A Snicker of Magic (20 page)

“Are you still trying to figure out Isabella’s riddle?” Jonah asked me. I stood on Oliver’s porch, kicking my shoe back and forth.

“Definitely.” I nodded. “But even if I figure it out, I’ll compete in the Duel.” I told Jonah what all Florentine said about my poems. He nodded along, but didn’t have much to say. Big, fat raindrops plunked down from the sky. I pulled my hood over my head and smiled. “You’re being awfully quiet.”

Jonah tugged on his hair, pulling his words together slowly. “I’m trying to figure out how to tell you something….”

I raised my eyebrows. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Jonah laughed nervously. “The thing is … I want you to know …” He took a steadying breath and looked up at me. “Even if I didn’t get a know-how over you, I still would have found an excuse to talk to you. When you stood up in front of Miss Lawson’s class and said ‘My name is Flea … ,’ I wanted to be your friend. I’ll be your friend no matter what. I feel kinda guilty for pushing you so hard to do the Duel. I mean, I’ve been trying to talk you into doing
something you are morbidly afraid of. You know what I’m afraid of?”

“Nothing.”

“Wrong,” Jonah sighed. “I’m afraid of clowns. And if somebody tried to get me to shake a clown’s hand, or wave to a clown, or even touch a clown with the tip of a vaulting pole … I wouldn’t do it. I’d tell that do-gooder to buzz off.”

“I don’t want you to buzz off,” I said. “And clowns are severely creepy. They have painted smiles.”

“I don’t like painted smiles,” Jonah said.

“Amen.” I nodded.

“Hallelujah!” Jonah grinned. “If I start pushing you too hard, just tell me to back off. Okay?”

“I’m plumb flattered you’d want to help me,” I admitted. “I’ve never had a friend like you.”

I looked out toward the end of Oliver’s driveway. Past the gate was downtown Midnight Gulch and past the Gulch were the gray mountains that hemmed us in and kept us safe. How strange, I thought, when you can see what’s way out ahead of you but not what’s right up close. “We’re leaving soon, if the Duel doesn’t work.” I swallowed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re gone by next week.”

“The Duel’s going to work,” Jonah said. He pulled his backpack around and fished a carton of Blackberry Sunrise out of it.

“Geez,” I said. “I’ve never met anybody who eats more ice cream than you.”

“I consider that a compliment.” Jonah held the carton out for me. He’d tied a red ribbon to the top. “But this one’s not for me. It’s for you. I got a know-how over you….”

“Again?!”

“All I know is that if you eat this ice cream, you will do great in the Duel. This is from the Beedle,” Jonah said, “when you’re ready for it.”

The carton of Blackberry Sunrise was so icy cold that it stung my fingers. I knew Jonah meant well, but I had absolutely no desire to eat that stuff. Ever. I swerved around to fling the pint deep into the abyss of my backpack. Before I did, I noticed something unusual on the carton. Two somethings.

“Did you write this?” I squinted my eyes.

“Write what?”

SWEET

AMENDS

Those two words were golden, glittering. They’d become familiar to me already, but I’d only seen them scrawled in my blue book. I’d read Isabella Thistle’s curse a zillion times wondering what the hayseed
sweet amends
meant. And now, here it was, out in the wild.

Maybe biting into that ice cream would help me break Isabella’s curse, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t eat it. I’d find another way. I shoved the ice cream deep into my backpack and cleared my throat. “I’m going to miss you and your crazy know-hows.”

“You’re not gone yet. The Gallery’s not even done.”

I was as good as gone, but I didn’t want to think about good-bye. Not right then. So I smiled and gently punched Jonah’s arm. “You’re splendiferous, Jonah Pickett.”

I walked down the ramp, toward Oliver’s spiraled gate. I was nearly to the balloon-shaped hedge when I heard Jonah say, “You’re spindiddly, Felicity Pickle.”

Mama marked out the scene she wanted on the Gallery wall: the blue sky, the silver river, some of the buildings on Main Street, the fields, and the forest. I hoped as soon as Mama started painting, she’d remember how much she used to like it. I thought it all looked spindiddly.

But the more beautiful the Gallery became, the more frustrated Mama looked.

She’d just painted a cluster of river rocks when she stepped back, crossed her arms, and squinted her eyes. “It’s all wrong.”

“It’s all going to come together,” I assured her. “Take all the time you need!” And then more quietly, just so she’d hear me, I said, “Maybe it would be better if you didn’t have so many people watching you work….”

Since the Gallery painting was the most newsworthy thing to happen in Midnight Gulch in years, I wasn’t surprised to see townspeople wandering by all day long. Elvis Phillips serenaded us for a time. Day Grissom brought us sandwiches from Ponder’s Pie Shop. He brought one for
Cleo, too, but I told him she was busy back at the apartment. Day frowned and gave the sandwich to Biscuit instead.

“That’s not it,” Mama sighed. “And anyhow, it’s everybody’s Gallery. I like them being part of it. It’s me that’s the problem; my work’s not good anymore.”

