slow countdown. Five, four, three, two . . . when I get to one, Bailee and I scream.
“Holy magenta! Holy magenta! Do you see what I see?” Bailee points at the pizza box. “Of course, you see it. But do you see it? Oh! My! Gosh!”
I holler nonsense. “Pizza leetza feetza neatsa!” I laugh. “A pepperoni pizza! Just like that! I wished for a pepperoni pizza and here it is!”
It’s our proof of magic. A pizza box on my table, the no-longer-lopsided table! And I scream, “And the table!”
“I know!” Bailee jumps up and down.
I pick up the magic candle and dance from one end of the apartment to the other, which only takes about five seconds, but still. Bailee dances behind me, both of us chanting, “Pep-per-oni pizza! Pep-per-oni pizza!”
“Thank goodness you listened to Minerva,” I say, still marching and dancing. “True confession, I sort of tuned out the list of rules. Give them to me one last time.”
Bailee stops and puts on her lawyer face, runs through the rules for the third time, and adds, “Since you didn’t pay attention, you probably missed when Minerva said wishes are like recipes.”
“Huh? Like I need ingredients or something?” I stop dancing. “Please tell me I don’t have to find an eye of newt or anything horrible like that. I’m not killing any lizards.”
“No! Minerva said she meant it metaphorically—her word, not mine.”
“For example?” I ask.
“Like if you make a fruit salad or a turkey sandwich, you can eat it right away, it’s ready to go. But if you blend up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, they take time, like ten minutes to bake, and if you make bread from scratch you have to let the dough rise and it can take all day. Each recipe has its own time frame for when it’s finished baking and ready to go.”
“Okay.”
Even though I understand, Bailee goes on, because she loves any opportunity to use her lawyer voice.
“Therefore, some magic you’ll see right away.” She points at the pizza box. “And some magic will need time to bake. Speaking of which, how much longer until the cake is ready?”
The whole apartment smells like a Hershey’s chocolate bar. I check the oven timer. “Twelve minutes. Now, where did you put the matches? I’m ready for a real wish!”
Bailee’s hands shake as she grabs the box of matches from the end of the counter. “What are you going to wish for?”
“Art supplies, of course.”
“Oh, good one.” She flips down the light switch before striking the match.
“Why did you turn out the lights?”
“Atmosphere!”
The match hisses to life. I can only see her hand and some shadows until she touches the fire to the candlewick. A blue-and-yellow flame dances to life, and I swear I see lavender, too. The blaze waves back and forth and the room glows to a warm gold-yellow tone. Just when I’m about to wish for all the art supplies a girl could ever dream of, I catch sight of the mail scattered on the floor by the door—the overdue notices and the letter from my daddy. I squeeze my eyes shut, thinking about how hard my momma works and yet we still have an empty refrigerator. I think of all the lawyer fees, about empty gas tanks and unpaid electric bills. Another drop of wax warms the tip of my finger, and I say, “I wish someone would give Momma a bunch of money.”
Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, drip.
Wax trails down the candle and it shrinks. I blow it out.
“Whoa!” Bailee says. “Did you see how much wax just disappeared?”
I hold up the candle. Now it’s about three inches tall. “Must be the bigger the wish, the more wax it takes away?”
“Hmmm.” Bailee’s face scrunches. “Would have been nice to know that rule up front.”
“I still would’ve made that wish.” But the moment those words leave my mouth I realize my mistake. “Wait. No! Shoot! I actually made the wrong wish.”
“What do you mean?” Bailee says, pushing her glasses up her nose.
“Call your mom and see if you can stay the night! I still have that bonus wish at eleven fifty-nine.”
While Bailee calls, I grab a warm slice of cheesy pizza and sink my teeth into the pepperonis.
A moment later, Bailee is all smiles. The slumber party is a go. She grabs plates and paper towels for us, helps herself to a slice, and presses me to find out what I’m going to wish for.
