Magic in the Mix (8 page)

They nodded.

“Okay.” Mom shifted to the middle of the couch
and patted the pillows beside her. “One on each side.”

“You're never mad when we get up at night,” said Molly, settling in.

Mom smiled and smoothed a wisp of hair from her forehead. “That's because I always miss you guys after you go to bed.” She dropped a kiss on the top of Molly's head. “Isn't that nutty?”

Miri snuggled into her mother's other side. “Mom sandwich,” she murmured, and heard her mother smile. Minutes slipped by quietly; Miri listened to Molly's breathing and her mother's, the efficient ticking of the clock in the hall.

“Mom?” It was Robbie. In the dim light, his blue eyes were huge.

“You too?” said Mom. She smiled at him and reached around Miri to toss a pillow on the floor. He sat, edging close to her knee. “Today was a little tough, huh?” Mom asked softly.

Robbie nodded. “I keep thinking about what the real thing must've been like.”

“War, you mean?” asked Mom.

“Yeah.”

“Bad,” she said. “Awful.”

“I don't see how they could do it. Fight like that, I mean,” said Robbie. “I couldn't. Not for real.” He stared moodily at the rug.

Then the quiet resumed and stretched on in the golden pool of light. Miri leaned forward: Molly's eyes were closed, her head nestled in the curve of Mom's arm, at peace and easy. No, Miri thought, she won't leave. We're her family. She would never leave Mom. Or me. Or all of us.

Everything will be okay, she thought.

Everything will be—

She was asleep.

Bright day. Miri could tell without opening her eyes that her bedroom was flooded with sun. She curled and then stretched, a long, unfolding stretch that must have added at least an inch to her height. “Molly?”

No answer, and suddenly, the day before came rushing back to her.

“Mols?” Miri draped her head over the side of the bunk to peer into the bed below. It was empty and comforter-tossed.

She's just downstairs, Miri told herself. Just downstairs, eating breakfast, chomp, chomp, have some toast. She realized that she was talking to herself the way you do when you're pretending you're not scared—“There's nothing outside that window, not a thing, just some trees, some good old trees.” Still, Miri insisted, she is downstairs. Where else would she be?
1918
, said her enemy brain. Shut up, she told it. Molly wouldn't do that.
Yes, she would, to set things right. It's exactly the kind of thing she'd do
. Miri threw off her comforter and went down the ladder in the Mom-disapproved fastest possible way, which was a backward leap. She didn't notice she was saying Molly's name until she slammed into the kitchen. “Molly, Molly, Molly—”

And there she was, at the kitchen table. She looked up at Miri. “Hi.”

“Hi!” Miri bellowed in relief.

“Are you
trying
to wake up everyone in the house?” asked her father. “If so, you're doing a great job.” He frowned at her as she collapsed limply into a chair beside Molly. “Up half the night,” he muttered, turning back to his toolbox, open on the counter, “and some of us have work to do.” Mutter, mutter, mutter.

“What're you doing?” asked Miri to distract him from his muttering.

He rattled something in the toolbox. “Gotta board up that door.” He jerked his head at the open back door. “So you kids don't forget and go flying out of it. Or leave it open so the kitten falls out—” He fell silent, intent on nails, and then resumed. “But I can't start hammering until your mama wakes up. Or nine o'clock, whichever comes first. Is this three inches?” He held up a nail.

“Could be,” said Miri, cheerful now that Molly was found. She tapped her spoon on the table. “No glasses. Can't see a thing.”

“It's three and a quarter,” said a hearty voice. Ollie's head appeared to be resting on the door's threshold.

“Ollie!” said Dad, taking a surprised step back. “Oh. You're standing on a ladder.”

“Naw,” Ollie chortled, “I grew in the night.” He peered into the kitchen. “I'm going to get to work measuring for the posts.” He waved his hand behind him, but his eyes were glued to the kitchen ceiling. “I think maybe you got some rot up there. See how it's peeling?”

Dad looked at the ceiling. “One thing at a time.”

“If you say so,” Ollie said. He gave the ceiling a longing look and disappeared from view.

“That guy's crazy about rot,” Miri whispered.

“Yeah,” Molly said vaguely.

“I got scared you'd gone back,” Miri confided, hoping for an indignant denial.

Molly nodded.

Miri pressed, “Even though I know you wouldn't.”

Molly shook her head, but she didn't look Miri in the eye.

“You wouldn't, would you?” demanded Miri.

“No. Course not,” Molly said. “And anyway, Dad's about to board up the door. In a few minutes, I wouldn't be able to get back even if I wanted to.”

Miri gave her a sharp glance. Who was she kidding? Molly wasn't a person who could be stopped by anything so paltry as a few boards. She was faking.

Was she faking? For roughly the millionth time that week, Miri wondered.

“Waaay back!” called Ray. “To the driveway!”

“You're dreaming!” hollered Molly. She took one step back. “You'll
maybe
get it to the tree.”

They were playing lettuce-ball, the only fun part of grocery shopping. Basically, it was football with heads of lettuce, but they weren't allowed to ruin the lettuce, so it was mostly passing and yelling.

Even though lettuce-ball was the only sport she truly enjoyed, Miri wasn't having a good time. She couldn't keep her mind on the game. She was too busy watching Molly from the corner of her eye, trying to read her mind. Was she planning to
go back in time to save Maudie? Was she planning to erase herself from Miri's life? What was she thinking? Oops—lettuce sailed past Miri's shoulder, and Nora caught it, shrieking with excitement. “I got it! I got it!”

Nora's triumph didn't last long. Molly raced forward to scoop her and her lettuce up and head for the goal (lettuce-ball was also like soccer). “She scores!” she screamed over her shoulder as she ran.

