Stirring Up Trouble (Stirring Up Trouble Trilogy 1)

My heart pitter-pattered a little. With my height, I didn’t get to feel girly and dainty very often. “You look great,” I said when he put me down.

“A-hem,” Anya said into my ear. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

“I haven’t even said hi to him yet, Anya.”

Anya looked at Milo with a coy expression. “Do I get a hug?”

Milo grinned at me as if to say ‘You weren’t kidding’ and turned to my friend. “You must be Anya.”

“Alive and in person,” she said with a really irritating giggle.

Mom came out to greet his parents. They always amazed me. His mother was totally earthy and sweet. His dad was a computer nerd. They both hugged me and raved about how grown up I was. Mom kissed Milo on the cheek. She thought of him as a son.

“Come on in Marjorie, Bill,” Mom said. “We’ll have some coffee.”

“Great.” Marjorie said, “It’s been what, two years?”

“At least,” I said watching Milo carry his big duffle bag.

Anya had attached herself to his side. Before long, I was going to lose my temper with that girl.

“Let’s put your stuff in the guestroom,” I suggested. I led the way upstairs with Anya right behind me. Milo had insisted she go first. Politeness was not going to work with Anya.

As we reached the guestroom, Anya said, “Zoe, I think he’d be more comfortable in the other guestroom. It’s more masculine.”

The way she said masculine gave me the creeps. “Since there’s junk all over the bed in there, I think he’ll be more comfortable here.”

“This is great.” Milo plunked his bag on top of the totally impractical expensive, white bedding Mom had insisted on buying. “It’s like a fancy hotel room.”

“That’s what she was going for.” The room had been nautical for his last visit. His parents had stayed the night also, and we’d all had a blast. Too bad his parents had other plans this time.

“You’ll love the Egyptian cotton sheets,” Anya said.

I stared at her. She wasn’t really going to get into a discussion of fabrics or worse how they felt on your skin, was she?

“We should get back downstairs,” I said quickly. “I don’t want your parents to think I’m ignoring them.”

Anya pouted silently, but Milo agreed. We tramped back down the stairs to the living room.

The situation in the living room was a little tense. Marjorie and Mom kept exchanging looks because they couldn’t talk about any of the stuff they really wanted to with Anya there. After half an hour, we said goodbye to Marjorie and Bill. Mom returned to her workspace in the kitchen. She had a private client’s media room design to work on.

Milo had made the mistake of sitting on the sofa, and with the parents gone, Anya scooted even closer to him.

“So, Milo,” I said, not bothering to disguise my motivation. “Tell me more about your girlfriend.”

He grinned. “Darlene’s great. What do you want to know?”

“She’d have to be great to get your attention. Do you work out?” Anya reached over and squeezed his biceps.

Milo jumped a few inches off the couch.

I laughed, and he rewarded me with a glare.

Standing up, he said, “I’ll get her picture. It’s upstairs.”

Failing to take the hint, Anya rose. “Oh, I’ll come too.”

“I guess we’ll all go.” I graced my annoying friend with a big, fake smile.

She stepped toward me. “Are you asking if you have anything stuck in your teeth? Because I don’t see anything.”

This time, Milo laughed.

I frowned and followed them up the stairs.

Darlene’s picture didn’t seem to have any impact on Anya. She knew better than to say anything critical though. I’d have hated for Milo to have to tell her off.

Milo sat in the chair in the guestroom. He must not have wanted to risk Anya sitting on the bed with him. I sat on the bed, but Anya apparently wasn’t satisfied with that distance, because she stood near him and kept talking.

Anya fawning over Milo was really getting on my nerves. Luckily, my mother came to the rescue.

“Anya, we have some plans for the afternoon. You know, these two need to catch up. I’ll run you home.” Her tone brooked no argument. The look she gave me said there’d be more downloads from the assertiveness training website for me.

“Okay.” Anya shrugged. “Call me later though. Maybe we could all go out tonight.” To Milo, she added, “I’d be glad to show you the town. I know all the fun things to do.”

Milo gulped. “Great.”

