A Farewell to Charms (13 page)

He had to have been following orders from Genevieve, who needed to find me a
real
agent soon, since the woman was obviously so busy that she didn’t think about the consequences of sending Floressa’s information directly to my house.

Dear Desi,

Lucky you, right? I thought you’d want a couple of things to help you prepare for our Match. Most of this is last season, so nothing lost. I just want you to get in the habit of wearing my styles, accessorizing with my jewelry line, and moisturizing with my beauty essentials. You’ll also find a copy of my scrapbook, which should give you enough history on me. Or you could look online. After all, I was the number-three Internet buzzword last month, right after some war in…some country.

And I wanted to, you know, thank you for your help with my mom and my father, King Aung. So this is the ultimate of ultimate down-lows, but things between them are very cozy at the moment—disgustingly so. Like, they’re-back-together cozy. Like, they-finish-each-other’s-sentences cozy. TELL AND YOU DIE.

So I’ve also had my people assemble a binder on the king and his country and stuff. We’ve hung out a couple of times since the news broke about him being my dad. All in secret—it’s very new and we don’t want the paparazzi watching. He’s decent. I’m not going to buy a T-shirt for him that says world’s greatest dad anytime soon, but I like him. Plus, he bought Barrett and me his-and-her motorcycles for our six-month anniversary. They’re mint-condition vintage. No touching!

I don’t know what happens next. I guess we’ll meet up sometime? There is so much about me you still need to learn. Like, did you know my favorite vegetable is broccoli, but only if it’s in broccoli cheese soup, and only if the cheese is imported? See? I’m complicated. Get reading.

Floressa

Even though I would have preferred Matching for Elsa, I had to hand it to Floressa—she was very comfortable with who she was. And sometimes, a high-maintenance princess is easier to copy. I could make any demand and it wouldn’t be considered out of character. And with Floressa living in Hollywood, it could be fun to ask for all sorts of crazy stuff. Diamonds, expensive cars, lunch with famous actors…

Wait. My grip tightened on the expensive tennis racket I’d just dug out of box six. Genius moment. There was one random request I could make, one task that might seem a little weird for Floressa, but still be totally doable. I don’t know how I didn’t even link the two before. Next time I subbed for Floressa, I could pay a visit to a certain struggling actress who also lived in L.A., an actress who Meredith once knew as a sub—Caprice. I could give her a very special gift.

The gift of magic.

I
’d gone to the Winter Ball every December since I was a baby. I remembered when I was seven, they had a real live reindeer in this makeshift stable across from the community center, and all the kids sat on the fence and watched the animal poop. When I was ten, I earned third place in the city Paint a Winter Wonderland contest, and Celeste was so jealous that she told me only weird people were artists, even though she’d entered a picture too. Sproutville was small, sometimes small-minded, but I always looked forward to the Winter Ball. The buildup to the event was bigger this year, now that I knew how much work went into planning it. The meeting had items of business on everything from menus to entertainment. Reed, Kylee, and I sat in our cold foldout chairs, staring at the snow outside of the community center, while two PTA moms argued over the ball DJ.

Mrs. Gunther, the mayor’s wife and Winter Ball chairperson, finally stood and clapped her hands together, blue veins marbling her translucent white skin. I knew Kylee was going to call her a ghost, probably from a movie called
The Mayor’s Wife Returns.
“Ladies. We can continue the eighties love songs versus modern-country-music debate at a later time. I appreciate both of your remarks.”

The two women mumbled apologies and sat down on opposite sides of the community gym. Reed caught my eye and mouthed, “Save me.”

Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any more awesome, Celeste Juniper bumped through the doors of the community center with another girl, Annie. Annie used to be my friend in elementary school, but she ultimately sided with Celeste. Although I was over the whole split, I didn’t need that tension here when things were already so awkward with Kylee and Reed. There were only so many fruit baskets I could send until Kylee was done with me.

“Sorry we’re late! I’m here to get some hours logged.” Celeste flipped her highlighted curls. “Part of being a pageant princess is helping out in the community, you know.”

“How wonderful,” Mrs. Gunther said. “Why don’t you have a seat next to the other youth volunteers—we were just about to assign committees.”

The girls sat in the row behind us. Annie gave me a little wave and smiled at Kylee. “Hey, I think you’re in my math class.”

“Yeah,” Kylee said. “That test today was so hard, huh?”

Annie’s eyes widened. “I know! When are we ever going to use a quadratic equation?”

Celeste leaned in between Reed and me. “Well, look. It’s the happy couple.”

“Hey, Celeste,” Reed said. “Didn’t think you would make it.”

“Don’t call us that,” I hissed. Why was she harping on the couple thing? And wait, what did Reed mean about the “making it”? Did he know she was coming? Did they TALK? “Why don’t you go volunteer somewhere else?”

