The Magic Half Page 5
But Miri was looking absently at the sink, where the dishes sat forgotten in gray water. She was remembering what Ray and Robbie had told her, was it only that morning? It seemed like years ago. An old man, who had lived in the valley for a long time, had said that there was stolen jewelry buried on their property. A thief had once lived in the house, but none of his loot had ever been found. Maybe it was Horst. He was crummy and nasty enough to be a criminal, that was for sure. But he’s such a loser, she thought. He’d get caught in a minute. What if he’s just pretending to be a loser? This was a worrying thought, and Miri was about to share it with Molly, when a sharp voice called from the dining room. “Those dishes had better be done!” Both girls recognized the tight crack of heels against the floor.
“Barn!” hissed Molly.
With an agonized nod, Miri leaped toward the back door—and slammed full-speed into the kitchen table. A frying pan the size of a wheel crashed to the floor with a thunderous clatter. “Sorry!” Miri managed to whisper as she flung herself out the door.
Not a minute too soon. Flo whirled in furiously. “You worthless, stupid girl!” she raged. “Are you possessed by the devil? Wouldn’t surprise me, not atall. Or maybe you’re trying to destroy my house. Is that it? I wouldn’t put it past you for a minute, not a minute! Ohh.” She knelt to pick up the vast pan, and rubbed her hands over the floor. “You took a big chunk out of the wood here. And don’t tell me you didn’t mean to—I know you! I’ll teach you about clumsy, miss!”
Meanwhile, Miri threw herself down the back steps into the soft blue night and landed with a thump in a bed of dirt. There was the barn, looming ahead of her, a dark shape against the sky. She headed toward it through a cloud of lightning bugs. At least lightning bugs in summer were the same. She could hear Flo’s harsh voice scolding Molly about the frying pan, and some soft music from a radio deep inside the house. Miri edged closer to the rhododendron bushes for cover.
Suddenly, the faded evening was pierced by two bright beams. A truck creaked down the dirt drive by the side of the house, its headlights glaring over the grass, the elm, and the tired gray boards of the barn. Miri cringed and backed herself into the nearest bush until she had fully disappeared. She heard a car door slam and mild, shuffling steps moving toward the back door. A meek knock, and Flo stuck her head out the window. “Who’s there?”
“It’s Bud, ma’am. Sissy at home?”
“Whyn’t you come to front door, Bud?” asked Flo crabbily. “We’ve got one.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the voice agreed. “Do you want me to go around?”
“Siss-y!” hollered Flo. “Bud Water’s here at the back door.”
Miri heard a window open. “Why on earth do you have to come to the back door like a cracker?” said Sissy. “I must have told you a hundred times.”
“I forgot,” said Bud. “I’m sorry.”
“Go out to the front.” The window slammed. The meek footsteps shuffled away.
Miri had a sudden vision of Sissy at about age fifty. She would be just exactly as mean as her mother. She’s only a little nice now because she’s young and pretty, thought Miri. Feeling intelligent, she climbed out of the rhododendron bush and walked quickly to the barn, pulling leaves out of her hair.
CHAPTER
7
MIRI’S EYES CLICKED open. She lay very still, trying to figure out where she was. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw rough wooden boards rising over her head. Her hand cautiously patted the floor beneath her. What was this stuff? She brought some of it close to her face. Hay. The barn. She was hiding in the barn—and now it all came pouring and tumbling back, like water out of a faucet. She sat up and shivered in the nighttime cool. Where was Molly? And what time was it? And how long had she been sleeping?
She had come up into the loft because it seemed to offer better hiding opportunities. Down below, in the regular part of the barn, there was a dopey- looking cow in a stall and a lot of rusty machinery. There were also chickens in a coop just outside, and for a moment she had thought of stowing away there, but then she realized that the chickens would probably freak out, and besides, she didn’t want to be that close to chickens. They gave her the creeps.
The cow stared at her stupidly while Miri pondered. Then she saw the ladder leading up into the darkness above. A loft—that was just exactly what she needed! Up she climbed, and the first thing she saw was a big, puffy stack of hay. In a moment, she was comfortably stretched out on top of it.
