The Magic Half Read online

  For Jeffrey

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER

  1

  ONLY MIRIHAD NO TWIN. People always said, “Two sets of twins! That must have been quite a surprise!” They would smile at Miri’s parents and shake their heads in wonder.

  When she was younger, Miri had been proud of it. After all, as her father loved to remind them, only one in fifty thousand families had two pairs of twins. It was like being world champion of something. But after a while, Miri noticed that none of the smiling people ever looked at her. Their eyes moved from Ray and Robbie on one side to Nell and Nora on the other, slipping right over Miri in the middle.

  “What about two pairs of twins and an extra?” Miri had asked once. She was curled up on the old blue couch in her father’s cozy office. “How many families have that?”

  Her father had turned a slow circle in his swivel chair before he answered. “I don’t think they have statistics like that, baby. But you’re part of a special family.”

  Ha, she thought, burrowing into the faded pillows. I’m just the extra, not the special.

  Now the couch was gone, and she missed it. It had been sold, along with all the other things that Miri’s mother had decided weren’t good enough to move to the new house. It would probably be months before the new owner of the couch discovered that Miri had cut a hunk out of the bottom of one of the cushions to remember it by. Miri smiled craftily at herself in the bathroom mirror.

  She had to admit that the new house wasn’t all bad. The bathroom mirror was tinted pink, for instance, which made her look good. The bathroom door locked, too. Since they moved, Miri had spent a lot of time in there. “Hello, me,” she said pleasantly to her pink reflection. She had toothpaste on her nose. She wiped it away, and a little breeze wafted a piece of hair over her forehead. The new house was full of breezes that seemed to come from nowhere. “We’re going to freeze this winter,” Miri told her reflection. Like an answer, another gust ruffled her hair.

  Miri shook her half-straight, half-curly hair over her face. Her glasses glinted through the strands, so she took them off. I’m the Wolf Princess, she thought, cursed to take on wolfish form when the moon grows full. My terrified family locks me in the bathroom, fearful of the destruction I may cause. Miri paused to snarl wolfishly and then continued, Shut up and forgotten, I spend years in solitude, eating bread that my family shoves under the door. But one night, as the full moon rises, I escape out the window—Miri squinted at the bathroom window. She thought it looked big enough—and tear through the countryside, causing mayhem among the villagers. Only one person is brave—brave enough to pursue the Wolf Princess—and his name is—

  “Miri!” her mother called down the hall. “Have you seen the girls?”

  Miri put her glasses back on. “No.”

  There was a pause. “What are you doing in there?” asked her mother, outside the bathroom door now.

  “Nothing.” Even in her human guise, the Wolf Princess had long, silvery hair that shone strangely in the moonlight.

  “Come down and have some breakfast, then.”

  Farewell, Wolf Princess, said Miri silently and opened the door. Her mother looked at her with a questioning smile. “You okay?”

  “Don’t you think I’d look cool with silver hair?”

  Her mother considered. “At sixty, yes. At eleven, no.”

  The big, square kitchen, filled with summer light, was empty. But Nell and Nora had been there: an almost-empty ice-cream carton lay in a thickening mint-chip puddle on the counter. Miri’s mom walked to the stove and poured herself a large cup of coffee. She contemplated the mess gloomily. “Those girls are a menace,” she said.

  Miri stood next to her. “It’s not so bad,” she said. “Remember the time they cut the eggs with scissors?”

  Her mother giggled. “You’re right. That was worse. I guess they’re trying to tell me that they’re tired of cereal.” She opened a cupboard and scanned the shelves. “There’s nothing else to eat, though. I should go to the store today. But what I really should be doing is setting up my office.” She tapped her fingers against the cupboard door. “I wish your daddy wasn’t at that stupid conference. I don’t see why anybody needs to talk about geothermal energy for ten days, much less a man who— Oh my God!”

  Miri looked up, startled. Her mother was gazing in horror at the back porch. Standing outside the screen door were Ray and Robbie. Their T-shirts were streaked with mud and dust. Their hair was thick with cobwebs, and their faces, underneath smears of grime, were blazing with enthusiasm. “Hey!” Ray yelled. “You’ll never guess what!”

