Stirring Up Trouble

  Stirring Up Trouble

  By Juli Alexander

  Copyright © 2012 Juli Alexander

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation with the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Chapter One

  “Mom! What did you do?” I screeched, my eyes immediately drawn to the giant wart she’d sprouted from her chin. I flung my overloaded backpack at the kitchen table, but it missed and hit the slate floor with a thud.

  “Hi, Zoe,” Mom said. From her perch on a stool at the kitchen island, she continued to search through one of our massive dusty potion books. Each time she turned a page, a small mushroom-shaped cloud of dust rose toward the copper pots hanging on their rack above the island. Finally she paused, looked at me, and sighed. “I had a little trouble today while you were at school.”

  “Obviously.” I retrieved my bag from the floor, set it on a stool and moved in for a closer look. So much for predictable. “That’s super nasty.” My mom was pretty, usually. Normally, I felt lucky to take after her instead of Dad.

  “Thanks.” She finally closed the book and met my gaze. “I did my hips. Just a little bit here and there.” She stood and modeled her new figure. She had on her skinny jeans with a white blouse, and she looked good.

  I glanced down at my own jeans, my second favorite pair. They weren’t as loose as I’d like either.

  “Oh my God, Mom. You know not to do that.” And she did. Or should have. Now look at her face!

  “I know, but I had the potion ingredients, and I really wanted to get rid of those five pounds.” She sat on the stool and tossed her long brunette hair into her face to hide her chin. “Do you think anyone will notice if I wear my hair like this?”

  “Yeah!” I put my hands on my slightly over padded hips. “Have you learned nothing from Oprah?” Mom was a huge Oprah fan. “There are no shortcuts to weight loss.”

  “I know.” She sighed again and flipped her hair back out of her face, smoothing it with her hands. “It’s just that, well, there should be some sort of benefits to being witches.”

  “Well, there aren’t any benefits,” I said. “And now you’ve got that horrific wart to get rid of. When does your show start taping again?” She hosts a very popular home decorating show on HGTV. I really didn’t think her audience would like her new look.

  “Two weeks.” Mom reached for her purse and withdrew a compact. The wart glared in the soft glow from the afternoon light filtering through the bay window.

  “You know what you have to do.” I walked to the fridge and grabbed a cold Coke.

  “Yes.” Mom nodded, poking at her chin. “I went to the Alchemist’s chat room. It looks like maybe a hundred hours of volunteer time.”

  The wart was so ugly that I almost felt sorry for her. “Well, get busy.” I pulled up a stool and popped open the can.

  When Zeus (yes, I do mean the ancient Greek god) gave my alchemist ancestors the gift of potions, he included the limits he bestowed on most magical gifts. Every self-serving potion detracted from our appearance. If we were to keep going, we’d lose our health and eventually our lives. Thus, the tradition of green skinned, ugly, wart-covered witches. Luckily, my non-magic dad had always viewed potions as another sort of chemistry. He’d always minimized the magic aspect because it wasn’t rational.

  Mom typically had good self-control, but the divorce had been tough on her. Now, she’d have to spend the next two weeks doing some intense volunteer work in order to get rid of the wart.

  I took a sip of my Coke. “You do realize,” I said in a chiding tone, “that you could have worked off those five pounds in a lot less than a hundred hours.” I mean sometimes you just have to say it like it is.

  Mom frowned, dejection in her eyes as she put down the compact and looked at me. “I know.”

  “And have we learned our lesson?” I asked, forcing her to meet my gaze.

  “Yes.” She grimaced and reached for the glass of iced tea sweating on the counter. September is still hot in Tennessee.

  Mom could be so utterly ridiculous. She obviously looked good, or she wouldn’t be hosting a show on national television. No one even noticed five measly pounds on her hips.

  “How’d your day go?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Are Anya and Jake still broken up?” Mom knew I had a crush on my best friend’s boyfriend.

  Sad but true. “Yeah. I think Anya likes Brad Griffith now.” I realized I was kicking the island and stopped before Mom noticed.

