Free The Magic Half by Annie Barrows Page A

Cape Romain. Just the two of us.”
    Miri smiled and nodded with as much excitement as she could muster. Boy, Mom must be feeling guilty—but why? “That’ll be great,” she said, swallowing the last lump of French toast. Now the orange. Under the table, her bare feet bounced impatiently against the wooden floor, eager to get moving. “Mom?” she began. “Was there any—” She broke off, surprised.
    “Any what?” her mother prompted.
    But Miri had forgotten her question. Her big toe had stumbled from the smooth surface of the floor into a wide crack. What? Miri stuck her head under the table and saw a deep canyon in the wood, smooth-edged from years of wear. Somehow, a long time before, a big chunk of the floor had been gouged out.
    By a frying pan, falling heavily from a table.
    “Miri?” Mom said anxiously as Miri failed to emerge from under the table.
    Miri came back up, wide-eyed. The chip was right under Miri’s usual seat at the table. She certainly would have felt it before—if it had been there. “Was this floor always chipped?” she asked, hoping her voice wasn’t squeaky.
    “What?” Her mother stared at her, obviously surprised by her daughter’s sudden interest in kitchen floors.
    “This deep crack,” said Miri, pushing back her chair to show her mother the gouge in the wood.
    Her mother began explaining, “All the floors on the bottom story could use some work, and it would have been nice if we could have refinished them before we moved in, but—”
    Miri interrupted, “Mom! Are you saying that you’ve seen this chip in the floor before?”
    “Miri! That was so rude.”
    Miri took a breath. “Mom,” she said as politely as she could manage, “please, was this chip in the floor when you bought the house?”
    “Yes, the chip was there. That’s what I’m trying to tell you—we wanted to refinish the floors before we moved in, but it’s a terrible mess because the dust . . .”
    Miri wasn’t listening. The chip hadn’t been there until yesterday. It hadn’t been there seventy years before yesterday either. But since yesterday, it had been there for seventy years. Miri stood up abruptly. “Great!” she said, giving her mother a big, toothy smile. “Okay! Thanks for the delicious French toast, Mom.” She whisked out of the kitchen.
    “—and we decided we didn’t have enough time,” concluded Mom, to herself.
    • • •
    Miri stared into her own green eyes in the bathroom mirror. In 1935, she had banged into a kitchen table, knocking over a frying pan and denting the wooden floor. And now, in her own time, the floor was dented in that precise spot, but the crack was worn with age. Even though it hadn’t been there the day before.
    This is too weird, thought Miri. I changed the house. I changed history.
    But the weirdest thing of all was that her mom thought the crack had always been there.
    I changed Mom’s history, too.
    Her hair brushed against her cheek, and a long shiver twitched along Miri’s spine. What if I changed Molly’s history, too—for the worse? She thought of Aunt Flo’s furious voice saying, “I’ll teach you about clumsy, miss!” She thought of Horst, choking with excitement, “You’d better let me teach her a lesson, Mama—you’d better—” With an effort, Miri pulled her eyes away from the mirror. She had to find Molly’s glasses—and quick.
    • • •
    “Mom? Was there any old furniture in the house when we moved in?”
    Her mother looked up from the computer. “What’s got into you? Floors, furniture—are you planning a career in interior decoration?”
    “No. I just wanted to know if there was old furniture in the house when we moved in,” Miri repeated.
    “You were here when we moved in,” Mom pointed out. “Did you see any old furniture?”
    “Um, I guess I wasn’t paying very much attention,” admitted Miri. “Was there? Like a desk? With drawers?”
    “Not that I know of. There was a tool chest in the basement, but