Who Needs Magic? (7 page)

“It’s how it works in my family.”

“I think you’re confused. Maybe your mom sensed that your powers were sort of … remedial, and so she didn’t tell you until later, but you misunderstood what she said. You need to talk to her—”

“I can’t talk to her. She’s—”

“You have to. This confusion is probably half of your problem. Just ask her—”

“She’s not here—”

“She didn’t move with you? Are your parents divorced? You can call her, can’t you?”

“No, because—”

“Why not? I don’t understand. Where is she?”

“She’s
dead
!”

All the blood drains from Ariella’s face, while the opposite happens to me. My whole face is on fire and I haven’t even had a bite of the mystery pepper noodle dish yet—which is being held out to me by a different counter guy, one who’s wearing the same awkward expression as everybody else around us in the pickup area. I’m surrounded by the jittery energy of twenty pairs of eyes trying not to look at me.

“Thank you,” I say, and carry my tray through the silent crowd. I wade out into the sea of tables, but I have no idea where to go. I even forget for a second where I am, because I’ve been snapped back into that nauseating clutch of grief that hits me sometimes, like a punch in the stomach from out of nowhere.

“I found a seat.” Ariella’s voice is soft and calm in my ear. She takes the tray out of my hands and I follow her like a robot to the narrow table where she’s already set her tray. She places mine opposite hers, and I sit down. The chair is hard and cold, but the noodles are spicy and hot, and the mix of tastes is so intense that I’m able to experience it without thinking at all.

The conversations of the zillion other diners spin a giant cocoon around us. Ariella leans forward, head bent over her food, eyes only on her plate. I know she thinks
I’m mad at her, but I’m not. It’s not her fault. If I had kept quiet for a few seconds, let her figure it out without me having to scream it, I wouldn’t have had to suffer the gut punch that always comes when the memory hits me this hard, leaving me emotionally deflated afterward.

The food is helping, though. “The noodles are good,” I say.

My comment completely inflates Ariella, whose head snaps back, body straightening, perkiness revived.

“I know! It’s my favorite place. Although Taco Wrap is great too. And Pasta Plus. I really like their veggie bolognese, but I try not to do mushrooms too much. It’s fungus, you know. It interferes with the energy flow.” She spins her soy-stained bamboo chopsticks in the air.

“Huh. That’s interesting.”

Ariella’s cheeks flush pink, a companion shade to her purse. “I’m sorry. I … I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s amazing you’ve been able to do any magic at all. If anything happened to my mom, I’d definitely be … I don’t want to think about it.”

“Neither do I. But I do.”

There’s another moment of quiet between us, but Ariella stays alert, gaze focused on me. She’s trying to show me that she’s
listening
. But I don’t want that anymore. I’d rather hear her talk.

“What’s it feel like?” I ask her.

“What?”

“The wand. When you do the big magic. Is it like electro shock?”

Ariella thinks a moment. “It doesn’t really feel like anything. Not in your hand. It’s more like you get really awake, as if you’ve just eaten a big cupcake with lots of frosting and drunk three Cokes.”

I dig around in my noodles for the biggest pepper I can find. If I can’t have the sugar rush, I can at least perk myself up with some spicy warmth.

“Maybe it’s happened already,” Ariella suggests. “Maybe you’ve passed right by your next beneficiary, but it’s so new to you, you didn’t pick up on it.”

Not what I need to hear. I chomp down on the pepper—and my tongue is instantly on fire. I snatch up my root beer and guzzle it down.

“Want to try some of mine? It’s not spicy.” Ariella pushes her bowl my way. I twirl a few of the noodles onto my fork and stuff them in my mouth to put out the fire. She’s right. The noodles are tangy and herbal, soothing. “Lime zest and lemongrass!” She smiles, takes a sip of her mystery soda and gazes around at the other tables. “It’s nice to have somebody to come here with for once.”

“Don’t you come with your friends?” I say when I get my voice back.

