Spells & Sleeping Bags

by Sarah Mlynowski

  “No, I just know what I want. Ready to switch yet?”

  I don't answer.

  Her eyes are on the dock. “Look at Raf in his canoe. Doesn't he look like he's having a good time?” she asks.

  I feel another gust of cold, and with a flick of Liana's wrist, Blume, paddle still in his hands, spins around and knocks Raf over the side of the dock. Raf lands headfirst in the water and comes up coughing.

  “Leave Raf alone!” I cry.

  “I will if you switch with me.”

  At least Raf's okay. I watch as he pulls himself onto the dock. “No,” I say clearly. “I'm not going to let you bully me. I will not switch places with you.”

  Her cheeks flush with anger. She purses her lips and takes another look around the beach, then spots my sister, who is still sitting by herself, reading. “You know, Rachel, traveling through Europe can be dangerous for a twelve-year-old. Really dangerous. It would be so easy for something to happen to her. For her to just disappear. Don't you think?” She smiles sadly. “I've always wanted a little sister. Someone just like Miri.” Her smile fades. “Too bad.”

  Fear slices through me. I gaze at my sister, who is obliviously reading her book and looking so sweet and helpless. I watch her for a moment before I turn back to Liana.

  I've lost. If I don't do what she wants, I could lose Miri—forever. Tears sting my eyes. “I'll switch, okay? But if I do this, you have to promise you'll never hurt Miri. Ever.”

  “I'm not such a monster, you know. I really don't want to hurt anyone.”

  What a crock. That's all she's been doing since she arrived at camp. “Promise me.”

  Her face hardens. “I promise.”

  I know I have no reason to trust her, but what choice do I have? And anyway, maybe I can still outsmart her . . . somehow. “All right.”

  She stands up and wipes the sand off her shorts. “Come on, let's get this show on the road.” She smiles sweetly. “And then I have to go make up with my sister, which will be a piece of cake. Let's just say your sister is very malleable. She's soon going to realize that I'm the nasty person you always said I was, and that you really are wonderful. Don't look so glum, Rachel. Isn't that what you wanted?”

  I swallow the rock in my throat and follow her up the beach. I take one last look at Raf. The next time I see him, it will be through Liana's eyes. The next time he sees me, I won't be me.

  Then I look at Miri. I don't know why Liana's doing this. All I know is that I have to save my sister. I try to will Miri to look back at me, but she goes on reading. After Liana gets through with her, Miri will never want to set eyes on me again.

  18

  THE BIG SWITCHEROO

  Switching is a trip.

  We do it at the lookout. We have to sit facing each other with our legs out, bare feet touching.

  Liana passes me a black candle and a book of matches. “When I count to three, we're going to light our candles. Ready?”

  As ready as I'll ever be, I suppose. I want to run down the hill, but what's the point? If I don't do this, she could hurt Miri . . . not to mention Raf, Prissy, and everyone else I care about.

  “One, two, three!” she shouts, and lights her candle.

  I scratch my match against the box, and the flame leaps to life in my right hand. I pick up my candle with my left and light it. “Now what?”

  She extends her candle over the center of our circle. “Our flames have to become one,” she says.

  Here goes nothing. Or everything. I lean over and let my candle's flame touch hers.

  As they interweave into one, Liana tells me to repeat after her. “As this flame burns through the night . . . ”

  I hesitate.

  “Say it!” she barks.

  “As this flame burns through the night . . . ,” I whimper.

  “Please listen to our plight,” she says.

  “Please listen to our plight,” I repeat.

  “Let our two souls switch . . . ,” she continues.

  “Let our two souls switch . . . ,” I repeat.

  Liana: “With absolute perfect pitch.”

  Me: “Because you're a total bitch.”

  Liana scowls and then says the line again: “With absolute perfect pitch.”

  Me, also scowling: “With absolute perfect pitch.”

  Liana: “Let she be me . . .”

  Me: “Let she be me . . .”

