Just Add Magic (7 page)

“Alrighty then. Let's start with a six-lap warm-up. The last five girls to finish will do an extra lap.” He led the run. “LET'S MOVE IT, LADIES!”

We all ran after Coach Richards like chicks following their mother hen—a strong, science-y mother hen. He turned and ran backward so he could talk to us. “After the warm-up,
we'll sprint, weave the bleachers, practice throw-ins, and we'll end with sit-ups.”

I was already out of breath. I looked back and saw that Darbie was the caboose. Everyone was vying for the space right behind Coach, but Hannah had it, followed by Charlotte.

I guessed I would answer myself later, but I felt confident that Darbie would toss her cafeteria fried chicken, creamed corn, and Devil Dog before my lunch came up.

“PUSH IT!” Coach Richards yelled. He picked up a plastic orange cone from the sideline and yelled through it. “Push it, girls! No pain, no gain. Come on, Darbie O'Brien!”

Hannah fell back to talk to me. “How're you doing, Kell?” Even Hannah's soccer clothes were fashionable: rolled below the waist nylon shorts and a shirt bearing the Nike Swoosh.

“I'm dying, Shoobedoo. You know CPR?” I could hardly get the words out.

Charlotte had finished the first several laps hardly breaking a sweat. “Looking good, Kell,” she said with her classic sarcastic snort. Hannah caught up to her and the two of them ran together for the rest of the tryout, which seemed to go on forever. Shockingly, it was only four o'clock when we were done.

Darbie's mom drove us all home after practice and we
planned to reassemble at my house for a cooking club meeting at five.

I dropped my school stuff and sniffed the air. Something yucky lingered. “Mom, what's that smell?”

“I was trying some new combos with my chili.” She whispered, “Let's just say, it didn't go well.”

“I guess not,” I said.

“Shhh,” Mom said. “Buddy came home from school sick with a sore throat. He can hardly talk. He's resting, so you have to be very quiet.”

“He can't talk?” I asked loudly.

“Shhh! That's right. You need to be quiet,” Mom said.

I whispered, “He can't talk?”

“That's what I said. When are the girls coming over?”

I looked at my watch, “Any minute.”

Darbie pushed my front door open. She tripped on her Rollerblades and fell on the tile floor.

“Skates off in the house,” my mom whispered, then looked at Darbie more closely. She had blood on her face and her sweatshirt. “Oh my goodness.” My mom rushed over and grabbed Darbie's face in her hands. “Come over to the sink.”

My mom washed Darbie's face. “What happened, honey?”

“I was trying to skate fast, but my legs are so tired, I wiped out like a cowboy surfing the coral reef.”

“Man, you're gonna have a big fat lip,” I said.

“Kelly, please grab a bag of vegetables out of the freezer to put on her eye.” Mom wiped the scratches on Darbie's legs. I could tell which areas would soon become black and blue.

“It'll make you look real tough for soccer,” I said, but this didn't seem to make Darbie feel better. I handed her a bag of peas and searched my brain for something that might cheer her up. “Bud came home from school early today with a sore throat. He can hardly talk.”

Darbie took the frozen peas off her face and looked at me with a twinkle in her swollen eye. “He lost his voice?”

I nodded.

“You're kidding!”

“Nope.” When my mom wasn't looking, she gave me a thumbs-up.

“Darbie, maybe I should take you home,” Mom said.

“Oh, can I stay, please? Really, I'm hunky-dory. We have something
very
important to cook.”

“Well, if you have something
very
important to cook, that
changes everything.” Mom teased Darbie. “I'll call your mom and see what she says.”

There was a beep in Mom's pocket. She pulled out her cell phone and flipped it open to read a text. “Oh, great. Your dad has no voice either. He's on his way home.” She opened the fridge and took out the two containers of leftover apple cobbler. “I'm sorry, girls. I saved this cobbler for you from the unsneezed-on side of the pan, but I don't think you should eat it.” Mom dumped the contents into the garbage disposal and flipped the switch. “I'm going to check on Bud. And don't worry, I'll keep the germs upstairs.” She opened a small cabinet over the oven, got up on her tippy toes, and reached in for a tiny golden tin bearing a bumblebee logo.

