The Magic Mistake

by Barbara Brauner

  —and a large green frog hops across the floor. There are laughs from all the kids, but the frog doesn’t pay any attention. He hops to the edge of the bleachers and stares with his beady little eyes like he’s looking for someone.

  And then the frog hops right into Gina’s lap.

  Other moms would have shrieked or jumped, but Gina just laughs. “Hello, there, Mr. Frog,” she says, picking him up to look at him.

  The frog leans forward and kisses her on the lips.

  “We don’t know each other well enough for you to do that,” Gina says. This gets a huge laugh from the crowd.

  I stare at the frog. Is he here because of my spell? Maybe Katarina’s wrong about there being no frog princes. OMG!

  But nothing happens. The frog stays a frog, and the kids all start making loud kissing sounds.

  Mr. Griffith claps his hands for attention. “People, please!”

  Gina stands up and gives Mr. Griffith a little wave of apology. “I’ll put him outside.”

  She carries the frog to the side door that leads to the parking lot. When she opens it, there are more frogs waiting on the sidewalk.

  The frogs croak and ribbet with excitement—and then leap right toward Gina’s face. I may not have found Gina a prince, but I’ve sure found her a lot of frogs.

  Gina’s still not freaking out. (I know I would be.) She starts tossing the frogs back outside, and Coach Overdale jumps up and runs over to help.

  As everyone in the auditorium stares at the frog-tossing, Katarina yanks on my ear and whispers, “Is there any spell you want to tell me about?”

  “All right! I tried to find a frog prince. But you said there weren’t any, so I thought I was okay!”

  “You idiot! All frogs think they’re princes. Don’t you know that? Go get that door shut before every amorous amphibian in the forest shows up!”

  Katarina calls me an idiot a lot, but this time it stings, because it’s sort of true. With my face burning, I wrap the train of my wedding dress around myself and walk over to the door to help Gina and the coach herd the frogs outside.

  Sunny and Paige start to follow me, but Principal Nazarino stops them. “Sunny, Paige! You girls hand out the ballots for the competition. And everybody else, QUIET!”

  There aren’t all that many frogs, just a couple dozen. Gina, the coach, and I finally grab the last of them and carry them out into the parking lot. I push the auditorium door shut with my butt so no more frogs can get inside.

  Even though the frogs keep jumping at Gina’s face, she just laughs. “This is nutty!”

  “No kidding!” Katarina whispers.

  Okay, I admit it was a stupid spell. But it could have been worse.

  Then I hear a weird sound from the edge of the parking lot.

  Oh no. Oh no! OH NO!

  It’s the sound of hundreds of frogs croaking at once. And they’re all hopping straight for Gina.

  One frog is cute.

  A dozen frogs is annoying.

  A hundred frogs is scary.

  A green river of frogs engulfs us.

  Not us—the frog river flows past me and the coach, and swirls like a whirlpool around Gina. Because of my stupid spell, she’s the one they want.

  Gina has been calm so far, but now she screams as hundreds of frogs try to kiss her. She tries to run—but she can’t take a step without squishing a frog. So she covers her head with her arms and huddles down as the frogs pile on top of her.

  I pick up frogs and toss them away, but for every one I toss, another three jump on. “You’re not princes, you’re just frogs!” I shout. But they don’t pay any attention to me.

  Finally, the coach gets as close as he can to Gina. “Take my hand!” he yells. She reaches out—

  —and he pulls her up and into his arms, so fast that the frogs drop to the ground.

  As the coach carries Gina, he looks like a knight on the cover of one of those romance novels my grandma reads. And Gina looks like the damsel in distress.

  With the frogs still jumping all around them, the coach runs across the parking lot, opens the door of his white Mustang, and gets them both inside. A moment later, the car is just a mound of green.

  Katarina flutters near my face, tsk-ing.

  “This is horrible!” I say. “Gina and the coach are going to be stuck in the car till midnight!”

  “Probably.”

  I look at Katarina with a faint flicker of hope. “Only probably?”

  Katarina asks, “What exactly was the spell you used?”

  “‘Gina needs a princely frog. If you’re there, get off your log.’”

