Witcha'be (2 page)

“Be thankful you have a father who cares about you.” Her gaze was serious.

I rolled my eyes again. “I’m just thankful I get to stay at Lenni’s.” I popped her with my dishtowel before tossing it in the sink. “Going to my room.” I kissed her freckled cheek. “Night, Dad!” I yelled in the direction of the bathroom.

I shut my door and turned on the TV. The local news station was airing a story on grasshoppers. Hundreds of them clung to the wire fence of some dismal-looking farmer. I fired the remote like a pistol and shot to an old movie about zombies. “Better,” I breathed, sinking into my chair. Boo hopped into my lap, licking my face as zombies ate the brains of innocent bystanders. “By standing isn’t working for you guys. Try running instead.”

Half an hour later, my vision blurred. I set Boo on the floor, pulled my nightclothes from the dresser, and then padded down the hall to the undersea bathroom I hadn’t yet redecorated. A mural of life-sized mermaids swam the walls and smiled, with the exception of a redheaded one who sneered. I stepped closer, running my fingers over her realistic green eyes.

Inside the steam-filled shower, Bianca rushed to the front of my mind. What was she doing with my stolen hair? I shook my shaving foam and grasped a disposable razor. Could she use my hair to curse personal objects? One little slip from this deadly weapon disguised in harmless pink plastic and...

I tossed the razor over the shower curtain. I would skip the shave.

After a speedy lather and rinse, I walked to the sink and wiped the steam from the mirror.

My reflection had no eyes.

Heart floundering like a fish out of water, I swung my gaze to the wall. The redheaded mermaid winked.

Steam tumbled into the hallway as I ran naked to my bedroom, yanking the door closed behind me. Boo circled my feet, barking and shaking. I dug through my pajama drawer, threw on a nightshirt, then darted downstairs into Mom’s arms.

“What in the world’s wrong, Molly Lou?”

Hiccups racked me. I grabbed my chest. “A girl at school, Bianca, a witcha’be, put a curse, or a spell, or something on me. Lenni said she could only levitate small objects and read minds, but she plucked my hair when I picked up Jake’s disgusting notebook, and–”
Hic!
“The mermaid on my bathroom wall winked at me. Mom, I have no eyes!”

“Whoa. Sit down and slow down.” She bent me into a dining room chair then seated herself. “Start at the beginning.” Her worried expression aged her.

The beginning. When Lenni and I met over the summer, we’d clicked right away. She’d talked about Bianca so often, I couldn’t wait to meet her. Now I’d be lucky to make it through the ninth grade without turning into something with scales or warts.

“Molly, what happened?” Mom’s worry lines deepened.

I dropped my gaze. She’d never believe me. And what if she did? What if she approached the principal with my allegations, talked to Bianca’s father, or worse, to Bianca? I regretted spilling my terrified guts to her.

“I watched a zombie movie on TV.”

“Zombie movie?” Her wrinkles disappeared as she smiled. “Well, that explains it. No more scary movies for you, Molly Lou.” She popped a kiss on my cheek. “Do you still want to talk about it?”

“No, I’m okay. Thanks for listening.” I stood and stretched.

“I love you,” she said, rising from her chair and giving me a hug. “Need me to tuck you in?”

“No. I’m fine. Sorry if I worried you.” I walked to the stairs.

“This Bianca, from your dream, is she a real person?”

“Just a girl at school.”

“I really like that name.
Bianca
.” Mom rolled off her tongue the name that sent chills down my spine.

I trudged upstairs and tucked myself tightly into the twin-sized bed. Boo curled at my feet. I hoped my bladder would hold through the night. Using my bathroom was not an option.

CHAPTER TWO

I stared at the bathroom door. This was crazy. I had to pee. I wrapped my trembling hand around the old-fashioned glass knob. “One…two…three.” I yanked and darted to the toilet.

The redheaded mermaid’s gaze tingled the back of my neck as I washed my hands. I ignored the towel, wiping them on my shorts as I hurried down to Mom’s pancake breakfast.

Half an hour later, still in my nightshirt and boxers, I stood in the back yard searching for presents from Boo.
Boo poo
. I shook the plastic sack in the breeze, walking carefully as Boo bounced around my ankles. “You’re so messy,” I growled, scooping up another find, as if on some twisted Easter egg hunt. Boo nosed the dirt then started digging.

I tossed my lumpy sack into the trash barrel and closed the lid. “Come on.” I snapped my fingers.