  “So, are you going to do anything about it?” Her eyes narrowed and her gaze grew sharp.

  “No.” I glanced down at my Coke, rubbing the condensation from the can. “I mean I can’t. How could I? Anya would kill me if she knew I’d been secretly in love with Jake for years. And Jake just sees me as a friend, or worse, as Anya’s friend.”

  I didn’t much like seeing pity in the eyes of a woman with a wart the size of Mt. Everest on her chin.

  “Our family is known for our love potions, and here you are desperately in need of one and you can’t do it.”

  I’d been through this a hundred times in my mind. I shook my head. “I’d need a love potion and a forgiveness potion to give Anya. I’m looking at a month or so to work off whatever ugliness results, and I’d have to drop out of school to get the volunteer work done.”

  There were some pretty harsh rules for that too. Mom and I saw a “Friends” episode where Joey tells Phoebe there aren’t any selfless good deeds, and boy did that statement hit home. Our volunteer work has to be something we derive no benefit from. Like, if it would look good on my college applications, then it won’t work for me. Basically, since any work experience would help a teen, I’d be stuck cleaning toilets at a halfway house or something.

  That is precisely why I would never succumb to the temptation of a self-serving potion. Being fifteen sucked bad enough as it was. Well, I had fallen into that trap before. When I was nine, I had to get glasses. Of course, I would have done anything not to be called four eyes, which, while totally unoriginal, is still around. I had just watched Pinocchio at the time, and my nose grew like I was the lying wooden puppet. I didn’t have to get glasses, but Mom had to home school me for a month.

  “You can’t drop out of school,” Mom said. She propped her chin in her hand, groaned when she felt the wart, and put her arm back on the counter. “But if Anya dates someone else, can’t you ask Jake out?”

  “Without a courage potion?” Was she crazy? “No way. Besides, Anya could be married with six kids and she’d still hate me for dating Jake.” Luckily, Anya was a great friend and worth the sacrifice. It’s just when I thought of kissing Jake that I started to wonder. Well, okay, lately, I hadn’t been as convinced that she was worth the sacrifice. She’d changed, and I’d changed, and we just weren’t as close as we used to be.

  “I guess I’m not the person to be giving advice on love right now.” Mom sighed and reached for her glass of iced tea.

  My steady, dependable dad had suddenly left her for another woman last year. Then the other woman dumped him, but he had a new girlfriend, and I think she had something to do with Mom’s sudden desire for slimmer hips. “I have to meet her this weekend.” I knew my voice conveyed my disgust.

  Mom knew what I meant. She tried not to badmouth Dad, but I knew it wasn’t easy. “Try to give her a chance,” she said with a commiserating smile. “Who knows,
you might actually like her.”

  “Oh, I know.” I’d hated his other girlfriend, and not just because she was a home-wrecker but because she was a truly horrid human being.

  It really wasn’t fair to spend my time worrying about my parents’ love lives when I was supposed to be focusing on my own. I was the teenager after all. They were, like, forty and supposed to be done with all this stuff.

  “I guess I’ll rock AIDS babies in the hospital nursery,” Mom said, eyeing the wart again in her compact.

  “But, Mom. That always depresses you.” Although looking in the mirror would also depress her at this point.

  “I know, but it does the babies some good. And they always need people.” She had some experience in the area. You didn’t get to be forty-something without making a few mistakes.

  Speaking of doing some good... “Did you get to the grocery?” I looked over my shoulder but didn’t see the things I’d asked for.

  “Of course,” Mom said. “Before my little, er, fiasco.” She gestured to her face.

  I hopped up and opened the cabinet to reveal canned meats and fish. “Cool. I’m really hoping I can use anchovies in the toad slime substitution.” Potions were my passion.

  “Might work,” Mom muttered. “Anchovies are just about as gross.”

  I shuddered. We agreed on that point.

