Spell Check

by Julie Wright

  And then it looked really, really mad.

  I tried to jump off. It wasn’t exactly wide, just incredibly long. But it had no intentions of letting me get away that fast and looped itself around me, leaving me standing on it, surrounded on all sides by its fat coils. My eyes started to bulge as its body constricted me tighter around the legs and stomach. In my panic, I screamed out, “I wish you’d just let me go!”

  If it looked surprised before, it was nothing compared to the surprise that flashed over its snake features as its coils dropped from around me. My mom stood near the curling wall of snake skin with her mouth hanging open in a scream that wouldn’t quite force itself out, her eyes wide, her nostrils flared out in mask of frozen fear. Farmor must have gotten them off the raft before I’d interrupted her.

  I sprang from the epicenter of anaconda squeezing and into my mother’s arms. “Mom! You’re okay! You’re alive!” I hugged her tight, and after the initial shock of finding me in the jungle with her, she tightened her arms around me too.

  “It could have killed you.” She ran her hands over my hair and my face and repeated this phrase several times while checking to make sure I was okay.

  “Look out!” Farmor yelled. She was already moving to action as she swung the tree branch she held around to club at the snake springing toward my mom and me.

  Apparently my wish for the snake to leave me alone didn’t have any lasting effects on it, because it looked ten times angrier, and a hundred times more determined to not be thwarted by anything or anyone.

  Farmor hit the snake soundly on the head and yelled out, “Du kan inte! Gå bort!”

  The huge mass of scales slithered back like a bad dog that’d been swatted on the nose with a newspaper. My mom, finally coming to her senses enough to be furious that her daughter was ever in danger, let out a primal scream and picked up the branch she’d dropped in her rush to hug me. She chased down the snake. “You stay away from my baby! Do you hear me?” She swung her branch with full intent to beat the snake soundly once and for all, but the branch flew from her hands and into Farmor’s. My mother was pulled back a dozen steps to keep her from reaching the retreating anaconda.

  “That would be a bad idea to reawaken the snake,” Farmor said. “Let him go. It’s hard to make lasting impressions over the needs of a hungry animal; if you reawaken him, I doubt I could stop him again.” Farmor looked calm and terrifyingly in control as she stood with the branch in her hand like a scepter, and her eyes set on my mother as though she anticipated an argument she planned on winning.

  Mom stood slack-jawed. Dad came from the riverside where he’d been battling the snake before I showed up to distract it away from him. They both stared at Farmor like she was an alien being. Then they erupted into questions, insults, and exclamations of either gratitude or disgust.

  “Did you do this?” Mom asked Farmor.

  “How did you guys get here?” Dad asked Farmor before turning on my mother. “What were you thinking bringing Ally into the jungle?” he shouted at Mom.

  “This isn’t my fault!” Mom shouted back. “What were you thinking bringing Ally into the jungle?” Mom re-shouted the question, only directed the shout to Farmor. “Your mother did this, not me!” She turned to my father.

  “She could have been killed!” they both shouted at the same time while pointing at me.

  “But I’m fine!” I called above the noise they were making.

  Farmor’s face darkened before she yelled out, “Silence!”

  Even the jungle went instantly quiet at her demand. My parents closed their mouths and stared at Farmor. They moved closer to each other as though they were nervous she might attack them the same way the anaconda had.

  “You’re here because you are both children in need of scolding. You’re both so ill-behaved that your daughter had to make a wish so you might learn to get along with each other. What would you have done if we hadn’t come along? Would you have argued with each other even while you were being digested by that serpent?”

  Mom looked abashed for several moments, her reading glasses broken and dangling from the little chain around her neck, her clothing dirty and torn. She looked like she had been through a war. She almost looked like she might hang her head in apology except she didn’t. Any guilt she might have had came to an abrupt halt. She narrowed her eyes and said, “My daughter wished us here? What are you saying, Katrine?”

