Who Needs Magic? (17 page)

“We don’t close until five.”

Flynn looks at his watch. “Ten minutes …” He sighs and glances upward, thinking deeply. “Yes. It’s worth the wait.” He takes my hand. “And while I’m waiting, you can show me the boots you made from the designs you came up with at the library.” He tugs me in the direction of the vintage clothing room, but I hold back.

“The ones I’ve finished are at home. I don’t want to show you any that aren’t done.”

“Why not?”

Because I haven’t even started any of them. “Because it’s bad luck.”

Flynn looks at me curiously.

“Delaney’s been having some problems with procrastination,” Nancy says helpfully—but she’s not helping. “Too many breaks, in my opinion.” She winks at me and all my goodwill toward her for taking me to the estate sale withers and dies.

Flynn grabs me by the waist and pulls me closer.

“Flynn …”
I tilt my head toward Nancy.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” Nancy says. “There’s a lot worse going on in here, believe me.” She taps the top of her book, then puts her glasses on to read.

Instead of kissing me, Flynn keeps talking. “Maybe you could show me where the ‘inventory’ crashed down on you. I could help you stack it more safely.”

Nancy looks up from the book and casts a questioning glance my way. Thankfully, Flynn has his back to her.

“It’s all picked up,” I tell him. “Strapped in. No danger of it falling again.” Flynn keeps staring at me, as if he’d hoped I’d say something else. But what? I want to move
on
from this.

What I really want is for him to kiss me already, and for a second it seems like he’s going to, but then—

“Oh my God, is that …” Flynn lets go of me and picks
up a dusty, prehistoric camera off a nearby bookshelf. Wow, that romantic moment lasted less than a quarter of a millisecond. Girlfriend versus camera: no contest.

“This is the Jackson X-7, Red series. I’ve never seen one of these in real life! Awesome.” He inspects it from every angle, squinting through the viewfinder, gently advancing the shutter, his eyes glazing over with camera love, rendering me invisible. “Hey,” he whispers. “You can use your employee discount for me, right?” Correction: not invisible, but of interest only for mercenary purposes.

“Ten percent of three thousand dollars isn’t going to help you much.”

“Three thousand dollars!” Flynn continues to study the camera. “I mean, I know it’s rare and all, but the shutter advance is rusted and there’s scratches on the—”

“Delaney’s pulling your leg, Flynn,” Nancy says. “If you’re really interested in it—”

“Are you kidding? It’s a
Jackson
. They only made these from 1957 to 1959—”

“Don’t get him started,” I warn Nancy.

She smiles. “It’s yours,” she tells Flynn.

“Really?” Flynn beams. “Do you have any more cameras?” He directs this to me.

“There’s a bunch of crap in the armoires against the wall,” I tell Flynn. “Help yourself. I’ll go get my bag.”

“And then I have a surprise for you.”

“I thought
you
were the surprise.”

“There’s more.” He grins and slips off to camera hunt.

I smile to myself. Doing small wishes will be enough f.g. action for me, because I can fill the client gap with boots and Flynn. From now on, I say yes to every date request he makes. I’ll never have to think about Jeni or Ariella again. Well, I did think of them just now, but only for a second, and I’m banishing them from my thoughts for the rest of my life.

I toss the angel pin into a wicker basket filled with rings. Maybe one of them will slip around the angel’s neck and choke it.

“Any five things. My treat.” Flynn swings his hand out over the nearby stalls, palm up, the king offering his kingdom. A kingdom of junk.

Flynn has dragged me to the Bizarre, which is what I call the Bazaar (although I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to come up with the nickname). The Bazaar is a part of the Annex that used to be a fruit and vegetable market, but now, instead of mangoes and avocados, the stands display baskets filled with cheap toys and bags of candy and sets of ceramic coasters with palm trees painted on them.

“This is my surprise? An unrecyclable bag filled with pointless plastic toys and defaced dead sea animals?” I pick up a sand dollar that’s been covered with spirals of green and blue glitter glue.

“Nope. It’s just the warm-up.”