  Liana: “And me be she.”

  “And me”—I hesitate and she kicks my foot—“be she.”

  It starts with sinus pressure. At first it feels like I have a bad cold on an airplane. But then the pressure gets more and more intense, like a nail is being rammed into my brain, trying to knock something out, which I guess is what it's doing—trying to knock me out.

  The next thing I know, the pain is gone. Just like that. There's no pain at all, just peace. In fact, I feel great, like I'm a cloud, or a gas, floating above the lookout. It's like I'm dreaming.

  Then I'm feeling that ramming again—but this time, I'm the nail being rammed. A square nail being slammed into a round hole. And then the headache stops and I open my eyes.

  Omigod.

  I'm staring at myself. It worked! It actually worked! I'm sitting across from myself! You know what? I'm cuter than I thought. My hair might be wavy, but it has a nice fullness. I have really good skin, and my lips aren't too thin. What was I always whining about? Why did I think I was so plain? You know what else? Don't trust mirrors. Or even photos. There's nothing like looking at yourself through someone else's eyes. This is the real thing. This is really me. And I'm adorable!

  The Rachel across from me is staring at me with as much amazement as I'm looking at her with. Er, at me with.

  I look down at my hands (these are not my hands!) and then at my legs (these are not my legs!) and then at my boobs (these are—unfortunately—not my boobs!), then run my not-mine hands through my not-mine hair. My super-glossy not-mine hair.

  My super-glossy hair that Liana permanently straightened before camp.

  Huh, how did I know that?

  Millions of images download into my head at the same time.

  Whoa. I have access to Liana's past. All of it.

  Maybe I can find something in her, some kind of spell, that will return me to my own body—while at the same time making sure she doesn't hurt anyone.

  I close my eyes and let the memories wash over me. It's like I'm watching a movie about someone's life. Except it's not a biography. It's now an autobiography. . . .

  I've just turned five and I'm on a broom with my mom, Sasha. Her long brown hair is tied tightly in a low ponytail and it keeps brushing my face.

  “This is going to be so much fun,” my mom tells me. “You're going to love it in Paris. You're going to learn to speak French.”

  “But I don't want to learn French. I want to go back to London,” I say, “where Imogene is.”

  Imogene has been my best friend for the past four months, as long as I've been living in the United Kingdom. Before that I was in Rome, before that in Vancouver, and before that I don't remember. All the cities have blurred together like overexposed pictures.

  “You'll make new friends,” my mother tells me.

  My tears drip off my cheeks and into the clouds, but my mother doesn't notice.

  “Can I have a sister?” I ask. We're on a yacht in the Red Sea. I've been playing checkers by myself for the past hour and I'm totally bored.

  My mom and her gentleman friend, whose boat we're on, laugh.

  “Please? I want someone to play with.”

  “Liana, you're doing just fine on your own.”

  “But a sister would be so much fun! Or a brother. I'd take a brother, too.”

  “Sasha barely knows what to do with you,” the awful man says.

  My mom nods. “One kid gets in the way enough.”

  My powers finally kick in when I turn ten. I'm in a hotel in San Francisco, watching another movie on pay-per-view TV, when I
manage to change the channel without the remote. I'm bubbling with excitement about telling my mom. She's going to be so proud of me! I wait eagerly by the elevator (I'm not allowed to leave the floor when she's out, but she lets me run up and down the hallway) and wait and wait and wait. When she finally returns from her date, I run to her, yapping a mile a minute. “I did it! I'm a witch too! Just like you! Now we can train together and I can come with you everywhere and—”

  She shushes me with a flick of her hand. “Not tonight. I have a headache.”

  I cry myself to sleep.

  My mom and I fight about everything.

  How I should wear my hair. How I should dress. How I don't want to keep moving. “I just want a normal life,” I plead.

  “We're never going to be normal. You're a witch. Go study your spell book.”

  “I don't want to study anymore!” I scream. And then: “I wish I could live with my father!”

