Free Bras & Broomsticks by Sarah Mlynowski Page B

sure, whatever.” It’s not as if anyone can tell whether I recycle properly. I can cut a few corners without her catching me.
    “And you can’t cut any corners with the recycling.”
    I give her the evil eye (essentially squinting with my right eye while raising my left eyebrow) to ward off future mind-intrusion spells. “I’m on to you.”
    She ignores me. “Three, you have to come with me to the peace rally on March twentieth in Washington Square.”
    “Can’t Mom take you?”
    “I’d rather go with you . It’ll be fun,” she pleads.
    “I doubt it.” I hate rallies. My mother has dragged me to a slew of them. All you do is stand there and freeze your butt off. “You sure you don’t want me to take you shopping? We can go to Bloomie’s. I’ll buy you that every-day-of-the-week underwear you’ve always wanted,” I add, dangling the only carrot I can come up with under the circumstances.
    “Peace rally. Final offer.”
    Any way you add it up, it’s worth it. “Deal.”
    We shake on it. Hip, hip, hooray! I’m going to be popular! I do a little victory dance.
    “Don’t do that. You look like you’re drowning.”
    Humph.
    “And you can’t ever tell Mom we traded,” she adds.
    Is she nuts? “We can’t tell her about any of this. She’d turn us both into frogs. Or cats.” I nudge Tigger with my foot. “Maybe she had another daughter before me. And she did magic. And Mom turned her into a cat. A male cat, just to be mean.”
    Tigger meows.
    “Why would she turn her into a male cat only to have her neutered?” Miri asks.
    “Girls!” my mother hollers from the kitchen. “Time to set the table!”
    It’s Monday and therefore . . . my turn. But it’s worth it. Every time I doubt that, I’ll just think of my name at the top of the A-list.
    Tigger follows me into the kitchen and almost trips me while I’m taking the plates down from the shelf. Hmm. Who knows? What if I wasn’t far off about Tigger? What if he really used to be human and was cursed by my great-grandmother to spend eternity as a not-too-bright feline? Creepy. Especially considering how many times the perv has watched me change.
    My mother licks tomato sauce off a wooden spoon while she checks the garlic bread in the oven and stirs the pasta. When she makes dinner, she looks like the Tasmanian Devil. She’s an excellent multitasker. She’s the same at work. I’ve seen her type, fix the jammed fax machine, make coffee, and book a trip to Costa Rica on the phone simultaneously. And that’s without using magic. Imagine if she did—her clients would all have sunny, turbulence-free vacations. She’s crazy for not using it. What’s the point? Why not? Why not be happy? Why not have a perfect life?
    When she was married to my dad, she used to take better care of herself. She used to get manicures and visit the hair salon. Now that she’s so busy working, she seems to have decided that she’d rather spend the energy on her new agency, and on us of course, rather than on what she looks like. But why shouldn’t she have it all? “Mom,” I blurt out, “why not use your magic to have great hair?”
    “Why are there black smudges all over my kitchen walls?” she asks.
    “Tigger’s been acting up.”
    Tigger meows, wraps his body around my leg, and tries to bite me. Bet you wish you were still life-sized so you could tell on me, big sis (or evil nemesis of my great-grandmother).
    “Bad Tigger,” my mother scolds, waving the wooden spoon at him. “Will you clean him off? He must have stepped into mud on the stairwell. And I told you,” she says, and waves the wooden spoon at me, “magic isn’t a game, Rachel. I won’t use it unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
    You’d think saving her marriage to my dad would have been absolutely necessary, wouldn’t you? Maybe it’s minor in the grand scheme of witchcraft, but still. You’d better believe I would have kept him around. (And poofed him up some hair and clothes from