The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams

by Rhonda Hayter

  Dad Has Big News

  Clearly, a time freeze spell was called for, to keep Callie locked in a single moment in time, while I went downstairs to see what was happening. I clapped my hands really quickly and yelled, “STOP, STOP, CLOCK!” to slap the spell on Callie, then raced downstairs to alert Dad that we had company.

  When I got to the bottom of the stairs, there were still gusts of wind knocking furniture around, pink puffs of smoke were everywhere, and my mom was just walking out of her office door, cracking up at the spectacle my dad was making.

  My dad was grinning and zooming around, doing aerial cartwheels with a big bouquet of flowers in his hand that he caused to turn all different colors before he presented them with a big flourish to my mom. He’s got brown curly hair like my little brother, Munch, and it was blowing all over the place. Guess he was happy about something, because when he saw me, he yelled, “Abbie-dabbie-do!” swept me up, and flew me down the hallway and back. Then, poof, there was the sweetest little black kitten you ever saw, sitting right in the palm of my hand.

  I’d been begging for a cat for months, and I fell in love with this fluffy fuzzball right away . . . even though there was something just a bit odd about it. Just how odd, you’re not going to believe, but I’ll have to get to that later. Right now, the kitten was staring at my dad and his hijinks, with its little tail puffed out, and furry body shivering all over. I stroked the soft fur until the tremors calmed down.

  Just then, Munch, who’s six, came sliding down the banister, and my mom had to stomp and yell “SOFT LAND!” really quickly, to conjure up a mattress to catch him at the bottom when he slid right off . . . as he always does. Right away, Mom got that look on her face that always means that some consequence is about to follow something Munch or I have done wrong.

  “Munch Adams, I have repeatedly told . . .” she started, in her really severe this-is-a-safety-issue tone. That’s as far as she got though, because luckily for Munch, big pink and white puffs of smoke started pumping out of my dad’s ears. They were coming out so thickly that my mom’s head got practically engulfed in them and she couldn’t finish what she’d started to say. Puffs like that were a sure sign that my dad had something exciting he wanted to tell us, so Mom held her tongue . . . for now.

  After giving Munch a big hug and a Superman action figure, my dad finally started to calm down so that he could talk to us properly.

  I was getting nervous about whether my hastily applied spell upstairs was still holding, but I didn’t want to interrupt my dad before I found out what was going on.

  “Big news, Adamses! Big news!” my dad kept chortling as he tried to catch his breath. He tends to get a little overexcited sometimes, so my giggling mom finally whispered a little calming spell on him so that he could settle down enough to tell us what was going on. Finally, he sat down on the hall bench, took a breath, and started talking.

  “You’re going to be very proud of your old dad when you hear this,” he said with a huge grin. “Very proud.”

  “I’m always proud of you, Dad.” I smiled back. And I am, too, but I wished he’d get to the point because I was starting to get very worried about Callie. I was thinking that I really ought to have said “STOP” two or three more times, with maybe some louder claps, to seal that spell properly.

  Mom urged Dad to spit it out, so finally, after pulling Munch onto his lap and tickling him for a second, Dad settled all the way down. Munch snickered, sneakily blew onto his new toy through his barely parted lips, and then let it go. This was a little spell that sent his action figure hovering high up above my head. He likes to annoy me that way because, of course, I never know when the hovering spell will wear off and the toy will drop right on my head. I didn’t care about that right then though, because I was dying to find out what Dad was so excited about.

  “Well, you Adamses,” Dad began, and then he took a big dramatic pause . . . “I think I just might have discovered the cure for Witch Flu.”

  Right here is where I should explain a little witchy history. You might have heard the word “mortal” to describe non-witches because humans are mortal, and, well, witches didn’t used to be. Mortal, that is. That’s right, we used to live forever, or at least for such a long time that nobody knew how old any of us were. (That is, we could live forever as long as we weren’t killed somehow.) But, back in the 1600s, after the miserable bit of business in Salem, Massachusetts, your average witch got very anxious to blend in.

