Charm and Consequence (Novella) - By Stephanie Wardrop Page 0,3

pagans,” I say when he looks at me quizzically. “But I bake a mean chocolate chip.”

The back door slams shut and someone squeals, “Oh. My. God. You look just like Harry Potter, in the movies!” The three of us look up to see Cassie, Leigh’s evil twin, in the doorway. The two of them seem to be the product of a psycho-biological experiment to see how different two human beings split from the same zygote can be. While Leigh is devoted to Jesus and living a life of good Christian example, Cassie’s devoted herself to Mary Magdalene. Or at least to dressing like a twenty-first century version of her.

“I’ve never seen any of the Harry Potter movies,” Alistair informs us. “I avoid movies and books that glorify witchcraft.”

Cassie snorts so hard that the Diet Coke she’s guzzling almost bursts through her nostrils.

“Harry Potter’s about magic, not witchcraft,” she says, as if Alistair were an unusually stupid specimen of slug she found on the bottom of her rain boot.

“Witchcraft and magic are both the work of the devil,” he tells us, and I almost laugh until I realize he’s not kidding. Leigh is starting to flush a little bit across her cheeks and Cassie bursts into laughter. I guess it’s not often she can feel superior to anyone in their critique of reading material—my dad’s an English professor, so we talk books a lot in our house. But since few people around here bother to analyze Cosmo Girl, Cassie is usually left out of the discussion. She jumps in now with the enthusiasm of one of our cats finding a long-lost mouse toy under the couch.

“There’s no devil in Harry Potter!” she scoffs, tossing her blond hair for emphasis like a horse swatting a fly.

“And there is no God in Harry Potter,” Alistair responds. He turns to Leigh and asks suspiciously, “Have you read these books?”

“Just the first one,” she admits, though I'm pretty sure as they were passed down to her from me and Tori, years ago, that Leigh read all of them. At least once. .

Cassie gives up talking to this uniquely unappetizing member of the male species and turns to me with a roll of her gray blue eyes, saying, “Mom is at her Ladies’ Aid thing now so she says you have to drive me to the game. Ten minutes? I’m going up to change.”

When she leaves, I grab a cookie before they're all gone and take a seat, even though Leigh is pretty much begging me with her eyes not to.

“So is that what your family was doing in China, teaching the heathens in the field about the evils of teen movies?” I ask Alistair.

“In part,” he says, setting down his half-drained glass of milk. “American pop culture is taking hold in China very rapidly. They need to be warned.”

“Oh, no doubt. So you’re not just teaching them about virgin births and eating with forks, then.”

He sits back in his chair and looks at me carefully over the round glasses that give him an owlish quality. He says, “We were taking God’s word where it had not been heard, just as we are doing here in Massachusetts now.”

“That worked out so well for Cotton Mather, right? Please warn me before the next public burning so I can get out of town.”

Leigh jumps up to get the milk jug and says to me, “Not everyone is as cynical as you, George. Some of us believe there is a better life beyond this.”

“I’m counting on that, believe me,” I tell her.

Alistair sits up then and leans toward me. “So you are ready to be saved,” he announces, and actually reaches for my hands. I pull them back, fast, like his anointed fingers might singe my heathen flesh, and say, “Saved from the boredom and hypocrisy of this town? Hallelujah!” I wave my hands in the air in my best approximation of a gospel singer.

“Saved from a life of sin,” Alistair says patiently but I can hear an edge in his voice now.

“I honestly don’t think I sin that much, Alistair.”

“We have all sinned, Georgia,” Alistair says with a gnomish little smile that makes me feel like a spider is crawling across my shoulders. “But Jesus died so that we may be saved.”

Fortunately, Cassie bounces in at that moment and distracts Alistair with her short red skirt and tight white cheer sweater with the big black LHS on it. I pick up the car keys from the basket by