Who Needs Magic? (15 page)

“Shoes …”

“Huh?”

“Um …”

I can’t stand it any longer. I step away from the rail and
catch Jeni’s eye. I draw an “L” in the air, but her blank look gets blanker, so I act it out, cheerleader style, one arm straight up, the other flung to the side. A couple of tween boys gape at me. I shoot them a glare and they avert their eyes.

“Listening …,”
Jeni says finally, sighing it out like a punctured bike tire.

Ronald stares at her a beat, as if she’s speaking in some strange code—which, actually, she is. “Okay, well. I gotta get back to work. Nice to meet you. You have a great day, okay?”
No, no, no
. They’re so close.

I need to act fast. Luckily, the girl next to Jeni is texting, not paying attention, so she doesn’t notice me flick my pencil in her direction. The wedge heel of Texting Girl’s left sandal cracks, causing her to fall sideways, and she crashes into Jeni, who tumbles into Ronald. Domino love. But Ronald doesn’t catch Jeni. The arms that were supposed to wrap around her fly up instead. He lets go of his phone, which sails free, soaring above the fountain pool. Ronald turns, following the phone with his eyes, throwing himself off-balance. His raised arms pinwheel …

If only Jeni had reached for him, grabbed an arm, a hand, the edge of his shirt—
anything
. Instead, Jeni jumps back and away from the fountain, her hands to her mouth, her eyes squinting in anticipation of the disaster that’s coming …

And that a split second later is here.

SPLASH!

Everybody turns to look. Some people back up, some lean forward. The grass-infested security guard dashes into the fray and helps the bystanders haul Ronald out of the water.

So much for steering clear of slapstick. I grab Jeni’s hand and drag her over the mini-bridge to the mini-lawn. Jeni’s lobotomized shock gives way to despair. “I pushed him!”

“
Shhh
. Technically,
I
pushed him. Well, indirectly. I was trying to save the whole thing from falling apart. Trying and
failing
.”

“I’m sorry.” Jeni sniffs and covers her mouth with her fists, as if to prevent a full-out wail.

I struggle between pity and irritation, but it’s a close battle. “Don’t apologize to me. It’s not
my
wish. What happened back there? We rehearsed it a million times.”

“I know! P.W.F.S.L.! P.W.F.S.L.! It’s the only thing I could remember.”

“What am I supposed to do? Write out a whole script for you to memorize?”

Jeni looks up, her fearful face taking on a hopeful glow. “Could you?”

“No. Because that wouldn’t work. How do I know what Ronald is going to say? Advanced mind reading is not one of the f.g. skills.”

“Oh.” Jeni wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
I find a tissue in my shoulder bag and give it to her. As I do, I catch a glimpse of twinkling light, coming from the direction of the movie theater.

And then I see
her
.

She peers out from behind one of the columns that hold up the movie theater marquee. She’s eating a grape candy stick, her headband glinting even in the shadows. She smiles, coy, takes the candy stick from her mouth and salutes me with it.

“So it’s hopeless?” Jeni asks.

I turn to her. “It’s
not
hopeless. We’re just getting started.” I glance back at the movie theater, ready to give Ariella a defiant sneer.

But she’s gone.

My sarcastic comment about writing a script gives me an idea. We’ll go to Jump Kicks, and while Ronald waits on Jeni, I’ll listen in and send her texts to tell her what to say. Having their romance begin in the store is better than the fountain, because instead of a glass slipper, it’ll be an athletic shoe that the prince will be slipping onto the foot of his prospective princess. How modern-day-fairy-tale can you get? It’s obviously what Ariella had planned with Fawn. Too bad it didn’t work.

Jeni is having a lot more success this time. It’s true that her responses to Ronald are a little delayed, the delivery of her lines is kind of wooden, and the number of “ums” and “uhs” is approaching astronomical, but at least the two of
them are having a conversation. It’s only about shoes so far, but once Jeni relaxes, I’ll send her more-personal questions to ask.

“Hi, I’m Sarah. Anything I can bring you to try on?” A woman in a red tracksuit has appeared at my side. She must’ve been in the back when we came in.

I swing a hand past a row of shoes. “You have these in a seven?”

“Which ones?”

“Um, all of them. In whatever colors you have. And maybe bring out all the six and a halves and seven and a halves too. To be safe.”

Sarah stares at me for a second, skeptical, but then leaves to get the shoes. That should keep her out of the way until my work is done.

Opposite me, Jeni jogs in place in a pair of purple running shoes. Ronald laughs. Excellent! The ice is broken. Flirtation is imminent.

“Here’s a couple to get you started.” Sarah has returned, carrying a small armful of boxes. She lifts the lid off the top box.

Ugh. This means I actually have to do it. I have to take off my boots and pull on a pair of flimsy canvas things that don’t even cover my ankles.

I unzip and lace up as slowly as I can, while doing my best to keep my ear tuned to Jeni and Ronald.

“Try walking around in them,” Sarah insists. “See how they feel.”

I know how they feel. Wrong. The skin on my calves has turned into a mass of goose bumps in the store’s air-conditioning, and I feel off-kilter without my usual chunky heels.

