I quickly put the top back on the potion as I hear Dad greeting Madison. By the time I toss the bottle into my backpack, followed by my offerings, Madison’s standing at my bedroom door.

“Ready?” she asks.

“Ready!” I smile, but inside I’m a little less than ready. I was just about to use Uncle Arnie’s love potion—without the official instructions. Is that really the right thing to do, with only his postcard from Alamogordo and my own silly dream as direction? One minute ago I was ready to tip the bottle’s contents all over Larry’s monkey, Dad’s glasses, and the Healthyland page, but now I’m not sure. What should I do?

The doorbell rings again, so I can’t answer that question yet.

“Cleo! Are we expecting someone else?” From down the hall, Dad sounds confused.

Oops. I forgot to tell him about Samantha coming over, but I also forgot something else—that it meant he’d be seeing Paige (ugh!). I run out of my bedroom to meet them at the door. I don’t want anything happening between Dad and Paige that I’m not there to see.

“Well, this is a nice surprise,” Dad says, too happily. “Cleo didn’t tell me you two were coming over.”

“Some things never change,” Paige replies, and they both chuckle. It’s a chuckle I don’t like. I don’t want them chuckling. Why couldn’t Paige leave Samantha at the curb and let her come to the door by herself? We’re not children anymore!

Sam knows the way to my room, so she walks past the adults with a quick “Bye, Mom” and zips down the hall. I don’t leave the doorway. I need to keep watching.

“Do you want to come in for a few minutes? Have some tea or coffee?” Dad asks.

Paige has got to say no to this dumb invitation! She’s all dressed up in a tight skirt and blouse; she must have things to do. Plus, who says yes to tea or coffee when it’s eighty degrees outside? I turn and start off toward my room, but I stop when I hear what Paige says next.

“That’d be nice, Bradley. Do you have any caffeine-free tea?”

No, no, no, no, no, I think. We only have tea that will keep you up all night. We have extra-amped-up caffeinated tea; it will make you bounce off the walls and the ceiling!

“Sure, come on in,” Dad says, and Paige strolls toward our kitchen, her high heels click-click-clicking on our hardwood floors.

Ugh. There’s nothing I can do about it…until we get to the lake and do the LLAMADA DE LA SIRENA. This means I have to leave them alone, whether I like it or not.

I run to my room, where Madison is sitting on my bed, petting Toby. Toby likes her so much that he didn’t even run and bark when Samantha and her mom rang our doorbell. He’s going to miss Madison when she goes away after the Bling Bling Summer Fling. Three months is a long time. And to a dog, it’ll feel like twenty-one months! Or it could be forever, if Madison chooses Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae over me.

Samantha’s on the other side of the room, letting Millie the millipede crawl on her hand. I have the feeling she and Madison are both nervous; that’s why they’re playing with my animals instead of talking to each other.

“Sam, are you going to wish for your mom and my dad to be together?” I ask loudly, without even saying hi.

Sam jumps a little. “I’m not allowed to tell!” she says, but her face looks truly confused, like she hadn’t even considered the idea. Then she adds, “I thought he liked Terri.”

“He did. I mean, he does. He still does,” I say. “Okay. Just wanted to make sure. So, your charm is going to be for yourself?”

Madison looks at me like I should know better. “We’re not supposed to tell, Cleo. It says so in the book.”

“Sorry,” I say to both of them, though I’m sick of testing my patience and would really, really like to know what both of them are wishing for! “I’m nervous, I guess.”

“We all are,” Madison says, mature person that she is. “So, are we going to sit around here or are we going to do it?”

Of course. It’s time to do the Siren Call.

We sling our backpacks over our shoulders and make our way toward the front door. Dad and Paige are at the kitchen table with mugs in front of them. They’re not sitting too close together, thank goodness, and it doesn’t look like we’ve interrupted anything romantic. It barely looks like they were talking.

They just don’t look right together. They never did. They don’t look like Terri and Dad used to. After we do the LLAMADA DE LA SIRENA, Terri will be the one drinking decaffeinated tea here with Dad, like it should be.

“Have fun, girls,” Paige says. We all nod without much of a response.

