"I only said it looks like a toad. It might be a frog." I bent over and peered more closely at the green creature sitting in my grandmother's driveway. It looked back up at me with its watery eyes, and it shifted its long, thin, definitely green, definitely furless hind legs. I stood up straight and added, "I mean, it's not a rabbit."

Beatrice bent over to inspect the toad. Frog. Whatever. It wasn't a rabbit. She held the magnifying glass to her eye. I had borrowed the magnifying glass from my grandmother for Beatrice because she said, at one time or another, everyone needed help seeing things. She inspected the frog for a few minutes, muttering something under her breath. When satisfied, she stood up and declared, "It's a frog. Ariana, dear, I believe you might be psychic."

"Really?" I gaped at the notion.

"Yes. You predicted I would make this frog appear."

"No I didn't."

"Yes, you did," Beatrice insisted.

"When?"

"When! Just now. I asked you what type of pet you would like. You replied a bunny rabbit. I said, okay, here goes. As I closed my eyes and lifted my wand to give you the pet of your choice, I distinctly heard you say -- dear, there's nothing wrong with my ears -- and I quote, 'there's no way she's gonna make a live rabbit' end quote." She smiled smugly at me and tucked the magnifying glass into the sleeve of her jacket.

"But that's not the same as predicting that you--"

With a wave of her hand, she cut me off. "You didn't think that I would make the rabbit, and I didn't. Maybe you aren't psychic. But you were right. Or was it that I was wrong?" She muttered something else and then put her arm around me, steering me toward the house. I didn't think we should just leave the toad in the driveway and glanced back at it, but only a dark oily spot remained where it had sat.

"Beatrice!" I exclaimed. "The toad, it's gone!"

"Shh, don't worry about that. Come, do you think I should get new boots?"

***

When I came home from my dad's, Beatrice, as usual, was waiting for me in my room. It was 7:00. I still had homework to do, and I was in no mood to discuss my weekend with Beatrice.

"How was your weekend?" she asked immediately.

My parents split up three months earlier. My dad had told me over the weekend that I should stay with him only one weekend a month instead of two. "Fine." I answered. I unpacked my duffel and backpack, adding, "I have math homework, Beatrice." I plopped down on the floor and opened my math book.

"Just fine? Nothing exciting happened?"

I shrugged and copied problems into my notebook.

"Anything at all out of the ordinary?" Beatrice persisted.

I stopped writing and chewed on the pencil eraser, looking into space. Dad's new lady friend Shelly had been there, in the kitchen, peering out over the bar, probably trying to hear the conversation.

"So something did happen?"

Shelly was all right, I guess. Except she treated me like I was a cat she was allergic to. You know how cat-allergic people are. They say they like cats; they just don't go near them. Shelly and I need our alone time, dad had said, you understand that, right, honey?

"What happened? You can tell me." Beatrice whined. I had learned quickly that she couldn't stand not knowing something. "Tell me, dear, tell me everything."

I gave in and told her everything.

"Have you told your mother this?" Beatrice asked. It was her standard answer to any situation that she felt too mundane for her to address. (Like when I had complained to her about the glitter in my carpet, which I thought she could wave away with her wand. She didn't.)

I nodded and went back to my math problems. I had told mom in the car on the way home. She had been worried that my feelings would be hurt. So I had told her dad's new apartment smelled like dirty sweat socks, which made her laugh. That had been nice. Because when she'd asked why I could only stay with him one weekend a month and I told her about Shelly, she cried.

"Hey!" Beatrice cried, "did I show you my new boots?"

***

Beatrice assessed me through squinted eyes. She had misplaced the magnifying glass. She said she had looked for it while I was at school, but she wasn't very effective at looking at or for anything without it, so . . . she stood squinting at me. "It's a what?"

"A little red wagon," I replied. "With horses' hooves instead of wheels." Beatrice was proving to be a pretty bad fairy godmother. Not bad as in evil. Bad as in her magic wand seemed to be broken. A wagon with hooves? Okay, this felt a little evil, definitely very wrong. I was sure we were breaking laws of physics and biology and maybe even ethics. The wagon was tottering around as though it couldn't stand straight.

