Don't Expect Magic (24 page)

I close my phone, the text unsent. I feel off-balance and woozy. The air’s gotten heavy all of a sudden and the swarm of carnival smells is making me nauseous—the salty-smoky scent of the popcorn, the sickening sweet of the cotton candy and the pinching sour of the lemonade. The caramel apple stews in my stomach. I have to get out of here.

“Delaney!” Cadie’s seen me. She waves and hops up onto her toes, like she’s about to launch into a cheer spelling out my name. She’s wearing cutoffs, a bright white T-shirt and high-tops, her hair pulled back in a loose braid. This must be her idea of “being herself.” Right. Really daring. She looks like a movie star getting on an airplane—dressed down but still gorgeous.

I trudge over, my bootheels dragging through the straw. Flynn smiles at me and a wave of giddy, annoying bliss gushes out of him and knocks into me. That must be what’s making me so sick. I’m not going to slap the idiot
grin off his face, though, because this is what I wanted. Flynn got his wish. And I wasn’t even here to see it happen. It’s like Dad said, you don’t need the magic. Apparently you don’t even need the f.g.

Whatever. What matters now is that I get the wand, nothing else. I pick up a piece of straw but it flops limply in my hand. I don’t feel powerful. I feel totally sapped. Maybe some sort of recharge needs to happen before the next client, although the thought of going through all this again exhausts me even more.

“Hi, Delaney,” Cadie says when I reach them, her smile as genuinely genuine as ever. “This is Emma.” The other girl says hello. She’s got wildly curly red hair, multiple ear piercings and is wearing an Indian tunic with lots of spirally embroidery over brown cargo pants. She’s definitely not one of Cadie’s cheerleading friends. She doesn’t say much, and I get the feeling she’s a cousin or the daughter of a family friend who’s been forced to tag along. The third wheel. Left out. I know how she feels.

“I was just going to tell Flynn, I’m having a beach party tomorrow,” Cadie says. “I want you guys to come.”

“I’ll be there!” Flynn says. Does he have to be
so
enthusiastic? Not that I care. Anymore.

Cadie looks eagerly at me. “I can’t, I’m busy tomorrow,” I say. “I actually have to leave now.” I know I should try to lure Emma off with me so the happy couple can bond, but I can’t stand to be here any longer. “My dad’s got this
business-related crisis. He needs me.” Cadie and Emma say they’re sorry and do a pretty good job of sounding like they mean it, and even Flynn’s smile fades a little.

“But I have your cotton candy,” Flynn says. He holds it out to me.

“You guys can share it.” As I say this, I get a mental picture of Cadie and Flynn with their hands around one cone, fingers touching, their lips getting closer with every bite.…

“So I’ll call you?” Flynn says, unsure.

I push the image away. “That’s okay.” I don’t look at him. I don’t look at any of them. I just race off, dialing Dad as I go, ignoring Flynn’s last call after me: “You forgot Rufus!”

On my way to the exit, I see a little girl with sticky orange Popsicle traces all over her face and crying. I wave the straw at her but nothing happens. I can’t even summon the concentration to grant a small wish. Or the will. The girl is the one who smeared the fake-flavored frozen treat everywhere. Let her live with it. I break the straw into pieces and toss them on the ground. A few feet away, the robot fortune-teller mocks me with his blank-eyed grin.

As if he knows he was right in his prediction after all.

Dad drives up to the Styrofoam hay roll I’m sitting on at the entrance to the carnival parking lot. He unlocks the door and I get in.

“That wasn’t very long. I hadn’t even gotten home yet.”

“Everybody was leaving.”

“You did have friends there, right?” he asks. “You weren’t just off by yourself?”

“Why would I lie about that? I
have
friends.” I’d started to think I did, anyway. Now I’m not so sure. “It was a bunch of people from school.”

“And they all decided to go home at once.”

“There’s not much to do here, in case you didn’t notice. We’d hit all the rides, played the games, had a candy apple.

What’s left?”

“Did something happen, Delaney? Something you’re not telling me?”

“Nope. Nothing happened.” Nothing at all. To stop any further interrogation, I direct the conversation back to him. “How’s Andrea?”

“Fine.” Now
he’s
the one who doesn’t want to talk, which is more than okay with me, because I’d rather not think any more about tonight, thank you. If I had the power, I’d erase the whole day from my memory. But of course, we don’t get to have any powers that would make
our
lives better.

I escape to my room when we get home, but the memories of the evening follow me in through the closed door, crowding around in a crushing mass. I shove away the images of Cadie, and of Cadie and Flynn, leaving only Flynn—handing me the bracelet, smiling at me on the Ferris wheel, joking in the fun house.

Holding my hand.

I’m still wearing the bracelet, but I yank it off and toss it into my mermaid wastebasket, future landfill fodder. I kick off my boots, crawl into bed and call Posh. I don’t need to talk; I just want to lie here and listen to her ramble on about some new superconductor or nuclear fission chamber she’s read about online, her nonsensical words knitting together until they settle over me like a warm blanket.

“Delaney!” Posh shrieks when she answers. “Guess who’s over? Christopher Marlin!” The nerd from chess club? Fish face? With the potbelly and the buzz cut? Since when are he and Posh friends? “We were in the Princeton class together. I told you, didn’t I? Mom said we can stay up in the backyard and watch the Eta Aquarids. They’re tonight. Did you get my email? You’ve got to check them out.”

She goes on about all the supplies they’ve gathered: lounge chairs, quilts, pretzels, root beer, and of course a sky chart and a stopwatch so they can time the intervals between the shooting stars and keep notes. “The Eta Aquarids aren’t as good as the Perseids, but Christopher says too many meteors get boring after a while, because there’s no thrill of anticipation.”

