I closed my eyes. The darkness heightened every sound — wind whipping through the trees outside, the ticking of the old mantel clock, my sisters’ breathing. My own heart thumping.
That’s when I knew I wanted to wish for something besides just ordinary good luck. It was probably just hocus-pocus, but somehow — call it the storm, the dark, the firelight — this felt bigger than a birthday-candle wish.
I’d wish for . . . something new and exciting to happen to me. Something different. Something daring. Like when I tried out to be in the musical Once Upon a Mattress. Or entered a Cupcake Cooking Contest.
Alex made her voice soft and spooky again. “‘Stars, hide your fires! Let not light see my black and deep desires.’”
Thunk! “What was that?” I asked.
“Just a branch hitting the roof,” said Alex.
I opened one eye and peeked. A reflection of firelight flickered in the troll doll’s eyes. Alex was holding a play program from Beauty and the Beast, and Joey had an origami frog in her hand.
“One . . . two . . . three . . .” Boom! A loud crack of thunder shook the house just as we opened our eyes and tossed our Special Objects into the fire. I jumped. Joey screamed and grabbed onto Alex. A streak of lightning flashed blue and the fire flared up. Tongues of flame licked the edges of Alex’s program and poof, it disappeared into ash. Joey’s frog went up in smoke. The troll doll melted quicker than the Wicked Witch.
All of a sudden, a string of pearl-size goose bumps ran up and down my spine. A thrilling kind of tickle at the base of my neck needled me. I scratched it, as if touching it might make it go away.
Maybe it was just the dark, the night, the storm. The gleam in my sister’s eye. What was Alex playing at? Wasn’t this just a game? What if we had done something, started something, called on something — unleashed something invisible, something bigger than us, this room, this night?
“Joey, I thought that was your favorite origami frog,” I said to break the spell. “The one you got to jump the best.”
“Hey! You weren’t supposed to see,” said Joey.
“It doesn’t matter. We all know anyway,” I said.
“Nuh-uh,” said Joey. “Nobody knows what Alex threw in the fire.”
“But we all know what she wished for,” I said.
Alex’s head snapped around to glare at me. “What?”
“To get the part of Juliet in the play. Duh. What else?”
“Oh,” said Alex. “Yeah.” She laughed a nervous laugh, but something secret and shadowy passed over those Mona Lisa eyes of hers. “Look like the innocent flower / But be the serpent under it,” I thought as another line from Macbeth sprang to mind.
I’d have to wait and see if something new and exciting happened to me. Time would tell. I guess the most I could hope for was that the spell didn’t turn my hair neon green and make it stand up as straight as a troll’s.
One glass troll eye stared at me from the bottom of the fireplace. Part of me wanted to yell Wait! and take it back. But it was too late.
A last line from Macbeth niggled the back of my brain.
“What’s done is done.”
FIRST KISS WISH
Starring Alex
Sock Monkey: So, you’re still talking to me, huh?
Me: Why wouldn’t I be?
Sock Monkey: It’s just . . . you hardly ever have time for me anymore.
Me: You sound like my sisters. Of course I haven’t forgotten you. Who else am I going to tell my secrets to? Not the Snoopy Sisters, that’s for sure.
Sock Monkey: The Snoopy Sisters. Good one.
Me: So, do you want to know my secret or what?
Sock Monkey: I’m all ears! Even though I don’t have ears. Why don’t you give me some ears?
Me: You had ears once upon a time. But they got all loved off.
Sock Monkey: Aw.
Me: Okay, listen up. Remember a couple of nights ago, during the blackout, when I —
Sock Monkey: Did a magic love spell? Yeah, I remember. You went to all that trouble, when you could just write down the person’s name and put it under your pillow. Or eat three petals of the black jade rose while thinking of the person’s name.
Me: Can we focus here? Unless you don’t want to know my secret.
Sock Monkey: Like I said, I’m all ears.
Me: Okay. So. You know how I threw that note from when I was in Beauty and the Beast with Scott Howell in the fire that night?
Sock Monkey: Yeah, that was really using your brain. Now you burned up his love note and you don’t have it anymore.