  My mother never talks about my father. I must have pushed her too far, because she yells, “You don't have a father!”

  “I must have had one at some point. I wasn't hatched.” Not even witchcraft can manage that. “Who is he? I have a right to know!”

  “You did have a father, but when you were six months old, I caught him with another woman.”

  Even before I ask the next question, I'm dreading her answer. “What did you do?”

  “I turned him into a mouse. And her into a cat. And that was the end of that.”

  I spend the night throwing up in the hotel bathroom.

  I meet a girl named Joanna in the park. She tells me my teeth are long and look like carrots.

  I turn her into a rabbit.

  Then I feel bad and turn her back into a girl. But I leave her with really floppy ears.

  I'm so lonely I want to die.

  Then I develop a crush on a boy named Matthew.

  He says he likes me as a friend and he has a girlfriend named Ellen.

  I put a love spell on him and give Ellen chicken pox.

  “Where are we going?” I ask my mom. She's zapping our clothes into two big Louis Vuitton trunks.

  “I'm meeting some friends down in Rio. You're going to Switzerland.”

  “Why?”

  “You're going to Miss Rally's Hall for Girls. It's one of the top boarding schools in the world.”

  “I don't want to go to boarding school!”

  “It's not up to you,” my mom says.

  “But I want to stay with you.”

  “Liana, it's for the best. You need to be in school, and I have some traveling I need to do on my own.”

  “But you can't just desert me!”

  “I'm not deserting you. I'm sending you away to school. Other girls would give their eyeteeth to be in your situation. You'll love it at Miss Rally's. There are even some other witches there, so you'll finally be able to make some real friends.”

  “Girls don't like me,” I say.

  “Because you're always putting spells on them. Give it a chance. For me?”

  I agree. I want to make her happy.

  There's a snake in my bed. Again. I want to take it and wrap it around the throat of my new archenemy, Olivia.

  Although this isn't a school for witches per se, Miss Rally herself is a witch. And that's why mothers who can't be bothered with their witch daughters like to send us here. There are at least six or seven of us here at one time, and Miss Rally keeps an extra-special eye on us.

  The other girls have no clue.

  Bunch of idiots. Don't they wonder why we always get the nicest rooms? The best food? The easiest chores?

  Not that it makes living here desirable. Not for me, anyway.

  I hate Miss Rally. I also hate the other witches, especially Olivia, who sleeps in the room next to mine and whose personal project is to make my life a living hell.

  At Thanksgiving break, I beg my mom not to send me back. “Please,” I say. “I hate it there.” I would run away, but my mother has shackled me with a location anklet that won't let me leave without her permission. It's like a magnet I just can't shake. I'm going to be stuck there for the next four years.

  “Liana, you just have to get used to it. You'll be fine. You can't stay with me. I'm way too busy.”

  “With what?”

  “I met a wonderful man named Micha.” She goes on and on about the wonderful Micha until I want to jump off a bridge.

  I already knew about Macho Micha. I found a spell to create a virtual crystal ball, and although it can't predict the future, it can show me what other people are doing.

  “Will I get to meet him at Christmas?” I can't wait for Christmas break. A whole month off from the school from hell!

  “Oh, about Christmas . . .” She pauses. “Micha and I are going to spend a week in Tahiti. I spoke to Miss Rally and she said that your staying there is no problem.”

  I want out. I search through my spell book for a way to break my invisible anklet, but there isn't one. Instead, I discover a five-broomer spell that allows two people to switch places.

  If I switch places with someone, she'll live in Miserable Hell (my pet name for Miss Rally's Hall), and I'll be free.

  All I have to do is find someone to switch with. My choices are limited, since she has to be related by blood. So I start by consulting my crystal ball.

  And that's when I discover Rachel, the daughter of my mother‘s sister, Carol. I knew there was a huge fight years ago, but I didn't know I had a cousin! A cousin my age. A cousin who has everything I ever wanted. According to what I see in the crystal ball, she has the perfect life, but she doesn't appreciate it. Why is she always whining? She makes me so angry that I can't look at her without my arms shaking and my teeth chattering.

