Chapter Fifteen
"Whoa! Annie!" Jack shrieked in surprise. He leapt off Annie's bed and turned to face me, frantically buttoning his shirt. Clu, who had been lying on the bed as well—beneath Jack—watched him with a sly grin. Then he turned to look at me and guiltily wiped his lips with the back of his hand.
"We were just—"
"Uh—"
"I was—"
"We didn't think you'd be back so soon—"
"Guys, shut up," I interrupted their idiotic rambling.
"I'm so sorry, baby…" Jack began to coax me, reaching over to touch my hair.
"Stop!" I impulsively stepped back and raised my hands in the air. "Look, I really don't care. I knew something was going on between you two."
"You did?" Jack asked hesitantly. Clu just grinned more widely.
"Well, sure, I mean, always sneaking off together, constantly calling each other, the late-night conversations, the giggling, and the way you"—I looked at Jack—"would always mention him at random moments when he wasn't around—"
"Dude, really?" Clu asked, sitting up on the bed and watching Jack with wide eyes.
"Well, you know… I missed you while you were away…"
Clu smiled adoringly and stood up. "Aww, Jack, man…"
"Clu…"
"Jack…"
"STOP!" I shouted, shielding my eyes with my hand. "God, not while I'm in the room, all right? Gross." I really didn't need to see my brother and one of my best friends making out in front of me again. They both turned to look at me, annoyed. "What are you doing in my room, anyway?"
"Oh, well, I needed to borrow your calculator—" Jack began.
"But he couldn't find it—" Clu continued.
"So I called Clu to come help me find it—"
"And then one thing led to another…" Clu drifted off. They both smiled at each other sheepishly.
"Aww, how cute, you two are already finishing each other's sentences," I remarked.
"And then you had to come in and ruin it," Jack added, ignoring my comment.
"Yeah, well, it's my room!" I said indignantly.
"Whatever."
"Dude, Jack, let's go to your room and finish what we were doing," Clu suggested. I cringed at the thought.
Jack grinned, then looked at me and quickly assumed a more serious expression. "Yeah, man, we gotta finish those video games we were playing…"
"Wait, Jack, I meant the other thing!" Clu hissed.
"Clu, you goon, I know what you meant, I just didn't want to say it around her!" Jack hissed back.
"Guys, just go," I said, shoving them both out of the room and closing the door behind them. Man. I couldn't believe Annie had managed to turn two guys gay. But anyway.
I walked over to Annie's desk and sat down with her laptop in front of me. Okay. So all I had to do now was turn it on and go to the Insta-whatever thing that Annie told me to go to. Piece of cake. Right?
First I had to turn the computer on. So easy. Now let's see. Should I open the cover first? I pulled on it, but nothing happened. Why was Annie's computer orange, anyway? Wasn't that a little odd?
There must have been a latch or something—oh—there! Found it. "Now we're getting somewhere," I murmured to myself. Okay. So the laptop was open. Now I had to turn it on, right? Oh man… I was so not a computer person… I began to push every button I saw. The little circular one seemed to do the trick. I breathed a sigh of relief. I could do this! Hopefully nothing disastrous would happen like the last time I used a computer and fried Fi's laptop with some freaky computer virus and the next thing I remember was being embraced by Molly with her arm draped around my back and my fingers gently caressing her silky hair—
"Focus!" I scolded myself. Okay, okay. There it was! I clicked the little InstaGab icon. "HELLO?" I frantically typed. "FI? ARE YOU IN THERE?"
Just then I heard the door swing open and then close shut. "Well?" It was my voice.
"Annie, she's not responding!" I said nervously.
"Let me see," Annie demanded, and I quickly jumped out of the chair. She sat down and stared at the screen. "Gee, Carey. Did it occur to you that maybe you should send someone a message if you want a response?" I stared at her blankly. "You're not talking to anyone," Annie clarified.
"Oh," I said dumbly.
"Gee, don't know much about computers, do ya?" Annie busily began clicking boxes and opening windows and typing.
I decided not to tell her about how it took me nearly five minutes just to open the latch on the laptop and turn the computer on. "I guess not. What took you so long?" I asked.
"Oh, you know, Molly wanted to go over a new song of hers really quick…"
"Great."
