Paint by Magic (2 page)

"Eleven, Mom. I'm eleven." I paused. "And can't I have Coke instead of milk?"

She flushed. "Silly me—of course you're still eleven! But—no Coke. Milk is better for young bones."

I drank the milk without a word, and when she served me the cake, I ate four pieces. No way was I going to remind her that she and Dad had been talking only last week about how they were going to sign Crystal and me up for a fitness sports camp to keep us in shape over the long summer vacation—as if we don't spend the whole school year doing
activities
already! I just wanted to spend thé summer being a couch potato. I mean, who wouldn't?

Anyway, the cake seemed to melt in my mouth. I decided I could get used to coming home from school to my mom and homemade snacks every day.

As I savored each bite of this unexpected treat, I reached behind me to the cookbook shelf, where we keep the remote for the kitchen TV, but it wasn't there. Then I looked over to the counter where the little TV usually sat, and it wasn't there, either. "Hey," I called. "Mom! I think we've been robbed!"

Mom was at the sink, peeling potatoes.
Peeling potatoes?
I'd never seen her do that in my life. "No, darling, we haven't been robbed. I just thought a break from TV would do us all some good." Instead of stuffing the potato peelings down the disposal the way Mrs. White does, Mom collected them into a bowl and set them aside. "We'll have to start a compost pile," she said with a little smile. "'Waste not, want not.'"

It was all very, very weird. "
Whatever.
"

"You know, dear," she said gently, "years ago kids didn't have TV and they found plenty to do. You will, too; wait and see."

"But, Mom! What about my shows?" I
always
watch TV after school!

I stomped out of the room, ignoring Mom when she called for me to come back and rinse my plate.
Rinse my plate?
That was Mrs. White's job. Or Ashleigh's. I would just watch my shows in the family room.

But when I looked into the family room, the big-screen TV wasn't there, either. The wall looked blank without it. I tore upstairs to my room. The TV on my dresser was gone, too!

I went crazy. I ran through all the rooms—my sister's, my parents', the guest room—all the TVs were gone! I ran downstairs and out the door, to the garage, then up the narrow steps in the garage to Ashleigh's apartment. I knocked, but when there was no answer, I barged right in. Ashleigh never locks her door. I'm not usually a snoop (except when I'm spying on Crystal), but I just had to see whether Mom had tossed out Ashleigh's TV, too.

No, there it was, complete with VCR and Nintendo.

I plopped down in relief and reached for the remote.

Bliss.

Bliss for about three minutes—because there was Mom again, peering in Ashleigh's front door like the vice police or something. "Oh, Connor," she said sorrowfully. "Con, honey, come down with me and I'll read to you."

"
Read
to me?" I must have shrieked without knowing it, because Mom put her finger to her lips. "I hate to read, and I'm missing my shows! Now, leave me alone and—"

"
Shh
. That's enough. I don't want you coming in here without Ashleigh's permission."

"I don't, usually, but I want to watch—"

"No. I want to see what else you can find to do. Go over to Doug's."

"Doug has choir after school today," I snapped.

"Well, go out and play."

Play?
Was she kidding?

Apparently not. She turned off the TV and hustled me out of Ashleigh's apartment, down the stairs into the garage, and then back into our house. "You can play in the backyard, or ride your bike, or climb a tree—"

"Mom, we don't
have
any trees." That was all I could think to say. Though it was true. My dad told me there had once been a whole lemon grove where our housing development now stood, but a big fire fifty years ago had burned almost everything down, and the rest had been bulldozed later to build the new houses. Our yard was covered with thick green grass, with flower beds along the redwood fence separating it from Doug's yard next door. Our grass and flowers were tended by an ancient guy named Gregorio, the weekly gardener. In one corner our old blue-and-orange plastic climbing structure still stood, with a swing and a slide and a lookout tower. Did she expect me to
play
on that?

"You'll think of something to do," Mom said. There was a steely expression in her eyes as she turned and went back to the kitchen.

