Trouble's Brewing (Stirring Up Trouble Trilogy 2)

“Sometimes you surprise me with the things you decide to do.”

We went our separate ways, and I found myself in the itchy, scratchy sweatpants section. No thanks. For two more dollars, I could get some that had at least some cotton in them. Sometimes I thought these so-called discount stores preyed on people who didn’t know better than to believe the prices were good here. At least on some of the products.

I made my way through housewares, struggling to glimpse a sign of toys through the shelving.

As I passed shelf after shelf of yard ornaments, I heard the excited chatter of a young child. I backpedaled and strained to follow the voice. Two rows over, I found the child and his mother. The little boy clutched a coloring book in one hand and a sucker in the other.

“Ohmygosh, wheredidyoufindthat!” I asked.

The mother jumped at my near uninterpretable query.

I had about two seconds until the child started crying. I knew that look from that nanny reality show. Take a deep breath, I told myself. I did, and then I smiled. “I’m so sorry to startle you. I’ve been searching the store forever for the toy section, and I was hoping you could point me in the right direction.”

The woman nodded, the panic in her eyes settling into warmth.

“Toy,” the boy said. “I want a toy. Mommy can I get a toy. I want a toy.”

So much for the warmth.

“No, Jeremy. You have a coloring book.” She looked up at me and pointed across the store, in the direction I’d been going before stalking them. “All the way to the far side of the store.”

“Thanks!” I said.

“I wanna toy!” the boy said again but louder.

“And I’m so sorry,” I said, and then I dashed away before I could make the situation any worse.

Halfway across the store, I heard the tearful yell at full volume. “I wanna toy!”

Spreading joy wherever I go, I thought to myself.

The Pepto-pink explosion that was the girls’ toy aisle appeared in the distance. Finally!

I couldn’t help pausing for a moment to run my eyes over the Barbies. I’d never had a lot of them, but they had the coolest stuff now. Focus, Zoe. I tore myself away from scientist Barbie with her awesome chemistry beakers and dark framed glasses, and I went to the crayon section. The chalk there was super generic. Awesome. But no sidewalk chalk. I needed the clearance section. Although the whole store appeared to be clearance. Junk pile after junk pile.

My phone rang and I reached in my pocket and whipped it out. “Where are you?” I demanded.

“Zoe, I think I found it.” I was hearing my mother’s voice in stereo. From the phone and from the next aisle over. I hung up on her and rushed around the corner. Sure enough. My mother crouched as she dug through a pile of toys on a bottom shelf even more cluttered than the others. She held up a box of egg-shaped sidewalk chalk. I grabbed it and examined the package. Four eggs in various pastel shades. The chalk had clearly been an Easter season item, and the brand looked decidedly off. Perfect!

“And here’s more,” Mom said, using one hand to hold up a mountain of not-so-desirable blister-packed toys as she withdrew a container of the standard cylindrical chalk with the other. I reached for it and checked the brand. A different name. The more variety the better.

“Ooh,” she said, “I see—”

An avalanche of toys rained down onto the floor.

“Oops,” she said as the cardboard dust rose around us.

A giggle escaped before I covered my mouth with my hand.

My mother looked up at me, her eyes lit with laughter. “I could use some help here.”

“Well, we can see everything better now.”

“I guess I should have just thrown it on the floor to start with.”

“Would’ve saved us some time,” I said.

She threw a neon green foam football at me.

The foam ball bounced off the side of my thigh and rolled down the aisle. I retrieved it, and glanced around for a place to put it. Apparently, I held the lone remaining foam product.

I found a spot on a shelf big enough to squeeze the football into. Then I went back to sort through the toys with my mom. She’d pulled out one character from each of a hundred different TV shows, comic books, movies, and collections. “Well, we know who the least popular characters are,” I said.

Mom waved a dinosaur-dragon-chicken-like thing. “Shocking that nobody snapped up this darling toy.”

“I get it, Mom. You want one for Christmas. Message received.”

My mother snorted. “No thank you.”

I tried to think of a way to buy the thing without her noticing.

“If you dare give me this as a gift, I’ll pay you back with hemorrhoid cream in your stocking.”

Someone might actually think I needed it. “Truce,” I said.

She grabbed a handful of pom poms and uncovered three dented boxes of sidewalk chalk shaped like ice cream cones.

“Oh my gosh! These are great.” I reached around her to grab the boxes of multicolored cones.

I set two of the boxes on top of the other chalk, and then ripped open the third box. The hard surface of the cone scratched against the skin on my hand.

