Here’s where I need to be a sneaky fairy godmother and gently push Gina toward the correct decision about getting married. I don’t want to say anything too obvious. I want to say something subtle, like…
“Mom! I think you should marry the coach right away!” Sunny blurts out.
If there was a class in subtle, Sunny would flunk.
Gina blushes and says, “Don’t be silly.”
Sunny leans forward. “But you like him, don’t you?”
“Sure I like him.”
“Really, really like him?”
“How could I ‘really, really like him’ so soon? I just met him today! Don’t you think that’s a little fast?”
I say, “When you like somebody, you’ve got to pounce. You’re not getting any younger.” (I thought that was a good point, but Katarina groans from behind my gardenias and kicks me in the head.)
Gina laughs. “You’re right, he’s my last chance. Everybody, hang on. I’m turning this Hyundai around and taking him ring shopping right now.”
OMG! “Really?”
“No.” Gina gives us all a smile. “I know you girls have been worried about me, but I’m going to be just fine, even if I never get married again.”
If she only knew what’s in store for her!
Katarina and I watch my bedroom clock as the seconds tick down to midnight. At twelve sharp, my wedding dress sparkles away, leaving me in my jeans and T-shirt. When I get married, my dress is going to be a miniskirt with absolutely no train.
As I change into my pajamas, I tell Katarina, “So, I know Gina and the coach are meant to be together. I could tell they really like each other—tonight, they never stopped smiling!”
“All right, fairy godmother, what do you do now?”
“I—I—I don’t have enough time! How do I get them from smiling to married?”
“Hints are one thing, but I refuse to just give you the answers. It’s your job to figure that out.”
I get into bed, still thinking. “I’ll have to use a love spell. There’s no other way!”
“No! This wedding has to be true love, and it has to last! Love spells vanish at midnight, just like your dress did.”
“But they would still be married.…”
“And unhappy and confused and making plans for a quickie divorce.”
I turn off the light, but I don’t go to sleep. How am I going to make this work?
The next morning at breakfast, I’m still thinking about Gina as I eat my oatmeal. (Katarina’s well hidden on top of the refrigerator, crunching on a coffee bean.)
Julius winds around my legs, purring. He purrs even louder as I get up and pop open a can of food for him.
“Lacey, you’ve already fed him,” Mom says.
Oh, right. I already have. My fairy-godmother problems are filling up so much of my brain that there’s not even room left over for cat food. But Julius looks so hopeful about getting a double helping that I give it to him anyway. At least I can make somebody happy.
As I sit back down, Mom asks me, “What’s up with you? Anything you want to talk about?”
I wish I could talk to Mom about Gina. And then I realize that maybe I can. So I say, “Why do people get married fast?”
“Fast?”
“Like, in love one day and married the next.”
“That never happens!”
“If it did, how would it work?”
“What is this all about?”
“I’m writing a story for English.”
“Well…if there was a war and one of them was leaving the next day, I guess it could happen.”
“There’s no war in my story.”
“What if someone was going to inherit a fortune, but only if he got married?”
“There’s no fortune.”
Mom thinks some more. “This is kind of hard, isn’t it?”
“Yes!”
Dad shuffles in and listens as he pours himself a cup of coffee.
Mom says, “Green card! What if the girl is from Canada and she’s going to be deported unless she marries the boy?”
“Nobody’s from Canada. At least, I don’t think so.”
Mom explains to Dad, “Lacey’s writing a story about a girl who needs to get married fast.”
Dad sips some coffee. “Maybe she needs to wait to get married. Until she’s thirty and has several grad school degrees and she’s met a man her father likes and approves of.”
Madison skips in, a Barbie in one hand and an Aladdin doll in the other. “Barbie’s father didn’t approve, but she married Aladdin anyway. And they only met yesterday.”
I say, “Madison, this is a grown-up conversation!”
“But you said you wanted to know why people get married fast!”
Madison has ears like a bat—she can hear me tearing open a Snickers bar from anywhere in the house. I say, “Okay, why did Barbie marry Aladdin?”