He ignored me.

“Boo, come.”

He dug faster.

“I’m letting flies in, you little mutt. What are you doing?” I closed the door and walked to the mound of dirt. “Dad’s going to be mad at you for that hole.”

I knelt, picking up an object wet with dog slobber, holding it between two fingers as I had Jake’s Band-Aid-covered notebook. A small brunette doll in a shapeless beige shirt and denim pants, hair chopped to the chin, tiny gold cross dangling around its neck. Me. In yesterday’s outfit.

I smeared dirt from the face with my thumb. My heart sank like an ice cube through sweet tea. Its eyes were gone.

Bianca.

How’d she known I’d find it? My gaze scoured the backyard as I poked the doll into my waistband. Sharp little fingers and toes bit into my flesh.

I kicked off my dirty sneakers and jogged upstairs, Boo at my heels. Chills raced my spine as I shut the bathroom door and retrieved the doll. Undeniably me, every detail accounted for, except the eyes.

I swallowed a hiccup. The doll slipped to the tile and Boo sniffed it. I scooped it into my palm, lowered its homemade jeans—made in the USA was stamped on its scrawny buttocks. American. Just like me.

On its dirt-smudged face, I saw the faint outline of eyes. Holding it to the light, I made out brush strokes. I grabbed the fingernail polish remover and a cotton ball then rubbed the doll’s face. Flesh-tinted nail polish stained the cotton. The doll stared through light-brown eyes.

* * *

I kissed the top of Boo’s head and stepped from the bedroom. The doll, mummified in toilet paper, rested in my overnight bag. Stopping short, I stepped back over the threshold, grabbed my cross necklace and latched it under my hair. The aroma of Mom’s special oatmeal raisin cookies met me on the stairs.

“Leaving!”

“Wait a sec.” In jogged Mom, hair dripping black dye, a quart-sized baggie filled with cookies between her elbows. “Tuck these into your bag for a snack.”

I crammed the small sack into the outside pocket of my bag, and she opened her arms for a hug. “You smell bad.” I held my nose.

“Just a peck.” Mom made fish lips.

I kissed her cheek. “See you tomorrow.”

I transferred the bag from right to left shoulder, dug my cell from my pocket, and texted Lenni.

Coming now.

K. Hurry!

A gorgeous day, I inhaled the fresh air. A big, greenish-brown grasshopper, making a terrible clicking noise, flew across my path, landing on the side of the road. I jogged away, my skin crawling, and then gulped a few deep breaths to calm down.

What surprise did Lenni have waiting for me this time? She loved surprises as much as I did. In our three-month friendship, she’d surprised me with strawberry-scented lip gloss, a matching journal and pen set, a box of Jelly Belly beans, and the gold cross necklace. I touched the pendant as I walked. Of all the surprises, I liked the cross best.

I stood on Lenni’s sidewalk and gazed up at her enormous house. The place equaled an Oklahoma mansion, though the Flemmings would never admit it.

Mrs. Flemming answered the door. “Hi, Molly, come right in.” She jolted me with a hug. “Lenneeeee!” she called loudly, glancing at the chandelier.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Flemming. I’ll find her.”

“Call me Pam. I tell you that every time I see you.” She pinched my cheek and shook her pretty, blonde head. She didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Lenni said she’d had some work done last winter, a Christmas present from Mr. Flemming. “I’ll call you when dinner is ready.” She swatted my bottom as I passed.

I lugged my duffel bag up the staircase, past the Flemmings’ photograph collection—an assortment of frames, different shapes and sizes, all of them black. The pictures were bright and exciting, crashing blue waves threatening sandcastles, lacey-white snowflakes melting on tongues, babbling brooks tickling tiny toes. Not one person just sat in a chair, or simply stood smiling. The photos
lived
, straining to breathe under glass.

Lenni swung her door open. I jumped, lost in another family’s memories. “Took you long enough.” She wore a pink tank top and khaki shorts, her hair somehow magazine-fresh in a messy ponytail. She smiled, and then blew a pink bubble. “Glad you finally made it. Your surprise is here.” She took my bag from me, pulled me into her room and shut the door. “Surprise!” she shrieked, ringing my ears.

My lips went cold. My stomach threatened to hurl the pancakes I’d eaten for breakfast onto Lenni’s fluffy pink carpeting. Bianca perched on Lenni’s purple bedspread, green eyes on me, her gaze curious like a cat’s.

