27 Magic Words

by Sharelle Byars Moranville

  Brook stared.

  Kobi knew she should shut up, but Brook was mean not to come to Kobi’s school or let Kobi go to her school. “Does Isabel know you’re weird?” she asked.

  Brook bit her bottom lip. Looking straight ahead, she marched past Kobi and upstairs.

  Kobi poured cereal into a bowl. She prickled with shame. Brook didn’t bug her about the footlocker and Kobi didn’t bug her about her little rituals, as Grandmamma called them. It was a sister rule.

  When Uncle Wim came into the kitchen, he asked where Brook was.

  Kobi watched her tasteless cereal float in the thin milk. “Upstairs, I guess.”

  “You girls aren’t fighting, are you?”

  When Kobi didn’t answer, Uncle Wim put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up. “You mustn’t,” he said, “because I’ve got all I can handle in the morning.”

  His eyebrows had a tiny little curve upward at the ends. When she looked at Uncle Wim, she saw both Grandmamma and her mother.

  “May I call Grandmamma?” she asked.

  Uncle Wim handed her the phone. “If you happen to mention Sally’s mother, skip the part about the Alzheimer’s, okay?”

  Kobi had a long list of things she couldn’t talk to Grandmamma about. She didn’t want to say anything about staying at the Hancocks’ because Grandmamma had gotten mad that they were going there after school. She’d overheard Uncle Wim on the phone Sunday afternoon saying Grandmamma was going to have to trust him to make good decisions. Yes, he could have made different arrangements for after-school care, but not better ones. He was not fourteen anymore. Kobi couldn’t talk about Sally because Grandmamma wouldn’t want to hear that Uncle Wim and Sally were in love. She couldn’t talk about Ms. Hancock because the most important thing about her was something Kobi wasn’t allowed to tell. She couldn’t talk about herself because she didn’t want Grandmamma to know about the haircut and the clothes. And she couldn’t talk about changing schools because if Brook didn’t want to be with Kobi, Kobi didn’t want to be with Brook.

  Kobi handed the phone back to Uncle Wim. “Maybe later,” she said. “But why can’t I tell her about Ms. Hancock’s illness?”

  Uncle Wim unwrapped a granola bar. “If Patricia were herself, she wouldn’t want Mom to know. So Sally doesn’t want Mom to know, either.”

  “Why not?”

  Uncle Wim sighed. “Mom and Patricia were always competitors. They would never show each other their weaknesses.”

  Uncle Wim went to the foot of the stairs and called up. “Brook! Blastoff in five minutes.”

  “Grandmamma thinks you and Sally Hancock are just friends because Sally is so much older than you.”

  Uncle Wim’s face turned red. “Only three years,” he finally said. “Okay. More like four.”

  When Brook came downstairs, she didn’t look at Kobi. Uncle Wim handed her a granola bar.

  On the way to school, the space between them felt like a great stone wall. The granola bar stayed unopened in Brook’s hand.

  As they were turning into the drop-off area, Kobi touched Brook’s hand. Brook’s eyes met hers. “Pantaloons,” Kobi whispered, and crossed her eyes. It was the only magic word she said out loud to anyone. It was a sister word. Brook tried not to smile. Her lips quivered and she finally gave up. She laughed. Kobi smiled.

  When she got to her classroom, girls playing a card game at the reading table said she could join in, but Kobi shook her head. She’d heard Ms. Carlson tell them to invite her.

  She sat at her desk and pretended to look at the book on islands she’d checked out during library time the day before. Dante was in his cage and nobody else was paying any attention to him. She could pick him up and look at his paw, find the heart-shaped freckle and know for sure. But she didn’t. The orange-haired boy in a two-toned green striped shirt stood in front of a rain forest poster.

  After the bell, Ms. Carlson told them to get out their math worksheets. The orange-haired boy, whose name was Norman, and another boy, whose name was Alejandro, got out worksheets with lots of writing on them.

  Did she have a worksheet?

  Ms. Carlson walked around the room, glancing at their papers. She didn’t say anything when she passed Kobi’s naked desk, but Kobi felt her notice. Kobi’s bare ears and neck flamed.

  During morning recess, a girl asked Kobi with a smirk if Kobi’s outfit was from Paris.

