A Snicker of Magic (18 page)

Once all the Pickles and Harnesses were snoozing, I snuck down the hall, around Uncle Boone’s sleeping bag, over to the window of Aunt Cleo’s apartment and pushed it open.

SQUEEEEEEEAK.

I cringed at the sound and waited for Cleo to run out of her room, flinging her broom, looking for an intruder. That’s what happened the other night when Boone got up to get a drink of water. Apparently, Cleo forgot he was here and ran in the kitchen and whacked him so hard with the broom that she nearly knocked him into next week.

Nobody got up this time, though. I waited until I heard Boone snoring again. Then I took one of the table chairs and pushed it up close to the window.

Something cold clutched around my ankle and I nearly screamed. Luckily, I glanced down in time to realize it was Frannie Jo and not some mean old shadow. Isabella Thistle’s magic didn’t sound very creepy in the daylight, but it was sure bothering me tonight.

“Go back to bed,” I whispered to Frannie.

“What are you doing?” She climbed up on the chair beside me. “You can’t fly!”

“Why would I try to fly?” I whisper-yelled. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

Frannie Jo didn’t answer.

I sighed. “Stay here if you want but stay quiet. I got work to do.”

“You’ll get in trouble for drawing on yourself.”

“You’ll get in trouble for being out of bed.” I pushed my sleeve up to my elbow and looked at my hope tattoo.

You could win the duel with that,
said the selfish half of my brain.

But you don’t need more hope
, said the do-good half.
You’ve got enough inside you and all around you. You’ve got it in your friends. You’ve got it in your family. You’ve had it all along.

I touched the fine tip of the pen to my wrist, right along the upturned feathers of the dove. The ink was so cold I felt every letter as I wrote the words on my skin. Sweet as cotton candy:

And then I threaded the rest of the letters underneath it:

Next I pressed my lips against my wrist. “I know you’re not a carrier pigeon,” I whispered. “And I don’t know if you fly long distances….”

“
Why
are you talking to it?” Frannie asked.

“Shhh,” I told her, returning my full attention to the bird. “I don’t know exactly what you do, but I’d be
grateful if you’d deliver that message to Arly Pickett … for Jonah.”

“
Jooonah
,” Frannie Jo said. She made kissy noises with her mouth.

“Hush,” I said.

“You hu —” Frannie gasped. “Felicity … your ink bird … it’s fluttering.”

Sure enough, the bird on my wrist shook out its feathers until it was puffed up proud and strong. Then it stretched its wings open wide and flew off my wrist, taking my words along with it. I saw one last flicker of Oliver’s bird before it sailed out the window and blended into the night.

“The bird was my only good luck charm.” I gulped. The Duel was coming. Mama was leaving. And I just sent all my courage out the window. “Guess I’m on my own now.”

Frannie Jo slipped her hand inside mine. “You’re not on your own. You still got me.”

“Tell me the truth, Florentine. Don’t hold back. I can handle constructive criticism.” I wrung my hands together, round and around, while she scanned my first poem. Showing Florentine my words made me so nervous that I couldn’t shut up talking. Florentine read silently. I figured she was trying to think of a nice way to tell me the poems stunk. I sighed. “They’re horrible, aren’t they? I can write a new batch. I still have a few days.”

“They ain’t horrible.” Florentine turned the page, her dark eyes scanning my next set of lines. “These words are marvelous.”

I felt light-headed. “… Really?”

Florentine nodded. “These are fine words you got here. And Jonah says you got Oliver’s dove to keep you calm and steady on stage. I’d say you’re about to have a fine dueling day.” She winked at me and handed the blue book back.

I didn’t tell Florentine about hope flying the coop. The thought of the bird tattoo flying across the ocean and
landing on the wrist of Arly Pickett made me happy. I wanted him to have hope. I wanted him to come home to his family. But I missed having a snicker of magic on my wrist. I blinked up into the face of the September sun, wondering where the tattoo was right at that moment.

Florentine propped her hand over her eyes to shield the light and glanced up at Mama, who stood beside us with her hands on her hips, staring at the Gallery.

“You been staring at that wall for twenty minutes,” Florentine said to her. “You think it’s gonna paint itself?”

“I need to figure out how to get the graffiti off first,” Mama said. She stepped closer and gently traced her fingers across the letters somebody’d painted on the bricks. I watched each word ripple beneath her touch. “I need a blank canvas when I start.”

