Potion Problems

by Cindy Callaghan

Hannah called Darbie for assistance. When Darbie marched with purpose toward the onion battle, the girl holding the last onion dropped it and walked away. No one wanted to duel with Darbie.

  “Good work, team,” I said when they returned with our goods. “I have some sea salt in my backpack. That will be good with this.”

  “Because we all carry around seasoned salt,” Hannah said.

  “Oh, it’s not seasoned,” I said.

  “My mistake,” Hannah said. “Then it’s totally normal.”

  While I was rooting around in my bag, I saw the flyer Mrs. Silvers had given me about the Felice Foudini Recipe Challenge. I set it on our kitchen counter with the sea salt.

  While I peeled the onion, Hannah examined the application. “Did you read this, Kell?”

  “Just the headline.”

  Hannah said, “The prize is ten big ones.”

  “Ten bucks?” Darbie asked. “Big whoop.”

  “Ten thousand bucks!” Hannah corrected. “That money could help the F and CS Program. How perfect would that be? ‘The cooking nut that saves her favorite class.’ ”

  Darbie said, “That would be like me saving . . . saving . . . Hmm, I guess it’s not like me at all, because I don’t like classes.”

  “If anyone can win, we can.” Then Darbie added, “With the Book, we can’t lose.”

  Hannah said, “Any bad-luck price would be worth ten thousand dollars.”

  “Totally,” Darbie said. “Unless it involves boogers or facial warts or snakes. Actually, I could probably handle facial warts, because then I could wear a mask, which, frankly, I would enjoy. So I guess facial warts would be okay. Man, I hope it’s facial warts.”

  “Two problems,” I said. “Public enemy number one has the Book. And second, Felice Foudini won’t have the right spices to make a potion.”

  “Well, there goes the ranch . . . and the mask,” Darbie said. “Thanks a lot. I was just getting excited.”

  “You can win without the Book,” Hannah asked.

  “She’ll get entries from all over the country,” I said. “Probably from chefs with a lot more experience than me.”

  “So it’ll need to be a mega-awesome recipe,” Darbie said. “If only there was a way that we could tell which of your recipes was the all-time best.”

  “Maybe there is,” Hannah said. “Can you guys handle things here?”

  “We sure can,” Darbie assured her, and she took off on some type of mission.

  I’ve known Darbie a long time. She meant that I could handle the cooking, and she could handle watching me.

  Mr. Douglass had returned, and Hannah asked him for the hall pass, which he handed over, leaving one hand covering his face.

  I chopped the onion and dropped it in a pan of hot olive oil the way I’d seen Felice Foudini do on her show a thousand times. It sizzled, and in a second the fragrance of caramelizing onions drifted into the hallway, luring in the only boy in F&CS. Mr. Douglass didn’t even notice how late he was.

  Frankie Rusamano bent down to smell. “What’s going on in that pot, Kell?”

  “We’re making the saddest thing we can, because F and CS is going to be shut down because of budget cuts, which is sad,” Darbie said. “But Kelly’s going to win the ten-thousand-dollar prize from the Felice Foudini Recipe Challenge, so everything should be okay soon.”

  “Gotcha,” Frankie said. “But this doesn’t smell sad. It smells good. Can I have some?” He tried to steal a piece of onion, but Hannah wrested the fork away.

  Hannah had a thing for Frankie, a crush kind of thing that she didn’t admit. Meanwhile, I liked his fraternal twin Tony, but that was my secret.

  I had given Tony Love Bug  Juice (a love potion from the Book) a few weeks ago. I thought it was working, but it was hard to tell since he’s quiet to begin with. I’ve been feeling guilty about potioning him into liking me, and I’m planning to give him a Moon Honey drop to undo it, but I haven’t yet. But I will. But I’m afraid that then he won’t like me anymore.

  I sprinkled in brown sugar and handed Frankie the brussels sprouts. “Can you wash these?”

  “I can try, Kell,” he said, like he was honestly not sure if he’d succeed. “You know these are like little baby cabbages?” he asked as he rinsed them.