  “Yes,” Kobi admitted. All her clothes were.

  The girl nodded and went off to join other girls, and they kept sneaking peeks at Kobi.

  The playground lady informed Kobi that it wasn’t allowed to just stand in the shade during recess. Even Norman, who would have blended in perfectly in the shade, was running around playing something.

  “But I don’t know how to play those games. And I don’t have on play shoes.”

  “Because Kooky is from Paris,” Lily sang as she ran past. Hogwash!

  The playground lady put her hand on Kobi’s shoulder and steered her into a game of foursquare, and Kobi felt very stupid as the kids explained the rules. One of the girls said, “Where did you go to school last year?”

  When the bell finally rang, they lined up at the door to go in. Kobi didn’t understand why they had to line up for everything. In the line, she heard the word stuck-up.

  She was the first person back to the classroom, and Ms. Carlson spoke to her quietly about math worksheets. She said Kobi should do one every night. They would help build her skills. Although she was nice, Ms. Carlson probably thought Kobi was stupid.

  During silent reading time, Kobi opened a book and practically threw herself onto the island. Avanti! she breathed silently.

  In the tree house, a breeze stirred the leaves. Her mother was weaving a mat out of soft grass. The fronds made a shushing sound as they passed between her mother’s fingers. Sometimes her mother hummed part of a song. She was wearing the soft sun-faded blue shirt. Kobi buried her face in the shirt. But her mother kept on weaving, her body moving back and forth as if Kobi weren’t even there. After all this time, it still broke Kobi’s heart that her mother didn’t see her. Looking down through the branches, she watched her dad drag a net out of the sea. Even from so high up, she could see the wriggling fish, their bodies silvery in the sunlight. She wanted to scream Fix the boat! but she knew he wouldn’t hear her.

  Kobi nearly leapt out of her chair when the bell rang. Bells and lines. She hated them.

  After science, she lined up to go to the cafeteria, and after lunch she lined up to go onto the playground. And because she wasn’t allowed to stand in the shade, she played kickball even though she had on sandals. And because one of the sandals broke when she kicked the ball, she fell and skidded across the asphalt.

  “Are you okay?” the playground lady asked, bending over her.

  Kobi couldn’t find her voice. Her knees felt as if they’d been ripped off.

  She sat up and looked at her scraped knees. They were grayish white. She looked at her hands. They were the same strange color. And then they began to ooze blood. Then the trees began to spin. The monkey bars melted. The playground lady’s face was a fun-house face.

  “You need to see the nurse,” the playground lady said, helping Kobi up.

  She felt a fat trickle of blood run down her leg. The broken sandal flapped when she walked. She was bathed in cold sweat. She would not cry.

  Ms. Johnson, the nurse, had beautiful wavy hair like Kobi’s mother. She left a message for Uncle Wim about Kobi’s accident. She took off the broken sandal, pronounced it history, and began to clean the scrapes, spraying them with something that didn’t sting. One cut on Kobi’s knee required a butterfly bandage. The nurse was putting it on when Uncle Wim called back.

  After Ms. Johnson talked to him, she held out the phone. “Your uncle would like to speak with you.”

  Was he going to yell at her the way he had when she’d used the stove? But none of this was Kobi’s fault. She wouldn’t have worn sandals if she’d kn
own she had to play running games.

  “I remember those skids across the playground,” Uncle Wim said. “They pretty much rip your skin off.” His voice was warm, like a puppy licking her. “Does it hurt a lot?”

  She couldn’t help it. She burst into heaving sobs. And the sobs turned into wails. “I want to go home! I want to go back to Paris!”

  The nurse was kind. She visited with Kobi about Paris, and then she played Scrabble with Kobi until school was over. And the dismissal bell was the best sound Kobi had ever heard.

  As she waited in the pickup area, wearing a pair of thick gym socks that Ms. Johnson had in her drawer, the boy in the striped shirt wandered over.

  “I have something,” he said out of the side of his mouth, staring at the shrubbery.

  Kobi looked around. “Are you talking to me?”

  “Yes. You did battle with the forces of evil. You are bloody but not broken.”

  That was a good description of her second day at Horace Mann Elementary.