  Apparently, during that period, in which everyone started trying so hard to seem human, the spell for immortality got somehow or other destroyed and erased from history, except for a few stories about it that got passed down. So that’s how we ended up with the same life span as everybody else. What’s worse, as a result of all this fooling around with life spans and so on, a special new disease that only hits witches developed. It’s called Witch Flu. Well, actually it’s got some long Latin name, but nobody calls it that. The thing that’s really bad about it though is that it can actually rob a witch of his or her magical powers for good. It’s been about the worst thing that can happen to a witch for the last three centuries or so, and nobody’s been able to find a way to cure it.

  Just as my mom opened her mouth to start asking questions, there came a terrific CLUNK from upstairs. I knew what it meant. My spell had worn off, and a disoriented Callie had just fallen off the bed.

  I gave my dad a quick hug and said, “Gee, that’s great, Daddy, but I gotta go for a minute.”

  I zipped back to my room, helped Callie up, straightened out all her hair braids, whistled a little forgetting spell, and then sat on the bed with her and the toilet paper rolls just as if I’d been sitting with her there all along. There we were, right back where we had been when my dad got home.

  I almost got away with it too, except for the fact that from Callie’s point of view, a fuzzy little black kitten had just magically appeared in my lap. Ooops. I had forgotten about that. Also, Callie’s head was a little sore (due to her fall), and that was confusing her a bit.

  She rubbed her head. “Abbie,” she said in a creepedout, wondering sort of tone. “Where did that kitten just come from?”

  I hated to do it, I really did, but I just pretended that I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about and acted like the kitten had been there all the time.

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you my dad finally told me I could have a cat?” I said, but I sounded all phony and horrible. Even to myself. Maybe even to the kitten, because the little head turned around and the big, round eyes stared right at me.

  You hate to deceive your best friend, and I really wouldn’t recommend it to anyone, but I just didn’t know what else to do.

  Luckily, Callie LOVES cats, so she shook off her headache and her confusion. She picked up and petted the kitten and started murmuring little funny baby phrases like, “Well aren’t ’oo just the fuzziest, funniest little furball? Aren’t ’oo? Oooh you tweety-pie, you tweety-’ittle pie.”

  I told her I’d just gotten the kitten and hadn’t even named it yet, so we decided to call it Betsy, for Betsy Ross, who sewed the first American flag. Then Callie took a closer look and realized it might be better to pick a different name. So we called him Benjamin, in honor of Ben Franklin.

  Funny thing is, I could swear that Benjamin smiled when he got his new name, like he understood what we were saying and approved of the change somehow. Well, it was funny at the time, but it wasn’t going to seem so funny later on, I can tell you.

  Just then, Munch’s Superman action figure, which had been hovering high above me, fell smack down hard . . . right on my head.

  CHAPTER 4

  Callie Gets Weirded Out

  After that stupid toy hit me on the head, suddenly the whole day of trying to control my sneezes, casting spells to help Munch, getting in trouble at school, and hiding who I really was from my best friend just really started to get to me. I couldn’t think of how to explain the Superman thing to Callie, and I r
eally didn’t want to anyway.

  The fuzzy little kitten in my hands started to look all blurry as tears began to burn my eyes. I struggled against an urge to stomp downstairs and kick Munch right in the seat of his pants. I even felt mad at my mom for not having any snacks in the house when I got home and mad at my dad, too, for always making such a big fuss when he gets excited about something.

  Across the bed from me, Callie was very quiet, and it took me a minute to get the nerve to look up and meet her eyes. She didn’t look like she was feeling that well. In fact, she was looking a little like Maria did right after the tricycle incident. She didn’t seem to know what to say either. Finally, she gave Benjamin another little pat and said, “You know Abbie, I . . . I feel kinda strange right now, and I think maybe I should go home.”