Since she doesn’t understand the curse, and I’m not ready to put my thoughts into words, I tell her she’ll have to wait. She’s patient—unlike me—so she’s good at waiting.
I chomp into my second slice of pizza and ask, “How long do you think it’ll take for the money wish to come true?”
“No clue.” Bailee wipes cheese from her mouth.
We keep talking about wishes and eating pizza until the oven timer dings, and we take the cake out. I break off a couple of tiny bits of cake for Bailee and me to eat right away. Bailee rolls her eyes at me, but she eats her cake. We let the rest of the cake cool and then frost and top it with just eleven candles, the regular ones. According to the rules, I’ve already made my three wishes, so I can’t light the special candle for the bonus wish until 11:59.
We talk about Minerva’s and wishes all evening, and several hours later, Momma comes home with tired-looking eyes. “Hi, Bailee. Happy birthday, Sage.” She comes over to the couch and hugs me tight, the sweat of the day still on her, but I don’t mind. “Did you have a good day?”
“Yep!” I wag my eyebrows at Bailee. “Miss Tammy brought pizza.”
Momma grabs a slice of cold pizza and joins us on the couch. I won’t tell her about Minerva’s, but I consider telling her about the Noodler contest. Problem is, she’s usually too tired to talk at night. Sure enough, she scoops up the remote and clicks on the television. The three of us scoot close on the couch, our legs curling underneath us, and we laugh as we watch a sitcom.
After the show ends, Momma and Bailee sing happy birthday to me. I blow out the eleven candles, the ones that don’t hold any real magic, and we eat cake and watch more TV. Momma showers and goes to bed around 10:30. Bailee and I go in my room and try to fix the chips in our purple nail polish. Then we lay our heads on our pillows and talk more about Minerva’s. We set an alarm so we won’t miss the wishing minute.
At 11:55 p.m., the alarm goes off. Momma is sound asleep. The apartment is dark except for a single nightlight over the oven. Bailee and I tiptoe to the kitchen, the tile cool on our bare feet. “I don’t see money anywhere,” I whisper. Our shadows silhouette the wall.
“A money wish must be the kind that requires longer baking time,” Bailee says. “Trust the process.”
“Okay.” I slide open the kitchen drawer, take out my magic candle, and stick it in the half-eaten cake.
“What’s your big secret wish?” Bailee says.
“When I made the money wish, I was thinking about how rough Momma has it.”
“Yeah?”
“And how easy the Pettys have it.”
“Yeah?”
“So, what I really should have wished for is the curse to finally turn in my momma’s favor.” I take out the matches.
“A curse-reverse?” Bailee’s eyes widen.
“Yep. A curse-reverse covers all good things and will grant me several wishes in one—Momma will become more responsible, we’ll stop living poor, and the best part is, the judge will figure out the jury got it wron
g, so my daddy can get out of jail.”
“Well, but—” Bailee lifts a hand to her chin.
“Nope. Don’t try talking me out of it.”
The clock ticks to 11:59. I strike a flame and light the candle. Yellow, blue, and lavender dance across the kitchen walls. Bailee grabs my hands and squeezes them for good luck. I look her in the eyes and say, “I wish the Contrarium Curse would flip on its head.”
A gazillion drips of wax shorten my enchanted green candle to only an inch and a half tall.
I blow it out and smile.
The wish cost me half the candle, but I know it’s going to be worth it.
How could it not be?
Chapter 11
Saturday, December 15
On Saturday morning, I shake Bailee by the shoulder. “Wake up. Let’s see if there’s a bag of money on the table!” Seeing the money wish come true will assure me the curse-reverse is up next. Bailee throws on her glasses, and we rush out of my room. There’s no money in the living room/kitchen/dining room.
“Bummer,” I say, sinking into a chair at the table.
Momma is not around, either. Her purse isn’t on the hook by the door, and her favorite yellow teacup sits on the wooden tabletop, empty other than the dried-out teabag at the bottom.
