Bras & Broomsticks

by Sarah Mlynowski

  “Can you get two plates down?” she asks now.

  Another wedding conversation safely avoided. Now all we have to do is avoid the wedding.

  I spend the entire next day at school trying to come up with Plan C. When I get home, after an exhausting day of classes and both lunch and after-school fashion show rehearsals, my mom is reading a romance novel and Miri is grunting and counting in Korean behind her closed door. “Hana!” Grunt. “Tul!” Grunt. “Set—”

  I burst in to find her barefoot and snap kicking at her reflection in the mirror. “We have less than three weeks left.” I’m panicked. Practically hyperventilating. “Why are you wasting time with anything besides the plan?”

  “I have other responsibilities, besides the wedding,” she says. “Like Tae Kwon Do? Schoolwork? Net! ” She snap kicks and grunts one last time before sitting down at her desk. “Don’t you?”

  Who has time for responsibilities during a crisis like this? Although now that I think about it, I have a math midterm on Wednesday. And I’m supposed to finish Huckleberry Finn for next Wednesday. Which shouldn’t be a problem, because I can normally read a book in a week. I’ll start with fifty pages tonight. And I have a French midterm next Thursday and . . . Stop! Must keep my priorities straight! “What are we going to do?”

  “We’ve run out of options,” Miri says. And that’s when I notice what I never, ever thought I’d see in a billion years. “What is that?” I shriek.

  “What?”

  “That!” I point to her fingers, which are wrapped in Band-Aids. Willingly. “Have you lost your mind?”

  She turns bright red and looks down at her notebook. “I don’t want to ruin my nail beds.”

  I know that’s not the only reason. Too bad she took the truth-spell antidote and is no longer being honest. “Are you getting soft on me? On her? We have not run out of options. Magic is unlimited!”

  “Well, I don’t know what else to do,” she says, blinking her long eyelashes repeatedly.

  That’s because she’s not even trying. Where is A2? I spot it beside her bed, on the floor underneath a sleeping Tigger. On the floor! Is this how you treat an authentic spell book? I tilt it sideways so that the fur ball slides off, and I heave it onto her desk. “Look at the book. It’s right in front of you.” Must think. Wait a sec . . . right in front of you. My heart rate speeds up. “We’re missing the obvious.”

  She flips open the book. “What’s the obvious?”

  “We need him to stop loving her.”

  “We already tried that,” she says slowly, as if I’m in preschool and she’s teaching me the alphabet. “Everything we do makes him like her more.”

  “Not everything,” I say, suddenly giddy and light-headed, as if I’m floating in a sea of helium. “What if he falls in love with someone else?”

  Miri flicks through the pages. “With whom? He doesn’t know anyone else.”

  “Yes, he does.” I raise my eyebrows, and give her my best hello? look.

  “Our mother?” Miri says, finally understanding.

  “Yes, our mother. We make him fall in love with Mom.” We’re both silent, savoring the sweetness of the possibility like melting chocolate ice cream in our mouths.

  After a few moments, she looks up at me, excitement creeping into her cheeks. “I . . . but . . . emotion spells aren’t permanent,” she says, her voice creaking. “Especially love spells.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I whisper. “By then, the wedding will be canceled.”

  Miri shakes her head slowly. “What about Mom? She’ll be hurt all over again.”

  “Don’t you see? It won’t wear off. If he fell in love with her once, he can do it again. He just needs a shove in the right direction. A push to help him realize that he made the biggest mistake in his life by leaving. This is perfect! Not only will we be saving Dad from marrying STB, we’ll be getting him back with Mom. We’ll be killing two birds with one stone.”

  “Dad and Mom back together,” Miri says wistfully.

  “She’s still in love with him,” I say. My heart is thumping fast and hard, as if I just ran up a hundred flights of stairs.

  Miri nods. “I know. She still has that sweatshirt. You know the ratty gray one? The one he—”

  “The sweatshirt,” I say. “Perfect! We can use that for the spell! Let’s go get it.”

