Maggie Malone and the Mostly Magical Boots (10 page)

The pounding sound keeps getting louder. I can't figure out what it is. The warm-up band banging out some crazy drumbeat? Two million feet attached to a million stomping fans? Maybe it's the roadies loading the gear onto the bus. Whatever it is, I wish it would stop. My head is throbbing and my eyelids feel like someone superglued them shut. It's probably the sparkly-spider lashes all stuck together. Did I even wash my face before I fell into bed last night? I honestly can't remember.

“Margaret Flannery Malone, for the love of lasagna,
open
this
door
!” shouts a voice from very far away. “I've been calling you all morning. Is your phone off the hook or something? Ummm, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Hey, are you still
sleeping
? It's almost nine o'clock! I brought doughnuts—with rainbow sprinkles! Open up already!!!”

I sit up in bed and pry my eyelids open. There's my polka-dot chair in the corner, and my zebra striped rug and the purple vanity table that I helped my mom paint. I swing my feet around and they land on the floor with a loud
plop
that startles me
.
Why am I wearing a dirty, scuffed-up old pair of—

The
MMBs.

The whole day—all of it—comes rushing back to me in a flash. The bus, falling out of bed, Vi and her clipboard, the breakfast tent, Chaz and the hair extensions, Lisbeth and her tweezers, mean old Gory Rory, the Superdome, the fans, hanging out with Justin Crowe…
It
was
real. I was her and it was real and now it's over.
I jump off the bed and race over to my mirror. I don't look any different.
Am
I different? I'm not sure yet.

“Hang on, Stella,” I shout, pulling off the boots and shoving them back into my closet, up on the highest shelf I can reach. I unlock my door, and Stella practically knocks me over in her rush to get in.

“Honestly, Maggie, are you sick or something?” Stella wants to know, pushing my stuffed animals aside so she can plop down on my still-warm bed. She has her laptop with her and she fires it up. I slide in right next to her.

“I mean,
HAPPY
TWELFTH
BIRTHDAY
!” Stella announces all official-like with big
ta-da
hands. She puts the plate of doughnuts in my lap and starts clicking away at her keyboard. “Anyway, check this out: Becca and Justin are
boyfriend
and
girlfriend.
”

“Um, I don't think they are—” I start to say, but Stella interrupts me.

“They are too, it's all over the web,” she points to the supposedly true news story that has a picture of Becca and Justin hugging.

“I think they're just good friends,” I say. “I wouldn't believe everything you read.”

“You got a better source?” Stella asks.

“Well, no, but—” I stammer.

“And get this,” she says, all excited. “Check out this picture of Becca yelling at some poor guy that works for her. She must have a real temper. Or maybe she's becoming one of those total divas. It happens in Hollywood all the time, you know.”

I look at the picture. It's Becca looking steamed all right. And the guy she's steamed at? None other than mean old Gory Rory.

“Well, that's because—” I stop myself just in time. “I mean, that guy is probably some big jerk, and she's yelling at him because she's sick of him being totally rude to her all the time. Or something.”

“It says here that she
fired
him!” Stella gasps. “What did I tell you? Diva!”

“You never know—” I say, but Stella interrupts me again.

“Look at
this
,” she says, scrolling down the page. “Here she is lounging on the beach in Mexico. Life is so totally not fair. I mean, she gets to lie around all day and sing for a couple of hours at night. Tough life. Where do I sign up?”

“I bet it's not as glamorous as you—er,
we
—think,” I say. “I mean, she probably has to be on the road a lot, driving from show to show and all, and think about what goes into a concert! The lights and the equipment and the microphones… There's so much that can go wrong, it must be really stressful. I'll bet even all that fussing over your hair and makeup gets old after a while…” I decide I'd better stop talking before I blow my own cover.

“If it makes you feel better to pretend Becca Starr has this really awful, miserable life, knock yourself out,” Stella says, snapping her computer shut. “I'm pretty sure her life is perfect.”

“Like my mom always says,” I tell Stella, “you don't know what you don't know until you spend a day in someone else's shoes.”

And boy, do I know.

My alarm startles me awake to the sound of disc jockeys laughing way too hard, bantering back and forth about something that makes no sense to me. I'm still pretty tired from my birthday weekend extravaganza.

I didn't want a birthday party this year, so on Saturday night, my parents took the whole family, plus Stella of course, to the Ichihana. My brother Mickey and I love that restaurant because the chef wears this ridiculously tall white hat, chops the food up right there in front of you, and plays tricks on the kid having the birthday. This chef was pretty impressive and caught, like, three shrimp tails in his lofty hat. And a raw egg that didn't even break. Then he tossed a delicious shrimp bite right into my mouth.

