Sadie's Story by Christine Heppermann

Author:Christine Heppermann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

Was this a trick question? “One?” Sadie ventured.

“And out of the smaller but still sizeable number of witches, how many of them are me?”

Sadie considered Ms. M’s droopy hat.

Her dusty dress.

Her crooked, snaggletoothed smile.

“One,” she said.

“All right then.” Ms. M tapped the page with greater insistence. “Time to get down to business.”

She wrote the date on a blank line. “We’ll add Bob and Lois here. Beneath Dorothy. Dorothy was lovely. I met her and her brother Toto at an outdoor film festival in Poughkeepsie. Their mother was a great fan of the classics.”

Sadie could see that the life list didn’t go straight up and down, like a grocery list, but was spread across the page in columns. Next to the date in the first column, Ms. M wrote Bob and Lois’s names. “What about the sighting conditions?” she asked. “Stormy? Dense fog? Bitterly cold? Cyclonic?”

“Um, nice?” Sadie suggested.

“We’ll say ‘very nice.’ To reflect the mood of the day. Now, location. You wouldn’t happen to know the latitude and longitude of your backyard, would you?”

“Not really.”

“We’ll just put ‘North America, Sadie’s backyard.’ Last is vocalization, though that can be hard to summarize for Columba livia. They are such lively conversationalists.”

Ms. M appeared to be concentrating hard. At her feet Bob burbled and cooed. He sounded like a cross between a purring cat and a tiny, whistling freight train.

“Of course, Bob, thank you for reminding me.” In the last rectangle of space on the line Ms. M carefully printed “Home.”

“What does that mean?” Sadie asked. Was Ms. M thinking of going home after all?

“When we were up on the roof, Bob and Lois told me how much they love where they live. I told them that I wished Ethel had turned into a pigeon instead of a yellow warbler, because then I never would have lost her. Pigeons are home-oriented. They leave, but they always come back.”

Hwhapwhapwhap!

Sadie jumped backward in surprise as Lois launched herself into the air, landed on the curve of Ms. M’s shoulder, and nuzzled her with her beak.

“Yes, you are absolutely right,” said the witch, smiling faintly and patting Lois on the head. “Ethel is who she is. I can’t change that.”

“What if we went to the park?” said Sadie. “We could try the picnic table by the fountain. I bet we’d have better luck.”

“Of course, dear. Would you mind fetching the binoculars? They’re in my bag. Put this away for me while you’re at it.” Ms. M held out the life list. “That’s enough note-taking for one day.”

Hwhapwhapwhapwhapwhap!

Bob and Lois flung themselves upward, rose over the garage, and kept going. In no time at all they turned from big dots to small dots to smaller dots, finally disappearing altogether.

Poof.

“Wow, pigeons are fast,” Sadie said, staring at the spot in the sky where they had just been.

“Champion flyers,” Ms. M agreed.

“I hope I see them again.”

“Oh, you will,” Ms. M said gaily. “They’re on their way to the park. They’re meeting Karen there for lunch.”

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