Who Needs Magic? (16 page)

I’ve got to stop her. She may be pathetic, but there’s an adorableness to her pitifulness. Ronald might confuse feeling sorry for her with liking her, and that won’t be good for anybody.

I’ll wait until she’s near the mini-lawn and then shove her, gently, onto the grass. All the parents and nannies will run to her aid as I disappear into the crowd. Nobody gets hurt. Everybody wins … in the long run.

I toss my spoon in the trash and slip around to the far side of the Pretzel Palace.

“Hi, Delaney!” Ariella appears in front of me, blocking my view of Fawn. She sneers as she stirs a strawberry shake. “How’s it going with Janna?”

“Jeni. Fine. Great. Excellent, actually. Feel free to concede.”

Ariella laughs. “You’re so funny! I wish I had your sense of humor!” Her mock-friendly expression ices over. “I don’t want anything
else
of yours, though.”

“I really don’t have time to talk to you. I’m meeting Jeni.”

“Give up, Delaney. You know it’s doomed. That fountain scene was a joke. And I know what happened at the shoe store too.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I hope Jeni
isn’t on her way yet. The last thing I need is for her to meet Ariella.

“Stand aside,” Ariella declares, “and let the correct happy ending play out, or you’re going to make your non-beneficiary miserable.”

“I can’t stand this!” Fawn steps between us, mushroom cloud askew, feet bare, clutching her yellow shoes in one hand. “It didn’t work! Again!”

“Did you—”

“Yes! I did everything you said. I talked to him. I asked him about the music he likes. He answered—but he barely looked at me.” Fawn pouts. “This is taking too much time away from my poetry.”

“Priorities, Fawn. Don’t make me repeat it again.”

“Gee,” I say, moving around to where Fawn can see me. “You seem … miserable.”

“Shut up.” Ariella pushes me away, then turns back to Fawn. “Let’s talk about this somewhere more private.”

“I hate these!” Fawn holds up the kitten-heel shoes, as if she hasn’t heard Ariella. “They’re like torture!”

“That’s enough,” Ariella hisses. She grabs Fawn by the wrist to silence her and then points a finger at me. “This would be over already if not for you. You’re blocking my energy.” She casts one last searing glare at me and then hauls Fawn off across the lawn, out of sight.

I smile. The war is almost won. There’s merely this one final battle.

“Delaney?” I turn around to see Jeni approaching from behind me. She glances off in the direction Ariella and Fawn disappeared. “Wasn’t that—”

“No,” I say quickly. “Those were just some girls I know from school. Forget them. Wait until you hear my new—”

“I release you.”

“What?”

Jeni stares at the ground. “I, um, hereby declare that I don’t want my wish granted. I’m sorry.”

“No, listen. I’ve figured it all out. It’s going to be easy—”

“Our bond is now severed. Or whatever.” She spins around and hurries back to the Fizzy Bar.

“Hold on.” I catch up to her. “Let me tell you my new idea.”

“It’s too late. I said the magic words. You’re free.”

“I made that up.”

Jeni pauses near the fountain. “But I can still tell you to stop … can’t I?” This is more a statement than a question, the way she says it.

“Well, yeah. I guess. But you’ll still have the wish.”

“That’s okay. It was better before. From afar. I don’t belong with him.” The fountain starts playing some horrible, ill-timed song about love gone wrong.

“You
do
.”

Jeni shakes her head and resumes walking. The water jets spurt and sway to the repetitive old-timey verses of the song. This music is
not
helping.

“I’ll still feel the wish too,” I remind her as I tag along beside her.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’ll be linked to you forever. I won’t be able to help anybody else.”

We reach the entrance to the Nutri-Fizzy Bar. Jeni looks up and meets my eyes. “That might, you know … be a good thing.” Her expression is sad and pitying. She’s pitying
me
!

I’m so stunned that I don’t even stop her as she disappears inside. It’s like Flynn and Cadie all over again, but this time I’ve failed with the right wish, which means I’ve actually become a worse f.g. than I was before. How is that even possible?

