I stared at the glass. I didn’t want to leave the kitchen.
Nina yelled, “Hurry, Wilma, you jerk.”
Jerk! She wouldn’t have called me that ten minutes ago.
Ardis rushed in. “Give me that.” She glared at me, took the glass, and left.
I followed her. She handed the glass to BeeBee. They were crowded around her. BeeBee sipped the water and gradually stopped coughing. She stared at me over the rim of the glass.
They were all looking at me. I saw the realization go through them that something was different. Nina frowned, shook her head, and frowned again. BeeBee’s mouth hung open. She held the glass tilted. She was going to spill water on her jeans. Daphne half smiled at me, looking confused.
Ardis’s face was dark red. She looked furious, so mad she was fighting back tears.
They didn’t think I was wonderful anymore. They weren’t my friends anymore. I fought back tears too.
I took the glass from BeeBee.
“Tha—” She trailed off.
“What just happened?” Ardis asked. “What did you do, Wilma?”
If I tried to talk, I was going to cry. It wouldn’t be good to cry in front of people who didn’t like me. I started crying anyway. Tears oozed out and then a flood came. Reggie rushed to me, wagging his tail. I petted him and went on crying. “Sorry,” I got out.
Daphne came over and patted my shoulder. Nobody else moved.
I wanted to go on crying now that I’d started. When I stopped, I was going to have to tell them something, and I didn’t know what to say. I never should have invited them. I should have just let it happen and faced them in the fall. They hadn’t liked me before the wish. It hadn’t killed me.
But I finally stopped crying. I looked up.
“What happened?” BeeBee said. “Something happened.”
“Wilma did something,” Ardis said. “I don’t know what.”
“And then she cried,” Nina added, “so we’d feel sorry for her.”
“I didn’t do anything.” I couldn’t tell them. They didn’t like me anymore, and telling a crazy story, even though it was true, wouldn’t make any difference.
Ardis said, “If you’re not going to tell us, I have to go. I have to pack for camp.”
BeeBee stood up. Ardis and Nina turned toward the door. Daphne stayed where she was, standing uncertainly in the middle of the room.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” BeeBee reached into a pocket and pulled out a small packet wrapped in tissue paper. She handed it to me. “It’s your locket.”
Ardis started to leave.
I couldn’t let them go. “Wait!”
They turned.
“I still have Ardis’s comb.” I went to my bureau. I was just stalling. What was I going to do?
“Talk,” Daphne urged. “Tell them something. Anything.”
I handed the comb to Ardis. “Thanks.” Then I took a deep breath. “Remember May twenty-sixth? A Tuesday? That was the day I became popular. . . .”
BeeBee came back and sat on my bed. Ardis and Nina stood by the door. Daphne sat next to BeeBee. I stood between my desk and Maud’s. And I told them.
Daphne listened the way you’d listen to a friend, nodding, smiling, frowning in all the right places. BeeBee said “far out” once, and “oh, wow” once, but mostly she fiddled with her hair, winding a strand around her finger and unwinding it. Nina crossed her arms and stared at me without saying anything. Ardis made clicking noises with her tongue every so often, like everything I said was garbage. She never looked at me, just stared up at the ceiling.
When I finished, Daphne said, “Something happened. I agree. Right here.” She gestured at the room. “But magic? The end of a wish?”
I could see she wanted to believe me, and if she didn’t, even though she wanted to, I had no chance with the rest of them.
“It’s what happened,” I said. “I wasn’t popular before, and after Ms. Hannah read my essay, I was unpopular. What could make me suddenly popular? So popular that everybody liked me?”
BeeBee said, “How should we know?”
“Points for imagination, Wilma.”
Daphne said, “What if the food in the cafeteria was drugged?”
“Yeah,” BeeBee said. “I like that.”
“What drug would make everybody like me? Only me?”
“I don’t know,” Nina said. “But—”
“Listen. Here’s proof. Remember when we went skating with Stephanie? She didn’t like me.”
“And you made her upset,” BeeBee said.
“We should have realized then that you were a creep,” Nina said.
“I got mad when she didn’t like me. But I told her I was sorry.”
“That’s not good enough,” Nina said. “Saying you’re sorry isn’t good enough.”
“Why does that prove there was a spell?” Daphne asked.
“Because she’s the only one who was immune to me. Because she didn’t go to Claverford. She wasn’t under the spell.”
