Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble)

by Alexander, Juli

  I wanted to spend time with him, but not tonight. I had planning to do for tomorrow. Finn and I were going to start the unicorn horn, and I still didn’t have a starting point. “Actually, I have to do some things with my mother. What about tomorrow night?”

  “It’s a date,” he said. “I’ll have to find another way to avoid my mother and your father.”

  “They aren’t that bad.”

  “At least they’re trying to keep the parental PDA to a minimum. They must have learned something from our PDA plan.”

  Even a minimum of public displays of affection was too much from Dad and Sheree. My gag reflex had a low threshold.

  “Where’d you get that?” Jake asked, holding my hand up.

  “What?” Oh, the ring.

  “Dad, I mean Mom gave it to me.” Mom would make more sense.

  “It’s pretty. What’s the occasion?”

  It’s to signal for help for a witch catastrophe. Because I’m a witch. “Nothing special. She just saw it and thought of me.”

  He may not have noticed that I was lying, but I felt rotten.

  At three, Mom picked me up to run errands. She needed another new outfit for her next show. My mother had an interior design show on HGTV. We did a lot of shopping for her wardrobe. Apparently, if she could write it off on her taxes, she didn’t mind spending the money. She had some sponsors, upscale clothing stores that gave her clothing in exchange for mention in the credits, but she didn’t always find what she wanted.

  “Where to today?” I asked after shoving my backpack into the back seat.

  “I haven’t decided,” Mom said as she put the car in drive. “I thought we’d run by Target first.”

  “Cool.”

  “Need something from there?”

  “No. I want to look around and see if anything jumps out at me.”

  “I doubt you’ll find something to replace unicorn horn at an everyday store like Target.”

  “Are you forgetting the tuna fish from the toad slime substitution?”

  “Toad slime isn’t quite as fantastic as the unicorn horn.”

  “Yet still rare and almost half of the cost.”

  “But toads aren’t mystical creatures.”

  “No.” I had to admit she was right. “Toads aren’t inherently magic either.”

  “It’s really a shame unicorns were so overdone in the seventies. I wonder if they’ll make a comeback.”

  “Are you talking about unicorns or unicorn merchandise?”

  “Are you suggesting that I’m rambling?”

  “Duh,” I said.

  We parked and went into the store. “I’m going to wander,” I said.

  “I’ll find you when I’m ready.”

  A huge portion of the store was stuffed with Christmas decorations. The number of toy aisles had doubled. Since I didn’t think a toy train or a Christmas bow was going to do the trick, I would have been better off browsing at another time of year. Normally, I would have looked through the Halloween clearance merchandise, but the trauma from the Frog Fiasco hadn’t abated yet.

  After a full tour of the rest of the store, I relented and started down the toy aisles. Barbies by the hundreds, bicycles, action figures, board games. I almost tripped over a small chalkboard easel that someone had left in the aisle. I picked it up and found room on the shelf where it would be out of the way. The aisle contained art supplies of all shapes and sizes, box after box of Crayola crayons, watercolor sets, and chalk. Chalkboard chalk and sidewalk chalk. Pastels. Wait a minute. I grabbed a container of the sidewalk chalk, and a box of the chalkboard chalk. I carefully opened the box of white chalk so that it didn’t damage anything. The chalk felt right. Close. Very close. I pulled the plastic lid off the sidewalk chalk and withdrew the chunky pink one. Softer. These were my starting point. These were my base.

  I thought back to my days with chalk. One year Mom got me a big art kit from one of the discount stores. The chalk in it was hard, too hard to write well on the board. Cheap. They’d cut corners and the result had been inferior chalk. I needed harder chalk. Replacing the chalk carefully and resealing the packages, I racked my brain for the best place to find cheap chalk. One of those stores where everything costs only a dollar. I had to find my mom and hit up some of those stores.

  I whipped out my cell and called my mother instead of tracking her endlessly through the store. “Mom! I have it. I know where to start.”

