Who Needs Magic? (25 page)

The date starts
now
.

As we walk through the galleries, Flynn explains who the artists are and what they’re known for, but I feel like he’s a guide giving me a tour. Most of the time, he doesn’t look at me, but when he does, it’s with a suspicious sideways glance, as if I might be a criminal he’s seen on a wanted poster and he’s not sure if he should call the police or make a citizen’s arrest. We enter the next gallery, a group show, and make our way past the bizarre mix of sketches and sculptures and photos and paintings and tiny TVs playing staticky video loops, toward a framed photo that’s one of the few pieces that doesn’t have a crowd around it. Number 82:
untitled thought process
. It’s a gray-and-brown blur against a bluish haze. It’s either a flower or a building. Or maybe a dog. Hard to tell. There’s a red dot stickered to the
wall next to the number, which means somebody bought it. According to the price list we have, it cost $7,500.

“You could do that,” I tell Flynn.

“That’s not really my style. It’s conceptual and I’m more naturalistic.”

“Who cares—look how much money you could make.”

“You can’t just take an out-of-focus photograph and sell it for thousands of dollars,” Flynn says. “It has to be part of a thematic plan.”

“I know that. I’m joking.” I
don’t
know, but I
am
joking, or trying. It’s like his sense of humor has gone MIA. The mood’s gotten as tightly strung as the electronic violin music playing over the gallery speakers. Why is he being so un-Flynn-like? I’m afraid to ask, because what if the answer is something I don’t want to know? What if he’s feeling guilty because he met some Cadie-ish surfer girl on his trip and he wants to break up with me?

“I’m going to get another bottle of water,” Flynn says casually, as if he’s not about to destroy my whole life. “Want one?” I shake my head and Flynn moves off into the crowd. I notice for the first time that he’s got a sport jacket on, a tweedy mix of dark green and mocha brown, and jeans that fit instead of the usual super-baggy ones.

He dressed up.

For me? Why, if he’s breaking up with me? And for that matter, why take me out on a date? Is this some “Dating Guide for the Chivalrous” rule? Look your best and show your victim a good time before you dump her?

Untitled thought process
is suddenly mobbed by fuzzy photo fans, so I escape through a doorway into a small room with only one artwork in it, lit eerily from above by a single amber light angled down from the ceiling.

It’s a large wall-to-wall photograph of a doll, just its head, against a black background. It has a baby-doll face, with pink cheeks and round, eyelashed hazel eyes, but its long, shiny red hair is teased up high on top and falls around its face in big question-mark curls.

It’s a photo, but it doesn’t look real. There’s something off about it, ghoulish. Its eyes stare right into mine, like it’s reading my mind—reading the parts of it even I can’t see.

“Oh, hey, here you are. They were out of water.” Flynn steps up beside me. “Oh, yeah. This is cool. I’ve seen some of the other ones in this series. It’s a mirror image. Look—see?” He holds up his hand in front of the photo to hide one side of it and then moves his hand to hide the other side. “The artist photographed one half of the face and then copied it, in the reverse, to the other side. It’s perfectly symmetrical. That’s what makes it so disturbing. Awesome, huh?”

I can’t look at it anymore. It’s stirring up something I don’t need stirred. I turn to Flynn, who’s still studying the photo, and I see that under the jacket, he’s wearing a bright white dress shirt over a forest-green T-shirt, both brand-new. The whole outfit is definitely straight from the Date-Wear for Male Teens section of the department store.

Snippets of things I want to say dart around my brain,
slipping by too fast for me to grab anything complete, fully formed. “How many more galleries?” is what I say finally, but it isn’t the right thing. It’s not what I meant to say at all, and the way it comes out is all wrong too. It should be an innocent question, something asked out of curiosity, not a complaint, which is how it sounds. Maybe it’s just the echo in the room that makes it sound that way.

Flynn takes in a breath, sighs out, and slumps his shoulders in a way that is so Flynn, it squeezes my heart.

