While they discussed dessert and the merits of pie with ice cream versus pie with whipped topping, I ran through possible scenarios for sneaking in some potion brewing. I could get up at two or three in the morning and sneak into the kitchen. Of course, there was no guarantee that Mom and Milo’s parents would stay asleep. Getting caught would be disastrous. Getting caught would be far worse than waiting until Monday to get started. If Milo weren’t here, I could sneak over to my Dad’s apartment and work on the substitution there. Goodness knew my father wasn’t using the place. But I wanted Milo’s visit, and I was too embarrassed for him to know how low I was on self-control. He’d lose respect for me. Maybe I could break into the house across the street. It was for sale and nobody lived there. Nobody would think to look for me over there. Except maybe the police. I was contemplating committing a crime to further my addiction. I slumped in my chair, disgusted with myself. Get a grip, Zoe!
“Chocolate cake or pumpkin pie?” Sheree asked.
“Pie, please,” I answered. Stupid chocolate allergy.
Dad and Sheree disappeared to the kitchen.
Jake snagged a piece of stuffing from my plate.
“It’s okay now,” I said. “I ate enough.”
“I wasn’t trying to help,” he said. “I just wanted it.”
Sheree returned with three large bowls, overflowing with giant slices of pie and ice cream or whipped topping. She passed one to each of us, and then Dad showed up with two more bowls.
“Whoa!” Milo said. “This slice of pie is as big as a whole pie. How’d you do it?”
“She made the pies in deep dish pizza pans,” Jake told him.
“I can’t eat all this,” I admitted, my fears of insulting Sheree returning.
“No pressure,” Dad said. “Sheree can’t eat it all either, but I dared her to try a teenage-boy-sized slice.”
“Oh good.”
“Wait,” Milo said, pulling his phone out of the pocket of his khakis. “Take a picture of me with this.”
He handed the phone to Jake, and Jake complied.
“Ooh,” Sheree said. “Get my camera, John, and we’ll get one of all three of them.”
Dad went for the camera, and Jake looked up at his mother. “Um, Mom. I already started.”
“That’s okay,” she said. “It won’t matter. I think it will be a cute shot.”
Moments later, Milo and I slid closer to Jake and we each held our pie bowls tilted to fully expose the massive servings. “Oh, this is going to be adorable,” Sheree said.
The brief reprieve over, I turned my focus back to finding room in my stomach for the pie. Anya would have passed on the pie and turned it into a setup for a compliment to her physique. I wasn’t nearly as good at that sort of scheming. I took a tentative bite, and the pie tasted incredible.
“Eat what you can, Zoe,” Dad said. “I don’t think I’m going to have any room left for beer with my football game.”
“You would choose stinky beer over this pie?” I asked.
“Obviously not,” Dad said, and he shoveled another heaping forkful of dessert into his mouth.
The dishes didn’t take long. Sheree had been washing them as she went, and she’d even started the dishwasher as Dad carried the turkey to the dining room.
In the media room, Dad turned on the SEC game, Sheree climbed into the recliner, and me, Milo, and Jake took the couch. Milo made a point of sitting in the middle. “No cuddling,” he demanded. “It’s awkward.”
Dad laughed, but Jake didn’t look too happy.
“Fine,” I said, leaning against Milo’s side. “I’ll cuddle you instead.”
“Hey!” Jake said.
Straightening up, I moved to the edge of the couch. “Fine,” I teased. “You two can cuddle.”
“I’d rather they didn’t,” Dad said, partly kidding, and partly revealing that he was not as open-minded as he pretended to be.
He didn’t need to worry. Jake and Milo had put as much distance between them as possible, which meant that Milo was invading my space.
“For crying out loud,” I grumbled, jumping up and throwing myself into the seat between the two boys. I reached out and held each of their hands. “Now shut up. I’m trying to watch the Bulldogs play.”
“It’s the Gamecocks and the Gators,” Dad corrected.
“Whatever,” I said.
