Spells & Sleeping Bags #3 (28 page)

The magic continues in
Parties & Potions,
coming December 2008!
Turn the page for a sneak peek. . . .

So Many Outfits . . .
Only One First Day

Do I like red?

I pirouette before the mirror. Yes, the red shirt could work. Red makes my hair look super glossy and glamorous and goes great with my favorite jeans.

If I do say so myself.

The shirt has a scoop neck and adorable bubble sleeves. It's my back-to-school top for the big,
big
day tomorrow—the very first day of sophomore year! My BFF Tammy and I went shopping last week, since we absolutely needed new tops for the special occasion. I know I could have just zapped something up, but the first rule of witchcraft is that nothing comes from nothing. I didn't want to accidentally shoplift a new shirt from Bloomingdale's.

I like the red. It works with my complexion. But I don't know if it
truly
shows off my fabulous tan. Hmm. I touch the material grazing my collarbone and chant:

“Like new becomes old,

Like day becomes night,

Pretty back-to-school top,

Please become white!”

I've found that adding
please
to my spells really helps. The Powers That Be seem to appreciate when I'm polite.

A chill spreads through the room, sending goose bumps down my back, and then—
Zap!
—the spell takes effect. The red of my top quickly drains from the material, turning fuchsia, dark pink, pale pink, and finally as white as Liquid Paper.

Now we're talking! Yes. It should be white. White shows off my awesome summer tan.

My awesome
fake
summer tan. Obviously. It's not like I have a pool in downtown Manhattan to lounge by, and anyway, it's way too muggy and humid in this city to stay outside for more than twenty seconds, so how could I get a tan? Unfortunately, my camp tan is long gone. But is my fake tan a spray-on? Nope. Is it from one of those tanning booths that could pass for a medieval torture chamber? Again, nope.

What is it, then? Why, I call it the Perfect Golden Tan That Makes Me Look Like I Live in California Spell. Patent pending.

I made it up last week and it worked immediately. True, at first I looked like I had a rash, or perhaps a severe case of the measles, but by the following afternoon the color had settled into a golden glow. A golden glow that makes me look like a native Californian.

I am very in control of my powers these days. Ever since Miri taught me megel exercises (where you control the flow of your raw will by lifting and lowering inanimate objects such as books and pillows—not glasses. Don't try glasses. Trust me on this), my magic muscles have gotten much stronger.

I finally got my very own copy of
A
²
(otherwise known as
The Authorized and Absolute Reference Handbook to Astonishing Spells, Astounding Potions, and History of Witchcraft Since the Beginning of Time
), but since I'm so good at making up my own spells it's not like I need it. If you know how to cook, do you need a recipe? I think not.

Yes, my top has to be white. Everyone knows white is the best color to wear when you're tan. Tomorrow, when I glide into JFK High School, they will say: “Who is that perfectly bronzed girl? Could that be Rachel Weinstein?” and “Did you hear? She's going out with the wonderful and gorgeous A-lister Raf Kosravi! Isn't she amazing?”

Yes, it's going to be a great year. The best year ever. I'm calling it the
Sophomore Spectacular
! My very own Broadway show. And tomorrow is opening day.

Nothing can go wrong because:

I am tanned, I have a boyfriend, and I have a groovalicious new haircut with lots of fabo layers. And I am a witch.

Yup, I'm a witch. Obviously. How else would I be able to change the color of my shirt over and over again without any type of dye? My mom and sister are witches too. We're broom-riding, spell-chanting, love-spell-casting magic machines. Well, Miri and I are magic machines. Mom is a mostly nonpracticing witch.

Luckily, I did not need a love spell to make Raf fall in love with me. Nope, he loves me all on his own. Not that he's said those three magic words. But he will eventually. Am I not lovable? I think I'm pretty lovable. He's definitely lovable.

He's my honey bunny.

Okay, I haven't actually called him that to his face. But I am auditioning potential terms of endearment in my head. Other options are Sweet Pea and Shmoopie.

Shmoopster?