I take a sip of my lemonade and try not to sneeze. Flynn’s bought us each a drink from a cart where a man
cranks an old machine that squeezes the lemons fresh for each cup. Because nothing’s played straight here, not even lemonade, there has to be a “twist,” which means that there’s every flavor of lemonade you can think of, from strawberry to kiwi-apricot. Flynn got a watermelon lemonade. I chose ginger, which is hot and is making my eyes water, but it’s still way better than a Nutri-Fizzy. At least it tastes like something that came from nature and not a laboratory.

“I thought we were going out.”

“We are out.” Flynn waves his arms. “We’re literally
outside
.”

“I meant somewhere outside of the mall.”

“Why do that when we’re surrounded by riches?” He grabs my hand. “Here, I’ll choose your presents for you.” He leads me through the winding path made by the slender gaps between the stalls and stands and carts. As we zigzag through the crowd, my mood lightens, as if the failures and insecurities that have been piling up on me are peeling away, layer by layer. Part of it is the vibe in the Bazaar. The buzz is livelier here than in the main part of the mall, and the people are more animated. The slatted roof and closely packed stalls help to hold the atoms in and keep them circulating. The early evening summer light casts muted stripes onto the customers and the concrete floor, and the dropped temperature has injected an extra burst of exhilaration that matches the stinging zing of my lemonade.

One after the other, Flynn snatches up items, pays for them and then drops them into my hands: a keychain with tiny blue cowboy boots hanging from it; a bag of malted milk balls; a tin license plate with the name
DELIA
stamped on it (since there is no sticker, mug, bracelet or anything in the country that has
my
name. A million versions of “Kaitlynn/Katelynn/Caitlin” but no “Delaney” anywhere); a package of sugar straws; and a pink whistle.

“Not bad,” I tell Flynn when his shopping spree is over. He snaps a picture of me holding my gifts.

“And …” He holds out a paper bag. “One hundred percent recyclable.”

I take the bag. “I wish the whistle wasn’t pink, though.” I blow it to test it out. It lets out a shriek that gets everyone within a twenty-foot range staring and glaring. Nice.

Flynn winces. “It’s meant to be ironic. And the sugar straws can double as wands.”

“Thanks, Professor. I figured that one out.” I point a green one toward a little girl whose wrist is too thick for the elastic bracelet she’s picked up, and suddenly the bracelet fits perfectly. The little girl smiles. I smile. Flynn smiles and I give him a kiss without even thinking about it. Okay, that was good. That was an ideal b.f./g.f. moment. Casual and spontaneous and sweet. My mind in the moment, free of any worries, past, present or future.

For dinner Flynn suggests we go to this snack bar in the Bazaar called the Hot Top, which sells hot dogs with like three thousand different toppings. You can’t just order
a chili dog, for instance, because there’s black bean chili, turkey chili, three-alarm chili, spicy mango chutney chili and something called “silly chili,” which is “for the kids.” And that’s only the chili dogs—it’d take me three years to list all the other options. So much for getting out of the mall tonight.

I order a veggie dog with lime salsa, and Flynn gets the traditional (ketchup, mustard, relish—but I told him to hold the onions if he wanted to stay within three feet of me).

“This better not be the surprise,” I say. “Eating hot dogs while a school of human sharks swarms behind us?” I flick my thumb over my shoulder, where salivating diners yell out their orders and shift their eyes from one end of the curved counter to the other, looking for a stool about to free up so they can dart in for the kill.

“No, it’s much better. Are you ready?”

“I’ve been ready.” If it’s not a place or an activity, it’s got to be a present. In the three months we’ve been going out, Flynn’s only gotten me goofy gifts, like the whistle and the sugar straws. That’s been fine with me, since necklaces with heart pendants and twinkly charm bracelets are not remotely my style. But if Flynn wants to get serious and sincere for a second and pledge his eternal devotion in gold or silver, I’ll be totally supportive. I’d even be willing to actually wear whatever it is. “Okay, where is it?” I glance down at his camera bag and wonder which of its three thousand pockets the jewelry box is hiding in.

