Frogs & French Kisses #2 (17 page)

“He was freaky looking,” Will says teasingly.

“Lucky he grew up to look more normal,” Mitch says. “More like us than Dumbo.”

Raf winks at Melissa. “If I looked like either of them, I’d never leave my room.”

Why doesn’t he wink at me?

“Oh, tough love from Lobes!” Will says, and laughs.

I give Will a wink. He winks back. Ha!

“What’s a mooshie?” annoying Melissa asks.

“Pulling his earlobe,” Will explains. “Go ahead, try it.”

Raf is still blushing, but he’s smiling, too. Adorably. And the little-brother thing is so cute.

Not cute! Not cute!

Melissa pulls on his earlobe and the entire table cracks up. “Very soft,” she says.

The waiter comes to clean off the table, interrupting the love fest and saving me from intense stabs of jealousy.

“Any news on the Columbia scholarship?” Don asks Will.

“What scholarship?” I ask.

“No big deal,” Will says dismissively. “The political science department is considering giving me entrance money. Nothing major—just some money for books.”

My boyfriend is modest, too! Take that, Raf. And political science! My boyfriend probably wants to be president— which means, one day, I could be the first lady. If I kept the spell up that long, which I wouldn’t, of course. But he might have fallen so deeply in love with me by prom that even without the spell he will still adore me—and I him—and we’ll live happily ever after, or something like that. That is so cool.
So cool.
I would make the best first lady ever! I could wear tailored suits and say, “Air Force One, fly me to Bermuda!” And I’ll have bodyguards. And, of course, do lots of charity work and stuff. Fix health care and social security . . . Would I have to cut my hair short? All the first ladies have Grandma Hair. I wonder if that’s a requirement. I could always cut it and then grow it out as soon as he’s elected. First lady for thirty seconds and I’m already shirking my duties.

Anyway.

“I should have gotten a scholarship to NYU,” Mitch says.

“For what?” Will asks.

Mitch grins. “My good looks?”

The whole table groans. “I think your head might need its own chair. It’s getting fat,” Raf says, smirking.

I stifle a laugh.

“I thought the youngest one was supposed to be the ham,” Melissa says.

Isabel smiles at her three sons. “Not mine. My baby is the introvert. My oldest can’t stop talking, and my middle one is on a quest to run the world.”

Melissa touches Raf’s hand. “Raf? Are you going to run for student council president too?”

He shakes his head. “Not interested.”

“Really?” Her face drops in disappointment. Someone wants access to the soc lounge. “You’d be so good at it.”

“I doubt it. I can’t suck up to so many people.”

“Hey!” Will says, obviously offended. “I didn’t suck up to anyone.”

“Kidding, kidding.”

How rude. “If you’re such an introvert,” I blurt out, “why did you try out for the fashion show?”

Our eyes lock. “I didn’t,” he says. “Will signed me up.”

“I knew it would be good for you,” Will says. “You needed to make friends besides T. S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas.”

Oh. I tear my eyes away from Raf and smile at Will. How sweet is he? Worrying about his little brother.

“Are you going to be in the show again next year?” Melissa asks Raf.

He shrugs. “Maybe.”

“And what about you, Rachel?” Melissa asks, the evil glint back in her eyes. “Are you going to try out for the show again too?”

“I might,” I say, and pick up my glass of water. Maybe I should dump it on her. How could Raf like someone so awful? It shows poor character. Will is definitely the better brother.

“Mom,” Mitch is saying, “will you sew on my camp labels for me?”

Camp? What camp?

She nods and takes a sip of wine. “Sure, dear. Bring over whatever you want labeled.”

“Don’t you think twenty-one is time to get a real summer job? Or at least sew your own name on your T-shirts?” says Will.

Isabel smiles patiently. “Oh, come on now. There’s nothing wrong with a little help from Mom. I’m helping Raf with his camp labels again this year. And I’m happy to help you, too, Will.”

The tips of Raf’s floppy ears turn pink. I resist the urge to give him a mooshie.

“I didn’t know you worked at a camp!” I say to Will. I’ve never understood what the appeal is. Tents? Mosquitoes? Forced swimming lessons? Not my cup of tea. If my parents had been inclined to send me somewhere for the summer, I would have opted for Club Med.

“Yup. Wood Lake. It’s up in the Adirondacks. Didn’t I tell you I was going back this summer? My
last
summer,” he says to Mitch.

“You’re just jealous of all the power I’m going to have as a section head,” Mitch says.

