If your annoying older sister has a boyfriend:
a. Being in love will make her happy.
b. She’ll be so busy mooning over him that she’ll leave you alone.
c. She’ll start freaking out over every little thing.
Answer:
C. And, if possible, be even more annoying than she was before, especially because she’ll start spending hours in the bathroom staring at herself, leaving you to pound on the door and have to beg to be let in.
“Are you going to wear that?” Lucinda asked, her nose wrinkling up when she saw my outfit.
I looked down. What did she expect me to wear? A dress? We were eating at home. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
Lucinda rolled her eyes. “If you don’t know, then I don’t know how to help you. Would it kill you to at least try to look nice?” She walked around our dining room table, lining up the silverware so that it was perfectly straight. Suddenly her eyes went wide and she lunged across the table to grab one of the glasses. “Mom! This one has a huge spot on it.” She held it out. She looked horrified, like she had discovered a body in the front closet instead of a water spot.
“Let’s not panic.” Mom bustled in from the kitchen carrying a bowl of salad. She looked at the glass and gave a quick spell. There was a plink and the microscopic spot that freaked my sister out was gone.
Lucinda inspected the glass carefully. She’d invited Evan over for dinner, and the way she was acting, you would think Oberon, King of the Fairies, was going to come by. The house was so clean you could have eaten off the kitchen floor. If you looked too closely at the stove you would go blind from the glare off the polished surface. We had dinner every night. It wasn’t like we were trying to do something really new and tricky, but Lucinda wasn’t sure we could handle it.
I folded napkins to put at each place. Lucinda stood behind me supervising. I might only be ten, and not have any magical abilities, but I was perfectly capable of folding a napkin. I turned around and glared at her. “It’s just a dinner, would you calm down?”
“Whatever you do, don’t say anything to Evan about losing your magic.” Lucinda refolded the napkin I’d just done. “I’d rather he didn’t know. It’s humiliating that someone in my family is in this situation.”
“I wasn’t planning on telling anyone,” I said. I didn’t mention what happened in spell class. There was a good chance Evan would have already heard about it from someone else. I was hoping that the Fairy Council would meet soon and rethink Miss Pipkins’s decision. There was a time when I thought I didn’t want to be magical, but I’d never wish for that again. I couldn’t understand Winston anymore. I couldn’t fly. I couldn’t do even simple spells. I hated it.
“Maybe it would be better if you didn’t say anything at all during dinner,” Lucinda said. “Whatever you say will likely be wrong. Just sit there.”
“Won’t it seem weird if I don’t talk?”
“Not as weird as whatever might come out of your mouth.” Lucinda turned to my mom who was bringing in a basket of rolls. “And can you make sure Dad doesn’t tell any of his jokes?”
This dinner was going to be great. We would all sit in total silence and watch Evan eat. The doorbell rang. “Hey, what’s that thing on your nose?” I asked Lucinda, pointing at her face.
She rubbed her nose furiously. “What? Is there something there? What is it?” Her voice raised in panic. She rubbed her nose again. “Is it gone?”
“Nope. Still there.” Her nose was actually completely clean, but I liked acting like there was a huge glob hanging off the end.
“Oh my gosh,” Lucinda dashed out of the room to look at herself for the one millionth time while my dad answered the front door.
“Hey, Wills.” Evan came into the dining room with my dad. He gave me one of his lazy smiles. Normally I hate when someone calls me Wills, but it sounded better when it came out of his mouth.
Lucinda came back into the room. The tip of her nose was bright red from where she had been rubbing it. She shot me a look that let me know she was now aware there had never been anything on her face.
I pulled out my chair to sit down, but Lucinda yanked it out of my hand. “Evan’s our guest. He’ll sit here. You can sit over there.” She pointed at the extra chair my dad had squished to fit around the table. I was going to have to eat in the corner where I would bump elbows with my mom and dad the entire time. Just so she could sit right next to Evan.
“Here, let me,” Evan pulled out the chair for my sister.
I plopped down in the corner chair and whacked my knee against the table leg. My dad held the chair for my mom. All of a sudden our dinners were formal. The only thing we were missing was a butler. My mom said a quiet spell and suddenly each of us had a pile of pasta on our plates. Cheese and a small grater came floating out of the kitchen and hovered above each plate, waiting for us to nod before sprinkling a small shower of parmesan onto the pasta below.
“This cheese reminds me of a joke,” my dad said, but before he could share it he winced. My mom had kicked him under the table. “All right, I forgot, but it was a funny joke.” He rubbed his knee.
“So, Evan, are you and your family planning any vacations this year?” my mom asked, saving us from having to eat in silence except for the sound of people slurping their noodles.
“We’re going to Paris in the spring,” Evan said. “We go every few years because my mom does a lot of fashion wishes.”
“I’ve always thought Paris was the most romantic city,” Lucinda gushed. “I think it would be nice to live there for a few years after school.”
I paused with the fork halfway to my mouth. Really? This was the first time I’d ever heard my sister talk about moving to Paris. I suspected if Evan told us how they were going to visit the Yukon, my sister would suddenly talk about how she always loved cold weather and polar bears.
“So, Wills, how are things with your humdrum friend?” Evan asked.