I wobble around the store, never getting too far from Jeni. My cell goes off just as I hear Ronald ask, “So how long have you been working at Nutri-Fizzy?”

The prince has asked a personal question first! This could
not
be going better. My phone rings again: Flynn. Since Jeni can answer Ronald’s question without my help, I take the call as I walk back to Sarah. “Hey,” Flynn says, “so I haven’t heard from you—”

“Hold on a sec.” Jeni has yet to speak. I notice she’s staring down—at her phone. You have
got
to be kidding me. She can’t be waiting for me to text her the answer.

“Delaney?” Flynn’s voice distracts me, and because my eyes are on Jeni, I’m not looking where I’m going. “I can’t talk right—” I stumble into the boxes mid-sentence. As I fall, I catch a flash of Ronald’s puzzled expression and a glimpse of Jeni’s panic, and then I hear Jeni whisper, “I don’t know.”

This could not be going worse.

Sarah helps dig me out of the rubble. I grab my phone to send Jeni a text—but then I see Jeni yanking off the running shoe, shoving her own shoe back on.

“What happened?” Flynn’s voice buzzes up at me. I forgot he was still on the line and I lift the phone to my ear. “Is everything okay?” he asks.

When is everything ever okay? When is anything ever not ridiculously, violently
not
okay?

“Everything’s fine.” The lies come automatically now. “I’ll call you later.”

I hang up and wave to Jeni. “Hold on!” I struggle to get the cross-trainers off, but she’s already at the exit, mumbling, “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” until she’s drowned out by the door’s cheerful “A customer has arrived!” chime.

Except this time it’s the sad gong of the customer gone.

When I get back to Treasures, I text Flynn that I’d tipped over some store inventory that had been precariously stacked and that’s why I couldn’t talk earlier. I was proud of myself—it was a totally believable fabrication, and was even sort of true, because I didn’t say which store. I’m making it a goal to find more ways to tell the truth in my lies so I won’t always feel worse at the end of every conversation than I did at the start. I’m determined to try this out when Flynn calls back. But he doesn’t call.

A couple of college-age girls come into the store, looking for sundresses to wear to a bridal shower, and while I help them, I struggle to think up a new strategy for getting Ronald and Jeni together. The ideas grow wilder and wilder, involving water balloons dropped from one of the store’s upper balconies and the derailing of the trolley that occasionally carries tourists and lazy shoppers from the
Alcove to the Annex and back. Somehow I’ve gone from romantic comedy to disaster film.

“Ooh, that’s nice,” one of the girls says to the other, admiring the simple aqua shift her friend has tried on over her shorts and top. “It’s like it was made for you.” Right. Ronald and Jeni are made for each other. That’s already been determined. I don’t need to go crazy. I just need to let it happen.

Flynn and I didn’t have a “meet cute.” We had a “meet hostile.” Well, I was hostile anyway. Then, when I was forced to join Yearbook, I got to know him better—and when he became my client, I spent even more time around him.…

Hmm. Jeni and Ronald
have
a place where their paths regularly cross: every morning at Nutri-Fizz. If I use a little magic to make sure Jeni is always the Fizz Master who takes Ronald’s order, eventually the romance will happen, because, like I’ve told Jeni a million times, it’s meant to be.

“Oh, yeah,” I tell the girl in the aqua dress. “You can definitely stop looking. You found it. That is definitely the One.”

Clang … Clang … Clang
.

The clock on Taylor & Taylor’s for Men strikes three. Jeni should be here any minute. She’d agreed to meet at the Ice Cream Cottage after her shift ended. I’ve grabbed a plastic spoon so I can grant a few small wishes while I wait.

What I can’t wait for is to tell Jeni how easy and simple it’s all going to be now. She’ll be so relieved. No codes to
memorize, no scripted lines to read, no artificial scenarios to wade awkwardly through. She only has to do her job.

I might set up some coaching sessions with her off-hours, though, to help her with the art of conversation. And I probably should make her promise not to run off and hide whenever Ronald appears in the Nutri-Fizzy line, like she’d done with me. I may be stepping back, but this isn’t going to work if Jeni doesn’t step up, at least a little.

I feel a sudden chill and with it the sense that Ariella is watching me. I tell myself she doesn’t matter—but that same self argues back: even if Ariella is wrong, she can still complicate things, and complications are exactly what I don’t want any more of.

I glance around, but there’s no sign of sparkle lurking behind vendor carts or peering out from pillars. I’ve just about convinced myself that the chill was only a blast of refrigerated air from the Ice Cream Cottage when I spot Fawn, maneuvering along the cobblestone walkway, in the direction of the faux side street where Jump Kicks is located. Her outfit has Ariella stamped all over it: goofy spring-green tulle miniskirt, chartreuse tube top and yellow kitten-heel slip-ons that are obviously causing her pain. Her frizzy hair is held up by a matching yellow clip and sprouts from the top of her head like a mushroom cloud.

She’s like the Little Mermaid on land, wobbling on her new legs, yet eager and excited to join the party she’s convinced she’s been missing out on while trapped under the
sea. Although she winces and lurches and squints, flailing her arms for balance, there’s more confidence to her awkward stride than I’ve ever seen in Jeni’s slow trudge.