The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams

by Rhonda Hayter

  “Oh Abbie, my lovey-doo! What a scream!” she laughed, and she swept me up in her arms and gave me a big kiss, giving another little zap with her pinkie to get the lipstick off my cheek afterward. As she spun me around, her long, silky blond hair whipped around behind her, like in a shampoo commercial.

  “You make sure to tell me exactly what the date of the performance is,” she went on. “Because I wouldn’t miss it for the world, not for the world!!”

  Then she zapped a little tickling spell on Munch and flew over to my mom. “Matty!!” (She tends to speak in exclamation marks like that.) “Matty!! That new stylist just showed me the cutest cut that would look absolutely adorable on you and you cannot possibly live without it another minute!”

  And then she zapped this flippy sort of hairstyle onto my mom’s shoulder-length brown hair. Blowing kisses all around as a ringing cell phone materialized in her hand, she laughed as she looked at the number and said, “Oh, good . . . about time. Gotta take this. Love you! Love you! Love you!” Then she disappeared in another silvery blizzard.

  So that’s my aunt Sophie. Usually she stays longer, but she was in the middle of a movie shoot and didn’t have a lot of time. That’s one of the really good parts about being a witch though. You don’t have to wait for airplanes and things when you feel like seeing someone. And I always feel like seeing my aunt Sophie.

  My mom was just checking out her new hairstyle in the mirror over the fireplace and trying to decide if she liked it, when Munch started a little ballgame with his plastic baseball players. Some of Munch’s skills are not too well developed yet, so his toy pitcher made a really bad throw and the marble Munch had given him as a ball clipped me hard, right on my ankle bone. I was watching my mom, so it took me by surprise and I kind of cried out.

  “AAAhh!”

  Munch’s eyes got really big and he said, “Oh no, Abbie. Are you going to cry again?”

  At that, my mom turned around to me and asked, “When were you crying, sweetheart? What happened?”

  Somehow, it all seemed so complicated to try to explain, and my mom was worried enough about her real estate test and about not being at home as much as before. Anyway, though part of me wanted to talk to her about how hard it was to keep all these darn secrets all the time, another part of me wanted to forget about that stuff for now and just be happy about my play.

  So I didn’t really lie. I would never lie to my mom, but I didn’t exactly tell the whole truth either. I just said something like, “Oh, Munch’s Superman bonked me kind of hard on the head last night” . . . which was true, you have to admit.

  “Oh, Munch,” said my mother. “I’ve spoken to you about tormenting your sister with those hovering spells, haven’t I?”

  Now I felt bad because it looked like I might be getting Munch in trouble. I hurried to say, “It’s okay, Mom. We worked it out between us.”

  My mom loves it when we do what she calls “resolving conflicts appropriately,” so she just smiled, looked back and forth between us approvingly, and said, “That’s good, then.”

  Then she completely changed the subject. “Abbie, when you get the script for your play I’d love to help you learn your lines.”

  That night, Mom cooked dinner in the non-witch way. I really like when she does this, because when I get home from school, the whole house is full of good smells that make me so happy to be home for dinner. The food’s just as good when she does it the witchy way, but you just can’t beat those smells when you first get home. Tonight it was roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. Yum.

  At dinner, my dad seemed sort of worried, like he was thinking about other things. He didn’t even notice my mom’s flippy hairstyle.

  My mom stood right in front of him and said, “Um. Helloooo?” in that sing-songy way she has that lets you know something’s expected of you.

  I mean, it was a completely different style from how she usually wears it, and Dad really ought to have noticed.

  Dad finally looked up and smiled.

  “Oh, that’s pretty, Tildy,” he said.

  Even though he complimented her, I could tell he probably thought it looked more like Aunt Sophie’s style than my mom’s. My mom could tell too . . . I think she’d been kind of feeling that way about it as well. She didn’t zap it right away, but as dinner continued, she just let it slowly unflip and rearrange itself back to her straight shoulder-length style, which is a lot more natural-looking. I was sort of relieved actually because I like the way my mom wears her hair. Anyway, I think that kind of fancy hairstyle looks better on people who are all dressed up, which my mom hardly ever is.