“I can’t believe they’re making you the boss of anything.” Will makes a face at his brother and puts his arm around my shoulders. “Rachel, what are you doing this summer? Why don’t you come too?”

I almost spit out my water. “No thanks, camp’s not for me.” As much as I like Will, I’m too much of a city girl.

Raf nods. “I can’t really see you there,” he says.

Excuse me? I stew silently. How dare he comment on my camp potential!

“May I take that plate?” asks the waitress, and our pies are suddenly in front of us. Who does Raf think he is? From now on, I’m all about Will. Raf who?

After Don pays the check (Will tries to pay for our share, but his dad laughs him off), Melissa suggests that the six of us go to a movie.

“I’ve already seen it,” I say quickly. This painful night must end. I’ve never felt more confused. I
can’t
stop thinking about Raf.

Melissa laughs snarkily. “We haven’t decided on one yet.”

“I’ve seen a lot of movies lately. And it’s already tenfifteen, and I told my mom I’d be home by twelve. Maybe another time.”

We push our chairs back and head toward the door in a single line. And that’s when I can’t help staring at the world’s best cleavage.

I don’t often stare at cleavage. But the woman’s dress is so low cut and her cleavage is literally spilling over and—

That silver heart necklace looks familiar. That neck looks familiar. That chin. That face. Oh. My. God. It’s my mother. My eyes whip back down to her cleavage. That is not my mother’s cleavage. Well, it wasn’t my mom’s cleavage yesterday. My mother is sitting at a table for two, wearing a low-cut black dress I’ve never seen before, chewing on a piece of crust. Across from her is Adam.

Mitch bumps into me from behind because I’ve stopped short. He follows my line of vision. “Sweet,” he says, and then whistles, which causes my mom to look up.

At first she smiles, but then awareness washes over her face and her cheeks drain of color. She folds her arms across her chest. Too late! Then she pretends she didn’t see me and looks back at her date.

My mouth opens but no sound comes out. Did the woman who gave birth to me just ignore me? “Mom?”

She doesn’t look up. Is this not my mother? Maybe my mom has a doppelganger too.

The woman bites her thumbnail. Oh, it’s my mother all right. “Mom?”

She looks up, feigning surprise. “Well, hello there!” Is she kidding me? “Adam, you remember my daughter Rachel.”

“Nice to see you again,” I say weakly.

“I thought Rachel just called you,” Adam says, looking confused.

“Did I say that?” my mom asks. “I meant Miri. I’m always doing that. It’s
Miri
who needs me to come straight home after dinner.”

Huh? What? “There’s nothing wrong with Miri. When we left she was—”

My mom gives me a please-shut-up look and I realize that she used my suggested make-your-cell-phone-ring-magically -when-you’re-bored trick. And I just totally busted her. Oops.

“That’s your mom?” Mitch says, poking his head over my shoulder. “Nice.”

Will, who’s already a few tables ahead, comes back. “Hi, Mrs. Graff. We were thinking of going to a movie. Is it cool if Rachel’s home a little later tonight?”

I try to shake my head without actually shaking it. Why can’t I project my thoughts? Why why why?

“Of course, Will!” she says with a great big smile, obviously thinking she’s doing me some sort of favor. “And I told you to call me Carol.”

Will takes my hand and squeezes. “Thanks.”

“Terrific,” I mutter, giving her and her breasts the evil eye all the way out the door. I wanted a friend for a mother. When am I going to learn to be careful what I wish for?

12

It’s One A.M. Do You Know Where Your Mother Is?

Miri’s light is still on, so I pound on her door. “You up?”

No answer. I open the door to find her room empty. Where in the world is she? Oh, no. She might actually
be
anywhere in the world.

I’m about to panic when there’s a blast of cold and light, and a soaking-wet Miri materializes in the middle of her room. “Hi,” she says, blinking furiously, startled to see me. “When did you get home?”

“Two minutes ago. Where
were
you?”

“Arkansas. De-polluting the Mississippi. How was your night?”

“Lame.” I could not concentrate on the movie. First of all, it was one of those action extravaganzas consisting of seven car chases, one after the other, which made me dizzy. My larger problem was that we were all sharing one super-sized popcorn, which Raf was in charge of. So even though I wanted nothing more than a handful of buttery delicious-ness, I couldn’t exactly reach my hand into my ex’s lap. How would it have looked?

Melissa was giggling and whispering to Raf the whole time, which I found annoying and infuriating. How could a guy who liked me like her? But the most distracting part was Will’s fingers, which were drawing circles in my palm. See, I’m so over Raf. Will is just amazing. Smart, handsome, ambitious. A senior. What more could I want in a boyfriend?

