The Trouble with Secrets Read Online Free Page A

drinkable,” Mr. Bishop said. “It has the same root as ‘potion.’ ”
    “Potare,” B said, remembering his spell. “That’s Latin for ‘to drink,’ right?”
    “Bingo. Though in reality, potions can also work through the skin, or by breathing in their vapors, though not always as well.” He gestured toward the cauldron. “Let’s get started. I want you to try to make a simple laughing potion. These drawers and cupboards are full of ingredients — the fridge, too. Help yourself to anything you see.”
    B wasn’t sure where to start. “I can just pick anything?” B asked. “Isn’t there a book I can look at?”
    Mr. Bishop shook his head. “Just trust your instincts.”
    B tossed her slushy cup in the trash and rubbed her hands together. This could be fun. Looking through the drawers and cupboards, B found rubber bands, matchbox cars, playing cards, bits of fabric and string, rusty nails, twigs, old pennies, marbles, some colored hair bands, old stickers, clothespins, beads, and odds and ends she couldn’t even name.
    “I thought the ingredients would be, um, spices and things,” B said. “Herbs. Oils. Stuff like that. This drawer is full of junk.” Row after row of drawers revealed the same assortment.
    B opened the fridge. “There’s nothing here but Swiss cheese, mustard, and pickles!”
    “I was sure there was bread in the cupboard,” Mr. Bishop said, nosing around. “Nothing helps a potion like a cheese and pickle sandwich. Do you like mustard?” He found a bag of bread and set it on the counter.
    B was baffled. “Am I supposed to put a sandwich into my potion?”
    “Certainly not,” he said, pulling two slices of bread from the bag. “You
eat
the sandwich. Getsyour creative juices flowing.” He started spreading the mustard. “C’mon, B, think. A witch rarely has powdered diamonds and dried rosemary when she needs them. But everyone’s got a junk drawer. Part of witchcraft is learning how to make do with what you’ve got. So, find some ingredients that you think suggest laughter, and brew them up.”
    It sounded mumbly-jumbled to B, but who was she to argue? She poked through the drawers and cupboards. She selected a joker card, a frog-shaped pencil eraser, a bubble wand, and a fake feather.
    “Feather?” Mr. Bishop asked through a mouthful of sandwich.
    “For tickling,” B said. “That always makes me laugh. Oh, wait, one more thing.” She reached into the jar with a fork and pulled out a pickle.
    “Pickles are funny, don’t you think?” B said. “Just saying the word makes me smile.”
    “I never thought of it that way,” Mr. Bishop said. “Usually pickles make me hungry.”
    B tossed all her ingredients into the cauldron and stared at them. They sat on the shiny bottom ofthe pan, doing absolutely nothing, looking like bits of clutter, not like the pieces to a magical puzzle.
    “Well,” her teacher said, “at this point in the process I would usually instruct my students to think up a
rhyming
spell to bind the potion together and create the liquid. So, let’s see what you can do with word-spelling.”
    As she munched on her sandwich, B wondered what word she should spell. She decided she’d try the obvious one. She tried to focus on the sound of laughter, but it was hard to ignore all her stray thoughts.
    “L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R,” she spelled, but a bit of sandwich almost caught in her throat. She hoped it wouldn’t mess up her potion. Soon, a bubbling sound came from the cauldron. She peered in to see the ingredients melting away like ice cubes, forming a pool of amber-colored liquid. When it was done brewing, Mr. Bishop poured some into a cup, took a deep breath, and drank. A little puff of cloudy vapor rose from the mouth of his cup, then vanished.
    “Hm,” he said.
“Hic!
I’m not
hic!
laughing.
Hic!
I seem to be
hic! —
uping.”
    “Oops,” B said.
    She waited, embarrassed, for the hiccuping to stop. At last it died down.
    “Fortunately, I didn’t