“Wow, are those really for sale?” I step down into the sunken living room to get a better view.

Nancy consults a booklet she was handed when we arrived. “Two hundred dollars apiece. Not bad, but I’m not sure of the resale potential.”

I spin around in a 360 and count them. Thirty. Thirty two-foot-tall Statues of Liberty, standing proudly along a wide shelf that must’ve been built for them. I take a picture and send it to Flynn. Even though he hasn’t called me in days. I’m trying not to worry about it. Ha.

When Nancy invited me to come along to the estate sale, I agreed because I needed a break from the mental
loop that keeps playing in my head. Do I give up on Jeni? I can’t, because I’m meant to grant her wish. I don’t see how I can do that, though, since she doesn’t
want
the wish. So I guess that means I have to give up. But I can’t … etc.

The house is owned by some folk singer who’s decided to move to Ireland and raise sheep. It’s not some big movie-star mansion. It’s in a nice but normal neighborhood, and from the outside it looks like all the other houses. But inside, it’s definitely … interesting. Nancy’s already loaded her pickup with furniture and we’ve only been through three rooms. “We better head upstairs,” Nancy says. “The sale opens to the public in half an hour, and I don’t want you to miss your chance.” Nancy’s on some list that gets her in early. It meant waking up at seven, but it’s been worth it so far, both as a distraction and for the entertainment value. In addition to the Statues of Liberty, I’ve seen a couch shaped like a giant mouth, a creepy collection of dolls with dried apples for heads, and a library room with an entire wall of shelves devoted to
The Little Prince
. Over a hundred copies at least. Paperback and hardcover, in like forty different languages. “It’s the owner’s favorite book,” an estate sale worker informed us, as if I couldn’t have guessed that on my own.

Lourdes would love this place too. On the way up the spiral staircase to the second floor, I snap a couple of photos to send her: a tiny topiary shamrock on a built-in shelf and a mural of snakes on the wall that seem to slither past as you walk by. When we get upstairs, there are already
a few other early shoppers in the master bedroom, rifling through the closets.

“Psst! Nancy!” A thin man at the end of the hall gestures to us.

“That’s Ryan,” Nancy whispers to me. “He helps run the sale. He always steers me to the best finds before everybody else.”

Ryan leads us into a small guest room. The walls of this room are painted in wavy stripes of green and gold, like the surface of the ocean at dusk. The apartment I lived in with Mom had some cool stuff in it, but nothing too bizarre, and we couldn’t paint the walls because it was a rental. Dad’s house was lifeless when I moved in, but I’ve helped him raise it up to “tolerable,” and I’ve improved my bedroom a lot, even with the kiddie décor that came with it. But this house is like the residential version of my overhauled vintage clothing room at Treasures—design by artistic impulse, without rules or limits. And it exists
here
, in the land of design by imitation and ostentation. Amazing. This is how
I
want to live someday—without the gruesome apple-head dolls, though.

“I’ve kept the others out until you got here,” Ryan says, and then opens a door to reveal a walk-in closet that’s almost as big as the guest room. Inside, it’s all accessories: bins of purses and belts, stacks of see-through hatboxes, and an entire wall of shoes.

“I’ll take those and those,” Nancy says, pointing to a bin of purses and one tall stack of hats. “And give me both
bins of belts.” On the drive over, she’d explained to me that she buys first and examines later, especially when it comes to collections.

“Hey, I wanted to look through those,” a woman says from the closet doorway.

Nancy hands the woman a business card from the store. “Come see me. I’ll give you a good deal.”

I’m bummed because the shoes are all sandals and pumps. Nancy had thought there’d be boots … but either they’ve been packed up to take to Ireland or they’re in the master bedroom, where the other shoppers have probably already snagged the best ones. Nancy whispers something to Ryan, who smiles and steps over to a mirrored cabinet. He opens it …

Inside, there is nothing
but
boots. Cowboy and army and hiking and ankle and high-heeled; with buckles and zippers and snaps. Different colors, different materials, all well worn but perfect for remaking. Nancy flips through the booklet. “Hmm. Priced to sell.” She winks at me. “We’ll take them all.”

