Upside-Down Magic

by Emily Jenkins

  “No, you don’t know me,” Lacey replied coolly. “But you’ve bothered me.”

  Zinnia tried to smother a giggle. She didn’t try very hard.

  Nory took a spot at the table. She studied Lacey more closely.

  Sharp, short haircut.

  Tiny feet and hands.

  Enormous black glasses with lenses the size of large cookies.

  “Oh!” Nory exclaimed. “We were in line together at the Sage Academy test! You didn’t get in either!”

  Lacey made a scornful sound, stabbed a piece of broccoli, and said, “Please. Of course I got in.”

  “But …”

  “I decided not to go,” Lacey said. “I wanted to stay in Dunwiddle and do Flare stuff with my besties.”

  Nory opened her mouth to reply, then thought better of it. She remembered Lacey’s father coaching her on roasting marshmallows. She remembered Lacey’s panic when her name was called, and her sobs as she fled the hall.

  Lacey chewed the piece of broccoli. She chewed it so aggressively that it seemed a small act of war. Then she swallowed and said, “I heard about you, though. The headmaster’s daughter, too wonky to get into her own father’s school.”

  Nory felt punched in the gut. She said, “We don’t say wonky. It’s unkind. We say upside down.”

  “Ha,” Zinnia said.

  “Love it,” Rune said. “Adorable.”

  Elliott turned red and looked down at his plate. “Hey! Guys! Remember that food fight in fourth grade? With the hamburgers?”

  “Epic,” said Rune.

  “Well, for fourth graders,” Zinnia corrected.

  “Things are different now,” said Lacey. “We’re the Sparkies.”

  “I know,” Elliott said. “I came up with that name. Duh.”

  “And it’s the perfect name—for us,” Lacey said. She pointed to Rune, Zinnia, and herself. “We are the Sparkies. You turned out to be … an icy?” She laughed, and her friends laughed with her.

  Elliott’s smile dimmed.

  “You need to go now,” Lacey said. She took a bite of a baby carrot. “You’re embarrassing yourself and you don’t even know it.”

  “And when you embarrass yourself, you embarrass us,” Zinnia said pleasantly.

  Elliott turned to Rune, looking for some support.

  “Well …” Rune mumbled.

  “Rune,” Lacey said.

  Rune rubbed the back of his neck. “We’ve been trying to ditch you all summer. Sorry, dude.”

  “We tried to tell you nicely, but you wouldn’t listen,” Zinnia said.

  Lacey took a dainty sip of milk. “That’s why we had to melt your bike tires.”

  Rune chuckled. “Epic.”

  Elliott’s head snapped back. “That was you?” he asked. “Wow. Yeah. Epic is right.” He tried to force a smile. “That bike thing, I never would have guessed.”

  “So leave us alone already,” said Lacey. “Honestly, Elliott, you can be so dense. No wonder you got put in UDM.”

  A familiar tingle shivered up Nory’s spine. Her vision blurred.

  No, no, no! Stay human. Do not flux in the lunchroom.

  But it was too late. Nory was out of her chair and on the floor. Her hands weren’t hands anymore. They were covered in thick black fur, with sharp claws.

  Oh, drat.

  She knew this animal. She had done it before.

  She was a skunk.

  Step away. Just leave them alone, thought Girl-Nory.

  But Skunk-Nory didn’t step away. She was too angry at the Sparkies. How dare they be so mean to Elliott?

  They were enemies. Hairless enemies. And she was a skunk! She could do stuff to enemies.

  Bad stuff. Smelly stuff.

  No, no! Girl-Nory thought, but it was no use.

  Skunk-Nory began to swell. She grew big to match the size of her hairless enemies. Then she grew bigger and bigger, until—

  A trunk popped out of her face. An elephant trunk.

  Nory waved it menacingly in the air. She was Skunkephant-Nory! Body of a skunk, nose and size of an elephant!

  And she was mad. So mad. She lifted her giant skunk tail.

  “Nory! Stop!” Elliott shouted.

  Skunkephant-Nory turned her haunches toward the hairless enemies.

  “No! Don’t!” Elliott cried.

  She aimed her Skunkephant-Nory bottom.

  “NORY! DO NOT SPRAY THE SPARKIES!”