“Oh, you know. You have to keep your distance when you’ve got a big secret like this. I mean, what’re you going to talk about? ‘What’d you do this weekend, Ariella?’ ‘Oh,
nothing.’ I can’t exactly say I went around waving a magic wand and granting wishes, right?” She stabs her chopsticks back into the bowl and twirls. “I can’t even talk to my family. Mom’s always busy with her latest beneficiary, and my sister’s a brat and jealous, and Dad doesn’t get it. Grandma’s the only one who listens, but it’s not like having somebody your own age to talk to.” She smiles, but it’s a little off and I can see it now—the crack in her outward confidence that’s probably always been there but I was too dazzled by her rapid-fire f.g. sorcery to notice. It’s nice to know she’s not totally invincible.

The weird thing is, hearing this is like hearing my own thoughts. Without the sister, and with Dad in place of her mom, and no grandmother. The “no one really understands” part—that’s the part that matches.

“I wouldn’t even be able to tell my boyfriend, if I had one. Because what if we broke up? I’d have to be sure he’s the One—but you need a fairy godmother for that.” She smiles again, and there’s that same sad light in her eyes. “I’m not allowed to go out with boys until I’m sixteen anyway, so I don’t have to worry about it now. That’s all right with me. It would distract me from my work.” She scoops up more noodles.

“My boyfriend knows I’m an f.g.”

Ariella’s chopsticks freeze in midair, noodles dangling. “You
told
him?”

“He was my client.”

Ariella drops the noodles in the bowl and leans back,
incensed on my behalf. “Your boyfriend was in love with somebody else?”

“He wasn’t my boyfriend at the beginning. And I thought he was in love with this cheerleader, Cadie Perez. But it turned out she was in love with somebody else. A girl, Emma, who loved her back.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Flynn’s wish was actually me all along.” I feel a flush of pleasure when I say this. The thought of it transports me to the Ferris wheel again and also makes me believe, right now, that everything really is and always will be okay with us. I
was
his wish, after all.

“Isn’t that weird, though, now that you’re going out, knowing what he’s wishing for all the time? There’s no mystery.”

“That was then. I don’t know what he’s feeling anymore. It’s
all
a mystery now, believe me.”

I take a sip of my root beer. My tongue hasn’t completely recovered from the pepper attack, and the bubbles sting. Next time, I’m ordering milk.

Ariella scoops up the last few noodles in her bowl. “So the beneficiary’s wish was for the fairy godmother.” She chews thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard of that.”

“You’ve never seen an f.g. who looks like me either, right? That’s what you said.”

“That’s true.” Ariella pulls a fistful of candy sticks from her purse and fans them out like cards for me to choose. I pick another green one. I expect it to be lime again, but it’s
not. It’s something else, something un-tangy, almost milky. Is this even a fruit?

Ariella unwraps a pink stick and holds it between her index and middle fingers like a cigarette, one arm folded across her stomach, contemplating. “I wonder …”

“Wonder what?” Melon. That’s what flavor it is. Honeydew. Blech. At least it’s not kiwi. That would be even worse. Ariella takes a lick of her grapefruit stick or pomegranate or whatever and her eyes light up, as if an internal switch has been turned on. She definitely runs on sugar. “I’ve got another idea …”

“Don’t you
love
it?” If Ariella had a visible aura, it would be bursting with dancing exclamation points. Pink ones. Pink and purple and honeydew melon green, the colors of pretty much everything in this store.

I am in hell. Hell has a name. It’s called the Princess Shop.

“Are you kidding?” I ask. “Look at me. Do I look like somebody who would
love
this store?”

There are pink dresses. Pink shoes. Necklaces with pink lockets, and bracelets with purple charms. Matching green and pink notebooks and notepads, pink pencil sets and pink and green pens. Pink purses and backpacks, and laptop cases with big purple daisies on them. Desk lamps shaped like ball gowns and clocks with glittering fairy-tale castles etched on their faces. Sparkly hats, sparkly barrettes, sparkly headbands and sparkly tiaras.
Tiaras
.

It’s such a gruesome visual assault, I’m scared I might go blind. Actually, I’m not scared. I
hope
I go blind. Or at least black out. Anything to end the horror.

