Magic in the Mix Read online

  No answer, and suddenly, the day before came rushing back to her.

  “Mols?” Miri draped her head over the side of the bunk to peer into the bed below. It was empty and comforter-tossed.

  She’s just downstairs, Miri told herself. Just downstairs, eating breakfast, chomp, chomp, have some toast. She realized that she was talking to herself the way you do when you’re pretending you’re not scared—“There’s nothing outside that window, not a thing, just some trees, some good old trees.” Still, Miri insisted, she is downstairs. Where else would she be? 1918, said her enemy brain. Shut up, she told it. Molly wouldn’t do that. Yes, she would, to set things right. It’s exactly the kind of thing she’d do. Miri threw off her comforter and went down the ladder in the Mom-disapproved fastest possible way, which was a backward leap. She didn’t notice she was saying Molly’s name until she slammed into the kitchen. “Molly, Molly, Molly—”

  And there she was, at the kitchen table. She looked up at Miri. “Hi.”

  “Hi!” Miri bellowed in relief.

  “Are you trying to wake up everyone in the house?” asked her father. “If so, you’re doing a great job.” He frowned at her as she collapsed limply into a chair beside Molly. “Up half the night,” he muttered, turning back to his toolbox, open on the counter, “and some of us have work to do.” Mutter, mutter, mutter.

  “What’re you doing?” asked Miri to distract him from his muttering.

  He rattled something in the toolbox. “Gotta board up that door.” He jerked his head at the open back door. “So you kids don’t forget and go flying out of it. Or leave it open so the kitten falls out—” He fell silent, intent on nails, and then resumed. “But I can’t start hammering until your mama wakes up. Or nine o’clock, whichever comes first. Is this three inches?” He held up a nail.

  “Could be,” said Miri, cheerful now that Molly was found. She tapped her spoon on the table. “No glasses. Can’t see a thing.”

  “It’s three and a quarter,” said a hearty voice. Ollie’s head appeared to be resting on the door’s threshold.

  “Ollie!” said Dad, taking a surprised step back. “Oh. You’re standing on a ladder.”

  “Naw,” Ollie chortled, “I grew in the night.” He peered into the kitchen. “I’m going to get to work measuring for the posts.” He waved his hand behind him, but his eyes were glued to the kitchen ceiling. “I think maybe you got some rot up there. See how it’s peeling?”

  Dad looked at the ceiling. “One thing at a time.”

  “If you say so,” Ollie said. He gave the ceiling a longing look and disappeared from view.

  “That guy’s crazy about rot,” Miri whispered.

  “Yeah,” Molly said vaguely.

  “I got scared you’d gone back,” Miri confided, hoping for an indignant denial.

  Molly nodded.

  Miri pressed, “Even though I know you wouldn’t.”

  Molly shook her head, but she didn’t look Miri in the eye.

  “You wouldn’t, would you?” demanded Miri.

  “No. Course not,” Molly said. “And anyway, Dad’s about to board up the door. In a few minutes, I wouldn’t be able to get back even if I wanted to.”

  Miri gave her a sharp glance. Who was she kidding? Molly wasn’t a person who could be stopped by anything so paltry as a few boards. She was faking.

  Chapter 6

  Was she faking? For roughly the millionth time that week, Miri wondered.

  “Waaay back!” called Ray. “To the driveway!”

  “You’re dreaming!” hollered Molly. She took one step back. “You’ll maybe get it to the tree.”

  They were playing lettuce-ball, the only fun part of grocery shopping. Basically, it was football with heads of lettuce, but they weren’t allowed to ruin the lettuce, so it was mostly passing and yelling.

  Even though lettuce-ball was the only sport she truly enjoyed, Miri wasn’t having a good time. She couldn’t keep her mind on the game. She was too busy watching Molly from the corner of her eye, trying to read her mind. Was she planning to go back in time to save Maudie? Was she planning to erase herself from Miri’s life? What was she thinking? Oops—lettuce sailed past Miri’s shoulder, and Nora caught it, shrieking with excitement. “I got it! I got it!”

  Nora’s triumph didn’t last long. Molly raced forward to scoop her and her lettuce up and head for the goal (lettuce-ball was also like soccer). “She scores!” she screamed over her shoulder as she ran.

  “No, she doesn’t!” shouted Robbie, chasing her down.

  Miri stood in the shade of the elm tree, watching Molly. No. She’d never do it. Look how much fun she was having. She’d never play around like that if she was leaving. She’d be tense and worried, or maybe that’s just how Miri herself would be—“Ow!” This time, the lettuce hit her on the forehead.

  Miri had been repeating versions of this argument all week long. Each day, she and Molly went to school, came home on the bus, played with Cookie, did their homework, read, went to bed, and did everything they normally did. Except that it wasn’t normal.

  The most un-normal part was not talking about it. Miri had tried. In the middle of finding the volume of a cylinder—a pointless project, in Miri’s opinion—she laid down her pencil. “Are you thinking about Maudie?” she whispered.

  Molly’s eyes darted guiltily away. “No. Nope,” she said. Then, “Can we round up the decimals?”

