“Yes,” I tell Jane. “Karate is perfect.”
“Great,” says Jane. She leans her head to the side. “So … want to come to my house after school? We can make our presentation super awesome, eat cookies, all that stuff.”
I freeze.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
Because that’s when it hits me. Cookies … peanut-butter cookies … magic. The magic is how I’ll make everything go back to the way it used to be with Sofia.
Chapter 19
I eat lunch with Jane, Brooklyn, and Emma again, because I don’t want to mess anything else up with Sofia before I give her the magic. In class, we had put the finishing touches on our poem, and over lunch Jane and I talk about how I’ll use karate moves in our presentation. Our ninja George Washington jokes weren’t that far off. It will probably be pretty silly, but at least I won’t be singing.
When school gets out, I run home as fast as I can. Past the crossing guard and Mr. Harris’s almond orchard, waving bees away from my face the whole way. I throw open the door to the house.
“Ssssh.” Mrs. Harris dashes out of the living room and motions for me to be quiet. “I just got Amelie down.” She stands on her tiptoes to look behind me and out the front door. “Where’s Parker?”
“Parker?” I’d forgotten Parker. In all my thoughts about magic and Sofia, I forgot that Parker would be walking this way.
He gets to the door a few seconds later, breathing heavy. “I couldn’t catch up.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He holds out a book for me. “I found this for you at home and thought you might like it.”
I take it from him. The cover has a picture of two knitting needles and a ball of yarn with the words 59 Ways to Cast On and Bind Off.
“Thanks,” I say, flipping open the book. “I’m really new to knitting, though.”
“Oh,” says Parker. “I can take it back. I just thought—”
“No, it’s okay.” I remember what I’d told Parker when he saw my hat. “I bet it will help when I teach you how to knit.”
I hold my breath to see if he remembers, if he still thinks that would be fun.
Parker grins. “Awesome.”
A high-pitched cry comes from the other room. Mrs. Harris sighs. “There’s our cue, buddy. Let’s get going.”
As soon as they leave, I toss the book on the hall table and rush into Dad’s office.
Grammy’s lying in bed, but sits up when I say, “Tell me about the magic again.”
“Is that baby gone yet?” she whispers.
“Amelie? Yeah, they just left.”
Grammy puts her hand over her heart. “Gracious, I have never seen such a colicky baby before. Of course I lucked out with your father. He was the happiest baby in the world, I tell you.”
I brush away her comment about Dad and push my hands into the mattress, leaning closer to Grammy. “Tell me about the magic.”
“The magic? What magic?”
No. It’s not a good time for Grammy to fade away. I need her right here. “Everyday Magic,” I say, slower this time. “Like you gave to your friend when you kissed that boy and she forgave you. I need it. How did you do it?”
“Oh, you mean the gum-wrapper necklace?”
“Yes!” I yell.
“Oh, my. You’re certainly excited today. What do you want to know about it?”
“How did you make it? How’d you make the necklace magical?”
Grammy points to the door. “Bring me my bag and I’ll show you.”
I go out to the hall, grab the bag, and bring it back. Grammy’s propped some pillows up behind herself. She rummages down at the very bottom of the bag for a couple minutes before saying, “Ah, there it is,” and pulling out a small pack of gum with three pieces left in it. Her face looks like she’s not holding gum, but diamonds. Magic gum is probably better than diamonds anyway.
“Now watch carefully.” She takes a piece, unwraps it, and pops it in her mouth. As she chews, she folds the wrapper up into a little V shape. I watch the whole time but I’m not very good at folding things.
“Show me again.”
Grammy doesn’t say anything. She just does it again, and then again a third time. After she makes three of the V’s, she shows me how they hook together to make a chain.
I bounce on my tiptoes. “But what about the magic?”
“What about it?”
“Well, how do you put it in there?”