As far as I remembered, my family didn’t like either team. We were one hundred percent Vols fans, and both teams were rivals. “Who are we rooting for?”
“South Carolina,” Sheree answered. “Florida needs another loss.”
I fell asleep at some point, and I woke up to find that I wasn’t the only one. Sheree snoozed in the recliner. Dad snored, softly at least, in the armchair. I had used Milo as a pillow, leaving Jake alone at the other end of the couch. Hopefully, he had fallen asleep before me. I didn’t want him to read anything into the situation. I disentangled myself from Milo, trying not to wake him. A glance at the television told me the Florida-South Carolina game had ended. Nebraska was playing somebody. I was tempted to snuggle up against Jake and go back to sleep. But I didn’t think Milo, Sheree, or Dad wanted to see us sleeping that way. Well pooh. I crossed my arms and leaned back against the sofa.
Soon my father’s snores escalated to their usual volume and irregular rhythm.
Milo groaned in his sleep. Jake whimpered and turned his head into the couch cushion.
I turned to find Sheree looking at me through sleep-heavy eyes. “I told him to see a sleep doctor,” she said. “He won’t listen.”
Dad hit one of his big snores, and Jake and Milo joined the land of the no longer sleeping.
“Wow,” Milo said.
“How can a human make that noise?” Jake asked.
Neither one of them said anything about my sleeping position, so I hoped I was in the clear.
“No reason to let John sleep,” Sheree said. “Wake him up to drive you home. I’m sure your mother is growing impatient. It’s after ten.”
Once we got to my house, Jake and Milo helped carry in the heavy bags of limestone. Milo made a show of keeping it just out of my reach.
“What did you want this for again?” Jake asked. “Mom wasn’t making much sense.”
I wished I could tell him the truth. I wanted him to understand me like Milo did. But that was not a possibility. So I said, “The garden.”
Jake didn’t ask for specifics. I didn’t expect him to. I didn’t care much about what my mother did in the garden either. How many lies had I told Jake in the short time we’d been dating? I had long ago lost count.
“Where should we put this?” Milo asked as we went inside. “Maybe in the garage?”
“Oh,” Mom said, seeing what they carried. “Let’s put it in the shed out back. I’ll get the key.”
I made a face at her to express my opinion about her lack of trust.
“Right,” Milo said. “Where the gardening stuff goes.”
I walked out the back door with them to watch them stack the bags inside the shed. Mom shut the door, closed the lock, and put the key in her pocket.
I glanced at the wooden shed. The joke was on her because there was an axe in the garage that would free that limestone in a couple of well-placed whacks. The idea made me smile.
Milo went up to say goodnight to his parents, and I walked Jake back to the front door.
Jake pulled me into a hug. “Should I risk kissing you in here where your mother might see or out there where your dad will?”
“Here,” I said.
Jake’s kiss was soft and sweet with vanilla and nutmeg lingering on his lips.
“I think you’re turning into pie,” I informed him.
“Will you still kiss me if I do?”
I nodded.
“Then I’ll survive.” He pressed his lips to my cheek, and then pulled away and opened the door. “Will I see you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Definitely.” I had no idea what our plans were for tomorrow, but I
would make sure they included Jake.
I watched him lope across the lawn to my dad’s car, and then shut the door.
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that,” Mom said, crossing to the sofa.
“You heard that?”
She raised her hand to her head and said, “Even if the cruel, cruel world turns me into a bakery item, I’ll be fine as long as I have you. My smoochy, smoochy goo goo.”
I laughed in spite of myself. “You are horribly misquoting.”
She shrugged. “That was the gist of it though.”
“Then I’m glad I missed it,” Milo announced as he came down the stairs. “The replay had to be way better anyway.”
Heat rushed into my cheeks and burned my ears. “It wasn’t like that, Milo.”
He and my mother had collapsed with laughter. They sat, side-by-side on the sofa, guffawing like idiots from a bad Cartoon Network show. I glared, and they’d stop laughing momentarily before looking at me and cracking up again.