“What's that?” I asked, studying the label. The bee was interesting because it was wearing a sombrero.

“It's Moon Honey. I always keep a tin around for just such a situation. My mother swore these little drops would heal anything.” She shook the tin. There was a slight rattle. She looked inside. “Only two left.” She disappeared and Hannah came in through the back door wearing plaid lounge pants and a Gap hoodie I'd never seen before.

When did she get all these new clothes?

Her hair was clean and damp, twisted up in a clip. Darbie and I were still sweaty and in our soccer clothes.

“Eew, what happened?” she asked when she saw Darbie.

Darbie, her head tilted back and her face covered with the
bag of peas, quickly filled Hannah in on her fall, but she was more excited to tell her about my dad and Bud.

“Bud ate the cobbler?” Hannah asked.

“Yep,” I confirmed.

“Wow,” Hannah said. “That's so weird. That's what the note by the recipe said.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Darbie said. “Which is empty, by the way. And this is a problem because I just got a text message from my stomach saying ‘put food here,
por favor
.'” She pointed to her stomach.

I unwrapped a stick of string cheese and shoved it under the peas and into Darbie's mouth. She took a generous bite and held it like a microphone. “Thank you, Shoobedoobedoowhop,” she said into the string cheese.

Hannah squinted like she was concentrating. “And your dad lost his voice too. Why didn't you?”

I explained the sneeze infestation.

“This is way whacked out, doncha think?” Darbie asked, her mouth full of string cheese. “It happened just like it did for the rooster.”

Hannah said, “I have to admit, it's a little coincidental.”

“My mom watches a lot of crime shows on TV and the investigators always say there is no such thing as coincidence,” I said.

“This might be a good time for me to point out that we're not on a TV crime show,” Hannah said. “There could be a
million reasons why Bud and Mr. Quinn are sick. Maybe they have a cold. Colds are very common. That's why they're called ‘common colds.' People get them all the time.”

“That's not a million reasons,” Darbie said. “That's one.”

“You get the point.” Hannah blew her blond bangs out of her face. She was frustrated with Darbie already.

I tried to change the subject so we didn't start fighting. “Ready?”

“For what?” Hannah asked.

“We're a cooking club, aren't we?” I pulled my apron over my head. “I've been doing some thinking and—”

There was a knock on the back door. I saw a curly mane in the door's window. “You've got to be kidding me. She must have some kind of wicked radar system.” I went to the door, but this time I was careful to stand in front of it so Charlotte couldn't just walk in. “May I help you?”

“Actually, you can. Do you have any clear nail polish?”

“Nail polish?”

“Yeah, I ran out in the middle of doing my nails.” She tried to be nonchalant when she stretched her head to the right and left, but I could tell she was trying to see what we were doing in the kitchen.

I looked at her hands. “They don't look wet.”

“Um, my toenails.”

I looked down. She wore sandals, and there was some polish on her toes that I suspected was also dry.

“No. I don't have any clear polish.”

“What's that smell?” Charlotte asked. “Is that chili?” I didn't answer. “Gross. Maybe you shouldn't even bother to enter this year. Honestly, I don't understand why anyone would go to all the trouble of making something you could buy already made. Seems like a waste of time. And it seems stupid to enter a contest you know you're going to
lose
.”

I had successfully blocked Charlotte so she couldn't see Darbie. But she heard Darbie when she yelled, “Wanna make a bet?”

Charlotte asked me, even though I wasn't the one who asked the question, “
You
want to make
me
a bet that
you'll
win the chili contest?”

“Yep,” Darbie yelled.

“Oh, you're so on. What did you have in mind?” she asked me.

I opened my mouth to answer, but Darbie beat me to it. From her kitchen chair she yelled, “If Kelly wins, you have to rake her yard. If Kelly loses, she'll rake your yard.”

Charlotte grabbed my hand and shook it. “It's a bet, Kelly Quinn.” She followed the beaten path back to her house.