I had to clear off a whole row of sandals at Treasures to make room for the boots. The deal is I have to put them on display, available for sale, until I’ve begun to work on remaking them. And I have to finish redesigning one pair before I can start on another. “You talked me into letting you have your boot-making business at the store, Delaney,” Nancy explained on the drive back. “But I haven’t seen
you working on it much. I thought you needed something to light a fire under you.”

She thinks I have artist’s block—designer’s block, rather—and I guess I do, sort of, but I can’t explain to her
why
I haven’t had time to make any. It’s killing me that I could lose some of these boots before I get a chance at remaking them. And now I do have time. This should make me happy, and I was excited as we were leaving the sale, but being back at the mall is such a geographical reminder of everything that’s gone wrong that my enthusiasm has crumbled. I’m hoping it will return once I unpack all the other accessories Nancy bought. There’s one more box, filled with costume jewelry. It takes forever to untangle the twisted-up necklaces and unhook the bracelets that have gotten caught on each other’s clasps. I hang each piece on a candelabra I’ve brought in from the main room. I’m almost finished and I’m admiring my work, when I spot it. At the bottom of the box, peeking out from underneath a strand of wooden beads, is an angel pin, glittering up at me as if it were smirking.

Things weren’t bad enough, now I’m being mocked by jewelry.

I can picture the real Ariella, snickering with glee at my defeat—once she finds out about it. I snatch up the pin and try to break the wings off, to get some voodoo revenge. Maybe it was
her
energy blocking
me
, and if I can get her out of the way, Jeni will come back.

Unfortunately, the wings are soldered on to stay, and now I feel even worse than I did before. Not only because the pin’s tiny wings have pressed painful indentations into my thumbs, but because it’s like a symbolic victory for Ariella. She may not have stolen Ronald for Fawn yet, but she’s succeeded in eliminating the opposition.

I bring the pin out to the counter. Nancy had bought two milk crates crammed with old paperback novels at the estate sale, and she has several of the books laid out in front of her. She skims through one and her eyes grow wide with interest.

“Hey, Nancy. Don’t you think this would look better without wings?” If I can convince Nancy not to want the wings, this will qualify as a small wish—and off the wings will come with the wave of a chopstick. One mini-victory for me, which is better than nothing.

Nancy peers at the pin over the top of her reading glasses. “It’s an angel, Delaney. It wouldn’t have much point without the wings.”

“Yeah, but, you know, certain people are turned off by the whole supernatural thing—or they don’t want to make some overt religious statement. I think it’d be less offensive if I removed any part that seems, like,
celestial
.”

Nancy stares at me curiously, and then her expression brightens with a thought. “Wasn’t your friend looking for angels?”

“She is
not
my friend.”

“Who’s not your friend?” I spin around to find Flynn grinning at me. “You better not be talking about me.” He lifts up the camera he’s got strung around his neck and takes a photo of my shocked face. “I wanted to surprise you.”

I’m so, so, so, so happy to see him, it’s like a sudden fever. I want to grab him, hug him, clutch him. I was worried he was mad at me, but here he is, which means he missed me, I hope. So much has happened since I talked to him last—not that I can tell him about any of it. But you know what? It doesn’t matter! Since I’m obviously never going to grant another big wish, I’ll just mentally block out that part of my life. It’ll be easy to keep it all in, as long as I stay focused on Flynn, Flynn, Flynn.

“Is this the famous Flynn?” Nancy asks.

Flynn’s grin spreads to cover his whole face. “You’ve talked about me?”

My face turns my least favorite color: pink. “I may have mentioned some guy who never returns my texts.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry,” Flynn says, his face falling. “But I’m here to apologize … and take you out.”