Which Witch Switch - Julie Steimle (if you give a mouse a cookie read aloud .TXT) 📗

Danna took a sip of her coffee and then set her cup down, dabbing her mouth. “Don’t worry about it. You’re just disoriented from the plane flight.”
“And that’s another thing,” I said, turning to her. “I don’t remember a plane flight. In fact, I don’t remember arriving at this house.”
Both of them looked at me as if I were merely being silly. The cook said, “I’m your Aunt Margaret. You’ve come to stay with us for a while.”
“You don’t remember it because you suffered a blow to the back of your head. You fainted,” Danna said with a mirthful look in her eye as her lips curled at then ends. “Hit your head, and you are recovering here.”
“Where is here?” I asked.
They just smiled at me.
“Don’t worry about that,” Danna said, grinning broader and she stabbed a sausage to eat. “Have some breakfast.”
I don’t know why I didn’t argue the point further. Inside somewhere I felt that I ought to. However, my stomach gurgled, and I could smell the sausage. With a shrug I began to eat again.
Aunt Margaret hummed as she finished cooking the last pancakes. By that time another woman came into the room, but I didn’t know her at all. She was an elderly woman with shrewd eyes that peered me over. Her lips were thin and crinkled, and her heart jumped with excitement as she watched me, though I didn’t know why. As she drew up a chair, Danna started into morning conversation, laying out what we cousins would be doing. It was then that I asked what she meant by ‘we cousins’. Danna didn’t even bat an eye when she answered that she and I were cousins. But when I thought of the word cousin, I imagined twin boys with a predilection for nasty pranks and not this flirty, skanky girl.
As it turned out, Danna was a senior in high school and not a college student as I had assumed. She mostly told me that she would be taking me to school with her. At first I felt like a show-and tell project, but as she talked it was clear that I would not be there to tag along with her.
She handed me a folded piece of paper. “Here is your schedule. I’ll meet you at lunch and then after school. Then we’ll go shopping.”
“For real clothes?” I asked.
Aunt Margaret broke into snickers but then smothered it with her oven mitt. The elderly woman also laughed, nearly sounding like a cackle.
Danna gave me a dry look. “The clothes in your room are fine.”
I returned her look. “You must be joking. I wouldn’t be caught dead in clothes like that. Where did my tee shirt go? And what about my jeans? And where are my shoes?”
All three women froze. They stared at me as if I had asked the wrong question.
“What?” I looked from one face to another and then back again, stopping on Danna. “Can’t I have my own clothes?”
Immediately Aunt Margaret shook her head and sat next to me. “No dear. That’s not the problem. If you don’t like Danna’s choice in clothing I can dig up something for you to wear. It is just that we don’t have your shirt and pants around here anymore.”
It was a lie. I could tell. People’s hearts jumped when they lied—well, the hearts of honest people anyway. This was the first honest jump of a heartbeat I had heard in that room, though in reality their heartbeats seemed uncommonly serene as if they were well-practiced liars.
“No, that’s not the problem,” Danna said, her heart beating at its usual pace. “Not at all.”
“Have some tomato juice,” the elderly woman said to me, the first sentence I heard from her mouth that entire morning.
I looked down at the glass she had shoved towards me. I sat down, picking it up. All three of them went back to eating breakfast, though their hearts seemed to quicken with either anxiety or suspense. I couldn’t tell which. And as I lifted the glass to my lips, their hearts pounded more.
I set the glass down. “What is going on?”
Aunt Margaret sighed then lifted her eyes to my face. “We’re anxious about you is all. You have been acting funny since you hit your head.”
Another lie.
I glanced at the glass of tomato juice then sniffed it. Besides the strong odor of tomatoes I also detected another smell along within it. The aroma was delicious and I was sure it would have made the juice taste wonderful, but something inside me told me not to drink it. I wasn’t sure why. However, I believed in following such impressions so I just went back to eating my breakfast, ignoring the glass of juice.
Danna chuckled.
I looked over at her. “What?”