Madison holds up the dolls. “Barbie told Aladdin that she was getting married to Ken, and that made Aladdin mad. So Aladdin said, ‘Barbie, Barbie, marry me right now! Because I loooooove you!’” Madison crams Barbie and Aladdin’s faces into each other and makes them kiss.
Dad says, “You know, Barbie doesn’t have to get married at all. At least, not till she graduates from medical school.”
Madison says, “Dad! Barbie’s already a doctor! I have the clothes!” And she makes Barbie and Aladdin kiss some more. If I were Barbie’s fairy godmother, I could get her married tomorrow, no problem.
I think some more about why Barbie married Aladdin so fast—it was because Aladdin was jealous and wanted her for himself. When a girl’s in demand, you’ve got to move fast.
Would that work with the coach? Making him jealous? It’s worth a try.
When I get to the school parking lot, Katarina looks up at me from inside my pocket. “You’re going to do what?”
“I’m going to make the coach think Gina’s about to marry someone else, to make him jealous.”
“How, exactly?”
“I’m going to find him in his office and say, “Coach! Did you hear the exciting news! Gina is getting married to the mayor!”
Katarina shakes her head. “No. Too easy for him to check. Tell him, ‘Gina has been pen pals with the czar of Russia, and now the czar’s sent for her.’”
“All the czars have been dead for a hundred years.”
“Oh! No wonder my Christmas cards keep getting sent back.”
I remember Dad pouring himself a cup of coffee this morning. “What if I say, ‘Gina is getting married to a Brazilian coffee billionaire. Tomorrow! There’s going to be a Frappuccino fountain at the reception!’”
Katarina nods enthusiastically. “Mmmm…a Frappuccino fountain!”
We’re about to go into the school when Coach Overdale’s Mustang pulls in to the parking lot. As I walk toward the car, I see the coach looking at his cell phone. Wait a minute—it’s not his cell phone. It’s a small, square box, and the lid is open.
And it’s not just any box, it’s a ring box. With a ring in it. A shiny, sparkly, beautiful, diamond ring! I let out a squeal. OMG! OMG! I don’t have to make him jealous—he’s already one great big step ahead of me. Last night, the coach said, “Love is in the air.” And he meant it! He really meant it!
The coach hears my squeal (who wouldn’t?), finally sees me, and blushes. Katarina ducks deep inside my pocket as he rolls down the car window.
I say, “That’s an engagement ring!”
“It sure is, but you can’t tell anyone. I haven’t asked Gina yet.”
I can’t help it; I squeal again. Even Katarina squeals, from inside my pocket. I ask, “Did you decide during the fireworks?”
“Yes. I realized there’s only one woman for me.”
“How did you find a ring so fast?”
“This was my grandmother’s.” The coach looks at the ring, smiling.
“When are you going to ask her?”
“Tonight.” He snaps th
e ring box shut and looks at me again, all business. “Remember, not a word about the ring to anybody. And you need to suit up for practice.”
“Practice?”
“I told you about it last night, remember? Get changed!” He locks his car and heads for the school.
OMG! OMG! OMG! Getting the coach to propose was amazingly easy, like something out of a fairy tale. It was almost too easy. But then I remind myself that fairy tales are never that complicated. Maybe this is just the way it’s supposed to be. And with the dress all picked out, the only things I need to worry about are the church and flowers and minister. And a cool party after the wedding. (Hmmm…that sounds like a lot. But the proposal was the really, really hard part.)
Katarina pokes her head out of my pocket, a big smile on her face. “I don’t know how you did it, Lacey, but you did it!” She opens her notebook, and I see her drawing a star, which fills in with gold the second she finishes the black outline. “Of course, you’ve got a lot more work to do, but this will look excellent in my report to the Godmother Academy.”
Oh, geez: the Academy. I haven’t been thinking about it, but that’s what all my work is leading to, isn’t it? Either that or everyone in the whole world hating me. Neither one of those is my idea of a gold star.
