The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams

by Rhonda Hayter

  “But, Tom buddy. If this is going to work, you’re going to have to behave and stay really still and quiet all day,” I warned him.

  Feeling like a spy smuggling secret documents, I snuck Tom into my coat pocket and Munch and I headed off to school. Munch loved the idea of having a secret like this and kept zapping cat treats into my pockets for Tom. When I discovered that one of the treats he popped in was a sardine, I had to ask him to stop. I almost made myself late for school again because I had to take the time to transfer Tom to my other pocket and zap in the disinfectant wave I’d recently learned from Dad to get rid of the fishy smell. Munch meant well though.

  Of course I wanted Callie to know who I had with me, but I knew Miss Linegar wouldn’t be exactly supportive of me bringing a kitten to school. So I took a moment as we were lining up outside the classroom to go in, to open up my coat pocket.

  “Hey Callie,” I whispered. “Take a look.”

  I felt the usual rush of wanting to share the whole truth with Callie because I knew she’d get a big kick out of the fact that I brought Tom so he could brush up on his schooling. It was okay though because Callie didn’t ask for any explanations. She just looked amazed at my nerve and then giggled and slipped her hand into my pocket to stroke Tom’s little head. She didn’t even seem to wonder why I brought him, because she just thought it was so much fun to have Tom (or Benjamin, as she still thought of him) at school.

  As we waited for the bell to ring, Callie whispered, “I’ll stand in front of you by the closet, so you can hang up your coat and get Benjamin out of your pocket.”

  The plan worked perfectly. I hung up my coat in the coat closet, hid Tom under a book on the way to my desk, and then transferred him to my lap once I was sitting down.

  Once I was in my seat, I whispered, “Remember, Tom buddy, just listen quietly and be very careful to stay under the desk.”

  Over at the next desk, I could see Callie biting her lips and trying not to giggle as Tom snuggled down in my lap. Meanwhile, I looked as studious and serious as I possibly could, in order not to attract Miss Linegar’s attention.

  We got through roll call with no problem and when we moved onto the “Drop Everything and Read” portion of the morning (I was reading Harriet the Spy), Tom fell right asleep. I knew he’d be interested when we got to science though, so when Miss Linegar told us to take out our science books, I gave him a little nudge.

  “Please turn to chapter thirteen, the chapter on sound waves,” Miss Linegar announced.

  Well. I thought Tom would leap right up onto the desk, he got so interested. I had to keep petting him to calm him down, but it was hard not to laugh because he kept trying to crane one of his little pointed ears up above the desk. If Miss Linegar had happened to turn around, which thankfully she didn’t, she would have seen a velvety little triangle of fur pointing straight at her and quivering with excitement.

  Callie spotted it though and she turned red in the face from trying not to laugh. Right away, we both got the giggles so bad that it turned into one of those whispery, snorty moments when you try to stifle yourself even though your shoulders are shaking and tears start rolling down your face. Calvin and Dennis, who sat right in front of us, turned around curiously. I managed to shove Tom down where they couldn’t spot him, and Callie and I both bit our lips really hard to stop our laughing.

  That’s a handy trick, by the way, that lip-biting thing to stifle laughing. Although, once Callie made me laugh so hard in assembly that my lip hurt afterward for hours. It was because of a little impersonation she sometimes does of Principal Oh, but that’s another story.

  Miss Linegar happened to sneeze, and turned away from the blackboard to get a tissue, but by then we’d gotten ourselves under control and she didn’t notice us.

  As I was trying to listen to the lesson and make notes, inside my head I kept getting rammed by sudden bursts of thoughts from Tom. The most frequent ones seemed to be “Well, confound it! Tell us why, woman!” and “Can’t you explain?”

  I saw that he was taking in the whole lesson, but it seemed as if his mind was racing ahead to try to figure out higher levels of what Miss Linegar was talking about. He was getting so frustrated at not being able to ask questions that he started to dance around in my lap and kicked into total hyper mode.

