Who Needs Magic? (23 page)

She may have the superior abilities and more experience, but she hasn’t won yet.

As I exit the Elegant Imprint a few minutes later, I spot Jeni, emerging from the Fizzy Bar with a pack of her fellow Fizz Masters, now all in civilian clothes. I call out to her and she says something to Kevin and then walks over to me.

“What?” she demands. “What do you want to tell me? That she was telling the truth? They’re on a date? It’s over? You did lie?
What?
” One thing that Ariella has achieved with her betrayal is to get Jeni to finally speak up. There hasn’t been one pause or hesitation in her speech since I arrived at the mall.

Jeni waits for my answer, while her Fizzy friends hover outside of the closed shop.

“I’m going to have to get back to you on that.” I bring up my map app on my phone.

“I knew it! I knew I wasn’t good enough for him. I told you that at the beginning.”

“That’s not true. And it’s
not
over.” I type in the address I got from the stationery guy at the store. “There’s just been a small complication.”

“Hey, Jeni,” Kevin calls. “We’ll meet you at the car.”

“Okay. I’ll be there in a second.” Jeni turns back to me. “We’re going to see
In Harmony
over at the Palace Theater. It’s another one of those fake, lying romantic comedies, where everything works out. Fakely.”

“Uh-huh.” I study the map on the cell screen.

“I suggested one of the movies playing here—
Dark Forest
. You know, the one where this evil woodcutter is killing off all the fairy-tale creatures, in lots of bloody, gross ways. But I was outvoted.”

“Mm-hmm.” I expand the map, looking for a familiar cross street.

“I’m leaving now, Delaney. Thanks for wasting my time.” She marches away toward the main parking structure. I scroll to the left on the cell screen, and among the highlighted landmarks, one stands out: the Palace Theater.

“Wait up!” I call out, and then run up beside her. Jeni looks up at me, a tiny flicker of hope in her eyes. It doesn’t last long, because what I have to say is not what she wants to hear.

“I need a ride.”

I thought poetry slams were in grungy coffeehouses, in seedy parts of town, down narrow alleyways, where you have to step over the sleeping homeless guy and duck around the quartet of jean-jacketed, greasy-haired smokers to get inside.

But this street is all glitter and glass, a wide boulevard lined with European clothing boutiques, and jewelry stores with empty velvet cases in the windows because the emeralds and rubies have been locked up in the vault for the night. The sun has set, yet I’m not cold. Either the breeze has died down or all the electricity being used on this boulevard is baking the air. The sky is that inky blue
that comes a few minutes before it turns black—the part of the sky I can
see
, that is. The part that’s not obscured by the glare of the brightly lit two-story storefronts that are all framed in wide bands of silver and gold, with the store names engraved in big block letters along the tops. I cannot possibly be in the right place. I check the name and address I got from the stationery guy again: Jasmine’s. 138 North Piñon.

Yep. This is definitely it. Weird.

Jasmine’s is one of the few places open. As soon as I step inside, it’s obvious that it’s not a coffeehouse. It’s a tearoom. Straight ahead is a counter lined with tins of leafy dried buds. Labels hang on delicate silver chains with the names of the teas written in cursive:
Lemon Blossom Rose
,
Oolong Pearl Heaven
,
Black Currant Geranium
. Behind the counter a man with a
TEA CONCIERGE
pin on his pressed burgundy dress shirt stands at attention. Shelves with teapots and infusers and strainers and presses line the opposite wall, backlit by hidden lights.

This has
got
to be the wrong place. On the ride over, I persuaded Jeni to hold off on giving up, writing me off, believing that she would be heartbroken for life. I did this by telling her the truth. I admitted that Ariella
is
a super f.g., but I explained that this means there’s something wrong if it’s taken her this long to get Fawn and Ronald together. I confessed that Ariella and I had declared an f.g. war, which is why Ariella stuck with Fawn weeks after she should’ve known it was hopeless. And I even told
Jeni that,
yes
, Fawn and Ronald were apparently on a date tonight—but I also revealed that Ariella is not nearly as certain about the outcome of the date as she pretended with Jeni.

It took a while to convey it all, since I had to do it by text in order to keep it from the other four people in the car. I also had to type while crammed into one corner of the backseat, the door handle digging into my side so hard I still have the imprint.

“May I help you?” A thin woman with precision-cut black hair and wearing a cream shift dress, looking like one of the mannequins in the boutique next door, has materialized next to me.

“I’m trying to find this poetry thing, but I think I—”

“Oh, yes. The literary salon. Right this way.” She swings an arm out to her left and leads me to a small doorway near the back of the store.
Literary salon?
I guess it’s in the same section of the thesaurus as “poetry slam.” My doubt returns when I peer inside the room and see lots of small tables and fancy-dressed people eating tiny cookies with their perfumey tea.

But then I notice there’s a small stage at the far end of the room, where a girl in a belted silver dress and red strappy heels reads from a gingham-covered notebook.

She shakes her fist over her head, her poetry-filled rage clashing with her dance-party outfit.

The light is dimmer and warmer in this room than out where they sell the teas, and I can’t tell if Fawn is here. Or Ronald. Maybe the guy at the Elegant Imprint gave me the address of the wrong poetry slam—although how many can there be? Maybe Fawn
is
babysitting. Maybe there’s no date at all, and Ariella was making it up, and my f.g. radar or instinct or ESP or whatever is wrong.

Dance-Party Girl closes her notebook and bows to the ensuing claps.

“Hey! What are you doing here?”

I turn to see Lourdes standing behind me. “What are
you
doing here?” I ask.

