Bittersweet Sixteen (A Dodie Jenks Novel) (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

On Saturday morning Grandma and I went into town to do some shopping. I finally got to a cosmetics counter to look at makeup.

“Do you really want to start wearing that?  You have a beautiful complexion, Dodie. Why mess with perfection?”

“If I had had concealer the other morning when I woke with a zit, I wouldn’t have had to cover it up with a bandage.”

“If you are determined to do this then you want to get the best product to wear. One that is hypo-allergenic so it won’t break you out. And you’ll need to get a cleanser, toner, and moisturizing lotion. Taking care of your skin early in life will lead to having healthy, younger looking skin when you reach my age.”

I smiled. Was that really her secret to looking so young? I was dying to know, but couldn’t bring myself to ask.

Grandma flagged down a sales associate and before I knew what was happening, I was seated on a cushy stool and being pampered with a makeover. Grandma didn’t stop with the makeup tips either. She took me to a hair salon down the street and I got a haircut and style as well.

By the time we returned home it was after two in the afternoon and a frowning Brody was waiting on the front porch with Anson Parker. I’d completely forgotten that my brother was coming out for the weekend.

“Brody, darling, what are you doing here?” Grandma asked, sounding surprised to see him as we got out of her car. Obviously she’d forgotten too.

“I came to visit.” He looked annoyed. “You did say I could come out anytime I wanted.”

“True. I didn’t realize it would be so soon. We wouldn’t have been gone so long if I’d known. Have you been waiting long?”

“About an hour, but Anson has been keeping me company.”

“That’s nice. Will you boys help us out?  There are a few grocery bags in the trunk that need to be brought into the house.”

“Sure, Cherie, anything you want,” Anson said. He looked at me and smiled. “I like your hair and I see the zit is gone. I guess the band aid worked.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Are you wearing makeup?” Brody asked, planting his hands on his hips and looking me up and down. “Maybe staying with Grandma will be good for you after all. You’re starting to look more like a real girl instead of a squirt.”

What was that supposed to mean?  A real girl?

I waited until they had gone on to the car before I made a face behind Brody’s back. Then I went into the house, anxious for Leopold to see my new look. I set my bag of cosmetics on the dining room table before I went into the kitchen where I found him, stirring the contents in the copper pot again, but whatever was in it today did not have that pungent odor. I really wanted to know what he was cooking.

“We’re back.”

“I see.” He didn’t look up from the pot or stop stirring.

“I got my hair cut. It was only an inch or so all over, but it’s styled.”

He turned and smiled. “It looks pretty. I see you got makeup too.”

“Yes. Does it make me look more mature?” I playfully struck a pose.

“Nothing you wear can make you what you aren’t. It can only enhance what is already there.” He came over and ran his fingers through the length of my hair that was curled. “Just like if you were to twist your hair in the back and pin it on your head, it would make you look older, but you’ll still be the same age.”

I swallowed. He was standing so close and his fingers were in my hair. Even when we were working on a chemistry experiment he hadn’t been this close. “Would you like me to wear it up?”

“Only if you want to wear it that way. I hope you did not decide to wear makeup because you thought it would impress me.”

I shook my head.

He removed his hands from my hair and let it drop back in place. “The makeup covers up your freckles and I thought they were cute.” He grinned and that dimple of his showed. “Even that zit you tried to hide from me the other day. I found it quite adorable.”

“You did?” my voice squeaked.

He nodded. “I know you think you are very plain, Dodie, but sometimes that is when a girl is her most beautiful because she doesn’t see what others do. Beauty is not skin deep; it comes from within and you radiate beauty.”

I blinked. How had he known that? And did he really think that of me? I stepped back. “Thank you.”

The kitchen door swung open. Brody and Anson carried the groceries in and set the many bags on the counter.

“Put them away, Squirt,” he called. “We’re going to go shoot some hoops.”

I walked to the counter and began unpacking the bags, putting the groceries in the cabinets as I went. Leopold came up behind me and I could sense him staring at me. I turned around and he looked at me so intensely that I shivered.

“You’re a good kid, Dodie. Run along and I’ll put the cold items away.”

“Okay.” I left the kitchen, snagging my cosmetic bag off the table as I hurried through the dining room and up to the safety of my room. I shut the door and fumbled with the lock, realizing I was trembling. Had he been about to kiss me?  Surely not. I mean…I’m fifteen…he’s eighteen. I’m plain. He’s perfect. Yet he said I was beautiful. But he did call me a kid.
A good kid.

I took the bag into the bathroom and opened up the vanity drawer, putting the cosmetics inside and setting the cleanser, lotion and toner on the counter. I folded the plastic bag and went back into the bedroom not sure what to do with it. Toss it? Keep it?

Oh heck, the bag didn’t matter. What mattered was Leopold had me beside myself. His intense stares. His cheeky grin. Those mesmerizing green eyes that made my insides turn to mush. At times I wanted to melt whenever I was around him and at others I could be so annoyed with him for wanting to control who I see and what I do.

I sat down at the desk and opened up my laptop. I had several messages from Callie and Lisa in my inbox. However, I didn’t open them because I really didn’t want to hear about what was going on with them back home. I really wanted to share with them what was going on here with me, but I couldn’t.

So I shut my laptop lid and I paced the floor, trying to decide if I was making something out of nothing with Leopold. I feared I was imagining things. Why should a guy who had been to college think twice about a high school sophomore who might die in a matter of days.

“You’re a good kid, Dodie.”

Leopold’s words ran through my head over and over. He thought of me as a kid, no matter if he did think I was beautiful. He was just trying to tell me I didn’t need to wear makeup to make others see that.