She would just rest for a while, she thought, until Molly showed up. But her eyes kept closing, and her brain, trying to make sense of the day, stumbled and looped until it was whirling with shovels and glasses and a small iron bed and a cat (where was the cat?) and Molly’s braids and fairies and Aunt Flo’s pinched nose and Horst’s meaty hand closing over a chicken leg and Molly’s smile when she said, “I’ll steal it!” And where was Molly anyway?
After a few minutes of struggling, sleep won. Miri’s eyes fell shut and she dreamed she was in a house of mirrors with her brothers and they wanted to break all the mirrors. “You can’t do that!” cried Miri indignantly. “No one will be able to see themselves!”
She was so mad she woke up.
Now, listening in the dark loft, she became aware of a sound from below. It was a quiet scraping, the sort of sound you make if you’re trying not to let people hear you. There’s Molly! thought Miri eagerly. Molly must be creeping around, looking for her.
Miri leaned forward to call to her friend but a little whisper of caution stopped her. She remembered the dining room disaster and thought, Look first. So she leaned out from the loft to peer into the barn below, expecting to see Molly scuffling about with her crooked braids and limp dress.
The barn was dim, its corners lost in shadows. But even in the half-light, Miri could see that the figure below did not belong to Molly. It was Horst. He was kneeling on the wooden floorboards near a high wagon, his wide back toward Miri, and, by the light of a small lantern, he was carefully, gently pulling up one of the boards in the floor. Miri couldn’t believe how quiet he was being.
She held her breath. What if she sneezed? Her arms began to itch, but she didn’t dare to move them. She didn’t dare move any part of herself, because being caught by Horst was the worst thing she could imagine. Frozen, she watched him, pulling ever so carefully until the board came free. He put it aside and reached his short arm deep beneath the floor, grunting quietly with the effort. Then he pulled out a black box, about the size of a shoe box, but made of metal.
At least Miri thought it was made of metal. It had a shiny surface, but she couldn’t see very well in the dim light. She stared at Horst, first squinting and then opening her eyes wide, trying to force them to see clearly. Horst fumbled in his pocket for something—a key, she guessed—and unlocked the box. It was so still in the barn that she could hear the click of the lock turning. Horst gave a little wheeze of pleasure as he looked at the box’s contents—and Miri gave a soft huff of impatience. If only she could see. She squeezed her eyes into slivers and caught the quick gleam of something like glass—or jewels!
This was what Molly had been talking about: Horst’s secret stash. And it looked like she had been right about him being a thief. Why else would he be keeping jewels hidden in the barn? Assuming they actually were jewels. If only she could see better! Miri wiggled with frustration and strained forward on her stomach to get a better view.
As she did so, a hard lump in her pocket pressed painfully into her thigh. Ow. She reached into the pocket, and her fingers touched the familiar frames of her glasses. The ones that Ray had broken that afternoon.
Silently, she pulled them out for inspection. One frame was bent and the glass had cracked across one lens, but they’d work well enough to let her see what Horst was hiding. She had to press her hand over her mouth to keep from giggling. Wait till I tell Molly, she thought, slipping the bent arms over her ears. She closed one eye and, with the other, looked through
the unbroken lens.
A cold wind blew through the cracks in the barn roof, and the rough boards of the barn seemed to wobble and bend. “Oh no!” cried Miri, wildly pulling off her glasses and hurling them away. “Not now!” She could just make out Horst’s face, startled, looking up, before he seemed to melt like wax, and she was being pulled up, up, through the center of time, while the barn and Horst and the wavering shadows fell away behind her.
• • •
“No!” Frantically, Miri rolled over and began to claw at the earth beneath her, as though she could dig herself back in time. “No, no, no . . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized how ridiculous her efforts were. Ridiculous. She sat back on her knees and sobbed with frustration and misery. She couldn’t leave now. Not yet, not without Molly. Molly would think Miri had abandoned her. Molly would be all alone again, alone in the world with her rotten aunt—and Horst.