Me: It wasn’t a love note anyway. I wish. It just said, “See you at practice. S.” No biggie.
Sock Monkey: Uh-huh. So, why’d you save that play program forever?
Me: I know Stevie and Joey think I wished that I’d get to play Juliet in the school play, but really I wished —
Sock Monkey: For secret crush Scott Towel to like you?
Me: A) His name is not Scott Towel! It’s Scott Howell. That’s just what my annoying sisters call him. And B) I wished for something better than that. Way better.
Sock Monkey: What? That he’d call you up? Send you a real love note? Ask you out to a vampire movie?
Me: Nope, nope, and nope.
Sock Monkey: That he’d come over for dinner again, and this time not drop his fork in the fondue and have to kiss everybody at the table?
Me: Wrong again.
Sock Monkey: What? I give up. Tell me!
Me: Okay, but you have to keep it a secret. Nobody but you in the whole entire world can know. Are you ready?
Sock Monkey: Hurry up! Whisper it in my ear. I mean, where my ear would be if I had one.
Me: I wished that I would get my first kiss, and it would be from him.
Sock Monkey: Who him?
Me: Him, him. Romeo.
Sock Monkey: Huh?
Me: Don’t you get it? I have it all planned. I get the part of Juliet in the play, and Scott is Romeo. And Romeo has to kiss Juliet, right? So, voila! I get my first kiss. What could be better than a sweet, romantic, Romeo-and-Juliet kind of first kiss?
Sock Monkey: Brilliant!
Me: I thought so. Now all I need is to really rock my audition, get the part of Juliet, hope Scott gets the part of Romeo, and convince Mr. Cannon that you can’t do Romeo and Juliet without at least one kissing scene.
Sock Monkey: Details, details.
I glanced up at the clock on the wall — 1:29 and the crowds are getting restless.
No wonder. We’ve spent the last twenty-nine minutes smushed like sardines on the bleachers with hundreds of antsy sixth graders and rowdy seventh graders in the multipurpose room, waiting for the assembly to start.
Olivia and I have been through our share of Author Day assemblies together. Once, back in kindergarten, this grumpy teacher yelled at me for telling the Author a story about putting a rubber ear in Joey’s spaghetti (that joke never gets old), and Livvie stood up for me and said it was a funny story. We’ve been best friends ever since.
“Who’s the author supposed to be, anyway?” I asked Liv.
“You know it’ll be some guy who tells seriously lame jokes.”
Afternoon forecast: Cloudy with a chance of boring.
“Or some guy whose great-great-great-great-grandfather walked the Oregon Trail,” said some kid behind us, butting into our conversation.
I mouthed, “Who’s he?” to Olivia. She shrugged.
The kid’s knee bumped me in the back of the head.
“Hey!” I said, turning around to squinch my face at him. He had short sandy blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses that looked kind of cool and ungeeky. And he was wearing a black T-shirt with Oscar the Grouch peeking out of a garbage can. Go figure. I never get the shirts guys wear.
“Sorry. My bad. I, um, it’s my second day here. I was at East, then we moved, like, 1.4 miles, and they transferred me to West.”
“Interesting,” I said. “Not!” I mouthed to O
livia, and she started giggling.
“Hey, I mean, aren’t you in my Earth Science class?” he asked.
“Me? No,” said Olivia, shaking her head.
He was looking at me. “I don’t know. Am I?” I said.
“Yeah. With that guy. What’s his name? Mr. Petri Dish.”
Olivia and I couldn’t help laughing a little. “Mr. Petry. Minus the dish. Um, word of advice? You better not let him hear you calling him that, or you’ll be staying after to wash all his Petri dishes till they sparkle.”
Ms. Carter-Dunne leaned forward from her seat at the end of the row and put a finger to her lips to shush us.
The assistant principal was yammering on about something. I’m not into being a rowdy sixth grader, but I am into telling Olivia the whole story about the storm and the power outage and the Sisters Club with the you-know-what in the fire and hoping my hair would not turn green.
“Speaking of green,” I said, “did I mention I have a new roommate? Joey adopted a frog. After the storm. She doesn’t know I know.”
“Wait,” said Olivia, “so now you have a frog living in your room? For real?”