“This is the thing I told you I had to go to.” She seems to have dressed up a bit—for Lourdes. Her sack dress is less sacky and you can actually see some curves. She’s wearing a collection of thin black and green leather wristbands instead of her usual thick scruffy cuffs, and matching thin black and green belts. Her hair is glossed back instead of
spiky, and she’s actually wearing earrings, long feathered things that brush against her neck.

“How’s Jeni?” she asks.

“Oh, she’s great. False alarm. She’s going to the movies with some friends from the Fizzy place and they dropped me off here because I wanted to pick up some chai to make at home.”

Up front, a guy in jeans and a backward baseball cap launches into a rhyming story about his dog, accompanied by some hip-hop moves.

“So, what’s your story?” I ask Lourdes. “I didn’t know you were into poetry.”

“My friend Ronald’s here. He’s reading. I’m here to cheer.”

“Ronald?”

“Kind of old-fashioned, I know. His middle name’s Reginald. Can you believe it? He’s named after his uncles. He keeps coming up with these new ‘professional names’ for his music career. The latest is ‘Double-R,’ which I told him sounds like a dude ranch.” The tea drinkers applaud as Hip-Hop Guy hops off the stage. “There he is,” Lourdes says, pointing toward the front. “Let’s go.”

Lourdes shoves me into the room. I’d intended to spy, from the back, but Lourdes drags me toward the stage. I spot Ronald at one of the tables near the front—but it’s not Fawn with him. It’s another girl. She’s in a grayish sateen halter dress, hair held up in an elegant twist with about three hundred jeweled combs. Her bare shoulders,
hunched over as she scribbles intently in a tiny lined notebook, have been dusted with bronzy glitter powder that shimmers in the glow from the table lamp.

I scan the room as Lourdes leads me through it. No Fawn. She must’ve left as soon as she saw Ronald with this other girl. It’s a failure for Ariella, but it’s not a victory for me, because now there’s a new wish-granting obstacle I have to get rid of.

The girl with Ronald gets up to read. She glides to the stage in her metallic stilettos, and her dress catches the light, turning a peachy pink in one step, a silvery green in the next, like the pearly insides of mollusk shells.

Then she steps around to face the room, and my breath stops.

It
is
Fawn.

I’m stunned but not surprised. Somehow I suspected it all along, but after watching Fawn’s fashion failures over the last few weeks, I didn’t think Ariella would ever be capable of this successful of a transformation. Fawn didn’t wobble once, and the dress is perfect for her willowy body. When Fawn squints down at her wee notebook, I think,
Aha! Ariella forgot to give her contacts
—but then Fawn lifts up a pair of stylish tortoiseshell eyeglasses and puts them on.

Ronald spots Lourdes and gestures for her to take the chair next to him. Lourdes pulls me down to the third chair, the one Fawn had been sitting in. Lourdes whispers something to Ronald and he gives me a friendly smile.
Fawn is close enough to see me, but her eyes are on her notebook and she begins.

This is not the usual “my life sucks” cry of angst. I get those. This, I don’t get. Although, I have to admit, it seems deep.

Whatever it means, I can tell Fawn feels it, and the intense, sincere way she reads it is mesmerizing.

Everybody’s stopped talking and they’re all staring. They’re either blown away, or they’re trying to figure out what it means too.

When she finishes, she closes her eyes. It seems to take her a few seconds to notice that the room has erupted with applause. She opens her eyes and blinks in surprise. It’s like Jeni at the karaoke place. I feel as if Ariella has stolen my success and twisted it into her own—because unlike at the karaoke place, Ronald is here to see the magic happen. Fawn takes a little bow and steps off the stage. She does wobble this time, but she catches herself and slows her pace.

Ronald, standing, hoots and whistles, his hands whapping against each other in gunshot claps. This is not good.

Lourdes leaves to get another chair as Fawn nears. “That was off the hook, girl,” Ronald says. “How did you come up with that? ‘Sacred ledge of sacrilege.’ You could write lyrics. We should collaborate.”

Not good at all.

Fawn is blushing from the praise, and since she’s taken her glasses off, it’s not until she reaches the chair that she notices me.

“This is Delaney,” Ronald says. “She’s a friend of Lourdes, who’s my friend. Lourdes will be back in a second.”

“Uh …” Fawn grips the top of the empty chair but doesn’t sit down. Behind her, the bow-tied emcee announces a tea break.

“Hey, Fawn,” I say. “Great poem.”

“Um …”

Ronald peers over at Fawn, worried. “You okay?”

“Uh, I …”

I wonder if some sort of vocal Object Transference has occurred and Jeni’s inability to speak has transmuted to Fawn. Now,
that’s
big magic. “Fawn and I have a mutual acquaintance,” I say. I give her a big, nonthreatening smile. She cautiously pulls out the chair and sits.

Lourdes returns, carrying a tiny wire chair that she’s gotten from the other room. She has a grim look on her face, like she might have had to slay someone to get it, but I don’t see blood, so it must’ve been a verbal slaying. As soon as she sits, a waitress appears to take our order. Ronald and Fawn are already sharing (sharing!—
definitely
not good) a pot of green tea. Lourdes orders mint and a plate of mini-scones for the table. I’m too tense for another chai. I need a drink without caffeine, so I point to a random herbal tea on the menu, something with a lot of vowels in the name. It’s either great or the weirdest thing in the tea shop, because the waitress raises her eyebrows in eager glee as she writes it down. Whatever. I have more urgent things to worry about. Like how to unplug this Fawn-Ronald connection that seems to have occurred.