and Thomas when the doctor finally called.
“It’s not malaria,” Rosalie Claire said when she hung up the phone. She closed her eyes and breathed deep. When I asked her what it was, she said the doctor didn’t know. “He thinks it could be some rare disease she picked up in the Amazon jungle. He’s never seen anything like it. He’s asked some tropical disease specialists to help him figure it out. We may not know for a few days. Maybe more. If your grandmother gets any worse, they want to airlift her to the hospital in San José.”
The hospital?! I hate hospitals. The last time I was in one was when my mom died. That was the last place I wanted Florida to go.
I remember my mom used to say that things happen for a reason, except I couldn’t see any reason for so many people in my life to leave me behind. My dad disappeared when I was a baby. My mom died. Was it possible that my grandmother could leave me too? My eyes stung hot with tears.
Rosalie Claire pulled me close.
“Does the doctor think she could die?” I whispered.
“He won’t know anything until they figure out what’s going on.” Her eyes were damp as she stroked my shoulder.
I laid my head on Rosalie Claire’s lap and my tears splashed down my cheek, spilling onto her fanny pack.
Her fanny pack! It had to have exactly what my grandmother needed to get better.
“Madison, what do you say we use a little magic?” It was as if Rosalie Claire had read my mind.
I bolted upright, drying my eyes on the back of my hand.
“This time let’s go for something more powerful than a wet washcloth, cotton balls, and a bottle of Calamine lotion.” She slid open the zipper of her pouch.
“Once again, my Rosalie Claire is about to save the day.” Thomas beamed at her from across the room.
But when she reached into her fanny pack, all she pulled out was her cell phone.
Her face froze in shock. “What in the world?”
“Maybe it’s too much to ask of your pack. Curing a rare jungle disease is a tall order,” Thomas said.
“It shouldn’t matter.” Rosalie Claire looked as confused as I felt.
“How could it just stop working?” Violet asked.
Rosalie Claire sighed. “It has been acting up lately. For what it’s worth, I do remember Grandma Daisy saying that everything expires after time. Bodies, milk, even magic. It’s lasted well over thirty years without needing a recharge, but now is a rotten time for it to quit working.”
“The magic can be recharged?” asked Noah.
Rosalie Claire nodded.
“Then let’s do it! What are we waiting for?” Could it be that Florida’s cure was right around the corner?
Rosalie Claire didn’t look as excited as I did.
“If only it were that easy. As far as I know, it can only be recharged with a rare piece of Baltic amber that belonged to Grandma Daisy.”
Grandma Daisy had been dead for nearly five years. What had she done with that stone?
A familiar feeling rushed over me like a gust of warm wind. I stared at Grandma Daisy’s old leather trunk. The one that gives me the shivers. With a sweep of my hand, our playing cards flew to the floor. There was something in there that we needed. I just knew it. I felt it. My gut told me that maybe, just maybe, it was the magic piece of amber.
I unlatched the rusty clasp and pushed open the lid, its hinges creaking from old age.
Rosalie Claire let out a heavy sigh. “I looked through it when it first arrived. I can’t say I remember seeing the amber, although maybe I missed it.”
We gathered around the trunk and peered inside. It was jam-packed with ancient treasures. We discovered raggedy yellowing books on herbal remedies, shape shifting, and black magic. Thomas and Rosalie Claire gathered up all the ones on herbs and began to read, hoping to find a cure for Florida’s mysterious disease.
My friends and I kept digging.
Violet found Grandma Daisy’s dusty red leather-bound photo album. The edges of the black construction paper pages were tattered and torn.
We thumbed through the fragile black-and-white photos. Mostly they were pictures of fifteen-year-old Rosalie Claire, taken the summer she came to live with Grandma Daisy in Truth or Consequences, right after her parents died. Instead of the braids she now wore encircling her head, they were wild and loose, like an explosion of twisty snakes.
“Nice hairdo.” Violet giggled.
“My Medusa period.” Rosalie Claire smiled at the memory. “Not my best look.”
Thomas disagreed and said he thought Rosalie Claire looked as pretty as a rosebud.
I’d read about Medusa in my book of Greek mythology. Her hair had been turned into a mass of wriggling snakes after she got in trouble for marrying Poseidon, the God of the Sea. She spent the rest of her life being generally nasty and turning people into stone. The total opposite of Rosalie Claire.
“Madison! Check it out! You were such a cute baby!”
Huh?
Noah waved a greeting card in the air. “Your baby announcement!”
I snatched it from his hand and stared at the photo. My mom and dad beamed from the picture as they held me up to the camera. Written at the bottom were the words:
ANGELA BROWN AND DANNY MCGEE
ARE THRILLED TO INTRODUCE THEIR NEW DAUGHTER,
MADISON.
My mom must have sent it to Grandma Daisy after I was born.
“I’ve never seen a picture of my dad before.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the photo. It was a revelation. Mostly I resembled my mom with my stick-straight brown hair and pale freckled skin, but I saw that I had my dad’s broad nose and his bright blue eyes.
“What happened to him, anyway?” Noah asked.
“No idea. My mom always said she thought he died, although nobody knows for sure. He just disappeared. Right, Rosalie Claire?”
“I’m afraid so.” She sighed and her mouth pinched tight.
“He left when Madison was a baby,” said Violet, who knew me better than almost anyone.
“Kind of like my mom, except I was seven when she took
