The Challenge Box Read online

  She had no way of knowing that Kate, sitting only a few desks away from where Cooper now sat, had made a list of potentially unanswerable questions. Now it was Cooper’s turn to make a list. Below the lines covered with “Face the thing you fear the most,” she hastily scrawled:

  Things I’m Afraid Of

  1. Sharks

  2. Mom or Dad dying

  3. Losing T.J.

  That was all she could come up with. The second two items were things she hadn’t really thought about before, but now they came to her easily. Still, she didn’t think they really counted. Magic could be tough sometimes, but she knew she would never be asked to confront those things as part of a test. But Annie had to, she told herself, thinking about how the deaths of Annie’s parents had played a huge part in her understanding of magic and her growth in Wicca. That was different, though. Mr. and Mrs. Crandall had died long before Annie had become interested in witchcraft. Magic had had nothing to do with it.

  No, she was certain that neither her parents nor her relationship with T.J. was in jeopardy. That leaves sharks, she thought. Maybe I’m going to fall off a boat and be surrounded by sharks. Then I’ll have to use magic to make their teeth fall out. She laughed at the absurdity of the idea. It sounded like something out of Harry Potter. Then again, sometimes she wished magic was as easy as it was in those books. While she would never admit it, and in fact would probably deny it if asked, she loved reading Harry Potter. The way magic was portrayed in the stories was how she’d always thought of magic when she was little. Now she knew better, but still it was fun to read about a world where people could make things happen just by waving a wand.

  The bell rang. Cooper closed her notebook. There was time to think about her challenge later. First she had to get through the rest of the day. And then there was Sasha’s party that night. As she left to go to her next class, she tried to think of something they could do to cheer up Kate. They couldn’t make up for the disappointment of her not being able to go to New Orleans, but maybe they could help ease the blow a little.

  That night, a little before seven o’clock, Cooper arrived at Annie’s house. She was carrying two wrapped gifts. When she went inside, she found Annie in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on a chocolate cake.

  “Is Kate here yet?” Cooper asked, looking around.

  Annie shook her head. “No,” she said. “You’re the first one.”

  “Good,” said Cooper. She set the two presents on the table. “I brought her a present.” She held up one of the boxes. It was quite large, and when she shook it, it rattled.

  “What is it?” Annie asked.

  Cooper gave her a mysterious look. “You’ll have to wait to find out,” she said. “It’s a care package. Stuff for Kate to remember us with while we’re gone.”

  “Don’t you think she’d rather forget us?” asked Annie.

  “I’m just trying to cheer her up,” said Cooper.

  “I know,” Annie said. “I’m sure she’ll love it—whatever it is.”

  “You seem a little tense,” remarked Cooper, sticking her finger in the frosting Annie was using and tasting it.

  “I guess I’m just a little nervous,” Annie admitted. “I’m going to meet my sister tomorrow. It feels weird.”

  “It will be fun,” Cooper said.

  “I know,” Annie said. “But what if she doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like her?”

  Annie should have gotten my challenge, thought Cooper as she listened to her friend talk. It occurred to her that Annie really was facing one of her worst fears in meeting her sister. If things didn’t go well, it wasn’t like she could just forget about Juliet. She would always know she was out there, and that they were related. Thinking about that made Cooper’s worries about her own challenge seem unimportant. But what was Annie’s challenge? she wondered. Since she hadn’t chosen the one about facing her fears, Cooper couldn’t imagine what she had chosen. Was it something even more difficult? She was dying to ask Annie, but she knew it was against the rules.

  Besides, before they could talk anymore about it, the front door opened and Kate arrived with Sasha. They had decided to limit the get-together to the four of them because Annie and Cooper—and formerly Kate—had to leave the next day for New Orleans. Technically, it wasn’t even really Sasha’s birthday; that was on the fourth. But since her friends were going to be away, they’d decided to celebrate early.

