21

There’s a Halloween party at Brittany Bishop’s tonight but I don’t want to go. I don’t want to run into Tyrone after he’s stood me up again. He probably thinks he’s too cool to go to a party at Brittany Bishop’s anyway. Everybody says her parents are going to be home.

Amber has the big swim meet to decide if she gets to go to the Nationals this weekend, so she won’t be going to the party. Besides, she’s hardly talking to me.

But everyone else has been planning their costumes for weeks. Brittany Bishop’s parents always rent a chocolate fountain for her parties. And halfway through the night a pizza guy delivers a gazillion pizzas.

Elaine Power is going as a monarch butterfly, of course. Andrew Sullivan is going as a soap bubble. His costume is apparently made of chicken wire and twenty-seven boxes’ worth of Saran Wrap. Ella Sloan is going as a block of Swiss cheese.

Even Felix has a party. A little girl in his karate class is having everybody over. Felix is a devil. His face is covered in red makeup and he has a plastic pitchfork and a red satin costume with a tail, and horns on the top of his head. He also has a glue-on goatee of black synthetic fur and fake nails, long and curling.

I’ll be staying home all alone, dressed as myself. Leggings, Morrissey T-shirt. Same old, same old.

But right now I have to finish the prototype of our unit because it has to be submitted to Mr. Payne on Monday or Tyrone and I lose fifteen percent. I’m in my bedroom with all my notes and one hundred beautiful glass bottles.

Tyrone hasn’t done one single thing for this project. I hate him.

Love, definitely not.

Then there’s a knock on my bedroom door.

What are you putting in this potion? says Miranda. She sits down in the middle of all the clothes on my bedroom floor and the stuff I’ve gathered for the project. I’ve been online and I’m determined to make the potions totally eco-friendly.

I already know that people will reuse the perfume bottles because they’re so beautiful. But I want the potions to be non-toxic too. Artificial food-coloring is actually pretty nasty. It can cause disease.

You need to boil some fruits and vegetables, Miranda says when I tell her all this. Beets for red, carrots for orange, spinach for green and blueberries for blue, she says, because I’ve also told her my idea for four different kinds of love.

I happen to have some blueberries left over from last summer in the freezer.

Soon we’re down in the kitchen chopping carrots and beets, boiling spinach, squashing blueberries and straining everything through four separate pieces of an old cheesecloth blouse of Miranda’s. She says it had a hole under the arm. When we’re done, we pour the four different kinds of colored water into four different bottles. We seal them with the frosted stoppers that came with each bottle. The potions have some sediment floating around in there, but that just makes them look more authentic.

They don’t taste very good, I say, when Miranda holds out a teaspoon of green potion for me to try.

But a customer only needs one sip for it to work, Miranda says.

Tyrone is supposed to be here, I tell Miranda. I slump down into a kitchen chair. It’s already late and I still have to label the prototypes. Miranda can see I’m upset, even though I’m trying really hard to sound unfazed and blasé and generally like I couldn’t care less about Tyrone.

I believe people are the best people they can be, Flannery. I believe everybody is trying to be good. But it’s harder for some people. Tyrone has had a hard time. They’re going through some heavy stuff over there.

So are we, I say. I don’t even have a biology book. And we’re going to have to go to the food bank again. Do you know what that feels like? I mean, they’re asking everybody in school to donate to the food drive. And I can’t donate anything. I’m the one they’re donating to, for gosh sakes. It’s humiliating.

Miranda closes her eyes for a second. When she opens them, she says quietly, Flan, oh boy. Okay. Look . . .

But then she doesn’t say anything for a minute. I wait quietly, looking into her eyes, until she takes a big breath and starts again.

Tyrone’s stepdad, Marty? she says. Is physically abusive, Flannery. He’s hit Tyrone’s mom. He’s blackened her eyes. Once he broke one of her ribs. Marty is a terrible drunk. I’m trying to talk to her, get her out of there. But it’s not easy. There are shelters, but she’s not ready to leave yet. She’s afraid he’ll come after them.

She lets out another big breath. This is confidential, okay, Flannery? But you have to understand. Things aren’t very easy for Tyrone. He’s not even at home half the time. Maybe his grades aren’t the most important thing in his life right now.

It’s not grades I’m worried about, Miranda, I say. I really care about him. My voice goes all funny.

Oh — oh, I know that, baby. I know.

But it hurts. Like, why doesn’t he care about me? What’s wrong with me? Why not love me?

I love you, kid.

I know.

I love my babies a lot. She hugs me and it feels good. Well, it feels better.

I’m about to start my period, I say. Maybe that’s why I’m so emotional. I mean, that’s part of it. And then I shed a few tears.

Me too, Miranda says. We’re synced. But we have lots of reasons to feel emotional. Life isn’t fair. There’s nothing wrong with emotion, Flan. That’s how we know we’re alive. It’s good.

It doesn’t feel very good, I say.

Now, what’s the plan for the love potion labels? Miranda asks, straightening herself up.

Labels? I say. It’s just colored water, Miranda. It’s only a gag.

