Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble) (4 page)

No one heard a peep from Anya on Sunday, and part of me wondered if she’d been shipped off to military school. When I saw her at her locker on Monday, I felt a flicker of relief. Anya turned to face me, her arms crossed, and her face mottled with fury.

I stopped, mid-stride, confused by the hostility. “Um, Anya?”

“I am grounded forever, and it’s all your fault!” Her eyes blazed as she took a step toward me. “How could you, Zoe?”

I opened my mouth and a cross between a laugh and squeak came out. Was she serious?

“I don’t even have a phone! And Camille’s stupid mother embarrassed me in front of Brice. He probably won’t ever speak to me again!”

“Anya, I don’t think you should be trash-talking Camille’s mother,” I cautioned in a quiet voice.

“No, she shouldn’t,” Camille snapped angrily from behind me.

I turned to see Camille’s angry expression mirroring Anya’s. Only this time, the rage wasn’t directed at me.

“Zoe,” Camille said, her eyes still on Anya, “walk with me.”

“I’d love to,” I said, and turned to leave with my real friend.

We heard the locker slam as we walked down the hall. “She blames my mother?” Camille asked with outrage.

“And me apparently,” I said.

When I got to homeroom, I realized I was in danger of crying. I didn’t do well with people yelling at me, even if they were totally in the wrong and I was in the right. Jake hadn’t gotten there yet, so I took my usual seat. Seconds later, he walked through the door, and I instantly perked up at his smile. Stupid Anya.

“Hey,” he said in that deep voice that made my heart beat faster.

The boy truly was beautiful, with his blue eyes and blond curls.

“Hey,” I said as he slid into the desk next to me.

He reached for my hand and raised it to his lips, a new morning ritual that I adored.

“Mr. Townsend!” our teacher, Mrs. Hale, said as she entered the room. “Kindly refrain from pawing at Miss Miller during school hours.”

I snatched my hand back as the room erupted in laughter. Mrs. Hale had a habit of using embarrassment to control our behavior. I’d never been her victim before, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Jake winked at me and I smiled. Totally worth the rebuke.

When I looked up at Mrs. Hale a few minutes later, she winked at me too. Most of my teachers liked me. It’s a good thing they didn’t know I’d caused the Frog Fiasco. If I let my guard down, I could hear the sound of the frogs splatting as my mom drove us home that night. The frogs and toads had covered the streets, flooded swimming pools, and sent scientists and the Council scrambling to gain control. Yeah, I’d brought a plague down upon the entire planet. But it wasn’t my fault. I’d accidentally mixed a table full of nacho toppings by falling into it, and the magic loose in the air on Halloween had done the rest. The result, other than a lot of frogs, had been disclosure of my toad slime substitution, and the Council sending Dr. Finnegan to work with me.

Anyway, as I watched Mrs. Hale take attendance, I found myself thankful that non-magic people, the majority of the planet’s population, had no idea I was to blame.

“Present,” I said on cue, even though she obviously knew I was in the room.

When Mrs. Hale nodded and moved on, I leaned toward Jake and whispered, “Did you hear about Anya?” We hadn’t discussed it yesterday at the rink.

“Kent told me. She’s grounded.”

“Yeah, and she blames me for not going over there.”

“Why’d she sneak out anyway?”

I guess Kent hadn’t told him everything. “Some guy she likes.”

“Oh.”

Jake had dated Anya for more than two years, and both of us worked hard to avoid thinking about their history.

“She’ll get over it,” he said softly, and then louder, “Present,” when Mrs. Hale got to his name on the roll.

“I’m getting tired of her drama,” I whispered.

“You’ll get over that too. You guys have been friends forever.”

We had, but I wasn’t so sure I was going to overlook yet another tantrum from Anya. Camille had been incensed about Anya’s comment about her mother. She may not forgive Anya either.

English was next, and sitting through a class with Anya was going to be interminable.

Chapter Three

Anya shot daggers at me with her eyes for fifty minutes in English, but then I had biology with Jake, Kent, and Camille. In third period Western Civilization, Camille and I concentrated on ignoring Anya. Normalcy returned after lunch, where Anya chose to ignore us and eat outside, and continued until I got home.

Beginning at about seven o’clock, Anya started calling. No doubt her mother had given up on her punishment already. I didn’t bother to listen to her messages. When she finally gave up and texted me, I relented enough to read it.
I’m so so so sorry. Please forgive me. Best friends forever
.