When I’d suggested Mama could paint the Gallery, I thought it’d be great for her. But I could see now I was wrong. Mama was so frustrated by her own lack of inspiration that she was eager to quit, and therefore even more eager to bolt. I could see it in her eyes.

I watched folks come and go from Abigail Honeycutt’s bench. Jonah parked beside me, scanning the paper for do-goods. Boone sat on my other side, strumming his banjo.

“Wonder where Florentine is?” I asked Jonah.

“Probably trying to find a place to put her burdens down,” Jonah said. “That’s where I hope she is.”

“Me, too,” I said as I flicked the locket around my neck. I pulled my legs up pretzel-style on the bench, then slid my blue book out of my backpack. I needed to concentrate on Isabella Thistle’s curse.

“What’s that noise?” Boone stopped playing. “Y’all hear it? That creepy-tingly sound?”

“The wind-chime wind!” I slammed the blue book shut. “You hear it, too?”

“Hear what?” Jonah asked.

“Of course I hear it.” Boone shivered. “It’s … weird.”

“Plumb weird,” I agreed. “I think it’s a snicker of magic.”

“Why don’t I hear it?” Jonah asked.

Because you’re not cursed
is what I wanted to say. But I just shrugged my shoulders.

Boone played his banjo louder and faster to try to drown out the wind-chime sound. I saw Elvis Phillips start tapping his foot to the music. I thought he might pick up his microphone and start singing again, but instead he said:

“Hey, Boone! You know any songs by the King?”

“I know a few.” Boone smiled. “I’ve never tried to pluck them on a banjo.”

Elvis nodded so sadly that it got to Boone. So Boone said there was a first time for everything and he shrugged and gave it a whirl. Elvis Phillips sang along till he was red faced.

“I got a request, too!” said Day Grissom, who was busy refilling Mama’s paint trays. “Could you play ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’?”

“Sure.” Boone flashed his eyebrows at me while he tuned. He whispered, “Cleo and Day used to play bluegrass together, back when they were young and in love. She ever tell you that?”

Jonah put down the paper. “
Day
and Cleo?”

“No way!” I whispered.

“Way.” Boone nodded and spun back around. “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” wasn’t the sort of song he could play standing still. The music spun him around a few more times before he was done.

“Now I have a request,” drawled somebody behind us.

All three of us looked back in time to see Rosie Walker shuffling toward the bench, her cowboy boots scrape-scraping across the sidewalk. As soon as Rosie sat down, Biscuit crawled out from under the bench and jumped up in Rosie’s lap. Biscuit gave Rosie a big sloppy kiss on the cheek.

Rosie chuckled. “I do love this darlin’ dog.”

Boone looked shell-shocked. His face went pale. Puke-ish pale. The kind of pale I get when somebody mentions the Duel. “Ramblin’ Rose?” he whispered.

“Once upon a time I was,” Rosie said with a nod. “And you must be Boone Taylor? I’ve heard good things about you.”

“I’m Boone Harness, actually.” Boone held his banjo steady, right over his heart. He looked down at the strings, like they might tell him the words he needed to say. “I’m such a big fan of yours. You’ve really heard of me?”

“Yes, sir.” Rosie nodded. “Now you better play me a tune so I can tell if I heard right. My favorite song is an old mountain tune, ‘Fair and Tender Ladies.’ You know it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Boone said. He took a deep breath and tightened the banjo pegs, looking for the right note to start on.

Boone played the song so gently, strumming across the strings as softly as the summer wind rolls over the river. It seemed like that banjo was made for that song. Then he sang out the words. Boone didn’t get red faced when he sang, like Elvis Phillips did. Instead, he closed his eyes and let the lyrics roll out peaceful and easy. I was spellbound. If Boone’s music painted pictures, that song was a sunset.

The painting party all took a break to hear Boone sing. I saw a tear sparkle down my mama’s face, even from all the way across the street. Day Grissom took his hat off his head and held it over his heart.

Something was happening in my heart, too. At first, I thought I was getting sentimental on account of Boone’s sweet music. But then the little circle of warmth I felt heated into an almost-burn, and then the almost-burn scorched its way into an almost-sorta-deep-fry. And then I realized the heat wasn’t coming from inside my heart but right over the top of it.

Stone Weatherly’s locket was burning red-hot against my skin.

I gasped as I yanked the locket off my neck and flung it onto the sidewalk. Boone was playing so loud, and people
were so lost in his music, that nobody noticed what I’d done. Nobody except Jonah.

“Flea?” Jonah raised his eyebrows. “What’s your —”

But he never finished his sentence. As Jonah gasped softly, I knew he was looking at exactly the same thing as me: The air around the necklace rippled in time to Boone’s music. And as Boone strummed his last note, the air around the locket shimmered one final time. And then … stillness.

Nobody except Jonah and me noticed it. Everybody else clapped and whistled and hollered out more songs for Boone to play.