Just Shmoo?

Even without the names, we make everyone sick. Not throwing-up sick, but yay-for-them sick. I think. Since we hooked up at camp, we've spent practically every day together. We hung in the park. We watched TV. We shopped (he bought this awesome-looking brown waffle shirt that brings out his brown eyes, olive skin, and broad shoulders, and every time he wears it I tell him how hot he is). We kissed (there was a lot of kissing. A ginormous amount of kissing. So much kissing I had to buy an extra-strength Chap Stick. But it tasted like wax paper, so I switched to extra-glossy cherry lip gloss. Yum. The problem is I love it so much I keep licking it off. Which just increases the chappedness of my lips. It's a vicious cycle).

As I was saying, I've never used a spell with Raf. Okay, you got me, that's a bit of a lie. Last week I zapped up fresh breath after gorging on too many pieces of garlic bread. I didn't want him to have to hold his nose while doing tongue gymnastics. But that's it. I would never cast a love spell on him.

Okay, that's another lie. When Miri first got her powers, I tried one on him. (Yup, Miri, my two-years-younger sister, discovered she was a witch before I did. How unfair is that?) But we accidentally cast the spell on Raf's older brother, Will, instead, so no harm done. Well, not too much. Will and I dated but broke up at the prom when I realized he was really truly in love with my friend Kat.

Now, what was I doing? Oh, right. White!

I pretend my room is a catwalk and sashay away from the mirror and then back toward it. Here's the prob. Wearing white might be mega obvious, since everyone
knows
you wear white when you're trying to show off a tan. Also, for some reason, white is making my head look big. Do I have a big head? Is having a big head bad? Or does it mean I'm mega smart?

Perhaps I should try blue. Blue looks good on me. It brings out my brown eyes. Yes! I must bring out my eyes! I need a new spell! I clear my throat and say:

“Like night becomes day,

Like calm seas become wavy,

Pretty back-to-school top,

Please become navy!”

Cold! Zap! Poof!

Interesting. I twist for a side view. Not bad. But is it better than red? I mean, I could always wear blue eye shadow. Maybe my shirt
should
be red. Or white. Or maybe something shimmery? Gold?

“Like night becomes day,

Like new becomes old,

Pretty back-to-school top,

Please become gold!”

The top starts pulsating with color. It's yellow! It's red! It's blue! It's a rainbow of cloth!

“Rachel!” Miri bellows, throwing my door open and wagging her finger at me in the mirror. “Enough! You've been at it for forty-five minutes! Just choose a stupid color and get ready for tonight!”

Ah. The one annoying part of the day. My thirteen-year-old sister is insisting that instead of going out with Sweet Shmoopie tonight, I
must
accompany her to some weirdo Full Moon dinner. “I'm almost ready,” I say. “But I want to lay out the perfect outfit for tomorrow. It's so hard! Do you think I have a big head?”

She laughs. “You? Full of yourself? Never!”

I cluck my tongue. “I mean, does my head look
physically
big?”

She plops down cross-legged on my pink carpet. It used to be orange, but when Tigger, our cat, had fleas, the exterminator's chemicals somehow turned it pink. Oh well. At least I like pink.

Maybe I should make my shirt pink?

“Your head is bigger than mine,” she says. “But only slightly.”

“Huh.” My big head is my second major physical imperfection. The first is my uneven boobs. The left one is larger than the right. It's not ideal. “Do you think there's a color I could wear that would make my head look smaller?” I would use a spell, but my mom claims body-morphing spells can do serious damage. Like accidentally shrinking my brain or giving me a mustache.

Miri sighs. “Do you know that every time you choose a new shade, my bedspread changes color?”

“Really? Cool!” Like I said, in magic, nothing comes from nothing. If I zap myself new sandals, the shoes have to come from somewhere. If I zap myself up twenty bucks, someone's wallet just found itself twenty short. If my top turns navy, some piece of fabric just had its blue pigments zapped right out of it.

“Not cool!” she wails. “My bedspread is currently a hideous shade of pale puke.”