Miri strips out of her wet clothes and leaves them in a lump by her door.

I cover my eyes. “Mom isn’t home yet, is she? I ran into her at the restaurant. Can you say
embarrassing
?”

“Nope, she’s still not back.” We both silently mull this over.

I sit down on her desk. “Do you think she’s gone a wee bit off the deep end? She used magic to do laundry.”

Miri sighs. “Yesterday she pretended she made those Mexican tofu tacos from scratch. But I so saw her zap them up.”

“What is up with her?”

“She’s been acting weird ever since Dad got married. Dating, letting me do magic. And then you convinced her to use a spell or two. Or a million. And I found an empty pack of cigarettes in her room. On top of everything, she’s smoking again.”

She has gone a bit overboard. My mother obviously doesn’t know the meaning of moderation. Speaking of which, the waistband of my pants is digging into my stomach. I ate too much pizza. And tiramisu. And Will’s licorice at the theater. Good thing I didn’t partake in that popcorn; I wouldn’t be able to breathe. A yawn escapes my lips.

“You look exhausted,” Miri says. “Why don’t you go to sleep?”

“I will. What about you?”

“I just have one more spell to find tonight. The bushfires are seriously endangering lives in California,” she says. “Remember last year? How many people were hurt? I need to stop them now.”

I pat down her soggy and tangled hair. “Moderation? Hello?”

She gives a small shrug. “At least I know where I get it from.”

“Ready to work?” asks my irritating sister as she yanks the covers off my half-asleep body. This is known in our apartment as the Wake Up by Freezing Technique. She discovered it way back when she was three and has been using it to torture me ever since. I mumble a very bad word into my pillow.

“We have lots to do today!” she sings.

I pull the covers back over my head. “Come back later. Go bother Mom.”

“Get with the program, deary. Mom is already long gone on today’s breakfast date. And from there she goes straight to her lunch date. It’s just you and me. All day.”

I groan. Think fast. “I have to—”

“Don’t go making things up.”

I roll into a sitting position. “What are your plans for us, precisely?”

“First we’re making a TV for your auction. Then we’re making rain in California.”

Sounds fair. “One project for me and one for you?”

“If you mean one for the pathetic prom and one for the betterment of humankind, then yes.”

After a shower and a bowl of cereal, I’m ready to work. I sit myself down on her desk, swinging my legs. “Zap it up, baby. Give me a whopper of a TV.”

She pushes me off her notebook. “I found the perfect spell. It’s called the incarnate spell.”

“Creepy sounding. How does it work?”

“We need a picture of what we want to create, a half cup of broken mirror, a half cup of crushed peanuts, and two cups of dirt.”

“I can find that.”

“Good,” she says. “Go to it while I work on the rain spell.”

My first stop is the apartment building’s mail room off the lobby downstairs. There I search through the recycling bin for one of the millions of flyers and catalogs that get tossed out daily. Win a Million Dollars! Yeah, right. Free CDs! Sure. Carpet Cleaning! No, thanks. Circuit City electronics! Ding, ding, ding, we have a winner! I carry the catalog back upstairs, plop myself onto the couch, and search for the perfect TV. Hmm. There are an awful lot of terms that sound like a foreign language. Like plasma. Composite video. S-Video. Aspect ratio. And many acronyms that I don’t know the meanings of. Like LCD. HDTV Non-CRT. RGB+H/V. How about T.I.V.C? This. Is. Very. Confusing.

“Miri, what kind of TV should I chose?” I scream.

“Busy saving California!”

I flip and flip and flip through pages. Finally, I find a TV I like: 50’’ HDTV Plasma Display Wide-screen. It looks larger than our apartment. Possibly the size of Times Square.

I like this one the best because the image on the screen is a scene from
The Sound of Music,
and most of the others feature football. In the picture, Maria (aka Julie Andrews) is sitting on the green grass with her guitar, singing to the dressed-in-curtains von Trapp children. I love that part! This must be a good omen. And the blue of the Austrian mountains and the green of the grass are quite vivid; I bet this TV is top-of-the-line. “Doe, a deer, a female deer,” I sing happily. “Ray, a drop of golden sun. Tee, a television, I found myself ”—ha-ha—“far . . .”—hold the note, you can do it!—“a long, long way to run . . .” I run, giggling, into my sister’s room. “Found it!” I say, shoving the catalog under her nose. “You like?”

“Well done. Now find the other ingredients.”

