The Magic Half

by Annie Barrows

  She should have known it wouldn’t work. After all, Ray and Robbie were going to be track stars next year. With a whoop, Ray leaped out the back door and chased her. Robbie, who had no idea what it was all about, joined in because he was bored and it looked like fun. Ray grabbed Miri’s arm and began to pull on it, but she kicked him and broke away. “Go away! Leave me alone!” she yelled and ran wildly toward the blackberry bushes.

  “Get her!” Ray croaked to Robbie, who stuck out one leg and tripped her.

  Miri went sprawling, and as she did, she heard the distinctive crunch of her glasses cracking. “Oh no! You broke my glasses!” she shouted, picking herself up from the grass. “You broke my glasses, you big creeps!” Tears of rage sprang into her eyes, and she tried again to run from her tormentors.

  But they didn’t stop. To them, it was a game. And if it was a game, they had to win it. “Head her off!” yowled Ray. He made a headfirst dive and succeeded in grabbing her around the stomach. Robbie cheered him on.

  “You jerk! I hate you!” screamed Miri. She pulled her arm free, and, in an explosion of fury, brought her shovel down with a clunk on Ray’s head. There was a short silence, and he dropped to the ground. Instantly, shrill squeals burst from the back porch, where Nell and Nora had been a happy audience to the brawl, and Robbie jumped to his feet and ran to his brother’s side.

  “Mom! Mom!” he yelled, catching hold of Ray’s shirt and trying to drag him toward the house. “C’mere! Miri killed Ray!”

  A new wave of screams poured from the porch, and Miri, sobbing now with fear, saw her mother moving in a blur of speed from the back door toward Ray.

  “Raymond!” her mother said in a low, urgent voice.

  “Mmm,” he replied in a whisper. “I’m okay I think.”

  “Don’t sit up yet,” she said, patting him. “Where does it hurt?”

  “My head,” he said, wincing.

  “Miri clocked him with the shovel, Mom! I couldn’t believe it! She just slammed him right on the head—” Robbie babbled.

  Her mother turned toward Miri, her face terrible. “Did you hit your brother with a shovel?”

  Miri tried to explain, “They were grabbing me, Mom! They broke my glasses, and they wouldn’t leave me alone, and they followed me, and then Ray knocked me over and—”

  “Miriam Gill, did you hit your brother on the head with a shovel?” Her mother’s voice was tight and furious.

  “Yes,” said Miri, looking at the grass. “But he—”

  “You could have killed him, Miri! How would you have felt then?” Her mother’s face was white. Miri had never seen her so angry. “Hitting is absolutely not acceptable in this family!” Miri tried again to explain, but her mother interrupted. “I don’t want to hear a word! Not a word! Get up to your room this minute! This minute!” She spit the word.

  “But—”

  “Your room!” Her mother pointed a jabbing finger toward the house.

  There was a silence, and Miri felt the stares of Ray and Robbie, Nell and Nora against her skin. She stuffed her broken glasses into the pocket of her dress and walked stiffly across the grass. When she opened the back door, Nell and Nora drew in their breath, as though they were shocked to find themselves in the company of such a bad person. Miri turned around and looked at Ray, who was sitting up on the grass with Robbie at his side. A mocking grin flickered across his face, and he stuck his tongue out at her. “He’s just faking it!” Miri yelled.

  Ray resumed his pathetic expression just as his mother swirled around. “Your room!” she shouted to Miri with another jab of her finger.

  CHAPTER

  3

  INSIDE, THE HOUSE was shadowy and quiet. Miri brushed her fingertips along the smooth, dark wood of the hallway and felt a little comforted. Her face was hot with anger and running, and her eyes were swollen from tears; she wished she could find a little door in the wall and disappear. Slowly, she climbed the small staircase that led to her room. Her room. She stopped on the threshold and peered at the walls. It didn’t look any better without glasses.

  When her parents decided to move from their house in Stanton far away into the valley, they had made a big deal about Miri finally getting her own room, instead of sharing with Nell and Nora. And, though Miri had been worried about leaving her friends and the house she had lived in all her life, she thought that having her own room would make up for a lot.

