Frogs & French Kisses #2 (8 page)

“Well, brush them again! You can’t go on a first date with stained teeth!” The clock now says four minutes.

“But what am I going to wear?” She’s eating her fingers in distress.

“I don’t know! I’ll find something while you scrub your teeth.” Who knew red wine did that? It should be illegal.

Three minutes.

I frantically grope through the clothes in her closet. Too frumpy, too ugly, too worky. Maybe something of mine? The cute V-neck . . . No, too young.

Two minutes.

“Is it coming off?” I scream.

“Almost,” she says, and then I hear gurgling. Spit. “Did you find anything?”

“Yes. I found the lime sweater, but you ruined it.” If only there was some way to get rid of the stain. Yeah, right. Even I know red wine doesn’t come out so easily. If only we had some superstrength stain remover. If only . . .

If only my mom was a witch and could zap the stain away.

She’s standing in front of me, clad only in her pants and beige bra. “So? What should I wear?”

I put my arms on her shoulders, look her straight in the eye, and say, “What you had on before.”

“But it’s stained,” she says, bewildered.

“Zap it clean.”

Her nostrils flare. “Rachel, you know I’m a nonpracticing witch.”

“No, Mom, you used to be a nonpracticing witch. But it’s time to evolve. There will be no consequences to cleaning your shirt. Seriously, what can happen? All the dry cleaners in the country will unexplainably burn down? I know you didn’t use magic when we were kids because you wanted us to have normal childhoods, and that totally worked. We experienced lots of lows, not to worry. But you promised to take my advice. And I’m telling you to zap it. Trust me. Just do it.” She zapped the wheels of the bus, so what’s the big deal about zapping a stain? She should really just zap herself a new wardrobe, but let’s take this magic stuff one baby step at a time.

She pushes past me into the closet. “Rachel, there must be something else for me to wear.” She holds up a boring white button-down.

“Will your date be at the office?”

Then a black long-sleeved sweater.

“A funeral home?”

A striped turtleneck.

“Ski hill?”

The buzzer rings, interrupting our fascinating exchange. Panic drains the Plum Fairy right off her cheeks. I hold up her lime sweater and wave it like a flag. “Just zap it!”

“I . . . but . . .” She gnaws on her thumbnail. The downstairs buzzer rings again.

“Mom?” Miri calls out. “Do you want me to get that?”

“Zap it!” I holler.

“Fine!” Her lips purse, the temperature in the room drops, and the stain is . . . gone.

Whoa. That was cool. And freaky. How did she direct her energy right at the shirt? What if it’s like radiation? Should I have worn one of those X-ray blankets like at the dentist? “Well done. Not so bad, was it?”

The buzzer goes off one more time.

“Miri, can you get it?” I scream, and toss the sweater to my bra-clad Mom. She slides it over her head and models in front of the mirror. “Perfect,” I say. “Go get ’em! Oh, and Mom? Now that you’re comfy using magic . . .”

“I won’t need to use more magic,” she says, tight-lipped.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but if the date is boring, like if he starts droning on about sports or his job or something, zap your cell phone to ring, and pretend it’s one of us with an emergency.”

She rolls her eyes, which isn’t her most appealing look. “Don’t do that on your date,” I advise.

By the time Adam gets to the front door, my mom and I are ready to greet him with smiles. I try gently to move Tigger out of the way with my foot, but he isn’t budging. Miri is there too, and she’s scowling.

Actually, I’d like to be the one Adam is taking out. He’s hot. In his copper sweater (upgrade from the Yankees jersey, definitely) and with his modelesque cheekbones, he looks like a Greek god. I wonder if there’s really such a thing as a Greek god? If witches are real, then maybe Adonis is too! Maybe he’s Adam!

Would a Greek god live in Jersey?

“Hi, girls,” he says. “Hi, Carol. Ready to go?”

Miri makes an I’m-constipated face and disappears into her room. Tigger hisses and follows at her feet.

“You two have fun!” I call down the hallway. “And make sure to have her home by midnight! Kidding!” Kind of. We don’t want any hanky-panky just yet. At the moment, two witches in the family are plenty.

7

The Fountain of Juice

“Why do you think he hasn’t called yet?” I wonder out loud a few minutes later. Miri and I are lying on the kitchen table, feet up against the apple-patterned wallpaper.

Miri shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s just not that into you?”

I gently kick her ankle so that she teeters to the side.

“Now can we focus on my stuff?” she asks. “You promised.”

“Yes, let’s save the world. What’s your plan?”

“I told you, number one on the list. Feed the homeless.”

“All of them?”

“Eventually, yes. But my current plan centers around the homeless in Washington Square Park. And I found a multiplying spell. So all we need to do is pick a food, multiply it, and then give it away for free. What do you think?”