  Finally, though I was doing all I could to keep Tom’s head down and keep him quiet, he forgot about everything I’d told him and suddenly jumped right up on my desk.

  “MEEEOOWWW!!!” he yowled . . . at the top of his lungs.

  Well. So much for Tom’s school career and so much for mine (almost). Now, I don’t know how she expected me to know about it, but it turned out that Miss Linegar (who I had noticed was sniffling and sneezing quite a bit) is violently allergic to cats. When she heard the yowl, she jumped right onto the top of her desk. This would have been kind of funny, if a person didn’t happen to be paralyzed with horror at the time—which believe me, I was.

  Everybody in the whole class turned to look at me, except for Callie, who had her face buried in her hands. Sympathizing once again.

  Instantly realizing that he’d just bought me a whole peck of trouble, Tom stopped dead. I got the distinct impression that he knew a little something about problems with teachers.

  I could tell Tom was remorseful, but his being sorry wasn’t much help to me in facing the wrath of the red-faced and furious Miss Linegar, who was trying to regain her dignity as she slid down heavily off of her desk. She kept my doom pretty simple. Just a few short words.

  She straightened her skirt. “Abbie,” she said. (And she took a deep sniffly breath to maintain her self-control.) “Go to the principal’s office . . . and take your cat with you.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Three- Time Loser

  Are there any worse words in the English language than those?

  “Go to the principal’s office.”

  Just five little words, none of them more than three syllables, but they pack a wallop, like the time Munch misjudged his baseball swing and hit me right in the belly.

  “Go to the principal’s office.”

  I kept hearing the phrase, echoing in my head, as I tucked Tom into my arms, got up from my seat, and made the long, long walk down the aisle of desks to the door at the back.

  “Go. Go. Go. To the principal’s principal’s principal’s office office office.”

  It was like everyone in class had turned to stone. Nobody moved and nobody made a sound. I tried to get out quickly, but the back door was locked like it always is, to catch and destroy the tardy, so I had to wrestle with it before I could get it open. As I closed it quietly behind me, I could hear a massive sneeze from the front of the room.

  “RRRAAAACHOOOO!!!”

  I don’t know what she was so upset about. It’s not as if she had to worry about hitting the ceiling.

  I walked across the quiet yard on the way to the office and I added up the number of times I’d been sent to the principal so far this year. Yep. This made three.

  The first time was completely Munch’s fault though. I had spotted him through my classroom window, morphing himself into a basketball during his PE class . . . right in front of nineteen startled first graders and a shocked Mr. Merkelson. It was happening so fast I didn’t have time to throw a time freeze spell on my own class as I hurtled out the door to throw one on Munch’s class.

  Of course all Miss Linegar saw was that I suddenly bolted up out of my desk, overturning my chair as I rushed out the door. From her perspective, I then immediately ran right back into the room. In reality, of course, I had time-frozen Mr. Merkelson and his class, moved into a different time mode, and flown up in the air to retrieve Munch as he slam-dunked himself into the hoop. Then I unmorphed Munch, gave him a serious talking to about not forgetting himself, and went through the usual rigmarole of casting forgetting spells and so on.

  When I got back to my classroom, I realized, with a sudden, sick pang in my stomach, that I had neg
lected to cover myself there. I was forced to pick up my chair from where it was lying on its side and suffer through Miss Linegar’s icy query.

  “Young lady, do you find it amusing to disrupt the entire class?”

  What made it particularly upsetting was that I couldn’t think of a single thing that might acceptably explain suddenly jumping up, overturning my chair in my hurry to get out the door, and then returning in what seemed to be an instant. So I was stuck with letting Miss Linegar think that I found it “amusing.”

  That’s when I heard those five little words for the first time this year.

  “Go to the principal’s office.”

  I got a note sent home that time, but luckily Mom and Dad understood, although Mom gave me a stern talking to about how fast a witch’s reflexes have to be and how mine weren’t getting any faster by skipping my spell technique practice.