  “What happened to you? What are you doing out there? Don’t come inside!”

  “Guess what, Mom!” Ray bellowed. “There’s stolen stuff! In the house!”

  Robbie nodded, beaming.

  “Excuse me?” said Miri’s mom.

  “We met a guy! Who told us!” Ray hollered, as if they were miles away instead of just on the other side of the screen.

  “Stop!” ordered their mother. She looked sternly at her sons. “Ray, please stop yelling. Robbie, can you tell me—quietly—why you’re filthy and what stolen stuff you’re talking about? And who this guy is?” She nodded at Robbie. “Begin.”

  Miri’s mother was on a campaign to get Robbie to talk more.

  Robbie was having none of it. He jerked his head at Ray. “Let him tell.”

  Ray smirked at his mother and continued, “As I was saying, we got up superearly this morning, like so early the sun was rising, cause we’re going to do track when school starts, and we thought we should start training today. So we decided to run to the creek, swim around in the swimming hole, and run back.” He slapped himself proudly on the stomach. “Cross-training.”

  “And then?” prompted his mother.

  “And then,” Ray continued, “we ran through the woods. We did great. Except Robbie tripped on a root or something and cut himself because he’s a dweeb.” Robbie smacked his brother on the back of the head. “Get out,” said Ray, smacking him in return. “Anyway, we were trying to run without any sound, like those Indian dudes, but Robbie made a lot of noise when he fell and Mr. Guest heard us.”

  Miri imagined running from tree to tree, silent as air. Maybe sometime she could go along with them. “Who’s Mr. Guest?” she asked.

  “He’s the guy!” Ray said impatiently.

  Which guy? wondered Miri.

  But Ray was continuing, “He said we scared all the fish away when we were running around in the woods, even though we didn’t really make that much noise. Anyway, he’s this old guy, like really old, who’s lived in the valley for a million years, and you know what he says? He says—”

  “He says there’s stolen stuff under our house!” Robbie blurted.

  “Under this house?” said Mom doubtfully.

  “Well, it might be under the house,” Ray said. “Mr. Guest said ‘on the property.’ But no one knows where. He says way back in the twenties or something there was a guy who lived here who was a thief, and he buried the junk he stole here, and after he was gone, nobody ever found it. It could be jewelry, he said. Isn’t that sick?”

  His mother smiled at him. “That’s pretty sick, all right.”

  “Maybe it’s bones,” said Robbie in a dreamy voice.

  “It better not be,” s
aid Mom firmly. “So—let me guess how you got all those cobwebs in your hair. You crawled under the house to look for this stuff. Right?”

  “Yeah. So far, though, we only found a rake,” said Ray. “We’re going to look some more after breakfast. We’re starving,” he added.

  Robbie nodded vigorously.

  “I’ll get you all some cereal,” said Mom. “But boys, I’m not so crazy about the idea of you messing around under the house. There’s a lot of nasty stuff under houses, and your father will have a fit if you knock out any of those furnace ducts. Why don’t you look in the yard?”

  “Mom!” groaned Ray. “A thief wouldn’t put his loot out in the yard where anyone could find it. That’d be stupid! He’d have buried it under the house, in a hidden place.” Robbie nodded in agreement.

  “You know,” said Mom hopefully, “there was a barn on this property a long time ago. It was somewhere out in back, near the apple trees, I think. He could have buried it in the barn.”

  “Mom! Come on! We’re not complete morons. We won’t touch the furnace, we promise. Just let us look under the house. Please!”

  Their mother sighed. “All of my children are horribly stubborn.” She yanked gently on Miri’s hair. “All except you, thank goodness. Okay, boys, you can look under the house, but carefully. Don’t touch the furnace or the water heater. And watch out for spiders.”

  “Can I help?” asked Miri eagerly.

