Out of Bounds Read Free

checked her watch. The game was almost over. The score was tied. “I think they have to go into overtime. Because it’s the championships, it’ll probably be first goal scored wins,” Katani predicted.
    â€œWatch this,” Charlotte said, taking advantage of the opportunity to try out one of her new tricks. She took one of the gold coins and passed it through her fingers from thumb to pinky and back again, over one, under the next, over and under again until she had done it several times.
    â€œWhoa, I’m impressed. How did you do that?” Katani said, meaning it.
    â€œPay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” Charlotte said in a stage voice, and they all laughed. It was a quote from The Wizard of Oz , which Maeve’s father had screened for them over the weekend. They all agreed that they loved the movie, they were still afraid of the Wicked Witch of the West, and that “I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too,” was one of the all-time great movie lines.
    Katani, who claimed she had no acting talent, in fact did an awesome imitation of the Wicked Witch. Donning a witch’s mask and hat, Katani had scared them all by bursting into the Tower room one night at Charlotte’s as they lay sleeping, and cackling the famous line.
    The girls screamed so loud that Marty ran and attackedthe leg of Katani’s pants, shaking it back and forth and growling madly. Katani fell to the floor laughing hysterically. The other girls pummeled her with pillows so hard that one of them broke and the feathers burst out and floated throughout the Tower.
    Mr. Ramsey, Charlotte’s dad, came running up to the room to see what was wrong. When he walked in, a feather fell right on his nose. He just stood there, nodding his head back and forth at the laughing witch on the bed and the feathers in the room. The girls went crazy and laughed even harder.
    â€œTry not to wake up the whole neighborhood,” Mr. Ramsey said as he walked out of the Tower. “And…don’t let the bedbugs bite, girls.”
    Ever since then, all Katani had to do was crouch over and begin to speak in her witch voice and Charlotte, Avery, Maeve, and Isabel would crack up.
    C HARLOTTE, THE MAGICIAN
    At the soccer game, it was about Charlotte and magic.
    â€œNow you see it, now you don’t.”
    Charlotte made a sweeping motion, and just like that, the old coin was gone.
    â€œEt voilà!” said Charlotte in her best Parisian accent.
    â€œWhere did it go?” Katani laughed, checking her teacup.
    â€œHow did you do that?” Isabel seemed genuinely interested.
    â€œNothing up my sleeves,” Charlotte said, showing them.
    â€œHey, that was my coin,” Maeve said. She had loaned the coins to Charlotte a week ago.
    â€œYou mean this coin?” Charlotte asked, reaching into Maeve’s pocket.
    â€œOr this coin?” Charlotte pulled another one from behind Katani’s knee.
    â€œOr maybe this one,” she said, reaching into Isabel’s sleeve. She handed all of the coins back to Maeve. “ Un, deux , trois ,” Charlotte counted.
    â€œHey, I’m rich,” Maeve grinned.
    â€œWhere did you learn that trick?” Isabel was clearly fascinated.
    â€œFrom my father’s friend Jacques in Paris. He used to be a magician before he gave it up to be a lawyer. He said the pay was better for lawyers. But it’s also in one of my magic books. I wasn’t this good at it before. The first time I practiced it, one of the coins landed in my dad’s soup. We were eating dinner at Le Languedoc, this really fancy Paris restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne, for his birthday. The soup splashed all over the tablecloth. The waiter screamed, ‘Oh, mon Dieu !’…He was not happy. The French are very serious about their food, you know,” Charlotte explained.
    â€œExcellent coin-in-the-soup performance,” clapped