  So, we kept eating dinner and Dad didn’t say a thing and just kept getting lost in his thoughts again. It wasn’t until Munch grew an extra pair of hands so he could grab two more cookies for dessert that Dad finally looked up and laughed . . . even though he made Munch put the cookies back.

  “Good try, buddy,” he said as he passed the cookie plate to Munch, so Munch could replace the cookies.

  I went to bed early and snuggled up with Benjamin and a book. He was very cute, lying there with me, cocking his head as if he was trying to make sense of the words on the page himself. I was reading this great Sherlock Holmes story, but I fell asleep before I got to the last page, where Sherlock always makes all his deductions and solves the crime. Strangely though, when I woke up in the morning, the book was open to the last page and Benjamin was lying on it sound asleep. I was starting to get a peculiar feeling about that kitten.

  CHAPTER 7

  An Unexpected Visitor

  A few days later, when Munch and I got home from school, I found a note from my mom saying she had to run out for a few minutes and to help myself and Munch to some peanut butter crackers and milk. I don’t really like peanut butter crackers all that much, but my mom is stubborn about us eating too much sugar, so that was the snack for today.

  “Let’s conjure up some honey to drizzle on them,” Munch suggested.

  “Aw, if Mom wanted us to have honey she would have drizzled it on them herself,” I answered dutifully, even though I was really wishing she had.

  Munch’s chin started to stick out a little bit in his mad face, but all of a sudden Benjamin came scampering up to us, bumping his head into our shins to say hello, and we both got distracted by him.

  Benjamin went racing up the stairs and Munch and I couldn’t help but laugh at how fast his little legs could go. We ran up and chased after him, but when we got to my room, there was a surprise.

  Every book that had been sitting on my bedside table was now lying on the floor and was open as if someone had been reading it. Not only that, Benjamin was jumping up and down in front of my bookshelves as if he was trying to pull down more books. He’s just a tiny little kitten, so he wasn’t getting very far.

  I looked at Munch, who sounded unimpressed. “Benjamin wants to read,” he said.

  Then Munch walked across the hall to his own room pretty quickly, as if he was afraid that he’d have to stick around to read too. Munch likes being read to, especially by my dad, who always makes the illustrations come to life, but he hates reading himself.

  Well, of course I didn’t really think that Benjamin wanted to read, but I pulled down the book he seemed to be jumping up for, which happened to be an illustrated volume about science fair projects.

  As soon as I took the book down, Benjamin started to purr, and when I opened it up on the bed for him, he gave me a little lick of thanks. Right away, he sat his little self down and started moving his head back and forth as if he really was reading the book. In way less time than I would have taken to finish the page, he jumped up and turned the page by pushing it across with his little padded front paws. Then he sat down to start all over. It was kind of adorable really, and I figured he was just copying what he’d seen me do, when . . .

  BOOM!!!

  There was a big clap of thunder and my bed suddenly lifted up and slammed back down, tossing Benjamin right onto t
he floor.

  “Oh my,” said someone who had just materialized under my bed.

  Knowing what you know about my family now, you might not think it’s so unusual to have people come out of nowhere right in the middle of your bedroom. Actually though, it’s not considered very good manners to arrive unannounced in somebody’s house unless you’re close family.

  To tell you the truth, I felt pretty nervous about poking my head under the bed to see who was there—especially since there was a little groaning and moaning going on. I wished Mom or Dad were home, and I considered getting Munch and running out of the house with him. I mean, you may not know this, but not everybody in the Witchy World is quite as nice as you might want them to be. And when someone’s not nice and has magic powers, well . . . it can be pretty scary. Munch and I are also not supposed to talk to adults we don’t know unless we have a parent with us—just like I’m sure you’re not supposed to either.