"And you had asked for what, again?" Her entrance had impressed me. One night, she had appeared in my room, with a bang, amidst a cloud of glittery blue smoke, wearing an all-white gabardine pant suit and boots that shined -- not a speck of glitter was on her anywhere. Her magic had never been as good.

I said, "A bike. Although a couple days ago, I casually mentioned, you know, when you didn't ask or anything, that a pony would be nice. So I think maybe that's why the wagon has horses' hooves. But how can that be? A wagon should have wheels. Beatrice, this is gross." I watched wide-eyed as the wagon-horse tottered some more and then fell back on its haunches.

"A-ha. And what did you say just before I began my spell to produce a bike for you?" she asked sweetly.

"Nothing." I answered quietly.

"Yes, you did!" she spat. She smiled and continued, sweetly again, "I heard you. You said, and I'm quoting you now, dear, you said, 'I hope she doesn't make another toad'." She straightened her jacket before continuing, "For a moment I thought you might be clairvoyant, but I already made a toad, I thought to myself, why would I make another? Clearly you have no understanding of my power. As I've tried to explain, negative energy does no--"

"I didn't ask for a toad. I didn't ask you to kill that toad. And I didn't ask for this!" I spat back, pointing to the wagon-horse, which quivered as I did. "I only answered your questions. I'm trying to understand." With that, I sat down next to the wagon-horse and began petting it along its side, tears filling my eyes.

"Well! You are confounding, my dear Ariana, clairvoyant or not." She squatted down to look in my face. I looked away and sniffled. With her index finger, she pulled my chin toward her and looked me in the eye. She said, "Ariana, dear, don't cry. I will get this right. You have to trust me."

She pulled me to my feet. I wiped my nose and said, "But what abou-" She raised her eyebrows. When I looked down to see the wagon-horse, it was gone, of course, a pile of grass left in its place.

***

"I found the magnifying glass!" I held it up to prove my sharp sleuthing. Beatrice had lost it a week ago, while everyone else was out of the house.

"Excellent, dear. You must be telepathic. I'll probably need that in a moment," Beatrice said, as she slipped the glass into her sleeve.

I had found it under the couch cushions in the living room, a part of the house where Beatrice was never supposed to be. I refrained from saying so because she had called me to the driveway, where she now stood with her hands on her hips, to discuss an urgent matter.

"First, though, let's regroup. Now, Ariana, you realize that I meant to make the firedancers?"

One good spell out of several bad ones didn't make a great record. I muttered, "Yes, but you wanted the firedancers, not me."

"Shh! Good. And you acknowledge that I did indeed make firedancers?"

She certainly had. Three of them had danced around my room, dangerously close to the curtains and bedsheets. "They almost burned down my room!" I exclaimed. Beatrice was lucky grandmother thought it was the cigarette smoke from her bridge party that had set off the alarm that night.

"Okay, dear, nothing burned. That's beside the point. And then you know I made them disappear? And myself, too, so your grandmother wouldn't see us?"

"Uh-huh." It was true. Grandmother had been none the wiser. But I didn't care what grandmother didn't see, my bedroom carried remnants of the incident -- it still reeked of kerosene and burnt cloth. Glitter in the carpet and the stench of kerosene in the walls, those are what Beatrice's spells have brought me.

"Pay attention, dear, I am trying to prove a point," she snapped.

"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to be more blunt," I countered. Once again I found myself unable to follow Beatrice's logic.

"Yes, of course I'll have to be." She sighed heavily. "Okay, here it is: for once, you didn't try to stop me."

"But I did try to stop you," I answered astonished. "I actually tried to physica-"

"Tut, tut," she placed a finger on my lips. When I shut up, she added. "No you didn't. Now then, what's for supper?"

***

"I complained to mom that I would never see Claire again," I explained to Beatrice. "Claire was my best friend." When we had moved in with grandmother, I had to go to a different school. Of course you'll see Claire again, mom had promised, on the weekends, over breaks.

