Witch Twins (5 page)

But when Fluffy came to pick them up at Tower Hill Middle School the next afternoon, the only regular human-brain -powered plan the twins had come up with was to act bored.

“Are you gals excited?” asked Fluffy, not noticing their boredom. “I just looove shopping. It really revs my engine!” She was all dressed up in a sparkle-studded blouse and matching pants. She looked very flashy, Claire decided. She hoped nobody at school mistook Fluffy for their real mother. Yuck.

“So how did you get the name Fluffy?” asked Claire on the way out to Regent’s. She tried to make her voice bored.

“I’m the youngest of five sisters, and they all liked to style my hair,” Fluffy explained. “So any one could always spot me in a crowd ’cause I was the one with the fluffiest hair! Funny huh?”

“Then what’s your real name?” asked Luna.

“Sugar, it’s nothing to wish for.” Fluffy lowered her voice. “It’s Edith Hortense. I was named after both my grandmas. My mama and daddy used up four names on my sisters before they ran out of excuses and named me after both their mothers. Two stones for one bird, my daddy liked to say!”

“It’s not so bad,” Claire lied. Inside, she gagged. Edith Hortense! Claire loved beautiful, interesting words, and she could not get hold of
anything
beautiful in the sound of Edith Hortense. It was a name so bad it almost had a taste of avocado in it.

For a minute, Claire felt sorry for Fluffy.

She forgot about all that as soon as they got to Regent’s.

Regent’s was a fantastic department store. For one thing, it gave out tons of free samples. By the time they got to the fourth floor, Missy Dresses, Claire and Luna had filled their coat pockets with free aloe-infused tissues, chocolate and butterscotch candies, lavender hand lotion, and one bottle of opal nail polish apiece. Fluffy let them take the escalators, so they didn’t miss a single freebie.

“So many dresses,” said Fluffy as they entered the Missy Dresses section. “Ooh, look at this cantaloupe-colored one! Ooh, or the linen.”

The girls split up into different aisles. In spite of their “act bored” rule, Claire saw that her sister liked looking at all the dresses. Ugh—she didn’t! Her boredom was real. Claire picked up a soft blue flowered dress and held it against herself. Then held up a pale green one.

Bor-ing!

Fluffy was pretending to inspect some shoes, but her eyes studied Claire carefully.

“You look as pretty as a picture in seafoam green,” she blurted. “My best friend Denise’s favorite color is seafoam. She’s a real cut-up, Denise. She’s got twin boys, five years old now. I hope you can meet her, she lives on a ranch. And you know, my parents have already offered you gals a place to stay with them. There’s more than enough room.”

Hearing Fluffy say this, Claire scowled and hooked the dress back on the rack. Texas! Twins! Ranch! Fluffy’s parents! Her eyes narrowed. She felt a prickliness come over her. She did not want to go to Texas, to meet somebody else’s twins! And she did not like the idea that Fluffy’s best friend lived in Texas!

“Texas is very far away,” Claire mentioned.

“Naw. It’s just a hop, sugar,” said Fluffy, with a wink.

“So, would you ever move back there? Permanently, I mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Fluffy. “I don’t give it too much thought, these days. Too much else going on.”

Claire’s scowl deepened. Luna had been right all along. Fluffy really was planning to run off to Houston. Her friends were there. Her family was there. And someday soon, their dad would be there, too.

Claire watched as Luna browsed happily around the racks of dresses, selecting one thing and then pursing her lips and putting it back. Luna wasn’t even pretending to act bored anymore. She’d forgotten.

Slowly, a plan formed in Claire’s mind. She took a few steps back and surveyed the entire Missy Dresses selection. She waited for the right color to catch her eye.

Pea-soup green.

Sickly pink.

Muddy-water brown.

Black and yellow.

Black and yellow! Yuck! She ran to it.

It might have been the ugliest dress in the store. Black and yellow bumblebee stripes, with puffy sleeves and two fat bows, a yellow one in the front and a black one in the back.

“Gorgeous!” Claire cried, pulling it off the rack. Fluffy hurried to see.

“You found one—oh, no!” Fluffy jumped back from the dress, swatting at it with her hand as if it really were a giant bumblebee. Luna looked over. Seeing the dress, a smile slowly spread over her face.

“Oh, yes!” Luna squealed, hopping to her side. “Claire, you are a genius!”

“Are you—are you positive?” Fluffy reached forward carefully, as if the dress might sting her. She rubbed the fabric between her fingers. It made a slithering, oily sound.