I slammed the door and walked over to Darbie, whose eyes were buried under a bag of frozen peas. I propped my hands on my hips. “What did you do that for?”

The peas fell into her lap when she lifted her head. “What?”

“That bet. Are you crazy?” I asked.

Hannah chimed in, “Mrs. Rusamano is on a four-year winning streak. You and your mom are good cooks, but Mrs. R. is great.” Hannah was right, but it would have been nice if she was a little more optimistic about our chances of winning.

Darbie picked up the encyclopedia with her bandaged hand. “Have you forgotten that you have an ancient secret recipedia?”

The corners of my lips started to bend, and suddenly I wasn't so mad at Darbie.

“If the Book can make Bud lose his voice, then it should be able to help you win a chili contest,” Darbie said.

I smiled because I liked what Darbie was saying, but it also gave me another idea. “And, maybe it can take care of a nasty, curly-haired, soccer-playing, chili-contest-betting, clear-nail-polish-needing, head-in-the-back-door-snooping girl?”

Darbie looked right at me. She pointed to me and then to her and to me again. “You and me,” she said. “We think so much alike, it scares me. And I don't scare easily. Except for
vampires, and werewolves, and zombies, and tsunamis, and earthquakes, and—”

“We get it,” Hannah said. “Lucky for you there's no such thing as monsters and we live in Delaware, so we don't have those kinds of natural disasters.”

“But I was also going to mention that I'm not too crazy about cryptic warnings,” Darbie said. “Remember ‘You get what you deserve'? Do we deserve something for potioning Bud?”

“You're taking this warning stuff too seriously, Darb,” Hannah said.

“Lucky for me I have you, Hannah Happygolucky, to bring me back to reality.” Darbie tilted her head back again and dropped the bag of peas on her face. “If you're not worried, then I'm not either.”

Hannah picked up the Book. I saw her fingertips rub the encyclopedia's rough cover. “So, what can we cook up for Charlotte?”

“I thought you thought it was all coincidence,” I said.

“Oh, I do,” Hannah said. “But, I also support the process of scientific experimentation. And I think Charlotte was really mean to you just now with all that ‘you shouldn't even enter the contest' stuff. I think she'd make a good test subject. Whatcha got in that recipedia?”

“Secret Recipe Book,” I corrected her. We looked through the pages together. I was glad Hannah Happygolucky wasn't
blowing her bangs out of her face or rolling her eyes. It felt like the three of us were in this together.

Hannah read aloud, “Lavender
Bizcocho de Chocolate
. That's Lavender Chocolate Brownie: Whoever eats this becomes
muy relajado
—
ip
. That's very relaxed.”

“What's
ip
?” I asked.

“I still don't know that word. I'm not sure it even is a word,” Hannah said. “Condensed Chamomile
Té
: If you need to fall asleep
muy rápido
. That's ‘quickly.'” She turned a page. “Hexberry
Tarta
.
Embrujar
—
ip
. There's
ip
again. I'm gonna have to look that up, it's bothering me that I don't know it means.”

I asked, “What's
tarta
and
embrujar
?”

“
Tarta
is ‘pie,'” Hannah said. “
Embrujar
is the verb ‘to hex.'”

Darbie said, “B-I-N-G-O, and Charlotte was her name-o. That's what she needs, an H-E-X.”

“What are the ingredients? I'll check to see if we have everything,” I said.

I rifled through the freezer and found some pre-made pie crust. I held the bag up. “I can name that tune in two notes:
pre-made
.”

“Let's see.” Hannah read. “Sugar?”

“Check.”

“Lemon juice, flour, cinnamon, unsalted butter?”

“Check, check, check, check.”

“Shaved hazelnuts?”

“Check.”

“Really?” Hannah asked, “You keep shaved hazelnuts in the house?”

“I never met a hazelnut I didn't like,” Darbie said, the bag of peas now defrosting and dripping cold water down her cheeks. She wiped the drops with her shirt.

“We have hazelnuts. I like to roast them with oil, garlic, and cayenne pepper and mix them with vegetables,” I said.