Mr. Baumgarten roared with anger. He pulled back his fist to hit his Mrs. Stockmeyer.
“Stop him!” Angie yelled at the red dragon.
Instantly, the dragon was hovering above the crowd, its wings flapping hard.
It pooped on Mr. Baumgarten’s bald head. In the commotion that followed, Angie cast amobfuscationworking over herself and raced to the taco truck. Elbowing and pushing, she fought through the crowd for the driver’s door. The kids and teachers were so angry she didn’t think they would have noticed her even without the don’t-see-me working.
Standing on her tiptoes, Angie grabbed the handle and turned. Pulled. Yanked. The taco truck door was locked. There was no way in. Unless she did something she wasn’t supposed to be able to do.
She was gonna be in so much trouble.
Fighting the bindings on her magic, Angie pressed her hand to the driver’s door andshovedwith her gift. The lock heated, then popped. With all the yelling, no one noticed her using magic. She climbed in, crawled into the tall driver’s seat, and shut the door.
The keys were in the ignition. She had seen Mama drive. It didn’t look that hard, except Angie couldn’t reach the pedals. When there were problems and dangers, Angie’s Ant Jane always said to fly by the seat of her pants. Of course, Ant Jane was always in trouble . . .
Angie started the truck, figured out how to make the stick thing go into drive, and, with a terrible lurch, she was rolling down the street. She didn’t roll over any bumps so she was pretty sure she didn’t kill anyone with the truck.
The cook in back was a man, and when the truck started its slow roll, he dropped down to sit on the floor of the truck, moaning. Holding his head. At a slow crawl, the truck moved down the street, away from the school and the crowd that had gathered around. And the woman at the telephone pole. Thewitchat the telephone pole.
The red dragon popped through the passenger door and settled onto the passenger seat. Longfellow looked at her.“Meep,” it said. It sounded happy but Angie didn’t speak dragon. No one did.
Angie asked, “Can you chase the woman at the pole and find out where she lives? And maybe then find a way to tell Mama and Daddy? ’Cause I’m in enough trouble as it is, stealing a bunch of tacos. And a taco truck. And kidnapping a taco cook.”
Oh man. She was a kidnapper.
The red dragon said, “Meep-meep,” sounding a lot like the Roadrunner cartoon character in that old cartoon. Longfellow popped through the door of the taco truck and flapped away, its body bouncing up and down with each wing-stroke, visible in the side mirror.
Two blocks away from the school, Angie scooted forward and put her toe on the brake. The truck slowly, very slowly, came to a stop, and Angie put it in park. Turned it off and stuck the keys in her pocket. She slipped down to the street. Running faster than she ever had, she raced back to the school, avoiding the crowd of people now milling uncertainly in the street. Remembering to drop theobfuscationworking just in time, she sped inside the school. Warm air hit her, reminding her she was cold. Really cold. Shivers hit and her teeth clacked.
Breathing hard, she sprinted through the empty school and into the principal’s office. It was empty. It was never empty, not even during a fire alarm. Angie ran into the space where the receptionist usually sat and looked for a phone. There was a green plastic squarish blob on the desk—an old-fashioned thing with buttons and a dog-bone-looking other thing on top—which was probably a phone from back in the Revolutionary War time. Angie had no idea how to use it, but she knocked the dog-bone-thing off and noticed holes on either end. A tone was sounding, so Angie called her mama’s number by pushing the buttons, and she heard ringing, followed by her mama’s voice saying hello.
“Mama, we got a problem.”
“Angie?” Mama said. “Why are you calling on the schools’ number? Wait. What do you meana problem?”
“Longfellow is here, and there’s a witch throwing curses at a taco truck, and all the teachers and the principal and kids are spellbound, and I’m all alone in the school, and we need help.Ineed help!” The thought shocked her. Angie never needed help. Not ever. She had more magic than any two or three normal witches. But she needed help right now.
Her shivers worsened and her teeth chattered, which made no sense. She wasn’t that cold, was she?
“We’re on the way. Where are you?”
“I’m in the principal’s office. I’m cold.” Angie’s whole entire body was shaking. “I feel sick. I might puke Mama.”
“You go ahead and puke, Angie Baby, but do it on the floor or in the garbage can, okay? Stay right where you are. Daddy and I are driving. Evan, slow down. You’re gonna get a ticket. Angie, we’ll be about five minutes.”
???
That afternoon, after the ruckus was settled and all the people were mollified—that’s what Mama called it, mollified, which was funny because Mama’s name was Molly—Mama and Daddy sat Angie down, to tell her what had happened.
They picked the kitchen table, near the brand-new AGA oven and stove, at the brand-new table, that replaced all the stuff that had burned when their family was cursed by a witch not so long ago. Everything had burned. All her clothes, all Mama’s plants, Daddy’s big recliner.
That’s what curses did. They destroyed everything.
Mama put a mug of her homemade organic rosehip tea in front of her and stirred it with a spoon. The smell of rosehips andhoney reached Angie’s nose and she took the mug in both hands. The cup was purple and warm. “Am I in trouble?” Angie asked. She hated it that her voice was so squeaky and worried.
Mama said, “No one is inanykind of trouble, Angie Baby. Notanyone,not even a little.”
Mama and Daddy both were smiling and looked relieved, so Angie knew Mama was telling the truth, not a white lie, like adults usually told, to keep a kid content, when really, they were in loads of trouble.
