Frogs & French Kisses #2 (2 page)

“Just do it quickly.”

Miri’s entire body tenses, and then with a burst of cold and a whoosh the Tercel roars to life, and the woman jumps at least a foot in the air, not knowing what just happened.

“Yes!” I say, and pat Miri’s back with the forehead of my helmet.

“I did it!” she squeals, lifting her arms in a V. And that’s when the broom starts making circles.

“What are you doing?” I ask nervously.

“I-I d-don’t know,” she stammers.

“Just stop it, please!” Getting dizzy again. Super dizzy. Flashbacks to the hora dance at my dad’s wedding. “Slow down!” I scream—not that she listens. My jaw is clenched, my teeth are grinding into each other, my feet are dangling, and I may have just lost one of my new cheer-me-up sneakers. Hair spilling in all directions. Think I just swallowed a bird. Now would be a superb time for my own powers to kick in.

Or now.

We’re making wide circles. Ten feet in radius, twenty feet. Thirty feet. We’re both clasping the broom and screaming, and I don’t know which way is up and which way is down and why am I smelling manure again?

Blur of speckled white and black. Oh my. Oh, no. I think we’re circling the farm. We’re
descending
onto the farm. We’re about to
plunge
into the farm.

“Hold on tight!” Miri yells as we—

Oh, no. Please no. It’s too gross! It’s—

—crash.

2

Got Milk?

Moooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

“I think I broke my head,” Miri says.

I’m lying on my stomach, my legs splayed froglike, my eyes clamped shut. “If you broke your head, you wouldn’t be talking,” I tell her, secretly thankful for the wisdom of moms and their helmet nagging. Despite my sister’s being a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do, she’s only twelve years old, four and a half feet tall, weighs only seventy-five pounds, and is quite fragile.

I feel warm breath on my face. I really hope that’s Miri. I open my eyes. A cow’s mouth is inches away.

I shut my eyes again. “A cow is about to eat me. Mir? Seriously, are you in one piece?” The breathing stops, and I look up again to see the cow already bored and moving on. Ouch. My leg is burning. I sit up to find my left knee bleeding right through a rip in my jeans
and
tights. Ow, ow, ow. And my chin hurts too. I think I broke my face. It chlorine-in-my-eyes stings.

“Yes,” she grumbles.

At least fifty black-and-white speckled cows of all sizes are surrounding us. I roll to my feet gently, careful not to disturb the livestock. I’m pretty sure cows don’t eat humans, but I don’t want to provoke them. Are they attracted to blood? I eye my scraped knee nervously. I
think
that’s sharks. I hope.

Once on my feet, I help Miri up. “Ouch,” she says. “You cut your chin. Does it hurt?”

“Not too much. But I’m sure it’s gorgeous. My leg hurts more. Are you okay?”

“Fine. But the broom has seen better days.” She points to what’s left of it. It’s cracked down the middle and now lies in shreds on the muddy (I hope it’s mud) ground.

I hoist off my helmet and scratch my head like crazy. Ah. I point at one of the animals. “Any chance we can fly one of these things home?”

Moooooooooooooooooooooo.

I leap back. “Maybe not.”

Miri sneaks toward the cow and gingerly pats him (her? I’m not checking) on a black patch on his/her side. “Come see,” she says. “He’s not scary up close. He’s kind of cute.” (She’s obviously decided on its gender.) She pats him, like he’s a dog.

Moooooooooooooooooooooo.

Only my sister would think a nine-hundred-pound cow is cute. “He’s useless unless he’s sprouting wings and taking us home,” I say. “We have to get out of here. Ideas?” Happily, I didn’t lose a shoe after all. But they’re definitely not looking their pinkest. I step up on tiptoe and scan the area for an exit. Ow, ow, ow. Knee hurts. About twenty feet away there’s a fence.

Moooooooooooooooooooooo.

“What do you think
Moo
means?” Miri wonders out loud.

“No idea.” And at the moment I don’t really care. “Any clue how far we are from home?”

“I bet it means he’s happy. Like when Tigger purrs.”

“Miri! Focus! Home—how far are we?” Our cat hardly ever purrs. Not when I’m around, anyway. He prefers my mom and Miri. Must be the witch thing.