“What’s the verdict?” Mom asked, standing up and rubbing her thighs. “You look happy.”

“I think it’s going to be good,” I answered.

Mom took the box from me and held out her hand for the chalk I had removed. “I’ll get the chalk together. You can get down there and clean up the mess we made.”

I hated to relinquish my find, but I handed it to her. “Okay,” I said, and got down on my knees to scoop up the toys and toss them back on the shelf.

“Fifty cents on clearance,” Mom read. “Department store price, four ninety-nine. As if anybody would pay five bucks for this stuff.”

“I would,” I said, shoving in another stack of toys. There was no way more toys were going to fit there.

“With my debit card,” Mom said with a sigh.

“Fifty cents is a steal. Too bad they don’t have more.”

“These will get you started, and we can go to the Internet for more options.”

I grabbed the last five assorted packages from the floor and stuck them on a higher shelf.

Turning to my mom, I said, “I can’t wait to get home and get started.”

“You are going to wait for Dr. Finnegan, aren’t you?”

Wait? That had been the plan, but how in the world could I wait until morning. Morning was forever away.

“Besides, we aren’t going home yet. I have an outfit to find.”

Oh, right. I stifled a whine.

Mom handed me half of the chalk and we walked to the front to check out.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said. I took the bag with my invaluable purchase. I knew I was on the right track with the chalk. Someday I’d write about my experiments, and this moment would mark the beginning of my success in finding the substitution for unicorn horn. The substitution that could lead to a cure for cancer and save millions of lives.

“Zoe,” Mom’s voice penetrated my thoughts. She rolled down the window, and called my name again. “Earth to Zoe. Get in the car.”

I was standing next to the door on the passenger side with my head so far in the clouds I didn’t remember the walk to the car. I opened the door and climbed into the car, setting the bag of chalk at my feet. “Sorry.”

Four stores, two adorable outfits, and one big salad later, Mom and I pulled into the garage.

“Thank you for pretending to be patient while I shopped,” Mom said as she removed her packages from the car.

Hugging the bag of chalk to my chest, I followed her inside the house. “You’re welcome.”

“You almost pulled it off.”

“I tried.”

I stopped in the kitchen to unload the three boxes of ice cream chalk, normal chalk, and egg chalk. I would save the other chalk for lat

er.

I needed to check the texture. I grabbed a knife and the cutting board. After covering the board with butcher paper, I chopped up an ice cream cone and scraped the powder into a small glass bowl. I switched out the paper and did the same with the other two kinds. Smiling, I stared down at the three glass bowls lined up on the counter. Time to test the texture. I stuck my hand in the ice cream cone bowl and felt the subtle graininess I was hoping to find. But as I continued to sift through the substance, I realized that most of the powder was soft. Too soft. The grittier portion probably came from the harder outside surface of the cone. I had hoped for more grit. The other two were even softer, with finer powder, and no graininess.

My instincts told me I needed a harder substance, but I didn’t know if hardening the chalk itself would work or if I needed something harder than chalk. I hoped that sleeping on it would give me some inspiration.

I fell asleep after two hours of lying in bed with a storm of ideas running through my mind. Exhausted from the excitement, I slept like a rock until my alarm woke me at seven.

I bolted out of bed, hoping Finn would come early so we could get a start. I wasn’t sure I had the ingredients right yet, but I did my best thinking while I was brewing. Potions, finding substitutions, I loved this stuff. Having Finn here though, well, I was afraid it would change things. Would I be able to focus, to brainstorm, with somebody watching? Not just somebody, but Dr. Finnegan. I’d started to get used to having the attention of the greatest potions master of all time. I wasn’t sure I could handle his scrutiny of my process.

Chapter Five

When I was showering, I realized that the chalk had a good chance of cross-contamination during the experiments due to the high likelihood of dust floating around the kitchen. I struggled to tamp down my knee-jerk reaction to freak, or worse to divide the kitchen into zones with plastic sheeting to prevent one chalk from contaminating that of another mixture. At this stage of the experiment such problems were not a real issue, although they were quick to balloon in import in my mind. No. This was my first go at the unicorn horn potion. I was doing little more than playing with the chalk at this point. I was using such large quantities of chalk anyway, that a few tiny specks, or even a hundred specks, I thought shuddering, would not impact the experiment. If I were dealing with smaller quantities or refining the substitution as I had with the toad slime right before Halloween, the contamination would render the research unusable. But I wasn’t, and I could handle the imperfections of today’s work.