Who Needs Magic? (20 page)

“Noisy!” Nancy calls from the other room.

I march over to the radio and turn it down. Not off, though, because it’s exactly the kind of music I’d been looking for earlier. “Look, Lourdes, I’m trying to—”

“All right, let’s get started.” Lourdes claps and swings
her hips in rhythm with the song. Jeni is staring at her with a mixture of fascination and future-roadkill-in-headlights. At least she’s too stunned to flee for the exit. Lourdes dances over to a rack of dresses and sweeps several of them up in an embrace, rising onto her toes to lift the hangers free from the pole. She sashays back to Jeni and dumps them into her arms. “Start with those.”

“All of them?” Jeni glances over at me, unsure.

I hate that Lourdes is right. I’ve been doing it again—rushing the process, trying to skip to the end instead of following all the steps. “Yes,” I tell Jeni. “All of them. You can’t tell what anything looks like on a hanger. You have to see what it looks like on you.”

“Pretend it’s a game,” Lourdes says. “No pressure.” She grabs a handful of scarves and tosses these on top of the dresses. “ ‘Dress-up day.’ ”

Jeni casts one last doubtful look between us and then reluctantly carries her pile over to the curtain.

“We make a good team,” Lourdes says to me.

“You kind of forced your way onto the team.”

“And you are
so
grateful I did.”

“Eternally.” I select some random tops for Jeni to try on next. Lourdes looks through the few new belts that have come in since her earlier shopping spree.

“Loved those photos from that estate sale,” Lourdes says. “Sorry I haven’t called. Boy trouble. How’s the math tutoring going?”

“Better. How’s it going with the guy?”

Lourdes examines a wide white patent leather belt. “I’ve given up. A million girls are after him. There’s no point.”

“You don’t seem like the giving-up type.”

“Shows how much you know, Boots.” She says this in an “end of subject” way that I’m familiar with, because I use it all the time. But I never realized it makes the person listening want to know
more
.

“What’s the holdup?” Lourdes calls out to Jeni. “We’re ready for the fashion show out here.”

“They all look bad. None of them look—”

“You’ve been trying things on without
showing
us?” Lourdes glances over at me.

“Jeni, you need to come out,” I say. “Show us whatever you have on now.”

“It’s awful.”

“Good! It’ll be a reject, then. The more wrong outfits you try on, the closer you’ll get to the one that’s right.” Silence from behind the curtain. “Jeni?”

“You won’t laugh?”

“I could use a laugh,” Lourdes says. “If you can make that happen,
please
come out. I’ll owe you.” More silence.

“In return,” I say, “we’ll make
you
laugh.” I grab a stack of hats and pile them on my head. Lourdes smiles and ties a wrap skirt around her neck like a cape. I pull on a horrid polyester jacket in mustard yellow. Lourdes circles one leg with a feather boa and ties it in a bow below the knee.

“We’re coming in.” Lourdes and I each take one end
of the curtain and raise it up, revealing Jeni, dressed in a knee-length hot-pink crinoline skirt and stretched-out macramé sweater top, looking like some disco reject. “Oh my God, that
is
awful,” Lourdes says. “What do you think, Boots?”

“Wretched,” I say. “Positively wretched.”

Jeni’s flustered, but only for a second. Then she notices what
we’re
wearing and she smiles. The smile turns into a giggle—and then we’re all laughing.

We send her back in to change. She’s still reluctant at first, and we have to drag her out again and again, but once she gets used to taking things off and dumping them in the reject pile, she relaxes. Her steps are a little less tentative each new time she comes out from behind the curtain. Soon, she walks right up to the mirror without us having to force her. Eventually, she
wants
to look in it. The different pieces start to come together. Old becomes new. I roll up the sleeves of a tunic Jeni’s tried on, Lourdes ties a beaded belt around Jeni’s waist, and Jeni smiles at the result. A smile that’s not shy or reluctant or embarrassed, but happy … closing in on confident. I begin to see the
real
Jeni, the one who’s been hidden all this time behind boring colors and downcast eyes and hesitation. My strategy is working. I finally feel as if I’m accomplishing something and that the f.g. thing isn’t about victory for me. Well, not only for me.