“Positive!” said Claire. “This is the most perfect dress I have ever seen! Oh, gosh, if I don’t get to wear this dress at your wedding, Fluffy, I’ll be crushed! It’s so gorgeous. Say you like it!”

“Say you like it, Fluffy!” Luna began to jump up and down. Now both girls were squealing.

“I … it’s not my taste,” Fluffy answered. “And you gals know how I’m allergic to bees and all, so those particular colors don’t …” Fluffy touched her hand to her forehead. “Oh, my,” she said. “I think I’m swelling up.”

The girls looked at her. It was true. Fluffy’s cheeks and chin were beginning to puff like balloons. When she stuck out her hands, her fingers were thick as cigars, her wristwatch squeezed on tight as an elastic band.

“It’s like I really got bee stung,” Fluffy groaned.

“It’ll pass,” said Claire. That’s what her mother always said whenever she had a cold or flu.

“Oh, my.” Fluffy touched her plump fingers to her bulging cheeks. “I just need to calm down. A psychological reaction. Funny, huh?” But she didn’t sound as if she found it too funny.

“We can still get the dresses, right, Fluffy?” asked Claire.

Fluffy blinked. For the second time that day, Claire felt sorry for her. She tried to push it away, and instead she pictured her dad in a Texas hat, teaching little Houston how to make buckwheat pancakes with huckleberry sauce.

Then Fluffy seemed to decide something. Her mouth zippered into a line. She patted her puffy cheeks and she smoothed down the front of her sparkle-studded blouse.

“Any dress you wanted; that’s what I said. I’m just having a temporary adverse reaction, sugar. Let’s go find a seamstress,” she said. She took another step back from the bumblebee dress. “You’all will probably need to have these fitted.”

“Bzz bzz bzz!” said Luna in Claire’s ear. “Good thinking, Clairsie.”

Claire grinned.

After the fitting, Fluffy decided there was not enough time to go to the Top Floor for tea. The drive back to 22 Locust Street was silent and speedy. Fluffy even ran a yellow light, she seemed so anxious to get the girls home.

She gave a weary half-wave when she dropped them off.

“How was it?” asked their mother when she opened the door.

“Great!” they chorused.

“Oh, I’m glad. To tell you the truth, your dad and I were worried that you girls were going through a little trouble adjusting to the engagement.”

“Not at all. Fluffy’s a real honey,” said Luna.

“She’s just the bee’s knees,” Claire added.

Then she followed Luna up the stairs and into their room, where they flung themselves on their beds and laughed into their pillows.

“But you know, Loon, even a dress that brings on an allergic reaction doesn’t mean the wedding’s off,” Claire said, after they had recovered. “We could still end up with a step–Fluffy.”

“Next time, we need a plan, not a trick,” agreed Luna.

“Or a spell,” said Claire. “Maybe getting rid of Fluffy is part of our GST test. As something good, something smart, and something tricky.”

“That’s a very intelligent point, Clairsie,” said Luna. “When you talk like that, you definitely don’t seem a whole thirteen minutes younger.”

T
HROUGHOUT MOST OF THEIR
fifth-grade year at Tower Hill Middle School, Mrs. Sanchez had been the twins’ teacher. They loved–loved–loved her.

In fact, even before they met her, the twins loved–loved–loved Mrs. Sanchez. That was because Justin always used to tell them Mrs. Sanchez stories. “Mrs. Sanchez never yells. She wears perfume that smells like oranges. She plays music during art and free time. And if you want to go back to Five A to visit her every once in a while, she doesn’t make you feel babyish about it. She was basically the coolest teacher I ever had.”

So Luna had been excited, back in September, when she and Claire had both gotten assigned to 5A. That was Mrs. Sanchez’s room! Although 5A would rotate some classes with Mr. Rosenthal’s 5B, getting 5A officially meant they belonged to Mrs. Sanchez.

“You lucked out,” Justin told them. “Besides, Rosenthal’s got hair in his ears and moss on his teeth, and sometimes he smells like sour milk.”

Not Mrs. Sanchez. “Welcome, this year’s beloved Five A kids,” Mrs. Sanchez told them that very first day. “Let me step back and get a look at you. I see we have twins! Now
that
is a good–luck charm!”

Luna smiled across the aisle at Claire, who smiled back. It was nice to be singled out as a good–luck charm.

And Justin was right. Mrs. Sanchez was the best teacher, ever. She showed them how to make dream catchers, she hummed under her breath, and she took them on a field trip every week.

