Witch Twins by Adele Griffin Read Free Book Online Page A

dinner. Chicken pâté to start. Then lamb Provençal and potatoes au gratin, then individual crème brûlées. Steve’s dinners were a mouthful to speak, but were also good to eat (though not as good as Licks ’n’ Sticks).
    “What did she do?” asked Justin.
    “Nothing yet. But it’ll happen, mark my words.”
    “Luna, you are a doomsday prophet,” said their mother. “Be fair. Give old Ms. Fleegerman a chance.”
    “How old is she, anyway?” asked Steve.
    “Somewhere between thirty and fifty two,” guessed Luna. “Old.”
    “Let me know when she does something mean,” said their mother. “So far, you have no proof in your pudding.”
    Luna did not need proof or a pudding to know.
    Sure enough, the very next morning, something mean had happened. When the girls walked into 5A, Claire’s desk was missing.
    “Where could it have gone?” asked Claire. She jumped down on her hands and knees and began scrambling around. “Here, desk-y desk! Here, desk!”
    The other kids started laughing. Jemina Consolo dropped to her hands and knees, too.
    “Here, desk. Come here, girl!”
    “What’s going on in here? What are you doing on the floor?” Suddenly, Ms. Fleegerman stood in the doorway. “Oh, yes. Claire Bundkin, you will find your desk in Mr. Rosenthal’s class, in Five B. I spoke with Mrs. Hass, and she agreed to separate you two.” She walked over to the girls and put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Don’t worry, this is a good idea. Studies of identical twins prove that it is important for them to maintain separate classroom identities.” She spoke as if she were talking out of a book.
    Luna looked at Claire and Claire looked at Luna. Never in their school-day lives had they ever, ever been separated. Not even preschool. In preschool, they had even shared a cubby and napped on the same mat.
    But Mrs. Hass was the school principal. There was not much a person could do, once something was agreed to by Mrs. Hass. Very sneaky of Ms. Fleegerman, thought Luna, to get Mrs. Hass on her side.
    “Bye!” said Claire. “See you at lunch!” Claire got upset in a different way from Luna. Her face turned red, like their dad’s. And she seemed to get very pointy all over, as if a thousand porcupine quills were poking off the surface of her skin. Now, even though she was smiling, she looked pointy as a sword.
    She slammed the door to 5A so hard that the floor trembled.
    Luna drooped. She went to her desk. She looked across the aisle. Instead of Claire, she saw Adam Chow. Adam was Luna’s cleanup partner and could copy any drawing perfectly. Luna really liked him, but he wasn’t Claire.
    Luna’s way of getting upset was to crawl back into the smallest corner of herself, and that’s what she did. She could not pay a second of attention to concepts in math, or reading comprehension, or science. In fact, if the school started to sink into the ground, Luna might not have noticed.
    All she knew was that Claire was gone, and she hated it.
    In computer lab, which 5A and 5B took together, only at different ends of the lab, Luna sent Claire an e-spell. An e-spell is just like e-mail, only it’s magic. It was one of the few spells Grandy allowed the girls to cast unsupervised. Most hackers can do it without magic, anyway. An e-spell is like a regular e-mail, only written in invisible computer pixel so that nobody except the receiver can read it. Luna’s e-spell went like this:
Dear Clairsie,
    I’m so miserable I could die. Who does Fleegermonster think she is, switching you out of 5A? Tonight let’s ask Mom if we can change schools. I wouldn’t mind going to Overbrook Middle. I heard they sometimes have eggrolls for lunch. Love, Luna
    A few minutes later, her e-spell reply came in.
Loooon, if we change schools now we miss mayfair & book fair & the lady who’s coming next week w/ her pet trick monkeys. u r the lucky one—i got rosenthal all day & he smells like sower milk!! ! ! ! !
    It was not the reply