“Milo’s my friend!” I protested. “You can’t steal him and use him to make fun of me.”
My mother thought this was hysterical, and she laughed harder and slapped her knee with her hand.
“Oh, Annie, you have to see this,” Milo said, pulling out his phone.
My mother’s eyes widened as she saw the size of the desserts Sheree had served. “Well!” Her eyes lit with mischief, and all I could do was wait for the punch line. “They do say you are what you eat.”
“That’s not even funny,” I protested as Milo succumbed to hysteria. “You had a sweet setup, and you blew it.”
“Sweet setup,” Milo said.
He high-fived my mother as the laughter continued.
Since we’d had a nap, Milo and I decided to watch a movie before bed. Mom went on upstairs, with one last, “Stay away from potions, Zoe.”
“Stay away from potions,” I mocked in a high-pitched voice after she’d gone.
“Wow,” Milo said. “You’re losing it, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t generally discuss my problems with my mother’s friends.”
“Ouch,” Milo said.
“Seriously. How am I supposed to wait until Monday? It’s been forever since I brewed a potion. Days and days and days.”
“I thought you weren’t talking to me.”
“Be careful. I might take out my rage on you,” I warned.
I watched Milo’s eyes as he considered messing with me some more. He wisely kept quiet.
“I looked into what we talked about before,” he said. “You know. Your theory that Finn discovered the substitution for dead man’s toe. I didn’t find anything online. The closest I came was an old textbook of my dad’s that said a woman, whose name was being withheld for safety reasons, had made the discovery.”
“A woman? Maybe they said it was a woman so anybody guessing it was Finn would be thrown off the scent.”
“I guess it’s possible,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
“What’s the safety thing about? Safety reasons? Is that exactly how it was worded in the book?”
“Of course. I memorized it because I knew you’d ask.”
“Whose safety? Hers? Ours? The Witch World? The planet?”
“I don’t know,” Milo said. “It could mean just about anything.”
“I think I might just ask him.”
“Who? Finn?”
“Yeah. I think he should tell me whether it was him or not. Instead of all this theoretical, ethical, mumbo jumbo.”
“Good luck,” Milo said. “I think mumbo jumbo is his thing.”
I pressed play on the remote and the DVD player roared to life.
“You aren’t going to fall asleep on me again, are you?” Milo asked, sneaking a glance at me.
I froze. “I didn’t think you knew.”
“I woke up when you started drooling.”
“I did not drool!”
“No,” he admitted. “You didn’t.”
“Did Jake see?”
“I don’t think so.”
I sighed with relief.
“He may not know, but I do,” Milo added.
I grabbed the throw pillow and swatted at him.
“Hey,” he snapped. “We’re missing the movie.”
Milo kept giving me weird, unsettling looks as we watched the movie. I hoped he was just trying to give me a hard time. I didn’t want things to change between us, and things definitely felt off-kilter right now. He was just messing with me.
Either way, I knew better than to fall asleep again. I got up and got us each a soft drink. Milo ignored his, so I ended up drinking it too. Then I got up once to run to the bathroom, and another time because I caught myself nodding off. Stupid L-tryptophan.
As added insurance, I practically draped myself across my end of the couch. Surely if I drifted off, I’d gravitate that way. I was starting to enter dangerous territory as the characters in the movie began interacting in my mind with my own family. This happened a lot, and it meant I was half asleep. Struggling to keep my eyes open, I started to push myself up into a seated position.
I didn’t have the strength. My body was heavy. In fact, there was a large weight draped over my back. It felt somewhat like the heavy apron they put on you when they took x-rays at the dentist. Only warmer. Hot almost.
And moving. The weight was moving rhythmically as if it were breathing. I stopped struggling and focused. Milo lay against me. Asleep? Or just trying to torture me? I wasn’t sure. I turned slowly to roll him onto the back of the couch as I slipped out from under him.