  Something was happening to the air, too. It was shimmering and the temperature kept shifting between hot and cold. Something weird definitely was going on and I turned to intercept Munch, who was just running in as Benjamin was racing out.

  “Hey, Abbie, I cast a hair spell just like Aunt Sophie’s!!!” he yelled excitedly, pointing to his large pink Mohawk. Then he noticed something was wrong too.

  I’d just decided the best thing to do was to take Munch outside until Mom could get home, when the bed rose up with a couple of weak little jumps and an elderly man rolled out from under it. He seemed dazed and very upset and I realized that he was one of my dad’s patients. I had recently met him in Dad’s waiting room.

  “Oh my. Oh my. I, I don’t know what happened,” he stammered. “I was on my way to, oh where was I going? Oh, well, it will come to me. Did I take a dizzy turn?” Then he looked sort of scared and like he might cry or something.

  It was pretty clear that he was harmless, so I helped him sit on my bed, got him a drink of water, and rushed to the phone to call my dad’s office. Dad zapped himself right home and when he emerged out of the blue sparkles he travels in, the old man looked really relieved to see him. “Oh my, Dr. Adams,” he said, his voice trembling. “I . . . I . . . I just don’t know what happened.”

  Listen. If you ever get sick, my dad is definitely the one you want to call, because in about two seconds flat, he had the frightened old man feeling a lot better.

  “Mr. Heatherhayes,” Dad said. “I know it’s worrying, but this sort of unexpected locale jump is a side effect we’re just starting to see with the new serum. I promise you there’s absolutely nothing to worry about. Now, I’m going to summon your son and he’ll take you right home. You have a cup of tea and lie down and you’ll feel much better before you know it.”

  Dad’s voice was so reassuring that Mr. Heatherhayes calmed right down. In just a moment, his son, who’s a guy about my dad’s age, popped in and took over his father’s care. After talking with my dad briefly, he zapped himself and Mr. Heatherhayes home.

  Dad took a moment to ruffle my hair and say, “Abbie Dabbie, you did exactly the right thing. That must have been kind of scary, but I’m proud of how you handled yourself.”

  He also complimented Munch on his big pink Mohawk . . . though he did tell him it was time to change it back.

  Munch, who, as you might have guessed by now, sometimes doesn’t listen quite as well as he should, brought back his brown curls right away. He could see that my dad was looking really serious.

  It’s a funny thing about my dad. There are times when he gets so silly and fun that he seems just like another kid. But when he’s taking care of patients, or thinking about his work, or anything else really serious, he’s a different guy entirely. It’s okay though because I like him both ways.

  When old Mr. Heatherhayes and his worried-looking son were gone, my dad did a clearing spell on the air. Then he swooped his hands around to create an anti-infection wave over Munch and me and finally got everything back to normal.

  When he had finished, Dad sank down on my bed, looking deep in thought. You can always tell when my dad has a lot on his mind because black smoke starts chugging slowly out of his ears. Benjamin came back in and rubbed up against his legs and he didn’t even notice.

  Pretty soon, it felt as though Dad had forgotten we were there in the room with him, so I picked up Benjamin and took him and Munch back to Munch’s room. I was worried about my dad, but I did happen to note that Benjamin seemed to look back longingly at my science book, which had fallen off the bed onto the floor. I’m telling you . . . peculiar. I would have mentioned it to my dad, but he seemed to have a lot on his mind just then.

  Things looked pretty funny in Munch’s room because all his action figures had ridiculous hairstyles. For instance, his Superman now had multicolored spikes. I guess Munch had been practicing on his toys before he cast the pink Mohawk spell on his own hair.

  Benjamin jumped up onto Munch’s bookshelf and I wasn’t completely sure, but it looked as if he got a disdainful look on his fuzzy little face when he saw that it was full of picture books and beginning readers.

  When I walked back across the hall to peek in on my dad, he was sitting on my bed with another man. They were both so focused on their conversation that they didn’t even notice me.