“Don’t worry,” Bailee says. “The money and the curse-reverse are probably two wishes that take extra baking time and patience.”
“You really think they’ll come true?”
“Absolutely. The rules say so.”
I run a finger over the chip in Momma’s cup and carry it to the kitchen. Dirty mixing bowls and dishes with dried cake crumbs and pizza sauce tower in the sink. I dump a glob of yellow liquid Dawn into the basin and turn on warm water. It smells like lemons.
Bailee crunches the pizza box into the trash can.
“We’re out of cereal,” I say. “That means cake for breakfast.”
“Perfect!”
Sudsy water inches its way up the sink. “Or you can have the can of Pringles in the pantry.”
“I’ll pass. Where’s your mom?”
“I don’t kn—”
The front door swings open and in walks Momma. “Hello, girls!” Her hair is swept up into a ponytail and a few loose strands frame her small face.
In one hand, she has our canvas grocery bag. It’s full, with carrots and oranges poking out from the top. In the other, she’s carrying a present!
Score!
Momma toting a bag of groceries and a gift is enough to make me believe the money wish must have come true.
The present is wrapped in my favorite color paper, dioxazine purple, and it’s topped with a giant red bow. Other years, when Momma gave me a gift, she’d wrapped it in a napkin or paper placemat from the café, and I’m not complaining, it’s just the reason why my mouth is hanging open now.
“Hey, Momma!”
“Happy birthday, sweet pea! I’m sorry I didn’t have this for you yesterday.” She puts the present on our wooden table and joins Bailee and me by the sink, setting the Sprouts bag on the counter and kissing me on the cheek. Today, instead of smelling like the factory, she smells like her mango hair conditioner.
“Thanks!” I turn off the faucet and drop the sponge in the water.
“May I help you with anything?” Bailee is already unloading the pancake mix and a pint of raspberries from the bag.
“Um, hellooooo.” I scoop up a handful of bubbles and blow them at Bailee. “There is a gift with my name on it, and I’m about to open it. Right, Momma?”
Momma laughs. “That’s what I’m thinking!” Lately, I’ve been searching for ways that Momma and I are alike—here’s one: neither of us ever want to delay fun.
I rush to the table and tear through the purple wrapping, screaming, “Yes-yes-yes!” It’s a sketch pad and an artist’s set of Prismacolor pencils. The pencils are made of cedar and have super-awesome colors—dragon-scale blue, hummingbird green, fairy-tale pink, Mars dust red, you name it. “Best! Gift! Ever!” I say.
“I slipped a few sheets of artist paper in your sketch pad,” Momma says, “for special projects.”
“Everything you need for the contest, Sage!” Bailee says.
Infamous to famous, here I come!
I hug Momma. “Thank you!”
She laughs. “What contest?”
I finally tell her about Doodle for Noodler.
Momma takes my hands. “Let me know if you need anything else, okay?”
There’s no way I am going to tell her about all the fancy computer programs the kids on the bus talked about. “Thank you, Momma. This is perfect.”
“Paints or brushes or whatever you need, no problem. I have a genius get-rich scheme.” Momma laughs at herself.
“Oh yeah?” I dart a peek at Bailee to see if she’s thinking about the money wish, too.
“Well, ‘rich’ might be a stretch.” Momma laughs again. “But we have a little bit of extra money. I sold a few odds and ends at Re-Bay, and I just dropped off a few more items.”
“What’s Re-Bay?” Bailee asks.
“Re-Bay sells items on eBay for people who don’t want to deal with the selling part, like figuring out the pricing, or how to post your ad, or dealing with the customers, packaging, and shipping, all that. You just drop off whatever you want to get rid of and Re-Bay does it all and then keeps a small percentage of the money.”
“What did you sell?” I ask.
“This first time,” Momma says, “I sold a purse and a few jackets I haven’t worn in years.”
I dart a look at the door and then around the table and realize the leather purse Daddy gave Momma, the one she took such good care of, is nowhere in sight.
