Alone, leaning against the cold metal door, Lennie let it all out: her big blubbering snot-nosed snuffles.
She’d had the power to disappear all her life, but never before had she felt so invisible.
When It Rains, We Train
The next morning brought a downpour that sounded like a rattlesnake. It was like the sky was crying for her—not to mention raging with thunder and lightning. The rain poured onto the grass making mud puddles in different spots, and the pudding pool was watery and overflowing.
Lennie curled deeper beneath her blanket. She did not want to get up. She’d just lie in bed for days, or weeks, or years. It wasn’t like anybody cared if she moved. She didn’t even care if she moved.
Then, the door to the room opened, and Mom came in. Lennie purposely rolled over so that her back was to her mom.
“Get up,” Mom said to Michael. “Come on, sweetie—time to train.”
Michael yawned loudly. “Five more minutes.”
Lennie pressed her lips together. She would have jumped right up at the opportunity to train.
“Now,” her mom said sternly. “The champion introductions are this afternoon, and after that, Michael, you only have two days until the first test. Every second of training counts. Some of your cousins are very strong. Now, get up!”
“Ugh,” Michael ughed.
“You too,” Mom said, putting a hand on Lennie’s back.
“What?” Lennie said, grabbing her glasses from the bedpost. She sat up so fast in her top bunk that she almost hit her head on the ceiling.
“I want to train both of you at the same time.”
Lennie pulled the blanket back up around her head. She was cocooning and wouldn’t emerge until someone told her this was all just a horrible nightmare that she would wake up from any second.
Her mom pulled the blanket off her and looked deep into her eyes. “Len, I know you’re really hurting, but when life knocks you down, you have to get back up and keep going. Come on, now, sweetheart,” her mom said tenderly. “You’re stronger than this. Show me you can face life’s hardships!”
Lennie reluctantly slid out of bed. It wasn’t what her mom said that got her moving—her mom’s advice was a bunch of baloney. It was the thought of training again that spoke to her. Practicing magic, Lennie realized, was the only thing that might make her feel better. It was hard to imagine feeling any worse.
“YAY! I’m so glad you’re coming, Len!” Michael cheered as Lennie silently began to slip into her Wellies and raincoat.
Lennie smiled weakly.
As they headed outside, the rain hit her like a waterfall; she folded her arms and shivered.
“Is there an u-umbrella?”
“No!” her mom shouted over the rain. “Your poppop changes the weather all the time, on a whim! The conditions for Wizardmatch could be anything, so we have to be prepared.”
No, Michael has to be prepared, Lennie thought glumly. I don’t have to be prepared for anything.
Her mom led them across the lawn, pulling them to the left, through the Garden of Goulash. It was not an ideal day to start: The meaty goulash sauce was watery with rain, and it took great effort to pull her feet out of it. The storm was so rough, that within ten steps, she was soaked through, and the meat sauce splashed up and splattered on Lennie’s raincoat. But despite everything, she trudged through, chilled and trembling.
Now that she was in the middle of the Garden of Goulash—and not just passing by the outskirts—she could finally read the unusual engravings on the tombstones (once she wiped the raindrops off her glasses):
Here lies Kimber, we sure will miss her. And there lies Scott, we sure will not.
“I can eat bath soap,” Gladys said, and now she’s dead.
RIP Horton de Pomporromp, who died on a dare. He bragged a lot, we thought him rude, he proved us right, now he’s worm food.
“Lennie!” her mom said, pulling on her arm. “Come on!”
Lennie broke away from the tombstones and sloshed through the soupy ground. In the distance, Ethan was training with his equally mopey-looking father, Uncle Philip #1, near the bleachers from the opening ceremony.
Anya was running laps around the castle with Uncle Philip #2. And when Lennie turned around, she saw Julien and Uncle Philip #3 doing push-ups by the pudding pool. Aunt Lacey seemed to be lecturing Bo over near the borderlands—right on the edge of the Pomporromp property.
