Twist My Charm

by Toni Gallagher

  Old friends…or two people falling in love.

  I’m starting to get an idea.

  Like almost every day when Dad drives me home from school, I run to the house while he checks the mailbox. He usually grumbles that there’s nothing but advertising and bills (“Wasting paper!” he says), but today his voice stops me before I reach the front door.

  “Cleo! There’s something here for you.”

  I turn around. Something in the mail can only mean one thing—Uncle Arnie! No one else has ever sent me anything.

  I practically tackle Dad to the ground, grabbing at the pile of papers in his hand. “What is it? Which one? Where, where?”

  He gives me his famous “calm down” look. It’s so easy to spot, he should trademark it, like Larry with his sarcasm. So I put my hands by my sides and bite my bottom lip, but I still can’t help bouncing around a little on my toes. And Dad can’t stop the voice inside my head from saying, Come on, come on, come on!

  Finally, after what seems like a million years, he hands me a postcard and walks inside.

  The side with the picture is facing up. It’s actually two photos next to each other. One shows a cute little pink cottage with a white porch in front, and the other shows a room stuffed with books from floor to ceiling. The words in the corner of the card say “Maple Street Bookshop, New Orleans, Louisiana.”

  I turn the postcard over and immediately recognize the scrawl. It’s the same writing from my voodoo doll instructions.

  Knowledge is power, said somebody important. Blaze your own trail, said somebody else. Go, go, go, my friend Cleoooooo!

  There’s no signature.

  Uncle Arnie for sure.

  I turn it over again. What is he trying to say? Is he telling me a story? Giving me a clue to something? Is the meaning of life hidden here somewhere?

  I look at the photos more carefully. There’s an orange cat stretched out on the floor in front of the books, and an owl perched on the top bookshelf. But the owl’s not real; it’s wearing glasses and a hat with a tassel like it’s graduating from high school.

  “Cleo, time to start homework!” Dad’s muffled voice is coming from inside the house, and suddenly I realize I’m still standing out on our front path.

  I run inside, straight to my room, and carefully place the postcard on my dresser, standing it against my bottle of love potion. Are the two things related? They must be!

  With all this in my head, I have a hard time working on my storyboards for the Immersive Interactive Art Installation. I sketch and sketch, but Pandaroo ends up flying around in space with a friendly, smart-looking owl, which isn’t exciting at all. Storyboards are the building blocks of movies; they need to have action!

  When Dad calls me for dinner, he asks to see the postcard, which I’ve brought to the table. “Don’t get your messy vindaloo sauce on it,” I warn him as I daintily hand it over.

  “I’m not eating with my hands,” he mumbles as he takes the postcard. He looks at the photos, then turns it over and reads the other side super quickly. He laughs and hands it back. “I think that’s bacon,” he says.

  “No, it’s chicken vindaloo.”

  “I mean the quote. ‘Knowledge is power.’ ”

  Dad is just as confusing and strange as Uncle Arnie! “If it’s a quote, how can it be bacon?” I ask.

  “No, Francis Bacon. A writer from the fifteen hundreds. He might have been the first one to say it. But a lot of people have said it since.”

  “What about ‘Blaze your own trail’?” I ask.

  “Lots of people have said that too.”

  “So, what does it all mean?”

  Dad finishes chewing, then shrugs. “What does your uncle Arnie ever mean?” He scoops up some rice with his fork, and I edge the postcard farther away from him. “I think it’s up to you to decide.”

  After Dad says that, I really can’t concentrate on homework. And I definitely have a hard time getting to sleep that night. As I stare at my ceiling in the darkness, I keep asking the same question: Uncle Arnie, why are you so confusing?

  I fall asleep without an answer. But when I wake up, I’m bursting with a fantastic idea. I don’t know where it came from, but I know it can be accomplished—today!—when we go on our school field trip to the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles.

  All I need to do is find a book of love potions (“Knowledge is power!”) and pick one that will make Larry and Samantha fall in love. Somehow in the middle of the night, I realized Uncle Arnie doesn’t want me to wait for his instructions; he wants me to do it myself!