Anya followed Mom out of my room, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Milo and I had a lot in common, and the great part of our friendship was that we could talk about our magic with each other. Having Anya around really screwed that up.

“Is she in heat?” Milo asked after breathing a sigh of relief.

My laugh could only be described as a guffaw. Maybe she was in heat. She’d been acting a lot like it lately. “Does that happen to people?”

Milo laughed. “They say it doesn’t, but I don’t know how else to describe her. She didn’t even react when I told her I had a girlfriend.”

“She is pretty though.”

“And she knows it.”

“So tell me more about your girlfriend,” I said settling back on the bed pillows.

“First, tell me about your toad slime substitute.”

“Okay,” I said with barely suppressed glee. And for the next two hours we talked science. Well, magic science.

I’d just finished admitting to my bathroom cleaning fiasco when I realized I was alone in a bedroom with a guy. I blamed Anya for my discomfort. If she hadn’t spent all that time emphasizing exactly how much a guy Milo was, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Since Milo had always been my friend, I’d never really thought of him as male before. He was just Milo. The thought that he might be seeing me as a girl for the first time made me even more uncomfortable. I hadn’t had these breasts when I saw him last.

Totally freaked, I stood. “I’ll show you the library. And we can grab a drink.” Then, I left the bedroom as fast as I could with Milo following behind me.

Saturday night, we were kind of mean. We invited Anya to a movie, but we waited until fifteen minutes before it started. I knew she couldn’t possibly make it in time.

So we didn’t have to put up with her. Jake met us there, and he and Milo did pretty well with each other. At first, Jake was leery, but when Milo started asking questions about Anya, they bonded making fun of her.

Sad, I know. And I should have been a better friend, but really I was thankful for something to break the ice. Jake had grimaced when he caught sight of Milo. Personally, I thought Jake was the hotter of the two, but Milo was a hottie. I wouldn’t want a hot girl spending a week at Jake’s house.

My stomach clenched at the thought and I passed the popcorn back to Milo.

I’d have to remember to be especially nice to Jake this week.

Sunday night, Milo and I planned and planned for Halloween. We drafted a checklist of things that I couldn’t do, including dressing myself and putting on makeup. Mixing things together in any way at all could turn into a potion. I couldn’t straighten a picture or microwave a bowl of soup. Mixing any food on a plate could be dangerous and I coul

dn’t mix anything in my mouth either. I had to chew one food at a time. Luckily mixing in my stomach didn’t seem to matter.

On the surface, Milo seemed to have it a lot easier. He had to avoid rhyming accidentally. Unfortunately for him, people accidentally rhyme all the time. See. I just did it.

“The trickiest part,” he said, “is to keep from rhyming what I say with what someone else just said.”

“Like if I say ‘How are you tonight?’ you can’t say ‘Being here is a delight.’”

Milo winced and threw the pillow at me. “I’m not real likely to say that anyway.”

I stuck out my tongue at him. “You probably didn’t think you’d rhyme three out of the last five Halloweens either, but you did.”

“Well you’ve only gone one year in ten without a catastrophe, so I’m way ahead of you.”

“But now we’ve got The Plan.” I gestured to the notebook full of rules.

“I still don’t think we should go to the party,” Milo said, taking over the remote and channel surfing.

“I have to, Milo. We just started dating. What would it look like? Plus, both you and my dad will be there to cover for me. Besides, aren’t you tired of being ‘sick’ on Halloween?”

He sighed.

I studied my list. I’d just wear a long sleeved black dress and a witch hat. That’s right. I had decided that my only option was to be a witch.

I’d start out as a normal looking witch, and hopefully if anything went wrong, I’d be an ugly witch. Or a witch with two heads, or whatever. With any luck, it would be consistent and therefore explainable.

When magic spells or potions went awry on Halloween, they resulted in Halloween Hiccups. “Okay, Milo,” I said. “Tell me about the great disaster of 1492.”

Milo thought for a moment. “Locusts in Brazil.”

“And what caused it?”

“A young witch doing laundry.”

No chores on Halloween. Score one for me. “And the impact?”