  Katarina sits on my shoulder, thinking. “Since the frogs aren’t really princes, just conceited, it’s a breakable spell.”

  “So, how do I break it?”

  “You have to make them forget the spell by giving them something they want more.”

  What do frogs want? They probably only want lily pads—and bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. I almost wish the pinch gnats were here; there’s a zillion of them, especially since they’ve been laying eggs in my closet.

  The pinch gnats! I know what I need to do!

  I cup my hands around my mouth and shout question after question at Katarina. “Why is the sky blue? What did I have for dinner last Tuesday? Who invented Silly String? When is Sunny’s birthday? What is the capital of Uruguay? Why does it always rain when you’re having a picnic? What’s the world’s highest mountain? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? How many Barbies does Madison have? When was the first Super Bowl? Where is the world’s longest river?”

  By now Katarina has her hands clamped over her ears. “Have you gone insane? Sit down and put your head between your legs!”

  I shout even louder, not even bothering to look at Katarina anymore. I want to be so loud that anyone—or anything—nearby can hear me. “Does putting your head between your legs cure insanity? Do you know the way to San Jose? How does a Magic 8 Ball work? If you swallow gum, does it really stay in your stomach? What is my aunt Ginny’s actual age? Is there intelligent life in the universe?”

  “There’s no intelligent life here! Why are you asking all these ridiculous questions? If the pinch gnats were here, they’d pinch you to death!” And Katarina finally gets it. “Oh,” she says. “You want the pinch gnats to come.”

  “Yes. BECAUSE AREN’T THE PINCH GNATS REALLY JUST TASTY BUGS?”

  With this final question, a bright red cloud of angry, buzzing gnats rises over the top of the school. (They’ve probably drained every hummingbird feeder in town.) Those gnats must have laid a lot of eggs in my closet, because it’s a big swarm. And the swarm is heading straight for the one who asked Katarina all those questions.

  Me.

  I dash behind the frog-covered car and wait. What if my plan doesn’t work?

  The pinch gnats zoom toward me from the other side of the car—and hundreds of frogs stop thinking, Gina! Gina! and start thinking, Lunch! Lunch!

  As the swarm passes over them, the frogs’ long, sticky tongues dart out to eat the pinch gnats like they are the most delicious bugs ever. In less than a second, the frogs gobble up almost all of them.

  The gnats that don’t get eaten fly into the woods, and all the hungry frogs hop off the car and go after them.

  A minute later, there’s not a single gnat or a single frog in the parking lot, just me and Katarina. Instead of a deafening roar of ribbets and buzzing, now there’s just wonderful silence.

  Katarina flies up to me and perches on a gardenia in my hair again. “Not the way I would have done it, but that worked.”

  “Are the pinch gnats coming back?” I ask.

  “Not unless frog poop can fly.”

  EW! I shudder, but not for long. Because that’s actually pretty great—I just solved two problems at once. No more frogs, and no more pinch gnats. I tell Katarina, “So now I can ask you all the questions I want—and you can give me all sorts of help!”

&nbs
p; “Not so fast, missy. I’m happy bending the rules, but I’m not going to break the rules, pinch gnats or no pinch gnats. I’ll give you suggestions. Such as, I suggest you tell Gina that the frogs have gone to lunch.”

  Good idea. I knock on the door of Coach Overdale’s car. “You can come out!”

  Gina cautiously opens the door.

  “It’s all right! They’re gone,” I say.

  Gina and the coach get out of the car and look at the empty parking lot. Gina lets out a huge sigh of relief, and then gives Coach Overdale a big, grateful hug. “Thank you so much!”

  He hugs her back, blushing a little but smiling.

  Then I get a GREAT idea. The coach is nice. He has a good job. He really likes kids. And, even if he’s got a sunburn and not much hair, he’s handsome. Is he the man for Gina?

  Right then, Principal Nazarino opens the auditorium door and walks over. “Coach Overdale? Are you ever planning on rejoining us?”

  I quickly pull the wand out of my sleeve and ask it in a whisper, “Shall this man be Gina’s true love?”

  Please, please, please, don’t raspberry the coach!