  We went to two dollar stores, both of which had chalkboard chalk. Neither store had sidewalk chalk.

  I slipped into the car and put the bag of chalk from the second store in with the bag from the first store. We’d cleared their shelves, and I had nine total boxes to start with.

  “Where are we going to find sidewalk chalk, Mom? It’s November.”

  “Maybe we should drive to Florida. They probably carry it year round.

  “Not funny.”

  “That’s right. You have a lot going on. I’ll fly down for the weekend and bring some back with me.”

  “I need it for tomorrow morning. There has to be some somewhere. What about one of those pool stores?”

  “They become Christmas stores this time of year.”

  Well, great. “Mom, I need this chalk!”

  “I know, Zoe,” she said with exasperation. “I might have an idea.”

  “Really?” Please, please have a good idea.

  “I think I remember seeing a lot of off season merchandise at that discount store down by Cedar Bluff.”

  “Like summer stuff? When? Recently?”

  “Actually, no. It was last summer and they had a large winter item stock.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Not the news I wanted to hear, but still… at least we had somewhere to go.

  “I think we have a good chance, Zoe. Let’s check it out and see.”

  The ride to Cedar Bluff took forever.

  “Zoe, please stop jiggling your leg.”

  Oh. I didn’t know I was. I stopped. “Okay, Mom, but drive faster.”

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that. We will be there soon enough, and I can’t exactly drive faster than the person in front of me.”

  She could try. How many times had she told me that you never know until you try?

  I smiled to myself.

  When Mom finally turned the car into the parking lot at the shopping center, I unbuckled my seatbelt and started reaching for the door handle.

  “Zoe, don’t jump out while I’m still driving!”

  “I’m not. I’m just getting prepared.”

  “You shouldn’t take off your seatbelt. Somebody could run into us.”

  “In a parking lot? In the next twenty seconds?”

  “It’s possible,” she snapped as she pulled into a space.

  With great restraint, I waited until she had the car in park. “Can I go?”

  In a near whisper, she said, “Go.”

  I went. I crashed through the front doors of the store and stood, struggling to orient myself so I could head in the right direction. In front of me, artificial flowers were crammed in between vases and candles. Birthday napkins, plates, and decorations overflowed from the shelves. The store must have saved on costs by foregoing any sense of organization.

  They could have buckets upon buckets of sidewalk chalk in here, and I wouldn’t ever find it.

  Mom walked up beside me.

  “Wow,” she said. “I didn’t remember the store being quite so… quite such… anywhere near this…”

  “… likely to crush and trap us inside forever?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Let’s split up and call if we find it.”

  “Sounds reasonable. Remember, if the shelves start falling, they can track our cell phone, so don’t take out your battery.”

  “Mom, that isn’t going to happen!”

  She pointed to the shelf in front of us. “I think these shelves could be unsteady.”

  “Yes. Obviously, but wh
y would I ever take out my cell battery?”

  “Sometimes you surprise me with the things you decide to do.”

  We went our separate ways, and I found myself in the itchy, scratchy sweatpants section. No thanks. For two more dollars, I could get some that had at least some cotton in them. Sometimes I thought these so-called discount stores preyed on people who didn’t know better than to believe the prices were good here. At least on some of the products.

  I made my way through housewares, struggling to glimpse a sign of toys through the shelving.

  As I passed shelf after shelf of yard ornaments, I heard the excited chatter of a young child. I backpedaled and strained to follow the voice. Two rows over, I found the child and his mother. The little boy clutched a coloring book in one hand and a sucker in the other.

  “Ohmygosh, wheredidyoufindthat!” I asked.

  The mother jumped at my near uninterpretable query.

  I had about two seconds until the child started crying. I knew that look from that nanny reality show. Take a deep breath, I told myself. I did, and then I smiled. “I’m so sorry to startle you. I’ve been searching the store forever for the toy section, and I was hoping you could point me in the right direction.”

  The woman nodded, the panic in her eyes settling into warmth.

  “Toy,” the boy said. “I want a toy. Mommy can I get a toy. I want a toy.”

