Witch Twins (7 page)

“Mom, hold that cab!” shouted their mother as the cabby drove off. “Oh, rats! I really needed that ride to the airport!”

Then Grandy crooked a pinkie and cast:

Back back

A seven
-
second tack.

It was a time-rewind spell, and now they all were hugging their mother good-bye again, and outside they heard Grandy saying to the cabby, “Wait here for my daughter. She’s going to the airport.”

Being witches, only the twins (and Grandy) felt the time rewind.

They followed their mother as she bumped her suitcase down the steps.

“Gosh, Mom, that cat looks just like all your others.” Jill Bundkin leaned down. She studied Wilbur with her serious, doctor- diagnosing face. “He must be in the same ancestral line.”

“Of course,” said Grandy. “This is Wilbur the Fifth.”

Wilbur closed one eye and yawned. Only a witch cat can do that. (All other, regular cats have to close both eyes when yawning.)

Their mother wrinkled her nose. “If I didn’t know that it was impossible, I’d say you had the same exact ugly old Wilbur that I remember from my childhood. Right down to the same raggedy right ear.”

Wilbur sniffed. Since he was a witch cat, he could understand humanspeak and he did not like to be insulted. He was also sensitive about his ear.

“You’d better get along, sweetie,” said Grandy, giving her daughter a little nudge.

In Claire’s opinion, Grandy had never been much fun to have as a babysitter. She did not cast any spells (unless it was an emergency), she checked napkins for hidden vegetables, and she did not even let them stay up late.

“Your mother’s house, your mother’s rules,” she always said.

While she had stayed over many times, it was always for one night or over the weekend, and it was always the same.

Bo-ring!

Which made it extra surprising the next morning when Claire stumbled out to the kitchen, last to breakfast as usual, and found Grandy sitting at the table all dressed up in her black suit and silver star earrings and holding a potted orchid.

“Where are you going?” she asked as she sat down and grabbed the Lucky Oats from Justin before he polished off the box.

“To school with you children of course. What else am I supposed to do?”

“But grandparents don’t go to school,” said Claire.

“Do I look like ‘grandparents’ to you?” snapped Grandy, making quote marks with her fingers.

“Mmmnnn,” said Claire, who thought that Grandy looked pretty much exactly like “grandparents.”

“I always walk a block ahead to check for muggers, so good-bye.” Justin jumped up, grabbed his bag lunch, and ran out the door.

“Why do you want to go to school with us?” asked Luna.

“For the shopping, of course!” their grandmother answered.

Claire almost choked on her Lucky Oats. She looked at Luna, who shrugged. While Grandy was basically a friendly witch, and a friendly grandmother, her Old School ways were sometimes unpredictable.

“She might be only going online shopping, using the school computers,” suggested Luna as they trooped out the door, Justin already two blocks ahead and Wilbur, chewing on a bottlecap, taking up the rear.

“Or she might be a serious encumbrance,” said Claire.
Encumbrance
was her new favorite word. It made a wonderful bumbling sound that gave her a picture of an elephant balancing on a cucumber. “What do you think she’s carrying that orchid for?”

Luna sighed. “I wish I knew.”

Kids began to stare as soon as they passed through the fifth-grade doors. Usually parents, grandparents, and other grown-ups came though the front doors. (And cats were not allowed through any doors.)

“Let’s stick together,” Claire murmured to Luna. “Maybe we’ll luck out and she’ll want to go to Justin’s room.”

Unfortunately, Grandy and Wilbur headed right for 5A.

“Ah, yes,” said Grandy, looking around with glee as she stepped into the room. “Paradise. It reminds me of my honeymoon with my poor, lost Fred.” She rubbed her hands together. “Plenty of bartering to be done here.”

The room had changed in the weeks since Ms. Fleegerman had arrived. She had redecorated it to look just like Hawaii. There was a relief map of all the Hawaiian islands on the cork board, as well as papier-mâché flowers, colorful tissue leis, and magazine pictures of Hawaii tacked into every corner. Claire loved-loved-loved Ms. Fleegerman’s dramatic touches, such as the basket of spiky protea flowers by the pencil sharpener and the big Styrofoam volcano on the windowsill. In fact, sometimes Claire wished that she, not Luna, had been the one allowed to stay in 5A.

But Ms. Fleegerman herself was a rules-and-regulations teacher, and she did not look pleased to have Grandy march into her classroom without so much as a permission slip.