I straighten the shirt and square my shoulders. “Miri, take one for the team.”

“I'm
always
taking one for the team. Team Rachel. You better turn your shirt back to its original shade before bedtime.”

Original shade? Like I can remember. “Or what?”

“Or . . .” She eyes my purse, focuses on it, and makes it slowly rise off its spot on my desk. “Or I'll spill your stuff all over the floor.”

“Oooh, now I'm scared. Anyway, whose house are we going to for dinner tonight? Huh, huh?” She can't argue with me, because I am ridiculously in the right. “Wendaline is your fake friend, is she not? I would much rather be going out with my friends, thank you very much.” Unfortunately, I agreed to this dinner before Raf invited me to a pre-back-to-school bash at Mick Lloyd's. I claimed I had a family function I couldn't get out of. Which is kind of true. I just didn't give the witchy specifics.

“She is. You're right.” Miri met Wendaline on mywitchbook.com. It's a social network, kind of like Facebook or MySpace, but just for witches. It's enchanted, so no one else can access it. Liana, our cousin, my mom's sister's daughter, sent us both friend requests. I declined. Ever since she tried to steal my body at camp, I'm wary of all things Liana-related. Anyway, it's not like I have the time to friend surf. I'm way too busy with Shmoo Pea. And Tammy. And my other best friend, Alison, who does not go to my school but does go to my camp. I am way too busy for witch friends. Especially ones you meet over the Internet. Everyone knows that cyberfriends only count as a fourth of a real friend, anyway.

Miri, on the other hand, loves mywitchbook. She made three friends on her first day and is desperate to make more. Last week, on her thirteenth birthday, they all sent her e-brooms. Ha, ha. In real life she got a cell. We've been bugging Mom for practically the last decade to get us phones, so I'm ecstatic she finally caved. I'm not complaining about the fact that Miri got one and I didn't—yet—because it's my birthday on Thursday (four days away! Wahoo!) and I'm assuming I'll be receiving mine then. Although it's kind of annoying that my little sister got a cell, and magical powers and boobs, before I did. (And unlike mine, her boobs are a matching set.)

Anyway, one of Miri's e-broom-sending mywitchbook.com friends—Wendaline—lives right here in Manhattan and goes to JFK High with me. (Miri has one year to go in middle school.) Wendaline is the one who invited us to the Full Moon dinner at her house tonight. Whatever that is.

Miri is psyched.

I'm concerned Wendaline might be a
psycho
.

“What are you gonna wear?” Miri asks me now.

“Black pants and a T-shirt. And ruby slippers in case I have to urgently tap my heels to go home.”

“Rachel, she is not a psycho! She's a witch!”

“Exactly. What if she's a bad witch? Like the one in ‘Hansel and Gretel’ who lures unsuspecting children with promises of food and then eats them?”

“She's not a cannibal. She's super-nice.”

“Sure she is.”

When Miri woke me earlier this week with the groundbreaking news that there was another witch at JFK, I feared the worst.

“Tell me who it is,” I demanded, imagining the most evil person in my class. “Is it Melissa?” Melissa is my archenemy and Raf's ex-girlfriend, and she constantly tries to steal him away. Obviously she wasn't a witch last year, because then I would so be a frog by now. At the very least, she would have turned the whole school—no, the whole world—no, the whole universe—against me.

“My life is over!” I wailed, pulling the covers over my head. Sure, Miri didn't care; being in eighth grade will keep her safely hidden in another building.

“Why are you so such a nut?” Miri asked. “It's not Melissa.”

“Oh. Good.” I removed the covers.

“It's her first year at JFK. She's a freshman. Her name is Wendaline.”

“Seriously?”

Miri's brow wrinkled in confusion. “Why not?”

“Wendy the Witch? Does that not sound familiar? From Casper the Friendly Ghost?”

“It's Wendaline. Not Wendy.”

“She still sounds like a made-up character. Like Hannah Montana. Or Nate the Great. It's too much rhyming.”