I can’t believe it. Posh has a boyfriend. Posh! “That’s really great!” I don’t sound like myself at all. I’m like a windup doll set on “chirpy.”

Posh says something I can’t hear and I know she’s talking to Christopher. “Can I call you tomorrow?” she asks me.

“I’ve got something to do, but I’ll call you next week.” It won’t matter if I don’t, though. Posh has Christopher now. And he’s
there
.

After I hang up, I gaze up at my constellation of earring stars. Tonight they seem as distant as real stars. At the far end of the galaxy. Completely out of reach. I will one to break free and shoot down to me, a meteor from Mom to tell me she’s watching over me. But it doesn’t come.

I hear my door open and I roll onto my side, curling into a ball. “Go away.”

Dad comes in anyway. The bed dips as he sits down next to me. “I know something’s wrong, Delaney.” I don’t answer. “Does it have to do with Flynn? Was he there tonight?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Flynn. Everything’s great. He got his wish.”

Dad rests a hand on my shoulder. “It’s hard sometimes, seeing other people happy when you’re not. It’s one of the biggest drawbacks to the job.”

“You don’t understand.”

I shrug my shoulder so he’ll lift his hand away. I wait for him to leave, but he stays. “Explain it to me, then.”

“I wish Mom were here.”

Dad’s silent for a second, then he pats my arm. “I know. I’m sorry. I wish she were too.” He stands. “Get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning.” Why do people always say this? Sure, the sun can cover up some of the gloom, but it doesn’t last.

“And then it’ll be night, and things will look bad again.”

I sense Dad’s smile, but he has no argument for my logic. Instead of saying anything, he leans over to kiss my forehead, like I’m a little girl. I don’t stop him, because I
want
to be a little girl again, the one Flynn saw, the one I used to be, even if it’s only for a minute. I want to belong in a pink frilly room filled with dolls and still believe in fairy-tale endings.

Dad turns off the light as he leaves, so there’s only the Tinker Bell night-light. It casts a purply glow against the wall. “Good night, sweetheart,” he says, and closes the door without making a sound.

I cling tight to the feeling of being young and clueless, but as I fall asleep, I sense it slipping away, and I know it’ll be gone long before I wake up.

Dad and I are back in the car, but the mood is the opposite of last night’s. I am up. I am on. I am over it.

A couple of hours earlier, I was in bed, gazing blankly at the whitish-yellow sunlight searing my bedroom carpet. I lay like that for about twenty minutes before I realized I was awake. My dreams had been a mash of wings and stars and me being stretched by some invisible force, my limbs snapping back like bungee cords before I plummeted to the ground, my bed rising up to meet me at the last second.

When I finally got loose of the dream, I practically leapt out of bed, as if there was an energy force propelling me. I
left all the draggy emotional stuff from last night behind, dead and buried forever under my tangled sheets.

I’d been recharged.

I bounced into breakfast and loaded up on all the sugarcoated animal and planetary shapes I could find.

“Want to slow down there a little, Delaney?” Dad watched me as he whipped up his egg-white omelet. “There
will
be other meals in the day.”

“I’m bulking up. So I’m ready for my next client.”

“It probably won’t be for a while. They’re usually pretty spread out at the beginning.”

“Whatever.” I refilled my bowl.

Dad set his plate down across from me. “This is quite a change from last night.”

“I had, like, an ultra-epiphany: f.g.’s are the same as firefighters or ER doctors. Or nannies. Helping other people is our only purpose. I’ve got the power now. I’ll have another client any second, you’ll see. In the meantime, I’m doing small wishes nonstop. My goal is two hundred a week. To start.”

Dad sat down and studied me in concern while I devoured the last of my milk-sogged bears. “You seem a little … manic.”

“I’ve just eaten like three cups’ worth of sugar.”

Dad took a bite of his omelet and chewed, for way longer than it should’ve taken to grind up something that was half air.

“You know, Delaney, sometimes we react to unsettling
feelings by repressing them beneath a hyper, overcompensating sense of—”

“I don’t need any psycho–Dr. Hank–alyzing, thank you. I’m not one of your sad ‘clients.’ I’m superhuman and superfine.”

“Nobody’s superhuman, Delaney. We’re all subject to bouts of depression, insecurity—”

I popped up from the table. “You’re not listening to me. I’m beyond that. I have a wand.” I held up my spoon, then took it to the sink along with the bowl. “Can we go to the mall early? I want to rack up some wishes before the signing. Get my numbers up.”

“I have to go over to Andrea’s first.”

“You told her you’d talk to her Monday.”

“I know, but she called this morning. She’s a mess.”

“She’s always a mess. She’s always going to
be
a mess.”

“She needs help, Delaney. Didn’t you just say a minute ago that helping people is our purpose? I’ll pick you up after.”

He was right. Andrea did need help. Extreme help. The help of a master.

“I’m coming with you.”

So now here we are, pulling up in front of Andrea’s apartment complex again. It’s a repeat of our first f.g. outing, except this time it’s during the day and there’s none of the jasmine-scented eeriness of that night. The sunshine has stripped the magic and mystery away.

Andrea’s calmed down a lot, but she still looks like a wreck, with her tangled hair, bleached-out, stretched-out cardigan and bunny slippers with cat-chewed ears.

“I texted Aaron this morning and told him that I passed out in the ladies’ room and hit my head and got amnesia and ended up at an all-night clinic and didn’t get my memory back until three a.m. and that’s why I never came back to the table.” Andrea barely breathes, her words tripping over each other as they come out of her mouth. “He offered to come over but I told him we should meet instead, so we’re going to brunch! If you give me a spell
now
, it’ll get me through the whole day and everything will be fine again.”