I stopped pacing for a moment and fell down onto my stomach on the bed. I might have gone gaga over him, but that didn’t mean he reciprocated the feelings. And other than being gaga over his looks, that was about all I felt if I was honest. He was here to try and save me from the curse. End of story.

Rolling onto my back, I stared up at the white ruffled canopy that matched the pristine white downy comforter I lay on. I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to drift aimlessly. It felt good to relax and take a few moments for myself.

Sometime later I heard knocking at my bedroom door and then the jiggling of the doorknob before knocking began again. “Hey Dodie, are you alive in there?”

Brody!

I jumped up and ran over to unlock the door before my brother decided I needed saving and rammed his weight against it, breaking it down. “What is it?” I yawned.

“Dinner is almost ready. Grandma is serving cocktails in the living room if you care to join us.”

“Cocktails? Who’s us?”

“Grandma, me, Anson and that weird dude, Leopold.”

“Anson is still here?”

“Yeah. So fix your face. You got black smeared under your eyes. And do something with your hair or you’ll scare him away.”

“Okay. I’ll be down in a few.” I shut the door back and went into the bathroom to see how bad I really looked. I did have mascara smudges under my eyes, but I fixed that easily enough and I brushed my hair, putting it back in place before I went to change clothes.

I pulled out a pair of straight leg black pants, a black tank and a cute soft coral long-sleeve sweater. For accessories I put on my floating pearl necklace I had brought from home and the same black sling back flats I had worn to church last Sunday.

When I entered the living room Grandma was handing out drinks. She gave me a martini glass with a few cherries floating in it. “And a Shirley Temple for you.”

“Thanks.” I sat down on the loveseat. It looked like Brody and Anson were having root beer. Grandma was having a mint julep and so was Leopold, who stood off to the side staring into the fireplace. He looked so out of place. I went to him. “Hi.”

He looked at me and smiled. “You changed.”

“Yeah. I have a closet full of clothes upstairs that may never get worn if I don’t take advantage of them.”

“Sounds like you don’t have much hope that I’ll break the curse.”

I shrugged. “It’s not really that as much as I keep thinking what if?  You know?”

“No. I don’t. I need you to believe in me, Dodie. I need you to see yourself living through your sixteenth birthday.”

“Okay. I will.”

“You need to not just say it. You need to feel it deep inside.” He laid his hand on my chest, beneath my collar bone. “That’s why it’s so important that we spend so much time together. Why there shouldn’t be these interruptions.”

He glanced over where my brother and Anson sat talking with Grandma.

“Are you saying I can’t have contact with my family?”

“No. I don’t want to disrupt your lives any more than necessary, but I wasn’t expecting to be entertaining this evening either.”

“You mean Anson?”

He nodded. “I get a bad vibe from him.”

“Really?” I half turned and looked at the boy from next door. I didn’t know much about him other than he made me feel very comfortable last Sunday during the social hour after service. He was polite and he got along good with Brody. “Do you read auras?”

Leopold grinned and that dimple appeared. I sucked in my breath. “No, but I get feelings about people.”

“Ambrielle says I have a shroud of death following me. That my aura is black.”

“Who’s Ambrielle?”

“The seer that Professor Simons put Grandma in touch with before she contacted you. Ambrielle warned us not to try to break the curse, that the outcome would not be good. She even referred to you as a soothsayer.”

“I see.” Leopold gripped his glass tight, so tight that his knuckles turned white and the glass shattered in his hand. Blood began to gush from his palm from where a thick shard of glass stuck in it.

“Leopold!” I cried.

He calmly pulled the glass out and tossed it into the fire before he stooped low and ran his hand over the flames. I saw his lips moving, but couldn’t make out what he was saying; all I knew was that time seemed to stand still. The room became silent and Grandma, Brody, and Anson were frozen in time.

Leopold pulled his hand away from the flame and stood again. His palm was as if the glass had never shattered. There was no blood. No puncture wound. He looked at me and smiled.

“I’m not a soothsayer. I do not foretell the future. I’m a warlock. There’s a great difference, but now is not the time to show you.”

I nodded. “B-but your hand?”

“It’s fine.” He waved his hand in front of the fireplace and the shattered glass fragments began to spin in a circle as they rose up then he moved his hand toward the flame and they followed, vanishing. “It’s time for dinner. Will you help me serve?”

I swallowed. “Sure, b-but what just happened?”

“Magic. I do possess powers, you know. Watch this.”

He snapped his fingers, releasing time. Grandma and the boys once again spoke as he escorted me to the kitchen. Even in my bewildered state I noticed the table was already set for the meal so all we had to do was dish it up and bring it out.

The copper pot was on the stove again, steam rising from its contents. Was this pot his witch’s cauldron? “What are you always cooking in there?”

“That, dearest Dodie, is what is going to save you.”

“Will I have to drink it?”

He grinned and showed his dimple. “Don’t worry about that right now.” He stuck his hands in oven mitts and opened up the door, pulling out a roasted, stuffed chicken. “The potatoes and carrots are already dished up in the warming oven if you want to take them out to the table.”

“Okay.” I took the extra set of oven mitts and carried both dishes out, then when I returned he handed me the basket of rolls. He followed me with the chicken platter.

After setting the platter on the table, he walked over the doorway and called across the foyer. “Dinner is served.”

“It’s about time,” I heard Brody grumble.

I eyed Leopold to see if he’d heard him, but if he did, he didn’t let on. He came over and pulled out the chair for me, scooting me in once I’d sat. Then he took the place beside me, letting Brody and Anson sit together on the opposite side of the table.