UnEnchanted (4 page)

“
What
happened?”

“
I threw it off the
catwalk as soon as I saw you were in trouble. I mean, come on, it
was either hold on to my stupid phone or save my best friend’s
life,” she said, holding out her hands and weighing imaginary
items. “Duh! Not a tough decision.”

Mina reached over and hugged Nan as tightly
as she could. She knew how much Nan’s life revolved around that
stupid phone, and her friend did help save her.

Nan made gagging noises as she squeezed
harder and harder. “Gee, let go, let go.”

“
Thank you, Nan.” Mina
smiled.

“
Yeah, yeah, I know.
You’re indebted to me for life. You’re my eternal slave and must
sacrifice yourself to save me now. Blah, blah, blah.” Nan waved her
hands in the air like it was nothing.

Mina and Nan sat back down in their seats
and listened to the harmony of a busload of students texting,
talking, and playing games on their cell phones. The chiming noise
was a constant reminder of Nan’s sacrifice.

“
Nan?” Mina began, getting
ready to apologize again.

“
Don’t!” Nan snapped,
holding her pink polished finger up to silence any more words. “I
already regret it.”

Mina laughed.

Chapter 3

Mina hadn’t told her mother what happened at
Babushka’s, knowing exactly how she would react. Sara was an
extremely overprotective mother, far beyond what seemed normal or
even sane. Anytime a crazy unexplained accident happened to Mina,
Sara would pick up the family and move, no questions asked. Mina
wasn’t really sure why.

In first grade, Mina took a trip to the zoo
and was overcome with anxiety as all the animals in the petting zoo
started following her around. They had moved the following
week.

In fourth grade, Mina's garden-variety
science project produced two car-sized pumpkins overnight. They
moved the next day.

In seventh grade during Home-Ec., Mina kept
falling asleep during her knitting projects. Sara told the school
it was mono, and their family was packed by the time Mina got
home.

Mina knew that what had happened yesterday
was worse than any of her other unpleasant accidents, which was why
she kept the list. She hoped to one day find hidden a link between
these disasters and figure out what made her mother want to
move.

For now she was lucky that her mother wasn’t
close to any of the moms from school. If she were, Mina might
already have found their small apartment packed up in boxes and a
moving truck in the alley.

“
Mina?” Sara peeked her
head into her daughter’s room, the door almost immediately stopped
by the piles of teenage debris. When Mina didn’t answer, Sara
braved the obstacle course of clothes and magazines and walked into
her daughter's dark room to open the blinds and window.

“
Ahhhh, MOM!” Mina
answered, throwing the comforter back over her head to protect
herself from the onslaught of fresh air and light, both of which
were toxic to a very sleepy teenager. Grumbling, she curled up
under the covers and tried to ignore her mother’s movements
throughout her room. All she wanted was to lie in bed comatose for
another few hours as she gathered strength to face another day at
school. Was that too much to ask? When Sara stubbed her toe on an
unidentified object, she let out a gasp of pain but held back any
forthcoming remarks. Mina bit her lip guiltily under the covers,
knowing she really needed to clean up her room. She was grateful
that her mother never harangued her about it.

“
We’re leaving now. I have
to pick up a few things before taking Charlie to school. I’ll be
late coming home after I drop off a packet at the Carmichaels’
residence. Be home for dinner, okay?”

“
Wait! The Carmichaels? No
way!” Mina shrieked, sitting up in bed and throwing the comforter
behind her. “I mean, don’t they have live-in maids? Why would they
want to employ another company?” Mina knew that whatever happened,
she could not let her mother go to the Carmichaels’. What if they
told her mother about what happened at the bakery? What if they
tried to thank Sara? Or worse, what if her mother became the
Carmichaels’
maid.
No. Mina could not let that happen.

“
Well, maybe they heard
what a great job we do and want to hire the best. We definitely
could use the extra money.” Sara looked at the piles of clothes and
sighed wearily.

“
What if I do it?” Mina
shot out without thinking.

