The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell Page 3

  “Conner, it’s people like you who ruin fairy tales for the rest of the world,” Alex said, forcing the smile on her face to fade. “People make jokes about them, and suddenly the whole message is… is… lost—”

  Alex suddenly stopped walking. All the color in her face slowly drained away. Something across the street had caught her eye, something very disappointing.

  “What’s the matter?” Conner asked, turning back to her.

  Alex was staring at a large house. It was a lovely home, painted blue with white trim, and had several windows. The front yard was landscaped to perfection; it had just the right amount of grass, patches of colorful flowers, and a large oak tree ideal for climbing.

  If a house could smile, this house would be grinning from ear to ear.

  “Look,” Alex said, and pointed to a For Sale sign next to the oak tree. A bright red stripe with the word Sold had recently been added to it.

  “It sold,” Alex said, slowly shaking her head from side to side in disbelief. “It sold,” she repeated, not wanting it to be true.

  The little color in Conner’s round face drained, too. The twins stared at the house for a moment in silence, each not knowing what to say to the other.

  “We both knew it would happen eventually,” Conner said.

  “Then why do I feel so surprised?” Alex asked softly. “I guess it had been for sale for so long, I figured it was just… you know… waiting for us.”

  Conner saw tears begin to form in his sister’s eyes through the tears forming in his own.

  “Come on, Alex,” Conner said and kept walking. “Let’s go home.”

  She looked at the house for a second more and then followed him. This house was only one thing the Bailey family had recently lost….

  A year ago, just a few days before their eleventh birthday, Alex and Conner’s father died in a car accident on his way home from work. Mr. Bailey had owned a bookstore a few streets away named Bailey’s Books, but all it had taken was a few small streets for a big accident to happen.

  The twins and their mother had been anxiously waiting for him at the dinner table when they got the phone call telling them their father wouldn’t be joining them that night, or any night after that. He had never been late to dinner before, so as soon as the telephone rang, they all had known something was wrong.

  Alex and Conner could never forget the look on their mother’s face when she answered the phone—a look that told them, without saying a word, that their lives would never be the same. They had never seen their mother cry like she did that night.

  Everything had happened so fast after that. It was hard for the twins to remember what order it all had happened in.

  They remembered their mother making tons of phone calls and having to deal with a lot of paperwork. They remembered that their grandmother came to take care of them while their mother made all the funeral arrangements.

  They remembered holding their mother’s hands as they walked down the church aisle at the funeral. They remembered the white flowers and candles and all the sad expressions on everyone’s faces as they passed. They remembered all the food people sent. They remembered how sorry people told them they were.

  They didn’t remember their eleventh birthday, because no one did.

  The twins remembered how strong Grandma and Mom had stayed for them in the following months. They remembered their mother explaining to them why they had to sell the bookstore. They remembered that, eventually, their mother couldn’t afford their beautiful blue house anymore, and they’d had to move into a rental house a little way down the street.

  They remembered Grandma leaving them once they were settled into their new, smaller house. They remembered returning to school and how falsely normal everything appeared to be. But most of all, the twins remembered not understanding why any of it had to happen.

  A full year had passed, and the twins still didn’t understand it. People had told them it would get easier with time, but how much time were they talking about? The loss seemed to grow deeper each day without their dad. They missed him so much sometimes that they expected their sadness to swell out of their bodies.

  They missed his smile, they missed his laugh, and they missed his stories….

  Whenever Alex had had a particularly bad day at school, the first thing she would do when she got home was jump on her bike and pedal to her dad’s store. She would run through the front doors, find her dad, and say, “Daddy, I need to talk to you.”

  It didn’t matter if he was helping a customer or putting brand-new books on the shelves, Mr. Bailey would always stop what he was doing, take his daughter to the storage room in the back, and listen to what had happened.

  “What’s the matter, sweetheart?” he would ask with big, concerned eyes.

  “I had a really bad day today, Daddy,” Alex said on one occasion.