  “Hey, birthday girl,” said Cooper, giving Sasha a big hug.

  “Sorry I’m a little late,” said Sasha. “Mallory called, and I wanted to find out what was going on.”

  “How is she?” asked Annie. Mallory, like Sasha, had been a runaway. She’d come to Beecher Falls the month before, running from an old boyfriend who wanted to harm her. The guy had shown up and beaten Mallory, and the girls had helped her out. They’d been able to reunite her with her brother, Derek, and now Mallory was living with him and his wife in Maine.

  “She’s doing really well,” said Sasha happily. “She’s about to go back to school, which will be a big deal for her. She’s missed a lot, but she says she’s determined to graduate. I’m really proud of her.”

  “Now if we could just keep that creep Ray in jail, we’d be all set,” remarked Cooper angrily, referring to the old boyfriend who had attacked Mallory and then tried to attack them when they’d stopped him.

  “Oh, that’s the best part,” Sasha said. “The police called Mallory a few days ago. Because of what she told them, they’ve managed to connect Ray to a whole bunch of crimes, including a murder in L.A. With any luck, he’ll never get out.”

  Cooper gave Sasha a celebratory high five. “Way to go,” she said. “So, how does it feel to be turning sixteen?”

  Sasha was the last of their group of friends to turn the magic number. Kate’s had been the most recent birthday, back in January. Annie and Cooper had turned sixteen the previous year. In fact, Cooper was looking ahead to turning seventeen at the end of April.

  “Finally I’m catching up,” Sasha said. “Now I don’t feel like the baby anymore. I mean, I know I still am, but at least it doesn’t feel that way. What’s this?” she added, picking up one of the boxes Cooper had set on the table.

  “Not yet,” Cooper said, taking it away from her. “Cake and festivities first. And Kate, this box is for you.”

  “Me?” Kate said. “What did I do?”

  “It’s just for being you,” Cooper said, pushing the box toward her friend. “Go on. Open it.”

  “Hey,” Sasha said. “It’s my birthday party. How come she gets to open a present?”

  “Because I said so,” Cooper replied. “Kate is before cake; you’re after cake.”

  Kate pulled the paper from the box and lifted the lid. She reached in and pulled out another, smaller box. It too was wrapped, and it was numbered 4. She looked at it, puzzled, then reached in and pulled out another box. This one was marked with a number 1.

  “There are seven of them,” said Cooper. “One for every day Annie and I are gone. You can only open one at a time.”

  Kate picked up package number 1 and felt it. “Is it a book?” she asked curiously.

  “Put it back!” Cooper ordered her. “You are not to open that until Saturday.”

  “But that isn’t fair!” wailed Kate. “First I don’t get to go with you, and now you won’t let me open the presents. You are so mean.”

  “Hey, I got you presents, didn’t I?” Cooper told her, grinning.

  Kate smiled. Then she hugged her friend. “Thanks,” she said. “I can’t say it’s better than going to New Orleans, but it makes it easier having to stay here alone. I can’t wait to see what these things are. You promise they aren’t just empty boxes, right?”

  “Who’s to say?” Cooper replied cryptically.

  “And by the way, you won’t be here all by yourself,” Sasha said to Kate. “I’ll be here. Now you’ll get to be around for my real birthday. Let them have New Orleans,” she sai
d, putting her arm around Kate and facing Cooper and Annie. “We are going to have big birthday fun.”

  “Right,” Kate said in agreement, although she sounded a little unsure.

  “Speaking of big birthday fun, let’s get going on this cake,” said Annie. She had lit the sixteen candles on the cake, and now she set the whole thing in front of Sasha. “Put your lips together and blow,” she ordered. “And don’t forget to make a wish.”

  Sasha leaned forward and puffed heavily. The candles flickered and then went out, thin streams of smoke drifting toward the ceiling. “That’s one wish granted,” she said, pumping her fist. “Want to know what it was?”