  Now one of the hairless things was tugging on her trunk. Skunkephant-Nory shook it off. It danced back in front of her and said, “Nory! It’s me, Elliott. Don’t do this!”

  Elliott. She remembered Elliott. He was nice. He had walked her to school. He was a single-veggie guy.

  “You can turn back,” Elliott said. “I know you can, before anything too disgusting happens.”

  Okay, good idea, Girl-Nory thought. I can do this. I will just change back. I will not spray anybody.

  But then, WHAT WAS THAT? Right in front of her was a tiny hairless thing in a baggy denim dress and two ponytails. It was the most terrifying thing she’d ever seen!

  Ahhhhh! It was coming her way!

  “Pepper, get out of here!” Elliott shouted. “You’re Fiercing!”

  DANGER! DANGER! HERE LIES DANGER!

  Skunkephant-Nory reeled. Terror took over.

  Elliott tried one more time. “Get away, Pepper! Stop, Nory!”

  But it was too late. Skunkephant-Nory lifted her giant bushy tail and sprayed.

  The cafeteria was closed until further notice.

  The Sparkies were sent to the medical office. They had been sprayed so thoroughly that an actual fog surrounded them.

  Rumor had it Nurse Riley fainted from the smell.

  Thanks to Elliott, Pepper had jumped for cover just in time.

  Nory had turned human again in the middle of the chaos, and before anyone could find her, or yell at her, or take her to the nurse, she ran down the hall to the supply closet and hid.

  She was so mad at the Sparkies.

  And very, very embarassed.

  And sorry.

  But she couldn’t hide forever. After waiting a few minutes to calm down, she took a deep breath and walked out to recess alone. She would have to face everybody eventually, and it might as well be now.

  In the yard stood a swing set and a big climbing structure. On the blacktop was a basketball court, where ten or so Flyers played fly-ball, hovering two feet up in the air. In a grassy area nearby, Fluxers turned into kittens and chased one another around. Some kids were doing ordinary stuff like jumping rope and playing tag.

  “There’s no fire and no flickering in the yard!” said one of the lunch ladies as Nory walked outside. “And only nonthreatening transformations! Understood?”

  The UDM kids were standing around the swing set, with Sebastian holding on to Andres’s leash. A larger group of ordinary kids were staring and pointing at them.

  “Bunch of wonkos.”

  “They could have hurt someone!”

  “That was really gross.”

  “Why do they have to be in our school?”

  “Is it even safe?”

  The UDM kids did their best to ignore the comments. Willa and Pepper were on the swings. Marigold pushed them alternately. Elliott and Bax bounced a basketball back and forth. When Nory walked over to them, the swings slowed to a halt. Everyone glared at her.

  “I can’t believe you did that to us,” Elliott hissed. “You made us look like wonkos—”

  “Dangerous wonkos!” Willa added.

  “—in front of the entire school.”

  “I’m sorry,” Nory said. “I didn’t mean to!”

  Willa and Pepper got off their swings, and they all turned their backs on her. Even Sebastian and floating Andres.

  Tears pricked Nory’s eyes. “You guys! Please!”

  Not one of them talked to her. Not one of them looked at her. For the whole rest of the day, they pretended she didn’t exist.

  M
s. Starr lectured everyone about tolerance and forgiveness. She reminded them that they all had magical powers that sometimes got out of hand. “That’s why we’re here,” she said. “If we can’t count on one another, who can we count on?”

  No one listened.

  * * *

  Nory called home when she got to Aunt Margo’s. But no one answered.

  “Please call me back,” she said to the voice mail. “I can’t stay here. I really can’t.”

  She watched the phone. It didn’t ring.

  Aunt Margo got home from work just before dinnertime. “Let’s call for pizza,” she said to Nory. “Should we get olives on it? Or pepperoni?”

  Nory was surprised. Hawthorn cooked something nutritious involving vegetables every night, and they all ate it in the dining room with cloth napkins. Then Nory and Dalia did the dishes before anyone was allowed dessert. “Pizza again?” she said.