“Your purse!”
“Oh, hush,” she says. “Your dad would want you to have art supplies. Plus, who needs a purse when I have the Sprouts bag?”
“Thank you so much.” I slide out a kitchen chair and spread my new supplies across the table. “Do you guys mind if I practice drawing Noodler logos?”
“Go for it,” Bailee says.
“Would you like to help me make pancakes, Bailee?” Momma asks.
“I’d love to!”
I open the box of pencils. They are already sharpened, their weight perfect. First, I practice with the sketching pencil. It glides across the paper’s thick grain in such a satisfying way that I lose myself, and before I know it, I’ve drawn our school bus with Mr. Melvin driving and Bay and me sitting nine rows down on the right. Then I draw the Noodler logo like pavers in the road.
I flip to a new page and test the colored pencils, each one floating across the rich paper. I switch back to the sketch pencil and use more pages to write “Noodler” over and over again, creating different fonts and styles and changing the logo letters into an image of some things in my life: an N-shaped apartment complex, two O chocolate donuts.
The apartment fills with the smell of pancakes and melting butter. Mmmmmm.
I take the Mars dust red pencil from the box and draw the D. It looks like a D but also a pair of lips tilted sideways, because the red reminds me of Miss Tammy’s lipstick. The hummingbird green isn’t the same color as my magic candle, but I still use it to shape the L into a candle. I add a yellow-and-lavender flame. The E is the best part; it’s a sideways version of me, Momma, and Daddy holding hands.
“Sage,” Momma says, suddenly sitting beside me.
I look up. Bailee is by the stove, flipping pancakes. Momma slides an envelope toward me, the one from yesterday, marked up by the Federal Correctional Institution. “I found this on the floor.”
I stare at the letter. I forgot to hide it in my dresser drawer with the others. My mouth dries. “Oh.”
“It might be a birthday note,” she says gently.
“Yeah.” I’m quiet.
If Daddy were here, he’d see the questions I have but don’t know how to ask. Momma and I don’t know how to talk about Daddy, or anything, really.
But Momma
surprises me. She touches my hand and says, “I know it’s your daddy who you spoke to about hard things. But now that he’s . . .” She takes a breath. “If you need to talk, I am here for you.”
I nod and swallow down words I haven’t even figured out. Words that aren’t ready. We both look at my drawing, me focused on the E. Three people holding hands.
That’ll be my family once the curse-reverse completes and my daddy is sprung from jail.
Chapter 12
At noon, Momma drops off Bailee and me at the dollar theater.
“Make sure you get gas for the car,” I tell her before shutting the door.
“Oh, Sage.” Momma shakes her head like I’m being ridiculous, but she has to know I’m right, since she’s forgotten before.
The car rattles as she drives off, and Bailee and I head inside to see the matinee double of Star Wars movies—A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back—Bailee’s treat for my birthday. The theater smells like buttery popcorn, and even though I have ten dollars plus a few quarters in my back pocket, Bailee uses her money and buys each of us our own bag of gummy bears.
After the movies, Momma is twenty-five minutes late picking us up, which is fine since it’s another sunny day, and the sky is a rich shade of Maya blue. Bailee and I use the time to practice cartwheels on the soft grass outside. But Momma’s tardiness also tells me the curse-reverse hasn’t started working yet.
When Momma pulls up, we climb into the car, and Bailee pushes her hand gel my way.
“Really?” I say.
“Hello! Bug larvae!” she says. “You never know what we touched in that grass.”
I’m rubbing in the gel when a Mimi Glosser song comes on the radio. Momma cranks the volume, and the three of us sing at the top of our lungs with the windows down, our hair blowing every which way. We laugh and sing to the next song, too. Momma is fun like that. Ten minutes later, we arrive at Bailee’s house. “Good seeing you, Bailee,” Momma says. “Tell your parents hello.”
“I will, Mrs. Sassafras. Thank you for the ride.” Bailee closes the car door.