“Philadelphia is one of the greatest cities in the world,” she said. “Let’s get to know it!”

Then, in October, Mrs. Sanchez had made a surprise announcement. She stood in front of the class with a big smile on her face. “My husband and I are expecting a child next year, in mid–April. I will be able to teach all the way up until then, and afterward I am taking off the rest of the year to be at home with our new baby. But I’m happy to tell you that Tower Hill Middle school already has found a wonderful substitute teacher to finish off the year with you. Her name is Ms. Fleegerman, and she used to live in Hawaii.”

The twins exchanged unhappy faces with all the other kids in the classroom, because Mrs. Sanchez was everybody’s favorite teacher, and nobody wanted a new one.

And even before they had met her, the twins knew they would hate–hate–hate old Ms. Fleegerman.

Luckily, “sometime next year in the middle of April” was months ahead, and pretty soon the class forgot about Mrs. Sanchez’s baby.

“That’s because she wasn’t having a baby the usual way,” declared Claire. “If Mrs. Sanchez had been pregnant, then at least we would have had a reminder every day.”

“Like a Fleegerman countdown,” added Luna.

So it came as a surprise, on the second Monday of April, when the twins walked into 5A and saw a strange woman sitting at Mrs. Sanchez’s desk.

“Aloha, class,” she said. “My name is Ms. Fleegerman. I am happy to give you some very good news. Over the weekend, Louisa and Randy Sanchez became proud parents of an eight–pound baby girl. At the end of the day, we will make congratulations cards.”

The room was in a rumble of confusion. For one thing, a few kids did not know what “aloha” meant. (It is Hawaiian for hello and good–bye.) Second, it took a minute to realise that Louisa and Randy Sanchez meant Mrs. Sanchez, and some husband nobody had ever met. And third, everyone had sort of forgotten about how Mrs. Sanchez and her husband had been planning to adopt a baby.

The final thing was that Ms. Fleegerman was very strange looking. She was tall as a lamppost and skinny as a needle, with hair that looked as it had been chewed off instead of cut. She wore blue-framed glasses and orange nylon stockings. Worst of all, when she saw the twins, her face scrunched up as if she’d swallowed a sourball.

“Why weren’t you twins split up into different rooms?” she asked. “That’s no way to assert your individuality.”

“We assert our individuality together,” said Claire, and a few kids grinned because Claire was known to be sort of wise.

Ms. Fleegerman made a hen-clucking sound in her throat, then wrote something down in her teacher’s notebook. Something bad, Luna knew.

“Old Ms. Fleegerman is even meaner than we expected,” said Luna that night at dinner. Steve was over, and he had made a special chef’s dinner. Chicken pâté to start. Then lamb Provençal and potatoes au gratin, then individual crème brûlées. Steve’s dinners were a mouthful to speak, but were also good to eat (though not as good as Licks ’n’ Sticks).

“What did she do?” asked Justin.

“Nothing yet. But it’ll happen, mark my words.”

“Luna, you are a doomsday prophet,” said their mother. “Be fair. Give old Ms. Fleegerman a chance.”

“How old is she, anyway?” asked Steve.

“Somewhere between thirty and fifty two,” guessed Luna. “Old.”

“Let me know when she does something mean,” said their mother. “So far, you have no proof in your pudding.”

Luna did not need proof or a pudding to know.

Sure enough, the very next morning, something mean had happened. When the girls walked into 5A, Claire’s desk was missing.

“Where could it have gone?” asked Claire. She jumped down on her hands and knees and began scrambling around. “Here, desk-y desk! Here, desk!”

The other kids started laughing. Jemina Consolo dropped to her hands and knees, too.

“Here, desk. Come here, girl!”

“What’s going on in here? What are you doing on the floor?” Suddenly, Ms. Fleegerman stood in the doorway. “Oh, yes. Claire Bundkin, you will find your desk in Mr. Rosenthal’s class, in Five B. I spoke with Mrs. Hass, and she agreed to separate you two.” She walked over to the girls and put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Don’t worry, this is a good idea. Studies of identical twins prove that it is important for them to maintain separate classroom identities.” She spoke as if she were talking out of a book.

Luna looked at Claire and Claire looked at Luna. Never in their school-day lives had they ever, ever been separated. Not even preschool. In preschool, they had even shared a cubby and napped on the same mat.

But Mrs. Hass was the school principal. There was not much a person could do, once something was agreed to by Mrs. Hass. Very sneaky of Ms. Fleegerman, thought Luna, to get Mrs. Hass on her side.