  “Do you eat meat?” asked Margo, looking at a takeout menu. “I realize I don’t even know if you eat meat.” She opened the fridge. It had some fruit and milk in it, but nothing that could be made into dinner. “Yes, pizza again. Definitely. The only other place that delivers is the fancy Japanese place and it’s—well, it’s not in the budget.”

  “Do you eat pizza every night?” asked Nory.

  Aunt Margo flushed suddenly. “Don’t you like pizza? I thought all kids wanted to eat pizza for every meal.”

  “I like pizza,” said Nory. “It’s fine.”

  Margo looked relieved. “We could each eat an apple before it gets here,” she said. “So we get some vitamins. Sound okay?”

  “Sure,” said Nory.

  “What about the meat?” said Margo, picking up her phone.

  “Meat is good. You can go to town on the meat.”

  Margo ordered a small pizza with double pepperoni and they sat on the couch and ate their apples in silence while waiting for the delivery. Nory did her math and English homework. Margo looked over her taxi schedule for the next week on the computer.

  Nory wanted to talk to someone about Pepper and the bitten and the skunkephant and the Sparkies and how everyone in Upside-Down Magic hated her guts now, but she had long ago learned not to talk about her wonky magic at home. Anyhow, she didn’t know Aunt Margo well, and Margo seemed absorbed in the taxi schedule, so Nory stayed quiet.

  There was just a living room and an eat-in kitchen. Nothing was very neat and nothing very messy. Margo didn’t have much stuff, and she clearly wasn’t interested in decorating. The living room had some grown-up books, a desk area with all her taxi papers piled around it, some cozy chairs, and a couch—but there were no board games, no pets, no art supplies or family photos. None of the jolly clutter that Hawthorn and Dalia created in the back rooms of Father’s house. None of the matching, careful quality of the formal front rooms.

  Aunt Margo lived alone till I got here, Nory realized. She knew that already, of course, but suddenly she felt it.

  There was a knock on the door and Margo got up to pay for the pizza. When she came back with the box, she flipped on the television.

  They ate without plates, just a roll of paper towels, and watched the news. It was extremely boring. Aunt Margo didn’t seem to realize it was boring, though. She leaned forward and shoved pizza in her mouth almost without stopping. “Flying with passengers is very physical,” she said during a commercial. “I need a lot of food at the end of the day.”

  “Oh.”

  They watched another news segment and finished their pizza. Then Margo looked at Nory’s face, really looked at her for the first time since she’d gotten home. She switched off the TV. “You had a bad first day, didn’t you?”

  Nory’s throat closed up suddenly. She nodded.

  “Super rotten bad, or just ordinary new-kid bad?”

  Nory wasn’t going to cry. She couldn’t cry in front of this near-stranger aunt, the aunt who didn’t even know how bad of a wonko Nory was yet, who had been so nice to take Nory in when her own father didn’t want her. She just pressed her lips together to keep the crying in.

  “Are you going to yak?” shouted Margo suddenly. “Oh, dear, don’t yak on the carpet. Let’s just walk you over here to the floor.” She pulled Nory gently by the elbow until they were standing on a patch of bare floor. “Okay, yak here. Go right ahead, this is good yak territory. Watch out for your shoes.”

  Nory burst out laughing. “I’m not going to yak,” she said.

  “You’re not?”

  “No.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  Margo smiled. “Oh, phew, I thought that was your about-to-yak face.”

  “No.”

  “I thought the double pepperoni was a bad idea, maybe.”

  “No, no, it was good pepperoni.”

  “You made me a little nervous there,” said Margo. “That face.”

  “No, no. It was—that was my super-rotten-bad-day face,” Nory admitted.

  “Oh.” Margo looked at her expectantly.

  There was a silence, and then Nory blurted, “I hurt a girl’s feelings but not on purpose and I didn’t know how to say sorry and then I turned into a bitten and ate some books and people thought that was weird but then at lunch I turned into a skunkephant and they had to close the cafeteria and it was really badly smelly like no smell you ever sniffed and I couldn’t help it and Elliott’s mad at me and the Sparkies are mad at me and the whole Upside-Down class is mad at me and they think I’m the wonkiest kid in the whole wonky classroom.”

  Aunt Margo sat down on the edge of the sofa. “Zamboozle,” she said, finally. “That is a super rotten day to end all super rotten days, I think.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. How can I help?”