“Call and check in if you’re gone longer than an hour,” Dad says. I shout for Toby, but Dad says we don’t need to take him, since he wants to jog around the lake later anyway.

“Oh, you jog?” asks Paige. Maybe I’m imagining it, but she sounds like she’s impressed, like the next thing she’s going to do is squeeze his biceps and tell him what nice muscles he has. She’d better not! He has no muscles at all!

I take Madison and Sam across the street. We walk on the dirt path until we reach the meadow that leads all the way to the bank of the lake. It’s warm out and the sun is shining, so people are all over the place. A large group of ladies is taking a yoga class, while families and friends are having picnics. Even the people who are by themselves, reading books or snoozing, look like they’re having a good time. All of them are too busy to care about three girls by the edge of the lake.

We sit on the ground and open our backpacks. Madison pulls out a ziplock bag filled with shells she took from the vase in her house’s entryway. I start looking through them right away. I don’t know if it’s true, but I like to think that shells are like snowflakes and fingerprints, with no two being alike. How could they be? The water and sand and air affect each one a little bit differently, so some look chipped and some look perfect—just like people. “Why’d you bring so many?” I ask.

“Well, if we need to make holes in them to put them on the string, I figured some of them might break.”

“Good thinking,” Sam says. “Let me get my things….” Her voice trails off as she digs in her backpack. Then she pops up holding two items for making holes in shells—a small pair of sharp scissors and something that looks like a teeny, tiny screwdriver.

My only item to bring was the string. That was easy because my dad has junk drawers filled with old computer cords, rolls of tape, random stamps, and other things he’ll never miss. I throw the wad of string on the grass between us. Madison and Sam look at me like I just barfed up a big hair ball.

“What?” I ask.

“I thought—” Madison starts.

“I expected a ball of string,” Sam says over her. “Not a tangled-up mess.”

“You expect my house to have a nice, neat ball of string?”

Madison and Sam laugh; they’ve both been there enough to understand. But now that we’ve contributed our items, it’s time to get started. One by one, we each manage to pull out strings long enough to make necklaces; then we pick shells and poke holes in them. Madison was right; a few of them crack and break. I’m making three necklaces, so I have to slow down and be more careful. Eventually I get the hang of it. Then I remember that I want the necklaces to fall off soon, so I take Sam’s scissors and scrape the sharp blade against the edges of my strings to fray them a little.

“Ooh, good idea!” Sam says. It feels nice, getting a compliment from her after all this time. “Let me have the scissors when you’re done.”

Once she and Madison have thinned out their necklace strings too, we walk to the edge of the water to dip our shells in. That part is easy, except for the tips of my sneakers getting wet. It’s the part that comes next—deciding what to sing—that isn’t easy at all. Of course it’ll be a Ryder Landry love song, but which one? Sam suggests “Love Monsoon” (“Love is a monsoon, a typhoon, it takes you over and spins you around!”), but Madison doesn’t think we should sing that next to a body of water, and I have to agree. Madison votes for “You and Me on a Boat in the Sea,” another water-themed love song. I love that one too, but when I make my suggestion, Madison and Sam both realize there is no other choice.

“Only One.”

What else could it be?

We sing it happily to the world. We’re Landers and we want everyone to know. “You don’t want just anyone, you only want your only one…”

Sam raises her arms into the air and sings louder, so we do it too. “The one who always stuns, the one who never runs, the one who’s there for fun…”

We might not have the best pitch, but we’re making it up with power. It’s a beautiful day, the LA air is semi-fresh, and for this little moment, life is almost as awesome as a Ryder Landry love song. We finish loud and proud: “The one who will be by your side forever, the one who will turn on you never, never ever, she’s your Onnnnnly Onnnnnne!”

When we turn away from the lake, the ladies from the yoga class are staring at us. “Namaste!” Sam shouts to them. We learned that word in Janet the Recreational Wellness teacher’s Spiritual Growth class, where we do things like yoga and drumming and meditation—the stuff my dad calls “New Age mumbo jumbo.” Madison and I put our hands in a prayer position in front of our hearts and shout “Namaste” too. The ladies should know this word, but they just look at us strangely, then go back to their downward facing dog yoga pose.