Annie giggled, then stopped abruptly. "Oh, look! Fi's online. It's amazing how she always just happens to be at the computer when I need to talk to her," Annie mused.
"Yeah, what are the odds? I guess she just sits at her computer all day waiting for the moment when you'll need her help."
"Probably," Annie agreed. "Okay," she said, and began typing. "Fi… how… do… I… reverse… a… spell… that… I… cast… question mark," Annie said slowly, typing as she spoke. I groaned. This could take all day.
Instantly, a paragraph-long response from Fi appeared. Clearly she must have had lightning-fast typing skills, or maybe this scenario was just overly unrealistic. Who cares?
"Annie, it's easy to reverse a spell. According to the rules of Celtic magic, all you have to do is perform a spell that is exactly the opposite. For example, if it was something you recited from a magic book, you'd perform the chant backwards."
"What's the opposite of giving someone pills?" I demanded.
"Thanks… Fi… comma… you're… the… best… exclamation point… exclamation point… exclamation point," Annie said as she typed. "Okay, Carey, we're ready!" she announced.
"Ready for what?" What the hell was she going to do? Ask me to regurgitate the pills on command?
"Oh, well, what Fi said just reminded me," Annie said.
I impatiently waited for her to continue. She just smiled like a moron. "Reminded you of what?" I asked irritably.
"Oh!" Annie said. "Right. Okay, well, when Conrad gave me the magic pills, and I crushed them and mixed them into your slurpee, I forgot that he still had another pair of pills! One pair was white, and the other was black. I used the black ones before, so I'll just use the white ones now…"
"You needed to ask Fi to figure that out?" I nearly screamed.
She giggled. "No, no! I just forgot about it till now when Fi said the opposites thingy. She reminded me. But I knew all along!"
I wanted to kill her, but that would have to wait until after the spell was reversed. "Okay. Fine. I don't care. Where are the pills?" I asked.
"Conrad has them."
Great. "And where's Conrad?" I asked.
"Oh! Well, he's right here, of course," Annie said, reaching down and patting the air. "Hey, pretty kitty. Can I have the white pills, my ittle-wittle panther-anther?" Annie cooed. I shook my head in disgust. Then, suddenly, two white pills materialized in the air, right next to Annie's hand. She made a fist around them and stood up straight. "This is it!" she announced.
I gaped at her with wide eyes. "Wait a second—how did you—where did those come from?"
"Conrad's mouth, silly!" Annie laughed. "Here you go," she said, placing one in my palm. "Sorry it's a little slimy. But don't worry, Conrad doesn't have any germs," she assured me.
"Thanks," I muttered. Sure enough, she was right. The pill was kind of slimy. But I didn't want to think about that right now. I would just swallow this pill, and—
"Wait!" Annie shouted.
"What now?" I asked, pulling the pill away from my mouth reluctantly.
"What's the opposite of a slurpee?" Annie asked.
"I don't know, air?" I suggested. "Look, the other pills were black, these are white, so I'm sure that's all we need…"
"No, it doesn't feel right," Annie interrupted. "I know! Hot chocolate."
"Hot chocolate?" I asked skeptically. "How do you figure that?"
"Well," she began, "Hot chocolate is hot. Slurpees are cold. Hot chocolate is made with chocolate. Slurpees are made with fruit or soda. Hot chocolate is most common in the winter—"
"Okay, okay, I get it. So we'll just go downstairs, grab some hot chocolate mix, then—"
"Oh, wow! Thanks, Conrad!" Annie interrupted me again. I stared in shock. Two mugs of hot chocolate had suddenly appeared on the carpet.
"How did that—"
Annie giggled. "Conrad loves hot chocolate! He has his own cocoa machine," she explained. "And it tastes really, really good, too, because it's spirit hot chocolate!"
I sighed. "Yeah… okay. Whatever you say."
"So, are you ready?" Annie asked, handing me my mug.
"Definitely." At the same moment, we both popped the pills in our mouths and took huge gulps of our hot chocolates.
"Carey?" Annie asked. She still stood before me.
"Yeah?"
"Do you feel anything yet?"
"Not really…" I replied, but as the words were leaving my mouth, I felt overcome with a spell of dizziness, and everything became blurrier and blurrier, until I could no longer see at all.