Magic in the Mix (2 page)

“Everyone in the whole world wishes for magic,” Miri had said one night. Her voice had drifted through the darkness, filled with wonder. “And we got it. How lucky is that?”

“Pretty lucky,” said Molly. “Pretty incredibly lucky. Especially for me.”

“Pooh,” said Miri. “Especially for me. I got a sister. I got a
twin
. And I got to go back in time.” She let out a long breath, remembering it—the shimmering moment when she and Molly had realized that magic was real and it had happened to them. “We'd be crazy to think that it would ever happen again. To us, I mean.”

“It could,” said Molly.

“It probably won't,” said Miri. She rolled over and looked out the high round window of their room. The moon fit perfectly inside it. Could you wish upon the moon? She decided you could. Let magic happen to us one more time, she begged. Please. And if you take requests, I'd like to go back and hang out with the Indians. The American ones,
please. Thank you. “Do you think I'm being greedy even to want it?”

“No,” Molly said at once. “Remember what Grandma said—magic is just a way of setting things right. Remember?”

“I remember,” said Miri. Molly's 1935 grandmother, May, had known all the secrets of magic. It was Grandma May who had told them they were meant to be sisters.

“Well, see, that's it,” said Molly. “If magic happens to us again, it will be because we're supposed to set something right.”

Miri brightened. “So it wouldn't be greedy, would it? Because we'd be doing good.” Maybe she could bring the smallpox vaccine to the Indians. “We wouldn't be just playing around, having a good time. We'd have a task. We'd be in the line of duty.”

Molly snickered. “Gee, it sounds really un-fun when you put it like that.”

“It could be fun, too,” said Miri, picturing herself gliding silently through a moon-silvered forest with a bow slung over her shoulder. “But even if it isn't,” she added, “we'll have to do whatever the magic wants us to do. I mean, I think we owe it something for letting you come here. Don't you?”

“Yeah.” Miri heard Molly flop over and pummel her pillow into shape. “Sometimes …” She paused.

“What?” Miri prodded.

“I sometimes wonder if …” Another uneasy pause.

“What?” urged Miri, curious. Molly was usually the opposite of hesitant.

“Sometimes I wonder if I'm supposed to be here. If I'm going to be allowed to stay. I mean,” Molly said hastily, “I
want
to be here, but why can I remember both worlds? Why does the magic let me remember being a kid in the thirties
and
being a kid with you and Mom and Dad?”

“Oh. Yeah. I remember both, too,” Miri said. She gazed at the moon. “I remember walking into kindergarten on the first day holding your hand, and I remember walking into kindergarten the first day with just Mom. I guess it means that both things actually did happen.”

Molly sat up abruptly. “But don't you think that's weird? If the magic really meant it, we shouldn't remember both lives. Nobody has two pasts. We should only remember this life, the one together.”

Now Miri sat up, too. There was something worrisome in Molly's tone. As if she doubted the new
life would last. “Well,” Miri said slowly, “I guess it's a little weird, but I think that the magic lets us remember both because we're the ones who made it happen. We know too much to forget it.”

“That sounds like we're secret agents or something,” Molly said doubtfully.

“We
are
like secret agents.” Miri pounced on the idea. “We have double identities. We're the only people in the world with two pasts.”

“I guess so,” Molly agreed. “But that's what's bizarre. How can they both be true? It's like two pieces of train track coming together: first we were separate, and then we joined, but we're the only ones who can see both tracks. For everyone else, there's just one track.”

Miri thought about that for a moment. “I picture it more like a cake.”

“A cake? What's a cake?”

“Time. It's like the layers of a cake. In my mind, all of time, all the people who ever lived, and everything that ever happened in all of history is still going on, but in separate layers, stacked one on top of the other, like a cake. Right at this moment, it's also a million years ago and yesterday and 1935 and every other time, too.”

“Crowded cake,” said Molly.

“No, because see, all the layers are separate, so everyone thinks that theirs is the only layer.”

“Okay, time's a cake,” said Molly. “But I still don't get why you and I can see more than one layer.”