  “Here’s a beetle for you.” He parted the folds of a piece of used spiral notebook paper. The beetle was about half an inch long and glistened like sea glass. “See the iridescence?” he said.

  That was one of her most amazing magic words! She looked into his pale eyes to see if there was some secret message in them, but he blushed and looked away.

  Kobi watched the beetle’s legs churn, but it couldn’t go anywhere because it was deep in the fold of the paper. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  He closed the paper gently and gave it to her. “I wrote the story it’s wrapped in. You can keep the story, but you should let the beetle go.” He nodded at her, making kind of a little bow, and then hurried to get into a car. The rims of his ears were as red as a sunset.

  He was brave to talk to her and give her a present when she looked as if she’d been partially eaten by a bear and everyone thought she was stuck-up.

  “Whoa!” Brook cried, getting into the car. “What happened to you?”

  “I fell playing kickball,” Kobi said.

  She could feel the beetle churning in the paper. He seemed to be slowing down. Dimpling, she said silently, hoping that would keep him alive until she could let him out in a good place.

  The minute they pulled into the Hancocks’ drive, Kobi got out and knelt in the grass even though it hurt her skinned knees.

  “What are you doing?” Brook asked, squatting beside her.

  Kobi opened the paper. The glistening beetle walked to the edge, went over it, walked on the underside of the paper, and then disappeared into the shadows.

  “Well, that was weird,” Brook said. “Why were you carrying around a bug?”

  “A boy gave it to me.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “No! He’s just a boy.” She told Brook about Norman’s quirks and funny attempts to blend in.

  When she was finished, Brook pursed her lips. “We’re new girls and who we make friends with is important so we get off on the right foot. Isabel explained it. So maybe you don’t want someone like Norman for a friend. He sounds odd.”

  “Oh, pish! Isabel,” Kobi said. Then she stopped. She had been mean about Isabel this morning. So she zipped her lips and followed Brook inside.

  Sally Hancock put out milk and cookies, and this time Ms. Hancock joined them. When the marigolds on the table made Kobi sneeze, Ms. Hancock said, “Gesundheit! Sleep tight!”

  It was hard not to laugh—especially when Brook caught her eye. “Thank you,” Kobi said.

  After the snack, she puzzled over her math worksheet. She asked Brook for help, but Brook said she didn’t have time to do her own work and Kobi’s, too. Kobi couldn’t ask Sally for help because she and Ms. Hancock had gone out to tie up tomatoes. Kobi had an image of tomatoes straining at their knots, trying to break loose and run free in the neighborhood. She drew that on the back of her math worksheet; then she turned the sheet over and wrote any old thing between the questions and hoped Ms. Carlson didn’t look closely.

  It was already dusk when Uncle Wim called to tell Sally Hancock he would be there in half an hour. She told him she’d make macaroni and cheese.

  Kobi’s mouth watered. She loved Madame Louise’s macaroni and cheese casserole, which filled the whole apartment with the aroma of baking cream and cheese. But Sally Hancock’s macaroni and cheese rattled out of a box into a pan of boiling water and was served up in ten minutes. It was a funny shade of runny yellow. It was not real food, but Kobi was hungry. Scrambled, she said silently, and it was good.

  Later, while Brook was running her bedtime bath in the tub, which Uncle Wim now called the Fastest Filler in the West, Kobi sat in the star-papered little room, which they’d christened their closet. She sat on the floor, leaning against the footlocker. A window, open a crack, ruffled her pajamas. The air that blew on her was the same air that blew on her parents. It was almost like being hugged by them.

  The faint sounds of Uncle Wim’s baseball game came through the floor. When Brook turned off the water, pipes clanged.

  Earlier, Kobi had heard Uncle Wim ask Brook what was in the footlocker. Brook didn’t know. Nobody did. They were things that would be needed when her parents got home. She turned and pressed her cheek against the hasp.

  After a while, she turned on the clever little flashlight Mr. Gyver had given her for Christmas, the one shaped like a credit card with a Monet painting on one side and a Pissarro painting on the other. She shone it on the paper Norman had wrapped the beetle in.