Sure it is, she says.

Okay, I say. I go and get my notes and show her what I have written down so far, what I am calling the Four Elixirs of Love.

1) Blue: fast-acting befuddling crush-inducer, effects last two to four hours.

2) Red: eternal love, effects include marriage and anniversaries up to ten years.

3) Orange: good for securing a prom date.

4) Green: for provoking an unending stream of compliments from the one you love.

Miranda jumps up and I hear her rummaging around in her studio and then she comes back with these huge sheets of thick, bumpy, beige-ish paper.

Look, Flannery! Left over from my paper-making phase, she beams.

I don’t say this, but the paper sort of looks like the paper towels in our washrooms at school.

But then Miranda gets the idea to attach some kind of written spell to the neck of each bottle.

Just a phrase or two, she says. For promotional purposes. Like a label, but more mysterious.

I had already thought maybe a gold cord with little gold tassels for the price tag, I tell her. They have them at Fabricville.

Gold tassels are all wrong, she says. You need twine.

She jumps up again and bangs around in the laundry room cupboard this time and while she’s doing that I cut out a tag for the blue potion and I write:

This love potion has a short and bittersweet bite,

One little sip and it’s love at first sight.

It’s complete foolishness but it sounds good. And that’s what marketing is all about, right?

Miranda comes back with a ball of twine. It’s brown and bristly with rough little hairy bits sticking off.

But the gold tassels, I say.

We want to conjure up medieval times. Those gold tassels would scream kitsch, she says.

I think they’d be classy.

Picture, Miranda says, a castle on a craggy moor, nothing for miles but jagged rock and tufts of dead grass shrouded in fog. Ancient fog. Fog that has been creeping across the earth for centuries. Bleak, sopping, sorry-looking fog.

Fog with cat feet, I say.

Panther feet, she says. Fog that steals and swallows and sucks and — 

Yeah, I got it. Fog. What’s that got to do with tassels or twine?

Medieval, Flan. More medieval, more magical. Picture fairies flitting in the shadows or riding the backs of butterflies, she says. Leprechauns dancing jigs; fireflies glowing in the dusk. Never mind tassels. Twine is more “of the common folk.”

Okay, I say. The twine.

Picture in the distance, a castle, all towers and . . . what do you call them?

Moats?

Not moats.

Ramparts?

Yes, ramparts. And drawbridges.

Yeah, okay, the twine.

And in the shadow of the tower window, which is just basically a hole in the wall because they didn’t have glass windows, a young lass, forlorn. Is she going to be impressed by gold tassels?

I’m guessing no?

Think of what she’s going through, Miranda says.

Is she in love?

Yes, but thoroughly unrequited love. Picture the face on her.

She’s annoyed.

She’s forlorn, Flannery. There’s a difference.

Forlorn.

Like, heartbroken because she’s in love with a guy who doesn’t return her affection.

Is he maybe in her Entrepreneurship class?

Oh, he’s in a different class from her altogether.

She’s got it bad.

And not only that, it’s medieval times, she has to eat her food with her hands because they don’t have utensils yet. Half the time she has chicken grease smeared all over her chin.

Which has got to be a drawback if you’re trying to get a guy’s attention.

They can’t text, or Instagram, there’s no Tumblr or Google glasses or email thank God and I won’t even go into the plumbing situation. Also the castle could use a space heater. Place is like a fridge. Talk about visits from the field worker. Costs a fortune to heat that place. So, you can see, these tassels you mentioned are all wrong. And she’s sixteen, so she’s already suffering a midlife crisis, they died so early back then.

Wouldn’t the silky gold tassels cheer everybody up a bit?

Sending the wrong message, Flan.

The twine is sending a message?

Absolutely. It’s authentic.

Gotcha. The twine is better than the tassels. And we don’t have to go to the mall. The twine is right here.

Exactly, says Miranda, looking at her watch. It’s nearly midnight. The spirits are roaming. I’d say it’s the perfect time for our spell.

I’ve already written the first one, Miranda. See — 

No, Flannery, we need to say the thing. An incantation. So the potion works, you know?

She’s smiling slyly, daring me.

All right, whatever, I say.

After all, it’s just a gag, right?

So let’s have the eternal love one, she says. I set out the bottle of red potion and she clears her throat with a little ahem.

We call upon all the goddesses of love in the universe and beyond . . .

She looks at me expectantly. I roll my eyes.

One sip of this potion, Miranda continues, and you’ll grow eternally fond . . . of the first person you see. Better than fond. After one little sip, you’ll play your part.

And I chime in with the ending: The first person you see will steal your heart.

What about the green potion? I say. My pen is ready, hovering over the bumpy paper.

One sip of this green potion, says Miranda, and your true love will turn into a poet. You’ll be ravished with compliments before you know it. I write it down on the bumpy paper and attach the little note to the neck of the bottle. I try to make my writing look all medieval-like, pointy and jagged.

And the orange potion? she says.

Easy-peasy, I say.

One sip of this and any Dick, Mary, or Tom

Will instantly ask you to go to the prom.