“Let’s skip the rest,” he says. He sounds defeated, as if he’s been struggling all night to put off some horrible decision and he’s finally accepted that he can’t wait any longer.

But I hope it’s only the echo.

Each time we’ve exited a gallery, the ocean, which is visible down the narrow side streets, has darkened one shade. Turquoise to teal. Teal to deep blue. Now the water is a rich violet, with curves of silver from the moonlight reflecting off its waves. It’s such a romantic setting! This was supposed to be a night to match the Ferris wheel. It’s like fate and the universe are at war—one side pro-Delaney, one side anti-Delaney—and I don’t get a say at all.

Flynn takes my hand, which confuses me even more, until I feel his grip tighten and see his shoulders sag farther, and then I
know
. He’s about to do it. He’s getting up his nerve. He’s going to dump me.

I pull free from his grasp. “Say it already!” My voice
carries off down the street, waking a sleeping seagull, which squawks and flies off.

Flynn stares at me a second and then sighs. “It’s true, then.”

Wait, that’s my line. “What’s true?”

“I didn’t want to believe it, but you were so weird on the drive from your house tonight, and I knew
something
was going on. All summer you’ve been pulling away.”

“
I’ve
been pulling away?” What’s he talking about? “That’s not—”

“Every time we’re together, you seem more distant.”

“I don’t—”

“I go away for, like, weeks, and you don’t text or call or email or anything.”

Have I stepped into Opposite Day? This is all backward. It’s me who’s supposed to be saying these things to
him
. He’s stolen my lines. “You never texted or called
me
.”

“I did so. I sent you that photo.”

“Of a dead eel.”

“Yeah, and you never responded.”

“How am I supposed to respond to a dead eel?”

“I don’t know. With a joke maybe? It’s like your sense of humor has gone MIA.”

Another line stolen! “
I’m
not the one—”

“Never mind, I know that’s not why you’ve been so distant. It’s because …” Flynn looks away. “It’s because of you and Ronald.”

“Ronald?” How does he know about Ronald? Has he been spying on me? “Yeah. Your client.”

“He’s not my client. He’s … the prince.”

Flynn turns back to me, suddenly angry. “Right. So, you admit it.”

“You’re not listening.
Jeni
is my client. Ronald is the guy she likes.”

“Jeni?” Flynn says this in a snide, skeptical tone, like I just now made the name up.

“Yes, Jeni Gold. She works at Nutri-Fizzy. At the mall. She was really shy, and she had a crush on this guy who works at a shoe store, and so I helped her, with earrings, and other stuff, and now she sings.” Flynn stares at me, skepticism transforming into pure disbelief. “Wait, that didn’t come out well.” If it were one day later, I would have already told him all this, in a coherent and mesmerizing way, illuminated by memorable detail, with planned pauses for his gasps of awe and wonder. This is not how it was supposed to go.

“I don’t want to hear any more of your lies.” Flynn spins around and marches toward the car, his shoulders now unslumped.

Why am I constantly having to run after people and defend myself? Calling me a liar has become the theme of the summer.

“I’m not lying!” I run to catch up to him.

“I thought you couldn’t talk about your clients, because
it was all confidential.” Flynn takes his keys from the pocket of his new date-wear jacket.

“I made that up.”

He unlocks the car. “In other words, you lied.”

“Not exactly.”

“Hmm. Well, ‘making something up’ is pretty much the definition of lying.
Exactly
.”

Flynn climbs into the car. I yank on the passenger door, and he takes his time unlocking it. So much for chivalry.

Flynn won’t look at me as I get in. He turns on the ignition before I’ve even closed the door.

“Flynn, listen—”

“Tell me,” he says as he pulls out, “that day at the library, when you said you had to run off to work on your boot designs because you were so inspired—was that true?”

“No, but—”

“Was the time you hung up on me really because inventory from your storeroom fell on you?”

