Who Needs Magic? (4 page)

She moved here from Phoenix two years ago and lives in a house near the beach with her mother and grandmother (both of whom are f.g.s) and her dad, her little sister, Justine, and her dog, Razzle (who aren’t). In addition to collecting “things with wings” and chopsticks, she’s also got two bookshelves that are crammed with (1) fairy tales from around the world, (2) all of her picture books from when she was little, and (3) scrapbooks she’s made of every vacation she and her family have ever been on. She loves big, warm slippers and musicals, and her favorite book of all time is
The Secret Garden
. She thinks jigsaw puzzles keep the f.g. mind sharp, that having a dog helps with empathy, and that making up cookie recipes is good for practicing improvisation, which an f.g. often needs on the job. It’s like she’s been bottling up all this information for years, waiting for somebody to tell it to. I can relate to that, but it feels more like she’s been practicing for a cover story in
People
than confiding in a fellow f.g. Meanwhile, I haven’t had a chance to ask her the questions I
really
want answers to.

“It’s so amazing that we found each other. How did
you guess? Oh, right—the boot! I didn’t know we could do small wishes for each other, did you? But why not, really?” Her spoon makes a little loop on the way to her mouth, and I know somewhere behind me an iPod battery has been recharged or a ripped shopping bag mended. “My grandma met a couple of us when she was younger and lived in France. We thought maybe they were all European. It makes sense, right? The Grimm brothers were from Germany and Hans Christian Andersen was Danish. Is your mom European? Although, according to my fairy-tale books, there are fairy godmothers all over, they’re just called different things. It would be so cool to meet one in South America or Africa, don’t you think? There must be lots more of us we don’t know about. I looked online once, but I didn’t find anything.” She stops suddenly and stares at me. “What’s wrong? You haven’t said anything. You’re not in shock, are you?” She snaps her fingers in front of my face.

I grab her snapping hand and push it down and away. “I’m waiting for a pause so I can ‘tell you
everything
.’ ” I’m sorry the second I say it, because I no longer want to smoke her with one of my signature clouds of sarcasm, even if she was asking for it. Plus, I started it—I followed
her
, after all.

She doesn’t seem offended, though. She smiles and scoops up the last bite of her melted strawberry-vanilla swirl. “Hey, I’m excited, right? Aren’t you? I
do
want
to hear everything.” She sets down the empty bowl and opens her handbag. “Candy stick? I have lots.” She tilts the purse toward me, displaying a dazzling bouquet of sugary sticks in every color.

“So I see.” I grab a red-and-white peppermint one, to go with my mint chocolate chip ice cream.

“Who was your first?” Ariella asks, immediately shifting back up to verbal warp speed. “Mine was my cousin Lucy. She had this puppy she loved. He was so cute, some kind of doodle. You know—one of those mixes, like jacka-doodle or maybe yorkadoodle. But he was a rescue and was scared of her. My powers were super-limited then, so all I could do was make Lucy smell like a steak bone. It worked, though! After that it was easy. How many have you done? I’m aiming for a hundred big wishes granted by the time I turn fifteen. February seventh. Oh!” She slaps her hand over her mouth for a second. “I’m doing it again! You go.”

“A
hundred
? How many have you done so far?”

“Eighty-two.”

I accidentally bite off a huge piece of peppermint stick and cough wildly when it goes down the wrong way.

“Don’t feel bad,” Ariella says. “It’s exceptionally high. My grandma says so. It’s partly because I started so early. I was nine when I granted Lucy’s wish.”

“Nine?”

“I know! Right? I used to keep track of small wishes too, but I stopped counting after five thousand. My mom’s totally jealous, even though she won’t admit it. We’re kind
of competitive. How old were
you
when you started?” She presses her lips together, like she’s determined to let me get more than ten words in finally. My luck, it’s the one question I don’t want to answer.

“Older.”

“That’s okay! That’s normal. It’s better to be normal. Less pressure. I don’t know why I feel this need to hit a hundred, but I do. I’m obsessed.” She chirps on, explaining how she once granted two big wishes in the same week. She’s so energetic and wound up, it’s tiring me out just listening to her. I thought I’d feel more of a connection to her: finally, somebody who gets it, who shares the secret, who knows the frustrations. But she’s never felt frustrated at all. She’s an f.g. Einstein. Instead of feeling like I’m not alone, I feel even more alone.

