The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams

by Rhonda Hayter

  See, the plot of the play was that this girl who doesn’t believe in magic (that would be moi, your humble narrator) falls asleep while reading a book. She dreams that she wanders into a magical kingdom where characters and scenes from books come alive. In the end, she comes to realize that books are full of magic that anyone can use.

  Of course it’s true about books having magic, and I really like books a lot, but just between you and me, there’s magic and then there’s magic, if you know what I mean.

  Anyway, it was a really good play with lots of funny parts, and as Miss Overton put it, some “eerie and fantastical sections” that were going to have special sound and lighting effects and dry-ice smoke and everything. I love that stuff!!!

  You know, before Miss Overton used it, I didn’t know that “fantastical” was even a word, but apparently it is. Inside, I was thinking that I could certainly show everybody a touch of “eerie and fantastical” but naturally, being very mature for my age, I restrained myself.

  The first time I got up and started acting though, I got this really strange sensation that I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I mean, if you’re just hanging around talking to your friends, your hands aren’t something you even think about, are they? But something about getting up on a stage with everyone watching you suddenly makes you feel as if your hands are two big clubs hanging around by your sides. You get this weird feeling that you really ought to put them somewhere.

  The other strange thing about having a lot of people watching you is that you feel like you’re watching yourself too . . . and sometimes what you see doesn’t look too good. Well, today it was just Miss Overton watching, but I knew there were going to be a lot more people later.

  In the scenes where I didn’t have any lines and I didn’t have to hold my script, I started to shift from one leg to another and stick my hands in my jeans pockets and on my hips and up in my ponytail and behind my back until Miss Overton finally said something.

  “I beg your pardon, Miss Adams. But what in heaven’s name are you trying to accomplish with all that fidgeting?”

  Well then, after she said that, I got so tense and awkward that a little tiny burst of magic charge built up and actually shot right out of my fingers before I got a chance to shake it off. It zapped a barefoot Michael Reid, who was playing an apple tree, right on the big toe.

  I instinctively said, “Excuse me,” like a polite witch should, but luckily no one heard me because of all the noise Michael was making. He thought he’d been stung by a bee and got all upset, jumping up and down and shaking his foot all over the place and causing a big fuss.

  Soon all the kids in the club (except yours truly) were screaming and running around yelling, “Bees! Bees!!”

  When I gave it a second thought, I jumped around and started yelling about bees too, just to cover myself.

  “Beeees!!!”

  Miss Overton gave a big sigh and said, “Well, this looks like an opportune moment to draw rehearsal to a close.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  CHAPTER 9

  Do Witches Face Instinction?

  Back at home, I was just considering putting in an urgent call to Aunt Sophie for acting advice, when Dad called Munch and me into the living room. He was holding Mom’s hand as he said, “Kids, I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but the cure I thought I’d found for Witch Flu is having some serious side effects on a few of my patients. I’m afraid we’ll all have to prepare for more unexpected visitors like Mr. Heatherhayes.”

  It seems the serum Dad had been giving people was bringing back their lost magical powers all right but not completely, just sort of every now and then. Anyway, Dad said he’s still hoping that the effect will eventually smooth out and that he was conferring with an expert in the field, who I guessed was that man with the white hair I saw with Dad in my room.

  The really weird thing about the serum Dad had given his flu patients was that it seemed to be making people involuntarily zap back to the source of the medicine (my dad) every time. Apparently Dad’s office is jammed with witches who suddenly materialize out of nowhere, seeming kind of confused. People who are really sick just sort of zap around to places where Dad has been or might be, which is how Mr. Heatherhayes ended up at our house.

  Gee, I can’t imagine what it would be like to have your powers controlling you, instead of you controlling your powers—although I guess that little incident with the “bee sting” in drama club does kind of give me a clue.

  “Daddy, if you don’t find a cure for it, will witches become instinct?” asked Munch worriedly as he climbed up into my dad’s lap.

