Don't Expect Magic (16 page)

Finally, Mia spots Flynn and recognizes Cadie’s daisy key chain. She marches her perky little cheerleader self over, snatches the keys from Flynn with a glare and then returns them to Cadie.

A few minutes later, as Cadie and Mia zoom past him, out of the lot and out of his reach, Flynn remains by his car door, still in his trance, his hand still open, clutching at nothing but lost opportunity. Pathetic.

You’d think I could get something going in Chem I. It’s
chemistry
! Elements combine and there’s a reaction. Unless one element is inert.

During a lab, I sit on the back counter, writing down calculations while Flynn titrates some nasty-looking amber liquid. The safety goggles make him look like a super-geeky cartoon junior scientist, which is not a plus, and Cadie’s only interested in double displacement reactions. For once she seems more focused on doing the experiment than debating ankle tattoo choices with Mia or giggling over another cheerleader’s latest make-out session with the school basketball star.

Mr. McElroy strolls past our table. He’s got the goggles on too: an aproned Hobbit. “Ms. Collins. Please?” He
waves a pipette at my boots. I drop them off the counter. He swings the glass wand around again like a baton. “You too.”

I jump down, and as I do, I casually point my pencil at Mia and Cadie’s side of the table. Their lab handout disappears. I feel it in my hand before I see it, and quickly stuff it behind my backpack. Displacement achieved. Now for the reaction.

Cadie reaches for the handout but her palm lands on an empty countertop. She gazes around, on the floor, under her feet, over to Mia. Mia shrugs and starts looking too.

Cadie waves at Flynn. “Hey, Flynn. Can I borrow your handout?” Flynn’s so caught up in counting orange drips, he doesn’t seem to hear her.

“Flynn!” I snap my fingers in front of his face. He jerks his head my way, eyes super wide in goggled cartoon irritation. I’d laugh if I weren’t so annoyed myself.

“You made me lose count. Now we have to start over.”

“Cadie asked you a question.”

His eyes narrow to magnified slits. “Huh?”

“I need your handout for a sec?” Cadie’s voice has gone a little squeaky and I can tell she’s afraid she’s accidentally lit some fuse that’s burning fast.

I force a smile so she’ll know everything is totally calm and fine. “No problem.” I pick up our handout and slap it into Flynn’s hand.

Cadie reaches over and takes it. “Thanks!” she says, “I’ll give it right back!” But she says this to me, not Flynn.

Mission: impossible.

I pull out the stolen handout, crumple it up and throw it at Flynn’s head.

“Hey!” he protests. He picks up the wad of paper, straightens it out, stares at it and then over at Cadie, who’s now consulting
our
handout.

He seems about to say something to Cadie, and I will him to do it, to speak out at last, to say
anything
. Instead he shakes his head, shrugs and goes back to work.

How hard is it to start a conversation?
I want to scream at him.
I mean, come on, do I have to write it out for you?

That’s when I get my idea.

“Oh hey, hi. Are you sitting with us?” Flynn holds his lunch tray and looks down at me like he’s not sure if he should be happy or worried.

“Only if you have room.” I glance at the other chairs—which are all empty.

“Uh, yeah—okay. Sure.” Flynn slides in across from me and gazes around for his friends. They’re not coming, though, not any time soon anyway. I’d texted Brendan, Skids and the feline three before lunch and told them that Flynn wanted to meet us in the yearbook room because there’d been a labor strike at the printers and we had to decide before one o’clock whether to support the strike and go all online or be capitalist pigs and find a new printer. We’re studying the Australian labor movement in world history, so that’s what gave me the idea. By the time
Shaggy Skateboard Man and the rest of the staffettes figure out Flynn’s a no-show, my plan will have been launched.

Flynn rearranges the lettuce and tomato on his Fontina panini, while I eat my Brie and pear enchilada and keep watch. I’m actually starting to tolerate the food here. I didn’t even pluck off the lavender blossoms this time.

“So … how’d you get started on the boot thing?”

I shift my gaze from the doors to Flynn.
Boot thing?
“How’d you get started on the
‘camera thing’
?” He totally misses the sarcasm and assumes the question means I’m interested.

“When I was four, my Grandpa Bud gave me one of those little Instamatics that print out photo stickers, and I took pictures of everything. I really liked bugs. Ladybugs, centipedes, spiders. I was like the world’s youngest entomological photographer. I bet you didn’t know that’s an actual thing.”

Flynn’s distracted me with his personal essay recitation and I nearly miss Cadie emerging onto the patio. Luckily, she spots me and waves. Even luckier, she’s Mia-free.

“… then I started saving my allowance so I could—”

“Follow my lead,” I whisper, and wave at Cadie to join us.

Flynn glances over his shoulder to see who I’m waving to, then whips his head back around toward me so fast I almost expect it to keep going, three-sixty.
That’d
be a buggy photo op. “What are you—”

Cadie takes the chair next to me and Flynn seems to
forget the rest of the question. She holds out the note I slipped in her locker. “I think this is such a great idea,” she says to Flynn.

