Don't Expect Magic (9 page)

I wish Mom were here so I could ask her. I wish Posh would remember to check her messages and call me back. I wish I could figure out what’s true and what’s not. I wish
I
had a fairy godmother to grant some of these wishes for me.

And I wish I knew if I was one …

Because what I didn’t tell Hank is that when I was little, I used to think I could make good things happen for people. I did it all the time, even for strangers. I’d sort of imagine something and it would come true. Mom used to say I was a good-luck charm. Later I realized it was a bunch of coincidences. If I were a good-luck charm, Mom would still be here.

But now, I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. My brain feels like it’s run a marathon and wants to collapse already. I let it zone out, but my eyes stay open, still looking up at Mom’s earrings for answers. After today, I wouldn’t be surprised if they
did
start talking, spouting advice through little pin-sized mouths in tiny tinny voices. Then the frog prince alarm clock and the Tinker Bell night-light will join in, and soon every object in the room will have gone all enchanted and magical.

Except me.

“… In a chemical reaction, substances are changed into other substances.…”

Mr. McElroy’s up at the front of the class lecturing. Thank God there’s no lab today, so I don’t have to pay attention. My thoughts are all jumbled, like I put my brain on backward this morning.

More weird dreams last night, this time involving lots of twinkling lights and feathery wings and me in this horrific wedding cake of a dress, with boots made of glass. They magnified my toes, which was not pretty, and I don’t remember how they felt, but they couldn’t have been comfortable.

Posh woke me out of my dream, calling my cell at predawn Pacific standard time. “Sorry!” she squealed. “I forgot about the time difference!” While I worked on achieving full consciousness, she gave me a rundown of the new examples of symbolism she’d found in
The Golden Compass
, after reading it last night for the thirtieth time.

I debated whether I should tell her about Hank and his Grimm brothers secret, and the need to just
say
it, to make it concrete with words, won out. When she finally paused for breath, I quickly jumped in and told her everything, from finding the letters, to Andrea’s dress. From the chocolate-swirl ice cream to the refilled ketchup bottle.

“Wow! That is so cool! It’s like you’re living in a graphic novel.” Just like that, she accepted it. Ms. Science. Of course, she’s also Ms. Science Fiction.

“You don’t think there’s some other, rational explanation?”

“It sounds rational to me.” She told me she’d seen this documentary on the Paranormal Channel about how there are people who’ve been scientifically proven to have unusually high levels of intuition, which translates as ESP. “And last week I read an article on the-psychic-report-dot-com that said you can train yourself to be telekinetic.” She’d tried to do it herself, but you have to sit still and focus for like eight hours—about seven hours and fifty-nine minutes over Posh’s limit. “Your dad is so lucky! He can extrasensory-perceive
and
telekinet. Or telekiness. Or whatever the verb is. Hold on, I’ll look it up.”

There it was. My new reality, officially approved by Posh. I had no choice but to accept that I was truly the daughter of a fairy godfather.

What Posh refused to believe was that I hadn’t inherited the f.g. gene. Despite my moment of doubt before I fell asleep last night, and my French-fry-fueled dreams, this was the one thing I knew for a fact: I am so
not
the fairy godmother type.

“But you
have
to be one, Delaney. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.” Great. Now I was living in a world where being a fairy-tale creature with the power to grant wishes was more logical than
not
being one.

“I have no idea how to turn pumpkins into carriages, Posh. Or mice into horses. I don’t know what anybody’s wish is, and I don’t care.”

“Maybe the ability’s atrophied, from lack of use.”

“Whatever. It’s not there.”

“You have to find out for sure. It’s your scientific and spiritual duty.” Then I had to hear her sermon about how “all living things are obligated to fulfill the destiny imbued in them by Nature.” This was like when they decided to give away goldfish at the school fair freshman year and Posh launched this big protest, because Nature had not intended fish to be put on display in plastic bags and then transferred to glass prisons. She guilted her father into building an actual freshwater pond in their backyard for all the goldfish to live in. After the fish died, within like
two weeks, the pond fulfilled
its
destiny by being concreted over and made into a pool.