  “That’s extinct, buddy.” My dad smiled, kind of sadly. “It’s not going to be as bad as all that, and hey, since there’s a doctor in the house, you and Abbie will get an anti-infection wave every night.”

  Dad swooped his arms up to bathe us in the wave and then we followed Mom into the kitchen to help with dinner. The refrigerator door popped open. Phil and Felix, the Schnitzler boys, fell out, looking very startled. They each had an end of a little toy car, as if they’d been in the middle of fighting over it.

  “Hi, guys,” said Munch, and gave them a little wave because he knew Phil from Witch Preschool.

  Mom explained what was happening to the confused brothers, cleaned up the leftover pumpkin pie that had gotten on them in the fridge, and zapped them both back home.

  And it was the last piece of pie too, darn it.

  CHAPTER 10

  We Find Out Something about My Kitten

  After school the next day, Callie came home with me and Munch again, and we played catch in the backyard for a bit while Munch did his homework with Mom.

  I was doing pretty good at catching for a while, but then I missed a hard pitch Callie threw to me and it nearly hit Benjamin, who had hauled my science homework sheets out of my backpack and was spreading them out on the patio by sliding on them like they were little kitty sleds. I yelled at him to watch out, but he didn’t even look up as the ball nearly hit him.

  Okay. Now there was no doubt about it, that cat was actually sorting those papers and something was definitely peculiar about him. Luckily, there was a bush blocking Callie’s view and she couldn’t see Benjamin, so I didn’t have to make myself feel miserable by having to hex her again.

  I was really curious about Benjamin now. After Mom sent Callie home so I could study for my spelling test, I picked him up and took a deep look into his eyes. And what I saw was so shocking it was as if I’d stepped off a pier into icy water.

  Benjamin wasn’t really a kitten at all. He was a boy!

  I cupped him in my hands and ran into the house to ask Mom to take a look at him. She picked him up, looked into his eyes, and gasped. “Oh my!” she said. “Oh my!”

  Mom pulled on her ring finger and whistled to summon my dad, and he zapped right home. He took a hard look at Benjamin too. Then he got so upset to think that he hadn’t noticed an enchanted person in his own house that he had to fly around the room a few dozen times, chugging black smoke, just to cool off.

  “Marley, where did you say you got Benjamin?” asked Mom as she settled Benjamin onto her best chair.

  “Well, well, you know, Tildy, my office back door was open and he just, he just wandered in,” huffed my dad nervously, waving away the smoke. “I asked around all over the building but no one knew whose he was, so I figured he was just a stray who would need a good home. I never dreamed . . . I never dreamed he wasn’t a real cat. Can you believe it?”

  My parents looked more upset than I’d ever seen them. Even my mom, who’s usually really cool in upsetting situations, kept having to flick magic charge out of her fingers. She just kept saying over and over again, “Oh his poor mother. She must be worried sick.”

  Dark smoke was pouring out of my dad’s ears so fast and thick that it was getting hard to see, and my mom had to keep muttering breezy spells to clear out the fog.

  Munch and I had never seen o
ur parents like this, and Munch was starting to look scared. I took him into his room and told him not to worry.

  “You know what, Munchie?” I said. “It’s just a medical issue and hey, if anybody can cure Benjamin, it’s Dad.”

  Once Munch seemed a little better, we both snuck back into the living room, where it looked like Benjamin was getting excited about all the activity. As soon as he saw me, he scampered across the room and jumped up into my arms.

  I cuddled him and whispered to him. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s all going to be okay.”

  I looked deep into my little kitten’s eyes again. It’s hard to explain because it’s not as if I really saw anything inside the slits of Benjamin’s yellow cat eyes, but I got sort of an impression, if you know what I mean. (And if you’re not a witch, you probably don’t.) It was a hazy image of a boy of around thirteen, a big-headed sort of kid, with bright blue green eyes, who didn’t seem able to stand still. The funny thing is, he didn’t look scared or worried, as I most certainly would have been if I woke up one day to find out that I was a cat. No, he looked sort of . . . well, intrigued, as if all of this was incredibly interesting to him.