Lennie’s mom had to holler to be heard over the storm. “WE’RE GOING TO RUN A FEW DRILLS! Both of you—run to that tombstone way over there, then run back halfway to me while invisible, touch the ground, run back to the tombstone visible, then run to me completely invisible. Ready? GO!”
Lennie and Michael ran. Lennie pumped her arms and pushed her legs—despite the rain, this was just like the training she did in her backyard. Her magic surged through her, and her skin tingled as she went invisible. It was like stretching a muscle she hadn’t used in a few days, but it felt so good.
Lennie touched the tombstone, turned invisible, and ran halfway back. Then she repeated, losing herself in the wind and the rain, getting totally drenched in the process—until she completed the first exercise.
She reached her mom fully invisible, then turned around to see where Michael was. He was still a half a field away, flickering in and out of invisibility, panting as he held on to his side. She’d beat him by a mile.
Her mom didn’t say anything; instead, she kept her eyes on Michael, purposely avoiding Lennie’s face. It made their silence even more awkward.
Michael trotted over. “That was soooooo bad.”
“No, no, it was a good first try,” her mom reassured him. “It’s okay. We’ll practice day and night before Wizardmatch. You’ll be ready, sweetie. And maybe Lennie can teach you some tips. Right, Len? Come help out your bro—”
Lennie stomped her foot in the goulash so hard that it splashed all over her mom’s coat.
“Lennie!” her mom scolded.
But Lennie didn’t answer. She turned on her heels and clomped off.
“Lennie, where are you going?” Michael cried.
She stormed across the property. Rain pummeled her like a thousand tiny fists. She kept her head down as she slogged across the estate—
Thump.
She knocked right into Ellington.
“Lennie! I didn’t see you!” her cousin said. “Wait . . . are you crying?”
“No,” Lennie said, more defensively than she’d meant to sound. She adjusted her tone and continued. “What are you doing out here in the rain? Are you training right now?” she asked her cousin.
“Nope!” Ellington said. “Just wandering around.”
“Let’s go inside,” Lennie said, linking elbows with her cousin.
Soggy as pieces of wet bread, they began to march back to the castle. Lennie looked back at her family. In the storm, Michael slipped on the goulash and fell flat on his face, turning visible the second he hit the ground. “You know,” Ellington finally said, “I’m surprised your mom chose Michael.”
Lennie shrugged, afraid that if she opened her mouth she’d start blubbering or sobbing or blobbing, which was some horrible combination of the two.
“Do you know why you weren’t picked?” Ellington said softly. Ellington put a hand on her arm, and Lennie took a deep, sharp breath. “You can tell me,” her cousin whispered. “It’s okay.”
Lennie walked faster, and tucked her head down. An intense sense of shame flushed in her cheeks. “It’s because,” she said, refusing to look at Ellington, “it’s what Poppop wanted. He wouldn’t listen when my mom tried to tell him how good at magic I am. He basically said I would lose if Mom entered me. So, she chose Michael.”
Ellington patted her back, and Lennie felt both better and worse at the same time. “What are you going to do?” Ellingt
on said gently.
“I don’t know!” Lennie groaned. “I already tried talking to Poppop, but he wouldn’t listen. And Mom doesn’t understand how I’m feeling—she told me to get up when life gets me down, which is the most useless advice ever. What do you think I should do?”
They were back at the castle entrance now. Inside the foyer, Ellington wrung out her long, chestnut brown hair and soaked the floor with rainwater. “I’m not sure getting into the competition is the answer,” she said, her voice so soft it was almost drowned out by the pitter-patter of water dripping off the two of them.
“What do you mean?”
Ellington bit her lip. “Can I be honest with you? I think the best thing you could do is let everything having to do with this whole competition roll off your back.”
“Let it roll off my back,” Lennie said, deadpan. Her own grandfather didn’t think she was good enough, and she was supposed to let it roll off her back?
“Yes. You know in your heart that they’re wrong, Len, so let them think what they want to think, and don’t let it bother you.”
