Magic in the Mix (9 page)

Ahead of her, Ray paused at the doorway to the living room. “Whoa, Ollie!” he yelped. “You
killed
that window, man!”

Miri winced when she saw it. Ollie hadn't just broken the glass. He had torn out the entire window frame, leaving a ragged hole on one side of the room. The wooden window frame, with bits of shattered glass still attached, was propped mournfully in a corner.

“Rot,” said Ollie briefly, sweeping up glass with a little broom. “Look at that wood.”

“You had to tear out the whole thing?” Miri asked. Poor house.

Ollie nodded briskly. “Gotta do it while the weather's still okay. I'm gonna tarp up the hole, of course. Just be a couple of days.”

Their mother hurried into the room. “Frank says don't start anything else without showing him first. Okay?”

Ollie looked offended. “It was rotten.” He pointed to the remains of the window. “And so's the bathroom window upstairs. The whole frame, you could stick your finger through it—”

“No,” said Mom firmly. “No new projects without showing Frank first. Okay?” She waited, her eyebrows raised.

Ollie heaved the sigh of the misunderstood. “If you say so.”

“Friday!” shouted Miri the next morning when her alarm went off. “Friday. Get up!” The shouting was for Molly, who never heard alarms. “Get up!
Up!
”

No movement below.

Miri hauled herself to the edge of the top bunk and looked down. Molly was awake. She lay flat in her bed with her hands folded on her chest like a corpse. “I feel terrible,” she said in a whisper.

“Terrible?” Miri put on her glasses and inspected her sister. Was she lying? She did look weird, but maybe it was just how her hands were folded. “Which part of you?” she asked suspiciously.

“I'm hot,” said Molly. “And my head hurts.”

“Huh,” said Miri. “You want me to get Mom?”

Molly nodded.

There followed Mom's sick-kid bustle. Thermometer! Juice! Aspirin! All other children warned to stay away!

“No one else is allowed to get sick,” announced Mom, placing five bowls of applesauce on the kitchen table. “That goes for you, too,” she said to Cookie, who had settled herself in the middle of the floor so that everyone had to step over her.

“Me and Robbie can't get sick,” said Ray, gulping milk. “We have to do that thing tomorrow.”

“Robbie and I,” said Mom.

“What thing?” asked Dad, plopping an enormous stack of toast on the table.

“That war thing,” said Ray, jamming an entire piece of toast in his mouth.

“What?” asked Mom.

Ray swallowed and said it again.

“That depends,” said Mom, “on whether Robbie's English paper is done by tomorrow.”

“Stalky!” protested Robbie.

“Excuse me?”

“He's trying to make it a word,” explained Ray. “It means really lame and annoying.”

This was followed by a lecture about rudeness that Miri didn't listen to. “Does she have a fever?” she asked suddenly.

“What? Oh, Molly. Yup, a little one,” her mother said. “No big deal, but she shouldn't go to school.”

“I'm sick, too,” said Nora. She pressed her hand against her stomach.

“Oh, that's terrible!” said Dad. “I'd better eat that toast for you.” He reached toward her plate.

Nora grabbed her toast, which was glinting with cinnamon sugar. “I'm not all the way sick,” she said.

At the bus stop, Miri watched the white puffs of her breath melt into the bright, sharp sky. It was almost cold. The elementary-school bus came, and Nell and Nora clambered on, a trace of regret for her lost sickness crossing Nora's face as she went.

Now the middle-school bus appeared over the crest of the road. As her brothers put down the branches they'd been poking each other with and shrugged their backpacks on, Miri realized what she was going to do.

“Guys!” she said quickly. “I'm not going to school
today.” She hitched her backpack up. “Don't tell, okay?”

They stared at her in disbelief. “Wait—what?” Robbie said. “You're cutting?”

“How come?” demanded Ray.

“You getting on this bus or what?” called the bus driver, the grumpy one who liked only Molly.

“There's something I have to do,” Miri said to her brothers in an undertone. To the bus driver, she called, “I feel sick. I feel like I might throw up.”

“Stay off my bus, girl,” said the driver.

Ray whistled admiringly. “Way to lie, Miri!” he whispered.

Robbie's blue eyes narrowed. “You know you're going to get busted, right?” She nodded. He shook his head and followed Ray onto the bus.

A few minutes later, Miri was racing from bush to bush, ever closer to the house. It was too bad the rhododendrons weren't there anymore, she reflected as she ran. They made great cover. Still, it wasn't too hard to find a hiding place. She hunkered down among the blackberry windmills that grew where the barn had been in 1918. It was sort of stickery and sort of damp, but she could see everyone who entered or left the house.

The first one out was her father, running down the front stairs with an armful of papers. Whoops, running back up the front stairs. And now out again, slamming himself into his car, chugging away down the driveway.

Then there was a long gap, almost an hour. Miri was forced to turn to her social studies textbook for amusement: “Mesopotamia: Land Between Rivers, Land Between Time.” What does that even mean? she thought.

“Okay, honey, I'm leaving!” Miri's mother called as she swirled out of the house. “Feel better! Drink water! Call Daddy if you need anything!” She was wearing what she called her professor costume, and she looked pretty and busy, dashing for her car with her briefcase swinging.