  I know it sounds weird to describe what he was wearing, since I didn’t actually see the kid, but somehow I knew that he wasn’t in modern clothes. He looked like he was wearing something you might have seen in a picture of somebody back in those days when they used to make kids wear way too much. I’ve done a little time traveling back to the 1800s, which is when it looks like this kid might have come from, and I came away from the experience feeling really sorry for kids back then. The girls’ clothes were just ridiculous, I don’t even want to talk about them, they had to wear so much. But even the boys had to sweat all day in high collars and ties and stiff, tight jackets and hats or caps in all weather. They must have found it impossible to run around or do anything fun like chase a ball. And don’t even get me started about how dumb those big swimsuits were back then. It’s a wonder everybody didn’t drown.

  While Mom and Dad were running around consulting books and arguing about spells with each other, Munch took a turn to look into Benjamin’s eyes. After just a moment, he smiled in at him and said, “Oh. Hi, Tom,” really loudly, as if he were yelling down into a deep well or something.

  As soon as Munch said it, I knew somehow that he was right, that the boy’s name wasn’t Benjamin at all, but Tom.

  You know, Munch is a funny kid. Just when you think he’s still a baby and you can’t expect much out of him, he surprises you by understanding something better than you do yourself.

  After he heard his real name, Tom bumped his head up against both of us and purred as loudly as I’d ever heard him purr. I think I know how he felt. Have you ever tried to explain something you’re feeling to somebody and then you finally realized they understood exactly what you meant, and were maybe even feeling the same way themselves? That was how I figured Tom was feeling just then. It’s the way Callie and I feel about things with each other all the time. My mom’s good that way too.

  Dad had all kinds of witchy medical books out and Mom was calling around to friends of hers to see who might have been visiting the nineteenth century lately. And by the way, isn’t it annoying how the 1800s is called the nineteenth century instead of the eighteenth century? Sometimes it feels as if things are arranged just so Miss Linegar will have things to correct me on.

  That tall, skinny man showed up again, popping right into the living room with his briefcase already open.

  “Oh. Thank you for coming, Dr. March Hall,” said Mom.

  It’s funny, just for a moment, I thought she said Dr. March Hare like that crazy hare at the tea table in Alice in Wonderland.

  While the grown-ups were busy in another room, Munch turned himself into a mouse so Tom could chase him, but Tom didn’t seem interested. He had jumped up on the sideboard to push his little paw against the light switch. Off and on. Off and on. He’d crane his sweet little furry head around every time he did it so he could watch the lights in the chandelier go on. I laughed because it was so cute, but then I bit my lip because now that I realized he was a kid and not a cat, I figured I’d better be careful not to look like I was making fun of him.

  Dr. March Hall and Mom and Dad didn’t seem to be getting too far in figuring out how to change Tom back and get him home to his parents, and after Mom zapped Munch and me a pizza, they went right back to work on it. Dr. March Hall seemed to be the one doing most of the talking, and he had this really loud, kind of overpowering voice.

  “As Andropov/Yeshinsky report, in the addendum to their third study on antagonistic transmogrification . . .”

  Honestly, it got a little hard to listen to it after a while because he just kept talking and talking and it seemed like no one else could get a word in edgewise.

  Munch and I were eating the pizza in the living room while the adults worked in Mom’s office. I thought it might be nice to hear a little music to drown out Dr. March Hall, so I turned on the CD player, which, as it happened, had one of Munch’s heavy metal CDs in it.

  Well, I nearly fell off of my chair at Tom’s reaction.

  All the fur on his back stood on end, his tail puffed out to three times its size, and he leaped a foot up in the air, yowling as though I’d set his feet on fire. I figured the music was a bit too much for him. I mean, heavy metal certainly isn’t to everyone’s taste, it certainly isn’t mine. So I turned the CD right off.

