Don't Drink the Punch! (7 page)

“Did you put the stuff in?” Pria asked Alice, who, along with Jess, had just come up to stand with Kayla. She could speak in a normal tone of voice—there was no danger of being overheard over the music.

“I did the grown-ups' bowl already,” Alice replied. “I figured my parents could use a little rekindling of their relationship tonight. All they do is fight.” She grimaced.

“So when are you going to add the potion to our punch?” asked Jess eagerly. “Did you see? Anthony and Scott just showed up, and Nick is with them!”

“Yep, I saw,” said Alice, fluffing up her beautiful hair with her manicured hands. “I'm going to do ours right now. We can pour it in, hand everyone a cup at the same time, and then propose a toast.”

“I wonder how it works with grown-ups,” mused Pria as the girls huddled around the punch bowl and
watched Alice pour the rest of the contents of the vial in. “I mean, Matilda said it takes fifteen minutes to take effect, and you have to be talking to your crush the whole time. What if they're, like, talking to someone else's parent? Ew!”

“I put extra into theirs,” said Alice. “That way it will speed up the process. Usually the husband goes and fetches the wife a drink first thing, so I'm sure the right couples will be standing together when the punch takes effect.”

Kayla felt a jolt of alarm but said nothing. What if her mother was still up there? What if Mr. Grafton gave her some punch? She shuddered. No, her mother seemed like she only wanted to say hi and then get out of there. She'd probably left already.

Alice, Jess, and Pria were now moving around from person to person, handing out cups full of punch.

“Don't drink yet!” Alice shouted to each person over the music. “We're going to have a toast!”

Alice thrust a cup of punch into Kayla's hands. “Technically you don't really deserve this,” she said. “I should punish you for not helping us buy the potion.”

“Well, thanks,” said Kayla, taking the cup.

“And don't try to say you didn't help because you don't have a crush,” snapped Alice. Her icy blue eyes flashed.

As Alice moved away, Kayla darted a look around, searching for Tom. He hadn't come. She sighed and set down her cup.

She watched Alice chatting and laughing with Nick Maroulis. She could see by the way he turned his shoulders slightly away from her, and by the distracted look on his face, that he wasn't all that enthusiastic about Alice's attention.
How can that be?
she wondered. Was he really not interested in Alice, the most gorgeous and popular girl in the seventh grade? Or was he just so self-absorbed that he wasn't interested in anything besides basketball and his hair?

She felt someone touch her shoulder, and turned.

“Hey,” said Tom. “I decided to show up. After all, you promised an exciting party.”

CHAPTER 10

“Tom!” cried Alice, rushing over to him. She took his arm and didn't so much as glance at Kayla. “I didn't think you were coming! What's wrong with your foot?”

Tom grinned that sideways smile Kayla loved so much. “Sprained my ankle in basketball practice yesterday,” he said, holding out his bandaged left foot. “It's not that bad, Coach says, but I'm not supposed to put any weight on it for a few days.”

Kayla noticed he had a single crutch.

“Nice going, klutzo!” Alice giggled, giving Tom a little shove to the chest. “Why do you even play basketball? I mean, it's not like you're very tall—no offense.”

Tom grinned. “No offense taken. But I do play pretty good
off
ense.”

Kayla smiled a little at his joke, but Alice didn't seem to get it. “Come over here. There's a chair you can sit in.”

She led him across the room toward where Nick and Scott and Anthony were standing awkwardly in a clump, holding their punch cups. Kayla watched as Alice pushed Tom down into a chair next to the table and then ladled out some punch for him and put the cup into his hands. He glanced back at Kayla and gave her a little smile and a shrug.

“She's trying to make Nick jealous,” said Pria, who was suddenly standing next to her. Kayla hadn't known she was there.

Pria nodded miserably. “She was just flirting like crazy with Scott, too. Isn't it enough that all the rest of the seventh-grade boys already like her? Does she have to go and flirt with
our
crushes too?”

Kayla was excited that Pria was opening up to her—maybe she and Jess were getting a little tired of Alice's attitude too. But before she could say anything, a voice boomed out loud and clear.

“Attention, everyone!”

Across the room, Alice motioned to Tom to stand up from his chair. Then she turned the music down
and climbed onto his empty chair. Everyone stopped talking to listen. Kids from the other room put down their Ping-Pong paddles and pool cues and filed into the room.
Alice looks beautiful
, Kayla thought. She seemed to grow more radiant simply by being stared at. Her perfectly cut, close-fitting red dress accentuated her slim figure and her long, toned legs, which were somewhere between supermodel and superathlete. Kayla looked at the boys, most of whom were standing together in one group. It was true. They were all obsessed with Alice. Who wouldn't be?
Even Tom seems dazzled by her beauty
, she thought miserably.

“I would like to make a Valentine's Day toast!” Alice started to say. “Everyone raise your glass!”

A vision of Matilda's face flashed before Kayla. She remembered the gleam in her eyes behind those thick glasses as she'd talked about the potion. Everyone was raising a cup.

“You too, Kayla!” commanded Alice from across the room.

Kayla realized that everyone in the room was looking at her. She picked up the cup she'd set down earlier and raised it along with everyone else. Everyone drank.

Kayla put the cup to her lips and took a tiny sip. It tasted bad and reminded her a bit of medicine.