She gave a shrug. “Nothing. You just seem extra paranoid to me.”
“Paranoid?” I set my fork down even as Aunt Margaret put another piece of sausage on my plate and then gave the elderly lady one. “Waking up in a place that I don’t know with people that—”
“Good morning everyone, is she up yet?”
All of us turned and saw a smart looking businesswoman standing in the doorway. She flashed that business executive smile at me standing there with type-A personality boldness. I think the word actualize could have been tattooed on her chest with how confident her stare was on me. I knew her face. I just couldn’t place where I had seen it before.
“Good morning Eve,” she said to me.
I closed my eyes again to see if this mirage would disappear when I opened them.
“Are you having a hard time focusing?” she asked.
Nodding, I set my hand to my head again. “Yes.”
“Well, don’t worry about it,” she said. “The feeling will go away, and you will have plenty of focus soon.”
I didn’t like the way she said that. Though it was ‘empowering’, there was a secret menace to it.
“Is there any breakfast left for me?” the woman then asked, looking around at Aunt Margaret.
Aunt Margaret hopped up and went to set a place for her.
“Who are you?” I asked the businesswoman.
The woman blinked at me first, then said, “Well, that isn’t a proper way to speak. You should say, ‘Pardon me, but I forgot your name. Could you please—”
“Oh, get real.” I dropped my elbow against the table. “I don’t even remember when I met you. This is all too weird, and I’m getting a headache just trying to figure out what the heck is going on.”
“Then stop trying to figure it out,” Danna said and stuck another piece of melon into her mouth.
I turned to give her a dirty look.
“Your cousin Danna is right,” the businesswoman said. “You’re thinking too much.”
I turned that dirty look into one of disbelief on the businesswoman, leaning away from her. “A woman who claims to be empowering women everywhere, and you are telling me not to think much? What is wrong with you?”
“Eat up,” Aunt Margaret said. “You need your strength, and she didn’t mean it like that.”
Groaning, I sat back in my chair, grabbing my fork. I stabbed the last sausage and stuck it into my mouth. Chewing on it I said through the other side of my mouth, “I don’t care how she meant it. If my head wasn’t feeling so fuzzy, I’m sure I would be feeling really upset.”
“Have some juice,” Aunt Margaret said gesturing to the pair of full glasses before me. I took up the orange juice and started to drink.
When I set it down, I added, “And I don’t like just waking up in some prissy girl’s bedroom with clothes some kind of prostitute would wear. I want my jeans and shirt back. And my shoes.”
The women all nodded at me as if giving in. That alone put me immediately at ease. I took up the juice glass again and drank more, feeling very thirsty. Only this time when I set the glass to my lips I had downed the tomato juice. After I had licked my lips and exhaled from a full stomach, I blinked my eyes. They were having a hard time focusing again.
Aunt Margaret stood up and looked me right in the face. She said with a more business-like voice, “Now, Eve McAllister. Listen to what I have to say. You are to go to school with Danna. You are to keep your eyes open for seven people.”
“Seven?” I murmured. I didn’t like that number. I just couldn’t remember why.
“That’s right. Listen to their names. When they call roll in class, and you hear that name find that person and remember that person’s face.” She paused waiting to see if I was ready for the list of names. Then she said in a slower more methodical way, “Daniel Smith, Edward White, Semour Dawson, James Peterson, Peter McCabe, Andrew Cartwright, and Jessica Mason. You got that?”
I swayed in my seat, feeling strangely floaty. “Yeah.”
“Say the names back to me.” Aunt Margaret waited.
I took a breath and repeated the names exactly as she had said them. Aunt Margaret smiled.
“That’s right.”
I didn’t see what was so right about it. Something felt very wrong about all of it. But all I could do was sit there and sway dreamily at the breakfast table.
“I think she’s ready,” the businesswoman said.
I looked to her. “You still didn’t tell me your name.”
Somewhat startled, the businesswoman then straightened up and said, “I’m Ms. Whittaker. And that is all you need to know.”
All I needed to know. Inside I doubted that very much.

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