“I can’t!”
“Sure you can.”
“NO, I CAN’T!” Lennie said so loudly that she scared Fluffles upstairs, and his yowl echoed around the castle. If she stayed silent, it was like saying she was okay with this. And she wasn’t. “I can’t just sit back, Ellington. I need to stand up for myself! I have to do something about this!”
“But what?”
Lennie didn’t know. But whatever it was, it had to be BIG.
Introducing . . . the Champions!
Later that day—in the aftermath of the rainstorm, in the glow of the setting sun—the Wizardmatch competitors were about to be officially introduced. Lennie sat on the bleachers, just like Poppop said she would. As Poppop had explained earlier, magically projecting his voice around the castle, there would be no elimination today. Just an exhibition of everyone’s powers before they were put to the test.
Lennie arrived at the stadium very early, the intense and blustery wind sending a chill right through her. The bleachers were the same as the ones from the opening ceremony just two days ago, but it felt entirely different. Her world felt different. She was different.
She stared pointedly into the open arena as her aunts and uncles began filing in and taking seats. They were all chattering excitedly, while Lennie felt like she had her own personal rain cloud above her head.
No one sat near her. Not Ellington’s little sister, Raina. Not Anya’s siblings, Jonathan and Mollie. Not Bo’s siblings. Not one of her aunts and uncles. She was all alone.
She glowered as Poppop took a seat on a plushy throne on his special judges’ stage. Estella sat to his right, holding a clipboard, while Fluffles was scrambling to get up on his designated chair. He tried to claw his way up the leg of the chair, leaving scratch marks and rips in the upholstery.
“Len,” her mom said softly, rubbing Lennie’s back in a circular motion. She’d been so distracted by Fluffles she hadn’t even noticed her mom sit down next to her. “I know you got upset this morning, and it hurts me that you’re hurting. What can I do to make you feel better?”
Lennie stiffened beneath her mother’s touch. Was she trying to be comforting? Because she was failing. Hard.
“Your poppop was just so insistent about Michael,” her mom continued, when Lennie said nothing. “I was just going by what he wanted.”
Lennie glared at her mom.
“Lennie, are you not talking to me?”
Lennie nodded.
Her mom’s face fell. “I understand why you’re upset. But I want you to know I would have sent both of you to compete if I could. And I really wish I could have.”
Could’ve, would’ve, should’ve. They were all just empty words now. And after a day of giving her mom the cold shoulder, she wasn’t going to stop now.
Lennie stood up and marched on over to the other side of the bleachers, closer to her older cousins. She recognized Emma, whose red bangs swept over her eyes; Lennie could only see the tip of her freckled nose and her black lipstick. And of course she knew Anya’s older brother, Jonathan. Lennie hadn’t talked with him since the first banquet, but she had seen him from a distance, shredding a storm on the magical skateboards in the Pomporromp Castle.
Lennie edged close to them, hoping they’d include her in their conversation. But Jonathan and Emma didn’t seem to notice Lennie lingering by them.
“—absolutely ridiculous,” Emma hissed. “I learned in bio class that your brain doesn’t even stop developing until you’re twenty-five years old. Our brains have years before they’re done growing—that’s plenty of time to learn Prime Wizard magic before we meet our untimely doom, death, and demise,” she finished, imitating Poppop.
“I know,” Jonathan said. “I mean, who made up that stupid fifteen-year-old age cap, anyway?”
“My brother, Ethan, is going to turn fifteen this summer,” Emma said. “So right now, he’s eligible for the competition . . . and in a few weeks he won’t be? That’s absurd. What’s going to change between this week and next week? Absolutely nothing. Age is just a number.”
“If anything, teenagers should be given a greater shot,” Jonathan said. “My magic is much stronger than Anya’s, but Anya is the one who gets to compete just because she’s younger.”
Lennie had been so wrapped up in her own issues that she had never even considered that Jonathan could be just as annoyed about Anya competing as she was about Michael.
