Bras & Broomsticks (28 page)

I tap the side of my head. “Focus, Miri, focus. We can take a road trip next year. Right now let’s work on Operation Steal Back Dad’s Sweatshirt.”

She jumps from foot to foot. “Sorry. Okay. You sneak into her room and find the sweatshirt. Then, after dinner, I’ll put together the spell—let’s hope we have the ingredients in the house—and then we’ll slip it under Mom’s pillow before she goes to sleep.”

“She’s going to sleep on the entire sweatshirt? Don’t you think she’ll notice?”

“Maybe we’ll cut off the arm and just use that.” She flips through the book until she finds the appropriate love spell. “Let me get a head start on the other ingredients.”

At eight, my mom finally gets off her bed and heads to the kitchen, deciding it’s time to make us dinner. Maybe I should put on appropriate spy clothes. Just what do spies wear these days, anyway? Maybe I should stop worrying about my clothes and go find the stupid sweatshirt before she’s finished in the kitchen.

Her bedroom door is open, and I slither in. Hmm. Now, if I were a sweatshirt that was being hidden by an ex-wife, where would I be? Under the bed? I drop to my knees and lift the bed skirt. No, but she could certainly sweep under there.

Maybe she keeps it with her other sweatshirts. Camouflage. So we won’t notice. I open her dresser and search through the drawers. One shelf. Nope. Two. Nope. Three. Nope.

Where is it?

I check in the closet. No Dad’s sweatshirt, but plenty of purses, shoes, and old concert T-shirts. Would it kill her to buy some new clothes?

The microwave dings. Uh-oh. Time’s running out. Where is it? I rifle through her bra and underwear drawer. She could use an update here. All her lingerie is beige. No wonder she doesn’t have a boyfriend. She’ll need to invest in some new stuff now that Dad has been exposed to STB’s unmentionables, because I’ve seen them drying around the house, and they’re all pink and frilly. At least now I know what to get Mom for her birthday. Is it creepy to get your mother lingerie?

I’ve checked everywhere and it’s gone. Impossible. I search the dresser again. And then the closet. It must be under one of these purses. Why does she have so many purses? And wedge sandals. Does anyone even wear wedges anymore? Where is the stupid sweatshirt?

“Rachel?”

Busted. Mom. Standing at her door. Wondering why I’m in her closet. Why am I in her closet? I try to appear nonchalant by twisting my ponytail around my wrist. “Yes, Mom?”

“What are you doing?”

“I-I-I . . .” Must think fast. Why can I never think fast when I tell myself to think fast? “Looking for shoes. Yeah. I need a lot of shoes for the fashion show. You know, a different pair for every number. So I thought you might have something I could borrow.” I hope I didn’t already tell her the designers are lending us heels.

She looks confused. “But you wear a six and I’m a seven.”

Right-e-o. “I know, but some of these shoes are so old I thought you might have bought them when you were a smaller size.”

She shrugs. “All right. But dinner’s ready.”

That was close. Close, but no cigar. Or sweatshirt.

A few minutes into our plates of revolting peanut tofu, my mom throws down her fork. “What’s wrong with you?” she demands. “Stop making faces; it’s not that bad. It’s a new recipe and it’s healthy.”

First of all, it is that bad. The lumps of tofu are jiggling on my plate like Jell-O, but that isn’t why I’m making faces. I’m attempting to illustrate to Miri that we’re having serious sweatshirt-locating issues.

“I wasn’t making faces about the food. I was thinking that I
couldn’t find
the shoes I wanted. I don’t know
where
they are. I’m thinking you must have
thrown it out
.” Oops. “I mean, thrown them out,” I correct.

“What shoes?” my mom asks.

“Um . . . you know. The silver ones.”

“What silver ones?”

Distraction needed! “Mom, um . . . this recipe is delicious.”

She beams with pleasure. “See? You have to give new tastes a chance. I’ll definitely make it again.”

Fantastic-e-o.

When we’re finally finished, Miri and I clear together (it’s technically her turn again,
finally,
but she set the table for me while I was rummaging in the closet) and my mom goes to her room.

“I can’t find it anywhere,” I whisper. “I even checked the wash, despite my skepticism that she ever cleaned it.”

Miri’s head wobbles from side to side. “That’s so sad.”

“I know. But that’s why we’re doing this. He’s going to fall madly in love with her again, and she’ll be happy.” I dump the leftover tofu into the garbage. Good riddance.

“Right. Except what do we do if the spell wears off?”

“I told you, once he’s out of STB’s grasp, he’ll stay in love with Mom.” Miri’s brown eyes widen with doubt, so I decide to tell her what I’ve always suspected but never wanted to admit. Even to myself. “The Step-Monster was probably responsible for them breaking up.”

“What are you talking about?” Miri asks, rinsing off a dish.

“Come on, think about it. He claims to have met her six months after he left Mom. Isn’t it possible he met her . . . um . . . before?”

Miri pales. “You mean he cheated on Mom?” We both stand still, listening to the sound of the water. And then Miri rips off each of her Band-Aids. “She has got to go. If we can’t find the sweatshirt, we have to find something else that belongs to him. It can’t be a gift he gave. It has to be something that was his personally. Do you have anything?”

