Hand-Me-Down Magic #2

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “Well, what do you want to do if we can’t go outside?” Alma asked.

  Del was willing to do anything to forget about the crystal ball and her bad fortune. She and Alma played eighteen rounds of Candyland with Evie, and it didn’t help at all. Del taught Alma how to sing “Pon Pon Pon,” the song Abuelita always sang to Del when she was little. That made Del happy for a little bit, but she quickly felt scared again. She tried drawing pictures and practicing cartwheels and visiting all her titis. She even tried cleaning her room! None of it helped.

  Del had loved that crystal ball. She loved magic. And she loved Alma for giving her the special present. She didn’t like being the fraidycat cousin.

  “Maybe we can go outside for a little bit,” Del said. “But I’m going to close my eyes, and if you see the cat or hear it or anything at all, we’re going right back inside.”

  “Okay,” Alma said. Del closed her eyes as tight as she could. Alma grabbed her hand and led her to the playground. Every few steps Del would ask if the kitten was there. It didn’t matter how many times Alma told her everything was fine. Del was still scared.

  She didn’t get less scared at the playground. With her eyes closed, Del kept hearing noises that she was sure were that dangerous black kitten. Some scratching on the slide sounded like a kitten clawing at the plastic. Alma insisted that was just a little kid playing with a branch. Next, Del was sure she heard the kitten meowing. Alma told her that it was just a very squeaky swing.

  When Del felt something soft brush against her ankles, she screamed. “It found me!”

  Alma rushed to her side. The black kitten was nowhere to be found. Del’s favorite dog, Oscar, was just trying to say hello.

  Del bent down to let Oscar lick her hand.

  But just when she decided to relax and enjoy her friend Oscar, the kitten appeared again. It ran right up to Oscar and batted his fluffy white tail with its tiny paw. A kitten that small should be scared of a dog, even a cute white fluffy one. But this kitten wasn’t scared at all. Only curious. And determined. And Oscar didn’t seem to mind. He wagged his tail in response, causing the kitten to bat it even harder.

  Evie watched, delighted.

  Alma giggled and tried to find someone with a phone to take a photo.

  But Del ran straight out of the playground and all the way back to her room. She dove right under the covers.

  That black kitten wouldn’t be able to find her there.

  . . . She hoped.

  10

  A Cursed Cousin

  -Alma-

  Alma wasn’t sure how to help Del. She wasn’t used to being the brave cousin. Or the in-charge cousin.

  “What do we do?” Evie asked, and Alma didn’t know how to answer.

  “Do you think I’m cursed?” Alma asked her littlest cousin. “Do you think I can only tell bad fortunes?”

  Evie thought about it. “Maybe,” she said. She didn’t seem very worried about it, though. Maybe all along, Evie was the brave cousin. “We should ask Abuelita. She’ll know.”

  Abuelita knew the answers to most things. She knew how much frosting was the perfect amount of frosting to put on a cupcake, and she knew where to find a cool costume, and she knew how to make a garden grow really fast, and how to make perfect rice and beans every time. And she knew all about magic.

  Evie and Alma found Abuelita in the backyard garden when they got home. She was pulling weeds. Titi Clara was there too, helping. They both had large glasses of Abuelita’s famous lavender lemonade and they were talking very quickly, half in Spanish, half in English. Alma could have sat all day and listened to the pretty way the two languages sounded together. But she didn’t have all day. She had to help Del right now.

  “Abuelita,” Alma said, “do you think I’m cursed? Do you think all my fortunes are bad?”

  Abuelita smiled. “I don’t believe in curses,” she said.

  “But you believe in magic,” Alma said.

  “Those are very different things,” Abuelita said.

  “How?” Alma asked.

  Abuelita gave her Abuelita shrug. One slow shrug. One very fast shrug. And a lift of her eyebrows. “You’ll see,” she said at last.

  Alma wanted to believe Abuelita. And she almost did.

  “Ouch!” Titi Clara yelped. Alma turned to face her. Titi Clara shook out her hand. “I got pricked by that rose’s thorn!” she said. “I guess I’m not much of a gardener.”