  “I’ve noticed.” I chopped the sprouts into shreds, added them to the onions and oil, tossed in some pine nuts, and added a dash of this and a dash of that. Then I let it simmer.

  Hannah ran back into the F&CS room. “It’s all set,” she said.

  “What is?” I asked.

  “You’re going to cook lunch for the whole seventh grade tomorrow. They’ll vote on which dish is the best, and that’s the recipe we’ll submit to the challenge. I cleared it.”

  “How did you clear that so fast? Don’t important people need to know and fill out forms and stuff?” I asked.

  “Of course. I spoke to the principal, who Skyped with the head of the school board. They filled out the online forms, which were e-mailed to our parents to sign and provide insurance info blah-blah-blah, which they did right away—our moms have gotten so good at doing those things on their phones—and, presto! We can cook in the caf.”

  “How am I going to cook lunch for all those people?”

  “You’ve gone through the slots of the spatula this time, Hannah-Spammy-Miami,” said Darbie. Ever since we were little, Darbie has added a little spice to Hannah’s name. Hannah doesn’t like it.

  “We’re gonna help you,” Hannah said to me.

  I looked at them. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “Me and Tony’ll help too,” Frankie said.

  “You sure will,” Hannah said. “Your mom signed the forms too.”

  Mr. Douglass’s cell phone rang, and, after a loud sigh, he answered. As he listened, his face brightened around his puffy redness, and he rushed over to us. “That call was about your excellent idea, Kelly and Company. I agreed to chaperone.” He clasped his hands together. “I feel so much better. Now I just have to do something about these puffy eyes.”

  “Try cucumbers,” Frankie suggested.

  We all looked at him with shock that he would know to suggest this.

  “It’s what my mom does,” he explained.

  “Brilliant idea, Franklin.” Mr. Douglass made his way to the fridge to tend to his skin.

  Hannah said, “Now you have enough people. All you need to do is pick the recipes.”

  “What are your three most amazing specialties?” asked Darbie.

  “Only three?”

  “The velvety red-carpet cake,” Frankie said.

  “Obvs,” Darbie and Hannah agreed.

  “How about that Slowpoke Cooker Fettuccine?” Darbie asked. “I love that one.”

  “Oh, I know,” Hannah said. “The Veggie Enchi-la-di-das. It adds the healthy angle. Felice Foudini would love that.”

  “Enchi-la-di-das,” Darbie sang, and added a dance. “Enchi-la-di-das.”

  Mr. Douglass called back to us, “LLJ said she needs your shopping list double ASAP.”

  LLJ was Lunch Lady Julie. We were afraid of her on account of her muscles and tats and the fact that she always looked really mean.

  “Um,” Darbie said. “How about if we give you the list to give to her?”

  “You’re going to lunch right after this. Just give it to her then.”

  Frankie said, “You’re afraid of her, aren’t you?”

  “If you aren’t, then you can give her the list,” Hannah said.

  “Fine. Give it to me,” he said. “I’ll make Tony do it.”

  5

  Isla de Cedros

  Coach Richards yelled through an orange cone as if it were a megaphone. “You’re late! How can you be captain today if you’re late, Darbie O’Brien? The captain is supposed to set an example.”

  Charlotte smirked, basking in the notion of Darbie falling short of the high expectations of captain of the Alfred Nobel School girls’ soccer team, the ANtS
.

  “Got it, Coach.” Darbie directed the team, “Let’s take a warm-up lap.”

  “Five!” Coach yelled.

  “Five?” Darbie asked him. “Coach, on behalf of the team, I think that’s a little more than a warm-up.”

  He pulled Darbie aside, but I was close enough to hear. “If it’s too much for you—” His phone buzzed with a text, and he glanced down to look at it.

  “It’s not too much. I swear. I got this.” Then she pointed to his phone. “And I figure you’ve got that under control.”

  “Don’t read other people’s texts,” he said. “But, yeah, I got that.”

  “Okay, team,” Darbie announced. “Let’s do a five-lap warm-up. Come on. It’ll be fun,” she encouraged. “We can sing.”

  Another round of groans indicated that no one was interested in singing while they ran.