  “She’s reading,” Miri says, jumping from her chair and pacing the room. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll distract her when she’s making dinner. I’ll ask her about the witch trials. She loves talking about that. Do you know that we can trace our roots to Salem? Isn’t that cool? Mom says we still have relatives there, and I can’t wait to meet them. I didn’t even know we had family in Massachusetts. I asked her if that’s where Aunt Sasha lives, but she still wouldn’t talk about—”

  I tap the side of my head. “Focus, Miri, focus. We can take a road trip next year. Right now let’s work on Operation Steal Back Dad’s Sweatshirt.”

  She jumps from foot to foot. “Sorry. Okay. You sneak into her room and find the sweatshirt. Then, after dinner, I’ll put together the spell—let’s hope we have the ingredients in the house—and then we’ll slip it under Mom’s pillow before she goes to sleep.”

  “She’s going to sleep on the entire sweatshirt? Don’t you think she’ll notice?”

  “Maybe we’ll cut off the arm and just use that.” She flips through the book until she finds the appropriate love spell. “Let me get a head start on the other ingredients.”

  At eight, my mom finally gets off her bed and heads to the kitchen, deciding it’s time to make us dinner. Maybe I should put on appropriate spy clothes. Just what do spies wear these days, anyway? Maybe I should stop worrying about my clothes and go find the stupid sweatshirt before she’s finished in the kitchen.

  Her bedroom door is open, and I slither in. Hmm. Now, if I were a sweatshirt that was being hidden by an ex-wife, where would I be? Under the bed? I drop to my knees and lift the bed skirt. No, but she could certainly sweep under there.

  Maybe she keeps it with her other sweatshirts. Camouflage. So we won’t notice. I open her dresser and search through the drawers. One shelf. Nope. Two. Nope. Three. Nope.

  Where is it?

  I check in the closet. No Dad’s sweatshirt, but plenty of purses, shoes, and old concert T-shirts. Would it kill her to buy some new clothes?

  The microwave dings. Uh-oh. Time’s running out. Where is it? I rifle through her bra and underwear drawer. She could use an update here. All her lingerie is beige. No wonder she doesn’t have a boyfriend. She’ll need to invest in some new stuff now that Dad has been exposed to STB’s unmentionables, because I’ve seen them drying around the house, and they’re all pink and frilly. At least now I know what to get Mom for her birthday. Is it creepy to get your mother lingerie?

  I’ve checked everywhere and it’s gone. Impossible. I search the dresser again. And then the closet. It must be under one of these purses. Why does she have so many purses? And wedge sandals. Does anyone even wear wedges anymore? Where is the stupid sweatshirt?

  “Rachel?”

  Busted. Mom. Standing at her door. Wondering why I’m in her closet. Why am I in her closet? I try to appear nonchalant by twisting my ponytail around my wrist. “Yes, Mom?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I-I-I . . .” Must think fast. Why can I never think fast when I tell myself to think fast? “Looking for shoes. Yeah. I need a lot of shoes for the fashion show. You know, a different pair for every number. So I thought you might have something I could borrow.” I hope I didn’t already tell her the designers are lending us heels.

  She looks confused. “But you wear a six and I’m a seven.”

  Right-e-o. “I know, but some of these shoes are so old I thought you might have bought them when you were a smaller size.”

  She shrugs. “All right. But dinner’s ready.”

  That was close. Close, but no cigar. Or sweatshirt.

&
nbsp; A few minutes into our plates of revolting peanut tofu, my mom throws down her fork. “What’s wrong with you?” she demands. “Stop making faces; it’s not that bad. It’s a new recipe and it’s healthy.”

  First of all, it is that bad. The lumps of tofu are jiggling on my plate like Jell-O, but that isn’t why I’m making faces. I’m attempting to illustrate to Miri that we’re having serious sweatshirt-locating issues.

  “I wasn’t making faces about the food. I was thinking that I couldn’t find the shoes I wanted. I don’t know where they are. I’m thinking you must have thrown it out.” Oops. “I mean, thrown them out,” I correct.

  “What shoes?” my mom asks.

  “Um . . . you know. The silver ones.”

  “What silver ones?”

  Distraction needed! “Mom, um . . . this recipe is delicious.”

  She beams with pleasure. “See? You have to give new tastes a chance. I’ll definitely make it again.”

  Fantastic-e-o.