She stops caressing the cow and glares at me. “We only flew for ten minutes, we can’t be too far away. Let’s go if you want. Good-bye, sweet cow! Moo!”

We hurry toward the fence—Miri skips, I limp—and try to find a gate. Even with the night-vision visor, I’m having problems seeing.

“And you’re sure you can’t cast a spell on the cow?” I ask. “So we can fly it home?”

She shakes her head. “What if someone sees us?”

“Come on, what’s the difference? Someone could have seen us on the broom.”

“Maybe another witch. And then we could hang out,” my sister says, pining for a witch peer. Apparently I am not enough for her.

“As if there’s another witch in upstate New York. Bet they all live somewhere cool like Transylvania, or Salem. Now come on, Miri. Make the cow fly!” My leg is really starting to burn.

“I’m not making an animal fly. A broom is one thing, but I won’t treat a cow like an object!”

“We’re not doing circus acts,” I say, exasperated. “We just want to ride him. People ride horses, don’t they?” I can see I’m not getting anywhere. “So how are we going to get home?”

She points to my shoes. Now she’s talking! “Perfect,” I say. “I’ll click them together three times and we’ll be zapped back to the cottage?”

She rolls her eyes. “Nooooo.”

“Hot-air balloon?” I ask hopefully.

“Your shoes are made for walking.”

Groan. “Here’s the gate,” I say, spotting the hinge. “What do you think this place is, anyway?” Miri asks.

An instant milk bar? “A dairy farm, dummy.”

Once we’re back on the road, we notice a sign on the door. “It’s called Sammy’s,” I say, rubbing my still-burning knee.

“Good-bye, cute cows!” Miri sings, waving.

And then we walk all the way home, the broom sadly dragging behind us.

Forty-five minutes later, we’re back at the cottage. My mom is sprawled on the mossy green couch in the living room, reading a romance novel. “Why didn’t you use the window?” she inquires. Her gaze falls on my ripped jeans. When Miri tells her about the broken broom, she has a full-blown panic attack. “That’s it,” she asserts as she examines my chin. “No more flying. And why, oh, why did I quit smoking?”

The next day is full of disasters. First, I wake up to see that my small facial scrape has ballooned into a massive red blob on my chin. The second happens when we’re at the grocery store that afternoon, picking up dinner. My mom is considering brands of veggie burgers, Miri is squeezing tomatoes, and I’ve just thrown a box of matzo into the cart because I feel I should have some since it’s Passover this week—not that anyone would know that from all the bread we’ve been eating. My mom is so not religious. My dad isn’t religious either, but he usually keeps Passover, which means no pasta, no pizza, no bread of any kind in the house. And he always has a Seder on the first night. No Seder this year, though; he and my new stepmom are on their honeymoon in Hawaii. I kind of miss the Seder. Last year my stepsister, Prissy, asked the traditional four questions, we sang that song about the goat (“Then came a cat and ate the goat, that my father bought for two
zuzim.
One little goat, one little goat.” I have no idea what a
zuzim
is or why a cat is eating the poor goat, but we all sang along at the top of our lungs), and we hid the matzo. My dad eventually gave us twenty bucks each to give back the matzo, as is the custom. I wonder what I spent my money on? I could really use that twenty bucks now.

Anyway, after taking the box of matzo, I look longingly at the beef filets, knowing that there’s a better chance of Mom getting us all makeovers than making us steaks. Zilch for both. And that’s when I see it. The sign over the luscious, juicy meat reads SAMMY’S GRADE-A BEEF.

Sammy’s? Oh, no. Step away from the aisle.
Step away
from the aisle.
Sammy’s is no dairy farm. It’s a slaughterhouse! I take a quick step back and almost trip over a spice rack. Then I step on a small sneaker. Miri. Maybe she didn’t see?

She shakes out her foot. “Be careful, clumsy. What’s wrong with you?”

“N-nothing,” I stutter. I oh-so-casually turn so that my back is to the meat section and stretch out my shoulders so that I’m blocking the sign.

“What are you doing?” she asks, and tries to peer over my left shoulder. I lean farther to the left. She tries to look over my right. I shift. Left, right, left, right.

I need a distraction. “Did you see the tomatoes? Yum.”

“Are you hiding something?”