  Father always told his children they had to help themselves. He couldn’t do things for them or make things easier. Helping themselves was the way they would learn. Nory kind of thought he was right about that—but it was nice to hear these words from Margo now.

  “I don’t know,” Nory squeaked in reply.

  “Then let’s go for a fly,” said Margo, pulling her coat from the closet. “Come on. Bundle up.”

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  “Not anymore. I got rest. I ate pizza. Here, wear some gloves.”

  They bundled up and went outside into Margo’s backyard. Then they levitated straight up in the air together, not too high, and from there floated gently over the town of Dunwiddle. Margo pointed out the pharmacy, a street full of restaurants and shops, and the park with its pond full of ducks. A few other Flyers passed by, enjoying the evening light. One of them had a canary on a long leash, taking her for an outing. The others were alone, since most Flyers couldn’t take passengers. Margo waved at them and called out, “It’s my niece, Nory! The one I told you about!” Nory waved, too, and the Flyers waved back. Margo seemed proud of her. Or at least glad to have her.

  They flew along a creek that meandered through town. They flew out over the town swimming pool, which was empty, and the fly-ball court at the high school.

  After a while, they came back to Margo’s house. They took hot showers and put on pajamas and then Nory went to sleep in her little iron bed in the room with the bright green walls.

  Much to her own surprise, she felt okay.

  * * *

  But the next morning at school was just as bad as the first day. “Today we’re going to do math and geography and vocabulary just like any other class,” Ms. Starr said. “But I like to get creative with literature.” She smiled. “You’re not just going to read poems and write essays. You’re going to read poems and do interpretive dance.”

  “Huh?” said Elliott.

  “Part of developing your Upside-Down Magic is getting in touch with your emotions. You want to understand your feelings so you don’t—well, you know, turn into a bitten. Or a rock. Or cause a rainstorm when you don’t want one. Or shrink someone’s car. UDM is not about controlling your feelings, it’s about und
erstanding them!”

  “Whatever,” grumbled Bax. “I don’t have feelings.”

  Then he turned into a rock and had to be taken to Nurse Riley. Marigold took him in a wheelbarrow Ms. Starr had brought to class that morning for this very purpose.

  The rest of the students read a poem called “The Lost Mermaid.” Then Ms. Starr played ocean music through the speakers and called them to the carpeted area of the classroom. “She can’t find her parents! Feel her sadness!” cried Ms. Starr. She dropped to her knees and made swimming motions with her arms. “Feel her panic! Feel her terror! Feel whatever it is the poem made you feel! Get in touch with it!”

  “I didn’t sign up for a dance class,” whined Andres from the ceiling.

  “Give it a chance,” said Ms. Starr. “You can be a hungry shark if you want to! Or an angry shrimp! Or a stoic rock. On second thought, don’t be a rock. We never want to make fun of Bax.”

  “There are no such things as mermaids,” Willa grumbled.

  “Not true,” Ms. Starr said. “No one has seen one for over a hundred years, but they did exist.”

  Sebastian rolled around on the carpet, apparently feeling feelings.

  Pepper scrunched into a ball with her head between her knees.

  Nory pretended to be a sad seaweed. She swayed over to Elliott, waving her hands swishily above her head.

  “I’m really, really sorry,” she said to him. “About the skunkephant. And your Sparkie friends.”

  “Go away,” Elliott said. “I’m very busy being a blobfish.”

  “A blobfish?” Nory studied Elliott. He was leaning against the wall, not doing a thing.

  Elliott became even more blob-like. “Yes, and I am feeling annoyed. I wonder if you can guess why.”

  “Because blobfish look like they’re made out of dough?” Nory asked hopefully.

  “Nope. That’s not why.” He scowled. “You’re not going to turn into a blob-kitten now, are you? A blitten?”

  Nory shivered. Gross. “I can’t make any promises,” she said. “But I’ll try not to.”

  Just then, the ceiling opened and rain poured down on all of them.

  A lot of rain.

  “Sorry!” yelled Willa.

  “No need to apologize,” cried Ms. Starr, running to grab the umbrellas. “This is a teachable moment! Let’s talk about why that rain just happened. Let’s understand the connection between your feelings and your magic.”