Who Needs Magic? (14 page)

“Then why aren’t you out there helping her?” Ariella studies me with the same condescending big-sister expression she gave me at the Princess Shop. “Did something go wrong already?”

“No.” Although technically yes. But it’s not
me
who’s wrong.

“Then why are you interfering with me and Fawn?”

“Because Jeni’s in love with Ronald.”

Ariella takes this in. She retrieves a lime stick from her purse and peels down the plastic. “He’s a cute guy,” she says. “A lot of girls probably have a crush on him.”

“This isn’t a crush. I
felt
it. This is the real thing.”

“You’re being oversensitive to a small wish.”

“No, I’m not.” A high-pitched whine has crept into my voice and I glance down at the end table next to me.
Be calm
, I remind myself. “I know the difference between a small wish and a big one,” I say. “Jeni is my client, and Ronald is her wish.”

“Delaney …” Ariella shakes her head as if I’m some clueless loser she feels compelled to set right. “We’ve talked about this. You’ve had one beneficiary.
Ever
. In your whole life. And you got the wish
wrong
.”

“I’ve done the major f.g. magic with Jeni.” I take my chopstick out of my boot and wave it in the air. “That proves she’s my client. And it proves her wish is a big one.”

Ariella leans her hand on the Buddha’s head and takes a bite of her candy stick as she thinks this over. “Maybe you got the stepsister.”

“What stepsister?”

“You know. In
Cinderella
, the stepsisters were in love with Prince Charming too.”

“Neither of them had an f.g.”

“They might have had a lesser version. Somebody with weaker powers … like
you
.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. If it was true, it would’ve been in the story. I mean, that’s a pretty big plot element to leave out.”

“It’s a really old fairy tale, Delaney. Practically a myth. Parts of it have been lost along the way.” She points the lime stick at me. “There isn’t any fairy godmother in the Grimm one at all. It’s a bird.”

I already know this from my library research, but it doesn’t prove anything. “So what? I know what I felt.”

“I believe you connected with her wish, Delaney. And I also believe you mean well. But which one of us is more likely to have sensed the
real
wish? The fairy godmother who’s been doing the job for only a few months and has never granted a big wish correctly? Or the one who’s been doing it for
six
years and has granted
eighty-two
?”

I point my chopstick at her. “Did you ever think maybe you’ve been rushing it a little? Grabbing the first wish you feel because you’re so determined to get to a hundred by your birthday?” I step near her, pointing the chopstick. “All you’re focused on is upping your numbers so you can show up your mom.” We circle the pillows, wands out in front of us like daggers. Ariella glares at me, but there’s a glimmer of doubt in her eyes. “When all you care about is the goal, you’re going to make mistakes.”

“I’m a
professional
,” Ariella snaps. “I don’t make mistakes.” As she says this, she stumbles on the edge of a pillow and loses her balance, dropping her lime stick and knocking her elbow into a stand of wind chimes. The little
metal tubes ram into each other in tinkling protest as Ariella lands, butt-first, on the pillow.

It’s really hard not to grin, but I repress it. Not very well, I guess, because Ariella’s glare gets sharper and colder. “This is
not
how a fairy godmother behaves,” she says. She pushes herself up from the floor.

“Maybe you’re right,” I tell her. “Maybe I
am
something else. A superior version that’s evolved over the years. Look at you, with all your pink and glitter.” I circle my wand at her, making a big lasso in the air, with her in the middle. “You’re totally old-school.”

Ariella fixes her headband. “I’m the real thing,” she says. “And you’re just a wannabe.” She smoothes out her skirt, snatches up her lime stick and brushes past me, batting the gauze curtain aside. I follow Ariella back out to the main room of the store. She stops at the door. “I don’t want to fight you, Delaney,” she says as she drops her candy stick into a trash can painted with swirling spirals.

“No, you just want me to cave.”

Ariella doesn’t answer.

“But I’m not going to. I’m getting Jeni her wish.”

Ariella shoves open the door, setting off another cascade of chimes.

“Namaste!”
the girl at the counter calls out to us.

“Same to you!” I say, and then step outside—to find Ariella waiting for me, blocking my way.

“I’m warning you one last time, Delaney. Don’t do this.”

I feel a flicker of worry, but I quickly tamp it down.
“I’m not afraid of you, or your fruit-flavored pseudo-wands, Tinker Bell.”

