Something isn’t right. I can’t say what, for sure. But something.

It isn’t Bea, even though she is banging around in the kitchen, upset about something she won’t talk about. It isn’t Dad, who is sitting here at the table, reading the newspaper and ignoring everyone else. Or Sally, who is eating her hot cheesy grits in stony silence. Or even Michael, who should have left for practice an hour ago, and hasn’t said a word as to why he’s joining us for breakfast.

It’s just… something.

“I have an idea, Julie,” Dad says, without laying down his newspaper.

“Okay,” I say.

“We will need your help, Michael,” he continues. Now, he puts down the paper to look at Michael, who is all ears.

“We?” Sally says. So I guess the idea is news to her, too.

“Your Aunt Helene will be coming back just before you return to school, won’t she?” he asks Michael.

Gulp. Immediately my gut churns, and by the look on Michael’s face, he’s none too pleased either.

“Uh, yes Sir,” he says.

“Did you know it will be her birthday two weeks from Sunday?”

“I did,” he says, cautious and noncommittal.

Okay, I really, really don’t like this. I don’t know why, I just don’t.

“I’d like to have a party for her, here,” Dad says, looking from Michael to me and back to Michael.

Okay, now I know why. I’m going to have to meet this woman. Face-to-face.

“Sir?” Michael asks, sounding shocked.

“A party. You know. An afternoon affair. Light Sandwiches, balloons, a party.”

“I love it!” Sally says, looking up from intently scraping the last tiny tidbits from her bowl. She would like the idea. Which is yet another reason why it has to be completely wrong.

“I don’t know, Dad,” I say in total deadpan, fully prepared to drop any bomb I need to, “do you think old people like birthday parties? Doesn’t it remind them of how soon they will be dying?”

“Well I sure hope you don’t say that to her,” Dad says, laughing. “I want her to like you.”

“Why?” I have to ask. Meeting her is already a stretch the size of the grand canyon. Getting her to like me would require a leap into another universe.

“Because we are partners,” Dad says, like it ought to be obvious. “And you like Michael, and Michael likes you, too.”

“What does that have to do with…?” I start to say.

“Honey,” Sally interrupts, “you sound like you’re trying to arrange a marriage or something.”

Michael’s face is instant red.

“Dad, I think I can…”

“What’s wrong with families getting to know each other, that’s all I’m suggesting,” Dad defends, without listening to me. As usual.

“Hello? Am I invisible here?” I ask.

“In fact,” Dad continues, “I’d like to surprise her. I was thinking you two could bring her mother, Mrs. Bayless. We’ve got a wonderful cook, and I’m sure with the right incentive we could get her to stay on.”

“Mrs. Bayless?” I ask, stealing a glance at Michael.

“Sure. I hear she enjoys you taking her out for walks. No reason she couldn’t come for an afternoon to celebrate her daughter’s birthday, is there? Get everyone together. I think it’s a great idea.”

Oh no. No, no, no. I look again to Michael, who in addition to being beat red, looks as freaked as I am. Then I see a smile come over his face. Like he’s thought of something. Which is good, because I surely haven’t thought of anything that could begin to make this anything but a magical global disaster.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Michael says.

What??? I thought he was smiling because he’d thought of a way out of this. Now he’s agreeing to it? I give him my best “what can you be you thinking?” look, but he just nods to me, still smiling.

I hear pots banging in the background, like Bea has been listening, and she’s no more pleased about this than I am. Good, at least there will be someone on my side. 

“I don’t know,” I say, “Mrs. Bayless is pretty out of it most of the time. And I don’t think a surprise party….”

Suddenly, I notice what’s wrong.

It’s the clock.

The clock on the mantle, the one that chimes every fifteen minutes, and has a ticker so loud it could drive you insane. It’s ticking out the seconds, but at a really slow rate.

I glance back at Dad, and his eyes are… I don’t know… weird…. blank…empty.

So are Sally’s. And Michaels.

Again I hear Bea making a clattering in the kitchen, and I turn to look, but she’s not in the kitchen. I am. I’m right here in front of her. She’s loudly banging a stainless steel pot right next to my ear.

“Come on,” she says to me, clanging and clanging away.

“What? What?” I reach out to stop her, grabbing the wooden spoon she’s hammering into the pot.

“’What?’ is right,” Bea says to me, standing over me like a mother hen.

Suddenly, I feel sick. Really sick. I push past her and run to the trash can just in time to  upchuck, right there in front of her. From behind me, I hear her sigh.

“It’ll be alright now,” she says kindly, more like Anna than her usual gruff self.

When I’m spent, I go rinse my mouth with water at the sink and then return to sit. I look at Bea, and she at me, without saying anything for quite a while. Finally, the dizziness in my head slows down. I listen for the clock in the dining room, and it seems to be ticking normally.

“Magic grab you?” she asks.

I nod. “I guess so.”

“I could see it coming over you even before you went fully out. Held on to your feet to make sure you didn’t go too far. When that didn’t work, I got the pot.”

How long was I out of it?” I ask. “I don’t remember. In fact, I don’t remember getting up this morning.” 

“Not long. But it’s four in the afternoon. You’re saying you don’t remember all day, here, cooking with me?”

“Did I eat breakfast with my dad, and Sally, and Michael?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “They all left early today. You ate with me, here. A bowl of cheesy grits we made. Oh dear, that might have been it.”

“What?” I ask, feeling exhausted. Can I really be missing a whole day?

“Remember when I asked you to blend in a question while you stirred?”

“No,” I say. Didn’t I just say I didn’t remember anything? I think this, but don’t say it out loud. I’m feeling totally cranked all of a sudden, but you just don’t get cranked with Bea. Not if you are smart.