“No—”

“When you wouldn’t let me look at the boots you’d made at Treasures, was that because there actually
weren’t
any?”

“No—I mean yes.” This is just like my argument with Jeni. Nobody lets me finish. It makes it impossible to think clearly.

Outside the passenger window, the last glimpse of moonlit ocean disappears as Flynn turns onto another
street, taking us away from what should have been a magical summer night.

My mind clears. But before I continue with my defense, I have a question of my own.

“How did you find out about Ronald?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes, it matters. If you were spying on me, the only time I was ever anywhere near Ronald was at the poetry slam, and—”

Flynn lets loose another sigh, but this one is less sad and defeated than frustrated that he’s being forced to continue the conversation, but too bad. “I wasn’t spying on you. I got this call, right before I picked you up tonight …”

And icy dread stabs through my whole body. I’ve felt this dread before, always right before I find out—

“… from somebody named Ariella.”

I knew it! Why did I even bother to call her and concede? I should have known she’d find out about the concert, somehow. She must have tiny f.g.-cams installed all around the mall.

“You can’t listen to her,” I tell Flynn. “She’s an f.g. too, but she’s—it’s a long story, but basically she has this client—although she’s got the wish wrong, because—Wait, how did she get your phone number?”

“She called the paper and they forwarded her number and I called her and she called me back. Who cares?”

What was I thinking, giving Fawn information Ariella
could use against me? I was trying to help Fawn publish her stupid poetry, but why? She’s not my client. Her happiness is of no use to me. “Tell me what Ariella said, exactly.”

“She said that there are some fairy godmothers who have this … flaw. It comes from their DNA being screwed up—they’re the second daughter, or they inherited the ability from their father instead of their mother—”

“That’s not—”

“
And
that this flaw causes them to fall for the person they’re granting the wish for.”

“I’m going to kill her.”

“So it
is
true.”

“No, it’s
not
.”

“It happened with me.”

“That was … I had it wrong then, that’s why. And anyway, I told you, Ronald isn’t my client. Jeni is my client.”

“Right. ‘Jeni.’ ”

“Stop saying that like she’s a figment of my imagination. Wait—I’ll show you.” I turn on my phone. “I should’ve taken pictures of her at karaoke.”

“You went out to karaoke?”

“Yeah, long story. Hold on, let me see if she’s on Facebook.” I type in her name. “Oh my God. There are like two thousand Jennifer Golds.”

“How convenient.”

“I’m not lying! I’ll call her. You can talk to her.” I bring
up Jeni’s number. Flynn stops at a stoplight and I hold the phone in front of Flynn’s face. “See? ‘Jeni Gold.’ Right there.”

He pushes my arm away. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

I hit Call and put the phone on speaker. Jeni’s voice mail comes on. Unfortunately, it’s one of those generic computerized voice messages that only give the number, no name. “Call me,” I say into the phone. “It’s urgent.” As I hang up, I come up with another idea, a better one, the one I should have thought of first. “Come to the mall tomorrow,” I tell Flynn. “You’ll meet her and you’ll see what’s going on. I’ll show you that—”

“I’m not coming to the mall, Delaney.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m working.”

“What does that matter, when our relationship—”

“We’re here.” Flynn points out the window at my house.

Again? It’s like the route between home and the galleries exists in some time warp. “You have to come tomorrow, Flynn. You’ll see you’re wrong about everything. Ariella and Ronald and Jeni and Fawn—”

“Fawn? Who’s Fawn?”

“She’s Ariella’s client. It’s a long story.”

“Yeah, right. You keep saying that. You have this whole long story about your summer adventures, going to karaoke and poetry slams, interacting with all these people you’ve never told me about.…”

“I was going to tell you, after tomorrow. All of it. Lourdes too, and the artists’ café. You would love that place. Let me see if I can find it online.” I pick up my phone again.

“I think we should take a break for a while.”

What? No. I put the phone down and turn to him, but he’s staring out the windshield, his hands on the wheel.