A Snicker of Magic (21 page)

“I should ground you for getting home so late and not calling first,” Mama scolded as she set a glass of milk down in front of me.

“I was trying to find Florentine. I had something I wanted to show her.”

Plus, I had a curse that I wanted her to undo or fix or whatever a person does to make a curse worthless. My mission failed. Nobody had seen Florentine and no wind-chime wind alerted me to her whereabouts. Now it was too late. The Duel was happening tomorrow. The Gallery was almost finished. We’d be gone before the week was over; I could feel it.

Mama sat down at the table across from me, clutching a warm mug of tea. She looked so pretty with paint in her hair.

“Gallery’s looking good,” I said.

Mama grinned, just barely — her smile resting like a crescent moon behind the rim of her mug. “Something’s still missing. I can’t quite figure out what —”

“Take all the time you need!” I squealed.

Mama sighed. Her eyes glossed over in a far-off, faraway stare.

“That Gallery,” Cleo said around her cigarette, “looks more beautiful than it has
ever
looked. I’ll bet it didn’t look that good back when Stone Weatherly painted it.”

“I hope everybody’s pleased with it.” Mama nodded. “It was nice of them to let me be part of something so special.”

Was.

Them.

Those are distance words. Mama was already past-tensing, already reminiscing about a place we hadn’t even left yet. I settled back in my seat and asked the question we were all afraid to ask. But there was no point holding back any longer. “How soon are we leaving once you get done?”

Cleo glanced up from her quilt. Boone looked over the couch at us. Frannie Jo was about to snap the last piece into a puzzle, but she stopped and looked at Mama, too. Mama didn’t look at us. She looked at the door. She’d already packed up some grocery bags and laundry baskets full of our stuff.

“Day after tomorrow.” Mama sipped her tea. “I told them we’d be there by next week.”

One more day.

That’s all I had left in Midnight Gulch. Twenty-four measly hours.

Cleo looked back down at her quilt, but I could see her lip trembling. Boone looked straight ahead again and Frannie Jo picked up her puzzle, piece by piece, and put it back in the box. Her little blue suitcase was propped by the door, too, ready for a new beginning, as Mama liked to say.

But I was sick of always beginning. I just wanted to be.

“June Bug.” Mama’s voice broke the silence. “Do you want me to help you with the rest of your poems for the Duel?”

I shook my head. “I think I need to do that part on my own. Thanks, though.”

“Are you still feeling good about it?” Mama reached to touch the fringe of my brand-new bangs.

Before I could answer, we all heard the music. Not wind-chime music. Banjo music. And it wasn’t coming from Boone. The banjo music was coming from outside in the parking lot.

“What in the … ?” Cleo asked.

Boone was already opening the door onto Cleo’s tiny patio, the one Mama never let us step on because she was afraid it would crumble.

“That’s Day Grissom!” Boone yelled.

“Oh,
no
,” Cleo groaned.

“Cleopatra Glorietta Harness!” Day yelled at the top of his lungs. “I wrote a song for you, and I’m about to play it. Right here. Right now.”

“Somebody shut that man up before the police come!” Cleo threw down her quilt pieces. “Or before every dog
in Midnight Gulch starts howling.” She stomped out onto the patio and yelled, “Or before everybody in this complex realizes some drunk old idiot is singing in the parking lot!”

“Hey there, Cleo!” Day hollered from down below.

We all ran for the patio and crammed out onto the little porch beside my aunt. She groaned, pulled the cigarette out of her mouth, and stared down at my gnarly-bearded bus driver.

Day Grissom cleared his throat and sang:

“Day
Grissom
.” She hissed through clenched teeth. And then she shouted out a string of unsavory words that caused Boone to laugh and Mama to clamp her hands down over Frannie Jo’s ears. “Get outta my parking lot!”

“Then you get outta my heart!” Day yelled back. He clutched his banjo across his chest the same way I’d seen Boone do, like that plunky instrument might keep his heart safe from harm.

“What’s that s’posed to mean?” Cleo asked.

“I only mean that …” Day shuffled nervously back and forth. “I came to tell you …”

“Spit it out, you old geezer,” Cleo said.

“I came to tell you” — Day stood up straight and looked right up at the balcony — “that I’m sorry.”

That shut Cleo up. Whatever she was about to shout back got stuck in her mouth. She took a long draw on her cigarette instead.

“You should have told me that twenty years ago,” Cleo said in a curl of smoke.

Patch it

Mend it

Stitch it back together

“You’re right,” Day said.

“And I ain’t the same girl I was twenty years ago,” Cleo said. “And you definitely ain’t the same man. Look at how you’ve let yourself go! Showing up here looking like some Cracker Barrel Santa Claus.”

Cleo was trying to talk mean, but she didn’t sound very convincing. Day Grissom could tell it, too. “I should have married you, Cleo Harness. I’d marry you right now if you’d have me.”

“The way we fought?” Cleo laughed. “Mercy! I’d have pushed you off the bridge by now if we were married. That’s a fact!”