Grammy sets the tiny chain on her lap and touches my cheek. “I don’t do anything to make this chain magical. When you make something for someone else, you give them love they can hold. That’s where the magic comes from. Anytime love becomes visible, there’s magic. You can’t stop it or take it away or add more. It’s just there.”
She picks the chain back up. “But this won’t do anyone any good. We need more gum.” Grammy gets out of bed, grabs her jacket off the dresser, and says, “Let’s go to the store.”
“The store?” My stomach tightens. “Mom doesn’t like me to leave the house by myself.”
“Oh, what your mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” she says with a laugh and a wave of her hand. “Plus, you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you.”
Sensei’s voice comes into my head. You must weigh all of your options and then proceed swiftly and with purpose.
I know by now that having Grammy around doesn’t always mean I’m not alone. She could take off down some path in her mind and not be back for hours. But if I’m going to get Sofia to be my best friend again for sure and for always, I need more magic gum wrappers. Sofia’s words come back to me. It never hurts to try everything. Not when it’s important.
I grab my Christmas money and we leave.
We walk to the end of the road and catch the bus at the stop in front of the school. It drives us past Mr. Harris’s almond orchard, the onion fields, and what will be a watermelon patch when summer comes, before turning left and heading into town.
Even in town, an orchard or small farm will appear between buildings. Mom says our little city is spreading out and taking over more land that used to grow things. But sometimes it seems as if the rich, dark earth is creeping into the city, settling down somewhere, and then deciding to break out into great big fields of lettuce and tomatoes.
The bus drives us all the way across town to Walmart. We only have an hour before Mom gets home, so I go straight to a checkout line. But Grammy shuffles past me.
“Grammy, where are you going?” I grab three packages of gum and chase after her.
She makes a turn into the office supplies and stops in front of a huge shelf of notebooks in every color.
“Come on, Grammy. Let’s go.”
She touches the cover of one of the notebooks. “Roses are red, violets are blue, write a poem in this book, to say I love you.”
Her voice is wrong. I grab her arm. I can’t lose her this far away from home. “Grammy. Pat. It’s me, Kate.”
“Kate. I … I need this notebook for my poetry. Poetry for Alice.”
I tug on her sleeve and look up and down the aisle, hoping maybe someone will show up who can help me. “No, we came for gum. Come on, Grammy. Let’s go.”
“We love writing poems back and forth,” she whispers. “It’s what friends do, you know. It’s kind of like magic.”
She isn’t really standing in the Walmart anymore. She’s standing somewhere a long time ago. But she still knows about the magic. And the notebooks are only ninety-seven cents. I grab a bright orange one and take her hand. “Come on, Grammy. Let’s go.”
For a second, she doesn’t move, and all I can hear is the blood rushing behind my ears. But finally she follows me to a checkout line beside a rack of sunglasses and candy. Below the boxes of spearmint gum is a package of sparkly colored pens.
“Oh, Jane would—” Something catches my eye then. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like my brain just knows something’s important. I search for the thing that mad
e my insides snap to attention. Then I see it, three aisles over. A green baseball cap with the letter A on it and a red stain on the brim. I know that hat, and I know the only person in this whole Giants-loving town who wears it.
Dad.
I want to shout and run up and hug him. But I shove those feelings so deep down inside my stomach I have to crouch to hold them in. I make a little squeak as I duck behind the candy racks.
“Oh, no,” says Grammy. Her mouth lifts out of that puckered frown, and I know she’s back. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
“It’s Dad,” I whisper.
“My Tony?” She stands on her tiptoes and looks around. “Where?”
“Over there in the A’s hat.”
Grammy throws out her arms. “Let’s go say hi.”
I shake my head and slowly straighten up, careful not to turn around, so Dad won’t recognize me. “No.”
After months of asking Mom where he is, when I actually have the chance to talk to Dad, all I can hear are her words coming out of my mouth. “He doesn’t want to see us.”
“Now that’s just silly,” says Grammy. “Of course he wants to see you! If I know my Tony, and I think I do—I am his mother—then he’ll want to see you.”