  It didn’t. Separated from the rest of the upper story by a steep, narrow staircase that was more like a ladder, her room had clearly been part of the attic at one time. Rather than being a rectangle or a square, the walls—and there were a lot of them—formed a peculiar shape. “It’s not exactly an octagon, is it?” said her mother doubtfully, as they stood looking at the room for the first time.

  Her father counted silently. “It’s a decagon,” he announced after a moment. “Ten sides. That’s pretty cool.”

  There were two thin windows on one side of the room, and then one more, a tiny, round, porthole-like window set high on the east side.

  “It’s like a skylight that slid,” said Ray.

  It wasn’t exactly what Miri had been imagining, but she could have been excited about the strange shape and the weird windows if it hadn’t been for the wallpaper. “Now don’t worry about the wallpaper,” her mother said brightly. “We’ll get that taken care of in no time!” No time wasn’t soon enough. The wallpaper was dark purple striped with vines of orange leaves. It was the ugliest wallpaper Miri had ever seen. And the closet was strange, too. It was almost as big as the room itself and had a long, low seat built into one wall.

  “Who’d want to sit down inside a closet?” muttered Miri, sitting down.

  Robbie pushed his way into the closet and leaned close to her ear. “It’s a coffin,” he whispered in a ghostly voice. “Prepare to die.”

  “Get out of here,” said Miri, giggling.

  But at night when she lay in bed, she wondered.

  • • •

  Now, as Miri stood in the doorway, the small room felt like a jail cell. Or maybe an oven. It was sweltering. She thought of Ray’s flickering smile and slammed the door behind her. What a liar he was! “Too bad I didn’t hurt him for real,” she mumbled, stomping toward her old rocking chair, “as long as I’m in trouble anyway.” She thumped down in her chair and began rocking wildly back and forth while she tried to guess what her punishment would be. It would be something pretty bad, she knew, because her mother hated it when they hit each other. Probably she’d be grounded. Big deal. There was no place to go anyway. Her mom would likely realize this. Maybe she’d have to go to bed early for a week. Or a month. Or maybe she’d have to stay in her room all day. She’d broil. She’d suffocate, and then they’d all feel really bad. Sweat trickled down Miri’s neck, and she looked around at the purple walls in disgust. They were all liars, everyone in her family. Wasn’t the wallpaper supposed to be gone by now? “We’ll paint it any color you like, sweetie,” her mother had said. But it had been twelve days, and she was still stuck with the grossest wallpaper in the world. Without her glasses, she couldn’t see the orange vines clearly, but there was a sort of a stripy orange tinge to the walls. Orange and purple wallpaper—who would be crazy enough to choose orange and purple wallpaper? Some old lady. Her mother had said that the house had belonged to an old, old lady who had lived there a long time. I bet she just picked this wallpaper on purpose to make the room uglier, thought Miri. I bet she put the wallpaper up right before she moved out, just to be mean. She knew this wasn’t true—the wallpaper was old and faded—but it made her feel better.

  Suddenly, Miri stopped rocking. There, in one of the many corners of the room, something glinted. Miri screwed up her eyes. It flashed like glass or a mirror. Her heart began to thump as she rose from her chair and walked toward the small, shining spot. Maybe, she thought, it’s a tiny window.

  But it wasn’t. It was just a piece of glass, taped to the wooden board that separated the wall from
the floor. Miri knelt down to get a better look, her dark hair tumbling forward. It was shaped like the glass in a pair of eyeglasses. It was a single lens from a pair of glasses—just the lens—stuck to the paint with a strip of yellowing tape. Carefully, Miri pulled the tape back, and the thin oval of glass fell into her hand. As it touched her skin, one of the stray breezes that wafted through the house grazed her, and a shiver rippled down Miri’s backbone. The surface of the lens was gray with dust. Why would anyone stick a piece of glass onto a wall? she wondered. She blew some of the dust away and then wiped the lens on her dress. There. Now it was clear enough to see through. She winked one eye closed and lifted the glass to the other.