  Ray and Robbie glanced at each other. Then Robbie gave her one of his wide, sweet smiles and said, “Maybe later you can help, Miri. Today, Ray and I want it to be just us. Okay?” Saying no to Miri was always his job.

  “Now guys, that’s not right,” objected Mom. “If there’s buried loot, it’s as much Miri’s as yours. But honey,” she turned to Miri, her face pleading, “it’s your turn to look after the girls this morning. The boys will do it this afternoon—oh, don’t give me that look, you two—and Miri, you can go look for buried treasure then. But this morning, I have to get my office unpacked. My syllabus is due next Tuesday, and I can’t even find most of my files.”

  Miri nodded, but she said nothing. That wasn’t what she wanted—to go hunting alone. She wanted to crawl under the house with Ray and Robbie. She wanted to dig in the mysterious dirt. She wanted to hear her shovel knock against a hard surface and call out, Hey, guys, I think I hit something. She wanted them to come rushing over to her spot and scrape frantically, all three of them, until the dull shine of a metal box appeared in the flashlight beam. She wanted them to let out an admiring breath and say, Wow, Miri, you did it. But that’s not what they wanted. They just wanted each other.

  Her mother slipped an arm around her shoulder. “You know how much I appreciate it, honey. Tell you what. Next week, after my deadline, we’ll go hunting together. We’ll find that old treasure before the boys do.”

  CHAPTER

  2

  “STOP YELLING about that stupid doll!” It was Ray’s voice.

  “Sierra is my baby and I’m the mommy!” Nell was screeching.

  “She’s not Sierra, she’s Amber!” hollered Nora.

  “Who cares about your ugly doll?” thundered Robbie.

  Out in the leafy backyard, Miri turned in time to see a naked doll sail out the back door and land with a thud in a pile of dust. Instantly, shrill screams erupted from Nell and Nora, together with aggravated yells from Robbie and Ray. Miri giggled. Her brothers were finally babysitting their little sisters, and she was glad to see that they were being driven out of their minds. Served them right. Robbie and Ray had a genius for disappearing when they were supposed to watch Nell and Nora.

  Feeling free, Miri turned and wandered down the faint dirt path that led through the lawn to an enormous overgrown tangle of blackberry bushes. The new house was much larger than their tidy home in the city, but it was more disorganized, too, with rooms popping out on the sides and a saggy porch in the back. Its gray paint was peeling, but the roof was edged with lacy carved wood, heavy vines cloaked the front porch in green shadows, and there were stained glass windows that sent jeweled light shimmering through the hallway at sunset. Her mother called it “decayed grandeur,” but Miri thought it was old-fashioned beautiful.

  The garden was the same way—big, old, and shabby. When Miri first saw it, she had supposed that the circular lawn, with its shady elm and white gazebo, was the whole backyard.

  “Nope,” her father had said. “The nice part stops at the lawn, but it’s all ours, past those ugly bushes and back through the woods to the creek. Used to be a farm, I guess. I think that overgrown part next to the driveway was an apple orchard.”

  Now Miri picked her way through the stickery berry coils, looking for a sign of the barn that her mother had mentioned that morning. Stopping in the humming sunshine, she popped a blackberry into her mouth and it exploded in hot, sweet juice. If she lived in the woods, she would live on berries, nuts, and roots, which she would collect in a little basket she’d weave herself from reeds. Miri picked up a few walnut shells that lay in the dust at her feet. They would be her little cups. She would fill them with berry juice and flower nectar. Then, on the night of the full moon, she’d be awakened by dozens of tiny blue fairies with swishing silver wings. Each would take a dainty sip of the drink and pat their mouths with their gossamer hankies. In a thin, silvery voice, the Queen Fairy would call out, “You, Miriam, have given us hospitality, and in return we will make you one of us this night.” Together with the fairies, Miri would flutter through the dark woods, talking to the night birds.

  “Whatsamatter, Miri? You get stung by a bee?” yelled Ray from the back porch. Miri turned to find four pairs of eyes gazing at her as she fluttered back and forth across the grass, inside her fairy world.