  First of all, she doesn't have to move all the time. She gets to stay in one place, and I'm not talking about boarding school. She has a normal life. A wonderful life. Friends. A mother who loves her. A father who adores her. But what makes me the most envious is that she has a sister. Two, actually. Two sisters who adore her. Who worship her. But the one she lives with is the one I'm interested in. Rachel is so obsessed with being popular and stupid fashion shows and stupid boys that she ignores her. As far as I'm concerned, Miri is ripe for the taking. For making her my sister.

  Rachel is the perfect candidate for me to switch with.

  I want Rachel's life. I want to be Rachel.

  But how? I watch her talking about camp in the crystal ball, and a plan unfolds in my head. If I go to camp too, I can make the switch. Convincing my mom to let me go will be a snap. She doesn't want me hanging around with her and Macho Micha all summer.

  The snag is that I have to get Rachel to agree to the switch. She's not all that happy with her life, but is that enough to make her want to do it? The annoying thing is that I can't put an obedience spell on her. She has to agree to it out of pure and free will.

  Of course, there's no rule that says I can't make her miserable. Make her detest her life even more. Provide her with the straw that breaks the camel's back.

  Make her beg me to do the switch.

  I remember turning on the lights in the CL.

  I remember launching a soccer ball at Rachel's head.

  I remember giving all of bunk fifteen, Deb, Morgan, and Carly my enchanted water.

  I remember attacking Raf and Rachel on the lookout with a flock of bees.

  I remember bewitching Alison into smoking in the bathroom.

  I remember bewitching Raf into kissing me. And then wiping his memory away.

  I remember making Miri's mail disappear.

  I remember turning Jennifer's care packages of lip glosses and bubble gum into the most embarrassing gifts possible.

  I remember giving Miri an amplifying charm disguised as a lanyard bracelet. The seeds of Miri's anger were already there. All I had to do was help bring them out.

  I remember convincing Miri that I could take off her location anklet. As if! If I knew how to do that, I wouldn't be in
this mess in the first place. But I needed her to believe that I was going to take her with me. I needed her and Rachel to buy my bluff, to buy into my plan.

  I open my eyes. I—the fake version of me—am still sitting in front of me, watching me. “Having fun?” Liana asks nonchalantly.

  “I'd feel bad for you if you weren't so awful.” I'm feeling awful—because I should have known that Miri wouldn't just desert her family without some magical assistance. But . . . her unhappiness didn't come from nowhere, I think guiltily. She really did feel unloved and unwanted at home.

  “Whatever. Have fun in hell. Hope you're not afraid of snakes.”

  “So this is it? I'm stuck like this?” The sickening truth hits me. She's never going to switch back. I can't believe I fell for her entire plan.

  She shrugs. “I'll see how I like being you. Maybe I'll switch back when you graduate.”

  I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe I let Liana get away with this. I want my life back! I want to be me again!

  But even if I could switch back, how could I risk hurting my sister?

  “Of course,” Liana says, “there's no way I'm going to change back until Miri is completely mine—without the aid of amplification. You're a fool, Rachel. Look what you gave up. And I'm not just talking about sisterly love. I'm talking about power. Sisterly power. The combined power of blood-related witches. There'll be no stopping us now. No stopping me, that is, because I'll control every move Miri makes.”

  Instead of feeling even sicker, I'm elated. Liana has just given me the solution. Part of it, anyway. Together, Miri and I can overtake her. Together, we can stop her from hurting either of us or anyone else we care about.

  The question is, how do I switch back?

  Miri and I can figure it out together. If not, she'll just have to get used to my new appearance. (I kind of like my new chest, anyway.) At least we'll be together.

  I just have to get to her before Liana does. I slowly stand up, not wanting Liana to guess what my plan is.