  With his eyes looking enormous and round, Tom quieted his trembling and seemed to gather his nerve to approach the CD player. He sniffed it and patted the buttons with his little paws and looked at me as if he wanted me to do something. So I turned the volume down much lower and pressed play again. This time Tom shook his head and started staring at every inch of the player in turn, as if he was trying to figure out how it worked. Very quickly he figured out where the volume button was, and he kept turning it up really loud, until it hurt Munch’s and my ears and I’d turn it back down again.

  After I finished my homework, Tom was still examining the CD player and trying all its buttons. It was late, so I turned off the music, picked him up, laid him out on my bed with a good book, and went to sleep. In the morning when I woke up, he’d already gone off somewhere.

  CHAPTER 11

  Munch’s Meltdown

  Munch woke up grumpy. He was mad because my mom got him up a little late and told him he’d have to hurry, and Munch HATES to hurry.

  He took as long as he possibly could to get out of bed, until my mom (after asking him nicely about a hundred times) finally raised her voice at him and then he got mad at her for yelling. Unfortunately, as you may or may not have noticed by now, Munch doesn’t always manage his anger too well.

  First thing he did after Mom yelled was turn himself into a teddy bear and hide among his stuffed animal collection at the foot of his bed. Next, after my mom zapped that spell away and pulled him onto his feet, he turned himself into a bird and she had to slam down the window so he didn’t fly out of it.

  “Munch, honey, please,” she said, much more nicely than I would have under the circumstances.

  I hate when Munch gets like that. Especially in the mornings. When he melts down before school, he makes it so we have even less time to have breakfast and get ready. In fact, I don’t mind admitting, there are times I wish I was an only child. By now he was really starting to get on my nerves, so I yelled at him.

  “Munch, you monster! Just get dressed already why don’t you!”

  Then he had the nerve to bonk me on the head with his Superman again. Can you believe it? After he was so sorry for doing it the other night? It’s a good thing I’m so much more mature than he is, that’s all I can say, because all-out war could have erupted.

  Finally, even my mom lost it.

  “Munch Adams! If you don’t stop morphing this instant you will not be going to see Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock!”

  Woodstock was some big outdoor rock concert way bac
k in 1969 and Jimi Hendrix was a guitar player who’s still on half of Munch’s T-shirts even today, so I guess he was pretty good. Anyway, Munch, who’s learning to play guitar himself, certainly didn’t want to miss him, so he finally brushed his teeth and got dressed.

  By then we were late for school and I had to hurry out the door with him as we both stuffed down bananas and granola bars instead of the oatmeal Mom had been planning to cook for us. I know my mom loves us, so I don’t take stuff like this personally, but I did happen to notice she looked distinctly relieved to get us out of the house.

  My friend, there’s nothing worse than arriving late at Miss Linegar’s class. You know what she does, just to make it a completely horrible experience? She locks the door so you can’t just open it quietly and slip in. No, you’ve got to knock and then she has to assign somebody the “privilege” of opening the door, to see who it is, and of course everyone in the whole class turns around to stare at you.

  Once you’re inside, you have to go up to Miss Linegar’s desk to apologize for your tardiness. Then, if she really wants to give you a hard time (and she always does), she’ll ask for an explanation as to why you’re late. Which is what she did on this particular morning.

  “Abbie, the bell rang five minutes ago. How is it that you’re just arriving?”

  And what could I say? That my little brother went on a morphing rampage and it put me behind schedule? That’d go over big. So I mumbled something about having slept late and she sighed and told me to hurry up and sit down.

  “Now, boys and girls, let’s all forget the interruption and get back to clearing your desks for the spelling test.”

  Spelling test?? Oh no! I knew I’d forgotten something the night before, in all the excitement about Tom. It was really hard words that week too, like “fasinate,” or “facinate,” or however the heck you spell it.