  “Stop watching me, you guys! Leave me alone!” Miri ran around the blackberry bushes to find a secluded spot where she could pretend in peace.

  But even in the shade of the dusty bushes, Miri was embarrassed. Fairies. At her age. Last year her teacher, Mrs. Lorne, had written on her report card, “Miri has a dazzling imaginative capacity.” That sounded nice, but most of the other fifth-grade girls had stopped pretending. They would act out movies or maybe books, but they thought magic was for babies. Mostly, they just walked together, talking and giggling. Except for Lili. Lili would pretend anything Miri wanted. She had even changed her name from Lillian to Lili to be more like Miri. The only problem with Lili was she didn’t do any of the pretending herself. She just waited for Miri to tell her what to do. Still, Miri admitted to herself, it would feel good to see Lili right this minute.

  Miri sighed. Her glasses slipped down her sweaty nose, and she pushed them up to look out at the empty expanse of grass and weeds that stretched before her to the woods. Of course, it wasn’t really empty. There were clumps of rocks and bushes, even a few stray stacks of wood. Miri got to her feet, planning to cross through the weeds and head for the stream that wandered through the trees behind. She climbed across a row of rocks and a few mounds of dirt to reach the cool shade of the trees. Then she stopped.

  Wait.

  A row of rocks. Why would rocks be in a row? She turned to investigate. The rocks were not really rocks, but lumps of gray brick in a broken line. Miri peered around at the surrounding area. Yes—over there was a pile of collapsed wood. And there was another straight line of bricks. Out from under the blowzy blackberry bush, another stack of rotting boards jutted forward, and an old metal wheel leaned against an uneven bit of fence. An ancient bucket filled with hard, dry dirt sat next to a scrubby bush. This was it, she thought excitedly—the barn! Now she could see its outline. It was definitely the ruins of an old building, and the only old building it could be was the barn her mother had mentioned that morning. Miri found a sturdy branch, and, starting from the broken gray bricks, she drew a long line out to the pile of collapsed boards. There was one wall. Carefully, she traced three more walls by walking from fragment to fragment. There, she thought, looking at her work with satisfac
tion, that’s the barn. The hidden barn. A hidden barn would be a perfect place to bury stolen jewels. I bet this is the place. The blackberry coils rustled in a sudden breath of air, cooling the sweat on her face. Miri nodded. This is definitely the place. I bet I could dig it up before the boys! I’ll beat them to it. She pictured a little treasure chest glittering with coins and jewels. Rings were her favorites. Opal rings. She turned and raced back to the house to find a shovel.

  Miri bounced through the screen door and began scrabbling through the boxes that littered the back porch. She found her mother’s gardening gloves, and the shovel was probably nearby—

  “Whatcha doing, Miri?” It was Ray, standing in the kitchen doorway. Miri jumped—she had forgotten about her brothers and sisters.

  “Nothing,” she answered. It was a dumb thing to say. Anybody could see that she was doing something. But she wanted to keep her discovery a secret. She wanted to find the treasure on her own and bring it back to show them. She had a vision of her brothers, exchanging impressed looks while she unclasped an ancient wooden chest. She would be modest about it. And kind. But she wasn’t going to tell them what she was doing yet. They would only laugh. And why shouldn’t I have a secret? she thought. Ray and Robbie won’t let me hunt with them, so why should I tell them about my barn?

  Ray didn’t ask again. He just stood there and watched her, slitty-eyed. After a minute, Miri turned back to the pile of gardening stuff. There it was, the green shovel. Just exactly what she needed. Ray was still staring at her, she knew. She tried to think of something she could be doing with a shovel that wouldn’t interest a twelve-year-old boy—digging for worms? No, he’d love that. Planting flowers? No, he’d know she didn’t have seeds. Oh, it was too hard! Eager to find her treasure, Miri decided to make a run for it.

  She tried an old trick. “Oh no!” she exclaimed, looking over Ray’s shoulder with a horrified expression.

  “What?” he said quickly, turning around.

  As fast as a cat, Miri hurled herself out the screen door, jumped over the stairs, and raced madly across the grass.