  Now the tears spilled down my cheeks because I figured I’d lost Callie as a friend, just like I lost Maria. Inside of my head I was yelling, Oh why? Why did I have to be born a stupid witch in such a stupid witch family anyway?

  Callie got up and stood there for just a second, and then she said, “Abbie, you’re my very best friend in the whole world and you know that nothing can ever change that. I just have to go home right now, but we’ll sit together at lunch tomorrow.”

  It was just the right thing to say, and then she even gave me a little hug as she walked out the door.

  I sat there sniffling for a bit, and Benjamin stared up at me, like he was trying to figure out what I was feeling. Of course later I would realize . . . well, I’ll explain about that soon.

  Just then, there was a shuffling noise at the door behind me, and I turned to see Munch watching me cry. He was all big-eyed and scared-looking.

  “I’m sorry, Abbie,” he said. “Did the Superman hurt you?”

  He looked really sad and worried standing there, and then he made the Superman fly up and hit him on the head too, to try to make things even.

  Well, I couldn’t stay mad at him. I grabbed him and squeezed him really tight and told him it was okay. I even made the Superman fly up again and do a few aerial tricks to make him laugh. And then I sneezed and accidentally hit the ceiling, which made him laugh even harder.

  So then I finished up the diorama and wrote a good little report on Benjamin Franklin, which didn’t take long. After all, I’d heard him tell enough stories about how he started the first volunteer fire department and first library in Philadelphia and everything that I really didn’t need to look anything up. He loved to talk, that Ben Franklin, especially when he was trying to impress the ladies.

  Downstairs, Mom, who usually likes to cook in the non-witch way, made an exception and conjured up dinner because she had been so busy with her real estate homework and the PTA fund-raising meeting at our school. My dad was bouncing around, setting the table and talking a mile a minute about the research he’d done in his lab.

  “I based it on March Hall’s early research at Witchy U,” he said to Mom. “I know you don’t think much of March Hall, but you can’t deny that he’s had some innovative ideas, especially in his early work.”

  My mom was following him around, sorting out the cutlery because he was so excited, he had given everyone either two knives or two forks.

  “Yes, but what exactly does the cure consist of?” she asked. Then she looked up and saw me walk in.

  Now, my mom can always tell in an instant if something’s wrong. It’s almost like she’s a psychic as well as a witch. Right away she came over to me and asked me if I was okay.

  I thought about telling her how much I hated lying to my best friend and how hard I found it fitting in at school and into non-witch life sometimes, but you know, I figured there was really nothing she could do about it. Anyway, I was feeling a lot better since I knew Callie was still my friend, so I just grinned and said I was okay. She gave me one of those deep “Mom looks,” as if she was trying to read my mind. Sometimes I think she thinks she’s psychic too. I guess I must have looked okay though, because she just gave me a little hug.

  “All right then, honey,” she said. “Would you mind getting the butter out of the fridge?” And we all sat down to dinner.

  CHAPTER 5

  My Big Fat B

  Next day, my cold was a lot better, and I presented my diorama and Ben Franklin report and I’ve got to say, I felt good about it. Even though I hardly ever seem to manage it, there’s something pretty satisfying about having all your work done for once. The kids thought the diorama was really great and they laughed at all the funny things Ben Franklin said, like “A man who is in love with himself will find he has no rivals.” Even Ralph Carnaby, who’s this kid who gets a big thrill out of embarrassing people, couldn’t come up with a snide remark about it.

  Anyway, it all went so well that I was as confident as I’d ever been about a project. When I’d finished delivering it, I turned around to smile at Miss Linegar.

  She stood up and started shuffling papers, looking deep in thought. The class was very still, because she always gives grades for projects then and there, right in front of everybody—another of her horrible policies.

  “Well, Abbie,” she finally said. “I think you did a very nice job and had you turned it in on time, it would certainly have been an A project. As it is though, I’m afraid I can only give it a B.”

  She still deducted from my marks because the project was late!!! Even though I did the extra report to make up for it!!! I mean, is that fair???!!!

