Sadie's Story (8 page)
Authors: Christine Heppermann
I
n the Kepplers' driveway, they joined the crowd milling among the stacks of books and plates, the treadmill and the microwave, the clothes hanging on racks or spread out on the ground in neat piles.
“Only three dollars,” said Ms. M, lifting the lid on a Crock-Pot. “I could cook a
whole gremlin in here!”
“We'll shop later,” whispered Sadie. “Look.” She pointed to a little girl tugging her mother over to the playhouse, which stood off to the side between a cluster of ski boots and a floor lamp shaped like a palm tree.
The witch began chanting rapidly, “Watercleanandwaterbright . . .”
“Too late for that,” said Sadie. “Wait here.”
She slipped around behind the playhouse and slithered in through the back window. When the little girl and her mother got close enough, Sadie flung herself through the front door, one hand clutching her throat.
“Toxic fumes,” she gasped, and collapsed in the grass.
The witch chimed in, “I used to be a
happy, healthy eight-year-old. I had tea in that playhouse yesterday, and now look!”
She took off her baseball cap to reveal gray, matted hair.
Ms. M and Sadie high-fived as the mother hurried her daughter away.
Next the witch sidled up to a man tapping his knuckles on the playhouse roof, as if he was checking a watermelon for ripeness. “My great-aunt Matilda died in there,” she told him. “But don't worry. It wasn't contagious.”
“Is that so?” said the man, looking amused. “What was your aunt doing in a children's playhouse?”
“Her doctors blamed delirium. From the fever brought on by the infected bile,” said the witch, hacking loudly into her cupped hands. “Oh, my.” She let the man see the yellowy-green slime streaking her palm. “Would you mind feeling my forehead?”
The man bought a beanbag chair instead.
Ms. M grinned and wiped her hand on her sweatpants. “Turns out I had a smidge of llama drool left after all.”
“This is fun!” said Sadie. She approached a mom who was trying to stuff a whining toddler back into his stroller.
“You should buy him that playhouse. It's a bargain, considering how much my parents paid the exterminator.” Sadie scratched at her arms and chest. “Did you know that bedbugs don't just live on beds?”
“Sadie!” It was Mr. Keppler. He motioned her over to the sale table.
“Cover for me,” she told the witch.
Mr. Keppler opened the money box, jam-packed with bills. “Big profits today, young lady, but no bites yet on the playhouse.
Try marking it down to fifteen dollars.” He winked. “That should catch us a fish.”
Shoving the pen he gave her into her sock, Sadie turned from the sale table in time to see two little boys dressed as superheroesâone Batman, one Spider-Manâdash into the playhouse and then stagger back out holding their capes in front of their noses.
She hurried over to where Ms. M leaned against a tree, fanning herself.
“What happened?” Sadie asked.
“I transmuted some energy to make the playhouse undesirable. A simple combination of nitrogen, methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen.”
“You what?”
“I farted in the living room.”
They laughed together as other yard sale items continued to disappear, but the playhouse remained solidly in place. Eventually the crowd dwindled to two older women haggling over the price of a lopsided dresser.
Ms. M let out a yawn so big that covers on the fifty-cent paperbacks fluttered. She rested her chin on a stack of flowered pillowcasesânow three for a dollarâand closed her eyes.
Sadie knew how she felt. After all of their brilliant performances, she didn't think she had the strength left to talk to even one more customer. But it looked like she wouldn't have to. The garage sale was almost over. Across the driveway, Mrs. Keppler started boxing up unsold cups and plates.
Just then a blue station wagon pulled to the curb. A woman and man got out. The man opened the passenger door, and Sadie groaned as she watched him unstrap a baby from a car seat.
Smiling, the young family headed straight toward the playhouse.
“G
o get that blanket,” instructed the witch. “The one you loaned me. It's in my bag.”
“But we can't nap nowâ”
“Trust me. And hurry.”
Sadie sprinted across the street and returned in less than a minute.
“What's this for?”
“To make the playhouse invisible.”
“Oh, good, you found the wolfsbane.”
Ms. M shook her head. “It's magical enough because it's yours. It has your essence all through it.”
With that she tossed the ducky blanket onto the playhouse roof.
“But it doesn't cover it at all!” Sadie said, dizzy with panic.
“All prices negotiable,” Mr. Keppler cheerily informed the man and woman as they started up the driveway. “Just make me an offer.”
“It's invisible now,” said the witch.
“It's not! It's totally not!” The playhouse shimmered behind her stinging tears like a fairy castle in the mist. But it would soon vanish into the back of that station wagon.
Poof.
The young couple was only a few feet away.
“Looks like all the cool toys are gone,” Sadie heard the woman say as the family strolled past.
“There are other yard sales,” said the man. He bounced the baby against his hip. “Aren't there, kiddo?” The couple turned around and walked hand in hand back toward the street.
“What did I tell you?” said Ms. M.
“They saw it, they just didn't like it.”
“No, they didn't like it because they didn't see.”
Sadie felt a tap on her shoulder. “Excuse me. Do you know how much they want for this?” A man in a suit gestured to the playhouse. His tie was loose, and he looked tired.
“Fifty dollars,” answered Ms. M, arms crossed.
“I'd pay twenty.” The man reached into his back pocket for a battered leather wallet.