Madison, Sam, and I take turns helping each other put on our necklaces. Samantha ties mine too tight at first, but she loosens it when I let out a little “ow.” We all agree that the string is slightly scratchy, but as necklaces, they actually look pretty good. I’m sure Ryder would like them too; according to Zip! Pow! magazine, he likes a girl who “revels in her uniqueness.”

With our song sung and our necklaces on, it’s time for our offerings. We settle back down on the ground and go through our backpacks. One by one, I pull out my items: Dad’s glasses, the page from Healthyland, and Larry’s monkey.

But there’s one more thing in my backpack the other girls don’t know about. The love potion.

My hand wraps around the edges of the glass bottle, edges that are sharp and smooth at the same time.

Should I use it?

And if I don’t use it now, when will I?

Trying not to be too obvious, I turn my back, just a little, from Madison and Samantha. With my hand still in my backpack, I pull the top off the bottle. There’s a small POP, but to me it sounds like an explosion. I glance behind me, but they haven’t heard the noise.

I take a peek at what Sam has brought out, hoping it might help me figure out her wish. But her offering must be microscopic, because it’s wrapped in what looks like one square of toilet paper. Unless the one square of toilet paper is her offering. Ewww, if Larry used that to wipe his butt, that would be the grossest thing ever!

I sneak a glance at Madison’s offering too. It’s something I’ve seen in her room every time I’ve been there, hanging off the edge of the bulletin board above her desk. It’s a laminated photo hanging on a long string—the VIP badge from the Ryder concert she went to with Lisa Lee and Kylie Mae! Of all the things Madison owns—and she owns a lot of things—that is one of her favorite, most treasured possessions.

Madison has never talked about liking any boy other than Ryder Landry. Could she be using the Siren Call to bring Ryder Landry to her? It seems far-fetched, considering he’s a big star traveling the world, but I’ve seen plenty of strange and magical things happen since I’ve moved to California, and I have to think anything is possible. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here right now, about to call the universe for three different wishes.

It’s time.

I’m still not sure I’m doing the right thing, but I do it anyway. Hunching over my backpack, I sneak out the love potion, and carefully—very carefully—tip it over so a nice blob plops onto Dad’s broken glasses. It feels smooth and soft as I smear it onto one of the lenses. The next drop falls on the piece of paper with the words of the play on it. I fold up the paper so the potion can’t escape. Finally, I pick up Larry’s monkey and turn it over. His two little feet are flat on the bottom. I tip the bottle one last time, but before a drop comes out, Madison’s voice shocks me.

“What are you doing?”

I turn my head, but Madison and Sam aren’t behind me anymore. They’re standing, looking down at me—and everything I’ve done.

“I’m…” I try to speak. “I’m…”

“She’s using the love potion!” Madison announces to Samantha.

“That’s the potion?” Sam asks, kneeling down by me. “Can I see?”

“I—I don’t know,” I stammer. I don’t want to give her the potion, but I can’t figure out how to say no either.

“You mean you weren’t going to share it?” Madison asks. She sounds like she’s accusing me of some kind of crime, and I suddenly realize I’m a terrible, terrible person. How could I not share it? What kind of friend would that make me?

“No, no, I was going to share it. I was just putting it on my stuff first.” That sounds selfish and greedy, but it’s not as bad as not sharing the potion at all. I hand the bottle to Madison.

“Well, good!” she says, flashing a satisfied smile. “Did your uncle finally send the instructions?”

“Not…exactly,” I answer. “But close enough. He sent a postcard and it sounds like it’s safe to use a drop.”

“Great!” says Madison, turning over the bottle and pouring much more than a drop on her Ryder Landry VIP badge. I grit my teeth, worried about how much she’s using, as she rubs it all over like she’s giving Ryder a face massage.

“My turn!” says Sam. Madison hands her the bottle and she holds it up to the sun, turning it around in her hand, looking at it from every angle. “Cool!” she says, sprinkling way too many drops of potion onto her folded-up piece of toilet paper.