“It’s so … 
fulfilling
when you grant one, don’t you think? It’s such a gift we have. We’re like that guy I learned about in school who planted all those trees—Johnny Appleseed. Doing good, spreading good. So how many have
you
done?”

I take it back:
this
is the question I don’t want to answer. “Not that many.”

“Come on, you can tell me. Are you working on one now?”

“No, I’m sort of between jobs. I wanted to ask if you had any advice—”

There’s a tinkling sound like wind chimes and Ariella lifts up a finger: “Hold on.” She pulls her phone out of her
purse and turns off the alarm. “Shoot. I have to go. Fawn’s on break now. She works at the Elegant Imprint—the card store? Fawn LaSalle. Do you know her? I met her at a concert at Otter Beach Pier last weekend. There was this huge crowd, and she was like halfway across the boardwalk, but that didn’t matter because—
ping!
—I felt her wish. Has that ever happened to you? Fawn and I are meeting now so we can check out the ‘target.’ I like to do a cruise-by and assess the difficulty level, and then I can work out a strategy. How do you work it with your beneficiary?”

“That’s what you call them? Isn’t a beneficiary someone who inherits money when somebody else dies?”

Ariella stands and straightens her skirt. “A beneficiary is someone who benefits. And our beneficiaries benefit from our magic. Why, what do you call them?” Before I can answer, her phone chimes again. “Sorry, Delaney! Gotta go. But I promise I’ll stop by your store the next time I’m here.” Ariella drops her cell back into her purse and adjusts her headband. Behind her, the swaying fountain seems to frame her in a halo of glittering watery light. “Feel free to call me anytime, day or night. There’s so much more we have to talk about!” She sprints off, unwrapping a new candy stick—orange—as she goes. She must be a sugar addict. With all her sweetness and sparkle, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was
made
of sugar.

My whole body relaxes now that she’s gone. Without her voice chirping away, the sounds of the laughing kids
and chatting lunch-breakers and jazzy fountain music flood into the vacuum and blend together in a soothing audio haze. The calm is accompanied by the realization that Ariella Patterson and I could never be friends. I don’t care if she’s the only other f.g. I’ll ever meet. The one thing I wanted to ask her—how do you find your next client?—she wouldn’t be able to answer anyway. She doesn’t
have
to find them. Their wishes storm through crowds to find her.
Ping!
I won’t be calling her. I’ll delete the number she programmed into my phone when we were in line at the Ice Cream Cottage. If she comes into Treasures, I’ll just be “busy.” She’ll get the message, eventually. And if she doesn’t, she’ll have probably granted her “beneficiary’s” wish by the end of the week anyway, so she’ll be out of my life.

When I walk into Treasures, Nancy looks expectantly up from her book, and I realize that I forgot all about the Nutri-Fizzy.

“Sorry,” I say. “The line was endless, and then right before I was going to order, the carbonation machine broke or something.” I hand Nancy back her money and avoid her eyes, though I can feel the skepticism wafting off her.

“That’s all right, honey. I’ll live. You will too.”

Whatever
that
means. Do I look like I’m dying? I trudge back to the vintage clothing room but pause at the doorway. Across from me stand the boots. I’d almost forgotten. I walk over and pick up the repaired one and run a hand
down its smooth, unmarred surface. It’s definitely as good as new. Well, good as
used
, but better than it was.

It wasn’t all a waste meeting Ariella. I still don’t have a client. I still don’t know how to get one, and the extent of my full powers remains a mystery. But at least one thing that had gone wrong today went right.

“Dad! I have to talk to you!” I slam the door behind me and dash through the dining room to the kitchen. After tossing my backpack on the counter, I open the pantry, looking for the Pop-Tarts I slipped into the shopping cart the last time we were at the grocery store. The surreal experience of meeting another f.g. has made me crave something warm and toasty and junky. Not a lot of that in Dr. Hank’s House of Health, but I’ve been staking my claim, slowly. I have nothing against vegetables, but Dad goes overboard. For instance, the leafy greens taking up the bottom shelf of the fridge look like they’ve been dredged up from a swamp or harvested from somebody’s front-yard ground cover.