After dinner, Stella and I put our drink umbrellas behind our ears and danced in our seats when they beat the drum and sang the birthday song to me. It was a great night and after dinner, we had a sleepover at my house and stayed up way past our bedtimes making up dance routines and doing our toenails and watching
Frenemies
reruns. I went to bed around eight o'clock last night but I still feel like I could sleep for another year. Which would be awesome, because then I could snooze right through the rest of sixth grade at Stinkerton.

But I know that's not an option, just like I know my mom will go batty if I'm not up and dressed when she calls me for breakfast, so I blink hard and try to stretch myself awake.

Finally I shuffle across my room to the blue sparkly tank top, black cardigan, and jeans I laid out the night before. Dread fills up my now twelve-year-old body. All the excitement of being Becca Starr, a super-fun birthday weekend, and now I'm right back in the same spot, getting ready for another agonizing day at my monster of a stinking school. When I was Becca Starr, if I was confused or angry or scared, all I had to do was pull out my MM pocket mirror and get some good genie advice from Frank. I could use a little of that right now.

I get dressed and sit down at my desk. Then I pull the pocket mirror from the way back of my desk drawer and open it up.

“Good morning, Maggie!” Frank says from inside the mirror.
He's here!
SWEET!
“Ready for another adventure already?”

“Um, not really,” I stammer, because I remember I wasn't supposed to bother Frank until I was ready to take the MMBs for another spin. “I just wanted, you know, to say hey. And so…hey.”

I realize my voice sounds pretty shaky on that second
hey
because Frank asks, “You okay, kid?”

“Uh, yeah, not exactly,” I say, slumping down in my chair.

“Do me a favor,” Frank says. “Go back and read that letter from your Aunt Fiona again, the one that came with the boots. You'll understand what you have to do. The choice is yours. Now I gotta go. There's a kid in Taipei trying to strap a pair of jetpacks onto the back of his MMBs. Shame the boots don't come with a healthy dose of common sense.”

“What?” I ask again, completely confused.

“You get to decide, kid,” Frank says, starting to fade away.

“Wait! Decide what?
Choose
WHAT
?
” I ask, pulling the mirror closer, but Frank is fading fast.

“See you next go-round, Maggie Malone!” he says as his reflection turns to mine.

Flaming
fiddlesticks! Does he have to play the mysterious disappearing genie card EVERY time?

I stash the mirror back in the far corner of my desk drawer and go to my super-secret box under my bed where I keep my diary, every birthday card I've gotten since I was a baby, and now, Auntie Fi's letter. I scan the letter, trying to figure out what Frank wants me to remember from it. What exactly am I supposed to decide?

I read: “Trust me when I tell you that things aren't always the way they seem.”
Well, that certainly turned out to be true. I mean, the life of a rock star sure isn't what I thought it would be. But what does that have to do with me, now, today?

And then I read: “You get to decide how big you want your life to be from now on.”

How
big
I want my life to be? I hadn't really noticed that part of the letter before. What does that mean, anyway?
Not
helpful, Frank.
What good is having your own genie if he disappears right when you need him the most?

I brush my teeth and figure it's time to do battle with my unruly ringlets. But instead, I decide to just wet my hands, scrunch my curls, and let a few fall toward my face, the way Chaz did when I was Becca, which is exactly what Auntie Fi does, now that I think about it. These curls aren't so bad, really—I think maybe I just need to stop getting in fights with them.

I grab my lunch bag and smear some butter on an already toasted English muffin. My mom has everything laid out for me—even OJ in my favorite tiny, blue juice glass. I look at the clock on the microwave and realize that my mini-Frank conference has almost made me late.

I yell into my mom's steamy bathroom where she's showering, “Bye, mom, I love you!”

“Love you more!” she calls back. “Have a great day!”

“I will!” I say, because that's what I always say. But I have a sinking feeling my day is going to be about as great as trick-or-treating in the rain. On crutches. With your dentist.

Stella and I figured out that if we meet at exactly 7:36 a.m. on the corner of Spruce and Maple, we have enough time to ride together for three blocks before she turns left toward Sacred Heart and I hang a right for Stinkerton. We brake on the corner before heading off in our different directions.

“Good luck at Stink Town,” Stella says with a half-smile and a thumbs-up.

“Hey, Stella, I was thinking,” I say, a little hesitantly, scarfing the last of my muffin and washing it down with some fairly fresh water from my squirt bottle.