“May I help you?” asked Ms. Fleegerman, standing up from her desk.

“I am Arianna Bramblewine,” said Grandy. “Nice to meet you.” She stuck out her hand.

Ms. Fleegerman took her hand to shake. Quickly, Grandy seized and squeezed it, hopped on one foot, and cast:

Freeze this minute to its death
—

Everybody, hold your breath!

Time will stop so I might see

The riches of my shopping spree.

With harm to none,

This spell
’
s begun.

This was a powerful five-star spell (imagine how hard it would be to freeze time!), and even a witch like Grandy could keep it going for only sixty seconds, maximum.

The next minute’s silence was frightening. Claire and Luna (who were exempt from the spell) both shivered. All the kids were poised in place. Derrick Sherron was in the middle of picking his nose. Jemina Consolo was brushing her hair. Ms. Fleegerman was stopped mid-handshake, her eyes fixed on her notebook to see how she could have missed this appointment with Arianna Bramblewine.

Grandy shook off Ms. Fleegerman’s grip. Then she whisked among the desks, cackling and muttering to herself.

“My tiger-frog orchid is so valuable, I can exchange it for anything without any hassle. The question is, what do I want in return? Hmm, these magazine pictures are nice. Or what about that nice volcano to brighten up my library? I must say, teachers have become quite talented at what they can do with your basic plain, four-cornered room.”

Then Grandy spied Frieda Gunderson, frozen in the middle of copying the morning spelling words. Her mouth was dropped open in the start of a yawn, and her eyes stared sleepily at the blackboard.

Grandy’s own eyes lit up. “Maybe I’ll take that girl,” she said to Claire with a little wink. “She looks like hard worker. And I need somebody to help me with my tomato plants.”

“No, Grandy, please! Don’t take Frieda!” Claire pulled on Grandy’s wrist.

“I bet I wouldn’t even have to feed her much,” Grandy mused. “Maybe a handful of oyster mushrooms now and then.”

“Grandy,” Luna said in her strictest voice. “Stealing Frieda is not a good idea.”

“Oh, you girls are too serious for your own good!” Grandy snapped. “Child-snatching was outlawed from the Decree at least five hundred years ago. But I’m not going back from my shopping trip empty-handed, and my time-spell is running out. Eh, what’re these?”

Over the blackboard, Ms. Fleegerman had taped up cutout letters from all different colors of construction paper. The letters spelled out:

IN HAWAII, ALOHA MEANS HELLO AND GOOD-BYE!

“Now, that’s handiwork!” Grandy reached up and plucked off the first I. “She did this with nail scissors. Very dedicated. Okay, I’ll take them.” In a blink, she pulled off all the letters from the wall and stuffed them into her silver-buckled black purse. She had just buckled it shut and plunked her tiger-frog orchid smack in the middle of Ms. Fleegerman’s desk when time unfroze.

Everybody continued what they were doing, from word copying to nose picking to hair brushing.

“Arianna Bramblewine? Are you the woman who is giving the assembly with the trick monkeys?” asked Ms. Fleegerman.

“What? Oh, for goodness’ sakes, no. I’m a cat person.” Grandy lifted her chin. “But since you asked, as a matter of fact, I’m the regional school inspector,” she said mischievously.

“Really!” Ms. Fleegerman began to flip through her teacher’s notebook. “Mrs. Hass did not say you were coming! I had no idea … I would have made some special preparations. I hope my classroom presentation is satisfactory.” She looked around the room, then drew a sharp breath. “My letters are gone!”

“What letters?” asked Grandy, more mischievously.

“My aloha letters,” said Ms. Fleegerman. She pointed to the empty space where the letters had been. “They were just there, a minute ago. Class! Class!” Her voice was shrill. “Would whomever took my letters kindly return them to me!”

The first bell rang.

“Oh, where does time go? I’m usually finished roll call by now.” Ms. Fleegerman shook her wristwatch and held it to her ear. She glanced at her roll book. “Why, where did this orchid come from?”

“Compliments of the Inspectors’ Bureau. Now, then, I must be getting on,” said Grandy, “but as regional school inspector, I should warn you, madam, that you seem both disorganized and overly emotional. Come along, Wilbur.”

With that, Grandy picked up Wilbur (who had fallen asleep in the trash basket) and swept out.

