Don't Drink the Punch! by P.J. Night Page A

fact, an old lady of eighty-seven. Heaven knows I have all the ailments of old age—bad eyesight, sore feet, aching hips. Seventy-five years ago, I was given a potion without my knowledge, a potion that caused me to appear to never age. I had been haughty and cruel and horrid to a girl at my school day in and day out. She was a mousy little thing, so easy to torment. My friends and I tortured her with our sarcasm, our teasing, our tricks. The teachers never had any idea. Well, I chose the wrong person to pick on. She was smart. If she’d been born today, she’d have been a Nobel Prize–winning chemist. But back then, girls didn’t think that way. They didn’t dream of careers in science.”
    She shook her head and looked out the window, lost in thought. Kayla resisted the impulse to leap from her chair, to scream, Get on with it! She sat and waited for Matilda to continue.
    â€œUnbeknownst to me, this girl had taught herself how to make potions. Strong potions. It was she who did this to me, who gave me an antiaging elixir. She laced some chocolates with it and left me a box of them forValentine’s Day, with a note that said the gift was from ‘a secret admirer.’ One piece of chocolate was all it took. I never grew up. I never got to live my life.”
    â€œI’m sorry, Matilda,” whispered Kayla. And she meant it.
    Matilda’s jaw tightened. “When I figured out what had happened to me, I vowed to learn the craft as well. I was smart too! My parents removed me from school when they realized something was wrong with my development, and they hired a tutor to teach me. They were embarrassed by me.”
    â€œWhat became of the girl?” asked Kayla.
    â€œDied,” said Matilda flatly. “She fell from a window, although to this day I wonder if it was an accident, or if she took her own life. After all, I had made her so miserable with my bullying, and then she must have felt some guilt for what she did to me.” Matilda pulled a large handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose loudly. “From that day on, I vowed to stop all the mean girls I encountered. That’s why I froze your friend Alice, along with her awful friends.”
    â€œMatilda,” said Kayla gently, “I am so sorry for what you have suffered. But surely you don’t want to doharm to so many people, people who never did you any wrong. And even Alice—do you really want to wipe out so many lives? My own mother works so hard. She’s a single mom with four kids. Think about who she’d be leaving behind. I have a little brother named Timothy. He’s only seven, but you should see what a great little hockey player he is. He has curly brown hair and—” Kayla began to sob.
    Matilda sighed, and Kayla looked up. The other girl’s expression had softened ever so slightly. “You’re right. I can’t go through with it,” she said solemnly. “I may be a bitter old fool, but I can’t actually do this. I guess I really didn’t think of all the other people I’d hurt, only those nasty girls. I’ll give you a vaporous compound that will reverse the paralysis condition. Wait here.”
    She stood up and went into the back room. Kayla wiped her eyes, leaned back, and breathed.
    â€œTake this,” said Matilda, upon returning. She handed Kayla a thick black candle. “Burning it will release the antidote fumes into the air. As soon as the frozen people inhale it, they’ll begin to revive. It may take fifteen or twenty minutes for a full recovery—assuming they haven’t ingested too much of the potion and its effectscan still be reversed. There’s certainly that danger.”
    Kayla leaped out of the chair, clutching the candle to her chest. Then she stuck it into her jacket pocket and zipped it securely. “Thank you, Matilda,” she said. “Thank you. You’ve just done a merciful