  The other man was really tall and skinny with lots of fluffy white hair and he was wearing a suit and had a briefcase at his feet. He was so stiff and formal and businesslike that he actually looked kind of silly sitting squeezed in beside my dad on my frilly pink bed under my Hermione Granger poster.

  There was nothing silly about the man’s tone though or the way my dad was intently listening to everything he said. I was certainly curious, but I didn’t want to make a pest of myself, so all I managed to overhear was something my dad said about the “serum provoking involuntary responses” before I went back into Munch’s room.

  When I got there, I could hear Mom arriving home. Munch and I raced each other down the stairs, to try to be the first one to tell her what had happened. He ended up getting there first because I’m just too good a big sister to run him over.

  “I’m telling it! I’m telling it!!” yelled Munch as he slid along the front hall in his sock feet.

  When Mom had finally sorted out our two stories, she got this really concerned look on her face and went up to see my dad and that man. They stayed in my room a long time, talking in low voices. When they came out, they all looked worried. Not so worried though that Mom forgot to remind me it was time to do my homework . . . with a strong suggestion that I take extra time after my schoolwork to focus on the spell technique exercises she’d been assigning me recently.

  I went into my room and sat at my desk to work on my math problems, but I had a hard time concentrating. I mean, it had just been a few days since my dad was so excited about his discovery of a cure for Witch Flu. But here, apparently, was a case of something going wrong with it right in our own house, and my dad certainly hadn’t been turning any aerial cartwheels lately.

  Before I knew it, a whole hour had gone by, Mom was telling us that dinner was ready, and I still hadn’t finished the first page of math problems. And I still had three more pages to go. Miss Linegar isn’t one of those teachers who believes in leaving kids a whole lot of free time.

  That little magic charge started to build up in my fingers again and I have to admit, the temptation to finish the work magically was really strong but I managed to overcome it. I’d just have to finish the math after dinner, and leave Mom’s spell technique homework for the weekend.

  CHAPTER 8

  I Have a Little Problem with Bees

  The next Tuesday was the first rehearsal for the play and as soon as we got to the auditorium, Miss Overton handed out our scripts.

  “And here, for Abbie, is the role of our little skeptic,” she said. “There’ll be quite a commitment required in order to memorize all your lines, dear, but I know we can count on you.”

  When I looked at the sc
ript, I couldn’t believe how many lines I had and I got so excited that I had to keep shaking my fingers to get rid of that pesky magic charge. Miss Overton happened to notice me, but luckily she just thought I was doing a relaxation exercise.

  “Hear hear, young thespians!” she called out. “Please observe how Miss Adams has admirably absorbed her lessons here and is practicing the relaxation techniques so necessary to the dramatic craft. It would behoove you all to follow her praiseworthy example. Let us start as she has, by shaking out the tension from our hands.”

  Miss Overton tends to use words like “behoove” and “praiseworthy” when she could just say something like they ought to follow my good example. In fact, I’ve never heard her use a ten-cent word when a five-dollar one would do.

  Anyway, she got the whole cast shaking out their hands and feet and rolling their necks around and breathing in “big sighs” and stuff in order to relax. I ought to have felt a little ashamed of taking credit for something I wasn’t really doing and pretending to be worthy of praise and everything. But heck, I get in trouble enough for stuff I’m not responsible for, so I figured I’d take a free compliment for a change.

  I gotta tell you, the play was fantastic, and even though I got the most lines, other people’s parts looked like a lot of fun too. Everybody else was going to play a lot of different characters and even the furniture and things.

  This guy Caetano, who’s also in my gymnastics class, was going to get to play Peter Pan. He’d fly in on ropes through a window for one scene. Calvin and Dennis, who are in Miss Linegar’s class with me, were doing a little excerpt from Alice in Wonderland. Calvin played the mushroom that the caterpillar sits on, while Dennis played the caterpillar. And it was really funny because in our version, the mushroom complains the whole time about how much the caterpillar weighs. He also keeps interrupting the conversation with these huge, hacking coughs because of the smoke from the caterpillar’s pipe.