“The layers of time are separate from one another,” Miri continued, “just like frosting separates the layers of a cake. But I think there are certain places where the frosting between the layers is very, very thin. Those are places where one time can mix into another. I think our house is one of those places.”

Silence from the bottom bunk. Then Molly said slowly, “Grandma said something like that. Remember? She said, ‘Time means nothing in this house.'”

“Yeah, and she knew more about magic than anyone,” Miri said.

“Huh.” Molly flopped back down. “Layers of time. That's pretty good. First our times were separate, but now they're mixed together.”

“Yeah,” said Miri. “That's it. That's why we can see both times.”

“In a way, we've had two lives,” said Molly thoughtfully.

Miri hesitated. “Which life is better?”

She had never asked that before; it had seemed
too private. But there was no hesitation in Molly's voice as she replied, “Well, gee, let's see: In this life, I've got you. And a mom and a dad and two cute little sisters and two dorky but funny brothers. In my first life, I had no mom; a missing dad; Aunt Flo, who hated me; and a cousin who was trying to beat me up all the time. And, oh yeah, it was during the Depression, so I was really poor. It's a tough call.”

Miri dangled her head over the side of the bed. “It's better for me, too,” she said happily. “It's better for all of us.”

Molly's voice came again in the darkness. “I have a family now. I didn't really know what that meant before. To have people be
glad
to see me every day—I didn't know about that.” There was a silence, and then she said, “Sometimes I'm scared it's all going to disappear. You know, like maybe I'm going to wake up in 1935.”

“No. You came through. This is your time now,” Miri said. “And you're supposed to be here. Grandma May said so. She said we were setting things right.”

“Yeah,” said Molly. “I guess so. But she also said I might see her again someday. Remember?”

“Yes.” Miri would never forget that scene. Molly's
grandmother, her eyes glinting like jewels, her worn hand cradling Molly's cheek as she said, “Do you think a little thing like time can separate us?”

Now, at the table with her brothers and sisters, her homework forgotten, Miri glanced around the old kitchen before coming back to Molly. They shared a long look, and each knew what the other was thinking: There
is
something funny about this house. Us.

The next day, Shenandoah Middle School was exactly the way it usually was: okay. Miri and Molly were in the sixth grade now, moving from class to class—though never the same class at the same time (they suspected a grown-up plot, but they couldn't prove it). As experienced middle schoolers, Robbie and Ray had given them many valuable tips the night before school began: “Don't go to the bathroom alone,” “Don't slam ketchup packets inside your books,” “Don't let anyone stuff you in your locker,” “Don't fart during science,” “Don't talk to eighth graders, especially Daggie.”

None of these tips had proved to be very useful, except maybe “Don't fart during science.” Going to
the bathroom alone was impossible. The place was always packed with girls putting on lip gloss.

As her final class of the day, Health and Nutrition, inched toward its conclusion, Miri slid ever farther downward in her stiff wooden seat until only her eyes remained above the sea-level of her desktop. I'm sinking, she thought, into a shark-infested sea. She folded a piece of paper into a fin and bobbed it lazily across the sea. Blub, glub, “Glub,” she mumbled aloud.

“Yes! Miri!” Miss Roos whirled around. “How many?”

Miri shot upright. “Eight!” she cried, hoping her answer had something to do with the question.

“Wow!” enthused Miss Roos. “Eight servings of fruit or vegetables a day! That's great!” She smiled around the classroom. “Miri's got the healthy eating habit, doesn't she?”

Everyone glared at Miri. Whoops, she thought, smiling apologetically at the girl sitting next to her. I've got to stop saying the first thing that pops into my head. She reflected that she probably did eat eight helpings of fruits and vegetables a day. But she wasn't supposed to say so; it looked like sucking
up. Middle school was complicated. A lot like a shark-infested sea, she thought, and slid sleepily downward again.

At the day's end, Molly was waiting for Miri outside the classroom. “Scale of one to ten?” she called when she saw Miri.

“Six,” yawned Miri.