Miri sucked her breath in sharply. Horst. He wasn’t just creepy and mean; he was a criminal, a real-life criminal. Miri groaned. Molly had no idea how dangerous her situation was, and there was no way Miri could tell her. “Don’t mess with Horst,” she whispered. Miri pictured Molly lying in her little white bed, waiting to sneak out to the barn, and she tried to send a telepathic message through time: Stay where you are.
Wiping away the tears on her cheeks, Miri lay down on a damp clump of weeds and looked at the starry night sky above her. She was home. She was back in her very own time, in her very own backyard. A few hours ago, it was all she had wanted. But now everything was different. It wasn’t right without Molly. It’s like when Mom gets sick, Miri thought. Something’s missing; something isn’t right. She sighed and glanced toward the leggy black shadows of the blackberry branches jutting into the sky. They marked the spot where the far end of the barn had been. At least, Miri reflected, the magic hadn’t dropped her from the height of the loft to the ground. The fall would have broken one of her legs, probably both.
But maybe I didn’t fall down, she thought. Maybe I was pushed up. That was what it had felt like. Slowly, Miri got to her feet and brushed off her dress. Oops. The magic hadn’t taken such good care of her glasses—they lay where she had flung them, and now both lenses were cracked clean across. Miri plucked them from the dust and peered at them in the moonlight. They looked like ordinary broken glasses. How could they send her through time?
Miri turned toward her house, which stood quiet and welcoming in the night. Despite its extra rooms and staircases, it looked solid, as though it would always be there. Lightning bugs gleamed briefly in the darkness and then disappeared in the warm stream of light that flowed from the kitchen window. Miri could see a blurry figure moving around the room. It was her mother. She felt a sudden, sharp ache— happy to be home, sorry that Molly wasn’t—and walked swiftly up the porch stairs to the kitchen door. Before she could begin to worry about explaining where she had been or what had happened, her mother looked up from the counter where she was working and opened her arms.
CHAPTER
8
WHEN SHE FINALLY REALIZED what her mother was saying, Miri almost laughed.
“. . . an imagination is a wonderful thing, Miri, and I don’t want you to think that I don’t appreciate yours. You’ve got a beautiful, rich world in that brain of yours.” Her mother stroked Miri’s forehead softly. “But baby, you’ve got to understand that you don’t live in that imaginary world. You live in the real one, and it’s much more complicated and, well—dangerous—than I’d like it to be.” She looked at Miri searchingly, and for one wild moment Miri thought her mother was telling her that it was all a dream, that Molly and her world were just made up.
“But Mom! You weren’t there! You can’t know—”
“I do know, sweetie,” her mother broke in soothingly. “You were very angry—and we need to talk about that, too—but honey, running away is not a solution. I know you read about it in books and it sounds exciting, but in the real world, it’s a bad idea. That’s why children have parents to take care of them—because the world is a crazy place.”
“Running away?” said Miri blankly.
Her mother squeezed her shoulders and said, “I know you didn’t mean to scare me. Your father said I should call the police, but I felt sure you’d be back in a few hours, and I didn’t want to get the police involved.”
That was when Miri almost laughed. Her mother thought she had run away. The idea was hilarious. She had been on the verge of running away—from Flo and Horst. But actually, all she had wanted the whole time was to run home, bringing Molly with her. She was about to tell her mom the whole story. In fact, she opened her mouth to say, Don’t worry, I didn’t run away. But she quickly shut it again.
How could she explain? Miri knew with certainty that her mother would never believe in Molly, in time traveling, in any of it. She would think Miri was bonkers and take her to a psychiatrist, who would also think she was bonkers. After a while, Miri herself might come to believe she was bonkers. And that would be the end of magic. Miri remembered the wonderful warm feeling of learning that magic was real and that it had happened to her and Molly. That was hers. If she kept the magic a secret, that feeling would be hers forever, even if it never happened again.
So she adjusted her face and tried to look pitiful. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to worry you. It was just so unfair that I got blamed for hitting Ray when he started it all. And he broke my glasses, too.” She sniffed in a pathetic way.