  “Are the other kids still teasing you?” he asked. “I can call the school and ask your teacher to have a talk with them.”

  “That wouldn’t solve anything,” Alex said through sniffles. “By publicly persecuting me, they’re filling an insecure void caused by social and domestic neglect.”

  Mr. Bailey scratched his head. “So, what you’re saying, sweetheart, is that they’re just jealous?” he asked her.

  “Exactly,” Alex said. “I read a psychology book in the library today at lunch that explained it.”

  Mr. Bailey let out a proud laugh. His daughter’s intelligence constantly amazed him. “I think you’re just too bright for your own good, Alex,” he said.

  “Sometimes I wish I was like everyone else,” Alex confessed. “I’m tired of being lonely, Daddy. If being smart and being a good student means that I’ll never have friends, then I wish I was more like Conner.”

  “Alex, have I ever told you the story about the Curvy Tree?” Mr. Bailey asked.

  “No,” Alex answered.

  Mr. Bailey’s eyes lit up. They always did when he was about to tell a story.

  “Well,” he started, “one day when I was very young, I was walking around the woods and saw something very peculiar. It was an evergreen tree, but it was different from any other evergreen tree I had ever seen. Instead of growing straight out of the ground, its trunk curved and wound in circles like a large vine.”

  “How?” Alex asked, utterly entranced. “That isn’t possible. Evergreens don’t grow like that.”

  “Perhaps someone forgot to tell that to the tree,” Mr. Bailey said. “Anyway, one day the loggers came and cut down every single tree in the area except for the Curvy Tree.”

  “Why?” Alex asked.

  “Because they figured it was unusable,” Mr. Bailey answered. “You could never make a table or a chair or a cabinet out of it. You see, the Curvy Tree may have felt different from the other trees, but its uniqueness is what saved it.”

  “What ever happened to the Curvy Tree?” Alex asked.

  “It’s still there today,” Mr. Bailey said with a smile. “It’s growing taller and taller and curvier and curvier every day.”

  A tiny smile grew on Alex’s face. “I think I get what you’re trying to tell me, Daddy,” she said.

  “I’m glad,” said Mr. Bailey. “Now all you have to do is wait for the loggers to come and chop down all your peers.”

  Alex laughed for the first time all day. Mr. Bailey always knew how to cheer her up.

  It took the twins twice as long to walk home since they’d moved into the rental house. It was a boring home with brown walls and a flat roof. Windows were few, and the front yard consisted only of a plain grass lawn that was barely alive because the sprinklers didn’t work.

  The Baileys’ home was cozy but cluttered. They had more furniture than they had room for, and none of it matched the house because it was never intended to. Even though they had lived here for more than half a year, unpacked boxes were still lined up against the walls.

  None of them wanted to unpack them; none of them wanted to admit they were stayin
g as long as they actually were.

  The twins immediately went up the stairs and into their separate bedrooms. Alex sat at her desk and started her homework. Conner laid on his bed and started a nap.

  Alex’s bedroom could have been mistaken for a library if it weren’t for the bright yellow bed tucked away in the corner. Bookshelves of all heights and widths lined the room, holding everything from chapter books to encyclopedias.

  Conner’s bedroom was more like a cave, in which he appropriately hibernated whenever he could. It was dark and messy; patches of carpet could be seen in between piles of dirty clothes. A half-eaten grilled cheese sandwich rested on the floor and had been there far too long for anyone’s peace of mind.

  An hour or so later, the twins heard sounds that meant their mother was visiting from work, and they went downstairs to join her in the kitchen. She was sitting at the table while on the phone, flipping through a stack of envelopes she had just collected from the mailbox.

  Charlotte Bailey was a very pretty woman with red hair and freckled skin that the twins undoubtedly had inherited from her. She had a huge, caring heart and loved her kids more than anything else in the world. Unfortunately, they hardly ever saw their mother anymore.

