Samantha leans over us.

Her hair is standing up like a crazed clown’s wig and her face is as red as a crazed clown’s nose. But this clown is also a thief—holding up a pair of short high-heeled boots that aren’t hers.

“How…about…a…trade?” It takes her a long time to finish because she takes a breath in between each word.

I look at Madison.

“No trade,” Madison says, and starts walking away. Slowly. Coolly.

“Madison’s got plenty of shoes and those won’t fit you anyway, Sam,” I say. “So why don’t you just hand them over?”

“Only if you give me the doll! Come on, it’s ours!” Sam shouts, trying to grab it from under my arm. I hold it tight and start to run.

“It’s mine, and it won’t be anyone’s soon!” I yell, running. Suddenly I feel something hit me in the back—not hard, but enough to make me turn around. I look down, and there’s one of Madison’s boots on the ground. “You’re throwing a boot at me?” I shout as the other one comes flying at my face. I duck out of the way.

“You really didn’t think that through, Sam!” I say as I pick up both boots and run, catching up to Madison.

I feel bad that she has bare feet but there’s nothing I can do besides hand over her boots. We make it through the gate and to the corner with the traffic light, where we have to stand and wait. And wait. The light across from us is red, but by looking at the green light in the other direction, I can see how long we have until it changes. Inside a square box on the traffic pole, a red hand is flashing and numbers are counting down. It’s the slowest counting I’ve ever seen. 10, 9, 8…

I move my weight from one foot to the other, bouncing nervously. Not talking. Just looking at the countdown, then looking behind us. That’s when I notice Madison has plopped herself down on the ground and is putting on one of her boots. Though this light is taking forever to change, I don’t know if she has time for that! 7, 6, 5…

I see Sam in the distance, and she’s getting closer.

When 2 flashes, I take a step off the curb. Madison stands up, one boot on, the other in her hand. Finally the countdown gets to 1, and then we have to wait even longer for the light to turn green. Then we run.

As we’re crossing the big road, I hear Madison scream, “Ow!” I turn, hoping she hasn’t fallen down. She hasn’t, but she’s avoiding putting weight on her bare foot. Oh no. Maybe she stepped on something sharp. “What is it?” I ask when she meets me on the corner.

She lifts up her foot. “Just a rock,” she says, picking it off her foot and throwing it on the ground. “Let’s go.”

We run some more, Madison bobbing up and down like a creature in a horror movie because of her one boot. When we get halfway down the block, I turn and see Samantha stuck at the traffic light. Good. That flashing red hand will keep her waiting awhile.

A few minutes later, we see the coffeehouse umbrellas in the middle of the block. I stop Madison from running so I can look at the people at the tables. Luckily no one has Dad’s messy black-and-gray hair, which is easy to spot. We both take a breath. Madison sits on the curb to put on her other boot while I put the doll safely in my backpack and zip it up tightly.

I’m sweaty and tired but I try to slow down my breathing before I walk into the coffeehouse. I see Dad’s head right away. He’s looking down reading a newspaper, wearing his thick round glasses and holding a big plastic cup half filled with ice and coffee.

I wish he were here with Terri instead of alone.

“Hey, Dad.”

He definitely wasn’t expecting to see me. “Cleo! What are you doing here?”

I have to think fast. “Ummm…”

So much for thinking fast.

“Ummm…,” I continue. Then I come up with something. “Oh! Samantha’s mom went down to the pool, and Samantha wanted to go too, but since Madison and I didn’t have anything to wear, we decided to come get you and go home.”

“Where’s Madison?” Dad asks, looking behind me.

“Oh…she saw a friend of hers, one of the kids sitting outside, so she’s saying hi.” I glance through the window, and of course Madison is nowhere nearby.

“Would you two like a drink?” he asks, putting down his paper. “Iced tea? Juice? Smoothie?”

A strawberry-blueberry-banana smoothie would be awesome right now, especially after all the running, but I know better. I want to get out of this coffeehouse and into Dad’s car. “Nope, nope, nope, I don’t want anything, and I’m sure Madison doesn’t either. Let’s go and have water at home. Lots of water!” I tug at Dad’s T-shirt sleeve. “Come on, let’s go.”

He takes his time getting to his feet. First he has to fold his newspaper, then he takes off his glasses and puts them in their case, then he grabs his big messenger bag to put it over his shoulder, and I’m just thinking, Come on, come on, come on.

“Madison, what happened to you?” Dad asks.

I turn around, and Madison is standing there looking like a totally different girl from the one Dad met at our front door. Her hair is as messy as mine, her cheeks are red, and there are patches of dirt from her neck to her knees.

“Oh, nothing. We were, um, playing in the dirt by Samantha’s house.”

I can’t imagine many reasons for three eleven-year-old girls to play in the dirt, and I’m sure Dad can’t either, so he looks confused. “You guys crammed a lot of fun into such a short time. Are you done talking to your friend, Madison?”

Madison has no idea what he’s talking about, but since she’s excellent at improvisation, she just says, “Yeah.” Then she looks at me like, What?

I’ll explain it all to her later. Right now we’ve got to get out of here. We walk toward the front door, and when Dad pushes it open, there’s someone in his way.

Samantha.

She’s redder than Madison and breathing heavy.

“Samantha! I thought you were at the pool,” says Dad, walking through the door and onto the street. Madison and I stay close to him.