Coach Overdale and the boys on the team groan when Scott throws me a basketball and I drop it.
Scott, who’s been demoted from player to equipment manager, just throws me another ball and gives me an encouraging smile. “Come on, Lacey! You’re going to be great!”
But I’m not going to be great. The only reason I was great before was because I put a spell on myself, and I’m not going to do that anymore. It’s not fair, and I don’t have time to be on the basketball team!
I throw the ball—and hit the coach right smack on the head.
“Ow!” the coach says.
And I keep being not great for the rest of practice. I’m not great at dribbling, at passing, at shooting, or at free throws. All I’m great at is hitting people on the head.
The coach blows his whistle. “Lacey, we’re not playing Whac-A-Mole here! The object of the game is to make a basket, not kill your teammates!” He blows his whistle again. “Everybody, hit the showers.”
As the rest of the team heads for the boys’ locker room, the coach stops me. “What happened, Lacey? You weren’t even trying!”
“I was trying as hard as I could! I’m just a bad player!”
“That’s not true. You’re fantastic!”
What a joke! “Please put Scott back on the team! He deserves it more than me.”
The coach looks over at Scott, who’s dragging a duffel bag full of basketballs into the equipment room, and says, “Oh, I see what you’re doing. You’re deliberately playing badly so Scott can get back on the squad.”
“No, I’m playing badly because I’m bad!”
“Scott will still like you if you’re good at sports. I hate it when girls pretend they’re not good at something so boys will like them. You’re playing in that game tomorrow, and I’m not changing my mind.”
The coach leaves, and Katarina flits down from the rafters. “I thought you played very well. You hit more people on the head than anyone else.”
That’s me. The hit-the-people-on-the-head girl.
In homeroom, when I tell Sunny about the coach’s engagement ring, she squeals even louder than I did. All the kids stare, so I tell them, “She just found out we’re having pizza for lunch.”
Sunny leans forward and whispers, “You’re a great fairy godmother! My mom is so lucky! And she’s going to be so happy!”
“She’s not married yet. We haven’t decided anything about the wedding.”
“Sure we have! We’ve got a groom, and a ring, and we even know which dress my mom likes: Paige’s Greek one, just without the column.”
“We don’t have a minister, a cake, flowers, or even a place for the ceremony!” I say. I feel like no matter what I do, there’s still more left. And I just have one more day.
Katarina sticks her head out of my pocket, and for once she agrees with me: “It’s supposed to be a dream wedding—and you haven’t done anything about the dream part!”
Sunny crinkles her forehead. “Can we get everything done over lunch and after school?”
“Yes!” Then I think about it. “Maybe.” Then I think about it some more, and I crinkle my forehead, too.
Sunny shakes her head. “There’s no way we can get it done.”
I bet no one in the history of the world ever had to be a fairy godmother and a full-time sixth-grader at the same time. I tell Sunny, “What we need is a snow day.”
“Can you make it snow?”
“I think so…but if I make a blizzard by mistake, we’re not going to get much wedding-planning done.”
“A blizzard would be cool. But you’re right.”
How do you make a snow day without making it snow? This school never gets shut down.
Right then, there’s a horrible screechy sound from the front of the room—Mrs. Neff, the homeroom teacher, is writing out next week’s block schedule on the chalkboard. (She’s retiring next year and refuses to switch over to the whiteboard. She says markers smell.) Her chalk screeches again, and Sunny and I both shudder.
I tell Sunny, “I hate that sound.”
Sunny says, “Everyone hates that sound.”
Hmmm…a sound everyone hates. Could I use that to get the school shut down? I make up a spell and aim my wand at the loudspeaker in the ceiling. I chant, “Out of the speakers come horrible squeakers,” and toss the spell.
Screech!
Screech!
SCREECH! the loudspeaker blares, sounding just as horrible as I had hoped it would.
All the kids in the room clap their hands over their ears—and so does Mrs. Neff.