  It’s really bad of me, I know, but sometimes I can’t help wondering how Miss Linegar would enjoy being turned into a toad for five minutes or so. Not that I ever would, of course, but sometimes these little thoughts do creep in.

  Later, Callie and I sat together at lunch like she promised and it was almost as if nothing weird had happened between us at all. At first we were a little awkward and I could tell she was waiting to see if there was anything I wanted to explain to her or anything, but when it was clear that there wasn’t, she just started yakking as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

  “Could Miss Linegar have shuffled those papers any longer before she dropped the B bomb on you?” she said. “Talk about making you sweat. I was sweating just watching you sweat!”

  We ended up having a very nice time together just hanging out through lunch. Callie was all excited because she was signed up for baseball and her first practice was after school the next day. I was happy because I had drama club after school that day.

  I happen to love drama club because, as I might have mentioned, my aunt Sophie is an actress and I want to be one too (when I grow up). Later that afternoon, we were doing these exercises where you’re supposed to act like an animal. I chose a cat and I tried to move just like Benjamin, scampering up and down the floor by my bookshelves like he did the night before. Of course at that point, I didn’t have any idea why he was so interested in my bookshelves. It was just the scampering that caught my eye.

  Miss Overton, the director of the drama club, used to be a ballerina about a hundred years ago I think, and she still has perfect posture and is really, really skinny even though she’s pretty old now. Anyway, at the end of the session, she stood in the middle of the stage and clapped her hands for quiet. And let me warn you right now, just in case you want to go for a drink of water or something, she can get a little talky.

  “Now, my young thespians,” she began. “I have consulted with the administrative personnel and it has been ascertained that the schedule for the auditorium will permit a satisfactory rehearsal period for a play, which we can present before the Thanksgiving holiday. I have penned this particular production myself and everyone in the drama club will be able to participate in it, in some form.”

  Well, she didn’t get to say much more for a minute or two because everybody started cheering and yelling about how great it was to be doing a play. My heart started to pound because I really, really hoped that the “form” I got to participate in was not building sets or running the lights. I wanted to be IN the play
. Really badly.

  Miss Overton went on, “Now, I do hope that as the author, I’m not being too self-congratulatory if I remark that there are many rather clever speaking parts and a rich assortment of colorful character turns. Consequently, everyone’s talents will be amply and, if I do say so myself, ably represented.”

  Okay, let me just tell you now, so that you don’t die of suspense like I nearly did. Here’s the big news. From all the classes we’d done, she had already figured out who should play what part. And guess who got the biggest one. Me.

  Are you ready for this? The play was going to be about a girl who doesn’t believe in magic. Well, if you happened to ever get the word “irony” wrong on any of your vocabulary tests, there’s a good example of it. I couldn’t wait to get home to tell my mom that the last person in the whole school who would disbelieve in magic was cast to play a girl who didn’t believe in it. I was also really hoping we could call my aunt Sophie to tell her, too.

  CHAPTER 6

  Meet Aunt Sophie

  When Munch and I got home, I ran right to my mom to tell her about the play. She laughed really hard when she found out about the part I got, and when I asked if we could tell Aunt Sophie about it, she got right on the phone and passed it to me.

  I told Aunt Sophie the big news about the play and then I told her about how my character didn’t believe in magic . . . and as soon as I did, there was a terrific WHOOOSSHH of air and I felt as if cold fingers were playing up and down my spine. All of a sudden, it looked as if silvery snow was falling in the living room for just a second and there was a sound like tinkling bells. Aunt Sophie was popping in.

  My aunt Sophie is a really well-known actress and right now, she was starring in a TV movie about the American Civil War, so she was wearing one of those long, wide dresses with a hoop underneath the skirt. As she materialized, her hoop skirt knocked my mom’s favorite vase off the coffee table, but Aunt Sophie just gave it a little zap from her left pinkie and it flew right back onto the table safely before it even hit the floor.