“Whaaaa?” she asks, but she can’t even pronounce the t because she’s wheezing like someone who really needs an inhaler.

“What’s wrong?” Dad asks. “Are you okay?”

“No!” she manages to spit out. “I’m not! I had to chase Cleo and Madison….”

“Chase them? Why?” Dad asks.

Madison and I look at each other. Will Sam really tell my dad what just happened? How could she? There’s way too much to tell and it’s way too unbelievable.

Samantha breathes a few more times. “Um, I had to chase them because I had Cleo’s doll, but I…”

She buried it in a graveyard! Is she going to share that with my dad?

“What exactly is going on here?” It sounds like Dad is getting irritated. This is not going well.

Madison jumps to the rescue. “It’s all part of a game we were playing, Mr. Nelson.”

It doesn’t look like Dad believes her. He turns to Samantha. “So this was just a game, Sam?”

Usually Samantha has everything figured out; she’s thought everything through way in advance. But not now. The look on her face is telling me she’s stumped. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her this way. She has no idea what she could tell my dad that would make any sense.

“Yeah,” Sam finally says. “We were sort of, um, playing tag in the neighborhood.”

Dad looks at the three of us one by one. So far he’s been told that we’ve been playing in the dirt, we turned down going in a pool, and now we’re frolicking on the city streets playing tag.

“Cleo, is this true?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you wouldn’t want me to leave Sam’s house without permission. But her mom lets her.”

Dad is skeptical. “I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe I should call Sam’s mom and see what’s up.” He opens his big bag and starts rooting around for his phone.

“No, Mr. Nelson, it’s fine. I’ll be home in one minute and thirty seconds. You can time me. See you!”

And Sam takes off down the street, her sneakers pounding the sidewalk loudly, her curly hair bouncing up and down.

Dad closes his bag and looks down at me and Madison.

“I don’t know what went on today, girls, but I’m sure I don’t like it.”

I look at Madison; then I look up at Dad. Finally I say something truthful to him, maybe for the first time all day.

“We won’t do it again.”

Dad must have enjoyed reading the newspaper at the coffeehouse because he doesn’t make a scene or yell at me in front of Madison; he just sighs. On the way home he asks us if any of this storytelling and running around had anything to do with boys. Madison and I squeal “ewww” and “gross” and “ick,” so he knows we mean it.

“Well, that’s a relief,” he says, and turns up the radio.

Back at the house, Madison and I go to my room. As soon as we close the door, we both fall to the ground laughing, groaning, and letting out all the stress our bodies have felt all day.

“What now?” Madison asks.

“We have to get rid of my little pal.”

I unzip my backpack and pull out the doll. I hold him in my hand and look down at him. Aside from the wine and dirt, the smell of cinnamon, and the leftover oatmeal mix, he’s not that different after all of this. But I sure am.

I look in the doll’s scratched button eyes and silently say I’m sorry for what has to happen next. But it’s what Uncle Arnie said we had to do.

I find some music on the computer and crank it up loud. I grab the voodoo doll’s legs, Madison takes hold of his arms, and we pull in opposite directions. He doesn’t rip at first, so we say, “One, two, three!” and yank even harder. It works. He tears in two and his insides fall to the ground, making a giant mess on the floor. It looks like corn and birdseed and kitty litter and the wood chips from the bottom of the guinea pig cages at Pets! Pets! Pets! There’s some fuzz too—stuffing or dryer lint, I can’t tell.

I notice something bigger—I don’t know what—sticking out of a clump of fuzz. I get down on the ground and sift through the mess to pick it out.

“What is it?” Madison asks.

“A…heart,” I tell her.

Between my fingers is a wooden heart, the size of a big marble and just as smooth.

“What’s that for?” Madison asks.

I hand her the heart. “I have no idea.”

Madison looks at both sides, then makes a discovery. The heart opens into a locket, with a place for a picture in both sides. “Cleo, look at this,” she says, lifting a little slip of folded paper out of the middle and peeling it open. “It looks like a note. Maybe it’s for you?”

She hands it to me. I open it, wondering what the heart of this voodoo doll could possibly have to say to me. Maybe it just says “Made in China” or something.

“Well?” Madison asks.

First I read it to myself. Then I read it again. It definitely wasn’t made in China. It was made by Uncle Arnie.

“It says ‘Friendship is the meeting of love and magic.’ ”

I can tell Madison likes the sound of that. “I think that’s true,” she says.

We’re both quiet for a few seconds; then Madison speaks up again. “So, is it time for the scissors?”

I look at the heart in Madison’s hand, the piece of paper in mine, the chunks of tan material and yarn, and the mess on the floor, and I say, “I think so.”

I hand her my scissors and she starts snipping her half of the doll into pieces. I use my hands to rip apart the bottom half. It’s not easy, but I’ve got extra energy from the running and the music and the fact that it’s all over. Madison, cutting the hair off the doll’s head, says it’s adrenaline.

I put my half of the pieces on my desk. Madison does the same with the yarn and buttons and material she cut. We mix it all together, and then Madison scoops up half and puts it in the outside pocket of her backpack. She’ll bury it somewhere near her house, far away from the other pieces—which I’ll put in the backyard next to Marty. Maybe I’ll write magic in stones by this grave.

Toby barks and scratches at the door. When I let him in, he immediately starts licking up the mess on the floor. “No, Toby!” I shout. I grab him by the collar and drag him back into the hall. He can come in again after I’ve cleaned up—whenever that is.