“I didn’t know I was crashing your duo.” She glanced at Kylee. “Oh, never mind. So it’s not couple time just yet.”

Kylee stared straight ahead, but she obviously heard Celeste’s comment. Great, like things weren’t hard enough. Why was Celeste here anyway? Didn’t she have a tiara to go shine?

“Next item of business,” Mrs. Gunther said. “The decorations committee needs more volunteers to help decorate the trees around the outside pavilion. You need a good eye for ornamentation—”

Reed practically shot out of his chair. “Desi and I can do it!”

“How cute,” Celeste said.

I tugged on Reed’s shirt. “Reed.”

“She’s really into, uh, aesthetics,” he added. “And I’ve already been doing some decorations for Chuck at the skating rink.”

I snuck a look at Kylee. She was biting her lip and staring at the ground. The only thing she asked was to not leave her out. This was exactly what I didn’t want to have happen. “And Kylee is really good at, um, decorating, too.”

“Sounds like a two-person job to me,” Celeste said.

No way. I was not ditching my friend. I stood up and folded my arms across my chest. “With three, two of us could hang things and the other one could step back and say if it’s even.”

Mrs. Gunther scribbled a note on her clipboard. “That’s a very good idea—”

“But Kylee’s a musical genius.” Reed’s eyes were going to pop out if he kept bugging them at me. Why was he acting like this? “So it’d be really helpful for her to work with the DJ.”

“But—”

Kylee’s face flamed, and she looked down. “No, it’s cool, Desi. Reed has a good point.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” I said.

“This isn’t about socialization, anyway.” Mrs. Gunther peered over her glasses at me. Man, she was creepy. “We’ll have several adults working on decorations as well, but you two can add a little…vim and vigor to the team.”

Vim and vigor? What the heck did that mean? I shot Reed a desperate look, but he kicked me in the calf.

“We need to be alone, remember?” he whispered loudly. Celeste beamed. Kylee looked close to tears.

And although I understood what he was saying—that we needed to be alone so we could discuss Façade—I knew how much this was hurting Kylee. But what could I do? This was the only opportunity that Reed and I had a decent alibi to be alone together to talk—this was, after all, the reason we were even volunteering. Decorating the trees would be perfect. We could mute our conversation and pretend to work while we planned. And the things we discussed could help us figure out something bigger than a friendship, bigger than Sproutville, bigger than almost anything.

But if I didn’t stand up for Kylee right now, then that crack between us was going to become a canyon. If the tables were turned, this wouldn’t have even been an issue, because she would have marched over to the clipboard and signed us all up for the same thing.

Who’d have thought the Sproutville Winter Ball Planning Committee could be so life-changing? “Can we, uh, switch positions? Soon? Can Kylee help with music, but then come help Reed and me later? The music won’t take as long. And we do need her help.”

“If I say yes, will you kids stop playing tug-of-war?” Mrs. Gunther asked.

“Yes,” we all mumbled.

Mrs. Gunther pointed to the gym door with her pencil. “Then, you two, go to the storage closet and start unpacking some of the older decorations. Figure out what is salvageable. And music girl. You come with me. As for pageant girl and your friend…you can be on cleanup.”

“Clean?” Celeste squeaked. “You want me to
clean
?”

Reed walked away without a look back. The tug-of-war wasn’t over for me, though. For the first time, it felt like I had to choose one life over the other, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to follow Reed.

Kylee flashed a false smile. “It’s okay. Go.”

“No. This is stupid. Just come with us.” I grabbed her hand. “You don’t want to go sit with some cheesy Sproutville DJ and go through his old CD collection.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Kylee pulled away. “But it’ll probably be easier than going with you and Reed. He obviously wants to be alone with you.”

“Not because he likes me!” I nearly shouted, frustrated. “Because…ugh, because…”

“Uh-huh.” Kylee shook her head. “I’m going to go.”

She joined Mrs. Gunther on the stage.

Why couldn’t I help her? Why couldn’t I be a better friend? Why did this situation have to be so messed up?

I felt a tingle in my toes and nearly jumped in excitement. There it was. Magic. I didn’t know why it came so strongly, probably because my empathy was so intense at the moment. Also, it seemed the more I used my magic, the more naturally it came. Now I just had to channel that ability into…something. I looked around the room, but all I saw was a broom. This wasn’t the movie
Fantasia,
and I wasn’t Mickey Mouse.

“Something else, Desi?” Mrs. Gunter asked. Kylee looked up.

We made eye contact, and I put all my emotion, all my feelings and apology and helplessness into that look. I must have looked crazy, because Kylee stepped back like she’d been pushed. I visualized her mood softening, like a nice fluffy coat or a bucket of kittens. Soft kittens, naturally, without any claws. When she finally regained her balance, her expression went from sad to serene. “It’s okay,” she mouthed.