  I was all the way across the yard now and heading into the office. I could see the office ladies chatting back and forth as they worked, just as if this was a perfectly normal, nice day and not potentially the worst day of a person’s entire life.

  The office ladies could tell by my face that I wasn’t there for any happy reason, like to borrow the phone to call home because I had a raging fever, or severe vomiting. Nope, it was pretty clear by the bleak, death-like look on my face that I was there for my third visit to the principal so far this year. And it wasn’t even Thanksgiving break yet.

  Mrs. Carol, who’s a really nice lady, looked at me sympathetically and didn’t even bother to ask why I was there.

  “Hi there, Abbie,” she said. “Mrs. Oh is on the phone right now but she’ll be able to see you in a moment.”

  She seemed a little startled to notice that I had a kitten with me, but Tom was on his best behavior (for all the good it did me now) and she chose not say anything about it.

  While I sat there awaiting my fate, I reflected on the last time I sat in that very seat, as I was waiting for Mrs. Oh after the cafeteria food-hurling incident.

  Just so you know, that wasn’t really my fault either, or at least not all my fault. Lunch had been chicken nuggets with baby carrots that day and I was sitting with these kids Frankie, a boy from my class, and Alioune, who’s a fourth grader. I happened to notice that Munch, who had just taken his first few levitation lessons, had started sending his food flying up all around the room. One nugget was followed by a carrot, followed by another nugget, marching along like they were toy soldiers, eight feet up in the air.

  I saw people’s mouths drop open and some scared-looking kids were starting to jump up out of their seats. The cafeteria was too crowded and busy for me to be able to throw a wide enough time freeze to be sure that everyone would be inside of it. So I did the only thing I could think of at short notice. I started throwing my food up in the air too, hoping to knock down Munch’s.

  Frankie, who’s one of those kids who can’t tell when he’s going too far, grabbed his lunch and Alioune’s too, and threw them as high as he could and well—I guess about every one of the 250 kids on first lunch break joined in. Pretty soon most of those kids were covered in nuggets, low-fat milk, and squished carrots.

  Mom was a little less understanding that time and reminded me of when she’d had to time freeze a whole stadium of people at a baseball game when she was my age. She’d had to bail out my aunt Sophie, who was seven and had flown thirty feet up out of her seat to catch a foul ball. I didn’t think it was the right time to mention that Munch is probably a whole lot harder to handle than “sweet little Sophie” was, because I could tell there were already heavy consequences involving spell drills in the offing. I will admit that after this incident, I did get a whole lot better at mass freezings.

  In Mrs. Oh’s office, I could hear the scary sound of Mrs. Oh’s phone going back in its cradle. A sour feeling hit my stomach.

  I watched miserably as Mrs. Carol got up to go in to tell Mrs. Oh I was there to see her.

  Soon I could hear Mrs. Carol softly whispering, “Abbie Adams has been sent to you again.”

  This was followed by a heavy sigh from Mrs. Oh.

  I felt a sigh of my own escape me as Mrs. Carol stepped out. She gave me a nice little reassuring smile that somehow didn’t reassure me, and motioned me into Mrs. Oh’s office.

  A sad-eyed Tom looked up at me as I trudged the long twenty feet across the office to Mrs. Oh’s door and reluctantly poked my head in.

  There she was, sitting at her desk with an exhausted look on her face. The look turned a bit grim when she saw that I had a kitten with me.

  “What is it this time, Abbie?” she said, with what I thought was an unnecessary emphasis on the word “this.” You’d think I’d been in her office fifty times, instead of three.

  As I got all the way in and stood in front of her desk, I faced the bleak truth that this time I had no one but myself to blame. Munch had been on his best behavior since his meltdown the other day, Frankie was still sitting back in our classroom, probably waving his arm around as usual, trying to be the first one to answer every single question, and Tom hadn’t asked to be brought to school, it was my big idea.

  Now listen. This is important. I want you to know that I do understand that the only right thing to do in these situations is to admit that you did something wrong, say you’re sorry, and face the consequences. I’ve certainly been in trouble enough times to have learned that lesson very, very well. So I can’t really explain what I did next.

