The Magic Half by Annie Barrows Page A

hang out with them in their room. She didn’t think so. Not that it was such a lovely place to hang out, Miri thought, looking around. Robbie and Ray had not wasted much time unpacking. Their posters drooped, unrolling, in corners, and their books were still stacked next to the bookcase.
    On Ray’s side of the room, clothes were scattered on the floor like fallen plums. Robbie’s side was neater. He had even decorated a little: his A+ ziggurat diagram hung over his bed, side by side with a small, blurry photograph of their cat, Icky, who had died two summers ago. Miri squinted, trying to see beyond all the familiar junk. It was impossible. She glanced from the half pickle floating in a jar to a brownish tank that (in theory) held a couple of lizards to a gutted Walkman lying on a piece of newspaper. There was a lot of stuff. But there was nothing that would contain seventy-year-old glasses. Miri was turning to go when her eyes fell on the closet.
    The closet had no door. It had had a door, but the door was now leaning against the wall next to Ray’s bed. So Miri could see inside the closet. And what she saw, rising above the smelly rubble of shoes and shirts, was a ladder built against the back wall of the closet. It led up to a small door, set high in the wall.
    The attic.
    Of course. Miri had known, even before her adventure with Molly, that there was an attic, because her own room was right next to it. And she knew that the nailed-down flap in her own closet could not be the only way into it, because that would be stupid. But she hadn’t thought much about it. Now she did. The attic would obviously be the place for Flo, Horst, Sissy, and—Miri crossed her fingers—Molly to store old stuff and forget about it. She remembered the napping dressmaker’s dummy. There should be tons of stuff up there by now. She jumped through the mess on the closet floor and took hold of the ladder’s rungs.
    At the top, the door opened with a squeak of protest, and Miri rapidly hoisted herself in, scraping her knees as she went. The attic was hot and dusty, just as it had been over seventy years before, and the same thin slats of light angled across the floor from the air vent. The first thing Miri saw as she climbed through the door were three pillows lined up on the floor, and her stomach jumped with illogical hope— Molly! She whirled around, ready to find her friend.
    Nothing.
    Beyond the pillows, the attic was empty. The floor that stretched away into dark corners was bare. It contained not one thing that Molly had ever touched. Hot tears filled Miri’s eyes and her throat grew thick. What if I never find her? she thought with an ache. What if I never know what happened? Two bright drops shimmered on the dusty floor, and she smeared them away. “Molly,” she called in a low voice. “C’mere.” She knew that there would be no answer, but she waited anyway. Nothing. “I’m not going to quit,” she said into the silent attic. She didn’t sound very convincing. “I’m not going to quit.” That was better.
    Miri climbed down the ladder, too gloomy even to plug her nose against the socky stink. She thumped heavily down the stairs and out the back door. Her mother was weeding the little vegetable patch near the porch while Nell and Nora squabbled over the tire swing nearby.
    Miri glared at the neat rows of tomato plants. “Rhododendrons would look better,” she snapped.
    “You can’t eat rhododendrons.” Her mother didn’t even look up from her work.
    Humph, thought Miri. She should be nicer to me if she doesn’t want me to run away again. The thought made her smile—she was starting to believe that running-away story herself.
    Her mother smiled in return. “That’s better. Do you want to go to town now?”
    “For new glasses?”
    “And paint, too.”
    “Mom?”
    “Hmm?”
    “Could I get wallpaper instead?”
    Her mother made a face. “You want wallpaper? What kind?”
    “I saw one with pink roses. I