It was the best okay ever. I didn’t understand how I’d actually accomplished what I wanted to, but I did. My whole body was pulsing, and the warmth felt so good. Annie bumped Kylee’s hip, and they started to look at Annie’s iPod. Perfect—Kylee wouldn’t be alone. And Annie really was sweet, despite her Celeste association. Maybe we could all be friends. Content that Kylee would be fine for now, I turned to follow Reed. Instead, I was suddenly up close and personal with Celeste.

She smiled at me—a genuine smile, or as genuine as Celeste ever got. “Don’t worry about Kylee. She’ll get over it. That’s what good friends do—forgive and forget. Go see your boy.”

“He’s not my boy,” I said, exasperated. “And don’t talk to me about being a good friend.”

“If he’s not your boy, then why did he ask me to volunteer so Kylee wouldn’t be the only other girl here?” Celeste poked my arm. “He said he wanted a chance to work
alone
with you. I know you don’t have much dating experience, Desi, but trust me. That’s code for a boy liking you.”

I shook my head. Was Celeste Juniper seriously giving me love advice? “Reed asked you to come?”

“Duh, that’s what I said. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“So…so you’re being nice? To me?” I asked.

“Look, I owe you after the Miss Teen Dream pageant.” She narrowed her eyes. “Not that I wouldn’t have placed on my own.”

“Of course.”

“It’s so smart that Reed and you signed up for something that your parents won’t care about. Hayden’s mom has been so strict lately—I hardly ever get to see him.”

This was weird. Girl talk with Celeste. Make it stop. “Oh.”

“So, anyway. I totally get it. Annie and I are going to volunteer, we’ll hang out with Kylee so she’s not lonely while her best friend steals her crush—”

“Celeste!”

“What? I didn’t say that boy-stealing is a
bad
thing.”

“Of course you don’t think it is,” I said.

“Desi. You can’t sacrifice your own romantic happiness just because someone else might get hurt.”

Wow. As tactless as Celeste was, she kind of made sense. And bottom line, this wasn’t about Reed and me liking each other. We had to be together for much bigger reasons right now. I almost stopped the conversation there, but then I thought…“Hey. I don’t like Hayden anymore.”

“Uh, yeah. You like Reed. And Reed is hot. So get out there and make it work. I’ll be so mad if you chicken out after all the effort I put into this. I could have volunteered for Hayden’s soccer team instead.”

“Um…okay? Thank you, I think.”

“Kylee!” Celeste called. “That music better have a beat to it. We want to dance.”

I wandered into the hallway, a little dazed by my Celeste encounter. Had that magic I’d tried to use on Kylee—and I was pretty sure had miraculously worked, finally—somehow bounced onto Celeste, causing her to be, dare I say,
kind
? Was that what just happened? Had my ex–best friend really come to distract my
new
best friend so I could be alone with the boy we both liked? Even stranger, I think the boy we both liked had
arranged
the whole thing, not because he liked me, but because we needed to, um, save the world. Yeah, that’s about where things stood. This was totally going as planned. Completely.

When I got to the storage unit, Reed was already hauling out bins.

“Thanks a lot,” I said.

“Sorry. Did you want to carry this bin?” He pushed a bin into the hallway. He popped open the lid and yanked out a large strand of garland. “What do we do with this stuff? Disperse the plastic needles?”

“Did you just say disperse?”

“So?”

“It’s not a word guys I know would normally say.”

“The guys you know must be idiots, then, and it’s no secret that I’m far from normal. You have your manual on you?” he asked.

I readjusted the strap of my purse. “Always.”

“So, let’s get to work.”

I stuck my hand on my hip. “Before we start on that, I have to say that I am not cool with how you ditched Kylee. And what’s with you getting Celeste in on this?”

“I had to.” Reed frowned. “We can’t plan our grand scheme with Kylee around. Being alone to talk is the whole reason we signed up to do this committee. Celeste is just backup. She already started those rumors, so I used her meddling to our advantage.”

“So you want people to think we’re together?” I asked.

“What does that matter? We have more important things to worry about than junior-high gossip. And is that really such an awful rumor anyway?”

My cheeks burned. “No…I mean, yes. Or no…It’s just, Celeste is not a person I want to feel indebted to, and you could have been a little more sensitive about Kylee’s feelings.”

“Kylee doesn’t care. She likes music.”

“That’s not the point.” I threw a piece of garland at him.

He flopped down, stunned. “What was that for?”

“Kylee likes music, but she also likes
you
,” I yelled. “So how do you think she feels when her best friend and her crush are practically running away from her?”

“Kylee likes me?” Reed asked. “No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t even talk to me.”