“But,” Daphne said, “I like you now. Am I bewitched now?”
“No. The spell ended. You’re not bewitched. You really like me.”
“I believe it,” Ardis said.
“You do?” BeeBee asked. “You think?”
“Yeah, I do. It felt like the end of a spell would feel, like I had been sitting on cushions a mile high, and they disappeared, and I landed on a pile of sharp rocks.”
Nina nodded. “Maybe. It was too sudden to be normal.”
“A spell?” BeeBee said. “For real?”
“Tell us, Wilma,” Ardis’s voice was extra soft, extra polite, “why did you wait for it to end to let us know? It would have been nice to know I had to like you.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me, and anyway, I wasn’t sure it was going to end.”
“So if it didn’t end, you would have gone on fooling us. You don’t know how it felt when you walked into the room before. It was . . .” Ardis stopped. “Forget it.”
“What was it like?” BeeBee asked. “Maybe it was different for me because I was coughing.”
“It was like I had this stuffed animal . . .” Ardis looked at Reggie and almost smiled. “No. It was like I had this pet. It loved me no matter what, and I loved it no matter what. And then it came into the room, and it wasn’t my pet anymore. It had turned into something else, an animal that didn’t like me—”
“I still like you.”
She ignored me. “—a horse maybe. Not a horse. I don’t know what. A fish maybe. It doesn’t matter what. It wasn’t my pet, and it didn’t like me and I didn’t like it.”
“I still like you,” I repeated.
“That’s not the way it was for me,” BeeBee said. “I mean, I was coughing, so it happened slower, not as dramatic. I drank the water and looked at her and I thought, ‘Oh, it’s Wilma. Why did I think she was so special?’” She looked at me. “Sorry. It’s just what I thought.”
How was I going to break through that?
“What was it like for you?” Daphne asked Nina.
“First I was stunned. After BeeBee stopped choking to death, I mean. Then I thought, ‘Points off, Nina. Many points off for letting Wilma Sturtz make a fool of you.’”
Ardis said, “Remember when I came to see your caricature and Suzanne barged in? Then, when she left, I said I was surprised she liked the drawing, and you said she couldn’t harm you. That was because of the spell, wasn’t it?”
I didn’t answer. What could I say? She knew the answer. But I never once thought I was hurting anyone.
Ardis turned to Nina and BeeBee and Daphne. “She said Suzanne couldn’t harm her because I was her protection. And I felt great about that. But she was lying.”
Nina nodded. “She’s been lying all along.” She faced me. “Is that what you brought us over for? To tell us about the spell after it ended? Well, you told us. Can we go now?”
“She invited us because she wants to keep us as friends,” Daphne said.
“No,” Nina said. “She invited us because she wants to stay popular.”
“I didn’t. I—”
“Then why did she invite me?” Daphne interrupted. “I can’t keep her popular.”
“I invited you because I like you. All of you. Listen. Believe me.” They had to believe me. “I wasn’t any different when I was under the spell than I am now. I didn’t have to be different. I could be the same old Wilma and everyone would like me anyway.”
“Maybe,” Ardis said, “but you don’t seem the same. Maybe I can’t remember what happened during the spell accurately.”
“Maybe you’ve been bewitched not to like her now,” Daphne said. “Maybe you were bewitched a long time ago not to like me.” She giggled. “Maybe it’s all a spell. It doesn’t matter what kind of a person you are. An old lady just decides whether you’re popular or not, and Wilma’s the only one to catch her at it.”
“Far out,” BeeBee said.
They all stared at Daphne, me included.
She went on. “Anyway, Wilma seems different now to me too. The popularity glow is gone, I guess. But she is the same person. And if you don’t see that, you’re going to miss out.”
Daphne made me feel like crying all over again.
“Maybe you’re right,” Ardis said. “Maybe she is the same person. But she seems different. I don’t know her anymore.”
BeeBee and Nina nodded.
“But you do know me. You’ve known me all along.” I wanted to scream, to wail, I like you. Like me back. Please like me. “Ardis, didn’t I help you stop being so afraid of dogs? Didn’t I help you with history?”
“Thank you very much,” she snapped.
I didn’t mean she had to be grateful. But what did I mean? After all, why should they like me? I had had fun with them, but they’d had fun with a person they’d had to like.
“Can we go now?” Nina said.