  When we’re finally finished, Miri and I clear together (it’s technically her turn again, finally, but she set the table for me while I was rummaging in the closet) and my mom goes to her room.

  “I can’t find it anywhere,” I whisper. “I even checked the wash, despite my skepticism that she ever cleaned it.”

  Miri’s head wobbles from side to side. “That’s so sad.”

  “I know. But that’s why we’re doing this. He’s going to fall madly in love with her again, and she’ll be happy.” I dump the leftover tofu into the garbage. Good riddance.

  “Right. Except what do we do if the spell wears off?”

  “I told you, once he’s out of STB’s grasp, he’ll stay in love with Mom.” Miri’s brown eyes widen with doubt, so I decide to tell her what I’ve always suspected but never wanted to admit. Even to myself. “The Step-Monster was probably responsible for them breaking up.”

  “What are you talking about?” Miri asks, rinsing off a dish.

  “Come on, think about it. He claims to have met her six months after he left Mom. Isn’t it possible he met her . . . um . . . before?”

  Miri pales. “You mean he cheated on Mom?” We both stand still, listening to the sound of the water. And then Miri rips off each of her Band-Aids. “She has got to go. If we can’t find the sweatshirt, we have to find something else that belongs to him. It can’t be a gift he gave. It has to be something that was his personally. Do you have anything?”

  “His math trophy?”

  “I think she’d notice a metal statue under her pillow,” Miri says.

  If she didn’t look so forlorn—probably because of what I told her about Dad’s quasi or otherwise affair—I might laugh. “So what do we do?” I ask, filling the baking tray with soap to let it soak. “Wait until next weekend?”

  She sighs. “I guess so. Although that only leaves one week for him to call off the wedding. What do you think?”

  I blow a soap bubble over her head. “We have no choice.”

  So much for unlimited options.

  18

  WHY GAMBLING DOES NOT PAY

  “One more time!” London screams at us.

  It’s Tuesday and I’m sweating through an all-cast after-school practice for the opening. Since the freshman girls are up first, London has already made us repeat our part twenty times.

  The music starts again and we go through the motions. It’s really not that hard. All five of us will be spread across the stage, and when the Chicago medley starts, five spotlights will shine on us as if we’re nightclub singers. Then we do a twenty-second choreographed dance, and the rest of the cast rushes on.

  “You’re not in sync!” London shrieks. She starts the music again. I feel as if I’m a scratched CD that keeps playing the same line.

  After we finally get it right, Jewel and I go to Soho to scout for my Spring Fling outfit, and I find the perfect dark green dress.

  “You look hot,” Jewel says, circling me in the changing room. “You should wear your hair up.”

  Jewel has always liked my hair up. For our middle school Valentine’s dance she helped me put it into a French twist. And one Halloween she spent an hour making me two perfect Princess Leia buns, or cinnamon buns, as Prissy called them.

  “Let me see what it would look like,” she says, untangling the chopsticks from her hair. Her curls spring over her shoulders, and without even thinking, I pull one so it uncoils and then bounces back, and she laughs.

  She twirls my hair until it perfectly tops my head, and strategically places two long strands onto my forehead. “We’ll style those with my curling iron.”

  We smile at each other in the full-length mirror. “Thanks, Jewel.”

  I’m going to look perfect. Thank God Miri lent me her last eighty dollars to buy a dress, which I promised, promised, promised to pay back out of my allowance. Eventually.

  After shopping, Jewel and I go back to her place to study for math. “Rachel, honey, what a surprise!” Mrs. Sanchez says when Jewel asks her if I can stay for dinner. “We missed you,” she adds, and I almost hug her. I missed her too.

  It’s lunchtime on Wednesday, and I rush to the drama room, where the freshman dancers are meeting. I open the door to find Raf by his sexy self, lying across the carpet, a textbook under his head.

  “Hi,” I say, and sprawl down beside him. Yes! Alone time with Raf! Maybe he’ll take this opportunity to kiss me! Or to ask me out for Saturday night. Our quasi date was two weeks ago. Doesn’t he want to go out again before Spring Fling? Does he like me or not? Did he just ask me to Spring Fling because I’m a good dancer? This whole dating/quasi-dating thing is turning me into a chronic question-asker.