  Mom could follow the potion recipes but she had no real knack for it. For some reason, my mother and grandmother had never pursued potions with any enthusiasm. I lived and breathed potions, and I was tremendously talented. I had big goals. I planned to be a doctor and develop drugs to cure diseases. We already had potions to help all kinds of symptoms, but none of them would get by the Food and Drug Administration. I mean the government bureaucrats were not going to okay the ingestion of bat wings or unicorn horns. Luckily, fat-free margarine had already been found to be an adequate substitute for dead man’s toe. So, I really held out hope that I could make things work. Mom and I were trying hard to keep the Council of Alchemists out of our business for as long as possible. Once they intervened, they could decide to send me away to school. I didn’t want to be isolated in a lab somewhere. I liked my pathetic life.

  I examined Mom’s purchases while she eyed her wart in the mirror again.

  “Maybe I should try Compound W.”

  “Mom, you know it will just make it worse! The more you mess with it, the worse it gets.” My mood took a downward turn. Sometimes I just wanted to be like everyone else. I hated having a gift that seemed more like a curse. And I hated that we had weird allergies. Like, we can’t tolerate any artificial sweeteners. They give us zits. And chocolate gives us diarrhea. It just isn’t fair. Being different sucks.

  Chagrined, Mom said, “I know. I guess I’ll cover it with a bandage so I don’t scare the babies.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Get changed. We need to leave in twenty minutes if we’re going to make aerobics.”

  I put down the tuna. “We’re still going?”

  Mom nodded. “I’ve got some serious stress to work off.”

  “Okay. I’ll go change as soon as I take care of Mrs. McGregor’s cat.”

  “And I’ll find an adhesive bandage. A really strong, sweat-resistant bandage. I don’t want to gross out the rest of the class.”

  I headed off to Dad’s library.

  Bookcases crammed with spiral notebooks, journals, and dusty books lined the walls of the library. All of Dad’s research was in there, and mine, too. My nuclear physicist father had taught me how to properly conduct experiments when I was seven. I’d kept every spiral notebook documenting every step in my search for potion substitutes.

  I paused in the doorway for a moment. The room reminded me of all the good times with Dad. I missed having him around, and I couldn’t really come to terms with him leaving my mother.

  Taking the key from the desk drawer, I unlocked the cabinet at the base of one of the bookcases. My potions had to be locked up because they were so potent and could be dangerous. I pulled out the feline health potion which I had developed specially for the neighbor’s cat by combining several ancient recipes. My own cat, Jasmine, didn’t need any help.

  I shook the bottle. Only a few drops were left. I’d have to brew some more tonight. Once a week, I treated Mrs. MacGregor’s cat with the formula. Mrs. MacGregor was about ninety years old, and she adored Snowball. The cat had been sickly and approaching fifteen when I’d started dosing it five years ago. I knew my neighbor wouldn’t live through losing her pet. So, I’d made sure she wouldn’t have to. Snowball was the healthiest cat on the block. Since I didn’t have any ulterior motives for helping, the potion wasn’t self-serving and there was no retribution.

  With the bottle in my hand, I went out the garage and around the side of the house. “Snowball. Here, kitty, kitty.”

  By the time we made it to the aerobics room, all the spaces along the back were taken. We grabbed our steps and risers and set them up in the middle. Hyper Bill was already there. He always set up in the front row. He’d joined us three months ago and was our token middle-aged man.

  “Hey, Annie. You got some kind of skin thing going on?”

  Mom grimaced. “Just had a little pre-cancer sliced off at the dermatologist today.”

  Hyper Bill nodded fiercely. He pointed to his freckled, bald head. “I had twelve lesions taken off last year.”

  My stomach tightened.

  “Well, Bill, I guess we all need to do better about wearing our sunscreen.” Mom beamed at him.

  “Definitely.” He nodded until I thought his head would fall off. Mom and I suspected he binged on energy drinks. Nobody had that much nervous energy. I could totally picture him slamming a case of Red Bull.

  The aerobics instructor finally came in, and Hyper Bill turned his attention to her.

  “Mom,” I said under my breath. “You are such a liar.”

  “Not exactly, Zoe. After all, sunscreen is important. The message is good.”