“
Do what, honey?” Sara
nudged a pair of dirty socks with her shoe over to what she assumed
was a dirty clothes pile.

Mina had to think fast. “I lent Brody my
notes, so I have to go over there today anyhow. So give me the
Happy Maids packet, and I’ll drop it off for Mrs. Carmichael.”

Sara thought about it. “Well, that would
work, because then I wouldn’t be late to the Browns’. Why, thank
you, Mina.” Sara smiled.

Mina tried and failed to return her mother’s
smile when she realized the full implications of what she’d
volunteered to do. Mina was an idiot.

Sara put the packet on the kitchen table,
and Mina watched as she and her younger brother, wearing a Superman
cape, headed out the door. Mina ran back to her bedroom, grabbed a
purple pillow off her bed, and screamed into it, dancing around the
room.

Green movement captured Mina’s attention,
and she froze when she realized that her mother had opened her
window and blinds. Mrs. Orn, the eighty-year-old cat lady from the
building next door, was watching her with one eyebrow fully raised.
She’d happened to be watering her window box full of daisies when
Mina made her dancing debut, and was now likely drowning them.

“
Sorry, Mrs. Orn,” Mina
called, and dashed to the ledge to close the window and
blinds.

Looking at the clock, Mina was glad to see
that she had woken up with plenty of time to take a shower.
Grabbing her robe, she flung it over the top shower bar and began
to work on the infinite twists and turns of the shower spigots. It
was easier to crack a double combination safe than it was to coax
hot water out of these ancient pipes. Mina said a quick prayer to
the god of plumbing and bathroom fixtures and, after a few spurts
of murky brown water, hot water eventually began to rain down.

After a quick and refreshing shower, she
donned her blue terry bathrobe and slippers and pulled on the
ancient porcelain bathroom door. She must not have prayed hard
enough to the god of bathroom fixtures, because the bathroom door
handle came off in her hands.

“
NO…No…no…no. This can’t
be happening!” Mina pounded frantically on the door and called for
help before remembering her mother and brother had left early. Mina
desperately tried to reattach the door handle, but all she
succeeded in doing was pushing the other one out the other
side.

Mina bit back a scream of frustration.
Getting on her knees, she tried to look through the bathroom hole
and find out what sort of lock it was. After assessing the
situation, Mina discovered she had no clue what it was or how to
get out. Frantically, she began to pull out drawers and open
cupboards to look for something she could jam into the hole and
turn the door. She tried several different things: her mother’s
tweezers, and her hairbrush, which was too thick. She had nearly
given up her search when finally her eyes fell on the toothbrush
holder.

Would it work? Should she try? Grabbing the
fattest toothbrush, which happened to be Charlie’s, Mina inserted
it handle first and gave it a few turns. It pulled on the lock a
bit, but not enough to release the catch. Opening up another
drawer, Mina grabbed a nail file and inserted it between the door
frame and the catch. If she could budge the latch enough to push
the nail file through, she’d be free.

For the next few minutes she pushed the file
against the catch, carefully twisting the toothbrush back and forth
until eventually she felt the door slide open in response.

Mina could almost have cried in relief. Just
another reason to talk to her mother about getting a cell phone.
But this latest debacle had made her late for school. Grabbing a
violet zippered hoodie, Mina ran out the door and across the lawn,
having to double back only once to grab the Happy Maids packet from
the kitchen table.

After pedaling for two blocks on her
bicycle, Mina heard a slight mewing noise. Looking down, she saw an
orange tabby cat keeping pace just to her right. Mina swerved a few
feet to the right to avoid the cat and almost ran over a large dog
that was now on the left of her bike.

“
Yikes!” Mina stood up and
tried to pedal harder to outdistance the animals, but after a few
more labored breaths, she looked behind her and saw they were still
there.

“
Go away! Shoo!” Mina was
worried that the dog and cat would continue to follow her and get
hit by a car. They sped up and seemed to be chasing Mina. Who would
have thought a dog and cat together would be chasing her on her
bike?

A loud screech and the large colorful object
flying toward her head was the only warning that Mina had of a
rooster propelling himself from a nearby fence. Ducking, Mina
swerved and almost lost control of the bike.