  The rose was red. Just like Madame Alma had predicted it would be. And when Alma counted the number of red roses on the bush, there were exactly twelve.

  A dozen red roses for Titi Clara.

  Alma’s heart sank. Another one of her Madame Alma fortunes gone bad.

  Abuelita might not have believed in curses, but Alma was sure starting to.

  11

  The Very Scary Shadow

  -Del-

  That night, Del couldn’t sleep. Every creak of the building made her nervous. She tossed and turned and tried to think of not-scary things like empanadas, and Oscar in the fancy black jacket and top hat he wore to Del’s birthday party, and the silly songs Evie sometimes sang to make Del laugh.

  But that kitten kept creeping into her thoughts. She imagined the scary kitten eating all their empanadas. The kitten in a tux, sneaking up on Oscar. The kitten singing a scary song. Del just couldn’t get away from thoughts of that kitten.

  The kitten didn’t act the way Del expected a kitten to act. That might have been what scared her most of all. She wanted to understand her fortune and the crystal ball and that little black kitten.

  But she didn’t understand any of it. And that made her want to hide away for as long as she could.

  Del tried to close her eyes again. She shut them tight. She tried to order herself to sleep, but her body wouldn’t listen. When she opened her eyes again, Del saw the scariest thing she’d ever seen. An enormous shadow of the kitten was on her wall. The kitten was now the size of a horse! It moved its legs and tail in a scary way. Del thought she might cry.

  “Please go away!” she said to the kitten. But the shadow stayed. If anything, it grew bigger and closer.

  “Leave me alone, kitten!” she said. But the kitten’s shadow only stomped its scary paw.

  Del hid under her covers, all the way at the bottom of the bed in a little ball. She would have to stay there until morning. Maybe she would have to stay there all week. Or all month! She didn’t know when the kitten would finally go away and find another family to scare.

  Meanwhile, the kitten didn’t have any idea how scared she was making Del.

  The kitten didn’t know it was supposed to be bad luck.

  The kitten didn’t know it didn’t act like a usual kitten. The kitten didn’t know most kittens were scared of water and of dogs.

  The kitten especially didn’t know that its shadow looked so big and scary. The kitten was still just a very small kitten. Its shadow was large because of the position of Del’s night-light.

  And the kitten wasn’t stomping its paw or batting its tail around to be mean or scary or a monster.

  The kitten had climbed into the tree outside Del’s window and it had found a silver streamer from Del’s birthday party.

  The kitten loved that silver streamer. It batted the streamer, watched it move around, then batted it again. It was even more fun than batting Oscar’s tail! When the kitten accidentally pawed the streamer so hard that it fell to the ground, the kitten curled up in the crook of the tree and fell asleep. It dreamed of silver streamers and birdbaths and blue paint.

  Del didn’t sleep at all. And she didn’t look outside her window to see how cute and small the kitten looked when it slept. She stayed at the bottom of her bed, underneath all her blankets, wishing she’d never ever seen that crystal ball or that little black kitten.

  When Del got out of bed, she saw little blue paw prints all over the tree and the sidewalk in front of her building.

  She felt her heart speed up. It felt extra b
ig and extra loud. It made her ears ring and her mouth dry. It made her hands all sweaty even though they were also cold.

  Del didn’t understand why those paw prints were still there or what the kitten had been doing or why. She didn’t understand anything but how scared she was.

  And now she was more scared than ever.

  12

  An Important Mission

  -Alma-

  There was one fortune from Madame Alma that still hadn’t come true. She’d told Evie that she’d seen a mirror in the crystal ball. It hadn’t happened yet, but Alma knew that if Evie got her hands on a mirror—any mirror—something terrible would happen.

  So Alma did what she had to do. She needed to protect her family from her cursed fortunes.

  But she needed Del to help her. She knocked and knocked on Del’s door.

  “I can’t come out!” Del called out at last.

  “There’s still Evie’s fortune,” Alma said. “That hasn’t come true yet!”