“If I was married to you,” Day hollered back, “I would have jumped off that bridge by now. Shoot, I’d let you push
me.” He grinned big and goofy up at the balcony again. “I’d
fall
for you, Cleopatra. Get it?”

“What I
got
,” Cleo said, “is age and insight.”

“Hindsight,” Mama whispered.

“Hindsight, hind end, whatever!” Cleo smashed out her cigarette on the rail. “We’re too old, Day. We’ve made too many mistakes now.”

“I still love you,” Day said. “The way I figure it, that should cover every single mistake from here on out.”

Cleo let out a ragged breath. She wiped the sweat off her forehead.

“Maybe you should come down and hear what I have to say? And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can mosey back up to that apartment and I’ll never bother you again.”

“You might as well go down, Cleo,” Mama said. “He’s a persistent man.”

“Don’t I know it,” Cleo sneered. Day Grissom howled out another song as we shut the patio door and crowded back into the living room. Cleo mumbled unsavory words as she slid on her flip-flops and stomped to the door. She flung the door open. Instead of walking out, she shut the door and sighed.

She checked her reflection in the mirror. Her hand was shaking as she fluffed her hair. “I ain’t the same girl I was,” Cleo mumbled. “I ain’t pretty like I was back then. He’s forgot. But he’ll remember when he sees me up close.”

“You definitely aren’t pretty like you were back then,” Boone said. He put his arm around Cleo and kissed her cheek. “You’re beautiful now. A person has to work hard to be your kind of beautiful, Cleo.”

“Don’t be stupid, Boone.” Cleo waved him off, but I could see her real answer shining in her eyes. Boone’s words meant the world to her. Better yet, I could see in her eyes that she knew Boone’s words were true.

“I mean it,” Boone said. “Don’t make this too easy for Day Grissom.”

Cleo nodded, her lip trembling again. Then she sighed, held her chin up high, and stomped out the door.

I wrote to the sound of the banjo’s plink and the clock’s ticktock.

I thought Cleo’s wall clock was spindiddly when I first saw it, but now it only made me sad. The clock sounded like a fake heartbeat, every
tick-tick-tick
a steady reminder that my time was almost up.

I heard Boone and Mama talking about Aunt Cleo, and Frannie Jo talking to Biscuit, and the weatherman talking about seasons changing. The whole world seemed to be yammering away while I tried to work. Only the midnight moon stayed silent as it peeked through Cleo’s window, checking on my progress. The bone-white light shimmered over my words and made me feel like I held the finest magic, words worth spinning, stories worth telling.

“Okay!” I hollered. “I’m ready to practice!”

I ran to the center of Cleo’s living room. Boone muted the newsman, then he and Mama and Frannie Jo and Biscuit all crammed close together on the couch, watching me. I clutched my blue book tight as I read my first poem, but the words didn’t feel right. I barely got through two full stanzas before I was tongue-tied. “Boone?” I said, glancing up.

“You’re doing great!” He nodded back.

“I wasn’t in need of affirmation,” I sighed. “I was wondering … if you’d play your banjo while I talk? Maybe the music will get my words where they need to go.”

Boone pulled his banjo up into his lap and strummed softly. And I dueled once, then twice, then a third time. The first time was a mess. The second time was less messy but still clunky.

But the third time? The third time was spindiddly, if I do say so myself.

I slammed the refrigerator door shut when I heard Cleo’s key turn in the lock. I thought about trying to duck down, real sneaky, so she wouldn’t see me in the kitchen. But then I thought about how she’d probably get after me with her broom, so I said, “I’m here, Cleo.”

Cleo startled. She leaned down and stared into the dark, looking for me. “Felicity? You still awake?”

I opened the refrigerator door again so she could see my face. “I was hungry,” I said.

“At midnight?” Cleo walked over to the kitchen and propped her hand on the door. “What are you hungry for at midnight?”

“Ice cream.” I smiled.

Cleo nodded. “That’s my girl. Hand me a carton, too. You finish your Duel stuff?”

“Yep,” I said. I passed Cleo a pint of Chocolate Chip Pork Rind. “You marrying Day Grissom?”

“Ha,” Cleo clucked. She shuffled out of the kitchen. “You go to sleep now. You gotta be top-notch for the Duel tomorrow. I got a big surprise for you in the morning.” I could hear a smile in Cleo’s voice when she turned back and said, “I sure am proud of you, no matter how it turns out. I don’t want you to ever forget how proud I am of you, no matter where you wander off to.”

“I never will,” I promised.

Cleo walked on down the hall to her bedroom. I heard Boone yell
OOOF!
when Cleo accidentally kicked him. But then I heard Cleo chuckle and realized it probably wasn’t an accident at all. After that, the whole apartment got quiet again.

I opened the freezer and took out the pint of Blackberry Sunrise.

SWEET

AMENDS

If there was something in that ice cream that would help me break Isabella’s curse … I needed to face it. Mama was packed and ready to roll. Even if we left town, I wanted to be able to look back and say that I tried.