My heart stretches. But it snaps when I remember what Mom said last night. How Dad left us. Not the other way around. “No. Mom said he needs time away from … everything. That means us.”
It’s my turn to check out. The cashier taps her lime green nails against the metal at the end of the conveyor belt. I hand the gum and notebook to her.
“Pish posh,” says Grammy. “I’m going to give my Tony a hug.”
I whirl around to grab her arm, but she’s already pushing past the people and carts behind us, muttering. “Of course he’ll want to—” Her voice gets quiet then. Almost a whisper. “Tony?”
That’s when I know she saw his face.
I pay the cashier and run straight for the door. I don’t wait for Grammy. I almost forget my bag. But I have to get outside. I have to breathe cold air and sunshine and stop thinking, thinking, thinking about Dad’s face.
Chapter 20
It smells like cows. Like grass and rain and mud all pressed together in a heap. Still, I breathe deep and fill my lungs. Then I sit at the picnic table where we always used to eat enchiladas from the food truck. But I don’t think about enchiladas, because then I would have to think about Dad, and I’m trying to think about cows.
“Cows, cows, cows,” I whisper.
I pull the hood of my jacket up over my face just as Grammy walks out the door. She sniffles as she sits next to me, so close that I almost fall off the bench.
“That’s not my Tony.”
“Yes it is.”
“But what happened to him? His hair, that beard … his eyes. He looks hollow and lost.” She stares at me as if I’m the grown-up and she’s the kid.
“It’s the depression,” I say. “One day the sadness came, and it never left.”
“My poor Tony.”
Then Dad walks out of the store.
I pull my hood even further over my face so he won’t see me, won’t recognize me. But I should know better. He hasn’t seen me for five months and nineteen days, and even before he left he didn’t really see me. He just walked around with that lost look. All this time, I’ve only wanted Dad back. But now that I know he’s still sad, still scruffy and empty, I want to hide. I don’t want him to look at me and not see me.
But I’ve spent over five months wondering where he is. So when Dad gets to the street and turns right, I stand up and start walking.
“What are you doing?” asks Grammy.
“I’m following him.”
Grammy nods and comes with me. We don’t run. We stay far back like spies.
He turns onto another street. “I just want to see where he’s going,” I say.
But I want to see other things, too. Like if Dad has a new family, or if he’s by himself. If he still stays in his bedroom all day, or if he’s out doing all the fun things we used to do together. If he misses us. If he wishes he were home.
We turn down the same street as Dad, trailing him past a long row of bushes right to the end of the road, where he enters a huge, brown apartment building.
As we walk up to the list of names and apartment numbers outside the doors, a lady with a screaming baby rushes past us.
“There he is,” says Grammy. “Apartment 304.”
I can’t help looking around me and wrinkling my nose. How could Dad leave our house to live in this gross apartment building with weeds growing in the cracks of the sidewalk and stinky ashtrays out front?
“Well, we know where he lives,” says Grammy. “So now we can …” She looks at me and waits for me to finish the sentence, to give her a plan.
“Go home,” I say. “Let’s go home.”
There’s a quiet space where the wind blows between us and carries away all the words I wish I’d said instead.
“My poor Tony.”
“At least now we can mail your letter.”
Grammy doesn’t hear me. She’s staring at the ugly building. Finally, she says, “Do you think he needs me?”
I nod. “And me. And Mom.”
“And magic,” she whispers.
“And magic. Can we give him some?”
“Yes. If you love someone you can always give them magic. And you always should. We never give up on people we love. I know that better than most.”
We go back to the store, hop on the bus, and then walk as fast as we can from my school to home. The closer we get, though, the further Grammy disappears. She keeps saying things like, “Now where are we? Where are we going? This doesn’t look familiar.”
“Almost there, Grammy,” I whisper, holding her hand.