“No, she doesn't!” shouted Robbie, chasing her down.

Miri stood in the shade of the elm tree, watching Molly. No. She'd never do it. Look how much fun she was having. She'd never play around like that if she was leaving. She'd be tense and worried, or maybe that's just how Miri herself would be—“Ow!” This time, the lettuce hit her on the forehead.

Miri had been repeating versions of this argument all week long. Each day, she and Molly went to school, came home on the bus, played with Cookie, did their homework, read, went to bed, and did everything they normally did. Except that it wasn't normal.

The most un-normal part was not talking about it. Miri had tried. In the middle of finding the volume of a cylinder—a pointless project, in Miri's opinion—she laid down her pencil. “Are you thinking about Maudie?” she whispered.

Molly's eyes darted guiltily away. “No. Nope,” she said. Then, “Can we round up the decimals?”

Meanwhile, Ollie worked on the porch, with Miri silently cheering him on. Once it was finished, the hole in time would be plugged—she felt certain of it. Five little boards over the back door were no protection from the past, Miri knew. 1918 was waiting, just over that feeble hurdle, and if Miri realized it, she knew that Molly did, too. She could almost see the past, crouched outside the door like a wild animal, ready to eat Molly up.

You're not sure how it works, she reminded herself. But she was almost sure. Just as she had explained to Molly before, she felt certain that their house was a place where the barriers separating past and present were very, very thin. All the events, the lives, the pasts that had ever taken place inside the house were alive within its walls, still occurring, still existing, still being. The time
that she and Molly lived in, the present, was only the container, the outermost shell holding in a million pasts. What was familiar to them—their bedroom, their living room, their kitchen—was the current version, and it formed sort of a lid over past versions, the way a bread's crust covered its interior. But the crust of the present could crack, and when it did, the past was ready to bubble up and fill the hole.

And that, Miri reasoned, was exactly what had happened when her father and Ollie knocked down the back porch: the previous porch, existing all the while trapped under the lid of the one they'd demolished, floated to the surface of time, bringing with it the whole world of its own present—1918.

It made sense, in its own magic way, but there was still plenty to wonder about. If, for instance, her father had happened to step out of the empty doorframe, would he have landed in 1918? Or, since Miri was pretty sure that the porch hadn't existed
only
in 1918—would the magic have whisked him off to another year? And that question was minor compared with the mystery of the front door. Why did it bring them back to the twenty-first century? Miri spent a useless hour inspecting the door for clues before she'd had an inspiration.

“Ollie?” she called, leaning out a kitchen window. “I think the front door is rotting.”

Ollie's thin face lit up. “I better take a look,” he said, and hurried around the house to the front. A long ten minutes passed as he peered at the surface of the door. Finally, he turned to Miri. “No rot,” he said bitterly. “Not a thing.”

“But what about all those dark spots right there?”

“That? That's the
wood
.” He shook his head at her ignorance. “It's just old.”

Bingo! “How old?” asked Miri at once.

“Old.”

“As old as the house?” she pressed.

Ollie stepped back and looked thoughtfully at the house. “Yep.”

It wasn't exactly scientific proof, but it was good enough for Miri. The door had stayed the same, unchanged since the beginning of the house. Nothing had happened to it, so it had simply moved along with time into the present. All its pasts were locked under the crust of now, meaning that it would always open into the present. Miri was grateful for that, at least.

There were other questions, of course, questions about how, who, and why, but Miri didn't worry
much about them. She was too busy worrying about Molly. When the new porch was built, the leak in time would be plugged, and 1918 would be unreachable. Molly would have no choice but to remain where she was—where she belonged. If staring could hammer nails into boards, the new porch would have been finished, but as it was, Miri had to be patient as Ollie measured, pounded, and hauled.

“Oooh, he's the ma-an!” Miri looked up from her thoughts. Ray was doing a victory dance. “Oooh,” he yodeled, waggling the lettuce over his head, “Ray's the winner and you”—he pointed at Robbie—“are the big fat loser-boy, uh-huh!”

Since neither of her brothers had ever won a game without insulting the loser, Miri didn't understand why they both continued to be insulted by the insults. Why couldn't they just ignore them? But they never could. Robbie, flushed with rage, stopped, pivoted, and charged at Ray. “
Swarm!
” he bellowed over his shoulder.

Miri shook her head but dutifully began to run. Swarm was a Gill tradition, a sacred obligation, and no one was allowed to question it, much less ignore it. When a swarm was called, all available brothers
and sisters were required to descend on the enemy like flies, head-butting, lunging, poking, dodging back and forth, side to side, up and down, until the victim surrendered in confusion. The point was not to hurt the target, but to harness the power of the mob for the greater Gill good. Swarming parents had long been forbidden, but swarming classmates, babysitters, and misbehaving siblings was very effective. Robbie, Miri, Molly, and the two little girls zoomed toward Ray, buzzing monotonously like overgrown mosquitoes.

“Get outta here!” he cried, swatting at the closing circle of siblings. “Haters! I caught it! I won! Cut it out!”

Suddenly, they heard the tingling sound of breaking glass.

All six children went still and silent, too used to being the manufacturers of such sounds to be certain that they hadn't caused it.

“Mama?” called Nora anxiously.

“Sorry!” It was Ollie's voice, coming from inside the house. “Aah, sorry about that. Sorry, Pammy!”

After a minute or two, their mother appeared on the front porch, looking harassed. “Don't worry,
kids. Ollie just broke one of the windows in the living room. Don't worry about it.” Her eyes fell on the bedraggled lettuce under Ray's arm. “That's enough lettuce-ball anyway, kids. Come on in. You shouldn't play with your food.”

Reluctantly, they straggled in, Miri last of all.