  Her eye filled with tears, and the purple walls around her wavered and bubbled. Wow. Whoever owned these glasses had really terrible eyesight, thought Miri. She rubbed the tears from her eye and then held up the glass again. This time the room seemed to bend and collapse in the middle, as though the center of the house were being sucked into a whirlpool, but Miri hardly noticed, because her attention had been caught by something else, something very strange indeed. She could suddenly hear voices. They sounded very close, as though they came from the landing at the bottom of the stairs. And they were not voices that Miri had ever heard before.

  “And I’d better not catch you again.” A young woman’s voice was raised in irritation. “Or you’re going to owe me a brand-new lipstick!”

  A door opened in the hall. “What’d she do now?” a voice growled. It was a teenage boy’s voice, but low and thick, and Miri felt her heart begin to race. What was happening?

  “She’s been messing with my lipstick—again. Ma! Molly’s fooling with my bureau again!” the young woman called out.

  “Want me to get her?” the boy asked. He laughed, but his laugh didn’t sound very funny. “I’ll get her for you.” A heavy footstep sounded on the stair.

  Miri looked wildly around the room. There was something about the boy’s voice—especially his laugh—that gave her the creeps. Even if this was completely crazy and she was having sunstroke, she knew for sure that she didn’t want the owner of that voice to find her.

  The heavy steps came closer, and Miri made a leap into the closet. The long space was filled with unfamiliar items: thick coats and suitcases and boxes that Miri had never laid eyes on before. She didn’t have a moment to do more than wonder at this mystery before she squeezed between a heavy woolen coat and a pointy cardboard box. The bedroom door was shoved open and Miri held her breath.

  From somewhere far below came the thin, silvery ringing of a bell.

  The boy let out a surprised-sounding grunt, “Hnnh?” Then Miri heard him thundering down the stairs. The young woman, too, seemed to be running away, or at least Miri could hear the clattering of heels on the wooden floor growing fainter and fainter.

  Then there was silence. Miri waited.

  Long minutes slid by.

  Nothing happened.

  Finally, with cautious steps, Miri eased out of her hiding place. Slowly, quietly, she tiptoed to the closet door and peeked into her bedroom. Except that it wasn’t her bedroom anymore. The walls still stood, all ten of them, and so did the funny long windows and even the little porthole, but everything else was different. The hateful wallpaper was gone, and in its place was a faded pattern of pink roses on white. The stack of cardboard boxes containing Miri’s books no longer towered in one corner; a scratched dressing table filled the space instead. And where Miri’s bright blue bed had been a few minutes before, a small white bed with a faded pink bedspread stood. There was a limp rag rug on the floor, and at its center rested a battered old doll carriage containing a sleeping white cat. The doll itself, bald and chewed-looking, poked its head out from under the bed.

  Miri looked slowly around the room, observing each new item in order to hold off the panic rising within her. What had happened? Where had her room gone? “Have I gone nuts?” she murmured, and the sound of her own voice in this strange place frightened her even more. She looked at the cat, whose unconcerned sleep was slightly comforting, and tried to remember if she had ever seen him before. Could she have walked into a different room by mistake? After all, they had only lived in the house for twelve days—maybe she had taken a wrong turn. But that was completely ridiculous; the house wasn’t so big that it could have rooms she’d never seen before, especially not rooms with ten walls. Yes, the walls were the same, and the windows. It was her room, but—somehow—completely changed.

  Like a sleepwalker, she went to a window and looked out, hoping to see her mother, brothers, and sisters on the great lawn below. She wouldn’t mind being yelled at, she wouldn’t even mind being chased and knocked down. She just wanted a familiar face. She took one look and drew her breath in sharply. Even without her glasses, she could tell that there was no sign of her mother on the lawn below, nor of her brothers, nor of her sisters. What’s more, the backyard was different, too. The elm tree was shorter and thinner and much less shady, but what made Miri gasp was the barn. There it was, a weathered gray barn with something that looked like a pigpen on one side, and it was standing in exactly the position Miri had so recently discovered behind the blackberry bushes. The bushes themselves were gone now, and when Miri squinted, she saw neat rows of vegetables in their place.