  Meanwhile, Ollie worked on the porch, with Miri silently cheering him on. Once it was finished, the hole in time would be plugged—she felt certain of it. Five little boards over the back door were no protection from the past, Miri knew. 1918 was waiting, just over that feeble hurdle, and if Miri realized it, she knew that Molly did, too. She could almost see the past, crouched outside the door like a wild animal, ready to eat Molly up.

  You’re not sure how it works, she reminded herself. But she was almost sure. Just as she had explained to Molly before, she felt certain that their house was a place where the barriers separating past and present were very, very thin. All the events, the lives, the pasts that had ever taken place inside the house were alive within its walls, still occurring, still existing, still being. The time that she and Molly lived in, the present, was only the container, the outermost shell holding in a million pasts. What was familiar to them—their bedroom, their living room, their kitchen—was the current version, and it formed sort of a lid over past versions, the way a bread’s crust covered its interior. But the crust of the present could crack, and when it did, the past was ready to bubble up and fill the hole.

  And that, Miri reasoned, was exactly what had happened when her father and Ollie knocked down the back porch: the previous porch, existing all the while trapped under the lid of the one they’d demolished, floated to the surface of time, bringing with it the whole world of its own present—1918.

  It made sense, in its own magic way, but there was still plenty to wonder about. If, for instance, her father had happened to step out of the empty doorframe, would he have landed in 1918? Or, since Miri was pretty sure that the porch hadn’t existed only in 1918—would the magic have whisked him off to another year? And that question was minor compared with the mystery of the front door. Why did it bring them back to the twenty-first century? Miri spent a useless hour inspecting the door for clues before she’d had an inspiration.

  “Ollie?” she called, leaning out a kitchen window. “I think the front door is rotting.”

  Ollie’s thin face lit up. “I better take a look,” he said, and hurried around the house to the front. A long ten minutes passed as he peered at the surface of the door. Finally, he turned to Miri. “No rot,” he said bitterly. “Not a thing.”

  “But what about all those dark spots right there?”

  “That? That’s the wood.” He shook his head at her ignorance. “It’s just old.”

  Bingo! “How old?” asked Miri at once.

  “Old.”

  “As old as the house?” she pre
ssed.

  Ollie stepped back and looked thoughtfully at the house. “Yep.”

  It wasn’t exactly scientific proof, but it was good enough for Miri. The door had stayed the same, unchanged since the beginning of the house. Nothing had happened to it, so it had simply moved along with time into the present. All its pasts were locked under the crust of now, meaning that it would always open into the present. Miri was grateful for that, at least.

  There were other questions, of course, questions about how, who, and why, but Miri didn’t worry much about them. She was too busy worrying about Molly. When the new porch was built, the leak in time would be plugged, and 1918 would be unreachable. Molly would have no choice but to remain where she was—where she belonged. If staring could hammer nails into boards, the new porch would have been finished, but as it was, Miri had to be patient as Ollie measured, pounded, and hauled.

  “Oooh, he’s the ma-an!” Miri looked up from her thoughts. Ray was doing a victory dance. “Oooh,” he yodeled, waggling the lettuce over his head, “Ray’s the winner and you”—he pointed at Robbie—“are the big fat loser-boy, uh-huh!”

  Since neither of her brothers had ever won a game without insulting the loser, Miri didn’t understand why they both continued to be insulted by the insults. Why couldn’t they just ignore them? But they never could. Robbie, flushed with rage, stopped, pivoted, and charged at Ray. “Swarm!” he bellowed over his shoulder.

  Miri shook her head but dutifully began to run. Swarm was a Gill tradition, a sacred obligation, and no one was allowed to question it, much less ignore it. When a swarm was called, all available brothers and sisters were required to descend on the enemy like flies, head-butting, lunging, poking, dodging back and forth, side to side, up and down, until the victim surrendered in confusion. The point was not to hurt the target, but to harness the power of the mob for the greater Gill good. Swarming parents had long been forbidden, but swarming classmates, babysitters, and misbehaving siblings was very effective. Robbie, Miri, Molly, and the two little girls zoomed toward Ray, buzzing monotonously like overgrown mosquitoes.

  “Get outta here!” he cried, swatting at the closing circle of siblings. “Haters! I caught it! I won! Cut it out!”

  Suddenly, they heard the tingling sound of breaking glass.

  All six children went still and silent, too used to being the manufacturers of such sounds to be certain that they hadn’t caused it.

  “Mama?” called Nora anxiously.

  “Sorry!” It was Ollie’s voice, coming from inside the house. “Aah, sorry about that. Sorry, Pammy!”

  After a minute or two, their mother appeared on the front porch, looking harassed. “Don’t worry, kids. Ollie just broke one of the windows in the living room. Don’t worry about it.” Her eyes fell on the bedraggled lettuce under Ray’s arm. “That’s enough lettuce-ball anyway, kids. Come on in. You shouldn’t play with your food.”

  Reluctantly, they straggled in, Miri last of all.

  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 plac
e. 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.”