Mom pulls into the driveway just as we’re walking up the front steps. I don’t have time to hide the plastic grocery bag. I’m trying everything I can to get Grammy to go inside.
“No, where are you taking me? This isn’t my house.”
Mom gets out of the car. “What’s going on? Is everything okay?” Then she sees the grocery bag. “Did you go to the store?”
“Grammy, this is where you live now,” I say. “I’ll show you your bed and all your things.”
Grammy shakes her head and pulls her hand away. “No. No.”
“Did you go to the store with her?” Mom asks again.
“We were safe,” I say. “I know how to get there.”
Mom walks up to the door. “It’s not you I’m worried about, Katydid.”
“Don’t call me Katydid!”
“Excuse me?” She says it in that voice that wants to see if I’m brave enough to say it again.
I’m not.
Mom turns away from me. She puts a hand on Grammy’s back and rubs in circles. “Pat, let’s go inside and make some hot tea. Then you can go home.”
“Okay,” she whimpers.
Mom leads her into the kitchen like a little kid. As she puts the teapot on the stove she says, “You’re lucky she didn’t do this to you at the store. Or on the bus. What if you couldn’t get her here?”
I let those questions float right out the screen door without bothering to catch them or answer.
Grammy shifts in her chair and hums nervously.
“I’m coming, Pat,” Mom says before turning to me. “So what’s in the bag?”
I hand it off to her.
“Bubblegum?” Mom pulls out one of the packages. “You know how I feel about bubblegum.”
“It’s for Sofia.”
“Sofia? Why?”
“I’m making her a necklace out of the wrappers. So we’ll stop fighting and be best friends again. Just like we used to be.”
Mom sighs. “Oh, Katydid.”
“What?” I grab the bag and the gum back from Mom so she’s standing in the kitchen with her hands out in front of her but nothing in them. They hang there for a minute before she slowly places them on my shou
lders.
“Do you know the hardest part about running Mayor Gerton’s campaigns?”
I groan. “Not again.”
Mom puts her finger to her lips. “No. Listen.” She bends down so she’s looking me straight in the eyes, so she knows what she’s about to say will really go in. “You can give the voters all the information in the world. And you can even drive them to the polls. But in the end, you can’t force them to vote for your candidate.”
I push her hands off my shoulders. “What does that even mean?”
“It means …” Mom takes a step back and waves her hand in the air. “Wouldn’t you rather make this necklace for Jane?”
“Jane?” Her name echoes off the kitchen cabinets and bounces around inside my brain. I look into my bag at the bright colors of gum and the orange notebook. A rainbow in a grocery bag.
“Yes, Jane. She sent you a text today.”
“Liz?” Grammy says like it’s a question. “Liz?”
Mom hands me the phone and hurries to Grammy. I find her text messages. Under the number I recognize as Jane’s it says, Hi Mrs. Mitchell, this is Jane. Kate’s partner on a project at school. I’m sending these texts for her. OK?
The next text reads, Kate, do you feel ready for our presentation tomorrow? Maybe we should get together tonight and make sure we’re good to go. The switch from singing to karate has me nervous.
I quickly text back. Can’t. Too busy. And I’ve got the karate down. Don’t worry.
Then, before Mom comes back, I flick down to find the last message I sent Dad. Merry Christmas. It still says it’s unread.
When Mom finishes helping Grammy, I hand the phone back. She reads what I texted Jane, sighs, and pulls the box of herbal tea from the cupboard. “Don’t you think you’d like to get out of this house for a little? Play with someone?”
“Play?”
Mom rolls her eyes. “Hang out. You know, with somebody other than Sofia. Maybe it’s time to, I don’t know, try new things.”
“I don’t want to try new things.”
Mom takes a tea bag from the box and places it in Grammy’s mug. “Katydid, sometimes friends grow apart. And that’s okay. It’s part of growing up. I know it hurts. I remember when—”
The Three Rules of Everyday Magic Page 9