The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor (2 page)

Cath Murphy (teacher, Grade 2B) stood on the second grade balcony, blinking and smiling in the morning sun, her hands in the pockets of her new baggy trousers, her neck feeling warm beneath her short blond hair.

It was the first day of term, and the children were gathering downstairs.

The new guy, Warren Woodford, was at the other end of the balcony, outside the 2A classroom. He leaned his chin toward the railing and gave Cath a firm little nod:
Yes, there they are, gathering.

She responded with her own solemn nod.

The new guy was sure to be a hit with the kids. He was very tall, so he would be able to reach up to touch the ceiling, or to tack paintings high on the wall. Also, he could pull down one side of his mouth while raising the opposite eyebrow. Kids think that kind of face, especially when done to tease them, is the essence of grown-up humor.

Cath looked back at Warren, and he was making that exact face at her.

It was actually funny, and she surprised herself by imitating him. He smiled softly, looked away, and then called something that sounded like “From the highlands.”

“Pardon?”

“Aren't the highlands!”

“Yes,” she agreed tentatively. Then she really wanted to know, so she ran a few steps along the balcony toward him. “I'm sorry?”

He waved her back. “I only asked if you were frightened! Are you scared?”

“Of course I am! Aren't you?”

Then she ran back to her spot to wait again, and felt awkward and foolish, but also she felt this: quirky, cocky, small, funny, wicked, and extremely blond.

In fact, she was not really frightened, more excited. But, as her mother liked to say, all meetings with new people, even locksmiths or seven-year-olds, can make you a little afraid.

Cath had been teaching for three years now, and had a reputation among the children as very nice and pretty, can be strict sometimes, but mostly nice.

She was known to be generous with gold stars and
SUPER WORK
! stamps.

Among teachers, she had a reputation as serene
and
conscientious
,
perhaps a little shy, but prone to fits of giggling.

She ate a Granny Smith apple at lunchtime each day, and believed in smiles that continued for 5-4-3-2-clear! after corridor nods. She had a Mary Poppins glint in her eye, but not the Mary Poppins spots on the cheeks, or the carpetbag.

Now, as the children filed up the stairs, jostled and excited, chatting with each other and at her, she herself chatted back: “Good morning!” and “There you go!” and “Just leave your bag on the rack, that's a good girl!” and “Oops! It's a bit early in the day to be tripping on your shoelace, isn't it; okay there?”

But she noticed, as she chatted, that the new guy, Warren, was welcoming his class in silence. He was holding one arm high in the air and using the other to wave them into his classroom. He was like a stately
policeman. The children, she noticed, were obeying him in wide-eyed wonder.

Later, as she spent the morning playing educational welcoming games (“Luke's name begins with the same letter as Lion! Scary!”), Cath was conscious of long periods of silence in the classroom next door. The silence was interrupted now and then by storms of laughter.

The telephone rang like a rooster that was learning how to crow.

It was Grandma. She was on the walk-around phone. “Why, it's my Cassie! How's my Cassie?”

She was fine.

“And how was your first day of
second grade
today? Was it exciting?”

“A bit.”

“And who will be your friends, do you think? Still friends with that Lucinda?”

“Yeah.”

“You're such a fast runner, aren't you? Will you win all the races at the carnival again this year?”

“Probably.”

“And what about your new teacher, Cassie? Ms. Murphy! Was she nice? Was she nice to you today, sweetheart?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And were you nice to her?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And were the other children nice to her too?”

“A bit.”

“Well now, Cassie, can I talk to your mummy? Is she around?”

Cassie took Grandma down the hall, nestled in her arm like a soft baby duckling, and into her mother's study. Her mother wasn't there. She
put the phone on the spare bed, and sat at her mum's desk to read some words from the computer screen.

Then she remembered, collected Grandma, and flew her down the hall like a kite without a string. Grandma got bumped against the wall once, and then Cassie saw her mum at the kitchen sink, and said, “Grandma's on the phone.”

“All right,” said her mum, peeling off her washing-up gloves. “Just put her over there for me.”

Cassie put Grandma down, gently, alongside the teapot and a saucepan lid.

Picking up the phone from the kitchen counter, Fancy Zing announced, “Today, Mum, the sky was
very
blue.”

At which her mother cried, “Yes! Wasn't it? A beautiful first day of term! Cassie seems excited about second grade, doesn't she? I can't wait to hear more! I bet you had trouble getting her up this morning. She likes her sleep, that Cassie, doesn't she? Now then, as madcap as it sounds, I'm thinking of making a strawberry risotto for dinner.”

They discussed the merits of strawberry risotto, but Fancy found herself drifting to a day at the seaside, years before, when she had scolded a pair of seagulls. The seagulls were stretching their necks to bully one another. “You
stop
that!” she scolded. “You be
nice
to each other.” The birds had glanced up at her, startled but also repentant, and she had longed to gather them into her arms and say, “I'm so sorry for shouting, darlings, but you really
mustn't
fight.”