It was these stupid rules that Poppop had made up—the sibling rule, the age rule. The whole thing stunk more than Fluffles’s throw up.
“HEAR YE HEAR YE!” Poppop Pomporromp said, his voice echoing around the stadium at ten times its normal volume.
Many of Lennie’s aunts and uncles covered their ears, though she couldn’t tell whether it was because of the volume or because they didn’t want to have to listen to Poppop.
“It is time to introduce the challengers. Just now, they have all been given a single directive: IMPRESS ME.”
Then Poppop sat down on his chair and clapped his hands, like some spoiled emperor.
The first contestant onto the field was Ellington, who timidly kicked her shoes the whole way to the middle of the arena. Lennie could only see the side of Poppop’s face, but he didn’t seem very impressed.
“Um—hi,” Ellington said shyly.
Ellington stared deeply at Poppop’s podium—until suddenly Sir Fluffington the Fourth let out a yowl. The cat was floating up in the air and gliding toward where Ellington was standing, all the while yelling, “NO NO NO!!! HISSSSSS SCRATCH CLAW! UNHAND ME, YOU VILLAIN!”
Then she floated the cat back to the chair and plopped him on his head.
Lennie frowned. She’d seen her cousin do so much more with her magic—lift multiple objects at a time with only her mind, juggling them and letting them soar in intricate patterns. Ellington was phoning it in.
“Oooooooooh!” Mortimer giggled, clapping his hands together. “Not a grand display—and you do need to rethink your presence—but I do love parlor tricks!”
Lennie winced. The way Poppop said rethink your presence reminded her of his comment about how she didn’t have the Prime Wizard look. And all her hurt crashed through her again like an ocean wave.
Ellington curtsied low. Then with an obnoxious, high-pitched giggle, she ran back to where the other champions were waiting, near the pudding pool, away from the magical spotlight that was beaming out of the mouth of the rubber ducky atop Poppop’s staff.
If she wants to fail Wizardmatch, she’ll have to do better . . . er, worse.
Lennie was secretly, shamefully, pleased that Poppop liked Ellington’s performance. She almost wanted Ellington to succeed out of spite. If Lennie had Ellington’s spot, she would never waste it like that!
Next, Bo ambled
out onto the stage, his white-blond hair and light blue eyes sparkling. He whistled casually as he dawdled around the stadium for a bit. Then he picked up a rock. He took a long look at it. And then he swallowed it.
Lennie leaned forward.
“Did he just eat that rock?” Emma spluttered to Jonathan.
All of a sudden, Bo looked like he was going to be sick. He sunk down to his knees and began to retch. ECK, he coughed. ECK ECK! And then he leaned forward like he was 100 percent definitely absolutely without a doubt going to vomit.
Except, instead of throwing up, he coughed up a small bluebird. Lennie tried her hardest to wrap her head around this . . . but her cousin just ate a rock and barfed it back up as a bird.
“TA-DA!” Bo sang. Then he ate a clump of grass, which he regurgitated back up as a pigeon. Then he took off his shoe and stuffed it whole into his mouth, which he regurgitated back up as a toucan. Then he ate his sock, which he regurgitated back up as a hummingbird. Then he reached for his watch—
“STOP!” said Poppop, who was starting to look a little ill. In fact, almost everyone watching this display was staring down at Bo with queasy expressions. “W-what is this exactly?”
“My power,” Bo said. “I can eat anything and regurgitate it back up as a bird!”
“My! What a . . . um . . . interesting and . . . er . . . useful power,” Poppop said.
“But I’m not done,” Bo said. “I was about to make a flamingo.”
“NEXT,” said Poppop.
And next was the very person Lennie hated most: Julien. He grinned in that annoyingly smarmy way. And he looked at Poppop Pomporromp for a beat.
Then two. Then three.
Lennie held her breath, waiting for him to display his power.
“WOW!” Poppop said suddenly, rising to his feet. “Julien truly is most impressive! Everybody clap! CLAP FOR JULIEN!”
Wizardmatch Page 9