“Frog? Who lives with a frog?” Wire Rims asked Olivia.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to listen in on other people’s conversations?” Olivia said.
“Sorry. Couldn’t help overhearing.”
She turned back to me. “Where were we? Oh, yeah. You were burning a troll doll and wishing for stuff and —”
Ms. Carter-Dunne glared at us.
“Shh! Stop saying troll doll,” I warned, making fierce eyes at Olivia.
“Did you guys say Roald Dahl? Is that who the author is? For real?”
“Yeah, that’s who it is. Except for one teeny-weeny detail. Roald Dahl is dead!” Olivia told him.
“Too bad,” I joked. “I love his book James and the Giant Eavesdropper.” Olivia and I cracked up.
Just then, the principal came out and tapped on the microphone. He cleared his throat and the room settled down to a dull roar. Behind him stood a guy with greased-back hair, wearing a black-and-white suit.
“Boys and girls,” the principal started, and Olivia whispered, “Uh-oh, bad news.” Whenever the principal starts out with “Boys and girls,” it’s bad news.
“I know you’ve all been looking forward to Author Day (we have?) and you’ve been preparing for this day in your classes (huh?) but I’m sorry to have to announce that our author is . . . has a bad case of . . . stomach flu —”
Wire Rims whispered, “Stomach flu, huh? That’s code talk for you-know-what. Hey, maybe he’s the author of The Princess Diarrheas. Or The Diarrhea of Anne Frank.”
“That is so not funny,” Olivia told him, but we couldn’t help laughing a little.
“Diarrhea of a Wimpy Kid,” he said, trying too hard to get us to crack up some more. I glanced over at Ms. Carter-Dunne, but luckily she was giving the evil eye to Ben Cheng.
“But the good news is that we had an assembly scheduled for the primary classes and our speaker has agreed to stay to address the sixth and seventh graders. Let me introduce the Nutrition Magician!” Collective crowd groan.
“Nutrition Magician?” Wire Rims leaned in and said to Olivia, “Suddenly, the dead author’s not looking so bad, am I right?”
“Shh! Don’t you know how to whisper?” Olivia nodded toward the teacher.
The Nutrition Magician pulled a zucchini out of a black top hat. Nobody laughed. Before you could say “Food Pyramid,” he started juggling the major food groups — two eggplants, an orange, a carton of milk, and a rolling pin.
Just then, I felt a knee in the back of my head again. “Hey! You’re pulling my hair! Ouch!”
He said, “Sorry,” but he was clearly grinning.
“You don’t look sorry,” said Olivia. She was grinning too.
The Nutrition Magician dropped the rolling pin by mistake. The audience erupted in laughter.
“So, you’re in her Earth Science class?” Olivia asked Wire Rims. “What’s your name, again?”
“Owen. Owen O’Malley. But my friends call me Owen.” He smacked his hand on his forehead like he didn’t mean to say that.
“Really? Strange. My name’s Stevie but my friends call me Stevie.” I couldn’t help grinning.
When the assembly was over, we got the nods from our teachers that it was time to go back to class.
“Finally. I’ve never heard so many questions about broccoli,” Olivia said.
“That’s because nobody wants to go back to class.” Including me. The assembly had been kind of fun. Missing Health class, I mean. And talking to Livvie the whole time.
As we filed past Ms. Carter-Dunne, I smiled. She did not smile back. She frowned and pointed to Olivia, me, and Wire Rims. “You, you, and you. Wait for me out in the hall. Now.”
SEALED WITH A KISS
Starring Alex
Sisters Stevie and Joey enter room, interrupting my perfect scene.
Me: But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon
Who is already sick and pale with grief.
Joey: Here we go again. Alex is being Juliet. That means we’re supposed to be quiet.
Stevie: Another death scene? Alex, you have more lives than a cat!
Me: (Holds up black eye mask on stick and waves it in front of sisters.) I’m not Juliet. I’m Romeo. And it’s not a death scene; it’s a love scene.
Joey: Ooh. Ick.
Stevie: My bad.
Joey: Are you sure? Because you’re flinging your head back and grabbing your heart. And that’s what you usually do when you’re stabbed or poisoned.