  Farmor lifted her chin, looking every bit like an empress speaking to the commoners. “Your daughter, Allyson, has come into her powers. I wanted to discuss this somewhere other than in a place where we are likely to get malaria since I doubt any of you have taken precautions against such a thing.” She lifted an eyebrow in challenge to their lack of preparation. They looked confused. She continued. “I see that I was right. You’ve taken no such precautionary measures, so why don’t we—”

  Mom cut her off. “Precautionary measures? I was sitting in my shop entering invoices. I closed my eyes for just a moment, and when I opened them, I was standing on a raft with him, of all people, and a mouth as big as my head coming at me! What is going on here, Katrine? And don’t start telling me I should have been prepared. Just tell me what happened. I don’t need a lecture; I need information!”

  Dad stepped forward, taking courage in Mom’s rant to spew one of his own. “For once, I agree with Hannah.”

  Mom was stunned enough by his agreeing with her that she went silent entirely. She folded her arms and straightened her posture. She gave a short nod to my dad to continue.

  “Seriously, Mother, what is going on? You owe us an explanation. And we’re both going to stand right here until we get it.” He folded his arms and nodded back to my mom. It was the first time in years I’d seen them unified on anything.

  Farmor smiled, her papery skin folding into little waves against her cheeks with the motion. “So you agree on this point? Well, it’s a start, though it isn’t good enough to be an ending to this mess. And you’ll stand wherever I tell you.” She clapped her hands together and we were all suddenly in the car. Dad sat in the driver’s seat, Mom on the passenger side, with Farmor and me in the back.

  My parents were both so pale, they looked sick. My mom took deep shuddering breaths as she pressed her hands against the dashboard and the windshield. “What just happen—”

  “We can’t stand around and wait for the mosquitoes to feed on us.” Farmor straightened her cape. “And I don’t know how long my command will last on that serpent. For all we know, he’s already on his way back to finish what he started. This will be a much more comfortable place to have our discussion.”

  My dad swiveled in his seat. “Mother, you aren’t making any sense. None of this makes any sense! What just happened? How did we get here? How do we get home? How did you make that snake go away? And where is Robison?”

  My mom’s eyes went wild. “Robison? Where’s Robison? He isn’t out there, is he?”

  I groaned. “Yeah, Mom, I’m totally stupid and dragged my ten-year-old brother to the jungle to fight snakes. Seriously, give me some credit.”

  A small monkey landed on the hood of the car, having jumped from who only knew where. Mom screamed. Dad let out a “Yeeahhh!” noise, and Farmor grunted at the two people sitting in the front as though she were doing a babysitting job and not getting paid nearly enough.

  “So where is Robison?” Mom demanded to know.

  “He’s at Heather’s. Farmor said we’d be better off leaving him behind,” I answered, trying to make Farmor look more responsible to my mother. I noticed that Farmor wasn’t really paying attention though. She was looking at the monkey on our hood. The monkey was looking at something down on the ground.

  I followed the monkey’s gaze to something sort of shiny and metallic looking sticking out of the dirt and leaves of the soft jungle ground. Farmor said, “Allyson, you do still have the car keys, don’t you?”

  “They’re in my pocket.” I felt uncertain of whether they were o
r not and reached my hand into my pocket to check, when the monkey jumped from the hood of the car to the ground and picked up the shiny thing. He held it up high above his head, jingling it as he flashed all of his teeth at us in what looked like a grin of triumph.

  Those were definitely my keys he held—the ones that were not in my pocket after all. I opened the car door and leapt out after the thieving monkey.

  “Ally! Wait!” Mom shouted after me.

  But losing the keys to the jungle would definitely not be a good thing. And if I thought I was in trouble for all the other stuff I’d done, this wouldn’t help my case any. The monkey saw me coming and turned in a flash of dark brown fur, his tail whipping behind him.

  “Stop right now!” I commanded.