“That’s why I brought you here! You need to look the part to be the part.” Ariella holds up a pair of twinkly beaded earrings to her ears and studies her reflection in a narrow mirror that runs along the side of the twirling countertop display.

“Um … no way.”

You’d think the customer base would be primarily the preschool/kindergarten set, and there
are
plenty of little girls running around, squealing in delight. But there are a terrifying number of older girls too. Some even older than me.

Ariella returns the earrings and tries on a thick wooden bracelet painted green with white polka dots. “I know green’s not your normal princess color. It used to be a preppy store a long time ago, but it evolved.” She holds out her arm to admire the bracelet. “Green’s nice to have as an accent, though. They could use a little baby blue too, if you ask me.”

A mix of floral and fruity scents, gardenia and pink grapefruit, swirls in the air, and a pop ballad plays oh-so-faintly from hidden speakers, low enough so you can’t hear the lyrics and be distracted, but loud enough to pulse an electro-funk feel-good “buy buy buy” vibe throughout the store, which seems to be working on Ariella.

“Ariella! Don’t you look adorable! Let me see that jacket.” Ariella does a half spin for a pink-frocked employee whose name tag identifies her as Sapphire and who applied a little too much lilac-frost eye shadow this morning. “I was just saying to Helen, ‘We haven’t seen Ariella P. in a while.’ Wasn’t I?” Sapphire calls the question over to a weary-looking older employee who’s rehanging an armload of mini-sweaters in the toddler section.

“Oh, yes. Hi, Ariella!” Helen waves to Ariella, her weariness lifting for a moment into the same genuinely happy smile Sapphire wears. They actually know Ariella’s name. She must drop a lot of doubloons in here, or whatever the official princess currency is.

“Are you finding everything all right?” Sapphire asks, casting a dubious look my way, having finally noticed me.

“Yes, thanks,” Ariella says. “This is my friend Delaney.” Sapphire gives me a veiled once-over, clearly put off by my completely pastel-free, princess-free look. “We’re just looking around.”

“Okay, let me know if you need any help.”

“Thanks!” Ariella leans over toward me as soon as Sapphire moves away, and whispers conspiratorially, “I have a member’s card.” Of course she does. “I get a ten percent discount on everything. So pick out whatever you want and I’ll buy it and you can pay me back.”

“I’ll say it again, since you’re obviously lost in a pink haze: ‘Um. No way.’ ”

“Come on, Delaney. There are boots!”

“Yeah, I saw them.” One pair. Pink plastic rain boots with yellow daisies on them. “I’m not three years old.”

“Those would be too big for a three-year-old,” Ariella replies, completely missing the point. The air in here is definitely numbing her brain cells.

She leads me over to a wall where the “New Summer Fashions!” clothes are displayed.

“Just try a couple of things on. See if they make you feel any different.” Ariella grabs a pine-green sweater off a hanger and holds it out to me with a green-and-pink-striped headband.

I fold my arms, tight. “Do you mean different as in ‘my blood cells are already messed up from being caught in this princess vortex, but if I let any of this stuff touch my body, I’ll turn totally toxic’? That kind of different?”

“That”
—Ariella swings the sweater at me in an effort to wave off my negativity—“is exactly what I’m talking about.”

I could argue more, but it feels like a show-don’t-tell moment is called for, so I grab the sweater and tug it on over my shirt. I snatch the headband and shove it onto my head. I was joking, but they actually do feel radioactive. I catch a glimpse of myself in one of the floor-length mirrors that bracket the clothing racks. I’m surprised the glass doesn’t shatter in protest at the unnatural image it’s been forced to reflect.

Ariella takes a couple of steps back and studies me.
“No. It’s not working.” Big surprise. I keep the sarcasm to myself, as hard as this is to do. Ariella circles me, to get all angles. “You’re right. It’s really not you.”

“Thank you.” I
cannot
get the sweater and headband off fast enough. I hold them both out to Ariella, clutching them between two fingers like a dirty diaper. Ariella takes them but doesn’t return them to where she got them, because she’s still looking at me like I’m some complex math equation that she’s
this close
to solving.