Anya was apologizing already? No way. She couldn’t mean it. She held grudges, and she would not have gone from ticked-off psycho to Miss Apologetic in less than twelve hours.

She wanted something, I realized. She had a reason to say she was sorry. I turned my attention back to my math.

Mom tapped on my door around nine.

“Come in.”

My mother stepped into the room. “You okay?”

“Sure. Why?”

“You aren’t going to like this, but Anya is coming home with you tomorrow.”

“Mom! I don’t want to deal with her!”

“I know you don’t, Zoe, but her mother asked if she could spend a couple hours here after school. She doesn’t want to leave her at home unsupervised. And after hearing about her behavior, I can’t say I blame her.”

“Seriously? She screamed at me. She called Camille’s mother ‘stupid.’”

“I know. I’m not requiring you to be nice. Just to let her stay here.”

“Fine,” I said, opening my laptop to instant message Camille and complain. Mom had already promised anyway. She didn’t like to go back on her word.

“Thanks, Zoe.”

Tuesday flew by. Jake and Camille couldn’t believe I was going to have put up with Anya this afternoon.

Neither could I. I spent most of the day trying to pretend she didn’t exist.

It didn’t hit me until we got to my house and Anya saw the picture on the refrigerator of me and Dr. Finnegan that we were in for some trouble.

“Oh my God! Who is this hottie?” she demanded as soon as she saw it.

“Nobody,” I said.

She snatched the picture out from the magnet to examine it more closely. “Zoe Miller, you have so been holding out on me! Is this like some hot cousin or something?”

“No.” I quickly calculated my chances of Anya not seeing Dr. Finnegan when he came to the door. Very bad. May as well tell her now. If I tried to lie, she’d find me out and get mad. “He’s my tutor.”

Anya’s eyes widened. “He’s your chemistry tutor?”

I nodded.

She started laughing. “Oh, Zoe, now I see why you’re willing to waste your time! I should have known there was a reason.”

After all these years of friendship, she should have known studying science wasn’t a waste of time for me. “Whatever,” I said.

“So how old is he? Is he in high school or college?”

He’s a ninety-five-year-old man and a brilliant potions master, I wanted to say. “College,” I said since that sounded more reasonable.

“He’s so cute that I don’t even care if he’s smart.”

He’d most definitely care that she wasn’t. Okay, so that wasn’t fair. She wasn’t dumb, just easily distracted. By boys.

“When does he get here?” she asked, reaching into her purse and pulling out a lip gloss.

“Five,” I said, wondering how I was going to make this up to Dr. Finnegan.

“How much are you paying him anyway?” Anya asked. “My mom would probably love it if I took some chemistry lessons.”

No way. “He’s full up,” I said. “There’s a waiting list. It took me six months to get in.”

She didn’t look fazed.

“And you have to take a science aptitude test first.”

“A science test?” Her shoulders slumped. “Does he teach anything else?”

“No.”

“Oh, well,” she said giving up on the tutoring notion. “I can at least see him on Mondays at your house.”

Lucky me.

The doorbell rang at ten minutes before five.

“I’ll get it,” Anya said, jumping up from the couch a split second ahead of me.

“Anya! It’s my house,” I wailed as I chased her across the living room.

She opened the door to reveal Dr. Finnegan wearing another T-shirt and some khaki shorts.

He took one look at Anya and grasped the situation. She wasn’t subtle, and while I couldn’t see her face, I suspected she was batting her eyelashes at him.

“Hi,” she gushed. “I’m Anya, Zoe’s best friend. She was telling me about you, and how she had to wait six months to land you as her chemistry tutor. But I’m sure you can make exceptions to the waiting list when you really want to. Can’t you?”

Dr. Finnegan blinked twice and then glanced at me.

I grinned. He was in big trouble walking around looking that gorgeous.

“Well, hello, young lady,” Dr. Finnegan said. “I didn’t realize Zoe had a guest.”

“I’m so sorry, Dr. Finnegan.”

“Doctor?” Anya laughed. “How can he be a doctor when he’s only, what, nineteen?”

Oh crud. “It’s, um, a courtesy title. For tutors. You’ve never had a tutor, so you wouldn’t know.” I turned back to Dr. Finnegan. “I know that as a college student your time is very valuable and that I committed to freeing my schedule for you, but I forgot about my friend coming over. Her mother should be here soon.”

He raised his chin slightly in a nod of understanding.