“And then,” said her mother, “there's beef Stroganoff. It's a good old standby, isn't it?”

“It
is,
” Fancy agreed, “but I'd better go now, Mum—I think Radcliffe's at the door.”

Radcliffe was Fancy's husband and just that moment he had called from the front porch, “Fancy that! My Fancy is at home!” This was his standard greeting from the porch, before he even opened the front door.

“I'm in my study!” called Fancy, and she hurried down the hall from the kitchen to her study, and sat down at her desk. She took a notebook from the drawer, and at the top of the page, she wrote:
Irritating Things About My Husband.
Then she used a ruler to draw a box.

Her husband leaned through the study door and said,
“Mwah!”
which was his way of kissing her hello.

“Hello!” she replied, ruling boxes furiously. She realized he was still standing there, leaning against the doorframe, and she looked up at him. “Hello,” she said again, and tapped the side of her glasses. He nodded calmly, and wandered down the hallway, calling, “What have you done with Cassie?”

Fancy ignored him, and began to write inside the first box.

Irritating Things About My Husband # 1

Well, in the mornings, he has this routine where he shaves at the bathroom sink while I take my shower. He uses a Valerio Close-Shave! which he keeps on a toothpaste-stained holding tray, and every few moments he taps it on the side of the sink.

Tap, tap, tap, and then a little while later,
tap, tap, tap.
Through the rush of shower water, and the snap of my shampoo bottle cap, I can hear it, the regular
tap, tap, tap.
Even as I step into my towel (which he hands to me from our heated rack, without looking back from his reflection), even then he taps:
tap, tap, tap.
Then he turns the water loud to wash his face and wash the little whiskers down the sink.

The whole thing drives me
wild
!

She closed that notebook, took up another, and wrote the heading:
Prize-Winning Novel.
It had occurred to her that she might write a prize-winning novel in italics. Italics, she thought, had both gumption and
mystique. Also, a particular italicized sentence was floating around in her mind these days:

How is your ocean bream, my love?

She was not sure what she meant by this sentence, but found it very moving. It would presumably be spoken in a restaurant.

She sent a text message to her sister, Marbie.
HOW IS YOUR OCEAN BREAM, MY LOVE
? Just to see what Marbie would say.

Then she returned to the first notebook and ruled another box.

Marbie was taking the train home from work when her sister's text message arrived.
A LITTLE OVERCOOKED
, she texted back.
ON THE FLAKY SIDE
.

Like her sister, Marbie had a sentence floating in her head these days. Her sentence was this:

It was a decision she would regret for the rest of her life.

Because she was so excited by her good luck in meeting Nathaniel and his lovely daughter Listen, she feared she would take one tiny wrong step and lose them.

For example: Let's say she opens her wardrobe and sees her short blue dress hanging alongside her long floral skirt. Which one should she wear? Hurriedly, she chooses the long skirt.
It was a decision she would regret for the rest of her life
—because later! On her way to work? The skirt gets tangled in her sandals and trips her up! And she breaks her ankle! And she has to go to the hospital! And Nathaniel comes to visit with flowers, and the nurse says to Nathaniel, “What lovely daffodils,” and he says, “Actually, they're tulips,” and then their eyes meet, and they
fall in love, and Nathaniel and Listen leave Marbie for the nurse!!

Tuesday, Listen went to Donna Turnbull's place for a strategy meeting.

“I, M, H, O,” said Gabrielle, “we don't need a strategy meeting. We just turn up at the school tomorrow and it happens. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, do you want me to keep going?” She was counting the freckles on Joanne's back.

“Keep going,” Joanne commanded. “I need to know the truth.”

“There's a lot,” Caro said. “Do you need more truth than that?”

“You think you can go to Clareville Academy and just live?” Donna was withering. “Power up your brain cells, I don't
think
so. Listen, would you stop dancing for one second in your life?”

Listen and Sia were sharing Sia's iPod, and they were both dancing. They stopped and looked at Donna. Listen hitched up her jeans. The jeans were too long and the right cuff had slipped into her sneaker and was caught under her foot.

“There's going to be a fundamental shift in the universe when we get to Clareville,” Donna explained. “That's why we need to have a strategy.”

“Hey, Listen,” said Gabrielle, bored with counting freckles. “Give me your jeans and I'll get my mum to take them up for you.”

“Yeah, you don't fold them like that?” Sia explained. She glanced at Gabrielle. “We should have taken them up for her before we gave them to her for her birthday?”

“Shut up about Listen's stupid jeans,” pleaded Donna. “My cousin was, like, in meltdown the whole first year she was at Clareville. Why?
Because of the shock of the things that transpired. We can
not
let that happen to us. Okay? We cannot.”

The others stopped talking to each other and turned to Donna.

“What transpired?” Joanne said. “For your cousin?”

“Well, for a start,” said Donna. But she couldn't really remember. Only, for instance, her cousin had said that you didn't play games at lunchtime anymore like you did at elementary school. You sat in a circle and you talked.