“Good idea. When do we give out the food?”

“Tomorrow. If it works. We have to pick a food first.”

“Brownies?”

“We want to feed them, not make them fat.”

Time to put on the thinking cap. What a lame expression. My dad uses it all the time. He called today from Hawaii; he and Jennifer were at a luau. Could not understand a thing he was saying over the ukulele music. All I could hear was him reminding me to take my vitamins. Hey . . . “The food should have lots of vitamins. Like spinach.”

She pretends to gag. “They’re homeless, not taste bud-less.”

“Good enough for Popeye but not for them?”

“Rachel, we can’t hand out plates of spinach. We need something that people like. And that’s healthy. And that tastes good.”

“Orange juice,” I say, suddenly inspired. “Or oranges so we don’t need cups.”

Miri claps her feet together. “Perfect! You’re a genius. Very easy. And vitamin C not only nourishes but improves people’s moods!”

“We can even whip some extras up for Tammy. Maybe then she’ll get better and drag her butt back to school.”

Miri flips around so that she’s sitting upright on the table and leans into A
²
. “We need a teaspoon of mint, one-seventh of a cup of chocolate, ten grams of grape skin. And one example of what we want to replicate. So one orange. Okay, you check for the ingredients, and get the measuring spoons. I’ll set up in my room.”

A half hour later, we’re all mixed and set. Miri’s sitting cross-legged on her carpet, the orange in her hand, and I’m standing behind her. She uses a silver spoon to coat the fruit in the yummy-looking mixture and then lowers it to the carpet.

“That’s so going to stain,” I warn. “We should do it in my room—my carpet has seen better days.” Once orange, it is now pink due to flea extermination chemicals (Tigger’s fault).

“We would if your entire closet weren’t on the ground.” She takes a deep breath.

“Here is one

Placed on the floor,

I nod three times

And now there are more.”

Suddenly, the room fills with cold and the strangest thing happens: the orange starts morphing.

It splits in two, like it’s giving birth. And then both blobs begin to regrow to their adult size, giving me the shivers.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this creepy.

About twenty seconds pass, and the orange and its clone do it all over again—they each split in half and regrow. And then the four do the same. It’s like we’re watching a science fiction movie. The next thing I know, there are at least
fifty
oranges covering the floor and it’s starting to smell like a grove in here. A hundred oranges. Two hundred. Wow. Coolest trick ever. I take a step back.

“Watch your feet!” Miri warns. Four hundred. The carpet is blanketed in at least two layers of oranges. Her room is flooding with fruit. She stands up and climbs onto her bed.

Eight hundred. “Um . . . Mir? How many are there going to be?” I step onto her desk chair as the pile of oranges doubles in height.

“I . . . um . . .”

Our eyes lock over the citrus explosion and we can’t help laughing. But the amusement quickly turns to alarm. We could
drown
in here. “Can’t you make it stop?” I ask, and leap over the fruit to stand beside her on the bed.

“I don’t know.” The oranges are touching the top edge of the mattress. If she didn’t have a super-tall pillow-top mattress, we’d have gone under by now. She frantically flips through the spell book’s pages.

“Miri, find a stop spell!”

“I’m trying!”

The oranges spill over onto her bedspread. “We’re going to suffocate in here!” I say, and get ready to drag the two of us to noncitrus safety. But just as I’m about to leap, Miri mutters something and the multiplying jerks to a stop.

“That was close,” Miri says, giving A
²
a grateful pat. She gently steps off the bed and tries to wade through the deluge. “I’m so sleeping in your room tonight.”

“So tell us everything,” I say as I stuff a forkful of poached egg into my mouth. We’re sitting in a booth at our neighborhood diner, on Tenth and Broadway. It used to be our favorite brunch spot, but we haven’t been here in ages. The fries are extra crispy. My mom always refuses to order any, then eats most of mine.

“It was
interesting,
” my mom says from across the table, ripping open a sugar and dumping it into her coffee. Her short hair is tied back into a tight ponytail, which only helps to display her horrible brown roots. Apparently, she needs me to be her stylist 24/7.

By the time Mom got home last night, Miri and I were already asleep in my bed. Okay, fine, that’s a lie; we were wide awake, but we didn’t want to explain Operation Orange. We closed Miri’s door, hoping Mom wouldn’t look in. Mom always checks my room first anyway. I guess that’s because she’s been doing it longer, since I’m the older child. She crept into my room at eleven-thirty and tucked us in with an “Aw, sweet.” Which it was, until Miri rolled herself in the duvet like it was a sari and I almost froze to death.

We are planning on telling her about the oranges. That’s why we suggested brunch. We’re definitely going to tell her . . . after we pepper her with date questions for as long as possible.

Miri dumps a bowlful of ketchup onto her fries and her tofu omelet. “How so?”