When I finally accomplished my task, Milo lay snoozing on his back on the couch. I squinted at him, trying to see if he had really fallen asleep.
I went upstairs, making sure my footsteps were loud enough to let Milo know I’d gone up. At the top of the stairs, I stopped and squatted to look through the railing.
Milo didn’t stir. I waited, determined to catch him awake.
Nothing.
Finally I gave up, no longer caring whether he was asleep or not. I crept the rest of the way to my bed and collapsed.
I wasn’t sure what to think about the falling asleep stuff. We were friends. We were comfortable with each other. Would Anya and I curl up like that if we fell asleep? No. Not on the couch. But in the backseat of the car, on a long trip, I vaguely remembered it happening. Normal, I assured myself. Perfectly normal. And I’d cuddled up with Milo instead of Jake because I always slept on my left side. I checked myself quickly to confirm and realized I was curled on my right side. Oh crud. It’s because I’m all freaked out, I told myself. Now I’m just making myself crazy.
I pulled the cover over my head in hopes of blocking out my racing thoughts. Stupid turkey, I told myself. All that Thanksgiving food was messing with my mind and my sleeping habits. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized I hadn’t once thought about the limestone in the shed. I had forgotten all about it.
Since the mountains were a ridiculously popular day after Thanksgiving destination, Mom had scheduled a trip to the lake where we could find some walking trails. We had a “light” breakfast which involved pancakes with lots of choices from fruit to yogurt to syrups. Then we drove up to Norris Lake and walked for about an hour. We’d bought tickets for a double feature at the movies later.
“I almost feel human again,” Milo’s mother said as we returned to their van. “I think I ate so much that my system was threatening to shut down completely.”
“Not the prettiest time of year for the lake though,” I said.
“I thought it would be preferable to walking around the track at the high school.”
“Definitely,” Milo’s parents agreed.
“It’s nice to get back to nature,” his dad said.
I wasn’t so sure. The sun wasn’t shining, and we could have been back home already. Of course, I wasn’t in a hurry. A weird notion for me. I didn’t need to hurry because
I couldn’t work on my potions anyway.
“I saw something interesting online this morning,” Bill said as we headed home.
I expected him to describe some new computer gadget, but instead, he said, “A village in Africa made a huge amount of money by capturing and selling a rare toad.”
“A toad?” As in, one of my toads?
“That’s right, Zoe. You may have caused a few problems…”
My mother coughed from the front seat.
“…but it appears some actually benefited from the Frog Fiasco. They’re using the funds to build a school and a clinic.”
“Oh, how nice,” Marjorie gushed.
“Cool,” Milo said.
Nobody mentioned the less positive results, and I found myself very thankful that they held their tongues.
Back at home, the parents started arranging the leftovers so we could each fix a plate. Milo eyed the stuffing and turkey. “How can it possibly look so good to me after all I ate yesterday?”
“Because it is good,” his father said.
The phone rang, and Mom answered.
“Hello.”
“Yes, of course. How nice to hear from you, Paulette.”
“Sure. Just a moment.”
Mom turned to Milo’s mother. “I need to take this. Can you guys excuse me for a moment?”
“Sure,” his mother said.
Mom went into the living room.
“Where’s the gravy?” Milo’s father asked.
“Annie has a jar somewhere,” his mother said. “I’ll find it.”
Since Milo’s dad was practically drooling on himself, we let him heat his plate in the microwave first. Once ours were heated, Milo and I went to the dining room table.
I was savoring a bite of cheesy broccoli casserole when my mother came into the room. The tension she radiated slapped me from across the room. I swallowed the casserole and put down my fork.
“Zoe Miller!” She held up her iPhone, her arm shaking with anger. “Did you do this?”
As I stared at the dating site profile on her iPhone, I tried to get a grasp on the situation. How could she possibly have found out already?
“I asked if you did this.” Mom’s face grew red.
I pushed away from the table and stood up.
Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble) Page 15