Ten minutes later, there are hundreds of kids outside the school. The noise is fainter out here, but we can still hear screechy sounds blasting out of every loudspeaker in every classroom.
Paige runs up to Sunny and me. “Lacey, why?”
(I like how she assumes that anything weird going on is because of me. Aliens could invade tonight and Paige would just think, What’s Lacey up to now? and go back to sleep. On the other hand, she happens to be right.)
Sunny tells her, “Lacey’s making a snow day. We need to work on the wedding.”
Paige nods. “Smart.”
Principal Nazarino raises her hands to get our attention. “School is canceled until tomorrow morning. Everyone, go home, now!”
The kids cheer.
I call Mom and tell her school’s canceled because the PA system is going crazy. She says it’s okay if we go window-shopping in town.
We head straight to the bakery on Walnut Street to pick out the wedding cake—or at least to pick out the kind I’m going to copy tomorrow by magic.
As we peer at the rows of cakes and cupcakes, Sunny says, “At least we know it shouldn’t be lemon with buttercream frosting—my mom never wants to eat that again.”
But that leaves us with a lot of other choices: red velvet cake, carrot cake, spice cake, coconut cake (yuck!), and banana nut cake. I say, “Everybody, pick one and say it out loud at the same time.”
We all look at each other as I count “three, two, one” on my fingers. Then we all say, “CHOCOLATE!”
Well, that was easier than I thought. We pool our money and buy one of the chocolate cupcakes to split. For a moment, we just sit in the bakery enjoying the creamy chocolate icing and the sweet-but-not-too-sweet cake. Cupcakes and friends. What could be better than that? This makes me wonder: will I have cupcakes at the Godmother Academy? Will I even have friends?
I know one thing—they won’t be as good as the friends I’ve got right now. I raise my water glass and make a toast: “I love you guys. Let’s always remember how happy we are this very second!”
Sunny and Paige smile and clink glasses with me.
Inside my pocket, Katarina
gives me a kick and whispers, “Where’s my cupcake!”
I break off a tiny piece and hand it to her.
“Mmmhmmffmmm!” she says with her mouth full of cake. (Translation: yummy.)
“All right, we’ll have chocolate cake,” I tell the girls. “What else do we need to decide about? I can make flowers by magic.…”
“Do we even know what time the wedding’s going to be?” Paige asks me.
“The moon is officially full at 9:23 p.m., so the wedding needs to be over by then.”
“Can we start at seven?” Sunny asks. “Mom thinks evening weddings are the nicest. Seven is when my mom wanted to get married to Dwight, until he said City Hall.”
Paige shakes her head. “That’s when the basketball game starts, and I’m cheering.”
Oh, right. The coach will need to be there, too, and I’m supposed to play in the game. Well, that’s not going to happen. I still want the game to go on, but it’s not fair for me to play using my magic powers. And without magic powers, all I’d do is make the team lose.
I ask Sunny, “Do you think five o’clock is okay? That’s almost evening.”
When Sunny nods, I say, “Okay! So that leaves us with two big things: who’s going to perform the ceremony, and where the wedding’s going to be. I wonder what spell I should use to make a minister?”
“No spells for the minister,” Katarina pipes up from my pocket. “If you want the wedding to be real, you need a real minister. A lot of other things can be magic, but not that.”
Hmmm.…This could be a problem. But then I think of something that might just solve everything. “The coach is going to ask Gina to marry him tonight, right? After she says yes, we’ll run in and tell them they’ve won a dream wedding.”
Paige says, “Like in a contest or something?”
“Yes, a big contest where the wedding has to be tomorrow. And we’ll let Gina and the coach figure out the minister. We’re doing everything else—they can at least do that much.”
Under the table, I cross my fingers.
The woman who owns the bakery brings us three more chocolate cupcakes, then gives me a wink. “These are on the house. I saw you putting the crumbs into your pocket, and anyone who likes my desserts that much deserves seconds.”
The Magic Mistake Page 8