  “It will,” Del said. “And when it does, it will probably be terrible.”

  Del didn’t sound like Del at all.

  “I won’t let it come true!” Alma called back.

  “Be careful,” Del said. She sounded tired. Fear was really exhausting, Alma knew.

  Alma had a mission. She would make sure that Evie’s fortune never came true. And if Evie’s fortune didn’t come true, then maybe Del would stop being so scared, and everything could go back to the way it was supposed to be.

  Alma went into every single room in all of 86 ½ Twenty-Third Avenue. She was looking for all the mirrors. She started on the top floor, where her family lived. She covered all the bathroom mirrors with towels and carried all the smaller mirrors out to Abuelita’s garden. She wasn’t quite sure what she should do with them, but maybe Abuelita would be able to help. At least this way, Evie couldn’t get hurt by her mirror fortune.

  The second-highest floor belonged to Evie and her parents and Titi Rosa. Alma found a small handheld mirror in Titi Rosa’s room and a pair of mirror earrings in Evie’s mom’s room. Alma tried to move Titi Rosa’s full-length mirror, but it was too heavy to do on her own. She’d have to find some help.

  Next, Alma went through Del’s home. She found a few compacts from Del’s mom and a pretty mirror that hung in Del’s family’s kitchen. Alma asked Del if she could look in her room for mirrors, and Del said no, but she opened the door a crack and handed Alma the mirror from her wall. It was the size of a book and had Del’s name on it. It was one of Del’s prized possessions.

  Abuelita’s home didn’t have many mirrors, so Alma’s work was almost done. The garden was full of mirrors now. Alma was very careful with each of them, lining them up against the fence, making sure they were all standing up so that no one would accidentally step on a mirror and hurt themselves.

  There was just the one big mirror left. Titi Rosa’s mirror. The one Evie loved. Alma couldn’t ask Evie to help her remove it, of course—Evie needed to stay far away from mirrors. Alma called Felix Sanderson’s house, but he was at soccer practice. Titi Clara’s finger would probably hurt too much from the rose prick to help Alma carry the mirror, and Alma’s parents would think she was being silly.

  Alma needed her cousin. Her formerly brave, formerly up-for-anything cousin.

  She needed Del.

  13

  A Dozen Cats

  -Del-

  Del had planned to stay in her room forever, but by about noon she was feeling pretty tired of hiding. Her room felt hot and stuffy. She’d left the book she was reading in Abuelita’s living room. And she hadn’t remembered to bring up any food to her room.

  Plus, Del could hear all kinds of things happening on the street below. She heard her father laugh. She heard Titi Rosa singing. She heard Cassie and Anna and Evie drawing in chalk in front of the building, and she heard Oscar barking with excitement, like he did whenever he saw someone he wanted to play with.

  If it weren’t for that scary black cat, Del could be outside with her friends and family right now! She wished the cat would just go away, bother another building on another street. She didn’t understand why the cat had to be hanging around 86 ½ Twenty-Third Avenue anyway.

  By the time Alma knocked on her door again, Del was hungry and bored and hadn’t heard a single meow or purr in hours. Maybe it was safe to go outside, she thought. Just for a moment. Or at least downstairs for some cremita.

  “Del, I need your help,” Alma said, knocking hard on her door. “Just for a minute. Just to protect Evie from the mirrors.”

  “Is the cat out and about?” Del asked.

  “I haven’t seen it all morning,” Alma said.

  “Yesterday you promised to protect me from it . . . ,” Del started.

  “I didn’t expect it to come up to Oscar!” Alma said. “I thought cats were scared of dogs!”

  “I don’t understand that cat,” Del said. “That’s what’s so scary about it.”

  “I guess,” Alma said.

  Del’s stomach growled. “I can help for one minute. And maybe I can eat a little lunch. But then I’m coming right back up here forever,” she said.

  “That’s fair,” Alma said, opening Del’s bedroom door.