  She was a nurse at the local children’s hospital and was forced to work constant double shifts to support the family since her husband passed away. Mrs. Bailey was already gone before the twins woke up every morning and would get home after the twins had gone to sleep. The only time she had with the twins anymore was on the brief lunch and dinner breaks she spent at home.

  Mrs. Bailey loved her job and loved taking care of children at the hospital, but hated that it took time away from her own. In a way, the twins felt they had lost both their parents after their dad’s death.

  “Hi, guys,” Mrs. Bailey said to the twins, covering the receiving end of the phone. “Did you have a good day at school?”

  Alex nodded positively. Conner gave her an overly enthusiastic thumbs-up.

  “Yes, I can work a double this Monday,” she said into the phone, speaking with someone from the hospital. “No problem,” she lied.

  Most of the envelopes she was looking through had bright red warning stickers saying FINAL NOTICE or PAYMENT DUE. Even working the hours she worked, Mrs. Bailey had to get creative with money sometimes. She put the envelopes facedown on the table, hiding them from the twins.

  “Thank you,” Mrs. Bailey said into the phone, and clicked it off. She turned to her children. “How are you guys?”

  “Good,” they both said passively.

  Mrs. Bailey’s “mom-tuition” turned on. She knew something was troubling them.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, studying their faces. “You seem a little down.”

  Alex and Conner looked to each other, unsure of what to say. Did their mother know about their old house? Should they tell her?

  “Come on,” their mother said. “What is it? You can tell me anything.”

  “We aren’t upset,” Conner said. “We knew it was going to happen eventually.”

  “What?” Mrs. Bailey asked.

  “The house sold,” Alex said. “We saw it today on our way home from school.”

  There was a moment before anyone said anything. This wasn’t news to Mrs. Bailey, but the twins could tell she was just as disappointed about it as they were and had hoped they wouldn’t notice it.

  “Oh, that,” Mrs. Bailey said, brushing it off. “Yes, I know. You shouldn’t be sad about it, though. We’ll find a bigger and better house as soon as we catch up on things here.”

  And that was that. Mrs. Bailey wasn’t a good liar, and neither were the twins. Still, Alex and Conner always smiled and nodded along with her.

  “What did you learn in school today?” their mother asked.

  “So much,” Alex proclaimed with a huge smile.

  “Not much,” Conner mumbled with a scowl.

  “That’s because you fell asleep in class again!” Alex tattled.

  Conner gave Alex a dirty look.

  “Oh, Conner, not again,” Mrs. Bailey said, shaking her head. “What are we going to do with you?”

  “It’s not my fault!” Conner said. “Mrs. Peters’s lessons put me to sleep. It just happens! It’s like my brain switches off or something. Sometimes even my old rubber-band trick doesn’t work.”

  “Rubber-band trick?” Mrs. Bailey asked.

  “I wear a rubber band around my wrist and snap it every time I get sleepy,” Conner explained. “And I was positive it was foolproof!”

  Mrs. Bailey shook her head, more amused than anything.

  “Well, don’t forget how lucky you are to be in that classroom,” Mrs. Bailey said with a guilt-inducing “mom look.” “All the kids at the hospital would like nothing more than to trade places with you and go to school every day.”

  “They’d change their minds if they met Mrs. Peters,” Conner said under his breath.

  The phone rang just as Mrs. Bailey was about to continue scolding her son.

  “Hello?” Mrs. Bailey said, answering the phone. The worry lines on her forehead became very prominent. “Tomorrow? No, there must be a mistake. I told them I couldn’t work at all tomorrow; it’s the twins’ twelfth birthday and I was planning on spending the evening with them.”

  Alex and Conner looked at each other with the same surprised expression. They had almost forgotten they were turning twelve the next day. Almost…

  “Are you positive there’s no one else who can cover it?” Mrs. Bailey asked, her voice more desperate than she wanted it to sound. “No, I understand…. Yes, of course… I’m aware of the staff cuts…. See you tomorrow.”

  Mrs. Bailey hung up the phone, closed her eyes, and let out a deep, disappointed sigh.