“His math trophy?”

“I think she’d notice a metal statue under her pillow,” Miri says.

If she didn’t look so forlorn—probably because of what I told her about Dad’s quasi or otherwise affair—I might laugh. “So what do we do?” I ask, filling the baking tray with soap to let it soak. “Wait until next weekend?”

She sighs. “I guess so. Although that only leaves one week for him to call off the wedding. What do you think?”

I blow a soap bubble over her head. “We have no choice.”

So much for unlimited options.

18

WHY GAMBLING DOES NOT PAY

“One more time!” London screams at us.

It’s Tuesday and I’m sweating through an all-cast after-school practice for the opening. Since the freshman girls are up first, London has already made us repeat our part twenty times.

The music starts again and we go through the motions. It’s really not that hard. All five of us will be spread across the stage, and when the
Chicago
medley starts, five spotlights will shine on us as if we’re nightclub singers. Then we do a twenty-second choreographed dance, and the rest of the cast rushes on.

“You’re not in sync!” London shrieks. She starts the music again. I feel as if I’m a scratched CD that keeps playing the same line.

After we finally get it right, Jewel and I go to Soho to scout for my Spring Fling outfit, and I find the perfect dark green dress.

“You look hot,” Jewel says, circling me in the changing room. “You should wear your hair up.”

Jewel has always liked my hair up. For our middle school Valentine’s dance she helped me put it into a French twist. And one Halloween she spent an hour making me two perfect Princess Leia buns, or cinnamon buns, as Prissy called them.

“Let me see what it would look like,” she says, untangling the chopsticks from her hair. Her curls spring over her shoulders, and without even thinking, I pull one so it uncoils and then bounces back, and she laughs.

She twirls my hair until it perfectly tops my head, and strategically places two long strands onto my forehead. “We’ll style those with my curling iron.”

We smile at each other in the full-length mirror. “Thanks, Jewel.”

I’m going to look perfect. Thank God Miri lent me her last eighty dollars to buy a dress, which I promised, promised, promised to pay back out of my allowance. Eventually.

After shopping, Jewel and I go back to her place to study for math. “Rachel, honey, what a surprise!” Mrs. Sanchez says when Jewel asks her if I can stay for dinner. “We missed you,” she adds, and I almost hug her. I missed her too.

It’s lunchtime on Wednesday, and I rush to the drama room, where the freshman dancers are meeting. I open the door to find Raf by his sexy self, lying across the carpet, a textbook under his head.

“Hi,” I say, and sprawl down beside him. Yes! Alone time with Raf! Maybe he’ll take this opportunity to kiss me! Or to ask me out for Saturday night. Our quasi date was
two weeks
ago. Doesn’t he want to go out again before Spring Fling? Does he like me or not? Did he just ask me to Spring Fling because I’m a good dancer? This whole dating/quasi-dating thing is turning me into a chronic question-asker.

Omigod, I’m turning into Prissy!

“Hi,” he says. “What’s up?” He runs his fingers through his dark hair and I wonder what it feels like. Smooth? Soft? Silky? Maybe like cashmere? Not that I’ve ever worn cashmere. Or know what it feels like. Would I even be able to feel the difference between it and cotton in a Pepsi/Coke–style test? I imagine myself blindfolded, hands out, palms caressing the different materials.

“My parents want me to go to New Orleans with them during spring break,” Raf announces, shattering my daydream.

Oh, no. He’s backing out of Spring Fling! He’s going to leave early, and then my dad’s wedding will be canceled, and after all the scheming, I’ll be at home on April 3 watching
Star Wars
. Again. “Oh?”

“My brothers don’t want to go, but I told my parents I’m game as long as they fly down on Sunday after the dance.”

How sweet is he? Not only does he still want to go to the Fling with me, but he’s a good son. He’s like chocolate mixed with cotton candy mixed with Kool-Aid. If I weren’t so in love, I would get a cavity.

Jewel walks into the room, smiling when she sees us together. “Hey, lovebirds. Bee-Bee, how’d you do on the math test?”

“Okay,” I say, trying to sound nonchalant. I definitely aced it. I finished in twenty minutes and spent the rest of class studying for next week’s French test and writing in my notebook
Je m’ennuie
. “You?”

“Pretty good,” she says, still smiling. “Thanks for helping me study.”

I figured she had done okay. During the test, she was scribbling furiously, wrapping her curls around her thumb like she always does when she’s thinking hard. She wasn’t eating the back of her eraser, which is what she does when she’s upset.

I wonder how Tammy did. I’d ask her. If we were talking.

The rest of the freshmen trickle in. Finally Melissa storms into the room, carrying two plastic chairs. “Everyone up. The moronic JFK administration wouldn’t approve my stripper choreography, but they said I could do a gambling theme. So we’ll be using chairs in the dance to give the number an edge.”

Chairs? What is she talking about? I don’t want to dance with furniture.

“Eight of us,” she continues, dropping our plastic dancing partners into the center of the room, “Jewel, Sean, Raf, Doree, Stephy, Jon, Nick, and I will be the main dancers. We’ll be gamblers at a poker table on the catwalk. Rachel and Gavin, you two will be dressed as casino dealers and will remain at the sides of the stage and
off
the catwalk.”