Miri waited a bit longer. And then a little longer, for good measure. When she finally rose, her legs felt like Styrofoam. She let herself in the front door without making a sound. The hall was still, except for the golden dust floating gently in the sunlight and the ticking of the clock. Miri glided toward the kitchen like a ghost.

It was exactly what she'd expected to see, but her stomach sank anyway: Molly stood at the open back
door, an enormous hammer in her hand, studying the boards that barred her way. As Miri watched, Molly sighed and hoisted up the hammer for her first stroke.

“Going someplace?”

Molly whirled around, her eyes wide with panic, the hammer dropping like a stone to her side. “What?” she stammered. “What are you doing here?”

Her shock steadied Miri. “Same thing you're doing,” she said coldly. “Lying.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

Molly looked at the floor. The hammer jiggled halfheartedly in the direction of the door. “I'm taking the boards down,” she muttered.

“Why?” snapped Miri.

“You know.”

“No, I don't.”

Molly lifted her eyes, gray and pleading, to her sister. “I have to go back, Mir. I can save her. Maudie, I mean.”

“I
know
who you mean,” said Miri angrily. “How?”

Molly's gaze returned to the floor. “I can keep her from meeting my dad,” she said softly.

“Got it,” said Miri with a curt nod. “You keep Maudie from meeting your father, they don't get married, you don't get born, and she doesn't die. Is that the plan?”

“Yeah,” mumbled Molly.

“Great plan,” said Miri. She glared at Molly. “You don't get born. That's just great.”

“No one will know,” said Molly miserably. “Think about what happened when I came here. We erased the other past. No one remembers when I wasn't here.”

“Except for us!” Miri was yelling now. “You and me—we remember! So it's fine with you if I have to be lonely and miss you, right? Think of what your grandma said—she said when you came here, that you were setting things
right
. And now you want to go back and mess everything up! You think I won't know you're gone?” She stamped her foot. “I will!”

Molly's gray eyes filled with tears. “Maybe not. Maybe I'll be erased from your memory. I hope.”

“You
hope
? Don't you care? About me and Mom and Dad and the kids?” Miri couldn't stop shouting. “Why, all of a sudden, do you care more about
Maudie than about us? Is it like she's your real mom and our mom's just fake?”

There was a shocked silence. “Is that what you think I'm thinking?” asked Molly incredulously. She shook her head. “No. Maudie seems like—a really nice girl, that's all. I mean, sure, she's going to be my mother, but I don't even know her. She's not my mom; Mom's my mom.” Molly frowned. “You don't think I
want
to do this, do you? I don't
want
to. I have to.”

“That's ridiculous. You don't
have
to.”

“Yes, I do.” Molly sighed. “We've said it a million times. If the magic happens again, it'll mean that we're supposed to do something. It won't just be for fun; it won't be playing around. There's something we're supposed to do.” She looked toward Miri. “Come on—haven't we always said that?” Miri nodded uneasily. They had said it, and Grandma May had confirmed it—magic was given for a reason. Magic didn't waste itself sending people through time for nothing. “So,” Molly pressed, “what does it want me to do? Why did it send us back to 1918? Why did it let us meet Maudie?”

“I don't know,” Miri admitted. “But,” she added
quickly, “it doesn't mean you're supposed to keep yourself from being born.” It couldn't mean that, she argued inside herself. It wouldn't.

“What else can it mean?” demanded Molly. “We met Maudie. And she was great, right? She doesn't deserve to die, and she sure doesn't deserve to die because of me. Right?”

“No!” said Miri. “Or yes! I don't know!”

Molly went on as though she hadn't spoken. “All this time, I wondered why I could remember both lives. It seemed wrong; it seemed like it meant I was detachable, like I had to keep remembering 1935 so I could go back to it. That's what I was scared of, and I was right.”

“You don't have to go.”

“Yeah, I do.” Molly smiled bitterly. “I have to be returned, like clothes that don't fit. I know what's going to happen, and I
can
stop it, so I have to go back and stop it. Don't I?”

“No, you don't. That's not what it means, it can't be. …” Miri struggled to find another explanation, another argument, another anything.

Molly went on, almost talking to herself now. “I'm the only one who could do it. Nobody else
could make the choice for me. Why else would I have been sent to see Maudie?” she asked again, her forehead furrowed. “There's only one reason I can think of. I'm supposed to keep her alive. And I can do that. So I should.”

An idea flashed into Miri's mind. “Wait!”

Molly looked up, hopeful. “What?”

“It's too late! They've already met! They must've! I mean, they almost had to! He was inside and she was in the yard, but that's, what? Thirty feet apart? They must've met! So it's too late, nothing you can do—”

The glint of hope disappeared. “They didn't meet,” said Molly.

“You don't know that—”

“Yes, I do,” Molly said. “Because I know what she was wearing the first time he saw her, and it wasn't a nightgown. She was wearing a yellow dress. It was almost sunset, and he thought she was light, shining through the clouds.”

“Wow.” In spite of herself, Miri was impressed. “He told you that?”

“Yeah. Lots of times.”

“Romantic.”

“I guess.” Molly's eyes dropped to the floor. After a moment's silence, she said, “I think I've figured out a way. You know, to keep them apart.”

The resignation in her voice made Miri's heart hurt. “This isn't what you're supposed to do,” she whispered. “It can't be.” She swallowed, hard. “Please don't leave.”