Bras & Broomsticks (21 page)

“I guess you’re right. It’s far less geeky than winning a math competition.” A wide grin stretches across his face. “Kidding.”

Just then a group of seniors passes by, and Will jumps on Raf. “Are you flirting with a girl?”

How cute! Brothers wrestling.

“I was until you sat on me,” Raf answers from beneath his brother, sounding annoyed, but pleased that his big brother is paying attention to him.

Will puts him in a headlock, messes up his hair, and then faces me. “So you’re his new partner, huh?”

“Yup.” I’m on the couch with Raf, the love of my life, and Will, the president of the student council. This must be heaven.

“His new girlfriend, too?”

Raf turns the color of the couch. I’m pretty sure I match. You’d think the class president could be a little more mature. Not that I mind. Say it again! Say it again!

“Will, I’m going to kick your ass later,” Raf mumbles from beneath his brother.

Will laughs, messes up his hair again, and takes off.

“Brothers,” Raf says, shaking his head. “I have two. Mitch is in his third year at NYU. They’re both pains. What about you?”

“One sister.” Hopefully Prissy will never make it to that level. And I don’t want him to know anything about any potential wedding. No way. My schedule is wide open. Or so it will be once Miri’s spell works.

“What’s she like?”

“She’s . . .” Magical? Focused? A brown belt? “Full of surprises.”

We talk for the rest of the night. Or at least I think we’re talking. It’s hard to tell what’s going on from cloud nine. The conversation seems to revolve around school, friends, and television. Turns out he hates reality TV as much as I do. (See? We are
so
made for each other.) Around midnight, Raf glances at his watch. “I’ve gotta head out soon. I’m playing hockey at seven a.m. How are you getting home?”

He’s a genius, a poet, gorgeous, a fantastic dancer, and athletic? Is it possible? “I’ll get a cab with Jewel.” I should be going home soon too. I have no curfew, but it’s understood that I’ll be home before twelve thirty.

He fidgets with his fingers. “Um . . . I was wondering . . . what are you doing for the rest of the weekend? Do you want to come to a concert tomorrow night? My dad got me some comp tickets, and I have an extra one. Do you like Robert Crowne?”

Omigod. Omigod. He’s asking me out on a date. I seriously think my heart just exploded. Oh, wait. I just forgot to breathe. Must focus. In, out. Out, in. Oh, no, I’m screwing the order up. “O-Okay,” I stammer, before I pass out from lack of oxygen.

He smiles that adorable smile. “Why don’t I call you around one tomorrow and we’ll make a plan?”

I nod, too happy to risk speaking. I write down my number for him while trying to catch my breath, and we go downstairs to find Jewel.

I can’t stop the smile from spreading across my face. Having a date feels amazing. Like my back is being tickled, I’m biting into a brownie, and I’m floating all at the same time.

I bet this feels even better than having magical powers. I spot Mick picking some girl up off her feet and it doesn’t even bother me. From now on all of my energy will be focused on Raf. Sorry, Mick.

I have a date.

14

MY FIRST EVER QUASI DATE

Raf has obviously changed his mind and decided to take someone else to see Robert Crowne.

It’s one thirty. He has not called.

“Can we go now?” Miri whines. She’s already in her coat and boots, waiting by the door.

“Ten minutes,” I say.

“You said that ten minutes ago.”

I ignore her and continue wandering around the kitchen, pretending to be busy.

“I know you’re pretending to be busy.”

I sit down on the tiled kitchen floor. “He said he’d call at one.”

Ring!

I leap to pick up the receiver, but all I hear is a dial tone. “Hello?” Weird.

Miri is bent over and howling. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

“Huh? You did that?”

“Yeah,” she says between giggles.

My hopeful expression morphs into an annoyed scowl. “How?”

“I’m not sure. I kind of suggested that you hear the phone ring. Isn’t that funny? It didn’t even ring.”

I wag my finger at her. “Not funny. Don’t do that. Why isn’t he calling?”

“He’s a boy. He’s late.”

“What do you know about boys?”

“More than you, if you’re expecting him to call on time. He’d better hurry up. I’m overheating.”

Just then the phone rings. I eye her with suspicion. “Is that you?”

“No, I swear, it isn’t.”

“Are you forcing him to call?”

“Don’t be crazy. What’s the big deal, anyway? You said it wasn’t even a date. That he got free tickets and has no one else to take.”

I grab the phone. Then I drop it and grab it again. “Hello?” I did say that. If he got the tickets for free, then is it more of a friend thing than a date?

“Hi, is Rachel there, please?” It’s him! It’s him! It’s him!

“Speaking.”

“Hey, Rachel, it’s Raf.”

I try to infuse my voice with surprise. “Oh, hi, Raf. How are you?”

“Good. Just making sure we’re still on for tonight.”

“Definitely.” Yes! He doesn’t want to cancel!

“Great. It’s at eight. Where do you live?”

I tell him my address.

“Hey, you’re right on my way. I’ll come by and pick you up?”

That is such a date thing to do. A friend doesn’t pick a friend up. A friend meets a friend. Like how I met Jewel. “Sure. If you want.” I say good-bye and hang up the phone. “I have a date! Kind of. Do you think it’s a date?”

“If he’s meeting Mom, it’s a date.”