I can actually help transform people—transform them in a way that doesn’t require one wave of the wand.

“Shiny New Boots” by Art in Motion comes on the radio. Lourdes and I dance around Jeni, and Jeni sways, just a little, like she’s trying it out, waiting to see if she’ll die of embarrassment. When she doesn’t die, the swaying grows slightly more detectable.

The song builds to the final verse. Lourdes hums along. I snap my fingers. Jeni does a spin. As the song rises to its last line, Jeni throws her arms open and belts out the last lyric. Lourdes and I stop dancing and stare.

Jeni’s voice is gorgeous.

Jeni suddenly notices we’re staring at her and she slaps her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide, her face flushed.

“Noisy!” Nancy calls again from the front. Then a second later: “But lovely!”

Our eyes meet in a three-way glance. We all burst into laughter at the same time and Jeni’s shyness is shattered, like the glass case holding Sleeping Beauty.

“Never?” Lourdes asks for the third time, stirring the ice in her drained blood-orange lemonade. “You’ve never sung in front of
anybody
? Ever?” Jeni shakes her head. “Why not?”

“I don’t know.” Jeni takes a tiny bite of her soft pretzel. “I don’t want people to stare at me?”

“It’s not exactly an insult if they’re staring at you because you’re talented.”

Jeni blushes and smiles down at the gum-spotted concrete floor of the Bazaar.

My lunch break is nearly over and I still haven’t figured out a way to bring up Ronald. Since I’d promised, pledged, sworn not to, this makes it challenging.

I take a sip of my ginger lemonade. I’m not sure ginger was the right choice for the lemonade, because it reminds me of being here with Flynn. I put the cup down and try to concentrate on the problem in front of me.

“You don’t get how lucky you are.” Lourdes points her last bite of pumpernickel pretzel at Jeni. “When I sing, people throw sacks over my head. I could be used as a military weapon. A torture device.”

Jeni laughs and I see it again, that inner sparkle that came out at Treasures. She’s changed into her Fizzy uniform, but she’s wearing a pair of big gold hoop earrings. Her hair is up, tied back with the orange jungle scarf. The lazy strips of sun coming through the roof slats cast a soft spotlight on the side of her face. She’s stopped hiding from herself and stopped hiding herself from everybody else. She’s not all the way there, but I can tell the door’s been opened, and in time it’ll swing all the way around on its hinges and never close again.

If only I’d
started
here, like I should have, it’d be an easy transition to fixing her up with Ronald. Now I have no idea how to get back on track. I’ve learned something for my next client, but I don’t know if there’ll be one, since I might be stuck with Jeni forever, both of us inching closer to full-on f.g.-generated fulfillment, but never quite getting there.

“You should try one of those open mike nights,” Lourdes says to Jeni. “They’re doing a talent show thing
here at the mall. There’s a poster for it in front of Brennan’s. A friend of mine’s going to be in it. Anybody can sign up.”

“Oh, no,” Jeni says. “That would be too scary.”

“We’d go see you. Cheer you on. Right, Boots?”

“Yeah. Totally.”

Lourdes stirs her melting ice and stares across the table at me. “What’s with you, Boots? Join the conversation.”

“I’m listening. Listening is a key element in conversation.”

“Are you saying I’m talking too much?”

“If you were
listening
, you’d know that I
didn’t
say that.” Arguing with Lourdes wakes me up a little. It’s like she’s whamming handballs at me and I could duck—or slam them back. Slamming is more fun.

“Are you sad because it’s over?” Jeni asks.

Lourdes glances between us. “What’s over?”

“Nothing,” I say, with a look to Jeni. I straighten up from my slumped position. “It’s just post-pretzel carbocrash.”