  So much for the warmth.

  “No, Jeremy. You have a coloring book.” She looked up at me and pointed across the store, in the direction I’d been going before stalking them. “All the way to the far side of the store.”

  “Thanks!” I said.

  “I wanna toy!” the boy said again but louder.

  “And I’m so sorry,” I said, and then I dashed away before I could make the situation any worse.

  Halfway across the store, I heard the tearful yell at full volume. “I wanna toy!”

  Spreading joy wherever I go, I thought to myself.

  The Pepto-pink explosion that was the girls’ toy aisle appeared in the distance. Finally!

  I couldn’t help pausing for a moment to run my eyes over the Barbies. I’d never had a lot of them, but they had the coolest stuff now. Focus, Zoe. I tore myself away from scientist Barbie with her awesome chemistry beakers and dark framed glasses, and I went to the crayon section. The chalk there was super generic. Awesome. But no sidewalk chalk. I needed the clearance section. Although the whole store appeared to be clearance. Junk pile after junk pile.

  My phone rang and I reached in my pocket and whipped it out. “Where are you?” I demanded.

  “Zoe, I think I found it.” I was hearing my mother’s voice in stereo. From the phone and from the next aisle over. I hung up on her and rushed around the corner. Sure enough. My mother crouched as she dug through a pile of toys on a bottom shelf even more cluttered than the others. She held up a box of egg-shaped sidewalk chalk. I grabbed it and examined the package. Four eggs in various pastel shades. The chalk had clearly been an Easter season item, and the brand looked decidedly off. Perfect!

  “And here’s more,” Mom said, using one hand to hold up a mountain of not-so-desirable blister-packed toys as she withdrew a container of the standard cylindrical chalk with the other. I reached for it and checked the brand. A different name. The more variety the better.

  “Ooh,” she said, “I see—”

  An avalanche of toys rained down onto the floor.

  “Oops,” she said as the cardboard dust rose around us.

  A giggle escaped before I covered my mouth with my hand.

  My mother looked up at me, her eyes lit with laughter. “I could use some help here.”

  “Well, we can see everything better now.”

  “I guess I should have just thrown it on the floor to start with.”

  “Would’ve saved us some time,” I said.

  She threw a neon green foam football at me.

  The foam ball bounced off the side of my thigh and rolled down the aisle. I retrieved it, and glanced around for a place to put it. Apparently, I held the lone remaining foam product.

  I found a spot on a shelf big enough to squeeze the football into. Then I went back to sort through the toys with my mom. She’d pulled out one character from each of a hundred different TV shows, comic books, movies, and collections. “Well, we know who the least popular characters are,” I said.

  Mom waved a dinosaur-dragon-chicken-like thing. “Shocking that nobody snapped up this darling toy.”

  “I get it, Mom. You want one for Christmas. Message received.”

  My mother snorted. “No thank you.”

  I tried to think of a way to buy the thing without her noticing.

  “If you dare give me this as a gift, I’ll pay you back with hemorrhoid cream in your stocking.”

  Someone might actually think I needed it. “Truce,” I said.

  She grabbed a handful of pom poms and uncovered three dented boxes of sidewalk chalk shaped like ice cream cones.

  “Oh my gosh! These are great.” I reached around her to grab the boxes of multicolored cones.

  I set two of the boxes on top of the other chalk, and then ripped open the third box. The hard surface of the cone scratched against the skin on my hand.

  “What’s the verdict?” Mom asked, standing up and rubbing her thighs. “You look happy.”

  “I think it’s going to be good,” I answered.

  Mom took the box from me and held out her hand for the chalk I had removed. “I’ll get the chalk together. You can get down there and clean up the mess we made.”

  I hated to relinquish my find, but I handed it to her. “Okay,” I said, and got down on my knees to scoop up the toys and toss them back on the shelf.

  “Fifty cents on clearance,” Mom read. “Department store price, four ninety-nine. As if anybody would pay five bucks for this stuff.”