“What is?” he asks, glancing back and forth between us.

I pull the original list from my backpack and hand it to Flynn. I’d written it up in trig and then stuffed a copy in Cadie’s locker before fifth period. “Sorry,” I say. “I forgot to give this back to you.” I try for maximum Cadie-style cheerfulness.

Flynn gets an old-man frown on his face, the lines between his eyes squinching up as he looks at the paper.

“What’s this?”

“Your list of questions.” I give him a look to say
Just go along with it
, but it fails to penetrate his dim boy brain.

“List of questions for what?”

“You
know
. The
questions
. For the yearbook profiles you’re doing.” I widen my eyes and tilt my head toward Cadie. I really could not be more obvious. Any minute Cadie is going to catch on.

I didn’t tell Flynn about the list before Cadie showed up since I knew he’d try to stop me. Once the play was in motion, I figured he’d have to go along, but I hadn’t factored in a certain gender’s inferior mental function. “You
remember
,” I tell him as he keeps staring at me, totally vacant. “We discussed it yesterday. Pick a few random people and interview them.” I tap the list.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Cadie glances between us and then stands up. “I’ll let you guys work it out. Have a nice lunch!” She gives us a little “bye-bye” wave as she moves off to join the cheerleader tables.

I shake my head at Flynn. “What was
that?
”

He’s still frowning down at the questionnaire. “This must’ve been in one of the old yearbook files, because I’ve never—”

“Forget about that. I made it up. It was just a cover story. An easy way to get to know Cadie.” I shove the paper closer to him. “I hand it right to you—and what do you do? Go totally blank screen.”

Flynn shakes his head. “You’re not still on
this
, are you? I told you—”

“I’m still ‘on it’ because you still like Cadie.” I know this because my enchilada has gone from swirling and whirling in my stomach to doing backflips ever since Cadie approached our table.

I pick up the questionnaire and shake it at Flynn. “Here it is, everything you need. Questions about her likes, her dislikes, her hangouts. So you can talk to her. That’s your problem, right? You don’t know what to say.” This is a guess, but I know I’m right, especially when all of the blood drains from his face.

“Are you, like, reading my mind?”

“Not exactly. I told you, I have these skills …”

Flynn stands up in sudden alarm and searches the
lunch crowd. “What did you do with Brendan and those guys?”

“I chloroformed them and locked them in the janitor’s closet.” Flynn’s eyes and mouth pop open in horror. He actually believes me. “You have nineteen seconds before the stink bomb explodes,” I say. “Here’s a clue: Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the wrench.”

Flynn drops the horrified expression and replaces it with an irritated one. “You know, Delaney, this weird out-of-the-box way of … of
being
that you have going on. I actually think it’s cool. Really. It’s why I was glad you joined yearbook. But
this
 … this is too theater-of-cruelty-New-York-performance-art bizarre.”

“I’m from New Jersey.”

“That’s not what I mean. It’s … Just stop it, okay? I don’t want you fixing me up with
anybody.
” He picks up his tray. “And I don’t want you in my head.”

As Flynn walks off, the churning in my stomach increases to blender speed and I think, The feeling’s mutual.

I dump my lunch because there’s no way I can eat any more of it and not throw it up. I find a triangle of shade near the front steps of the school and spend the last minutes of lunch period there, alone. I text Posh to tell her about my Project Completion wipeout. She’s so excited about getting accepted to some spring break “Teen Genius” astronomy course at Princeton (Posh’s idea of vacation: more school)
that her reply is nine-tenths rambling about some quasar-counting study they were doing and one-tenth “Keep trying!!!” Helpful.

“Here you are!” I look up to see Cadie standing next to me, one hand shielding her eyes. In her other hand is a bunch of folded-up papers. “I finished it,” she says, and holds the stack out to me. I take it and unfold the top sheet.

It’s the questionnaire, filled out. Cadie’s handwriting is exactly like I’d expect, big and loopy and neat, with happy circles dotting her “i’s.” “It was your idea, wasn’t it? You were just trying to get Flynn to go along.”

“Um, yeah. Sort of.”

“Well, I think you should just
do
it.” She says this in her upbeat pep rally voice, hands on hips, and I almost expect her to break out into a cheer. (“Give me a ‘Q,’ give me a ‘U,’ give me an ‘E-S-T!’ ”) “I got the whole squad to do it at lunch.” I glance through the other papers, a collection of ripped-out notebook pages, with only the answers written down. “It’s a good way to find out about people,” she says. “Everybody has hidden depths.” I kind of doubt I’d find any depth hiding in the cheerleading squad, but whatever.

“Thanks,” I tell her.

After she leaves, I stuff the extras into my backpack, because Cadie’s is the only one I need. I read through it. She’s got some off-the-radar indie bands under her Favorite Playlist section, and she’s written down like ten books she’s read in the last month, only one of which you can buy at a grocery store. Unless she made this stuff up so
she’d have “hidden depths,” there might be more to her than I thought. Not that it matters to me either way. The important thing is that I’m back on track.