“Molly.” She sat tall, rolling her shoulders back, red hair brushing the waist of her leather skirt.

Hic!

A telephone rang downstairs. I wished it was Mom, changing her mind, ordering me home to complete some undone chore.

“Are you surprised?” Lenni asked, tossing my bag to the floor. “It’s time for you and Bianca to get to know each other and become best friends too. Then we’ll each have two best friends! Whoa, that’s deep.” She rubbed her forehead.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Len.” Bianca smirked.

She called her Len.

Hic!
I grabbed my chest.

“I think you need a good scare,” Bianca muttered, edging from the bed.

“Oh, Bianca, that doesn’t work on her,” Lenni explained. “Molly actually
gets
the hiccups when she’s scared—she’s frightened
into
them.”

“Is that so?”

“I have to go,” I said. An enormous hiccup followed my announcement. I ran from Lenni’s room and flew down the staircase, nearly colliding with Mrs. Flemming.

“Molly, what’s your hurry?” she asked, catching me by the forearms.

“I don’t feel well, Mrs. Flemming-I mean, Pam.” I pushed against her grasp. “I’m going home.”

“Molly, you can’t go home. Your mother called. Your father surprised her with an overnight trip to Evandale. They’re driving over tonight for dinner and dancing, staying in a nice hotel, and then shopping at the weekend flea market. They’ll be home around six o’clock tomorrow evening. I told her to be on the lookout for those little charms people attach to their cell phone cases. I want some for the store.”

Panic bulged my skull like an overinflated balloon.

“I’ll give you some medicine. Tummy or head?” She led me to the restroom.

“My head.” It was tough to decide which hurt worse. I followed her into the large bathroom, my gaze on the marble floor.

“Here you go, dear.” She poured two chalky-white tablets into my hand then handed me a glass of water. “You’ll feel better in no time. Dinner’s almost ready. I’ll call the two of you down when it’s on the table.”

“There are three of us upstairs.”

“Who else is here?”

“Bianca,” I said, trying to outsmart the hiccups.

“I didn’t even notice. The girl moves like the wind. Breezes right through undetected. She’s been that way since she was a child. You know, Lenni and Bianca go way back.”

“Yeah, Lenni told me. They met in second grade.”

“Mrs. Donald’s class. They hit it off so quickly. Sometimes after school, I’d pick Bianca up, along with Lenni, and bring her over to play. Once, when they were only seven years old, I caught them pricking their fingers with stickpins. They squeezed drops of blood onto black construction paper and blended it with Q-tips. After I bandaged their bloody fingertips, they buried the paper in the backyard and performed a special dance on the dirt, creating a blood sister bond. Blood sisters forever, they chanted.” Mrs. Flemming shook her head. “Kids, huh?”

The balloon in my head tightened.

“Over there, beneath that big oak.” She pointed at a large tree through the bathroom window. “That’s where they did their precious little dance. It was so darn cute.” She smiled as if describing a child’s ballet recital. “The next day that amazing plant sprouted in the very spot their blood sister pact was buried.”

“What kind of plant is it?”

“That’s a mystery. It’s been seven years and no one, including my horticulture friends from the university, has found one similar. Bianca calls it the bloodberry bush, because of the blood sister ritual and the little red berries. She’s got us all calling it that now.”

I followed her from the bathroom.

We walked through the kitchen, past the stove where something bubbled and belched. “See you in a bit.” She stirred the steaming kettle.

The staircase might as well have been a mountain. I paused with my hand on Lenni’s door, nerves jigging. I puffed out a breath and turned the knob.

My gaze scanned the room. “Where is Lenni?” I hated the wobble in my voice.

Bianca shot flames through her eye sockets.

I pressed my lips together to keep them from trembling.

Lenni stepped into the doorway. “Geez, Molly. You didn’t have to go all the way downstairs. There’s a bathroom up here, too, you know. And the soap smells better.” She thrust a damp hand under my nose.

I sniffed her sickeningly sweet fingers, stifling a cough.

“Vanilla cream,” she said.

“Your mom said dinner would be ready in a few minutes.” I tried to ignore the green eyes boring into my skull from across the room.

“Yikes. I think she’s making some vegetarian version of Chinese dumplings. She downloaded this whole recipe book of low-fat Asian dishes. Hope we can choke it down.” Lenni looked worried for a moment then broke into a big smile. “Molly, bring your huge bag downstairs and hide it under the table. We’ll fill it with dumplings when Mom’s not looking.”