  The monkey didn’t take commands, apparently, as he wrapped his little fingers around some low-hanging branches and launched himself high into them. I followed him quite a distance, trying to keep an eye on him as he leapt from tree to tree. He finally stopped and stared down at me.

  “You stupid monkey!” I called up to him as he chattered. It sounded like the primate version of mockery. I was being mocked by a monkey.

  “This is crazy!” I kicked at a fern-looking plant and felt frustrated to my core. This was the sort of thing Lisa would have loved to film so she could plaster it all over the Internet. This was the sort of thing that would have made Jake change his mind about going out with me.

  I stared up at the monkey who seemed to be waiting for me to chase him up. He slapped his lips together and grinned. “I wish you could see me now, Lisa, arguing with a monkey and nearly killing off my parents. Wouldn’t you just love that?”

  The monkey cocked his head as electricity filled the air.

  My stomach dropped into my toes. “Oh no!” I whispered as Lisa shrieked in mortal terror.

  Chapter Eleven

  Note to self:

  Keep earplugs in your purse. You never know when you’ll end up in the Amazon with a shrieking Lisa Snoddy.

  I whirled around to find Lisa right behind me. She looked totally out of place in the middle of the jungle, wearing a knee-length, hot pink, satin bathrobe over her nightgown and pink flip flops. But oddly, her slimy green hair seemed earthy and natural among all the foliage. So she fit in while at the same time standing out entirely.

  When her eyes met mine, she shrieked again. Even the monkey, who’d been making fun of me just moments before, seemed perplexed by the primal eruption of Lisa’s lungs. We both gaped at her while she emptied her lungs, refilled them, and emptied them again.

  Her hands flew to her head as she tried to cover up the mass of moldy strands. I rolled my eyes, horrified by my own stupidity, and lifted my hands in a soothing, shushing motion. “Don’t worry about your hair, Lisa. I don’t care what it looks like.” I didn’t add that it was my fault she’d been having a series of bad hair days. It was awful enough to need to explain why she was in the jungle.

  “What are you doing here?” she finally asked before looking around, reassessing her situation, and adding, “What am I doing here?” Her voice trembled.

  Every word, even now that she’d stopped shrieking, still sounded high pitched and very near the verge of another shriek attack. I looked up to the monkey, not really having time to deal with Lisa when I still had to get the keys. How I wished I’d had better control over what I’d said and never wished her here. But I couldn’t say that out loud because if I sent her back without explaining things to her, she’d run around telling everyone I was a witch. Or worse, what if I sent her back, but she ended up somewhere wrong? Stupid wishes.

  And then it hit me . . . how to make the monkey give me back the keys. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

  I glared at the monkey, who opened his mouth wide with that sassy grin again. “I wish you’d throw down those keys to me, right this instant!”

  The monkey looked disappointed as his fingers loosened his grip. With a grunt of disgust, he threw the keys straight at me with all his little monkey might. I felt pretty sure that all the chattering he was doing would get him in big trouble if his mom heard because he was definitely swearing at me in monkey.

  I had to dodge to the side to avoid being struck with the keys, and then hurried to snatch them up before he came back down from the trees and took them again. Then I turned my focus on Lisa.

  “I’m sorry.” What else could be said? I was sorry. And it was a huge thing for me to feel bad about anything bad that happened to Lisa. With our past history together, and all the horrible pranks she’d pulled on me through the years, one would imagine I’d feel a little triumphant in regard to her current situation, but all I felt was guilty. I hated guilty.

  “What’s going on, Ally?” She seemed too terrified to realize how desperate for help she sounded, or that I was the one she was asking for help. She hadn’t called me Ally Kat. She hadn’t added the typical scorn that always seemed to fill her voice whenever she uttered my name.

  “It’s complicated. But don’t worry; you’ll be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.” I tried to sound confident, comforting, and in charge all at the same time.

  “Where am I?” she repeated.

  “It’s comp—”

  “Don’t tell me it’s complicated! Tell me where I am!”