Ms. Fleegerman watched her leave, then wilted behind her desk. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Claire and Luna. “Whichever one of you is Claire Bundkin, please go to your classroom,” she said in her regular strict old Ms. Fleegerman voice.

“See ya,” said Claire. She felt bad. It had been mean for Grandy to exchange those letters without telling. Claire knew that Ms. Fleegerman was having a hard enough time in 5A without having her words taken. Some kids called her Fleegermonster, and of course everyone wanted Mrs. Sanchez back. In fact, when Mrs. Sanchez had popped in last week for a quick visit and to show off her new baby Olivia, 5A had gone berserk, jumping all around and hugging her.

Nobody would jump around and hug Fleegermonster. No way.

The truth was, it was perfectly possible for Ms. Fleegerman to think that any single one of the 5A kids had stolen her letters.

Later that morning, Ms. Fleegerman marched into 5B. “I will be putting this manila envelope on a chair outside my door,” she said. “Would the person who borrowed my letters kindly put them in this envelope at his or her convenience?” she said. Her voice was haughty, but Claire knew that Ms. Fleegerman tended to get haughty when she felt unfairly treated. “My room is not the same without these letters,” continued haughty-voiced old Ms. Fleegerman. “And I worked very hard to make it perfect.”

A few kids snickered.

Claire did not snicker. She thought about the time she had practiced walking backward on her hands every afternoon for a month until she got it just right. Even though practice had roughened the skin off her palms and given her shoulder cramps, something inside her had needed to walk backward perfectly.

Claire bet that Ms. Fleegerman’s feelings about her room were a lot like her own feelings about walking backward on her hands.

With the letters, 5A had been perfect.

A plan began to form in Claire’s mind. On the way home from school, she told her plan to Luna.

“What? I don’t want to waste my time cutting out dumb letters. It would take forever,” said Luna. “Besides,
Galaxy Murk
is on TV tonight.”

“It’s a repeat,” said Claire.

“And since when is old Ms. F your best friend? She pushed you out of Five A! You should be happy that Grandy bought her letters!”

“Grandy
took
them,” said Claire.
“Taking
is not the same as
buying
.”

“She
exchanged
them,” said Luna. “And exchanging
is
the same thing as buying. Almost.”

“Is not.”

“Is.”

“Is not.”

“Is, and either way,” said Luna, “count me out. I don’t like old Ms. Fleegerman, and I don’t want to do her any freebie favors.”

“You girls got some packages,” said Grandy when they got home. Two identical brown-paper-covered boxes rested on the kitchen table.

The girls pounced and opened them. “Maybe this is something about the GSTs,” whispered Claire.

But the packages turned out to hold their ugly bumblebee bridesmaids’ dresses, newly fitted, from Regent’s department store.

“Yick!” yelped Grandy. “What are these revolting bee costumes? It’s not Halloween for another five months, three weeks, six days, and eight hours.”

“Those are our junior bridesmaid dresses,” said Claire.

“Did Furry pick them out?”

“Fluffy,” corrected Luna. “And no, she didn’t. We did.”

“Well, what horrible picks,” said Grandy. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. I’m going for a walk.” She picked up her pigeon-shooer cane and whisked out the door.

The twins rushed upstairs to their room and tried on the dresses.

They were so ugly, they weren’t even funny.

So ugly, that the only thing to do was to take them off. Fast.

“Maybe we should be ashamed of ourselves,” Luna mentioned as she wriggled out of her dress. “Especially you. You picked them out.”

“Who cares?” Claire swept the dresses into her arms and shoved them into the farthest back part of their closet. She slammed the closet door.

But she did care.

She decided to make up for it by doing something good.

“
I’m
cutting out letters,” she said dramatically, her mind made up.

“Yuck.
I’m
not,” said Luna, and she scooted out of the bedroom.

Claire sat on the floor and got out her ruler, colored construction paper, and her scissors. Thirty-three letters plus one comma, one hyphen, and one exclamation mark. Ugh! It would take forever.

With a long sigh, she began to trace the letters.

After about ten minutes, the bedroom door opened. Luna was holding their mother’s first-aid kit scissors. She sat down next to Claire and gave a big long sigh of her own.

Claire handed her a few pieces of construction paper.

They worked until Grandy called them to dinner. They hurried through their homework and continued working until late into the night. They finished the last E and the ! a few minutes before they heard the cab pull up to the front door, and they were safe in bed just in time to get their good-night kiss.