  My heart is almost exploding with happiness because this is such an awesome, positive thing I can do for the girl who was once my best friend. She already likes Larry for sure. He seems to like her too. And even though sixth-grade boyfriends and girlfriends usually make me as sick as a bucket of lumpy papier-mâché does, I could accept those two as a couple…because they’d both be my friends then! If Sam is hanging out with Larry, she’ll talk to me more and more, and eventually she’ll be my friend again. I’ll have the group I’ve always wanted.

  Today I’ll blaze my own trail, just like Uncle Arnie wrote. With Madison’s help, I hope.

  When it’s time to go to the library, we get in a line and walk out to the school parking lot, where a big yellow school bus is waiting for us.

  It feels like I’m going back in time as I climb up the stairs. The tall steps are just like the ones in Ohio; the seats are the same shade of green, with the same thin, uncomfortable padding. I’ve done this a million times, but for the kids in my class, it’s a weird treat. They don’t ride school buses; they’ve always been dropped off by parents and nannies and au pairs. “Oh my gosh, I feel like I’m in one of those old teen movies!” Madison says, looking around with the amazement I might feel if I were on an actual movie set. “Where should we sit?”

  Finally I’m an expert at something! “The backseat,” I say. “It’s the bounciest, so it’s the most fun, and we get to see everyone come on.”

  We sit down and watch as Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae walk on together, with Ronnie and Lonnie Cheseboro behind them. “Weirdness! It’s totally like in the movies!” Lisa Lee announces.

  Madison looks at me and smiles. “I guess I still have some things in common with them,” she says. Madison never totally stopped being friends with Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae; she just started having lunch and hanging out with me more often. They all still text sometimes and even do things on the weekends, but Madison doesn’t tell me anything about it. So I don’t ask.

  The popular lovebirds hold up everyone else in line by standing in the middle of the bus and giggling about who’s going to sit where, and whether the girls are going to sit with the boys or each other. Finally they decide that the boys will sit behind the girls. I can only imagine the teasing and poking and giggling that will follow. Ugh.

  “Is this seat taken?” asks Larry, plopping down into the seat across from me and Madison without waiting for an answer. He stretches his legs out like he’s going to take up the whole space, but when he sees Samantha looking around for a free seat, he shouts for her to come back toward us.

  “Do you have room here?” she asks Larry. She almost seems shy—which is not normal for Samantha!

  “Sure.” Larry pulls his feet back and lets her sit down. “As long as you’re not allergic to monkeys.” He lifts his monkey figurine out of his backpack and holds it up.

  “Oh, cute! I’ve been wanting to see this little guy close up!” Sam is talking in a high-pitched, enthusiastic voice I’ve never heard before. Something is definitely up.

  This is exactly why my love potion idea is so brilliant! Unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell Madison my plan with Sam sitting two feet away, so instead I ask if she’s read about Ryder Landry’s tour of Asia this summer. Of course she has. It was on the WickedHappyTeenTime blog this morning. She also knows his favorite Asian food (Korean barbecue) and the color of the sleep mask he wears on long flights (b
lue).

  “Are you a Lander, Cleo?”

  Like most school buses in the world, this one is rickety and noisy, especially with windows open and horns honking and cars passing by. But I swear that question came from Sam on the other side of the aisle. I turn and see she’s smiling.

  “You’re a Lander?” I ask.

  “Yeah! I didn’t think you knew who he was. Your dad listens to all those boring podcasts and old music.”

  “Madison told me all about him, and now I’m his biggest fan,” I tell her.

  “Except for me,” Madison says.

  Larry leans across Sam toward us. “Except for me!” he says.

  We all look at him in silence. Ryder definitely has boy fans, but Larry is not the kind of boy who likes anything normal and popular.

  “Okay, I’m lying,” he says. “Actually, I can’t think of a human being I want to know less about. I built my little sister a whole fort out of pillows in our basement so she could sing his idiotic creepo-teen-robot tunes as far from my ears as possible.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, Larry,” says Sam, launching into some Ryder Landry lyrics—loudly! “When I need to talk, or take that long, long walk, you’re the one who won’t say no.”