I opened my mouth, but Lucinda cut me off before I could get the first word out. “Her friend is fine. Nothing going on there. No news.” Lucinda glared at me across the table like I had done something wrong. He was the one who had asked me a question. I could have said something. It wasn’t like I was going to tell him about losing my magic. I had some social skills.
“Tell us more about Paris,” Lucinda said. She had a piece of parsley stuck in between her front teeth, but there was no way I was going to tell her. She could have had a whole tree branch stuck there and I wouldn’t have said a word. After all, I wasn’t supposed to talk.
“Paris is boring compared to what’s going on with you guys. I still can’t get over the fact that after hundreds—thousands—of years, the barrier between fairies and humdrums has been broken down.” Evan was practically bouncing in his seat he was so excited. I could tell he was really interested, too, not just being polite. “And who would have guessed that if it was going to happen, it would happen this way. You’d think it would have been something more formal, like the president of the United States having a summit with the Fairy Council or something.” Evan raised his water glass to me. “You lucked out with getting such a cool sister,” he said to Lucinda.
I tapped his water glass back to complete the toast. “She is pretty lucky, isn’t she? Some sisters wouldn’t appreciate how lucky they were. They might be the kind who would be mean to their little sisters,” I said with a smile.
“We’re so close, we’re like best friends and sisters rolled into one,” Lucinda said, giving me a huge fake smile back and rushing to clink glasses with the both of us.
“We sure are. Why, if we weren’t so close, then Lucinda wouldn’t let me borrow her purple sweater tomorrow,” I said.
Lucinda’s eyes narrowed. She never let me borrow her clothes because she said I would spill things on them. She’s right about me being kind of messy, but it isn’t like the sweater couldn’t be washed. I knew there would be no way she would turn me down now, with Evan listening. “Of course you can borrow it,” she said through her teeth. “What are sisters for?”
“I think it’s cool you guys get along. I’ve always wanted a kid sister,” Evan said. “I have an older brother, but he teased me all the time. He was terrible to me growing up. You wouldn’t believe the stuff he used to do to me.”
“I’d believe it,” I said, giving him a sympathetic smile. “I hear stories about what older siblings can be like. It’s a tragedy.” I knew I liked Evan. He understood what it was like to be tortured by a cruel sibling. No wonder he had such nice eyes. He’d known real pain.
“We should all go out together. I’d love to talk more to your friend Katie,” Evan said. “I’ve never really spent any time with a humdrum. I’d love to know what she thinks about stuff. We could all get ice cream sometime.”
“Willow hates ice cream,” Lucinda said.
I laughed. “She’s teasing you. I love ice cream. So does Katie. We’d love to go out with you guys. It’ll be fun.”
Lucinda’s mouth was in a thin line. “Yeah. Lots of fun.” I couldn’t tell what she thought was worse, that she was now going to have to be nice to me because otherwise I might tell Evan, or that she was going to have to hang out with me and Katie.
“That’s great!” Evan looked really excited. It could hardly be considered my fault that Evan would rather spend time with Katie and me than alone with my sister. Most likely it was because I had such a good sense of humor. Lucinda was too serious all the time. Evan looked like the kind of guy who liked to have fun.
Lucinda snapped her fingers. “Darn it, I just thought of something. Willow and her friend Katie are so busy these days with their humdrum science fair. They probably don’t have a lot of time to go out for silly things like ice cream with us.” She shook her head sadly as if she had gotten really bad news. “And I was really looking forward to it too. Of course I understand you guys need to focus on the science fair. After all, didn’t you say it was super important that your humdrum friend won?”
“Katie plans to be an astronaut,” I explained to Evan. “The winner of the science fair gets to go to NASA Camp Kennedy Space Center. That would be pretty much a dream come true for her.”
Evan looked thrilled. “That’s great. It’s like a wish of hers. We should grant it.”
“NO!” my parents yelled out at the same time. Evan looked shocked. Mom smoothed down her skirt. “What we mean is that the Fairy Council has indicated it would be better if we didn’t do any magic to help Willow’s friend right now. They want to make sure that the fact that they’re friends doesn’t make things unfair. We shouldn’t grant wishes for a humdrum simply because we like them.” Mom smiled at everyone around the table. “Would anyone like more salad?”
“If we can’t grant her wish, then we should be there to support her,” Evan said. “The council can’t have a problem with us cheering her on. That’s what friends do for one another.” He smiled at Lucinda, proud of himself for solving the problem.
I could tell Lucinda wasn’t happy about the idea at all, but she couldn’t let Evan know that she was actually evil and mean. She wanted him to think she was sweet and nice. Sooner or later the poor guy was going to figure it out, but I couldn’t blame my sister for trying to keep it a secret. Everyone has secrets. I couldn’t do magic, my dad was bad at telling jokes, Winston liked to eat shoes, and our whole family had a gnome problem.
No one had seen Jakob, the science-fair-project-ruining garden gnome, for days. My dad had left a formal note in our greenhouse requesting a meeting. The note disappeared, but he didn’t write back. I thought that was rude, but I guess if someone will ruin a kid’s science project we shouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t have the best manners. My parents were sure that Jakob was still hanging out in the greenhouse, but that he would likely leave me alone now. I hoped they were right, but you never know with gnomes.