“Oh my God,” said Gabrielle. “We'd better practice that. Does anybody know what a circle is?”

“What is this other word you use?” Joanne sat up looking mystical. “This word. How do you say it? ‘
Talk.
' What can it mean?”

They all laughed until they saw that Donna was crying.

So they took turns comforting her, apologized for disrespect, and agreed to an eternal pact. They would stay friends forever, no matter what transpired.

Wednesday was a strange, shiny, sharp-edged first day of school.

When she got home, Listen opened the fridge door, but all she could see was the gap between the teeth of the Clareville Academy principal, a loose red thread in the seam of Sia's shoe, and the jar of pickled snakes in Science Lab B11.

These images loomed up at her from a ketchup bottle in the refrigerator door, each one swimming straight toward her nose and bouncing back.

It was strangely exhausting. She sat down at the table to rest.

At Assembly that morning, the principal had welcomed them to Clareville by explaining that they would not see their next birthdays if they ever knocked on the upper staffroom door between 1:00 and 1:35.

At lunchtime, Gabrielle said she was going to sit the principal down and talk her through the concept of “welcome.” Joanne laughed about
how strict the teachers were acting to make a first impression (it was so transparent). Caro could not
believe
they sold pecan pies in the tuckshop. Sia worried there was something wrong with the seams of her new school shoes. And Donna went through everybody's timetables to figure out which classes they had together, then lectured them all on the importance of eternal pacts.

In Science that afternoon, the teacher breathed loudly through his nose and said, “Let me give you the key to survival at Clareville. It's not in the mysteries of Science Lab B11, much as the beakers and Bunsen burners might intrigue you! No. It's doing two hours of homework
every single day.
”

“What's say there's a day when we
get
no homework?” Caro asked shrewdly.

“Wonderful point!” said the teacher. “If there's ever such a day, give me a call, and I'll let you take your pick of pickled snakes.”

Caro missed the point and said she didn't want a pickled snake.

Now, Listen looked at her backpack and thought about doing some homework. Instead, she watched TV until her dad phoned from the Banana Bar to ask about her day. She watched TV again until Marbie phoned from the insurance company where she worked, also to ask about her day.

“Hey,” Listen said, after they had philosophized about fundamental shifts in the universe for a while, “what time is it, Marbie?”

“It's five! It's the end of the day!”

“Gotta go,” said Listen, “Gotta go do something.” And she hung up the phone.

Hooray for you! You waited until 5
P.M.
on Wednesday! You can clearly follow rules, and that's just what you need to be able to do, because otherwise
this Spell Book won't work!

Here are the rules:

1. You have to do
every single
Spell in the book, one at a time. You can't skip ahead!

2. Usually, you won't even know if a Spell has worked or not! But
never mind
! Trust us! It
has.

You can turn the page now.

Okay!

Now put the Spell Book
back underneath your pillow,
and DON'T GET IT OUT AGAIN until 4
P.M.
this FRIDAY.

YOU WILL THEN BE ABLE TO DO THE FIRST SPELL!!!

(Note: Take great care not to say the word
walnut
from now until then.)

Thursday, Listen searched through her drawers until she found the postcard her mother had sent her from Istanbul. She sat on her bedroom floor, curling the postcard in her fist.

She was thinking about her English teacher at Clareville. At first, Listen had liked him because he wore a Mayor McCheese T-shirt and faded jeans, but then the teacher had said, “Look, girls, now that you're in junior high, you're not big fish in a little pond anymore, are you? No! You're
small
fish in a
big
pond!”

Immediately, Listen stopped liking him.

For a start, two other teachers had already said the same thing. An English teacher should be more original.

For another thing, the image made Listen think that last year she and her friends had been bumping around in shallow water, eating all the fish
food, blocking out the sunlight, crowding out the pond, and accidentally knocking little fish in all directions with their enormous, clumsy tails.

Hey there, kid,
her mother's postcard said.
Aren't you starting junior high this year?!!! Watch out for all the big fish!!!!!!
The postcard had arrived two years before. Her mother had always been vague about things like Listen's age.

Listen flicked the postcard with her thumbnail a few times, then dropped it back into the drawer.

HELLO AGAIN! YOU DID IT! IT'S 4 P.M. ON FRIDAY!

You can go ahead and do the First Spell now. The First Spell is simple. You probably already know this one, but you still have to do it, I'm afraid. You know what I'm talking about?

A Spell to Make Someone Decide to Take a Taxi.

Of course! That old favorite. You know the drill. Take two lemons and cut them in half, take five bananas and peel them. Fill up the bathtub with lukewarm water, toss in your lemons and banana peels. WAIT UNTIL 5 O'CLOCK AND THEN say the magic words—“Bob's your uncle”—and
Bob's your uncle!
The Spell is done.

Now put the Spell Book back under your pillow. Don't turn the page until the Thursday after next!