Sam hands it back to me. The liquid barely fills the bottom of the bottle now. But both she and Madison look so happy and optimistic, I know I made the right choice in sharing the potion. Not that it was actually a choice, of course.

I give Madison and Samantha a weak smile and turn my back slightly again, putting a small drop on Mono’s feet. I let out a sigh, relieved that this is almost over, but that feeling doesn’t last for long.

“Is that Larry’s monkey?” Sam asks.

I quickly hide it behind my back.

“It’s still there, Cleo,” says Madison. She’s right. Just because Sam can’t see the monkey right now doesn’t mean she didn’t see it at all.

“Are you asking the universe for Larry?” Sam asks. “You said you didn’t like him.” To me it sounds like an accusation.

“I…don’t,” I sputter. “I’d tell you everything if I could, but I can’t. The spell says so.”

Samantha looks more disappointed than angry. “He always has that monkey, every day,” she says.

“Well, if the monkey’s that special, maybe it’ll get the universe’s attention,” I say. “I want it to listen.”

“Yeah, me too,” Samantha says. Then she mutters “wow” and walks to the edge of the water.

Madison looks at me, then at Sam. She understands why I have Larry’s monkey, and I hope she’s not judging me like Sam seems to be. “Cleo’s got a lot of complicated wishes going on,” Madison tells Sam. “And someday, this is all going to make sense.” We join Sam at the edge of the water.

“I get it,” Sam says, though she doesn’t sound totally convinced. “So are we going to do this?”

We do it. First I chuck Dad’s glasses far and they make a decent little splash. Madison’s badge follows. Samantha’s toilet paper doesn’t go far; it flutters quietly onto the water’s surface, and if any item fell out of it, I couldn’t see. I fling the folded Healthyland page like a Frisbee. The paper goes pretty far, but the splash isn’t impressive.

The only thing left is the monkey. I feel the cool wood against my hand, the carved fur against my fingers.

Madison and Samantha stare at me, waiting.

I look at the monkey’s cute pink face, smiling at me with its mischievous eyes.

Larry’s had this with him every day since spring break. It’s much more important than Dad’s old glasses…or Samantha’s toilet paper (whatever that was!)…even Madison’s Ryder Landry badge. What would I tell Larry at school on Monday? That I lost it?

I could never do that. Not to a friend.

I look at Madison and Sam. I shake my head.

As I’m bending down to put the monkey back in my backpack and the girls are telling me I’m doing the right thing, a loud, gruff voice interrupts us. “What are you kids doing?” All three of us turn around.

Red Shorts!

“I will call the authorities!” he shouts. He’s not coming toward us, though; he’s staying on the dirt path and walking in place. But he’s stretching his neck to look past us.

“You’re littering?” he yells. “Why in the world would you come to this beautiful lake to destroy it?”

While I hardly feel like tossing a few small items into the lake is going to destroy it, I also don’t want to argue with him—especially when he’s attempting to unzip the little pack on his butt while walking in place. Maybe he’s reaching for his phone! Luckily, it’s a tough task and takes him a while, so I do what any smart, focused Focus! student would do: assess the situation, determine my options, and finally shout, “Run!”

We scramble as quickly as we can, bumping into each other as we throw all our supplies in the closest backpacks and run off with them unzipped.

“I’m gonna keep an eye out for you kids!” Red Shorts shouts. He’s still walking in place, holding his phone in his fist and shaking it at us.

“Please don’t call anyone!” Sam yells, running. “We’re innocent little children!”

“It’s not littering! It’s love!” I shout.

I didn’t think our short legs could outrun the walking man, but when we turn around a minute later, breathing heavily, we see his red shorts walking in the other direction. We all break out laughing, and I’m glad Samantha has forgotten about Larry’s monkey, at least for the moment.

“Did he give up?” Madison wonders.

“I don’t know,” I say, “but I think we’d better get back to my house fast!”

As we walk back, I can’t talk. My heart is pounding from running. I’m smiling because of Red Shorts. And though I’m a little upset about how Sam reacted to the monkey, I’m excited about all the great things that are going to happen next.

I hope.