  So much for me being in charge. I took a deep breath and kept my hands held out in front of me like people do when facing a ferocious wild animal. The snake may have been gone, but my battle with beasts was far from over. “You’re in the Amazon, I think. Somewhere in South America.”

  “How did I get here?”

  I almost said it was complicated again, but pressed my lips together instead to hold those words in my mouth. I didn’t want a repeat of her yelling at me so let the question hang between us before finally confessing the naked truth. “I wished you here. So you could see me make a fool of myself. You like to watch me make a fool of myself. I hated for you to miss the opportunity of watching me chase down a monkey through a rain forest after he’d stolen my car keys.”

  She shook her head, making her wild, green hair slither. “I don’t understand. You wished me here?”

  I looked away and flopped my shoulders around in a way of a shrug. “Yeah. I’d tell you that you can hate me for it, but since you already hate me, I guess all things are equal. Too bad you don’t have your phone on you. This would look great on YouTube. Let’s get to the car. I don’t think we’re safe standing out in the open.” I turned and headed back the way I’d come, not even caring that I’d just been totally honest with my arch enemy.

  It took a moment for her to decide to catch up, but she fell into step beside me. “You drove your car to South America?”

  “You could say something like that.” I pushed aside a spray of leathery leaves and held them, allowing Lisa to walk through without touching them. If she touched a plant that had bugs on it and one of them bit her, she might get sicker than her clingers. The last thing I needed was another epidemic to be responsible for.

  “I didn’t say it. You did,” she said as she walked through the little entryway I’d made for her without saying thank you.

  I let the leaves fall back into place and must have finally snapped under the sleep deprivation and chaos of my new life because I said exactly what I was thinking. “I didn’t say that exactly. I said, let’s get to the car. Look Lisa, weird things are happening. I didn’t mean for all the weird things that are happening to happen, but they are, and right now I’m tired, and bugged, and honestly, you’re the last person I want to share any of this information with. And yet, because I’m an idiot, I don’t have a choice. I’ll fix it and get you home and everything will be just fine, but for now, can you pretend to be a nice person?”

  She stopped abruptly, her mouth hanging open in total shock. “I don’t have to pretend. I am a nice person.”

  I’m sure my look of shock matched hers. “Yeah. And puppy breath smells good. You’re kidding me, right? You don’t real
ly believe that?”

  “Of course I believe it. It’s the truth.”

  How she appeared so stuck up and princess-like with her green hair and pink flip flops while proclaiming her fictional benevolence baffled me. I faced her directly, feeling angry and confused, and wanting to staple her mouth shut. “Forgive me if I don’t nominate you for the Nobel Peace Prize.”

  I shook my head and grunted at her in disgust before turning and walking away, I didn’t bother to hold any more plants for her, didn’t even bother to see if she was behind me. She kept a close distance though. The slapping noise of her flip flops and her chanting the words, “This is all just a nightmare . . . this is all just a dream,” gave her away.

  I was about to wonder if I’d gotten us lost, because I felt pretty sure we should have arrived at the car already, when I felt Lisa’s hand on my arm. I turned to see what she wanted when, in a dizzying swirl of movement, we were suddenly standing directly in front of my mom’s car. My parents were standing next to it, as was Farmor, though she looked pretty calm, and my parents looked like they’d drop dead if you whispered “boo” at them. Well my dad did anyway. Mom looked mad.

  Lisa’s hand on my arm had turned into a tourniquet-like grip, her green nails digging into me. “What just happened?”

  Farmor groaned and shot me a reproving glare. “What is this? What have you done now?” She positioned herself directly in front of me with her lips pursed and her eyes slit into a look that said she was furious with me. “Where is your wishing troll?”

  I felt around my pockets before lifting my empty hands in surrender. “In my room, I guess?”

  She harrumphed. “Your room? You guess? You left the one item you need to keep you from being out of control in your room? Did you shove it back under your bed?”