  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that my mom and dad had been so worried lately and I didn’t want to bother them. I’d like to think that was part of the reason anyway. But if I’m really honest with myself, I’d have to admit that I just turned into a great big chicken and couldn’t face up to that inevitable phone call home to my parents, which—it spells out very clearly in the student discipline guidelines they always make us sign on the first day of school—is what happens on the third visit to the principal.

  I watched Mrs. Oh trying to look patient as her hand snaked over to my file, which Mrs. Carol had already efficiently placed on her desk. Any second, she’d be opening it to look up my parents’ phone number. It made me feel so chicken that if I’d been Munch, I would have sprouted feathers and started flapping around the room.

  At least I didn’t do that, but what I did do wasn’t a whole lot better. I just felt something get so tense and tight inside of my chest that it was as if I had no control over things at all. That magic buzz built up in my fingers to the point that they started to feel as if they were burning. I stuffed Tom into my sweater pocket so that I wouldn’t shock him. Then, before I’d even had a chance to think about it, I did something I know no witch should ever do—I performed completely unnecessary magic on an unsuspecting mortal for no good reason but to get myself out of a consequence that I absolutely deserved.

  Zap!!! My hands snapped up as if they were operating without any sort of orders from my head and a flash of magic exploded out of them that froze Mrs. Oh in her seat. I snatched up my file, raced up behind Mrs. Carol and the other ladies in the outer office and froze them too, then slammed my file back into the first filing cabinet drawer, which had been left open at the A’s. As I rushed out the front door, I hissed and whistled a Forgetting Spell and undid the time freeze so that the ladies would go back to their day without any recollection that I’d ever been there.

  Without stopping to think for a second about what I’d done, I just walked right off campus and took Tom home.

  I’ll bet you’re thinking I wished I went to a school like Hogwarts where you could do magic all day long without getting into trouble. And you’re right, I do. Even Professor McGonagall isn’t nearly as strict as Miss Linegar. But here’s the problem. I don’t go to Hogwarts. And I’m not supposed to do what I did.

  Nobody was home at my house, so I just let myself in, got out a couple of cat treats for Tom, went upstairs to my room, and threw myself on the bed. It had been a really hard day, even if it was stil
l only a little after 10 a.m., and I fell asleep on my bed with my head buried under the pillow.

  CHAPTER 17

  We Find Out Who Tom Is

  When I woke up, though Mom and Dad still weren’t home, I could hear the faint tap, tap, tap of computer keys.

  I pulled myself up off my bed and went down into my mom’s office to investigate. There was Tom, sitting right up on the keyboard of my mom’s computer, tapping sort of slowly with his tiny right front paw and staring in awe at the computer screen. Munch and I aren’t actually supposed to use that computer because my mom’s got all the household accounts and her stuff for real estate school on it. I don’t think she’s that worried about me doing anything wrong, because fifth grade has computer class every Friday, but I figure she knows Munch well enough to realize she’d be risking her hard drive by letting him play with it. Just another example of how having a little brother can be a big pain.

  I was already feeling guilty about everything and I didn’t want anything else on my conscience, so I told Tom he’d better cut it out. He jumped about a foot into the air because I guess he’d been concentrating so hard he hadn’t heard me come in. I took him in my arms and cuddled him and leaned over to look at what he’d been doing.

  When I saw that he’d typed the name Thomas Edison a strange chill came over me.

  Of course. Suddenly, everything started to make sense. Forgetting all about my mom’s restrictions, I did a Google search on Thomas Edison as a boy and right away I was looking at some old-fashioned photos of the boy I had seen for just a second the first time I looked into my kitten’s eyes.

  Tom was so fascinated by what was on the computer, he kept jumping out of my arms onto the keyboard, causing the pages on the screen to delete, or to jump all over the place so that I couldn’t read anything. Finally, I held him against my chest with my left hand and used my right hand to scroll through the information that came up.