Ariella’s blue eyes narrow and take on an icy gleam. “If you insist on marching your carved-up, out-of-season boots down this dangerous path, you and your ‘client’ are going to be very sorry.”

I hold up my chopstick in a salute. “May the best f.g. win.”

“All you have to remember is the code.”

“P.W.F.S.L.”

“Right. Follow the code and you’ll do great, okay?”

Jeni nods one of her barely perceptible mini-nods, which I’m able to detect only because I’m staring at her so intently. She squeezes the iron armrest on the bench and nervously murmurs the letters to herself while I lean back, breathe in the calming, suntan-lotion-scented air wafting out of Fiji Escapes and picture Ariella’s horror when I tell her that my Cinderella has beaten hers to the prince.

I also imagine Flynn’s awe when he hears about my f.g. triumph. He’d invited me out to a concert last night, but I
told him I was doing something with Dad. I have to get this wish done first before I can say yes to any plans. Luckily, now that Jeni knew it was either go after Ronald or risk unraveling her destiny, I was able to reel her back in pretty quickly. I explained that Fawn was the girlfriend of Ronald’s best friend. “She was in the store to buy shoes for her boyfriend, for his birthday,” I told Jeni. Either it’s getting easier to lie, or Truth Altering is yet another advanced f.g. power.

Because Ronald and Jeni don’t know each other, I’ve come up with a plan for their “meet cute,” which is what they call it in romantic comedies when the hero and heroine first connect. I read it in a movie review when I was doing my online research, and I thought it was a good technique for an f.g. to use.

The best sort of “meet cute” is one where it later seems like fate was behind it all. And it will be fate, because aren’t fate and fairy godmothers the same thing?

After doing a little spying on Ronald, I discovered that every day, on his two breaks, he buys a Nutri-Fizzy (morning break) or a coffee (afternoon break) and hangs out at the fountain to check his text messages.

Then I came up with my plan.

I wanted the meeting to be relaxed. Not something farcical and crazy that could only happen in the movies. All I needed was a trigger to get the conversation started and a couple of prompts for Jeni to use to keep it going, until nature and chemistry kicked in and the romance took off
on its own. A torso-less male mannequin in a Hawaiian (or I guess Fijian) shirt and straw sunhat stares coolly down at me from the Fiji Escapes window like he doubts my plan. What does
he
know? He’s a brainless piece of plastic who’s been sliced off at the chest. He should stick to his own problems and not waste time trying to knock down my high expectations, which can’t be done anyway.

“What do the letters stand for?” I might as well quiz Jeni for the tenth time, since we’ve still got a few minutes.

“Pomegranate walnut Fizzy with selenium and lime.”

“Right. That’s how to remember it, but what is it really?”

“Um … take my
place
 … the
wallet
 … um … uh …”

“The ‘F’ is the easiest one, Jeni. It’s the same.”

“Right! Fizzy! ‘S’ is shoe store, and ‘L’ is ‘What are you listening to?’ ”

“Yes! Perfect. It’s going to go great.”

Summer shoppers shuffle past us, their shopping bags hanging from elbows and stroller handles, temporarily blocking our view.

Then the crowd clears, and—

“There he is!” Jeni’s eyes brighten. At the fountain, Ronald is taking up his usual space at the stone wall. His back is to the water and the sun hits him like a spotlight as his body bops in time to a beat only he can hear, thumbs tapping and scrolling. “It’s like the space is reserved for him,” Jeni coos, as I think the same thing. The rest of the rail is packed with shoulder-to-shoulder grade-schoolers
and camera-clicking tourists, but somehow Ronald’s butt has managed to slip right in—to the exact place I’d seen him before, like there’s some magnet in his pants that repels the crowd and draws him to the spot.

“In a second, you’ll be right next to him.” I take Jeni’s hand and pull her to her feet. “Repeat it again.”

“P.W.F.S.L.”

“Good.”

“But aren’t you supposed to … you know.”

“What?”

Jeni waves a hand up and down in front of her.

“The whole servant-girl-to-beauty-queen magic makeover? That would be superficial, and wrong. Magic is a tool. I’ll use it to help you but not to change you. You need to be
you
, because that’s who Ronald’s meant to be with, not some fake fairy-tale princess. The whole ball-gown thing’s for people with no confidence.”

“
I
have no confidence.”