  I recognize the song right away. I have a lot of favorites already, but it’s one of my favorite favorites. Madison and I join in. “Because you’re my friend, my friend, my friend to the end of the Earth!”

  It’s a little weird to be singing this song of deep and lasting friendship with my best friend and the girl who used to be my best friend, but it’s ridiculously funny to see Larry plugging his ears with his fingers and howling like a coyote with a stomachache, so we keep going. Larry shouts and begs for us to stop…which we don’t, until we arrive at the library.

  That might have been the most fun bus ride I’ve had in my life.

  I’m so excited when we get to the library, I’m ready to explode…and it’s not just because of my awesome plan—the plan I still haven’t gotten to tell Madison. This library is actually a cool-looking place. It’s not boxy and boring; it’s like an old castle or fortress, with statues built into the building and a colorful mosaic pyramid on the top of a tower. Our teacher, Kevin, says it takes up the whole city block and houses a hundred bazillion books—or some big number. I’m not totally listening; I’m just hoping one of those books has love potions in it!

  Kevin leads us into the big main room. It’s got a super-high ceiling with chandeliers hanging down and a long desk with four librarians working behind it. Kevin hands out our library cards and says we’re supposed to pick two books we’d like to read, and do a report on one at the end of the school year. He tells us to meet right back here in one hour, not a minute later. He reminds us to keep our voices low, to not talk to strangers (unless they work there), and to pair up and always stay with our buddy.

  “I never leave my buddy’s side,” Ronnie Cheseboro says, draping his arm over Lisa Lee’s shoulder.

  “Ewww, gross,” Lisa Lee says, squirming away, but I can tell she loves the attention.

  Madison’s my buddy; we don’t even need to talk about it. She knows I have something important to discuss, and we’ve got eight floors to ourselves for the next hour. As we run to the elevator and the door closes, I spot Samantha and Larry walking up the stairs together, and she’s laughing at everything he says.

  I knew it! She likes him. All we need is a potion—with instructions—so they’ll both fall in love. I explain it all to Madison in the elevator. “It’s obvious that Samantha loves Larry, but if Larry loves her back, she’ll have no choice but to become part of our group.”

  “Why’s that important?”

  That part’s harder to explain, but I tell Madison the truth, even if it’s slightly embarrassing. I tell her how uncomfortable I feel not being able to talk with Samantha, passing her in the lunchroom, and trying to avoid her in Kevin’s classroom and in Focus! The fact is, I miss Sam as a friend.

  “But we just had fun on the bus with her,” Madison points out as we head toward a computer we can use to search for books.

  “Right! Because she was with Larry! Once we get them together for real, she’ll be your friend, she’ll be my friend, she’ll be everybody’s friend!” I must have shouted that last part because we get a “Shhh!” from a librarian behind a nearby desk. “Sorry,” I whisper in her direction.

  I lower my voice and turn to Madison, who’s typing search words into the computer. “All we need is the right book.”

  Madison lifts her hands off the computer keyboard and turns to me. “No books,” she says, disappointed.

  I’m not giving up yet. I need to blaze my own trail! “Come on, there are a million bazillion books here! Look up spells. Look up charms. Try another language, anything!” Madison’s fingers fly across the keyboard. Then they stop. I peer over her shoulder to look at the screen. “Did you find something?”

  “Glad you asked.” Madison steps back from the computer and pushes me toward it. I read the title on the screen. Then I read it again. I’m confused. And she can tell.

  “It’s the only thing they have,” she says.

  I look at it again. It says:

  ¡POCIÓNES FANTÁSTICOS PARA LA VIDA Y AMOR! (Los hechizos y encantos para encontrar el amor, mantener el amor, y crean el amor que antes no existía)

  Obviously it’s in Spanish. I easily figure out POTIONS FANTASTIC (the nouns and adjectives are backward in Spanish), and the word amor again and again and again. I’m hoping that means “love.”