No fun. “How do you solve a problem like my Miri-a?” I sing all the way back to the couch. Next! A half cup of broken mirror. That sounds sketchy. Am I supposed to break a mirror? Won’t that give me lots of bad luck? “Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrrriiiiiiiii?”

“I’m wooooooooooorking. Figure it out!”

What is luck, anyway? I bet my mom has a hand mirror somewhere. Ten minutes and a large mess later, I find a small one under the sink. Now, where best to break it?

Kitchen table? Nah, don’t want to eat glass shards by mistake. Bathtub? Don’t want to bathe in them either. Hmm. I’d better do it out in the hallway. (Though if anyone comes off the elevator as I’m in midshatter, they might have me arrested; is this vandalism?) I lay out the remaining catalog papers on the floor and place the mirror on top. I’m about to give it a good heeling when I realize I’m not wearing shoes. Brilliant. Back inside I go.

Oops. A key would be so helpful. Ring. Ring.
Ring! A
drop of golden sound . . .

Miri opens the door, scowling.

“Sorry. Just need a shoe. And a key. Wanna watch me break the mirror?”

She hands me a pink sneaker and grumbles, “Fine.”

“Not that shoe. Give me one of Mom’s.” She hands me a high heel (another new shoe? Mom is unbelievable), and I slip it on. Very nice. I should wear these things more often. They’re so glam. “Ready? Set . . . go!” I smash my foot down. Crunch. “Yay! See? I have everything under control; no need to give me that look.” I bend over to pick up the large shards. Oh. “Can you pass me something to put these pieces in too?”

By three o’clock, I have collected all the necessary ingredients. “Operation Wide-screen TV for the Auction, known in TV lingo as OWSTVA, is primed and ready to be turned on. Tuned in. Booted. Energized. Channeled . . .”

“Can you stop with the bad TV puns, please?” Miri begs as she dumps the soil I harvested from the dead kitchen plant into the cauldron.

“But it’s fun. Try it. Are you ready for prime time?”

She throws a peanut at my arm. “Why don’t you help?”

I sit cross-legged next to her. Tigger rubs his face against my knee. “What should I do?”

“Crush the peanuts, shred the image, and mix ’em together with the mirror pieces. Then plant that concoction like a seed in the earth. Then I’ll add water, say the spell, and wait for the TV to grow. And can you take Tigger out so he won’t attack our TV tree?”

Wow. “That is the coolest spell I have ever heard. Will it grow
anything
?”

“I guess.”

The possibilities are endless. Where to start? What are my favorite things?
Raindrops on roses?
I lift Tigger up and try to carry him out. He tries to scrape my chin with his need-to-be-cut claws.
Whiskers on kittens?
Those I can do without. “Can I have a new prom dress?”

“Can’t you wear the dress you bought for Spring Fling?”

Duh. “It’s not fancy enough.”

“Why don’t we raise money for the prom first and then worry about what to wear to it?”

I drop Tigger outside, slam the door shut before he can sneak back in, stick out my tongue at Miri, and start crushing peanuts. This is going to be so awesome, as long as we don’t somehow screw it up, which I’m sure we won’t. The spell seems pretty straightforward. What could go wrong? I’m about to give the page a solid rip in half when I freeze. If the spell creates whatever is in the image, I should check what’s on the back! I am so clever that it kills me. I flip the image over to find a picture of a man’s hand holding a remote. Good save, Rachel! Imagine if we grew someone’s hand! And what if it attacked us? Strangled us? Tickled us? “I’m going to color this hand in with black marker, to avoid conjuring up severed body parts.”

Miri giggles. “Nice catch.”

Nice catch, indeed. What would she do without me? I find a permanent marker in the kitchen, and then as well as getting ink all over my fingers, I manage to cover up the hand. “Let’s do it,” I say. I rip up the image, drop the pieces into a plastic bowl, and add the shards of broken mirror. Then I crush the peanuts with a tablespoon and add them to the bowl. Using the same spoon I mixed the stuff with, I scoop up the mixture and dump it into the cauldron of earth.

“A mirror’s reflection

For your own detection

Planted in the depths of the earth

Solidify, congeal to a birth.”

Miri sprinkles a few drops of water on top and I feel the familiar rush of cold.

Yes! Wide-screen TV! When we do the multiplying spell, I’m so keeping one for us. “Hey, why don’t you split the lump into two so we can have one for the living room?”

She considers the idea, then shakes her head. “What if that only makes half a TV? Or two twenty-five-inch ones instead of a fifty?” She carries the bowl to my room, places it carefully on the floor under my window, and opens the blinds. “It needs sunlight,” she explains. “And I think we should let it grow here, because your room is bigger.”