“Oh, and by the way, your friend’s here,” Nyala announced.
“What friend?”
“The one you just mentioned. Gretel.”
“Greta?”
“Yeah, her. I have no idea why she’s friends with you. She’s cool, you drool. You drool more than Mrs. Wendlebaum’s Saint Bernard.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m serious!”
Iris got out of bed, jammed her feet into her fuzzy blue slippers, and rushed out of her room. “You’re welcome!” she heard Nyala yell behind her.
“Close the door when you leave!” Iris yelled back. “Pleukiokus,” she added softly, to make sure that Lolli would stay safe.
Heading down the stairs, Iris tried to shake off her dream fog and return to reality. (There’s my favorite bird on the wallpaper… there’s a sippy cup on the carpet… the house smells like muffins.) She wondered why Greta was here. Was it Penelope-slash-Antima business or some other kind of business? Or maybe Greta really did just want to walk to school together, maybe talk about makeup and boys and whatever else girl friends (not girlfriends, one word, but girl-space-friends, two words) talked about with each other. Not that Iris would know, since her only real friend back in New York had been Fareeda, and their conversations had been 90 percent about Witchworld and 10 percent about their shared hatred of school. Maybe not hatred so much, but a big old casserole of fear, anxiety, and boredom.
Likely, Greta was here on Penelope-slash-Antima business. Iris already knew that Div was safe and sound, because Greta had texted last night about the big rescue mission. So maybe Greta had new news to share? Like, maybe they’d caught Div’s attacker and solved the mystery of Penelope’s death and invented a super-spell to make all Antima love witches? Case closed?
Or… was Greta’s surprise visit somehow related to Iris’s insane nightmare (or should it be morningmare)?
Downstairs, Iris found Greta and Ephrem nestled side by side on the ancient brown corduroy couch; they were poring over Ephrem’s rain forest coloring book. Maxina and Oliver P. were both meatloafing on Greta’s lap—or Maxina was, anyway, being the petite, prissy creature that she was; Oliver P., who needed to lose at least ten pounds, was spilling over Greta’s right thigh like a massive wad of jelly, forcing her to nudge him back up with her elbow as she rooted through a shoe box full of crayons.
“What do you think, Ephrem? Should our macaw be blue or yellow?”
“Blue and yellow. And red and orange and green and blue.” Giggling, Ephrem pulled off one dinosaur-print sock and threw it across the room.
“Perfect. Yellow, red, orange, green, and double blue.” Greta glanced up. “Hi, Iris!”
“Are you okay?” Iris demanded.
“Yes, I’m fine. Are you okay?”
“How about Gofflesby?”
“His breathing problem seems to be totally gone, and he hasn’t… he’s been acting totally normal.”
“Oh, whew.” So the morningmare hadn’t meant Greta was in trouble. Or Gofflesby, either.
“I like your pj’s,” Greta said.
Iris glanced down. Argh. She was still wearing her flannel SpongeBob pajama top and sweatpants. The pajama top had a blobby strawberry jam stain across the front and a ripped sleeve from when she’d accidentally slid down the ladder of Ephrem’s bunk bed during action-hero hide-and-seek. The sweatpants had holes in the knees.
“I’m a mess!”
“No, you look cute.” Greta leaned over the coloring book. She shaded in the rain forest bird’s feathers with a sky-blue crayon, holding it sideways instead of point down, then added on a layer of sunflower yellow. Her long, long hair splayed across the page; she swept it back over her shoulder. Iris’s heart skipped a beat. Greta was so pretty, like a figure from a Rembrandt painting.
“I’m sorry to just drop by your house like this. I tried to text you, but you weren’t answering,” Greta said, still coloring.
Iris blinked. “Oh, I’m sorry! I was asleep… well, obviously, right? Since Nyala had to come upstairs and… So, what’s up? Why did you text me? Although I suppose I could just go back upstairs and read the text for myself?”
“No need. I was wondering if you wanted to walk to school together. I thought we could talk about the… the…”
“Homecoming Dance! Got it!” Iris improvised, remembering the posters in the school halls.
“Who’s going to the Homecoming Dance?”
Rachelle Gooding pushed at the kitchen door with her hip as she balanced a wooden tray in her hands. On the tray were a platter of blueberry muffins, a teapot, mismatched mugs (the Muppets, D.A.R.E., Monet’s waterlilies, a sudoku puzzle), clementines, and honey. She wore her daily uniform (work and non-work) of black leggings and an oversized Café Papillon T-shirt, and her hair was scrunched back in her usual messy I-can’t-be-bothered-with-hairstyles ponytail.
“Greta, this is my mom. Mom, this is Greta,” Iris said.
“Greta and I already met. Before you came down. We had a nice chat about your new school,” Rachelle said. “I thought you both might like a little breakfast before you head off. I warmed up the muffins.”
“Thanks. Are they vegan?” Iris asked.
“Yes, in fact!” Rachelle set the tray on the coffee table and slanted a look at Ephrem, obviously signaling that she wasn’t going to bring up the subject of Penelope in front of him. “Greta told me about some of the clubs and such, and she said she’s in the choir. Maybe you’d like that, too, Iris? It sounds low-key.”
Low-key was Iris’s mom’s favorite expression when it came to suggesting activities for her. Stimulating but not too stimulating, no stressors or triggers, nothing that would require a paper bag to breathe into or a special-occasion Xanax or an emergency call to Iris’s therapist. Like that time during Mrs. Barber’s piano recital, back east. Ten-year-old Iris had performed a solo piano version of Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” from The Nutcracker. When some dumb boy in the audience had laughed at her for a slipup, she’d stopped mid-measure, taken off one of her shiny black patent leather shoes