Before I hung up, I made Posh swear not to tell her mom about Hank’s big secret. Hank would deny it, and her parents wouldn’t believe it anyway, so it’d be
me
who ended up looking crazy and desperate. In return, Posh made me promise that I would find out if I had the f.g. DNA after all. I said I’d try, but I already know that Nature has given me a pass. I’ll let a couple of days go by and then tell her the answer is no.

“… one compound into another. You can’t change an element, however—that can only be done by a nuclear reaction.…”

So why am I still thinking about it? Why do all these annoying questions keep popping up in my head? “
Am
I one?” “
Should
I try to find out?” “What happens if the answer is yes?”

“… you need to supply ‘activation’ energy to start the reaction.…”

Maybe sketching will get my mind off it. I reach into my backpack for my charcoal pencil, but it’s not there. As I search through the pockets, I feel a tap on my arm. It’s Flynn, at the desk next to me. He nods to the front of the room, where Mr. McElroy waits, one eyebrow raised. “I don’t think you’ll find the answer in there, Ms. Collins.” How did he know I was looking for answers? Don’t tell me Mr. McElroy’s a fairy godfather too. I can’t take my life
getting any more bizarre. “I’ll repeat the question: In an endothermic reaction, is heat given off or absorbed?”

Oh thank God, he’s just talking about chemistry. Not that I care about endothermic anything. I have bigger issues on my mind. I might as well take a guess, though, since I have a fifty-fifty chance. “Absorbed.”

Both of Mr. McElroy’s eyebrows go up, then settle back down in nonexpression mode. “That’s correct.” Mr. McElroy goes back to colliding reactants and breaking atom bonds, so I’m free to finish the flying boots from yesterday. I guess I’ll have to sketch in pen for now. It’s not ideal, but I can always start over later. As I add feathers to the wings, the boots start to look familiar. Oh no—they’re the wings from my dream. Forget it. I slash a big X through the whole page.

“Since there are no volunteers, why don’t you demonstrate for us, Ms. Collins?” Great. The harassment hasn’t ended. It’s not fair that I’m constantly singled out like this. Flynn shrugs like “I tried.” How did he try?
He
could’ve volunteered.

On my way to the front of the room, I glance at the board to see if I can figure out what the experiment
is
exactly. I’m trying to remember anything Mr. McElroy has said, but all I can summon up are random phrases like “double displacement” and “kinetic energy.”

“This is the active yeast I mixed with warm water.” He hands me a beaker. “That’s the catalyst. Now add it to the hydrogen peroxide.” It better not explode in my face and
kill me. Although if it does, all my f.g. problems will be resolved. I pour the yeast into a big glass bowl on the front lab table. It instantly starts to bubble. “There you go. Oxygen forms on the surface and is released, leaving water. The yeast has sped up the decomposition of the hydrogen peroxide, but the yeast remains unchanged. So what have we learned here, Ms. Collins?”

“Don’t try this at home?” I get a few laughs, but I know they’re laughing
at
me, not with me.

“Amusing but wrong, on two levels. One: you
can
try this at home. Two: the lesson is that a catalyst can speed up a chemical reaction, as can other factors such as …” Mr. McElroy waves at the class to answer, and a few kids call out: “Temperature.” “Concentration.” “Pressure.” Magic wands, I think. I could say this, as a joke, although no one would get it and there’d be no laughs this time, only stares. Posh would get it, but she wouldn’t laugh either. She’d nod seriously and launch into some Harvard-genius-type speech about how this proves her right and how everything Hank’s told me and shown me is not only rational but provable. Ergo, equals, therefore: I am a fairy godmother.

But I’m not. I’m
not
.

