Bras & Broomsticks Read Online Free PDF Page B

and the day is already a disaster.
    First, I cornered Miri in the kitchen, begging her to zap away my horrendous under-eye circles.
    “Did you listen to a word Mom said? No!”
    “I was up all night digesting your witch news. Take some responsibility!”
    But noooooo.
    Then, she borrowed my new sneakers without asking, and since my black boots have been MIA since the switcheroo, I had to wear my smelly gym shoes. If she ever takes them again without my permission, I’m fully dropping a house on her.
    Except she’s the one with the powers, so I can’t even do that.
    Third, because I’m still in a trance from yesterday’s news, I tripped between the third and fourth floors and banged my knee on a metal stair. The bruise ain’t gonna be pretty.
    Fourth, Tammy went on and on about how fantastic yesterday’s pizza excursion was for the entire twenty minutes of homeroom, and she made me miss all the announcements.
    (I’m getting so much better at these lists. Maybe now I can have my powers?)

    “I really had the best time at Stromboli’s,” she says, for the eighty-seventh time, while unsnapping her lock. Her locker is right next to mine, because we’re in the same homeroom and our last names both start with Ws. I’m Weinstein and she’s Wise.
    “So who was there?” I ask.
    “Everyone.”
    She must see the look of dismay on my face, because she quickly wrinkles her nose, which makes it look big (I’ll admit it’s a bit on the large side, even though I always swear to her it isn’t), and adds, “I mean, not everyone . It wasn’t a big deal. You didn’t miss much.” She wobbles her right hand, which is her so-so signal.
    I don’t need psychic abilities to know she’s trying to make me feel better. “Was Jewel there?”
    “Um . . .” She pulls her green binder off her top shelf. “Yeah.”
    “And Raf? And Mick?”
    She bows her head. “Mick was. We sat at the same table.”
    Ouch. An oversharpened pencil spears my heart. “He would have been at my table if I’d been there,” I moan.
    “I hadn’t realized he was such a nice guy,” she says, intensifying the chest stabbing. “I stuck my elbow in tomato sauce and he was the first one up to get me a napkin.”
    So unfair. It should have been me staining my shirt.
    “Maybe I’ll find out where they’re going tonight,” she says.
    “No point,” I say, and sigh heavily. “I have to go to my dad’s.”
    The most annoying part of having divorced parents is spending every second weekend on Long Island. I love my dad, and I want to spend time with him, but the packing, train taking, and missing out on all the weekend festivities are a massive disruption to a fourteen-year-old’s social calendar.
    Of course, if I have an important event—bat mitzvah, school function, shoe shopping—I can stay in Manhattan, but then I burn Miri by making her go to Long Island alone. My sister says STB nags her more when I’m not around. (“Stop biting your nails!” “Don’t pick at your food!” “No practicing your karate in the house!”) I don’t doubt it. STB never nags when my dad is there. She pulls a Jekyll and Hyde every time. When he’s there, she’s supersweet and helpful: “You’re so creative, Rachel!” As soon as he walks into the next room, she instantly becomes evil: “Why are you such a slob?”
    My dad hates when we miss a weekend. But now that he has STB, he can’t switch dates easily. She’s always got something up her wrinkle-free sleeve—dinners, theater tickets, trips to the Caribbean.
    We never went to the Caribbean when he was married to my mom. We never even went to the Jersey shore. To be fair, he wasn’t a partner in his law firm then and didn’t have as much money. We drove to Florida twice and took some weekend ski trips to Stowe, but we never left the country (unless you count World Showcase in Epcot). Those car rides were long. We’d play Geography, the game where you name a city/state/country that starts with the