“Not this time you don’t,” Florentine chuckled. “Whoever painted those words? They were mad. They painted ’em in deep. Heartbreak always makes the words stick extra deep.”

Mama looked down at Florentine. “How do I get them off, then? They’ll probably bleed through the paint.”

“Probably.” Florentine nodded. “But you do what you know how to do: You paint something new.”

“Been too long since I’ve done this,” Mama sighed as she eased down on the sidewalk. She hunched her scrawny shoulders and buried her face in her hands. “I don’t even know where to start. That’s what happens when we’re in a place too long. My creativity’s just … gone. I feel stuck.”

“That’s not why you’re stuck,” I said quickly. “You just haven’t painted in a long time. Start in the center, like you tell me,” I said.

We’ve done a bunch of traveling in the Pickled Jalapeño. And on warm summer nights, after sunset, before the dark drops its curtain, I like to stare out the window and wonder. I’ve seen mountains and wildflowers and wild animals and storms. I’ve seen the ocean; I’ve felt it lick up around my ankles like it’s something frisky and playful. And I’ve seen it crash against the rocks, dangerous, a silver-tongued monster. I’ve seen sweet things like Frannie sleeping and Biscuit snuggling close to me and Cleo slipping extra cash into the pocket of Mama’s work uniform. My eyes are tiny, but they’ve taken in a world full of wonderful.

So I can’t even imagine how it must feel to see all that wonderful and then be able to touch a paintbrush to a piece of paper, or pavement, or brick, or brittle rock and leave that image right there, exactly the same way your eyes took it in. Mama doesn’t just paint mountains or moonlight or people’s faces; she paints memories. She paints the joy you feel when you see something wonderful for the very first time.

But Mama wouldn’t even look at the Gallery.

I clutched the locket so tight in my fist, I wondered if it’d crumble. Enough magic to take her sad away, that’s what I wanted. I didn’t have that.

But I did have my words.

“Miss Florentine,” I said, “I’d like to tell you a few things about my mama, Holly Harness Pickle. Do you mind?”

“Sure don’t,” Florentine drawled.

Mama didn’t look at us, but I could see her cheek dimple in an almost-grin.

“Okay, then,” I began. “The first thing I painted with Mama was rocks, river rocks we saved from the Cumberland River. We all took home a rock and we painted one thing we loved on it. I painted the dog, and Frannie painted a piece of cheese.”

“That’s fancy.” Florentine nodded.

“It truly is,” I agreed. “And then when we lived in Birmingham, Mama painted red roses on paper plates and she taped the plates to my wall. She told me I could fill my garden with any flower I wanted. If I could dream it, I could paint it. That’s what she told me. But quite honestly, I can dream up some pretty weird stuff. And it never looked so good when I painted it. When Mama did? It looked even better than it did in my dreams. By the time we moved from that place, the entire wall of my and Frannie Jo’s room was covered with paper flowers.”

Mama wasn’t looking at the wall anymore. Her body was still turned toward the Gallery. But she’d turned her face toward me, listening.

“Once, Mama painted a map on the roof of the Jalapeño. We called it the Kingdom of Spiderberg. Every night we told a story about a new place and then Mama would paint a new castle on the map. I was the Queen of Spiderberg.”

“Rightly so.” Florentine nodded.

“I told Mama maybe we should paint stars up in
Spiderberg, too.” I gulped. “But instead of grabbing her paintbrushes, she pulled me and Frannie outside and we stared up at the stars and spun around underneath them until we got spindiddly dizzy. She said stars don’t mind being painted. And they don’t mind sonnets or songs or poems, neither. But they’d rather just give you light enough to dance by. That’s what she told me.”

“Okay,” Mama breathed. She wasn’t talking to me or Florentine. “Okay,” she said again, like she was answering some deep-down question she was afraid to ask out loud.

Her hands trembled as she picked up the can of white paint and poured it into her paint tray. She pushed the big paint roller down into the paint until it soaked up all the color.

SWISH.
The roller swiped up and down, over the brick, over the words, over every picture that had been painted there before.

My heart felt heavy in a good way again, holding me still in that memory.

“Mmm-hmmm.” Florentine grinned at me. “I just heard you speak hundreds of words, Felicity Pickle. Every last one of them came out of your mouth fine. Mighty fine, in fact.”

