Parties & Potions #4 by Sarah Mlynowski Read Free Book Online Page B

with no one but witches to show off to … “I don’t know, Mir. It sounds like a lot of work.” A lot of work for nothing. “Can’t you just meet people on Mywitchbook?”
    “I’m trying to! But it’s hard! Please? Pretty please?” What if the witches talk to dead people? And zombies come out of the graves? And they all have headless torsos with blood pumping out of their necks? What if there really are vampires? “But it sounds so creepy—”
    “It won’t be! It’ll be beautiful! We’ll be beautiful!” I close my eyes. “But what’s the point in me being all beautiful if Raf won’t even get to see?”
    “Why won’t Raf see you? He can be your date!” If only. How hot would he look in a suit? So hot. And of course he wouldn’t be able to take his eyes off me. But unfortunately, that just can’t happen. “Miri, I can’t invite Raf to my coming-out witch party.” “Why not?”
    Hello? “Because then he’ll know I’m a witch!” “So then he’ll know. Big deal.”
    I flip over my pillow. “I see you’ve been talking to Wendaline.”
    “She has a point,” Miri says. “Witchcraft isn’t something to be ashamed of.”
    “I’m not ashamed,” I say. “I just don’t want Raf to know. I don’t want him thinking I’m a weirdo. Or being afraid of me. Or worrying that I zapped him with a love potion.”
    “You mean the love spell we put on Will by accident?”
    Right. “I especially don’t want him knowing about that.”
    “I bet he’d think it was cool,” she says.
    “Or he’d dump me and tell everyone I’m a freak.”
    Miri’s quiet and I wonder if she’s given up. But then she says, “You’ll have to tell him eventually.”
    My stomach gets twisty. “No, I won’t.”
    “Even if you get married?”
    “Mom never told Dad.”
    “And look how well that turned out.” She looks at me. “She told Lex. Doesn’t that count? And shouldn’t relation-ships be based on honesty?”
    She does have a point. But who knows if Lex and Mom will last? They haven’t even been together six months. What happens if their relationship cools off like an unused cauldron ? What then? “Maybe, maybe I’d tell him if we got married. Or possibly engaged. But I’m not telling him now.” No way. We haven’t even said “I love you” yet. Saying those words would have to come before telling him I’m a witch. “No, there’s no way I’m bringing him to my Samsorta.”
    She gives me a wide-eyed hopeful look. “Does that mean you’ll do it? But just not invite Raf?”
    “But what’s the point, then?”
    “Me!” she says. “I’m the point! Everything isn’t always about Raf. I want us to do it together!”
    Oy. She is obsessed.
    Wait a sec. There’s no way Mom’s going to go for it. She said it was a huge waste of time and magic. And she wouldn’t even let us see any of the Halloween movies. She’s not going to let us run around with dead bodies.
    “Well,” I say, “if you really want to do it, I’ll do it.” “You’re in?” she says gleefully. “A hundred percent in?” I nod. Good thing I’m two hundred percent sure Mom will say no.

Operation: Samsorta
     
    We approach her in the kitchen.
    “Mom,” Miri begins. “We’ve been thinking.”
    “Yes, honey?” She’s peeling an avocado for a salad.
    Miri nudges me to continue.
    “We want to participate in the Samsorta,” I say, sliding into a kitchen chair.
    Mom drops the avocado slicer. “Since when?”
    “Since we heard about it,” Miri says.
    “Yeah,” I say, trying to keep my voice flat and void of emotion. Hello, robo-Rachel. “It. Will. Be. Fun.”
    “Rachel, come on,” Mom says, resuming the salad prep. “This is one of those things you say you want because it sounds like fun, and then you’re sick of it within a week.”
    Just as I thought. No way.
    “Remember the electronic piano?” she continues. “You claimed you wanted to take lessons, we bought you the piano, and you only played it once.”
    I