  “I would,” I said, shoving in another stack of toys. There was no way more toys were going to fit there.

  “With my debit card,” Mom said with a sigh.

  “Fifty cents is a steal. Too bad they don’t have more.”

  “These will get you started, and we can go to the Internet for more options.”

  I grabbed the last five assorted packages from the floor and stuck them on a higher shelf.

  Turning to my mom, I said, “I can’t wait to get home and get started.”

  “You are going to wait for Dr. Finnegan, aren’t you?”

  Wait? That had been the plan, but how in the world could I wait until morning. Morning was forever away.

  “Besides, we aren’t going home yet. I have an outfit to find.”

  Oh, right. I stifled a whine.

  Mom handed me half of the chalk and we walked to the front to check out.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said. I took the bag with my invaluable purchase. I knew I was on the right track with the chalk. Someday I’d write about my experiments, and this moment would mark the beginning of my success in finding the substitution for unicorn horn. The substitution that could lead to a cure for cancer and save millions of lives.

  “Zoe,” Mom’s voice penetrated my thoughts. She rolled down the window, and called my name again. “Earth to Zoe. Get in the car.”

  I was standing next to the door on the passenger side with my head so far in the clouds I didn’t remember the walk to the car. I opened the door and climbed into the car, setting the bag of chalk at my feet. “Sorry.”

  Four stores, two adorable outfits, and one big salad later, Mom and I pulled into the garage.

  “Thank you for pretending to be patient while I shopped,” Mom said as she removed her packages from the car.

  Hugging the bag of chalk to my chest, I followed her inside the house. “You’re welcome.”

  “You almost pulled it off.”

  “I tried.”

  I stopped in the kitchen to unload the three boxes of ice cream chalk, normal chalk, and egg chalk. I would save the other chalk for lat
er.

  I needed to check the texture. I grabbed a knife and the cutting board. After covering the board with butcher paper, I chopped up an ice cream cone and scraped the powder into a small glass bowl. I switched out the paper and did the same with the other two kinds. Smiling, I stared down at the three glass bowls lined up on the counter. Time to test the texture. I stuck my hand in the ice cream cone bowl and felt the subtle graininess I was hoping to find. But as I continued to sift through the substance, I realized that most of the powder was soft. Too soft. The grittier portion probably came from the harder outside surface of the cone. I had hoped for more grit. The other two were even softer, with finer powder, and no graininess.

  My instincts told me I needed a harder substance, but I didn’t know if hardening the chalk itself would work or if I needed something harder than chalk. I hoped that sleeping on it would give me some inspiration.

  I fell asleep after two hours of lying in bed with a storm of ideas running through my mind. Exhausted from the excitement, I slept like a rock until my alarm woke me at seven.

  I bolted out of bed, hoping Finn would come early so we could get a start. I wasn’t sure I had the ingredients right yet, but I did my best thinking while I was brewing. Potions, finding substitutions, I loved this stuff. Having Finn here though, well, I was afraid it would change things. Would I be able to focus, to brainstorm, with somebody watching? Not just somebody, but Dr. Finnegan. I’d started to get used to having the attention of the greatest potions master of all time. I wasn’t sure I could handle his scrutiny of my process.

  Chapter Five

  When I was showering, I realized that the chalk had a good chance of cross-contamination during the experiments due to the high likelihood of dust floating around the kitchen. I struggled to tamp down my knee-jerk reaction to freak, or worse to divide the kitchen into zones with plastic sheeting to prevent one chalk from contaminating that of another mixture. At this stage of the experiment such problems were not a real issue, although they were quick to balloon in import in my mind. No. This was my first go at the unicorn horn potion. I was doing little more than playing with the chalk at this point. I was using such large quantities of chalk anyway, that a few tiny specks, or even a hundred specks, I thought shuddering, would not impact the experiment. If I were dealing with smaller quantities or refining the substitution as I had with the toad slime right before Halloween, the contamination would render the research unusable. But I wasn’t, and I could handle the imperfections of today’s work.