“He’s only meeting Mom because she’s on the way,” I clarify. Obviously, I don’t want him to meet my mom. It will not improve my chances of future kind-of dates.

Miri pushes me out the door. “We can discuss this en route. We have a lot of shopping to do. Did you bring your Hanukkah money?”

“Looooooong gone. I’ve bought shoes, jeans, makeup. . . . But I have twenty bucks on me from leftover allowance.”

Miri blinks at me. “I have two hundred saved up from my birthday and the holidays.”

How did she save two hundred? Oh, right. She borrows my stuff instead of purchasing her own.

As soon as I lock the door behind me, I ask, “So where are we going? Some mystical secret market? Is there a Diagon Alley in New York like in Harry Potter? Will we have to ride the four and a half subway line?”

“You’re being crazy again,” Miri says. “We’re going to the supermarket. And we’d better hurry, because Mom said she’d only be running errands for a few hours.”

“The supermarket?” That is so uninspired.

We enter the Food Emporium and push our cart down the aisle. “We should stock up,” Miri says, thinking out loud. “So I don’t have to keep stealing ingredients from Mom’s kitchen.”

“What’s on your list?”

“Almonds, apples, basil, butter, chamomile, cherries, chile peppers, garlic, ginger, honey, horseradish, lemon, mint, mustard, onions, salt, tomatoes, and yogurt.”

Any more food and we’d have a buffet.

“And maybe some mozzarella.”

“Why? What spell is that for? Are you going to make us taller?” I start laughing. “Get it? Because it stretches?” Maybe I should be a comedienne.

“Ha-ha.” She leans against the wall and almost knocks over a display of cereal that’s placed under a giant cardboard strawberry. What is it these days with the dried fruit in cereal? Are we astronauts? Too lazy to cut up our own fruit? “No,” Miri says after she catches her balance. “I’m in the mood for pizza. And Mom might be suspicious about why we went to the grocery store. If we make dinner, she won’t grill us. Following?”

“Like our offering to make dinner won’t be suspicious?”

She casts me an accusatory look. “
You
offering to make dinner would be suspicious, not me.”

“You are so very clever,” I say, and throw a candy bar into the cart. Yum.

“Don’t get that,” Miri says. “The manufacturer makes South American children work in sweatshops.”

I almost take it out. But really, would one little candy bar make a difference? Bet Mir got that from some conspiracy theory Web site anyway.

“Let’s get some bath salts for Mom,” Miri says. “Maybe she’ll like them. And maybe we’ll need them.”

I pick up the honey and the almonds. “So tell me, what do these things do? Honey makes you sweet? Almonds make you nuts?”

“All these herbs and foods and, um . . . condiments have magical properties. They send vibrations into the cosmos when combined with my raw will and the spell.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

“You know how a smell will make you feel a certain way?”

Like Raf’s smell. Yum. “Yeah.”

“It’s the same thing. The spell, the ingredients, and my power all work together to make what I wish for happen.”

“Cool.” I push the cart down the frozen food aisle. “But why does it get cold whenever you do magic?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe the energy in the room is being sucked into the spell?”

“Can everyone feel the temperature change? Or maybe just other witches?” I ask hopefully.

“Everyone. That’s why Mom says it’s especially dangerous to do spells in public.”

“Oh.” We head toward the meat and poultry section. Wait a sec. “You said the spell works with the ingredients and your powers. But you made the lobster move without a single word.”

“But I didn’t have any control over what I did. These spells allow me to be in control of what I wish for.”

I hurry her toward the baking aisle,
away
from the dead animals, just in case. “So what do spices do?”

“Well, chamomile is a calmer. Salt is a cleanser. Garlic is a protector.”

“What are we using for the truth spell?”

“It’s easy. All we need for that are water, almonds, and a little mint to give it some kick. And there aren’t even any crazy fractions to confuse me.”

“Kick?”

“Yeah. Mint is an activator.”

In the vegetable aisle I peruse the onions. Cipollini, Mayan, red, red pearl, white pearl, yellow, Maui. “Is there a specific type you had in mind?”

She looks mildly afraid. “I don’t know. Can’t we just get a regular one?”

“What’s a regular one?”

She points at a beige one. “That looks like the kind Mom uses.”

I toss it into the cart as though it’s a basketball. Score! “Hey, any ingredients we can add to make me irresistible tonight?”

She shakes her head over the shopping cart. “Don’t you want him to like you for you, and not because of a spell?”

“You’re the one who made him call me.”

“No, I did
not
. I would never do that. It wouldn’t be right.”

Wouldn’t be right unless I agreed to set the table for a whole year, I think, but refrain from saying. I wouldn’t want her to get mortally insulted and accidentally-on-purpose sabotage my date tonight.

“Besides, you’re already irresistible,” she adds, making me smile. “I’m just a beginner at all this hocus-pocus, remember? Why risk what you already have?” She pushes the cart toward the condiments.

I plop a container of yogurt into the cart. “I already know Raf likes me for me. He asked me out, didn’t he?”

Although, before I got into the fashion show, he’d never even talked to me. If Miri hadn’t cast that dancing spell, I’d be watching TV tonight with Tammy.

So what? Maybe sometimes love needs to be kick-started. You know, laced with a little mint.