  The wand glows pink and makes a ping-ping-ping like a slot machine paying off. I say quietly to Katarina, “The answer is yes! Coach Overdale is Gina’s prince!”

  I’ve found the prince.

  Now all I have to do is get them married. In three days.

  Half an hour later, Sunny, Paige, and I pile into Gina’s old Hyundai. It’s hard enough squishing Sunny’s hoop skirt into the Hyundai’s backseat, but for a while it looks like there is no way that Paige’s column will fit. Finally, Gina opens the sunroof and Paige stands with her head—and her column—poking out. All the way to Sunny’s house, Paige waves at people on the street like she’s practicing for a parade.

  When we girls go into Sunny’s backyard to talk, Fifi barks at us through the fence. Katarina tells her, “Yes, a fifteen-foot train is excessive. So five years ago.” Fifi barks in agreement.

  Sheesh! Everyone’s a stylist!

  While Gina was around, I couldn’t say anything about my exciting news about the love-locator test and Coach Overdale. But now I tell the girls every wonderful detail.

  Paige and I both look at Sunny—after all, the coach is going to be her new stepfather. Sunny thinks about it for just a moment, and then smiles. “He’s way better than Dwight!”

  I breathe a big sigh of relief.

  “So, what’s next?” Paige asks.

  “Well, they’re getting married on Friday, so I guess they should go out on a date tonight,” I say.

  Katarina snorts. “It better be a fantastic date, if they’re getting married on Friday.”

  I say, “Okay, Katarina. We need fantastic. What would be a fantastic date?”

  Katarina doesn’t hesitate. “Invading Italy!”

  We all look at her, confused.

  Katarina scratches her head. “It was that man in the hat…What was his name? He was very defensive about being short. They named a pastry after him?”

  Sunny guesses, “Twinkie?”

  “No…Napoleon! That’s it! He was trying to figure out how to get Josephine’s attention, and I suggested he send an army to Rome. She was wowed!”

  “Gina is not Napoleon, Katarina,” I say patiently. For a fairy, she can be a little dense sometimes. “We need to think of something simpler—and where people don’t get killed.”

  Over the next half hour, Paige, Sunny, and I come up with a lot of ideas for a perfect date: horseback riding, a picnic, hiking, or a hot-air-balloon ride. None of them seems right.

  Finally, Katarina raises her hand. “May I make one teensy-weensy suggestion?”

  I brace myself for whatever rude thing she’s about to say.

  “Why don’t you talk to Gina?”

  That’s actually a really good idea. (I’m sure I would’ve thought of it eventually.) I say, “Let’s go talk to her right now!”

  Katarina shakes her head. “No, Lacey, you go talk to her right now. You’re Gina’s fairy godmother. Not Paige, not Sunny, not me. Go find out what her dream date is.”

  When I get inside, I find Gina in her workroom, sketching with colored chalk. “Hi, Lacey,” she says, looking up for just a second. “I haven’t drawn anything in six weeks—but those frogs inspired me.”

  “You’re going to do a book about a frog prince?”

  “No. About a frog vampire.”

  She turns the sketchbook around to show me a picture of a frog with an evil smile and fangs. He’s not scary, he’s cute—like a little kid dressed up for Halloween. I laugh and say, “That’s great!”

  Gina laughs, too, and then goes back to sketching.

  Hmm…I need to make her tell me what her perfect date would be. How do I bring that up? So I say, “Gina? Have you ever thought about writing a book about a girl having a perfect date?”

  “Boring! I want to do a book about Frogula!”

  “But if you did do that book, the one about the girl, what would her date be like?”

  Gina looks up at me and sees that I’m serious. She smiles and says, “Did Scott Dearden ask you out?”

  I blush.

  Gina pats my arm, leaving fingerprints in colored chalk. “Trust me, Lacey. A good date can be anywhere or anything. All that matters is that there are fireworks. You and Scott could be at the most boring place ever, and if there are fireworks it will be perfect.”

  Wow, I never would’ve thought of fireworks. But that’s something I can magic up!

  Gina closes her sketchbook. “Where are Sunny and Paige? I want to take you Bridemonsters out to dinner.”