“Yeah?” she answers, adjusting her bike helmet.

“Since I'm going to be going to Stinkerton, like, probably forever, maybe we should start calling it Pinkerton,” I say. “I don't know, I just think it might help.”

“Totally,” Stella agrees. “It can't hurt.” Then she gives me a big, goofy overbite grin.

“Do I have poppy seeds in my teeth?” she asks. “My mom ran out of cinnamon raisin bagels and gave us the poppy seed ones. Am I good?”

“All good!” I confirm. “See you this afternoon!” And we wheel off in our different directions.

It's kind of crazy how Pinkerton is almost exactly as close to my house as Sacred Heart. I'm glad I don't have to cross a major four-lane or anything—not that my mom would let me do that on my bike. I pull up in front of the school and slide into the spot on the end. I like the end spot the best. It gives you a little elbow room, unlike my locker. As I'm twisting my lock, I notice a girl who's probably in my same grade locking her bike up on the opposite end. She looks up at me but quickly turns away. I figure I've got three minutes to get into my locker and to class so I skedaddle as fast as I can.

I make my way through the crowd to my locker and duck down, holding one hand over my head for protection, just in case. I keep my lunch bag in the other hand, which makes it a little hard to unlock my locker. But you really can't be too careful around this place. When I stand up, I'm nose to nose with a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl—the same one who stomped my sandwich on Friday.

“Excuse me,” I say, trying to step around her.

“No prob,” she says, moving out of my way. She actually smiles when she says it, but I'm sure it's really one of those nasty “I'll get you later” sort of smiles. I tuck my chin to my chest and rush off, making a mental note to stay as far away from her as I can.

I have a great morning, in the sense that I'm not late to a single class, nothing falls on me and slices any body parts open, and I don't trip and crack my front tooth or anything. It's pretty sad that this is what having a great morning means to me now, but it is what it is. I'm trying to ignore the growling in my stomach, because I'd rather not think about the lonely lunch hour that starts in one minute.

Man, that minute went fast
. The bell rings, and the entire school rushes toward the cafeteria. I grab my sandwich from my locker and dart into the bathroom. I decided earlier that I was going to eat in a bathroom stall. It's totally gross, I know, but at least it's warm in here.

I listen as girls come in and out, giggling and chatting. They don't sound so horrible from in here, but I'm sure that's just because I can't see them ignoring me. Finally there's a quiet spell, so I wrap up my lunch trash and tiptoe out of my stall. When I round the bend toward the sinks, I catch a glimpse of the mirror and let out a scream.

“How's it going, kid?” says Frank.
Frank
-
the
-
genie
is
here, at Stinkerton, in the girls' bathroom mirror. As my mom would say, jumping Jehoshaphat! I have no idea what that means, but I like the sound of it.

“What are you doing here, Frank?” I hissper. I made that word up. It's like a hiss and a whisper combined. I bend down to see if there are any feet in any stalls.

“It sort of seemed like you could use a little help,” Frank says.

“I'm doing fine,” I tell him, pointing at my head. “Look? See? No blood!”

“Did you reread your aunt's letter?” he asks.

“Of course I did,” I tell him, a little bit insulted. I'm about to tell him that he doesn't know a thing about me if he even has to ask me that, but right then two girls walk into the bathroom and make a beeline for the two sinks next to me.

My heart is pounding in my ears just like it did when I was onstage as Becca Starr. I lock eyes with Frank in the mirror and send him a silent message:
HELP
ME, FRANK. HELP ME NOW!

“Relax, Malone,” Frank says. “They can't see me. Or hear me. But if you talk to me, they'll hear
that
, so try to be cool.”

Try
to
be
cool, he says. That Frank is hilarious.

“Hey, did you finish your pig dissection diagram?” one girl asks the other.

“Ugh, I did,” her friend answers. “Thank goodness
that's
over! Can you say dis-gus-ting?”

I'm trying to look very busy washing my hands when I hear Frank's voice.

“You know you can chime in there any time, right?” Frank says. I glance up at him but say nothing. “Oh, I get it. You're waiting for
them
to talk to
you
! Well, that's a great plan…if you want things to stay exactly the way they are. When your aunt said that part about deciding how big you want your life to be, she wasn't talking about whose shoes you were going to step into next. She was talking about
you
. Think about it. How big do you want your life to be, Maggie?”

I just don't know what to do. I open my mouth to say something just as the girls finish up at the sinks and bustle out of the bathroom.

“Maybe next time,” Frank says. His face fades just as the end-of-lunch bell rings.