I’m not going to think about it anymore. I’m going to concentrate on school. I’m going to listen as Madame Kessler batters us with examples of the conditional tense for reflexive verbs in her clipped nasal voice.
“On se demanderait.”
One would wonder.

I
do
wonder.
Je me demande
what it would be like if I did have magic powers. To make things appear, change, disappear. My life wouldn’t be ruled by everyone else.
I’d
be in control for once. Instead of treating me like a freak, the Happy High students would gaze at me in awe. That might make life semibearable until I can get home to New Jersey. There’d probably be a way I could speed that up too and make Posh’s parents let me go back now. I could wave my wand and a new wing would appear on the side of their house, for instance, with a bedroom for me, decorated my way. Posh wants me to come back, so it would qualify as a wish.

Things would change at East Lombard too. The kids would line up to tell me their wishes. Posh and I wouldn’t have to eat at the outcast table. I’d be popular.

If
I were an f.g., which I’m not. Still, Posh is going to keep bugging me about it until I prove it’s not true, so what I have to do is try a small wish, really try, and fail. Then she’ll get off my back, and I can let it go.

I glance around the room, but I can’t find anyone in need of wish granting. The twinsetted French snobs are beyond smug in their overpriced clothes and celebrity-endorsed makeup, blessed by tutor-guided straight As and neatly arranged future plans for private college, sorority queendom and glamorous starter jobs in Los Angeles or New York. The rest of the class appears just as disgustingly content. No one even seems to want class to end early, despite the fact that Madame K’s voice should be declared
a crime against humanity. Her own nose scrunches up in disgust below her unibrow as she speaks, and she bites down on every word as if she wants to chop them all into bloody bits. “
Nous nous coifferions
.” The high pitch of her squawking is so painful it could send a pack of wolves fleeing in aural agony.

Je me demande
what makes her so stratospherically miserable. Part of it has got to be that she’s bitter over being so evil-hag-looking. Ergo, equals, therefore: she wishes she were prettier.

Where to start, though, and how? I don’t want to stare at her, so I’ll sketch her, although I still can’t find my charcoal pencil. I checked my locker between classes, but it wasn’t there either. Using pen isn’t the only challenge. Madame K’s also moving now, going up and down the rows, ordering random victims to conjugate “to wash” and “to hurry.” Her face sears the brain, though, so I do a pretty good job working off memory, capturing the scowl and the sunken eyes and the big thick single eyebrow. Since I can’t erase, I put my thumb in the middle of her sketched forehead, dividing her brow in two. Wow, that makes it a lot better. Now she just looks pissy, not horrific.

Okay, so if Hank can make fudge swirls disappear from ice cream, and if I
do
have the power, I should be able to point my pen and pluck a few—

“
Danielle
!” Madame K’s assigned French name for me pierces my eardrums with the force of a nuclear missile. “
Qu’est-ce que vous faites
?”

“Um …” Semideafness has switched off all my other brain functions. She snatches the notebook off my desk. “
Je ne suis pas heureuse, Danielle. Je ne suis pas
du tout
heureuse.
” Her eyes squint down at me, her unibrow curling up like an inching caterpillar. I was
so
wrong. She’s not miserable at all—
du tout
. She loves being the bitter, scary crone.
Je me demande
if she’s considered a job as a cartoon villainess.

Madame K flips the sketchbook closed, preventing the kids around me who’ve been craning their necks from seeing what I drew. She flicks the book under her arm, clamping it between her elbow and hip, claiming it. Panic brings back my power of speech. “But that’s got all of my—”

“
EN FRANÇAIS!
”

“Uh,
mais le cahiers ont
, I mean,
a tous mes …
” Clearly my power of
French
speech has fled. “
Il est les autres
 … uh,
drawings de moins—
”

Madame K purses her gray lips in mock sympathy. “
Alors. Je regrette. C’est trop mal. Trop, trop, trop mal
 … 
pour
vous.”