“Fifty,” she insisted. “That's the minimum.”
“Well, somebody is living in a yard sale dreamworld.”
As he stomped away, Ms. M said to Sadie, “He didn't see it either.”
“Are you crazy? He offered twenty dollars for it.”
“He didn't see it deeply, dear. He didn't see its real value. Its essence. Its light. It's like the stars. They're out there in the sky every night. Wondrous things. But most people don't even bother to look up. And speaking of up . . .”
While they'd been talking, a patch of dark clouds had moved in and gobbled up the last
of the afternoon sun. All the customers still in the drivewayâthere weren't manyâbolted for their cars.
“Better late than never,” Ms. M cackled as the first drops fell on her gnarled, outstretched hand.
T
o celebrate, Sadie brought two Freezee Treats out to the backyard.
She gave Ms. M first pick. “Banana or grape?”
“Ah, noble grapes, food of Bacchus, the god of wine and mirth.”
“No kidding?” Sadie said, handing her friend the purple one.
“Also, fake banana flavor?” Ms. M made a face. “Bleh.”
They watched from behind the rhododendron bush as her father and Mr. Keppler returned the playhouse to its proper place. “This thing is heavier than it was this morning,” they heard her father complain. “It's cursed!”
Ms. M poked her head out. “Well, technicallyâ” Sadie clamped a hand over her mouth and pulled her back into hiding.
When it was safe to come out, they spread the ducky blanket over the rain-dampened grass and sat on it together, slurping happily. Wilson entertained them by crouching, wriggling his behind, and springing at flies.
“Onyx was a first-rate fly catcher,” the witch said, and she sucked the last drip of juice from the Freezee Treat wrapper.
Sadie found herself thinking about how she would feel if Wilson went missing, if she had only a cat-shaped emptiness instead of his warm, furry self.
“I was lonely,” she blurted, “until you came along.”
“Me, too,” said Ms. M.
From high in the maple tree, a robin tried four or five notes four or five different ways.
They both reached for their binoculars and scanned the yard. At one point their eyes met through their lenses, and they giggled.
Ms. M lowered her binoculars and looked directly at Sadie. “I like to think that Onyx has found a nice new home.”
“But you don't know that for sure.”
“But I don't
not
know it. Is my tongue purple?”
“Weirdly enough, it's green.”
“Excellent. A spell that works.”
Sadie laughed. “What about my tongue?” She opened wide.
“The exact shade of Ethel's belly. Which reminds me . . .”
She popped into the playhouse and popped back out waving a book, which she tossed onto Sadie's lap. “I found my field guide!”
“
The Ornithomancer's Guide to the Upper Midwest
.” Sadie read the title aloud slowly.
“The deluxe edition includes hippogriffs, but they're mainly in the Southeast.”
Sadie turned the pages carefully, so as not to smudge them with her sticky fingers. Grackles and grebes. Shrikes and swallows.
The great blue heron and the common loon. So many amazing birds!
And there, on page 198, the yellow warbler. The bird in the photo was a male, the guide said, because of the reddish streaks on his otherwise lemon-colored breast. He gazed sideways at the camera with a round, black, inquisitive eye.
“You know what I was thinking?” Sadie didn't wait for an answer. “That it'd really be fun to be a different kind of bird-watcher and not watch all the birds sometimes but just one bird all the time. And follow him wherever he went and watch him there.”
“You're a very interesting young woman,” said Ms. M.
Embarrassed, Sadie pretended to be
studying the habitat map for the ring-necked pheasant. “Wait until you meet Jess and Maya. They're a lot more interesting than I am.”
Ms. M laughed so loudly that the mourning doves perched on the telephone wire stopped crying. She placed her old, rough hand on Sadie's young, smooth one. “Such a generous thing to say. And so not true.”
“When you were my age,” Sadie asked softly, closing the field guide, “did you know you wanted to be a witch?”
“I just wanted to be like my mother. We lived in the forest. My father was a botanist, and he traveled a lot. My mother taught me most of what I needed to know. The forest taught me the rest.” Suddenly Ms. M stared hard at the lilacs. “Look there.”
A flash of yellow!
Eventually the witch shook her head. “Eastern meadowlark. They build their nests on the ground, of all things.”
“What if we never find Ethel?” asked Sadie.
Ms. M polished one lens of her binoculars with the corner of her smock. Then she polished the other lens. “Things change,” she said after a while. “That's what living in the forest taught me. Trees die and new ones grow. Wolves I could recognize in the fall didn't come back in the spring. And what if Ethel likes being a bird? Probably she has a mate and children by now. It's what birds do.”
“So are you going to give up looking for her?”
“No. I will always look. I like looking.
Maybe it will lead me to Ethel, and maybe it won't, but either way, I have wonderful memories.” She laid the binoculars in her lap. “Ethel and I were close for a long time. And now I have a new friend and a new place to live.”
“My parents still want to sell the playhouse,” Sadie warned.
Once again the robin in the maple tree sang out.
Cheery-o, churlee, cheery-up!
“An intriguing vocalization,” Ms. M said. “Certainly territorial.”
The witch pursed her lips and replied to the robin. Sadie wasn't exactly sure what the witch's lilting melody meant, but she figured it was something along the lines of,
Don't worry, I won't take your nest. I have my own.