“
What the…?” This was the
oddest thing that had happened to Mina in a while. She turned her
head to see the rooster land behind her next to the dog and cat,
and it seemed to join in on the chase.

Turning her head, Mina had only a split
second to register that there was a large animal directly in her
path, and slammed on her brakes. Too late. Mina lost control and
flew headlong over the handlebars of her bike to land crumpled on
the sidewalk. In that instant, Mina recognized the animal that
caused her wreck, but she couldn't believe it. It was a donkey, in
the middle of town. And was it wearing a hat?

***

Shivering and sore because of her wet hair
and skinned hands, Mina rode slowly the rest of the way to school.
She decided today was turning into another epic disaster. When she
hit the sidewalk, she must have blacked out for a split second.
Either that or she was hallucinating, because when she dusted off
her hands and looked around, there was no sign of the donkey,
rooster, dog, or cat. There was no evidence that they were ever
there. Mina ran up and down the block looking for the donkey, but
with no success. Maybe it wasn't a donkey. Maybe it was another
large dog? She didn’t even bother pulling up to the bike rack, but
threw her bike on the ground, her feet pounding the pavement as she
ran up the stairs and into school.

Mina glanced at her watch; she was five
minutes late for class. Keeping her head down, she tried to walk as
fast and as quietly as she could, hoping to avoid the hall
monitors. Maybe if she pleaded hard enough with her first-hour
teacher, she would have pity and avoid writing a tardy slip. Yeah,
right.

Her teacher, Mrs. Porter, had her back to
the door and was writing on the whiteboard, so Mina slipped into
the classroom and tried to nonchalantly slide into her desk next to
Nan. Mina took a quick peek at the rigid spine of Mrs. Porter,
noticing that the teacher never turned or made any movement to
acknowledge her late entrance. She turned slightly and began to
shuffle some papers around on her desk; she didn’t even glance
Mina’s way. Mina was just about to breathe a sigh of relief when
Mrs. Porter walked over and dropped a tardy slip on her desk, with
Mina’s name written in perfect penmanship across on the top.

She never even saw her teacher fill out the
form. Mina took the yellow slip of paper between her shaking
fingers and looked toward Mrs. Porter’s desk in confusion.

Mrs. Porter’s thin pale lips tightened into
what could only be described as an inhuman smile. “I find that it
saves time if I fill out your tardy slips in advance, Ms. Grime.
It’s less of a distraction for the class, and you seem to be the
only one that has this peculiar problem.” She held up a stack of
the small carbon-copy yellow forms and spread them so everyone
could see her name printed on the next five tardy slips. “As you
can see, you haven’t disappointed me yet.” Her eyes tried to
crinkle as she laughed, but everything looked strange and awkward
on her. She was so old that the whites of her eyes were no longer
white but a pasty gray. Her teeth looked like faded yellow
parchment, and her clothes seemed to have come from the 1950s.

Everything about Mrs. Porter was a throwback
to some other era and time. Even the antique candy bowl that sat on
her desk with ancient, uneaten candy corn seemed forlorn and out of
place amongst the high-tech gadgetry of the classroom.

Mrs. Porter had been with the school since
it first opened and refused to retire, which was why she only
taught homeroom or study hall. While other teachers had moved onto
video chat guest speakers and live televised distant learning, her
teaching methods were so far outdated that she made fuzzy 70s-era
VHS tapes seem modern. Mina guessed she had never so much as
touched a computer. But there was one thing that Mrs. Porter did
and did well, and that was discipline. She prided herself on
handing out the most detention slips and tardy notices, explaining
that the other teachers had gone soft.

Mina shrank into her seat, crumpling the
tardy notice and stuffing it into her pocket. It wasn’t fair that
she was always late. Most of the time it was out of her control.
Biting her lip, she tried to study her algebra notes when a
persistent foot kept nudging her Converse. Mina looked up into the
excited eyes of Nan, who was being careful to mouth her words so as
not to be overheard.