“Same here.” Together, they gathered their books from their lockers, ran to catch the bus, and joggled along the highway to the town of Paxton. There, they got off bus number one, spent five minutes staring wistfully at the candy in Mike's Snak-n-Go, got on bus number two, and set off down the long, zigzagging country road that led home. The nice thing about living so far out in the valley was how pretty it was—lots of trees, turning now to gold and red, and tiny creeks dodging in and out of rolling hills. The not-so-nice thing was how long it took to get there.

But as soon as she rounded the hedge that bordered the driveway and caught a glimpse of her house, Miri decided, as she always did, that it was worth a bus ride of almost any length. Sitting on a slight hill above a sloping circle of lawn in the shade
of an enormous elm tree, the house was big, old, shabby, and beautiful, with its lacy wooden trim edging the roof, its panes of colored glass bordering the door, and its curtain of vines shading the deep front porch. Miri loved everything about it, from the odd ten-sided room she shared with Molly to the wreaths carved into the mantelpiece in the living room. She loved the dust-smelling attic, she loved the hammock on the porch, she even loved the decrepit faucets that came off in your hand if you turned the water on too hard. It was rich with oldness, her house.

“Home again,” murmured Molly, with a long, contented sigh. “Home.”

Miri nodded. “Home—” She broke off, startled by the whack of a hammer resounding through the yard. Then came a long, wooden ripping noise. The two girls exchanged looks of alarm—earthquake? Tornado? Giants? Following the trail of sound, they ran up the lawn and veered around the side of the house to the backyard—

Where they skidded to a halt, astonished by the wreckage. The back porch, which had that morning stretched across the rear of the house, lay in bits
on the ground. Dark boards had been hurled into a mangled heap on the grass, while a tidy stack of fresh pink wood sat primly to one side. The destroyed porch had been almost a room, with shelves, cupboards, and windows on three sides. Now the windows, still in their frames, were propped against the side of the house for reuse. A pile of shelves and a stack of cupboard doors had been dumped helter-skelter into the weedy grass.

“Look at the door,” Molly gasped.

The back door, which had opened from the kitchen onto the porch only that morning, now opened onto nothing but air. The old white door, flapping six feet above the ground, looked silly now, like something in a cartoon.

In the center of the emptiness where the porch had been stood Dad and Ollie, chucking rocks and hunks of wood on the mountain of remains. “Girls!” called Dad enthusiastically. “Isn't this outstanding?”

“You said you were just fixing the stairs,” Miri said, frowning. “You didn't say you were going to tear the whole porch down.”

He straightened, rubbing his back. “I didn't know I was going to tear it down, either. But once we got
going, Ollie saw a lot of dry rot. And wet rot, too, huh, Ollie?”

“Lots of rot,” confirmed Ollie vigorously. He hurled a rock toward the pile. “Big-time rot.”

“It had to come down before it fell down,” their father said.

“But what about—history?” asked Molly. “What about heritage?”

“Heritage?” Her father blinked at her. “Well, think about it this way: I'm keeping our heritage from rotting. I'm saving it from itself.”

“Rot's rot!” called Ollie with gusto. “You gotta dig it out. You gotta get it gone.” He gazed at the newly exposed wall of the house and smacked his lips. Miri could tell he was dying to tear it apart and find more rot.

“Oh, hey!” said her father suddenly. “You want history? I found some old pictures and clippings when we were taking down the shelves. They're historical. I stuck them—” He looked around absently. “Where'd I stick them, Ollie?”

“On your new porch.” Ollie pointed to the stack of fresh pink wood.

“Right! Go take a look. I thought your mom
might want them. She likes old stuff.” He smiled, pleased with himself, and tossed a mushy-looking board on the junk heap.

Miri turned away. She wanted to argue, to save the house. She imagined herself standing bravely between the porch and Ollie, her palm up, the protector of the past. She looked up at the lonely, ridiculous door. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“This stuff doesn't look right,” said Molly, regarding the pink wood critically. “It's too new.”

“Maybe the house will reject it,” Miri said. She pictured a bone-shaking crash and a pile of pink splinters.