“Jeni?” A pair of Nutri-Fizzy-uniform-clad kids approach the table. One male, one female. I recognize them from my Frequent Fizzy visits.

“Hi!” Jeni says enthusiastically, forgetting for a second to be shy. Then she remembers, blushes and stares down at her strawberry lemonade.

“Hey,” the boy Fizz Master says. “We’re going over to Mocha. They’ve got half-price coffee shakes until two.”

Jeni nods and says nothing. I kick her under the table and tilt my head toward her coworkers. “Oh! Um, this is Delaney,” Jeni says. “And Lourdes. Kevin and Cheyenne work with me at the Nutri-Fizzy Bar.”

“Figured that part out,” Lourdes says. This time I kick
her
under the table. She kicks me back.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey!” Lourdes says, directing it and a big smile at Kevin and Cheyenne.

Cheyenne nudges Kevin. “Tell Jeni about tomorrow night.”

“Oh, yeah! A bunch of us are going out for karaoke, if you want to come.”

“Yes!” I yell, and ignore Jeni’s look of alarm. “That would be, like,
perfect
.” Oh my God, I can’t believe the universe is actually helping me for once.

“Uh, sure,” Kevin says. “Anybody can come.”

“Sorry,” Lourdes says. “The nationwide bar against me singing in public remains in effect through the next millennium.”

“Um, okay.” Kevin exchanges a wary glance with Cheyenne. I shoot Lourdes a look. She smirks back. I don’t think she realizes her effect on people.

“So it’ll be me and Jeni,” I tell Kevin. “We just need when and where.”

Jeni has yet to speak. This is working for me at the moment, because she can’t protest. I give Kevin my cell number so he can text me the information.

“We better get going,” Cheyenne says. “We’re on break.”

“Why don’t you go
with
them,” I say to Jeni with a pointed stare. “I have to get back to work anyway. And Lourdes has to go—wherever it is she’s going.”

“Yeah. I’m late,” Lourdes says. “For wherever. And you know how
that
is.”

I stand and gesture at Lourdes to do the same. Jeni follows as we carry our trays over to a nearby trash can. I can feel her nervousness. It’s like a buzzing in the air. “No backing out on the karaoke,” I whisper to Jeni, out of earshot of Lourdes.

“But I’m—”

“This is part of the process we have to go through, okay? Now go get a coffee shake and have fun, like we did at the store. Try not to worry about tomorrow. Try not to think at all. It’s going to go fine, I promise, and then you’ll be off the hook. We’ll be done.”

Jeni has borrowed her parents’ car to drive us to the karaoke place. She’s made an effort with her clothes. She’s in jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers, but the jeans are a pretty cobalt blue and not baggy, and the T-shirt has been embroidered with pearly beads along the collar. She’s wearing the scarf from Treasures around her shoulders, and she has on the dangling earrings I bought for her at the craft show.

We enter the parking lot, across from what used to be a huge bowling alley, the length of an entire strip mall. It’s
been divided up and there’s still bowling, in the middle part, but now one end is a video arcade and the other is where they have the karaoke.

As soon as she turns off the ignition, I hand Jeni the bag I brought with me. She asked about it when I got into the car. “I’ll show you when we get there,” I told her.

She opens it now. “Oh!” She lifts out the cowboy boots I’d made her try on, the sides now etched with stars, painted silver to match the spirals, and puts them on.

When we get out of the car, I inform her that it’s not only stars I added to the boots. “I know I said I wasn’t going to use magic to help you with this step of our bond severance process, but this is a special circumstance.” Even though there’s no one around us, I lower my voice to emphasize the gravity and significance of what I say next. “I’ve put a powerful confidence-building spell on the boots. It’ll kick in when you need it, like a timed-release vitamin.”

Jeni absorbs this information, her eyes growing wide and then lowering to stare in awe at her magical boots. I hold back a smile.

She totally bought it.