  “What’s his deal today?” I asked.

  Darbie said, “The Groundhogs’ coach, Coach Madden, sent him a text talking smack about our game against them. I saw it. It said, ‘Groundhogs crush ants.’ ”

  “That kind of thing just isn’t necessary,” Hannah said. “Does their rivalry have to be so cutthroat? What’s wrong with just regular old friendly competition?”

  I said, “It’s always been that way with Groundhogs and ANtS.”

  “Pick up the pace, girls! Let’s HUSTLE!” he yelled.

  When the five laps were done, we ran up and down the bleachers, moved huge logs from one side of the field to the other, lunged around the parking lot with rocks in our hands, and ended with sit-ups. Two hundred! No one even touched a ball.

  “Hey, great job, captain,” Charlotte said to Darbie. “I don’t think the team has ever liked me as much as they do right now, so thanks for that.”

  After Charlotte walked away, Darbie asked us, “What was I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we need to find a way for Coach Richards and Coach Madden to bury the hatchet.”

  “Do we have a potion for that?” Hannah asked. For Hannah to suggest a potion was a big deal, because it wasn’t until recently that she believed they had special powers. She was a real skeptic, but since we learned the story of the Book, she’s come around.

  “We can look,” I said. “No Return could be as bad as that workout.”

  We lay on the grass and chugged water. “Do you think Sam has an ice cream that will make us feel better?” Hannah asked.

  “I’ve never met an ice cream that could make feel me worse,” Darbie said. “So it would be irresponsible for us not to try it.”

  “Totally,” I agreed. “Let’s go see Sam and Señora P to ask her about hypnosis and buy some Cedronian spices. We have a serious shortage.”

  The magical ingredients came from the Isla de Cedros in Mexico, where Señora P is from. Whenever she goes back, she’s able to bring us everything we need from her local healer and shaman, who sources those spices.

  After practice, we hobbled down Marsh Road toward the stores. “Do you think she’ll be mad that we lost it?” I asked.

  “Lost is a strong word,” Darbie said. “It was donated, which is really a nice thing, so how can she be mad about charity? And”—she rubbed her calves—“will one of you carry me?”

  “We’re almost there.” Hannah enticed her. “There’s ice cream.”

  “Those are the magic words,” Darbie said, and pressed onward.

  It was in our sights. La Cocina’s windows were dark, but that was nothing new. It was always dimly lit, dusty, and downright spooky. Truthfully, I didn’t love going in there. I was always afraid that Señora P’s crow would fly into my hair and make a home there, but this was the only place we could get the special ingredients.

  “Is that a sign in the window?” Hannah asked.

  Darbie said, “I can only see fuzzy little spots before my eyes. I’m dehydrated. I’m sure of it. Ice cream is the only thing that will help my condition. I need the biggest Super Swirley Sam can make. He might have to put it in a bucket, because a regular cup won’t hold the puppy I need to rehydrate.”

  Hannah ignored Darbie. (She does that a lot.) “It’s definitely a sign.”

  We got close enough to read it.

  “Oh no,” I said.

  6

  Gone to Mexico

  Gone to Mexico?” Darbie asked. “How can Señora just leave town when we need her?”

  “She could’ve told us,” Hannah said. “And maybe given us a plan for a potion emergency, because she knows how deep we are in recipe experimentation.”

  “Maybe she’s getting more ingredients,” I said.

  “That woman should have a light, like the Bat-Signal, that we could shine into the sky, and she could see it in Mexico and know we were in trouble.”

  “Or,” Hannah suggested, “a cell phone.”

  Señora P wasn’t the type to have either.

  “Let’s get Swirleys and figure out our next step,” I said.

  We limped into Sam’s iScream, home of the Super Swirley, which is the most amazing ice cream concoction on the East Coast, and possibly the world. We come here so much that we don’t even have to tell Sam our order anymore: I get Black and White, Darbie gets Rocket Launching Rainbow, and Hannah gets Bowl Me Over Chocolate Brownie.

  “If we can figure out the other two authors of the Book, we can ask one of them for help,” I suggested, then took the first amazing sip.