Me: I’m sure. It’s the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. The balcony scene is only one of the greatest love scenes of all time! Ask anybody — dying and falling in love are the two hardest things an actor will ever have to do.
Joey: Does Romeo wear a mask, like a robber?
Me: Duh. Romeo meets Juliet at a masked ball. He has to go in disguise because Juliet’s family hates him.
Joey: How come?
Me: Well, they don’t just hate him, they hate his whole family. The Montagues and Capulets have been mortal enemies for, like, a million years. They hate him so bad they’ll kill him on sight if they see him at the ball.
Joey: Wait a minute. I know this story. One’s a Montague and one’s a Capulet and they’re madly in love, and they rub noses a lot, but their moms and dads are super mad at them. They keep trying to get Juliet to marry this other guy, who’s really big and has bad breath that makes her cough all the time. He’s a walrus, I think. Or an elephant seal.
Stevie: (Laughs.) A walrus?
Joey: Yeah. (Shrugs.) I saw the cartoon. Romeo and Juliet are seals, and there’s this talking fish named Kissy who’s really annoying. He sings “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Who sings “Twinkle, Twinkle” in the play?
Me: C’mon, you guys. You have to help me figure out what to do for the audition.
Joey: Sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”!
Me: I mean, what should I do with my hair? (Tugs on short hair.)
Joey: How come nobody ever listens to me?
Stevie: Your hair’s fine.
Me: My hair was fine, until somebody burned it with the iron and I had to get it all cut off!
Stevie: Well, you’re the one who wanted straight hair. You forced me to iron your hair. I’m on record for saying it was a bad idea from the get-go. Ask Joey.
Joey: Me? Don’t look at me. I wasn’t even there!
Me: (Makes face at Stevie.)
Stevie: Okay, okay. Let’s not even go there.
Me: You know, when you think about the Hair Ironing Disaster of the Century, you kinda owe me. So, I was thinking . . . I really need a Romeo. To practice for Juliet. (Looks pleadingly at Stevie.)
Stevie: Don’t look at me! I’m not going to kiss you then d
rink poison or stab myself or whatever.
Me: It’s the balcony scene. There’s no poison. Romeo climbs up over the orchard wall to talk to Juliet.
Joey: (Jokingly.) Oh, Romeo, Romeo, I love you so much. Smooch, smooch, smooch. (Makes kissing sounds on her arm.) You’re my one and only lovey-dovey love bug. Oh Romeo, I just can’t live without you. (Mimes sticking finger down throat.) Gag me with a spoon!
Me: Make fun all you want. But the part of Juliet is like a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Every actress has to play Juliet at least once.
Stevie: Especially if . . . I mean . . . you know who would make a great Romeo?
Joey: Scott Towel!
Me: (Blushes.)
Stevie: I was going to say Allen. Allen Albertson.
Me: Alvin the Chipmunk? Are you bonkers? That kid has see-through ears and more zits than there are craters on Saturn.
Joey: Ouch!
Stevie: (Teasingly.) But if he gets the part, you still want to be Juliet, right? I mean, as an actress. You’d still kiss him, I mean, for your career and everything.
Me: (Shudders.) He’s not going to get the part.
Stevie: And Scott Towel is?
Me: The kiss has to be good. No, not good, off-the-charts great. Because it’s her first kiss. And first kisses have to be perfect. (Shuts eyes, imagining.) For the play, I mean. (Clears throat.) To be believable. You know.
Joey: Juliet Capulet is kind of a weird name.
Stevie: How do you know it’s her first kiss? Do they say it’s her first kiss?
Me: I don’t know. But she’s only, like, thirteen in the play. Almost fourteen.
Joey: Your age.
Me: Exactly.
Joey: Blech. Forget about all that kissing. Just do what the seals do in the movie. (Flaps hands together.) Arr! Arr! Arr! (Barks like a seal.)
Stevie: (Smacks hand to head.) Wait a second. I get it. I see what this is all about now. You go out for Juliet and Scott Towel goes out for Romeo and Romeo kisses Juliet in the play so you get your first kiss from Romeo. I mean, Scott Towel!