  I rush into the backyard. “Gina wants fireworks!”

  Katarina nods. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?”

  “We’ve got Gina,” I say. “Now all we need is Coach Overdale.” My heart sinks. “How are we ever going to find him?”

  “Bat-n-Putt,” Paige says.

  “What?”

  “That’s where Coach Overdale is going to be at seven.”

  Katarina looks at Paige, surprised. “How do you know that? Are you a witch?”

  Paige holds up her smartphone. “No, it’s on the coach’s Facebook page.”

  Katarina is still mystified. “Is this Facebook a witch?”

  When it comes to computers, Katarina is worse than my grandma.

  Gina was surprised when we told her that we wanted to have dinner at the Bat-n-Putt. But she said it was our Bridemonster party and we got to choose.

  Sunny, Paige, and I get some odd looks as we sit at the outdoor snack bar—it’s not every day you see girls in wedding dresses eating chili dogs next to the batting cages. (The chili dogs are great. If you’re ever around here, you should try them.)

  Gina says, “I’ve never seen you girls eat so slowly.”

  We’re stalling for time waiting for Coach Overdale to show up, so I say, “It’s because they’re so delicious we want to taste every bite!” We nibble the hot dogs delicately…

  …until Katarina leans down from her gardenia hiding place and whispers, “He’s here!”

  As the coach walks in from the parking lot, we scarf down everything on our plates in one or two bites—so much for nibbling.

  The coach sees us and comes right over, smiling. “Hi, girls. Hi, Gina.”

  Gina smiles back. “Hi, Brian.”

  OMG! They know each other’s first names. They must have talked when they were trapped together during the frog attack.

  Coach Overdale tells me, “I’m glad to see you, Lacey. You’re not on my e-mail list yet, and I’m holding an early practice tomorrow morning.”

  “Okay.” Who cares about basketball? It’s time for romance. So I tell the coach, “We’ve never been here before. But Gina wanted to learn how to bat.”

  Gina says, “Actually…I played shortstop in college.”

  Oh, geez. I even knew that. Did I just wreck everything?

  But the coach grins and says, “I played s
hortstop in college! Let’s see what you can do!”

  And, just like that, Gina and Coach Overdale are in the batting cage together. Paige, Sunny, and I tell them we don’t want to get our wedding dresses dirty, so we stand outside watching Gina and the coach hit the balls as they come out of the machine. They’re both really good.

  When the coach finally misses one, Gina scampers all around him doing a funny victory dance. “I win! I win!”

  The coach laughs and pretends to collapse on the ground. Gina pokes him with her bat. “Don’t be a quitter! Get up.”

  Wow. This is the least romantic moment I’ve ever seen.

  But then something cool happens. The coach yanks on the bat and pulls her down to sit next to him. It’s not like they’re kissing or anything, but they’re sitting very, very close.

  What they need now is fireworks. Luckily, it’s dark enough that we’ll be able to see them.

  Pointing my wand straight up, I chant, “Fireworks in the sky, like the Fourth of July!”

  I know what you’re expecting. After the wedding dresses got messed up and the frogs attacked, you think something bad is going to happen with the fireworks. Like they’ll burn down the town or make loud farting noises or something.

  Well, you’re wrong.

  The fireworks are beautiful.

  Blast after blast of sparkles fill the sky—white, pink, blue, and purple. We all turn our faces upward, watching.

  At the end, there’s a burst of fireworks that forms into red curves. “Look! It’s a heart!” Gina says.

  The coach looks thoughtful and says, “Maybe it’s a sign.”

  “A sign?”

  “That love is in the air.”

  I hope he’ll say more, but he just smiles, gets to his feet, and stretches out his hand to help Gina up. “It was great seeing you again.”

  “Yes, it was!”

  They don’t say too much more. But they don’t have to. After all—love is in the air.

  As Gina drives us home, she’s kind of glowing…it’s more than just fireworks. She says, “That was really fun! Brian is such a nice guy—Lacey, you’re lucky to have him for a coach.”

  In the backseat, both Sunny and Paige give me the thumbs-up (which isn’t easy for Paige, since her head is poking out of the sunroof again because of the column).