Her mother hugged her again. “I know,” she murmured. “I know. Let’s talk about it.”
• • •
They talked for nearly an hour, and then her mother called her father, and Miri had to talk to him, too. He told her that he understood why she had hit Ray, but that controlling her temper was an important life skill and . . . After a while, Miri stopped listening. They were being very nice, especially considering how hard she had whacked her brother on the head, but she couldn’t wait to escape to her bedroom.
When she finally entered her room, Miri glanced immediately toward the dark corner where she had found the glass lens that afternoon. Of course, she knew it couldn’t be there, because it was somewhere in Molly’s world, maybe in her pocket or something, but she had a hope that somehow the magic would let it reappear. Instead, the wood board was smooth and empty, holding nothing. The disappointment was like a weight dropping on her. Why couldn’t you just let it be there? she demanded and instantly apologized. She had read enough stories to know that magic punished the ungrateful. “Thank you,” she said out loud, stretching her face into a wide, fake smile. Sheesh, she thought after a moment, maybe I am bonkers. No, she knew she wasn’t. And besides, she missed Molly. Who misses an imaginary person?
Miri slipped into her closet and flicked on the light. Her own clothes hung unevenly on their hangers, looking out of place. Miri knelt on the untidy pile of shoes on the floor and pulled up the lid of the long, low bench. Yes—it rose with a resentful squeal. I am such a dork, thought Miri. I never even checked it before. She peered inside. Maybe she would find a clue, something that belonged to Molly, something that would prove that Molly was real and that Miri had really met her that afternoon.
At first glance, it, too, was a bust. There were a few frayed, no-color ribbons at one end. There was a glass jar containing the remains of several spiders. There was a single brown shoe with a hole in the toe. There was bunch of cloth violets that probably didn’t look very good even when they were new. And there was a stack of magazines. The secret flap that led to the attic had been nailed shut from the other side. Miri saw little nail points jutting through the wood. She thumped her fist against the boards, but they didn’t budge. Miri was about to close the bench when it occurred to her that the magazines might be interesting. She pulled the pile out and began to leaf through them. They were all from the thirties and forties: Life, Saturday Evening Post, Motion Picture, and Ladies’ Home Journal. At any other time, Miri would have liked looking at t
he pictures, but now she tossed them to the floor impatiently.
A thin paper notebook with a blue cover slid out from the pages of a Saturday Evening Post. Miri opened it, her hands trembling with excitement. “Molly Gardner” was written in flowing cursive in the right-hand corner of the first page. Wow, her handwriting is a lot nicer than mine, thought Miri. Below, where the lines began, a date was tidily noted: September 4, 1934. “Fifth grade began. Miss Dilys Fanning. Cow out. Nothing.” Immediately below on the next line was “September 5, 1934. Reading good. Laundry. Nothing.” On the next line, “September 6, 1934. Multiplication tables. Made blackberry muffins. Nothing.” Miri frowned as her eyes ran down the page. What was “Nothing”? And why bother to write at all if you weren’t going to say any more than that? She flipped a page: “Nothing . . . Nothing . . . Nothing . . .” It was at the end of every entry. She flipped another page, and another, until she came to the last entry: “July 22, 1935. Miri came.” The rest of that page and all the following pages were blank.
The notebook fell from Miri’s hands, and she stared wide-eyed at the white wall before her. It had all happened. The magic was real. She had gone back in time that afternoon and met an eleven-year-old girl named Molly. The last tiny doubt disappeared from her mind like a popping soap bubble, and a question arose to fill the newly cleared space: Why? Why had it happened? And why had the magic chosen her?
Miri was pretty sure that it was not because she was good. Cinderella, for example, now she was good: singing while she cleaned the house, happily sewing for her nasty stepsisters. And that’s why her fairy godmother had given her the coach, the dress, the prince. Miri had always found Cinderella annoying, but she was definitely better than Miri. Miri complained if she had to clean even her own room. And look at this afternoon—she had almost killed Ray with a shovel. No, the magic hadn’t chosen her because she was good.