Read Online The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty - Free Book Online

Fancy’s shoulders, and the Zing Family Secret ran straight into the letters of Radcliffe Mereweather LOVES Fancy Zing.
    The first few weeks of the school year were hot, and as usual when the sun burned white, Fancy remembered the day at the seaside when Radcliffe revealed he had kissed another girl. Fancy had trumped him with the Zing Family Secret.
    Also, during the first few weeks of the school year, Fancy wrote seventeen notes to her daughter’s Grade Two teacher. She was just finishing the third of these notes—
Dear Ms. Murphy,
    Thank you so much for teaching Cassie (and the rest of your class, I suppose) that lovely song about the sparrow and the ironbark tree, etc., etc. She has been entertaining her father and me with the song (on and off) all week, and it is such an unusual tune!
    Just thought I should let you know.
Best regards,
    Fancy Zing
    â€”when her husband, Radcliffe, arrived home from work.
    â€œFANCY THAT! MY FANCY IS AT HOME!”
    Fancy sat up straight and waited patiently for the sound of his key in the front door, the scraping of his feet on the welcome mat, and the “Huh!” of pleasure as he put his umbrella in the stand. He had given Fancy the stand for a birthday, and he used it assiduously, taking his umbrella back and forth to work each day, even during heat waves.
    The footsteps approached. Fancy scraped a wisp of hair out of her bun.
    â€œMwah!” said Radcliffe, at the study door.
    â€œHello,” she replied. “How was your day?”
    Radcliffe leaned into the room and smiled around at the bookshelf, the scanner, and the corkboard. He looked at the printer next and chuckled. “What have you done with Cassie?” he said, wandering away down the hall.
    â€œI haven’t done anything with Cassie,” murmured Fancy. She opened her desk drawer and took out her Irritating Things notebook.
    They had frozen quiche for dinner, and watched Hot Auctions!, and the next day, the moment she woke up, Fancy remembered this: It is possible to change a person.
    People went around warning you: Never imagine you can change someone, for people NEVER CHANGE. Then they talked about leopards and spots. Forgetting altogether about chameleons. Or that octopus, which lives on the ocean floor and can change its shape to become a stingray, a sea anemone, or even an eel, depending upon its fancy.
    Furthermore, Fancy recalled, she herself had changed. There had been a time when, after a shower, she would leave the shower curtain where it was when she stepped onto the bath mat: crowded together, pressed against the bathroom wall.
    Radcliffe explained, a month or so after they were married, that this was unhygienic. “The shower curtain should be drawn closed,” he explained, demonstrating, pulling the curtain all the way along its metal bar as if somebody were taking a shower. This would help to prevent mold.
    Just like that, Fancy changed, and began to close the shower curtain tight.
    Stepping out of the shower that morning, and drawing the curtain closed behind her, Fancy regarded her husband, shaving at the basin. Tap, tap, tap, said his razor.
    â€œSo, that’s how you get the whiskers out of the razor, is it?”
    He turned to her. He had a white towel around his waist, a white smear of shaving cream around his chin, and he was squinting in the steam from Fancy’s shower.
    â€œIs there another way you could get the whiskers out?” she suggested.
    â€œWe should change this routine,” he replied, turning back to the steamy mirror. “Me shaving, you showering. Same time, eh? Look at the mirror here. Can’t see a thing.”
    She leaned around him and flicked the switch on the overhead fan, so the room was filled with its buzz.
    â€œWhat’s with that rash on your arm there?” he said, raising his voice over the buzz.
    â€œI know.” She reached for her skin cream. “I feel like a fish. It’s just dry skin. I