  “Good idea,” Hannah said. “What do we know about them?”

  “According to Señora P, she and two other girls wrote the Book the summer when she was about twelve years old,” I started.

  “She said they went to the pool together, remember?” Hannah asked.

  “So we can hypotenuse that the other two are about her same age,” Darbie said.

  “ ‘Hypothesize,’ ” Hannah corrected.

  “Sure. If you want to,” Darbie said, clearly not knowing “hypotenuse” or “hypothesize.”

  “We know their initials,” I said. After studying the Book, we figured out that some of the recipes had initials, like they’d been signed by the girl who created it. The three sets of initials were IP (we knew that’s Ida Perez), RS, and KE. We didn’t know who RS or KE were, and Señora P wouldn’t tell us.

  Darbie asked, “Why do you think Señora P was so secretive when we asked her about those other two names?”

  “Probably because things didn’t end well,” I said.

  Hannah picked up the story. “She said they’d made a potion with effects that they couldn’t undo, so they sacrificed the biggest thing they could think of—they stopped cooking. That’s when they pasted their recipes into the old encyclopedia to hide them. Then they stopped hanging out together. And, slowly, things returned to normal.”

  I added, “Creating the Book brought them together for the best summer of their lives, and the Book tore them apart.”

  “It’s a sad story,” Darbie said. “Can you change the ending? I’ll sleep better if it’s a happy ending.”

  Hannah said, “We can’t change history.”

  “If only we could go back to that summer and tell them not to do that one potion,” Darbie said.

  “Or, if we could go back, we could see who her friends were,” I said. “But, unless you have a time machine, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to do that.”

  “Then we’d better get started,” Darbie said.

  “With what?” Hannah asked.

  “The time machine.”

  Hannah sighed, frustrated.

  I said, “With the missing Book, impending doom of F and CS, and a coach situation, maybe we can save time travel for another day.”

  “Fine,” Darbie said. “Next week, though, for sure.”

  Just then our phones chirped with a text. It was Charlotte.

  She had sent us a selfie. And she was holding the Book.

  7

  We’re Back, Baby!

  Coach Richards, who was also our science teacher, w
as writing on the board when we arrived at first period the next day. This was the only class we had to go to this morning, because we were making lunch for seventy-five kids. I thought maybe Coach was back to his old self until he kept writing and writing and writing, pressing down real hard on the chalk.

  Finally, once the whole board was full, he took the last tiny nub of chalk and tossed it into the trash can. He didn’t speak; he just slumped over his carrot juice and pointed to the first two words, which were all in caps: GENEALOGY PROJECT. Under it were detailed instructions. We had to write a paper about our family history and give an oral report, due Monday. It would count for half of our grade.

  There was a knock at the door, and in walked Tony Rusamano with two things: a thick, padded yellow envelope and a haircut. I was able to see his eyes clearly, and they looked straight at one person in the class—me.

  I smiled at the attention, then stared at the floor. I really liked that Tony was noticing me, but it was immediately followed by a pang of guilt that I’d potioned him into doing it.

  Tony handed the envelope to Coach Richards, who didn’t seem to notice it was there, so Tony delivered it directly to the recipient—me.

  I resisted the urge to turn my head and watch him leave the classroom. Once everyone was working on their projects again, I opened it and peeked inside. I didn’t have to remove the contents because I knew from a quick glance what it was—just your everyday boring old World Book Encyclopedia, Volume T.

  There was a loose piece of paper with it. It said, From KE.

  I didn’t know who the second author was, but apparently she knew me. I passed the note to Hannah, who then shared it with Darbie, who exclaimed, “We’re back, baby!”

  Ordinarily Charlotte would’ve made an announcement and spilled the beans about the Book to everyone. Except that the last time she had done that—she’d said something like “Kelly Quinn has a book of magic potions”—no one had believed her, and she was a laughingstock. So we’d narrowly escaped public humiliation.

  Could we be that lucky twice?

  Everyone looked up, including Charlotte, who quickly sized up the situation: Book-size envelope and our smiling faces. She knew we had it.