Instead of going outside to
play,
I stomped up to my bedroom. It was a cool room, basically, though I think maybe the decorator my parents hired went a
little
bit overboard with the
Star Wars
theme. I love
Star Wars,
don't get me wrong, and I love the dark blue and gold star wallpaper and the constellations stuck up on the ceiling in glow-in-the-dark plastic. And the furniture is totally cool, too. My bed is a plastic model of a starship, and there's a trundle bed that looks like a booster rocket underneath that can be pulled out for a guest.

My dresser looks like a robot, with the different drawers pulling out from the robot's body. My TV used to be on top.

The desk takes up the whole wall with the window, and it's like a big command center with my computer and telephone and my music system. I hurried over to the desk command center now, so I could call my dad in San Francisco, where people pay him big bucks to do things with computers. He always said not to call him at work unless it was an emergency, but I figured this was an emergency. He needed to know that Mom had thrown away bur TVs. How was he going to watch
his
shows?

I reached for the phone—but things were more serious than I'd thought. The TVs weren't the only things Mom had tossed. My phone was gone! And the computer—you guessed it. When I tried to turn it on, nothing happened. My light worked okay, and my CD player worked, so I knew we weren't in the middle of a blackout or something. Mom had removed all of the cables!

I stormed down the stairs to confront my mom—but at the living-room door, I stopped short.

There she sat, just like before, looking cool and unruffled in her light blue dress, with the big antique book open on her lap. There was a saucer on the table next to her, and a plate with a slice of cake. She held her teacup as if about to take a drink, but she wasn't drinking. She was just sitting there like a statue—and her face was frozen in a look of pure terror.

"Mom?" I said. Suddenly I felt scared. The air grew colder, and there was a strange silence all through the house—especially in that room, blanketing my mom. She didn't even notice I was there.

"Is that the book you wanted to read to me?" I demanded loudly from the doorway.

She jumped, slapping the book shut. The tea sloshed onto the couch. When she looked up at me, there was a bewildered expression in her eyes, but the scared look was gone. "Book?" she said. "Oh! Not at all—this is another book entirely."

"Are you all right, Mom?" My moment of being scared was over—but things still felt weird.

"Of course," she said in a firm voice, as if speaking firmly would make it true. "Let's go to the family room and I'll be happy to read something to you, darling."

"No thanks. I'm going outside to
play.
"

Our street—Lemon Street—ended in a cul-de-sac, a dead-end circle like most of the streets in our development, except the one leading out to East Main, past Kmart and the grocery store, then on to the maze of freeways. Our school is on the other side of the freeway tangle, and sometimes the school bus sits in traffic for twenty minutes just trying to inch past all the commuters. We could practically
walk
faster—but who walks, anyway?

I sat on the front step, looking out at the empty road. I don't think I'd ever sat there before, and I'd lived here for eleven years—ever since I was born. But better out here than inside with Mom and her weirdness.

I sighed. No sign of life, except for the dog across the street, who barked at me sharply from his fenced-in front yard. He was excited—glad to see me. Probably his, days were really boring, just looking out at the street, with nothing to guard or chase, and no company. Nobody's really home on our street till evening because all the adults work and the kids are at school or day care. It would be a good street to come to if you were a burglar, except that all the houses, including ours, have Silent Sentry alarm systems hooked up.

I guessed I could ride my bike—but where to? I looked up at big old Mount Diablo rising above our town. There's no more "grove" in Shady Grove, but the shade's still there, and always will be, when the late afternoon sun hits the mountain. It was shady out here now, and growing dark. Not exactly great for
playing.

I checked my watch. It was almost five-thirty. Crystal would be home soon. So I figured I would just wait for my sister's bus. Can you believe it? First time I ever
wanted
to see her. But she had to be warned that something very, very weird was going on with Mom.

I sat there listening to the barking dog until the yellow school bus stopped at the corner of our street. Then I got up and walked down to meet-Crystal. She was the only one getting off at our stop. She waved to somebody still on the bus and sauntered along in a jaunty sort of way, her blond ponytail bouncing, until the bus drove away. Then she slowed down and stopped smiling. Her footsteps seemed to drag even more when she saw me coming toward her. Obviously she was as thrilled to see me as I usually am to see her.