  I can’t translate it all, but I understand enough to know that this book could change everything.

  Now that we’ve found the listing for the book, we have to find the book itself—which is not so easy in this gargantuan library. First we have to figure out the floor, and we’re so busy jabbering in the elevator that we miss it, so we have to go all the way to the top floor and then wait to go back down again.

  Finally we spot the room with the Spanish-language books. As we run inside, we happily shout some of our favorite Spanish words (¡Hola! ¡Adios! ¡Feliz Navidad!) and are shushed by another librarian. Quieting down (but not slowing down, not at all), we zoom up and down the aisles. I’ve never seen so many palabras de español (words of Spanish) in my life! Shelves and shelves and shelves of words I don’t understand. Words like etéreo, místico, and muertos vivientes. Luckily, the Dewey Decimal system is in numbers, not Spanish, so we finally find POCIÓNES FANTÁSTICOS.

  My hand is almost shaking as I pull it off the shelf. The book is definitely old. The edges of the pages are thick, yellowish, and raggedy. The cover artwork is faded and lame-looking. It’s just a simple drawing of a bottle—sort of like my bottle of love potion, but purple—with a hand lifting up its stopper so hearts and flowers can fly out. I could have designed something way more creative. Still, I’m holding this book like it’s from ancient times, as if any page could turn to dust with the touch of my dirty fingertips.

  Madison shakes me. “Let’s look inside!”

  I carefully open the book. There are illustrations inside on every couple of pages, but there are also lots and lots of words. “Wow,” I say, overwhelmed. “It’s todo español.”

  Madison nods. “It doesn’t look easy.”

  “I guess we could pick a potion and I could…translate it,” I offer, knowing I don’t really want to, no matter how excited I am. I’ve got enough homework already.

  “You’ll translate?” If this were the Madison I used to know, I’d say she was being mean or judgey, but she’s just joking because she knows I’m pretty slow at Spanish. Muy despacio, as a matter of fact. And that means really slow!

  We sit on the floor with the book open between us. I concentrate for a minute and, to my surprise, I get an idea. “I know! I’ll pick the pages that look the best and scan them on my dad’s printer. Then I can email them to myself and translate them online.”

  “Perfect!” Madison says. “I was going to say Yvonne could hel
p me, but I don’t need her telling my mom or dad that I’m translating love potions. They’re already worried about how much I like Ryder Landry.”

  I stand up, ready for action. “Well, once Larry falls in love with Samantha, I want to use one on my dad and Terri. Then maybe you and Ryder can be next.”

  “Ha ha,” Madison says. Suddenly there’s a ringing noise from inside her backpack. She jumps back in surprise. “Oh no!”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “I set my alarm for when we have two minutes left,” she says.

  “Two minutes? You couldn’t have given us more time?”

  She stares at me. “How much time did you set your phone for?”

  Good point.

  We haven’t even looked for any other books, and we definitely don’t want any from the Spanish-language section. We rush out of the room with POCIÓNES FANTÁSTICOS, shouting “¡Gracias!” at the librarian. We’re gone so fast, we can barely hear her shush us.

  We wait all of two seconds after pressing the elevator button, then scramble down the stairs instead. When we get to the first floor, we see Kevin in the distance, standing by the main desk. No one else is around him.

  “You’re late, ladies! Check out your books and let’s go!”

  “Grab anything!” Madison says, but I’m already doing exactly that. I pick the thinnest book I can find off a random shelf. Perfect for a book report!

  Madison and I toss our books on the desk. The librarians slide them over a scanner, and we cram them in our backpacks. Kevin leads us onto the crowded bus. As we look for seats, kids grumble about us being late. “What were they doing anyway?” Ronnie Cheseboro says to Lisa Lee.

  “Madison was helping Cleo learn to read,” she suggests, and they laugh.

  I glare as I pass their seat and squeeze in with a kid I don’t know. When the bus gets moving, I look around and see Larry and Sam still together—even now, when they don’t have to be buddies! It will only take one small sip of love potion to push them into boyfriend-girlfriend land for sure.