I find the Pop-Tarts behind a box of ten-grain crackers. Soon one is heating up in the toaster and giving off that nice burnt-jam smell.

“Dad!”

His car’s here, so I know he’s home. I yell again and finally I hear his footsteps approaching from the hall, but it’s his cologne that enters the room first. It’s so intense and eye-watering, it’s like a special-effects monster. A fog of cinnamon and musk come to terrifying life. It’s completely crushed my little Pop-Tart’s nice grapey aroma.

“What did I tell you about the screaming, Delaney?” Dad says when he catches up to his cologne.

“I wasn’t screaming. I was calling. I have to tell you something earth-shattering.”

“Then you could have come down the hall and told me. In a civilized voice.”

“You said never to disturb you when you’re in your office.” I pop my tart onto a plate and lean close to inhale. Nope. The cologne has won.

“Yelling at the top of your lungs
is
disturbing.”

“You weren’t in your office anyway. You were in the beauty parlor.” I take a bite of the Pop-Tart and wave the rest at his slicked-back hair. “Why did you do that to your hair?” I say between chews. “It makes your receding hairline look even more receding.”

Dad pats his forehead worriedly. “No, it doesn’t.” He peers at his reflection in the door of the microwave.

“Like a wave pulling away from the shore. Farther and farther. Out to sea.”

Dad frowns. “I don’t need the metaphor, thank you. Is that your dinner?”

“I’m going out with Flynn, remember?”

“Be sure you’re home by eleven. I’m having dinner with Gina, but I’ll be home before that. Now, what did you want to tell me?” Dad waits, listening intently, a Dr. Hank–type “I’m standing by to help you solve all your problems” expression on his face.

I swallow my last bite of Pop-Tart and feel a flutter of worry. He’s the one person who would truly understand the significance of what happened today, but whatever I say needs to come out just right so that I’m not subjected to a life-coach session on how “this experience is an important part of your individual learning path,” in which I’m then ordered to create a ten-step plan on how I can use the experience to “empower my choices for action” or “choose my actions for empowerment” or whatever.

Talking to Dad is the opposite of how it was to talk to Mom. She would say things like “Wow” and “It’s okay, that’s how I’d feel too.” When I talked to her, I could get to the end of things, but with Dad it’s like you’re just starting. I don’t want an action plan, because part of it would be seeing Ariella again, which I will
not
be doing.

“Delaney? Did you want to tell me or not? I’m already late.” Dad pulls on the jacket he’s carried in with him.
“Gina’s taking Theo to his father’s and then I’m meeting her at the restaurant, so I have to get going.”

“Will you promise not to give me any advice?”

Dad pauses in his jacket-buttoning and gives me a look. “The reason I give you advice, honey, is because I’m trying to help—”

“Never mind.”

“Delaney—”

“No, go on. It’s okay. It was nothing big. I had a problem with a boot design, that’s all.”

“Are you
sure
that’s all? You said it was earth-shattering.”

I pluck his car keys off the key ring on the wall next to the door and hand them to him. “I was exaggerating. Like I’ve done a million times before.”

Dad smiles and takes the keys. He leans over and kisses my cheek, his cologne cloud enveloping me. “Okay, we’ll talk later. And don’t forget. Eleven o’clock.” Then he’s gone, out the door, his monster cologne fog dragging behind him, leaving just a dying vapor.

My cell buzzes. Posh must be calling me back. Thank God. Finally, I can tell
somebody
. On the cell’s screen, a star-burst flares and the name “Ariella P” glows underneath. I hit Ignore and dial Posh.

“Delaney!” Posh squeals, but before I can say anything, she launches into a giggling fit and there’s a
thunk
, like she’s dropped the phone, and then more giggles, and a guy’s voice saying something I can’t understand, and Posh saying, “No more tickling! I’ll get hiccups.”

Ugh. I end the call. You’d think I’d get more respect when it was me who made all these happily-ever-afters happen. Dad never would’ve gone out with Gina if I hadn’t tricked him into it, and if I hadn’t moved away and left Posh with no one to dominate her time, she never would’ve ended up in her backyard one night with Christopher, watching shooting stars and embarking on geek romance.

Not that it matters. Who cares about any of them? Flynn’s coming in half an hour and I haven’t changed yet.

Finding the perfect outfit for tonight.
That’s
what matters.