“Well, you asked about getting Anna out. How you could do it. You stirred it into the cheesy grits. You added hot peppers, and truth be told, I put in a little something extra to help you along.”

“What?”

“Aw, nothing much, a little… well, it was poison, technically, strictly speaking, but just a bit.”

She poisoned me? Bea, my teacher, my mentor?

“How long ago was that?” I ask, not sure why it might be important, but thinking it might.

“Let’s see, seven this morning…. Oh my. Nine hours. Exactly.”

“Is that important?”

Bea nods very seriously. “Nine hours, and you put in nine peppers. Nine times nine is eighty-one, which is an eight and a one, which added equals nine. That’s three nine’s, which is nothing short of a spell. Goddess, we might as well have asked for you to be abducted.”

“Abducted? Aren’t you supposed to be being careful with me?” I demand.

No, I don’t want to piss her off. But I don’t want to be upchuking aliens, either.

She shrugs. “If you don’t want to learn, that is up to you.”

“I want to learn, I just want to be safe.”

Bea gives a harrumph. “Not possible. You can protect yourself from darkness, sure enough. I’ve taught you plenty about that. But safe from the Magic that is teaching you? No, not possible. You’ll lose ground as sure as gain it in the process. You bet you will. If you’re not up for that, I’d normally say get out now. But it’s too late. You signed up girlie. You’re in.”

My head is spinning again. I’m tempted to move toward the trash can, or the toilet, but I don’t want to leave the comforting stability of the chair.

“You signed up girlie,” rings and rings in my ears, though Bea is just staring at me, looking like at any moment she might grab her wooden spoon and pan again.

“Breathe,” she says. “Nine times.”

So I do.

“I think I’m okay,” I say after things settle down again.

“So, where did Magic take you?”

“To the dining room,” I say. It would be far more impressive to say it took me to other worlds, like where Anna goes. But it is what it is.

“What did you learn?” she asks.

“Nothing really, we were just having breakfast… oh, wait, Dad was saying we should have a birthday party for Helene. Before Michael goes back.”

“What?” she asks, as stunned as I was.

“I know. It’s crazy. And he wanted Anna here for it, as a surprise. Michael seemed to be in favor of it, too, but I didn’t get why. He knows we can’t get them together.”

Bea ponders, her head dipped low. She even begins to pace from the sink to the door and back, thinking.

“Magic must want us all together. But why and how? It makes no sense.”

I just nod, and she goes back to pacing.

“What other details do you have? Anything unusual?”

“Not really. I just noticed the clock was ticking about half as fast, and you seemed to be mad about something, banging the pots in the kitchen, especially after Dad talked about the party. But that might have been your real banging.”

“No, no, we must consider that all the clues are possible. I was thought to be angry about it. And Michael was in favor of it. And Sally?”

“She was… oh, I forgot, it was like Dad was wanting us all to do this so we could get the families all buddy-buddy, and Sally was saying it sounded like he was arranging a marriage.”

“Well, we do know magic would love that.” 

“What, me marry Michael?” I ask, alarmed all over again.

“One of the boys, anyway” she says, shrugging.

“But when I told you Anna said I’d have to choose, you said that was nonsense,” I argue.

“Poppycock, is what I think I said.”

“Whatever,” I loudly complain.

“I just didn’t want Jake to overhear talk like that,” she mutters.

I hardly know what I want to know next. I mean, has she lied to me about more than this? Led me astray on purpose? And what does Jake have to do with it? Yes, that seems most important right now. “What is wrong with Jake hearing about that?”

“Are you kidding me? He would fight for you, tooth and nail, if he knew the competition was on already.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, “as usual.”

“You don’t need to. What is important right now is that you realize that Magic is invested in your future life, with either Michael or Jake. Your vision spoke to that.”

“What if I don’t want to have a future life until like, way, way into the future?”

“You put a lot of restrictions on Magic,” Bea argues.

“It’s my LIFE!” I say, standing, and realizing I’m still a little woozy.

“Not exactly. Not entirely. Or, not only yours, shall we say.”

“Uhh!” I grunt, then turn on my heels to find myself looking right smack dab at a sweaty, grass-stained Michael.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, making sure to keep his distance from Bea. His question sounds innocent enough, so I don’t think he heard the thing about marriage.

“Ask her,” I insist, throwing up my hands.

Bea looks at him blinking, innocent. “Magic wants you to help us figure out how to manage having all of us here, in this house, at once.”

“Who is all of us?” he asks.

“You, Mayden, Me, Anna, and Helene.”

“Holy…” he starts, then thinks better of offending his elder.

“Exactly,” I say, satisfied that at least someone understands how impossible this is.

“But you won’t even let me near you,” he says.

“Exactly,” I say again.

“One thing you will both learn about Magic is that, more often than not, she will turn things upside down to get what she wants. Our job is to take the message given, decipher the clues as best we can, feel into our guts to know what is true and possible, be cautious to our own prejudices and wishful thinking, and the move forward with a plan. The two of you can surely do that tonight, and come back with a solution tomorrow, can’t you?”

She looks at us fully satisfied, like she’s just pulled the winning card from a deck of cards and thrown it down for all to see.

I look at Michael, because I for sure am not going to commit to such a thing.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he says.

Well, he had an idea in the dreamshift. Maybe he’ll find it again.     

“Hey, I was wondering, you want to go out to dinner tonight?” he asks me.

“Sure she does,” Bea says, putting a motherly arm around me. “She just threw up in the trash can, so she’ll be hungry.”

I step back to look at her like she could not possibly have said that. Now way, not on heaven or earth or any other planet. But she did. That old bat of a woman who is never the same one day to the next surely did.