  The sound of a screen door crashing into its frame shook Miri from her daze. Quickly, she pulled back from the window. If it wasn’t her house, it was somebody else’s, and maybe that somebody wouldn’t be pleased to find her here.

  No sooner had this thought occurred to Miri than the door opened soundlessly and a girl about her own age slipped quickly inside. She closed the door behind her and made a flying leap into the closet. There was a moment of complete silence, during which Miri wondered what on earth she should do, and then a pair of large gray eyes peeked around the edge of the closet door.

  “Oh my gosh!” the girl said in a whisper. “You’re here.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  MIRI’S MOUTH OPENED, but no words came out. What could she say? The girl was apparently expecting her, which made Who are you? sound very rude.

  The girl didn’t seem to mind. She was busy staring at Miri. A long minute passed, and then she blurted, “Will you show me your wand? Please?”

  “Excuse me?” said Miri.

  “Your wand,” the girl repeated.

  “Um. I don’t have a wand,” said Miri slowly. She wished she did. The girl’s thick-lashed eyes were glowing with admiration and excitement, and Miri didn’t want to disappoint her. “I’m Miri Gill,” she said, to change the subject. “What’s your name?”

  “Oh!” The girl looked embarrassed. “Molly. Molly Gardner. I thought you knew.”

  Miri felt as though she had fallen into the middle of a play where everyone knew their lines except her. “Why?” she burst out. “How could I know your name when I never saw you before in my whole life?”

  The girl grinned at her, a can’t-fool-me grin. “You’re trying to test me. Fairies do that all the time. Grandma May and me called you up, and you’re a fairy, so of course you know my name.”

  Miri began to feel dizzy. “I’m not a fairy, and nobody called me up. I was just sitting in my room—this room—and then it all switched, and I was here, and I don’t understand any of this . . .” She trailed off.

  “You are too a fairy,” Molly said firmly. “Otherwise what are you doing in my room?”

  “I don’t know what I’m doing in your room. And it’s my room, by the way—at least it was a few minutes ago. It had purple wallpaper.”

  Molly glanced quickly around at the faded pink wallpaper and the old iron bed. “It did not,” she retorted. “It’s been like this since my mama was a girl, ’cause it used to be her room.”

  “But it’s my room,” said Miri weakly. “Is this 2207 Pickering Lane?”

  Now Molly goggled at her. “It’s Pickering Lane, all right, but it’s not twenty-two-whatever-you-said. It’s just the countr
y out here—there’s only three houses on the whole road. We don’t need numbers to tell one from the other.”

  Just the country. Only three houses on the lane. A strange notion began to take shape in Miri’s mind. It was impossible, and yet—it happened in books. She shook her head; it was a crazy idea. But there was the barn in the backyard, and the elm, smaller and less leafy. Just the country. She held herself still and listened intently, and in the hot air she heard only the buzz of cicadas and the distracted cackle of afternoon birds. No cars. Let’s look at this logically, she thought, trying to hold back the tide of excitement that flooded her. It’s definitely the same room. But maybe—just maybe—it’s not the same time. “What year is it?” she asked urgently.

  Molly smiled at her triumphantly. “You see? You are too a fairy. You don’t even know what year it is because you’re from the shadowed ages of the past.” “Fine. I’m a fairy. What year is it?”

  “1935.”

  “1935!” Miri sat down abruptly on the limp rag rug. This was crazy. This was completely unexplainable. Things like this don’t happen, she thought. She lifted her head to look once again around the half-familiar room and took a gaspy breath. In books, people who traveled through time always knew immediately what they had done. None of them got sick to their stomachs either.

  She felt a small, sweaty hand patting her on the back.

  It was Molly. She crouched beside Miri, her brown braids tickling Miri’s shoulder. “Don’t fret,” she whispered. “I won’t let ’em catch you, if that’s what you’re fussing about. Most people don’t even believe in you anymore, so it’s a lot safer than it used to be.”

  “That’s good,” said Miri. “I guess.”

  Molly nodded encouragingly. “Everything will be all right. You’ll do just fine.”

  Miri stared at her. “What will I do just fine?” she asked. “What am I going to do?”