“The inner workings of my soul?”

She takes a bite of her thumbnail and the accompanying skin. “I know they sell meat here, Rachel. I’m not an idiot.”

You’d think a vegetarian wouldn’t bite her own body parts, but no. I wrap my arm around her thin shoulder and usher her toward the cereal aisle. She wiggles out of my grasp and turns back toward the meat fridge, her eyes filled with disgust as she inspects the beef chunks. Maybe she won’t notice. Maybe someone will scream
fire.
Maybe—

Her face pales. Her jaw drops. Her eyes tear. I think she noticed.

“Oh, no,” she moans.

“Miri, don’t get upset.”

“But all those cute cows are going to die!” Her lip is quivering and her shoulders start shaking and she looks a bit like she’s trying to do a body wave. “They’re going to be someone’s dinner!”

I nod. “Unfortunately not mine.”

Which doesn’t help, because it causes Miri to fully cry right in the middle of the grocery store.

Where is our mother? I peer through the aisles and spot her tangled in those impossibly frustrating plastic vegetable bags. No need to bother her. I can handle this.

I hate watching my sister cry. I know she’s being psycho-dramatic here, as well as taking this cow thing too personally, but only a soulless person can watch her sister be this upset and not feel pain. It’s like having a clump of hair ripped from my head. Or a lung from my chest. Or a kidney from my . . . Hmm, I don’t know where kidneys are. I should definitely pay more attention in bio. I got a B on my last assignment. But this month I’m going to focus and study and do my homework when it’s assigned, just like Miri, and maybe I’ll be able to save my final grade. . . .

What I really need to save is my love life.

What Miri really needs, I gather from her expression, is a tranquilizer. But back to saving . . . Eureka! “Miri,” I say, tapping my temple. “If it makes you so upset, why don’t you save them?”

She stops crying, and I see, beyond her ridiculously long, glistening lashes, the hope in her eyes. “How?” she asks.

Must I think of everything? “Use your powers, silly. You can’t save all the cows in the world, but you can probably come up with a plan to save the ones at Sammy’s.”

She fingers a package of beef and then wipes her hand on her jeans. “You think I can?”

“Of course. We’ll look through A
²
.” Otherwise known as
The Authorized and Absolute Reference Handbook to AstonishingSpells, Astounding Potions, and History of Witchcraft Since
the Beginning of Time.
My sister prefers using spells to cast her magic, rather than just zapping something with her raw will, since mixing the ingredients and chanting gives the witch more control. After last night’s impromptu car-starter spell and subsequent nosedive into the cow field, I wholeheartedly agree with the strategy. “And we’ll need to buy a new broom,” I add.

“You think Mom will let us fly again?” she asks dubiously.

“Of course. When I fell off my bike, didn’t she insist I get right back on?”

“I guess.” Miri doesn’t look convinced.

“Leave the permission stuff to me. You focus on finding the right spell.” Maybe we can make the cows indestructible. Maybe Miri can put a spell like that on us, too.

“I flipped past a safety spell a while back,” Miri says. “That might work.”

“Or you can find an immortality spell.” Nothing could hurt us! We’d look a little worse for wear when our hair started to fall out in a few centuries but we’d be as indestructible as vampires, without having to drink blood, but getting to wear the sexy red leather outfits and high-heeled shoes.

The safety spell wins. It seems Miri believes she has more of a say in this magic stuff than I do. I can’t imagine
why
. On the plus side, I manage to convince Mom that Miri will be scarred for life if she doesn’t get back on the broom immediately. So Mom takes her on a test run around the neighborhood before letting us go out alone again. We opt not to tell her about the Protect the Cows plan. She’s in bed, reading, and there doesn’t seem to be a point in worrying her over nothing. After all, she said Miri was allowed to use magic, right? And saving cows shows a social conscience (for the cows), so that makes it definitely responsible.

“Can you stop bumping into me?” Miri whines as my knees once again (unintentionally) smack the backs of her calves.

Okay fine, that last one was intentional. “If you stop zigzagging, I’ll stop bumping into you,” I say, negotiating.

She jerks the front of the broom up and I slide backward, nearly falling off the back end. Excellent. Maybe being in a body cast will help my social status. Not. My redesigned chin sure won’t do me any favors.