“I mean f.g.s with no confidence. You don’t need confidence. I mean, you do, but that’s easy because all you have to do is be yourself, which you already are. Okay?”

“Well …”

“We’re wasting time.” I spin her around by the shoulders. “You’re meant to be. Just keep telling yourself that.”

“We’re meant to be. We’re meant to be.”

“Right. Don’t forget the code, though.”

“P.W.F.S.L., P.W.F.S.L.”

I guide Jeni forward a few steps and then let go. Miraculously,
she keeps walking. I see her fingers curl one by one and then straighten again as she repeats her mantra.

I sprint over to observe from behind a vendor cart selling sun hats. When Jeni gets close enough, I pull out my chopstick. It’s another one of those mysterious f.g. rules that allows me to use my wand to perform magic that no one is actually wishing for, as long as it helps with the client’s big wish. I narrow in on a girl eating a salad from a plastic container. I hate to litter, so I won’t send it flying into the pond. Too bad there’s no recycling nearby, but if Lourdes were here, she’d say that nobody should be ordering meals stored in those plastic things in the first place.

A wave of the chopstick and the salad and its unenvironmental container vanish. The girl glances around in confusion, searches the ground at her feet, then hops off the rail and peers into the water. If she tried the trash can next to the hat vendor, she’d score, although I doubt she’d want to dig soggy lettuce leaves out of the trash. She searches around for a few more seconds, even looking up, as if maybe she’ll see a bird flying off with it. Finally she squints at her watch and frowns. Lunch break is probably over. She’ll have to settle for a protein bar. The girl walks away and Jeni takes her place, one body closer to Ronald.

The next three are just as easy. A little girl’s orange and silver pinwheel flies from her hand, onto the ground several feet away. She chases it and Jeni moves over. A security guard fidgets, his uniform suddenly itchy, thanks to the bits of grass I’ve transported under his collar, and
he steps forward to scratch. Jeni slides into his spot. A fountain jet spurts up wildly, spraying a man and woman holding hands, causing them to leap back and brush water from their shirts—and, at last, Jeni is next to her prince. She’s in place and “P” is taken care of. It really didn’t need to be part of the code, but I knew she was nervous and I wanted to give her an easy, guaranteed victory right away. Thanks to our f.g.-client connection, I can feel her tiny surge of confidence, and there’s a faint smile on her face—so I know this was the right thing to do.

Time for me to move in closer. I take the long way around the fountain and look for a spot a few bodies away from Jeni and Ronald. Close enough to listen in, far enough away not to be seen.

There’s somebody at the rail where I want to be, a woman reading the free mall newsletter. Not for long, though. She suddenly spins around to look for whoever tapped her shoulder (no one), and I’m able to slip in. I retrieve a small pad and pencil from my shoulder bag and flip to a fresh page to sketch. After I’ve gotten a few lines on the page, I angle the pencil toward Ronald.

Jeni blinks down at the wallet in her hands, surprised, even though she knew this was the next step. “ ‘W,’ ” she says to herself in wonder. Ronald glances up for a second, not at Jeni, just in vague confusion. He knows something’s wrong, but what?
We
know, Ronald. And soon
you’ll
find out.

Jeni bends down and then straightens back up, holding out the wallet in both palms like a lotus flower. “Um …”

Come on, Jeni. “W.” Wallet. You’re staring right at it.

“Um …” Oh, no. “Walnut?”

Ronald, listening to his MP3 player, can’t hear her, but a mouthed “walnut” looks enough like “wallet,” I guess, and he does see the wallet in her hand.

He pulls out his earbud. “Hey! Wow, thanks. It must’ve fallen out.” He takes the wallet from Jeni and stuffs it back in his pocket. “I don’t know how that happened. I haven’t moved since I got here.”

“Um …”

My f.g. radar picks up Jeni’s panic as it clashes with her yearning, fear trumping desire. I can sense her struggling, her fingers curling up again as she mentally recites the letters. This is the easy one, Jeni! I spin my pencil to make the bubbles in Ronald’s Nutri-Fizzy fizz.

“Fizzy!” Jeni blurts out. Thank God.

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Cherry with the B-12 boost. My a.m. jolt. Hey! You work there, right? I recognize you.”

“Uh …”

Ronald laughs. “Oh, yeah. Stupid question. You got the uniform on. Duh, man! I’m Ronald.”