It's not like I hate my sister or anything. She's not especially mean to me, not the way Doug's little sister, Becca, is to him—always rampaging through his room and messing with his stuff. Crystal is in seventh grade and has a few good friends, but otherwise she keeps to herself pretty much. She looks a lot like Mom, tall and thin, with the same yellowish hair (Crystal likes to call it
golden
). She's very private and is always ordering me to stay out of her room. Once Doug and I hid under her bed after we got home from school, and no one even knew we were in the house. Crystal was messing around in her room, putting on makeup and stuff, and we spied on her. When Ashleigh called that it was time for dinner, Doug and I reached out and grabbed Crystal's ankles. You should have heard the screams. I'm surprised they didn't set off the burglar alarm.

Crystal's bed looks like a castle, with a headboard made of some sort of fake stone built like a turret. There's a pink flag coming out the top, and a painted Rapunzel with a long yellow braid hanging from the top window. Her desk chair is a velvet padded golden throne, no kidding. She's not into fairy tales, like you might think, but is really big on modern-day royalty. She's got this thing for kings and queens and stuff. Her goal is to go to England and meet everybody, and it would be like she was already friends with them because she's read all these books about them. She plans to marry Prince William or Prince Harry. Prince William is supposed to be king someday, so that would make Crystal the queen, and she's already planning how to decorate their palace. If it falls through with William or Harry, she's got plans to hook me up with some English princesses named Beatrice and Eugenie. I told her I'd only ever marry somebody whose name I could pronounce.

Anyway, Crystal was walking slower and slower and finally stopped in front of me. "What are
you
doing here?" she asked, as if I were the last person in the world she'd expect to see on Lemon Street.

"I've come to warn you about Mom," I began. "She's home from work early, and something's wrong with her. She keeps freezing up—like she's in a trance."

"Is she sick?" Crystal asked quickly, and started walking fast. "Is it, like, a brain tumor?" Ever since our grandmother died last year of cancer, Crystal has been worried that something will happen to one of our parents. And now something had, but not like Crystal meant.

"She's not sick," I assured her, "but she's sort of gone crazy. She looks different, for one thing, and she's acting like she hasn't seen me in a year—for another thing.
And
she's gotten rid of all the TVs—"

"
What?
" shrieked Crystal, latching on immediately to the most important part.

"Yup. Every TV in the whole house."

"But there's a special on about Prince Charles tonight! And after that, I need to watch—"

"Well, you won't be watching anything. She'll probably send you out to
play,
just like she did me."

Crystal stopped again and stared at me. "What do you mean,
play?
" We were in front of our house now. The dog across the street barked once more, then fell silent.

A cold wind was blowing. It blew a sheet of old, yellowing newspaper down our quiet, empty street. You could hardly see Mount Diablo anymore, the sky was so dark. "Let's go inside," I said, and sighed. "Then you can see for yourself."

We went in. Mom was standing at the kitchen counter, with a big knife in her hand. Sliced tomatoes lay on the cutting board, and something was simmering on the stove. It smelled wonderful—almost as good as the Thanksgiving feast we'd had at our favorite restaurant downtown. And it sure smelled a lot better than our usual microwaved Reddi-Meals.

Mom's hand held the knife steady over the tomatoes. Steady and unmoving. A gentle smile was locked on her face, but her eyes looked panicked. She must have cut herself somehow. There were little beads of blood at her hairline. One slid slowly down the side of her face and dripped onto the counter.

"Mom!" I shouted.

No response. Mom was a statue of a lady cooking dinner. I felt a flutter of panic in my stomach, like a little moth trapped at a closed window, and I heard Crystal's sharp intake of breath just behind me. Then I stepped right up close to Mom and clapped my hands hard.

"Yo, Mom! Earth to Mom!" I yelled. That did the trick. Mom sort of shivered for a second, and the knife dropped out of her fingers. I saw her take a deep breath. Then she turned to us, her empty eyes filling with pleasure after a moment.