Twist My Charm

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2016 by Toni Gallagher

Jacket art copyright © 2016 by Helen Huang

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children's Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gallagher, Toni.

Title: Love potion #11 / Toni Gallagher.

Other titles: Love potion number eleven

Description: First edition. | New York : Random House, [2016] Series: Twist my charm ; [2]

Summary: “Cleo and her friends get into matchmaking mischief when she receives a love potion recipe” —Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015019925 | ISBN 978-0-553-51119-2 (trade) | ISBN 978-0-553-51120-8 (lib. bdg.) | ISBN 978-0-553-51121-5 (ebook)

Subjects: | CYAC: Love—Fiction. | Magic—Fiction. | Interpersonal relations—Fiction. | Middle schools—Fiction. | Schools—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Girls & Women. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Humorous Stories.

Classification: LCC PZ7.G355 Lo 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

eBook ISBN 9780553511215

Random House Children's Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

v4.1

ep

To Max.

Wishing you all the friendship and love that this magical world has to offer!

“I
t's disgusting.”

“It's offensive.”

“It should not be allowed on school grounds!”

“Our brains are still forming; we should not be in the presence of this kind of activity!”

“There should be a rule against it.”

“There should be a
law
against it!”

Madison Paddington and I are in perfect agreement. There's nothing ickier than two sixth graders acting like they're in love.

Across the lunchroom, Madison's former-but-still-kinda friend Lisa Lee is tossing her hair back, giggling like a girly hyena at something Ronnie Cheseboro just said. Nothing can be
that
funny. Especially from Ronnie. He thinks burping is hilarious and hocking loogies is even better.

“Are they calling themselves boyfriend and girlfriend?” I ask Madison as I cut my meatloaf and pop a piece into my mouth.

“No, Lisa Lee says they're
hanging out.
”

I chew and think about this. Now, I hang out all the time. Well, not
all
the time, but on the weekends, and after school when Dad lets me. Still, since I moved to Los Angeles from Ohio almost a year ago, most of my hanging out has been with Madison. And before her, I hung out with my used-to-be-but-not-really-anymore friend Samantha.

That's
friendly
hanging out, though. That's not what Madison is talking about. She means boys.

I don't want to hang out like
that
anytime soon, especially if you have to laugh at burps and loogies or care about sports and video games. Yawn!

Madison says that once you turn twelve you start thinking more about hanging out with boys, but she celebrated the big one-two before we were friends and she doesn't care about boys yet…I don't think.

“You don't care about boys now, do you?” I ask.

“Ewww, no. At least not anybody at school. Why? Do
you
like somebody?”

“No way!” I say. “I'm still eleven.”

“Yeah, but you're the only one here who has a love potion!”

“Shhh!” I hiss at her. “The LP is not to be discussed on school grounds.”

For someone who doesn't care about boys, Madison is very interested in my love potion. I can't blame her. It's a cool thing to have, for sure. My uncle Arnie sent it to me as a gift when I performed in
Healthyland,
a play at school. Most kids get flowers or cards or gift cards to iTunes, but that's not his way. He lives in New Orleans and has a head of big, frizzy hair like Albert Einstein and a cat called Fuzzer who looks exactly like him. The best explanation of Uncle Arnie is that he's the kind of person who thinks a voodoo doll is a good birthday gift for an eleven-year-old.

It wasn't.

Madison never totally believed that the voodoo doll worked, but she's always bringing up my love potion. It's part of the reason I think she must like a boy—maybe not here at Friendship Community School, but somewhere.

She lowers her voice and leans in. “Has your uncle told you how it works yet?”

I dunk some mashed potatoes into the lake of gravy in the middle. “Not yet.”

Uncle Arnie's note said “instructions to follow,” and I've been waiting for them ever since. It's hard for me to wait for things; I like things to happen right now. But I'm in a class at school called Focus! that teaches us how to deal with things like being patient, and I guess it's working, because I haven't called or texted or emailed Uncle Arnie once to ask him about the love potion. More than twenty-one whole days, and I haven't done a thing…except think and think and think about it, day and night, awake and in dreams, on school days and weekends, all the time! To tell the truth, I'm about to burst.

“Darn,” Madison says. “It'd be fun to try on someone here at school.”

Someone at school? That
would
be fun! “Who?” I ask.

“I don't know.” She looks around the lunchroom, and her eyes stop at her old table in front of the big window, the one she used to share with Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae. Kylie Mae is sitting down now too, giggling with Lonnie Cheseboro, Ronnie's twin brother. Ickiness doubled! “Maybe Ronnie…or Lonnie.”

“They don't need a love potion. They've got Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae. They're already
in loooove.
” I make my voice nice and sarcastic so Madison knows how I feel about it.

“Yeah, but wouldn't it be fun if one of them fell in love with Janet?”

Ha! Janet teaches our phys ed class, but our school calls it Recreational Wellness, because they're weird that way. I like the idea of Ronnie or Lonnie falling in love with Janet, but I have a better one. “How about the class ferret?”

We watch as Ronnie wads up his brown paper lunch bag and tosses it, basketball-style, into a huge trash can a few feet away from him. The girls cheer as he and his brother high-five each other with loud smacks like they just won at the X Games.

“He could fall in love with that trash can,” I suggest.

Madison laughs. “A boy and his trash can. A love story for all time.”

As we're laughing, our friend Larry plops himself into the chair next to mine, his lunch tray clattering onto the table. Like he does every day, he opens the outside pocket of his backpack and pulls out Mono (
“Rhymes with oh no,”
he always says), a little wooden monkey sculpture about four inches high. It's ridiculously adorable, with carved black-painted “fur” surrounding a mischievous face of “fur” painted white. He got it when his parents took him on a jungle adventure tour in Costa Rica for spring break, and now this monkey is always by his side. It's part of what makes Larry Larry.

“So, what's the rating on the meatloaf?” he asks. “Edible, or time to call the health department?”

I give it an A-minus. He takes a bite of his and agrees.

As we're talking, Samantha crosses the lunchroom and walks past us, holding a tray with the same lunch on it. I open my mouth to say something. Any words could work.
Hey, the lunch is good today. You're gonna like those potatoes. Want to sit with us?
But nothing comes out. I've barely said anything to Sam since we fought over my voodoo doll. We talked after the play—I even gave her a hug—but the most conversation we've had since then is when we happen to be near each other and say, “Hey.”

I want to be friends with Sam again, but I don't even know where to start. How can you be friends with someone when she's announced you're no longer friends…and thrown pepperoni on you in the lunchroom…and chased you through a graveyard?

I don't have the answer to that, so all I do lately is say, “Hey.” And today I didn't even do that.

“So, what's the hot topic at the lunch table today, ladies?” Larry asks. He never says something normal, like “What's up?”

Madison and I look at each other. We agreed to keep the love potion between us, so we scramble for a safer answer.

“Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae,” I say.

“And Ronnie and Lonnie Cheseboro,” Madison adds. “They're hanging out, you know, like couples.”

“Two girls talking about two other girls in love with two lame-o guys?” Larry says. “Snoresville! I expected a lot more out of you two. Art, literature, or at least the advantages of enjoying Friendship Community School lunch as a sandwich cookie.”

Larry's holding up two pieces of meatloaf with mashed potatoes in between. He lifts it to his mouth like a hamburger and takes a big bite. Then, with his mouth full, he adds, “Work on something better for lunch tomorrow, please.”

We crack up and promise him we will.