“Why are you talking all weird like that, Zoe?” Anya asked.

Because you’re ruining everything! “Weird like what, Anya?”

Dr. Finnegan cleared his throat. “May I come in while we’re sorting out our schedules?”

“Oh,” Anya said. “Sorry.” She stepped back to let him in the house.

Dr. Finnegan stepped into the living room. “As for the courtesy title,” he said with a grin. “Maybe you should call me Finn.”

Finn definitely suited him.

“Okay, Finn,” Anya said clamoring for attention.

I stood in the living room unsure about what to do next.

“You can go ahead and start,” Anya said. “I’ll just watch.”

Watch us brew potions? Not going to happen.

I looked to Finn for help.

“Let’s get started then,” he said. “We’ve been setting up at the kitchen table.” We walked to the kitchen and Dr. Finnegan sat on the far side of the table. Anya pulled out a chair right across from him. The better to ogle him from. I sat next to her.

“We’ll start by reviewing the periodic table. Why don’t you run through the Dubnium facts?” Dr. Finnegan kept his eyes on mine, probably to avoid the looks Anya was shooting him.

Nicely done. Bore her with chemistry. “Atomic number 105. Symbol Db. A radioactive synthetic metal,” I began.

Fifteen elements later, I glanced at Anya. She should have been screaming and running for the door. Apparently, the view was worth the boring chatter. She continued to stare dreamily at Dr. Finnegan.

Anya’s mom finally got there to pick her up just as my mother got home from aerobics class. Anya’s mom honked like usual.

“See you soon, Finn,” Anya called flirtatiously as she left the kitchen. “I’m here a lot.”

Not until Thursday, I thought, but I couldn’t take even one more day like this. I had to stop her from coming.

Mom came rushing in as soon as Anya was out the door. “We forgot all about Anya seeing Dr. Finnegan!” She set her purse on the counter by the fridge and came over to us.

“How we did that I’ll never know,” I muttered.

“I’m so sorry, Dr. Finnegan,” Mom said.

He held up his hand. “These things happen. Although I must admit it was a little unnerving to have someone young enough to be my great-granddaughter leering at me.” He laughed. “Yet another unforeseen effect of my selfish transformation.”

“We haven’t even started yet,” I told my mother. “What a waste.”

“I don’t have any pressing engagements, Zoe,” Dr. Finnegan said. “I’ll be happy to stay until we complete today’s lesson.”

“Really? Thanks!”

“And start calling me Finn, even in private. We don’t want to raise anymore eyebrows than we have to.”

“Gotcha. Finn.”

“Finn,” my mother mumbled. “Got it.” She gave me a tired smile. “I’ll let you two get to work. I’ll be in the library if you need me.”

“You are so lucky!” Anya said at my locker on Wednesday morning.

“Good morning, Anya.” I hoped she wasn’t going to spread the news about my tutor all over the whole school.

“Finn’ll be there tomorrow, right?” Anya clutched her science book to her chest.

I nodded.

“I am so lucky that Mom is making me get to stay with you after school!”

I was so lucky she had no clue about Dr. Finnegan coming to my house on Saturdays. She’d move in if she found out.

Wednesday lasted forever. Anya kept pestering me about Finn which made Jake more and more annoyed. I wanted nothing more than to dive in and start working with Finn.

I couldn’t concentrate on my classwork because I had a big decision to make. I might not be able to continue with the toad slime, but I had a long list of potion ingredients that needed low cost, edible substitutions. Tomorrow night, I was going to convince Dr. Finnegan, Finn, that we should work on either unicorn horn or eye of newt. Unicorn horn would be tough. I only had a few ideas of where to start. Eye of newt shouldn’t be too bad because I already had a long list of possibilities. Whatever gut instinct I had that helped me find the toad slime substitution was working a lot better on the eye of newt. But unicorn horn was the rarest of all the potion ingredients. I had sixty-four ounces of it saved up because I’d been asking for it as a gift for special occasions for years.

Newts might be happy about keeping their eyes, and yes, my substitution would make a difference in getting by the FDA. But to find a replacement for unicorn horn would be epic. The scholars like Dr. Finnegan had written that we’d probably only found one-tenth of the possible potions that unicorn horn made possible. The expense kept academia from conducting the extensive experiments that had been instrumental in developing potions with other ingredients. Unicorn horn could be essential to the cure of cancer, to solving the problems that witches hadn’t yet conquered.