  Krom was an evil pirate and a sorcerer too. His terrible weakness was that he required a constant supply of pairs to keep his powers from waning. Pairs of anything. So Krom and his minions hunted the seas, shanghaiing hapless ships and stealing all the pairs they could find. Dice. Twins. Gloves. Bookends. Shoes. Earrings. Eyeglasses. Socks. Trousers. Earmuffs. Parents.

  The twins and the parents were the hardest to steal because they put up a fight. But when he said the Be-Still Words to them, they folded like pieces of warm pizza.

  When he had a good catch, Krom set sail for the hidden cove on the coast of Meanderhieden. When he came to the white cliffs, the pirate king tacked windward to his castle.

  Once his human catch was dumped like fish in the dungeons, their only hope lay in the small colony of beetles that lived in the roots of the milkweed plant growing along the edge of the moat. These enchanted, magical beetles shone with iridescence. Their mission was to carry messages between the prisoners and people in the world who loved and missed them.

  So anytime you see one of these iridescent beetles, and you can see them often if you look in the right places, remember two things. 1) Pirates are real and very dangerous. 2) People in our hearts are real, too.

  Kobi’s hand went to her heart. Why did the story make her sad? Make her think of her parents? They weren’t in a dungeon. Pirates didn’t have them.

  But she said Avanti! to be sure.

  And there they were. The beach fire crackled, sending fireflies into the darkness. The wind was blowing, the trees at the edge of the forest swaying. Her parents sat in the sand, her mom’s head on her dad’s shoulder. They looked sad. They weren’t saying anything, but Kobi knew they were missing home, missing her and Brook. Her dad stood up. He took her mother’s hand. “Come on,” he said, helping her to her feet. “Tomorrow is a whole new day.”

  ELEVEN

  THE days were the same. Get up and put on stupid Parisian clothes. Go to school and stick out like a sore thumb, as Madame Louise would say. Go to the Hancocks’. Get up and put on stupid Parisian clothes. Go to school . . .

  Kobi couldn’t ask Uncle Wim to buy her normal clothes because he was unfortunate. And Grandmamma would never understand because Grandmamma had a very sure fashion sense. Plus, she would logically wonder why the stylish dresses worked for Brook but not for Kobi. And Kobi couldn’t explain what had happened between her and Brook. It was like lurching along with one shoe off and one shoe on.

  On Tuesda
y of the third week, when she and Brook were in the kitchen helping Sally dry herbs from the garden, Brook asked, “Why don’t you buy parsley like Madame Louise does?”

  “Does Madame Louise have any choice? Does your grandmother have room for a garden in her apartment?”

  Brook shook her head.

  “And this is grown organically not fifty feet away from where you’re standing,” Sally said. “It hasn’t been shipped all around the world. Think of what that saves.”

  “But I saw worms on it in the garden,” Brook said.

  “Caterpillars,” Kobi said.

  Brook shrugged.

  “Caterpillars will become butterflies,” Kobi said. Sally told her if nothing ate the caterpillars on the parsley, they would become swallowtails. “And caterpillars have legs. Worms don’t,” Kobi said. She had drawn a picture of the green-and-black caterpillars on the parsley.

  Ms. Hancock put on a paint-streaked smock. She arranged bottles of paint on the table. She laid out brushes and sponges, cotton swabs and fat pencils, two cups of water and a tiny vial of gold.

  “What’s she doing?” Brook asked as she tweaked parsley leaves into tidy columns and rows to make a perfect square on a paper towel.

  “I don’t know,” Kobi said. She was arranging the leaves like a flock of swooping birds.

  The herby smell made Kobi ache for Madame Louise’s kitchen. It was eleven o’clock in Paris at that moment. Grandmamma might be in the kitchen having a cup of bedtime tea. She had decided not to accompany Mr. Gyver to Beijing to claim his prize because she was tired. She would rest until he got home, and then they would make their wedding trip.

  “Why do you have so many books on gardening?” Brook asked.

  Sally smiled. “Ask Wim.”

  “Beatrice,” Ms. Hancock called, motioning to Kobi to come to her.

  Kobi looked at Sally.

  “It’s okay,” she told Kobi.

  Kobi would rather have finished the flight path of her parsley birds, but she crossed the kitchen and sat in the chair Ms. Hancock gestured to.