  “Oh, is that our criteria for lies now? The overall impact on society?”

  The music started and I moved back and forth to stretch my legs. Years of step aerobics had kept me in shape. At first, the uncoordinated factor had really made it difficult. But I discovered that I concentrated so hard on the steps that I barely felt the exercise. And now, I could hold my own with the rest of the class.

  Mom tried to go every day, but on weeks when she had to shoot, she missed a lot. She wasn’t obsessive, but she did make exercise a priority. She’d been a chubby kid, and her image was important to her. When it had become clear that I’d never excel at sports, she’d encouraged me to exercise with her.

  “Take pity on me, Zoe,” Mom mumbled. “I’m hideous.”

  I just laughed.

  The exercise high really helped with the stress I was feeling. At least until Anya called. I had showered and crashed on my bed with my laptop when my cell rang.

  “Did you read my email yet?”

  “No. I’m just logging on.”

  “Well, forget it. I’ll just tell you. I’m thinking about calling Brad,” she announced.

  Thank God! “Really,” I said, trying not to sound excited. “I thought you said he wasn’t smart enough for you.”

  “Oh, he’s not,” she assured me. “But that could be a good thing. If I’m the smart one in the relationship, I could be the boss, right?”

  Leaning back on my pillows, I considered my answer. I was really torn here. I wanted to say whatever it took to get her away from Jake, but she was my best friend. I had to be honest with her, and I really didn’t want to see her hurt. “I don’t think you can boss around football players. I mean, Anya, they’ve got built-in popularity. Brad isn’t going to put up with much.” Football was big at our high school. Football was huge in Knoxville, period.

  “Zoe, that is so the wrong answer,” Anya scolded.

  “You know he likes you, Anya. Just go for it.” Was I pushing too hard? “Or don’t. Whateve
r.”

  “I take it you’re getting sick of hearing about it.”

  “No. It’s just that, well, you’ve broken up with Jake before. And you always get back together.” I’d actually lost count, but it seemed like this was break-up number five.

  “I’m over Jake,” Anya insisted. “Besides, he was totally flirting with Camille today.”

  He was? My heart shattered. I hoped Anya was exaggerating. Extreme exaggeration was part of her personality. An annoying part. Watching Jake date one friend was bad enough. Having to watch him with another would kill me.

  Love stinks.

  Luckily, Anya didn’t require a response from me. She continued, “Do you think Brad’s hotter than Jake?” I could just picture her tossing her perfectly straight black hair as she asked. Anya could model with her clear skin, big brown eyes, and full lips. She had an exotic quality about her while I just looked like your average tall brunette.

  No. “I don’t know,” I answered tactfully.

  “Well, I think Brad’s a total hottie. Jake’s blonde curls are so last millennium.”

  I loved Jake’s hair. His hair fell in soft waves around his face. It would take someone else days to get that effect. But his just naturally did that. “Well, he has had his hair that way for a while.” I didn’t say that I hoped he kept it like that forever. Or ask her if the curls bounced into her face when he kissed her.

  “Brad’s hair is so much more normal,” she said.

  Brad’s hair was totally average. Medium brown, cut short. No personality. “It’s normal all right.” I’d always had a problem with “normal.” I think it had to do with being a witch. Talk about having a chip on your shoulder. I had a freakin’ black cat on mine.

  “Oh God! I have to go. Mom wants to have some together time.”

  Anya and her mother didn’t get along very well. They both had strong personalities.

  “Have fun,” I teased.

  I pushed end and logged into my email hoping to push away the thoughts of Jake and Camille. I deleted Anya’s message and opened one from Milo. We’d met at orientation camp after second grade. He hadn’t fit in that well, and I’d been homesick and miserable. A chubby kid with glasses, Milo had been easy prey for the bullies at camp. I still haven’t figured out what his parents were thinking when they named him Milo. The kids didn’t have to stretch to find mean names for him. They just added –lo to any word and taunted him with it. Weirdlo. Craplo. Nerdlo. Buttlo. Well, you get the picture.