“Perfect, perfect, perfect,” she says on the last three claps. She beams with approval. “And I thought you weren’t going to bring anything to the table.”
“Backhanded compliments are worse than insults with you.”
“I doubt that. I’m very good at insults.”
“So we have our options,” Beddy says.
“All that’s left to do is consult the milk,” Connie says.
“Huh?” Beddy and Di say almost simultaneously.
“Bring me whole milk, food coloring, dish soap, and a q-tip, and I’ll show you what I mean.”
Beddy quickly gathers everything from the kitchen and bathroom and lays it out on the dinner table, except for the dish soap, which Connie nabs herself.
Connie pours the milk into a deep plate and drips the four types of food coloring in a tight diamond, color by color, each drop spreading into a succinct Rorscach pattern. One splits into two identical spades. She drizzles the dish soap over the fuzz of the q-tip.
“Now watch this,” she says, and touches it soap-side-down into the center of the milk. Immediately the colors fan out to the edge of the plate, surprising Beddy in their speed, as if struck by something much more forceful than a q-tip. Like a fist.
“I remember this from fifth grade,” Di says.
It looks like a psychadelic pie chart for a moment, the clearly delineated colors in a state of ecstatic undulation, before Connie lifts the q-tip out of the milk. The reaction changes, with milk seeming to get the upper hand, white welling up from the center, pushing the colors out to the fringe of the plate, blending them by force. Then, two-dimensional bubbles appear, bursting through the pockets of color, as if in a rainbow swamp.
The dream. How could they dismiss it if it predicted the visual in front of her right now?
“You’re breaking the surface tension of the milk with the q-tip, and the soap is bonding with the fat molecules in the milk, causing the milk to become agitated.”
“Thanks, Dr. Goldkuhl, Magic Killer. Anyway. It works kinda like Musical Chairs. You say your choices aloud, like,” she jabs the q-tip into the milk again, causing another eruption of color, “‘Car door boobytrap Duffy.’ And when the reaction stops reacting,” she jabs the q-tip in again and again, each time getting less of a response, “it’s whatever choice you said before it does.”
“This is pretty witchy,” Di says.
“I’m going to make your nose fall off for saying that.”
Di grabs her nose instinctively.
“You know who witches usually were?” Connie says.
“Who?”
“Widows,” she points at Di with the q-tip. “With no adult male children. And after she was burned at the stake, the church and state would split the money from confiscating her property.
“But this demo’s over. Time for the real thing.”
A new plate is retreived. More milk is poured and food coloring dripped. But when Connie grabs another q-tip, Beddy tells her to wait and runs upstairs. She comes down with Duffy’s toothpick in her hand.
“We use this.”
“Is that-?” Connie says.
Beddy nods.
“Gross, but undeniably cool. You’re really comitting. This is like a totem for the whole group.”
Beddy nods.
“Where’d you get it?”
“He left it in the phone booth outside The Grove.”
Connie snorts. “Might as well have left a sign saying, ‘Duffy Was Here.’ And now he is. Hand me that. It’s time to begin.”