  “You’re not supposed to tell,” Annie chided her as she cut the cake.

  “It’s my birthday,” replied Sasha. “I’ll tell if I want to. I wished you all would pass your challenges with flying colors.”

  Annie, Cooper, and Kate looked at one another, each wondering what the other two thought of Sasha’s wish.

  “Using your wish for us,” Cooper said. “How very unselfish.”

  “That’s just the kind of girl I am,” Sasha said, taking the plate Annie handed her and digging into the piece of cake. “Besides, I’ll get another wish on my actual birthday. That one is going to be all about me. And Josh Hartnett,” she added, licking frosting from her lips. “Now where are those presents?”

  CHAPTER 4

  Annie looked over at Cooper. She was asleep. Her headphones were on and her mouth was open as she dozed. Annie wished she could sleep, too, but she’d never been able to nap on airplanes. Besides, she was too excited. In just a short time she was going to meet her big sister for the first time. She checked her watch for what seemed like the thousandth time since they’d taken off five hours before. They would be landing within the hour, and the closer the time came the more nervous Annie got.

  Then she looked at the empty seat between herself and Cooper. Kate should have been occupying it. Instead, she was back in Beecher Falls. Annie was sad that her friend couldn’t be with them. But she was trying not to let that get in the way of how happy she was to be meeting Juliet. She thought about the gifts Aunt Sarah and Meg had helped her put together—the photo album of pictures of their parents, the video they’d had made of some home movies Peter Crandall had taken, and the painting that Chloe Crandall had done. That last item was packed carefully and was sitting at the front of the plane. Annie had convinced them not to make her check it, and one of the flight attendants had put it in a safe place. Annie had selected the painting from among those her aunt had stored. It was a picture of a black dog sitting in a garden. The dog was surrounded by purple irises, and Annie loved the contrasting colors. She didn’t know why, but she thought Juliet might like it as well.

  She turned back to the window, looking out at the black sky. Even though they’d left school halfway through the day to take an early flight, it was still evening because of the time difference. Outside the plane stars twinkled brightly in the darkness, and the red lights on the plane’s wings blinked steadily. Annie looked down, wondering if she could see any lights from below, but nothing was visible through the thick clouds.

  She leaned back and closed her eyes, trying to at least relax a little. She didn’t want to be too exhausted on her first night in New Orleans. But she was simply too worked up to rest. Besides, there was something weighing on her mind. That was her challenge. While her approaching meeting with Juliet had occupied most of her waking thoughts, the challenge was lurking in the background. She knew she was going to have to deal with it sooner rather than later.

  What troubled her was that she thought maybe she’d chosen the wrong one. The slip she’d taken from the Challenge Box told her “Give away your most precious possession.” Seeing the instruction, Annie had at first thought it was a straightforward challenge. She simply had to give away something she owned. But as she’d thought more about it, the more confused she’d become. She didn’t really have anything that was worth a lot of money, except perhaps for her computer. And technically that belonged to Aunt Sarah, who had paid for it. Annie herself owned almost nothing of monetary value.

  Then she’d thought that maybe the thing she had to give away was something with personal value. She had a lot of that kind of thing, including the paintings her mother had done, the photographs of her family that helped her remember them, and the various magical gifts Kate and Cooper had given her. Perhaps, she thought, her challenge was to give one of those things away.

  But that wasn’t much of a challenge. As much as she cherished those things, she would be able to give them away without too much trouble if she really had to. They were, after all, just things. And anyway, she didn’t think that Sophia and the others who had written the challenges would expect her to give away something like a photo of her parents to prove that she was ready to become a witch. That was more like something someone would be asked to do to join a stupid gang, or a sorority or something where they wanted to embarrass you. Wicca didn’t require people to do meaningless things like that. Annie just couldn’t make sense of her challenge.

