The little girl kept coming toward Maria-and walked right through her. Did I die? Maria wondered. Did the thought of my mom dressed in my black sweater kill me? Am I some kind of ghost?
"Hey, I work as a waitress," a girl's voice said behind Maria. "So I know. He did not deserve a tip for pouring two peach smoothies."
That was Liz! Maria spun around and saw Liz and Jerry heading toward her.
"Liz, you have to help-" Maria knew her mouth was moving. She could feel it. But no sound was coming out.
The floor began to shift under her feet. She stumbled toward Liz. But she couldn't reach her. The mall was dissolving into colored dots.
Maria sank to her knees. She wrapped her arms around herself. The dots whipped past her. Then they started to clump. A few moments later they had reformed into her bedroom. And Maria was sitting on her own bed.
Maria's heart felt like it was trying to jerk its way out of her body. She pressed her hands over her chest-and felt something hard under her fingers. The ring.
Maria grabbed the chain and pulled the ring out and cupped it in her hands. It was glowing, spilling its purple-and-green radiance over her skin.
Maria brought the ring right in front of her eyes and kept her gaze locked on it as the eerie glow slowly faded. That was no trick of the light, she thought. And it wasn't my imagination, either.
Wait. Wait, she told herself. Before you start tweaking, try thinking like Liz again. In fact, maybe she should get the actual Liz to help her. Maria leaned over and grabbed her phone off her night table, then hit speed dial number one. Mrs. Ortecho answered on the second ring. She sounded kind of distracted, the way she always did when she was working. Maria didn't have to say who she was or anything. All she had to say was hello.
"Oh, Maria, hi," Mrs. Ortecho said. "Liz called and said she, uh, she was at the library and would be home in an hour or so." Maria heard some pans rattling around. "No, not at the library, the mall," Mrs. Ortecho corrected herself. Maria felt all the little hairs on her arms stand on end. "Want me to tell her to call you?"
"Sure. Thanks," Maria answered. She told Mrs. Ortecho good-bye and hung up. So Liz really was at the mall. Things were getting freakier by the second.
Calm down and pretend you're Liz. Think like a scientist, Maria told herself. Okay, what just happened obviously had something to do with the ring-or at least the stone in the ring. So what Liz would do is try and find out everything she could about the stone, get some hard facts.
Maria shoved herself to her feet and walked over to her bookshelf, taking each step slowly and carefully. She pulled down The Encyclopedia of Stones and Crystals and sat down at her desk with it. She flipped through the pages, searching for anything that looked like a possible match.
Not that one. Or that one. Maria turned another page, and a sidebar caught her eye. It was all about how some people believed stones and crystals could be used as a tool to enhance psychic abilities.
Psychic abilities. She'd been holding Liz's lipstick and wondering how things were going with her and Jerry-and then she saw Liz. That meant… that meant Maria had psychic abilities. Had the stone in the ring helped her tap into them?
Didn't some psychics use their energy to heal, too? If Maria was psychic, maybe she really had healed Sassafras the other day! Suddenly she felt filled with strength and energy. It was as if the ring's light was somehow burning deep inside her.
Whoa. And I'm the one who was sitting in Flying Pepperoni yesterday feeling like the ultimate girl next door, she thought. Boring with a big capital B. She'd been so afraid that some exotic alien girl was going to stroll into town and steal Michael away from her. Not that she exactly had him or anything.
But if she was right, there was nothing boring about her. She was psychic. That meant she had powers even Michael, Max, and Isabel didn't have.
Maria shook her head. She was getting way too excited way too fast. Probably what really happened was she came in her room, sat down on her bed, and dozed off for a few minutes. She always had the strangest, most vivid dreams when she slept during the day.
That was the most logical, scientific thing she'd thought yet. But Maria didn't quite believe it. A test-that's what she needed.
She could just use Liz's lipstick again. But it would be better-more scientific-if she did her test on someone different. That way she wouldn't have junk already in her head the way she would if she tried to see Liz again.
Kevin, Maria decided. There was plenty of her little brother's stuff all over the house. She rushed out of her room and stumbled over Kevin's baseball mitt. Yeah, you never had to go far to find something that belonged to slob boy Kevin.
Maria took the mitt back into her room and sat down on her bed. She dug her fingers into the leathery material. "I wonder what Kevin is doing right now," she whispered.
The bed rippled underneath her. Yes! It was working.
The room dissolved into colored dots and swooped around Maria. It's so beautiful, she thought. At least it is now that I'm not one hundred percent freaked out.
The dots began to clump, and Maria found herself standing in the parking lot of the minimart. Kevin and two of his buddies sat on the curb in front of the store.
"I can burp the Pledge of Allegiance," Kevin bragged. He grabbed his supersize soda and drained it in one long guzzling gulp. Maria could see the muscles in his throat working.
Kevin opened his mouth to burp, and the dots began to swirl. Good, Maria thought. Kevin was always making her listen to him burp stuff. She could stand to miss one of his little performances.
The dots clumped, and Maria was back in her room. She checked the ring-it was glowing again.
"Maarrriiia!" Kevin shouted outside her door. He knew better than to come in without permission.
"I'm not deaf, you know," she snapped. She swung herself off the bed and opened the door.
"Are you sure?" Kevin grumbled. "I called you about four thousand times."
"You called me once," she shot back. Somehow she always got into these stupid arguments with her little brother.
"Whatever," Kevin mumbled. "Aren't you supposed to be making dinner?"
"I don't know how you have any room for food with all that soda sloshing around inside you," she said.
Hold up, Maria thought. I just saw Kevin at the minimart. Even if he left right away, it would take him at least five minutes to ride his bike back here.
Kevin pulled an empty soda cup out of his backpack. "I only drank this much," he told her. "It's not even the biggest one they have."
The cup was exactly like the one she'd seen in her vision. This did not make sense. How could he be at the minimart ten seconds ago and here right now?
"Did you really call me a bunch of times before I answered?" she asked Kevin.
"Yeah. I was kind of hoping you were dead," he answered. "Except then I would have had to make my own spaghetti." He grinned at her over his shoulder as he headed down the hall to his room.
Maria leaned against the door frame and wrapped her arms around herself. It's like the other day, she thought. The way my clock jumped forward five minutes, right after I healed Sassy's paw.
She'd just thought the clock was messed up. But maybe-it seemed like two of the times she'd used her psychic powers, she'd lost a little time. Nothing much. Five minutes the other day. Maybe ten minutes after she'd seen Kevin.