  Omigod, I’m turning into Prissy!

  “Hi,” he says. “What’s up?” He runs his fingers through his dark hair and I wonder what it feels like. Smooth? Soft? Silky? Maybe like cashmere? Not that I’ve ever worn cashmere. Or know what it feels like. Would I even be able to feel the difference between it and cotton in a Pepsi/Coke–style test? I imagine myself blindfolded, hands out, palms caressing the different materials.

  “My parents want me to go to New Orleans with them during spring break,” Raf announces, shattering my daydream.

  Oh, no. He’s backing out of Spring Fling! He’s going to leave early, and then my dad’s wedding will be canceled, and after all the scheming, I’ll be at home on April 3 watching Star Wars. Again. “Oh?”

  “My brothers don’t want to go, but I told my parents I’m game as long as they fly down on Sunday after the dance.”

  How sweet is he? Not only does he still want to go to the Fling with me, but he’s a good son. He’s like chocolate mixed with cotton candy mixed with Kool-Aid. If I weren’t so in love, I would get a cavity.

  Jewel walks into the room, smiling when she sees us together. “Hey, lovebirds. Bee-Bee, how’d you do on the math test?”

  “Okay,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. I definitely aced it. I finished in twenty minutes and spent the rest of class studying for next week’s French test and writing in my notebook Je m’ennuie. “You?”

  “Pretty good,” she says, still smiling. “Thanks for helping me study.”

  I figured she had done okay. During the test, she was scribbling furiously, wrapping her curls around her thumb like she always does when she’s thinking hard. She wasn’t eating the back of her eraser, which is what she does when she’s upset.

  I wonder how Tammy did. I’d ask her. If we were talking.

  The rest of the freshmen trickle in. Finally Melissa storms into the room, carrying two plastic chairs. “Everyone up. The moronic JFK administration wouldn’t approve my stripper choreography, but they said I could do a gambling theme. So we’ll be using chairs in the dance to give the number an edge.”

  Chairs? What is she talking about? I don’t want to dance with furniture.

  “Eight of us,” she continues, dropping our plastic dancing partners into the center of the room, “Jewel, Sean, Raf, Doree, Ste
phy, Jon, Nick, and I will be the main dancers. We’ll be gamblers at a poker table on the catwalk. Rachel and Gavin, you two will be dressed as casino dealers and will remain at the sides of the stage and off the catwalk.”

  Quelle surprise. At least she didn’t relegate us to behind the curtain.

  Free lunch! Free lunch!

  It’s Friday and this is the first lunch all week that I don’t have dance practice during! It’s my first real chance to sit at the A-list table. I search for Jewel in the caf. Where is she? I don’t see Doree, either. Or Stephy. Where are they? I don’t see Raf, but he normally leaves for lunch. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him all day.

  Did everyone go out for lunch without me? I feel sick to my stomach, and I haven’t even eaten yet, so I know it’s not food poisoning. Maybe they don’t like me after all. I buy a grilled cheese and fries from the lunch ladies and then look for someone, anyone, to sit with. I spot Tammy at my old table, fourth from the back, eating with Janice, Annie, and Sherry. Oh, well.

  I carry my tray to their table and sit next to Tammy. “Hi, girls.” I take a bite of my sandwich to make sitting here feel less weird.

  Tammy squints at me. “Excuse me? Do I know you?”

  “Do you want me to sit somewhere else?” I spit out, along with small crust remnants.

  She stares at me for a long second and then pushes her hands down, her scuba way of telling me to relax. “I’m kidding. It’s just that I never see you anymore. Of course you can sit with us.”

  Oops. I kind of overreacted there.

  Sherry is giving me a strange wide-eyed smile from across the table. She pulls a sopping wet strand of hair from her mouth. “Hi, Rachel. Love-ee your sweater.”

  My sweater? I’m wearing the green one I bought at Macy’s and have worn a million times. Is she kidding?

  Annie is also smiling at me weirdly, and I squirm in my seat. What’s wrong with everyone?

  Janice stares at me, her face all serious. “How is the fashion show?” she asks. She’s wearing faded jean overalls. “We’re looking forward to cheering for you.”