“We went to a place in Little Italy. First we ordered—”

“He didn’t do anything stupid like order for you, did he?” Miri asks.

“No, why would he do that?” She steals one of my fries and dips it in Miri’s ketchup.

Miri shrugs. “I heard that some men do that.”

She’s doing an excellent job with our peppering-Mom-with-questions plan.

“We were small-talking about silly things,” Mom says, “like the weather, New York, you kids . . .”

“So we’re silly?” I ask.

“You know what I mean. Anyway, when the appetizers came, the conversation just dried up. And we both focused intensely on our plates. The goat cheese salad was suddenly the most interesting piece of food I had ever seen. A minute dragged into two, and then three, and then four . . .”

Oh, no. That’s the worst. I’ve pushed my mom into dating again before she’s ready and now I’ve scarred her for life. She’s going to give up dating and get another cat.

“And then I couldn’t take it anymore. So I looked into his mind.”

“You can do that?” I ask in amazement.

“I read his mind so I could know what to talk about. At first he was thinking that I seemed nice but we obviously had nothing in common. And he was wondering what the score on the Yankees game was.”

“What a jerk!” I interject.

“So I blurted out, ‘I wonder what the score on the Yankees game is.’ ”

“Way to go, Mom!” I can’t believe it!

“You don’t need to be a mind reader to come up with that one,” Miri says. “Wasn’t he the one wearing the Yankees jersey? On a baseball tour?”

I motion to her to shush. “Brilliant idea, Mom! What did he say?”

“His eyes lit up. And he said he was wondering the same thing!”

Miri shovels her eggs into her mouth. “I hate Yankees fans. He’d be far more interesting if he were a Mets fan.”

“
You
don’t have to date him,” I tell her. I lean across the table. “So what happened next?”

My mom steals a handful of my fries. “We talked about baseball for a while.”

“You don’t know anything about baseball,” Miri says, frowning.

“Right. So I had to do more mind reading. You’d be shocked how much sports trivia this man has in the front of his mind. It’s amazing really. Scores, RBIs . . .”

“RBI what?” I ask. My mom can finally explain to me the secret language of boys!

“Who knows? That’s all I got. Men think a lot about sports. And about other stuff,” she says, and then blushes.

Ew. I want my mom to date, but I don’t need the unnecessary details.

“Anyway, I basically kept talking about what he was thinking,” she says.

“Mom,” Miri says, shaking her head with disapproval, “what happened to wanting a guy to like you for you?”

“I know, I know. But it’s not like I was in love with this man. I was really nervous, and I saw the night as an experiment. To find out what could happen.”

“And what happened?” Miri and I both ask.

“Jinx,” I say. “Buy me a Coke.”

Mom smiles. “He begged me to see him again. Tonight.”

I’m in awe. “Are you going to?”

“No. I told him maybe next weekend.”

“Do you like him?” I can’t believe this.

“He liked me. I believe his exact words were ‘You might be my soul mate.’ But I haven’t decided how I feel about him. Seeing him tonight seems a bit excessive. But I have to admit, it’s nice to feel wanted. Anyway, we’ll see. What were you two up to last night?”

Abort topic! Switch gears! I want to avoid this subject for as long as possible. “Um . . . what did you have for the main course?”

“Fettuccine Alfredo. Now back to you two.”

“Wait!” Miri says. “What about dessert?”

My mom smiles. “Lemon sorbet. And what did you two eat? Oranges?”

So my mom saw the fruit. And she wasn’t too angry. After Miri outlined her plan, Mom gave us her “just be careful” lecture (whatever, she’s using magic to help her dating life; how careful is she being?) and then shocked us by offering to help distribute. “I’d rather be around if you’re talking to strangers,” she explained.

And that’s where we are now. In Washington Square Park, handing out oranges to anyone who looks hungry. The three of us filled two shopping bags each with as many as we could carry. The sun is shining, and my first bag is almost empty.

“Would you like some fruit?” I ask an elderly woman in a sleeping bag on a bench.

She eyes me suspiciously, so I gently place it on the edge of her bed. She picks it up, squeezes it, and then nods. I hand her another one, and the three of us move on.

My hands are starting to chap from the cold, but my insides feel warm, like I just finished a cup of hot chocolate. I don’t remember the last time the three of us had so much fun. Once our bags are done, we stop back at the apartment for a refill and then head over to the Lower East Side.

“Oranges! Who wants fruit?” Miri sings, looking happy but determined. Her cheeks are flushed, her hair is wind-blown, and she hasn’t stopped smiling all afternoon. Next to her, my mom has the same sun-kissed tousled look. And I bet I do too. I lock my arms through theirs, and we giggle as we skip down the sidewalk, smiling and reeking like a fruit stand.