  At least it didn’t make sense for her. But maybe it made sense for someone else in the class. After all, each person’s challenge was supposed to be uniquely theirs. What was it Sophia had said? They didn’t choose the challenges so much as the challenges chose them. Was it possible that Annie had somehow taken a slip meant for someone else? Would the words mean something important to another person in the class? But wouldn’t Sophia or Archer have noticed something when they saw what she’d selected? She’d been tempted to go back later and ask them if she could choose again, but that had seemed like breaking the rules.

  Annie sighed. Maybe you need to break the rules more often, she told herself glumly. She wanted to be excited about her challenge. Instead, she just felt confused. If it did belong to someone else, she would just be wasting her time trying to complete it. And what if someone else had her challenge? Then two people would be doing the wrong thing.

  Well, she couldn’t really worry about it now. She was thousands of miles from home and from the store. She would have to deal with it when she got back. She would just go to Sophia and tell her that the challenge wasn’t right for her. Surely, Sophia would understand that. It would all work out fine in the end, Annie told herself.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we will be landing in New Orleans in approximately twenty-five minutes. Please fasten your seat belts in preparation for arrival.” The announcement came over the plane’s speakers. Annie leaned over and patted Cooper’s arm. Her friend opened her eyes and looked around sleepily.

  “What?” Cooper said, sounding confused. “Is it time for school? Just fifteen more minutes.” She started to close her eyes again. Then she saw Annie watching her and she sat up. “Are we there?”

  “Almost,” Annie said.

  Cooper stretched and yawned while Annie busied herself collecting everything she’d spread out on the seat beside her and returned it to her backpack. Within minutes she was all ready to disembark. Cooper, meanwhile, was still searching for the shoes she’d removed before falling asleep. But after a few minutes of rooting around under her seat she, too, had gathered her things and was waiting expectantly to land.

  As the plane descended, Annie kept stealing glances out the window, as if perhaps if she looked hard enough she could somehow see Juliet below them. She wondered if Juliet was looking up at some blinking red lights in the sky and hoping they belonged to Annie’s plane.

  Soon she could see the lights of the city beneath them, and then the runway lights as the plane approached the airport. When she felt the wheels touch down, she thought she might not be able to sit still another minute longer. Juliet was right inside the terminal, waiting for her.

  It seemed to take forever for the plane to taxi down the runway and pull up to the gate. Annie kept watching the seat belt sign, and as soon as it went off she unbuckled herself and stood up. Cooper stepped into the aisle and opened the overhead
luggage compartment, removing their bags. Annie took hers and immediately headed for the front of the plane. When she had to stop because there were people ahead of her, she tapped her fingers on the back of a seat impatiently.

  “Relax,” Cooper said. “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Annie tried to follow her friend’s advice, but she just couldn’t. Every second seemed like an eternity, and she kept craning her neck around the other passengers to see what was taking so long. Finally the line began to move, and a minute later they were at the front of the plane. A flight attendant handed Annie the painting that had been stored there.

  “Thanks,” Annie said as she stepped into the gangway. Immediately she was hit with a blast of hot, moist air.

  “Whew,” said Cooper, coming out behind her. “That must be the swamp. Goddess, it’s hot.”

  “Come on,” Annie said, storming ahead in her rush to get inside. Cooper followed along behind, saying “Excuse us” as Annie moved by the slower passengers.

  As soon as they stepped into the terminal, Annie scanned the area for Juliet. She found her almost immediately. She was standing near the gate, holding a big hand-lettered sign that said CRANDALL FAMILY REUNION. When she saw Annie and Cooper, she waved.

  Now that she was actually face-to-face with her sister, Annie didn’t know what to do. For a moment she just stood there, staring at Juliet and praying she wouldn’t wake up and find out it was a dream.

  “Go on,” said Cooper gently. “Say hello to your big sis.”

  Annie ran to Juliet, who dropped the sign she was holding and held out her arms. Annie ran into them, and as soon as they closed around her she began to cry tears of happiness.