  The girls walked right upstairs to Titi Rosa’s. There was the beautiful mirror. The last thing left to take down to the garden and get away from Evie. Evie was little. She needed to be protected. And even though Del was scared, she still took her responsibility as a big cousin very seriously.

  Del and Alma were careful as they snuck the mirror out of Titi Rosa’s home and down the stairs. They listened for Evie’s little voice to make sure she didn’t catch them. Evie needed to stay as far away from the mirror as possible.

  Alma opened the door to Abuelita’s backyard garden, but before Del could put the mirror down somewhere safe, she gasped.

  There in the garden, she saw dozens and dozens of black cats. Tall black cats. Skinny black cats. Stumpy black cats. Black cats with tails that looked too long for their bodies. Black cats with smushy faces and black cats with especially long faces. Del had never seen so many cats at once. She had tried so hard to stay away from the little black kitten, and now she was in a garden of black cats.

  Del screamed. That made Alma scream.

  And with Del and Alma both screaming, something else happened. Those dozens of black cats all started to run at the same time. They ran. They leaped. And there was a crash!

  The mirror Del and Alma were holding broke. Del figured it must be one of the evil black cats. Her bad fortune was finally beginning.

  But when Del looked to try to see which black cat had broken Titi Rosa’s beautiful mirror, she saw something she hadn’t expected.

  A dozen black cats lying down, meowing and licking their paws.

  That was strange. That didn’t make any sense at all.

  “Why are all the cats hurt?” Del asked.

  “There’s only one cat, Del,” Alma said.

  “What do you mean?” Del asked. “Look around—there are—Oh.” Del looked around. It did look like there were cats everywhere. But in fact, there were actually mirrors everywhere. There was only one cat being reflected in all the mirrors Alma had brought outside. The mirrors had been at all different angles, making the cats look like they were different shapes and sizes. But it was all the same single cat.

  One little black kitten.

  One hurt little black kitten.

  14

  Fraidycat

  -Alma-

  “What do we do?” Alma asked. She was panicked. She had never seen a cat get hurt before. And it was all her fault. She had told the terrible fortunes. She had bought the crystal ball. She had thought of the plan to bring all the mirrors outside.

  Everything Alma had done had gone horribly wrong.

  All this time Del had been worried about her bad fortune. But Alma was the one who couldn’t do anything right, no matter how hard she tried!

  “You should go
upstairs,” Alma said to Del. “You have to protect yourself from the kitten! Who knows what will happen!”

  But Del didn’t look so scared of the kitten anymore. In fact, Del was very carefully tiptoeing over to it. She was whispering something to it. She was petting its little head.

  “This kitten needs our help,” Del said. “Get some milk. And water. And a dishtowel. And Abuelita.”

  “But aren’t you scared of the kitten?” Alma asked.

  Alma and Del looked at the little kitten. It was shivering. It was curling itself into a ball. It looked scared. More scared than Alma had been at the party and more scared than Del had been since getting her fortune told.

  “I think the kitten is the scared one now,” Del said. She petted the kitten’s head with one gentle finger. Alma ran inside to get Abuelita and water and milk and a towel. And when she returned with all those things, Del was holding the kitten in her lap.

  She was singing it “Pon Pon Pon,” the little song Abuelita used to sing her. She was telling it everything would be okay. She was showing it the bracelet on her wrist, and letting the kitten bat the sparkly charm back and forth.

  “I thought you couldn’t be anywhere near our little gato,” Abuelita said when she saw them.

  “It was hurt,” Del said. “I know what I need when I’m hurt.”

  “I thought you thought the kitten was strange,” Alma said. “I thought you didn’t understand the fortune or the kitten.”

  Del shrugged. Del’s shrug was a lot like an Abuelita shrug. A little mysterious. A little slow. A little magical.

  “We’re all a little strange sometimes, I guess,” Del said.

  “And the fortune?” Abuelita asked. She had a twinkle in her eye.

  “Being scared of the fortunes only made things worse,” Del said.

  Alma nodded. She couldn’t have agreed more. “I thought maybe if I could stop Evie’s fortune from coming true, everything would be okay . . . ,” Alma said.