“My words are different when I talk about people I” — I gulped — “love.”

“Exactly,” Florentine said softly.

The wind-chime wind tunneled down Main Street. Florentine groaned and pulled her traveling bag close to her side. I stood up and clamped my hand tight around the locket.

The wind didn’t rattle Mama, though. She kept swiping the paint roller back and forth across the brick. I watched new words appear, then fizzle, with every stroke:

Sandstorm

Avalanche

Fly

Away

Home to visit

Home to stay

You don’t have to leave to find a new beginning, Mama. You can begin again exactly where you are.
That’s what I wanted to say to her, but me telling her wouldn’t matter. Mama had to see that we were home for herself. Painting the Gallery might help a little bit.

But breaking the Weatherly curse would set Mama free forever. I could feel it.

After Mama’d been working for a few hours, I jogged across the street to see how the Gallery looked from far off. As I spun around to take a seat on the red bench, I heard Florentine hollering my name from back at the wall.

“Don’t sit there!” she yelled.

I froze, half squatted, ready to plop myself down. “Why?”

Florentine slung her traveling bag around her shoulder and crossed the street. “ ’Cause that bench belongs to Abigail Honeycutt.”

I glanced back at the empty bench. “You think she’ll mind if I sit on it?”

“Probably not,” Florentine said. “But she’ll sure mind if you sit on
her
. She’s invisible. Maybe ask first and make sure she’s not there.”

Mama had already told me that Florentine was probably crazy, but crazy in a sweet way, not crazy-mean. I knew then that Mama’s words were most certainly true. All the same I said, “Uh … Miss Honeycutt?”

When nobody answered, Florentine said, “You’re fine, then. She ain’t here.”

“Who is she?” I whispered, sitting down easily onto the bench.

“That’s a better story for Oliver to tell. He tells it right.”

Florentine pulled her bag tight against her side. “I only know bits and pieces about people who used to live in this town. I don’t know the full story.”

“Thanks for all those kind things you said back there,” Mama said as we walked back to Cleo’s. She leaned down and kissed the top of my head.

I flung my arm around her waist and said, “You’re welcome. I can’t wait to tell Jonah what Florentine said about my poem.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something about Jonah,” Mama said, turning us down Main Street.

Just when she was about to ask, we passed Dr. Zook’s Dreamery Creamery. The door swung open, and Uncle Boone walked out carrying two ice-cream cones. “Perfect timing!” he said. He gave one cone to Mama and one to me. Boone’s banjo was strapped to his back, like always. He slung it around in front of him and winked. “I figured I’d play y’all home. How does that sound?”

I wished every day could end that way, with banjo music, sweet ice cream, and street shadows painted long by the setting sun. The world was so beautiful I nearly forgot about my troubles.

“About Jonah Pickett.” Mama glanced down at me. “Do you have a crush on him?”

“Not a crush.” I shook my head. “More like an inflate. He makes me feel the opposite of crushed. He makes my heart feel like a balloon, like it’s going to blow up and fly right out of my chest.”

Boone sighed. “I might have to use that in a song, Felicity Pickle.”

“Jonah’s a sweet boy,” Mama said. “But you know you don’t have to participate in the Duel to impress him, right? You can back out if it scares you.”

“Why would it scare you?” Boone asked. “You didn’t get worked up over that stupid curse did you?”

Mama stopped walking. Her hand clamped down tight on my shoulder. “Why would she know about that?” She narrowed her eyes at my uncle.

Boone shrugged. “You know how people talk. It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s a story, Liss. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Boone …” Mama warned. Then she looked down at me. “You are
not
cursed, Felicity.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t believe her. Even though I was pretty sure Boone didn’t, either. The curse had everything to do with me, which is exactly why I had to figure out how to break it.

“You don’t have to do the Duel.” Mama tightened her arm around my shoulders. “If you change your mind … if you get nervous …”

“I am nervous,” I admitted. “But I’m not going to run away.”

“Atta girl!” Uncle Boone cheered. Mama only sighed.

Boone strummed a sweet tune as we walked through downtown, toward Cleo’s apartment. The first evening star showed up in the sky and winked at me. The wind rolled through the streets. The trees shook their branches and beat their tambourine-leaves in a strangely perfect rhythm. Almost like the trees were clapping along to Boone’s music.