  “I’ve got some bad news, guys,” she told them. “It looks like I have to work tomorrow night, so I won’t be here for your birthday. But I’ll make it up to you! We’ll celebrate when I get home from work the next night, all right?”

  “That’s fine, Mom,” Alex said cheerfully, trying to make her feel better. “We understand.”

  “It’s okay,” Conner added. “We weren’t really expecting anything special anyway.”

  The situation made Mrs. Bailey feel like the worst mother in the world, and their understanding made her feel even worse. She would have much rather watched them throw a fit or get angry or show any emotion appropriate for their age. They were too young to be used to disappointment.

  “Oh…” Mrs. Bailey said, fighting back the sadness inside her. “Great. Then we’ll have dinner… and get a cake… and have a nice night…. Now, I’m just going to go upstairs for a minute before I head back to work.”

  She left the kitchen and hurried up the stairs and into her bedroom.

  The twins waited a beat before climbing up the stairs to check on her.

  They peered into their mother’s bedroom. She was sitting on her bed crying, with rolled-up balls of tissue in both her hands, talking to a framed photo of her late husband.

  “Oh, John,” Mrs. Bailey said. “I try to stay strong and keep our family going, but it’s really hard to do without you. They’re such good kids. They don’t deserve this.”

  She quickly dried her tears once she felt the twins watching her. Alex and Conner slowly walked into her room and sat on either side of her.

  “I’m so sorry, for everything,” Mrs. Bailey said to them. “It just isn’t fair that you’ve had to go through all of this at such a young age.”

  “It’s going to be okay, Mom,” Alex said. “We don’t need anything special for our birthday.”

  “Birthdays are overrated anyway,” Conner added. “We know things are tight right now.”

  Mrs. Bailey put her arms around them. “When did you two become so grown-up?” she asked them with watery eyes. “I am the luckiest mom in the world!”

  All their eyes fell on the photo of Mr. Bailey.

  “You know what your dad would say if he were here?
” Mrs. Bailey asked the twins. “He’d say, ‘Right now, we’re living in an ugly chapter of our lives, but books always get better!’ ”

  The twins smiled at her, hoping this was true.

  CHAPTER THREE

  A BIRTHDAY SURPRISE

  Pencils down,” Mrs. Peters ordered from the front of the classroom. Her students were taking a math test, and she had been watching them like a prison guard the entire time. “Pass your tests to the front.”

  Conner looked down at the test as if it were written in ancient hieroglyphics. Most of his answers were blank, and he had just scribbled around the others to make it look like he had tried. He said a little prayer to himself and passed the test forward with the others.

  The tests were all passed to Alex, who stacked them in a neat pile for Mrs. Peters. She always felt so refreshed after taking a test, especially one as simple as that one had been for her.

  Her brother’s test caught her eye since it was the one with the least amount of writing on it. Alex knew Conner always tried his best at school, but his best never seemed to be good enough. She looked back at him, wishing she could help him… and then it occurred to her: Maybe she could.

  Alex looked up at Mrs. Peters and saw that she was busy looking at the notes in her lesson plan. Would her teacher notice if Alex quickly filled in a couple of answers for her brother? Was Alex even capable of doing something so blatantly wrong?

  Was it considered cheating if you were doing it on someone else’s test? Would the gracious gesture cancel out the offense in the grand scheme of things?

  Alex was prone to over-thinking everything, so she just did it; she quickly filled in some of her brother’s answers, making her handwriting slightly sloppier than it usually was, and handed the stack of tests to Mrs. Peters.

  It was the most spontaneous thing she had ever done.

  “Thank you, Miss Bailey,” Mrs. Peters said, making eye contact with her. Alex felt like the pit of her stomach had fallen out of her body. The excitement she had felt from her impulse was now overshadowed by guilt.

  Mrs. Peters had always trusted her; how could she do something so juvenile? Should she confess what she had done? What was the punishment for her crime? Would she feel this guilty for the rest of her life?