“It’s not a thing. It’s news.”

“News?” News is not a gift. News is bad. Oil spills, terrorist bombings, TV show cancellations. I don’t want news. I want a heart pendant.

“The paper’s sending me and Skids to Costa Verde to cover the Pacific Southwest Extreme Water Sports Festival!”

See? News = bad. Always. “That’s like five hours away. You’re going to drive down there and back every day?”

“We’re going to crash at Skids’s Aunt Jennifer’s and Uncle Dan’s place.”

Flynn doesn’t seem to notice the dark mental cloud forming over my head. This isn’t fitting in with my new plan. If he’s not here, how can I fill up my time with him?

Flynn sits up straighter on his stool, buoyed by his excitement. “The festival goes on for a week and a half, but we’ll probably stay after to see if there are any other newsworthy things going on in the area.”

Ugh, that word again. “ ‘Newsworthy,’ meaning horrible stuff that’ll make people even more depressed about the state of the world.”

“The water festival’s not horrible. It’s, like, awesomely cool.”

“Eye of the beholder.” He’s not putting me in the equation at all. My cloud is expanding, growing grimmer and gloomier.

“We get to post daily reports on the paper’s website. They’re going to create a whole separate page for us! How
awesome is that?” Flynn’s eyes are literally shining, his smile enormous. It’s as if he thinks this is something to celebrate. Enthusiasm radiates from him like bursts of sunshine.

Meanwhile, my cloud is rumbling with impending lightning flashes. “When are you leaving?”

“Day after tomorrow. This is an awesome opportunity for me, Delaney. I’ll be able to take some really awesome photos, with the sun and the water and everything. Action shots that are art. It’s going to be
awesome
.”

“You’ve officially exceeded your lifetime limit for the number of times you’re permitted to use the word ‘awesome.’ ”

Flynn’s eyes dim a little as he narrows his gaze in on me. I can tell his mood is still high and he’s mystified as to why I’m not sharing it. Can he be that clueless? Can he really not tell that the thunderstorm he’s created over me is now drenching me, deflating my mood, dissolving me back into the pool of depression I thought I’d left behind?

Our hot dogs arrive. We eat in silence, the din from the crowd closing in.

“What if I want to call
you
awesome?” Flynn asks quietly, between bites.

“Don’t even try it.” The hot dog is peppery and sour, matching my mood.

“You’re happy for me, though, right?”

“I’m thrilled.”

“You have to be happy for me, Ms. Collins. It’s in the
boyfriend/​girlfriend rulebook. You’re supposed to cheer me on.”

I try to dig up some enthusiasm, but the only thing I succeed in unearthing is sarcasm. “Rah.”

“Whoa. Delaney Collins Mood Level Alert: Orange.” He leans on his elbow and tilts his face toward me. “You’re really going to miss me that much?” I can smell the relish on his breath. I should’ve told him to leave that off too.

“I mean, you’re busy too, Delaney. Right? With your job … and everything?” He’s got the same questioning look in his eyes that he had at Treasures. Like there’s something he’s waiting for me to confess. What? I haven’t done anything. I’ve withheld information, but there’s no law against that. I don’t think.

“I
am
busy,” I say. “But I made time for you, even though you showed up without calling or anything, so you could take me out somewhere that’s not even
out
, and then tell me that—surprise!—you’re blowing me off.”

“I’m not blowing you off.”

Isn’t he? I think back to when he threw me over for a washed-up lighthouse, and before that to when he took the job in the first place. And what about the ignored texts? Hasn’t he been showing me that I’m not as important to him as I thought?

I’ve been so caught up in my client chaos that I missed it, but I see it now. He’s been figuratively drifting away from me since school ended, and now he’s literally drifting away, or rather,
driving
away, in Skids’s car, off to their
water-world extravaganza. Figuratively or literally, it’s the same thing. He won’t be here.

“We’ll go on a real date when I get back,” Flynn promises. “We’ll go
out
.”