She spat the punch back into her cup and set it down on the table. Her mouth felt all tingly and numb. Something was definitely not right, though no one else seemed to mind the bitter, numbing taste, or else they were too scared to insult Alice.

Across the room, she noticed Tom, who was chatting away with Nick and still holding his cup. Had he had any punch?

“Tom! You didn't drink any yet!” she heard Alice say, and watched her jump down from her chair, light as a cat. Kayla watched Tom raise his cup to his lips.

In two bounds Kayla had crossed the room, bumping into several people as she did so. Tom didn't even see her coming. A second later she'd knocked the cup from his hand and onto the floor. Tom almost toppled over with surprise.

The room fell silent, except for the music, which someone had turned back up.

Tom blinked at the spreading puddle of red punch on the off-white carpet. Then he looked at Kayla, his eyebrows raised in a question.

Kayla didn't dare look at Alice. “Did you drink some?” she said to Tom.

“Uh, yeah, I did. It's pretty good,” he said.

She turned to Alice. “I'm so sorry about the carpet,” she said, although her voice felt pinched and thin, the way it sometimes does in a dream when you're trying to scream and find you can't. “It was an accident. I'll go get something to clean it up.”

“
Look
at the carpet!” she heard Alice say as Kayla bounded up the stairs to the kitchen. But all Kayla was thinking about was seeing if her mother was still at the party. She had to make sure her mother had left—and if she was still there, that she didn't drink any of that disgusting punch.

CHAPTER 11

Kayla burst into the kitchen. It was oddly quiet. Through the large window over the sink, she could glimpse the snow coming down. It looked like it had finally started to snow heavily.

She crossed the kitchen and went through the swinging door that led to the large, open pantry. Still not a soul to be seen. Where was everyone?

At the other end of the pantry was an open doorway that led into the large dining and living rooms. A man was leaning against the doorjamb with his back to her, probably chatting quietly with someone next to him that she couldn't see. She could hear music playing. Not the same kind of music they were playing downstairs, but it was reassuring to see that people were in there.

She stepped across the pantry and stood behind the man. He was a large man; she had no idea whose dad he was, but he certainly took up most of the doorway.

“Excuse me?” she said tentatively. “Um, sir? Can I just squeeze by you?” Her voice came out sounding high and barely audible.

The man didn't budge.

Kayla's fear for her mother made her bolder than usual. “Sir, I just need to . . .” She put a firm hand on his arm and tried to guide him over to the side of the doorway, so she could squeeze past.

For a strange moment the man felt weightless. Then, with a sickening feeling, she realized he was falling. Falling over. Over to the side, in the direction she had nudged him ever so gently.

Kayla screamed, or tried to. Instead of a scream, a strangled, unearthly sound came out of her throat. The man toppled over like a tall tree beneath a woodsman's ax. She tried to shriek again, several times, in rapid, gulping succession, but the sounds came out as mere squeaks, and then she couldn't seem to make any sound at all. She stared in horror at the man lying on the carpet, the crystal punch cup in his hand, his eyes open but unseeing.
For a moment she couldn't take her eyes off the cup, which hadn't broken on the thick carpet. With the red punch stain next to him, seeping under his face, which was turned to the side, he looked . . . dead. But he couldn't be dead. He was still breathing, although it was barely noticeable.

“I'm—I'm so sorry, sir!” she tried to say, but no sound came out of her mouth. Her tongue felt thick and uncooperative, as though she'd just left the dentist after a major round of Novocain.

She raised her eyes to look around the room. She froze and staggered backward, nearly falling.

Eight or nine parents were in the room. Some were clustered around the table, which was filled with platters of food, drinks, and the large punch bowl in the center of it. Several others were standing around the outer area of the room, in little groups. No one was moving. No one was speaking. Everyone was still as a statue, frozen in mid-gesture. One man held the ladle of the punch bowl suspended above his other hand, which held a crystal punch cup, as though he'd been frozen mid-pour. A woman had one arm raised halfway to her open mouth, a small finger sandwich in her hand.

Kayla was suddenly struck by the memory of an experience she'd had when she was a little girl. She and her father had been hiking together on a wintry day, she in her little pink plastic kiddie snowshoes, and he in his grown-up trekking gear. They were on a trip north together, she couldn't remember why, and he'd wanted to show her one of his favorite places from his boyhood. She'd been amazed by the snow and the cold, having lived all her life in Texas. And then they'd come rather suddenly upon a brook. She'd stopped and stared at the waterfall, which had frozen in a perfect ice sculpture of its watery state; it looked as though a wizard had waved his wand and stopped the rushing waterfall instantaneously.

She blinked her eyes, hoping and praying that she was just imagining things. That she was the one who had gone crazy, not the whole world. But the people remained as still as statues, the cheerful music sounding almost mocking in that terrible room.

Her mother. Sudden, wild terror clutched her heart. She had to see if her mother was here. Hadn't she said she'd just stay a few minutes? Hadn't she said she'd leave as soon as she could? Kayla stepped to the window, which
overlooked the front yard and the sweeping driveway, to see if she could find their battered old minivan. Outside the snow was swirling thickly. It was impossible to see past the arc of the floodlight, and the parked cars she could see were already blanketed with a thick coating of snow. It was impossible to tell whether her mom's minivan was one of them.