About a month before the conversation about Claire, mom had also promised me that she and dad weren't getting a divorce.

"Ah, a young girl's best friend," Beatrice replied wistfully.

"Well, we have talked on the phone, but not very much. I'm not allowed to call Claire a lot because it's long-distance now."

"I had a best friend when I was about your age. Now then, where is that wand?" She rummaged through all her pockets before the wand fell out of her sleeve.

"What was her name?" I asked.

Beatrice bent over to pick up the wand, and replied as she stood smoothing her jacket, "Whose, dear?"

"Your best friend."

"Oh, yes, her name was Esperanza." She marched to the middle of the drive with her wand poised for a spell, cleared her throat, and added, "We used to play outside all day and make pies and castles out of mud. It was great fun. Oh, we would get so dirty!" Beatrice laughed and her eyes sparkled for a moment. She then fell silent, looking off at nothing.

"What happened to her?"

She shook her head and answered, "You know how it goes, Ariana, I was sent off to learn how to be a fairy godmother. Esperanza was sent to be a muse." Beatrice lifted her wand and closed her eyes.

Before I could ask where you went to become these things, I spotted my mom's car down the street. "Beatrice, my mom's coming!" I shouted. As I turned to wave to mom, I heard a muffled bang behind me and knew that Beatrice had disappeared.

***

I didn't see Beatrice for a couple weeks after that. Then she reappeared one evening, behind the garbage cans, next to the garage. I was taking out the trash after dinner, when bang! there she was, in her spotless white gabardine pant suit. I jumped and dropped the trash.

"Oh, Ariana!" She gave me a big hug and then stepped back to look at me. She was positively beaming; I had never seen her so happy.

"Beatrice! You scared me!" I looked down at the trash bag, now split open with its contents spilling into the grass and onto my sneakers. I should have been mad, but I realized that I had missed her, and couldn't help but smile.

"Oh, posh." Without looking down, she flicked her wand and the trash disappeared.

"Hey! Nice trick." I exclaimed encouragingly. While she had been gone, I had begun to think that I had been too hard on her. Performing magic spells probably wasn't easy, after all, even if you've been trained.

She preened at the compliment and replied, "Why thank you, Ariana. Say, did I miss anything?"

"Well, just about every day grandmother asked about her missing magnifying glass." She shook her sleeve, and the glass slipped out. She giggled, and I added, "Plus, mom worried about the oil stain on the driveway. She was sure her car was leaking oil, but the mechanics didn't find anything."

"Did you tell them what really happened?" she asked, chuckling some more.

"Yeah, I said, hey, mom, don't worry about that stain. It's just from the frog my fairy godmother made for me." I giggled along with her now. "And while I was at it, I told grandmother about the firedancers!" We both screamed with laughter, tears running down our cheeks.

I dried my eyes. She did the same and then pulled me into another big hug.

***

The next morning was Saturday. When I went downstairs to get breakfast, I noticed the morning's folded up newspaper on the table in the hall, grandmother's magnifying glass lying on top of it. From the kitchen window, I could see the driveway. The infamous oil stain was gone. Now all that was left of that ill-fated frog was my memory of him, which I could never share because who would believe me? (The grass left over from that poor wagon-horse had blown away weeks ago.)

Mom and grandmother had gone out to the grocery, like they do every Saturday morning, but this morning mom had left me a note: "Ariana, You and me are meeting Julie and Claire at the mall this afternoon at 1. Pancakes are in the fridge. Just mic them for a minute. love, mom"

Julie was Claire's mom. I couldn't believe it! This would be the first time I'd seen Claire since we moved in with grandmother. I was so excited, I couldn't wait to tell Beatrice. I ran back upstairs without getting any food, only to find Beatrice gone, along with the kerosene odor.

The blue glitter, however, was still in the carpet.

The End

Nicole Sholly edits computer manuals by day and stays awake into the wee hours reading fantasy and science fiction stories. She lives in Indianapolis, Indiana, with her husband and a cat named Bunnie.

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