But I kept my eyes on the locket. I wondered if it might burn a hole in the sidewalk.

Jonah punched my arm. “Pick it back up.”

I punched his arm harder. “You pick it back up.”

Jonah rolled his eyes and reached down to grab it, but I didn’t want Jonah to think I was too girly. So I snatched it up first. The locket felt the same as always: big, tacky, shiny, and cold against the palm of my hand.

And sealed tightly shut.

“Well, Flea.” Jonah reached for the locket and let it fall long, swinging it back and forth in front of his face like he was trying to hypnotize himself. “There’s something weird about this locket.”

I rolled my eyes. “You think?”

Jonah chuckled as he passed the necklace back to me.

“There’s something weird about that old song, too,” I said, rolling the pendant over in my hand. Boone had
already launched into another tune, but nothing strange was happening. The locket didn’t scorch my fingertips. The air didn’t tremble. But as Boone’s tune played louder, the wind chime rolled down the street. It blew through the trees, rattling the maple leaves. Then it blew down around us both, and pricked against the back of my neck. And I remembered something.

“‘Fair and Tender Ladies’ was the Threadbares’ favorite song. Remember when Rosie told us that? At your mom’s shop? Must be one heck of a snicker of magic in that locket….”

“Too bad we can’t just open the dumb thing and look,” Jonah said as he tried to pry open the locket. But it remained sealed shut. Tight-lipped.

“That locket’s keeping a good secret,” I said to Jonah. “I can feel it.”

I watched Mama step back from the wall again, and sigh, and look over her perfectly imperfect painting. She was standing right there, right on Main Street. But when she looked toward the bridge that first brought us into town, I caught a familiar look in her eyes. A wandering look.

I had to figure out a way to break the Weatherly curse, I knew it. Or we might all be wandering forever.

Snip

Snip

SN

IP

I saw the words cut into pieces as Jewell Pickett slid her scissors across my bangs.

The wet tips of my hair spelled out more words on the floor:

Toggle

Hiccup

Cornucopia

“My brain’s feeling crazy today,” I sighed.

“My brain
always
feels crazy,” Jewell laughed.

She tilted my face up and looked at my bangs to make sure they were even. Aunt Cleo had trimmed my bangs a few days ago, but she’d used her crafting scissors. Mama was not pleased with the outcome.

“
That
is so much better.” Jewell nodded. “Your eyes are too pretty to keep covered up. There’s a whole world of
good to see that you might miss hiding behind your hair. And! This way you’ll be able to look everybody in the eye when you duel.”

“Yep.” I gulped.

“Jonah says you’re pretty nervous about tomorrow.”

I looked through the window into Jewell’s mechanic shop, where Jonah was sitting at a long table, helping Harriet Bond clean the tools. I didn’t mind that he’d told his mom how nervous I was. Jewell Pickett would have figured me out anyway. Jonah’d warned me that she could massage the secrets right out of a person’s scalp.

And sakes alive, was he right.

When Jewell washed my hair, every secret I knew came spilling out of my mouth. I told her about Stone Weatherly being my balloon-riding, globe-trotting, curse-bearing great-great-grandfather. I told her about how I was cursed to wander, cursed to fail, and most likely cursed to keep on riding around the country in a Pickled Jalapeño that smelled like Frito pies.

I told her that Mama was packing up to leave Midnight Gulch. I even told her the secret I hadn’t told Jonah yet. “I heard Mama on the phone last night, talking about Seattle like it was some snazzy carnival.”

Jewell told me everything would work out fine, and her words calmed me down, for about a minute and a half.

But now tears burned in my eyes all over again. Jewell put down her scissors and rested her hands on my shoulders.
Her fingernails were long and coral colored. Her perfume smelled like expensive candy.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” She said it in such a way that the words came spilling out of me again.

“Mama’s got a wandering heart,” I said. “She can’t stay anyplace for long.”

I thought back to that first night when Mama stared up at the lonely old moon, the way the light fell across her face. I thought the moon beamed because it was happy to see us. Now I knew the moon had recognized one of its own: bright, beautiful, lonesome.

Snip

Snip

SN

IP

Words fell loose around me:

Hunger

Safekeep

Refuge

“Maybe I’m meant to be like Florentine,” I said. “Maybe I’m meant to keep drifting around to different places.”

“OH!” Jonah’s mother screeched. I grabbed my hair ’cause I was afraid she’d cut a big hunk out of the back, but my hair was okay.

“Jonah!” Jewell rapped her long fingernails against the window to the auto shop. “Come in here! I need to tell you and Felicity something extraordinary.

“Yesterday while y’all were painting the Gallery,” Jewell said, holding the door open so Jonah could wheel inside, “Florentine came in for a trim. As soon as I started washing her hair, she started talking….”

“We know Florentine’s story,” Jonah said.

“You don’t know what I know!” Jewell grinned.

We both knew she was right. Neither one of us could give a proper shampoo.

Jewell motioned Jonah closer, then leaned in close so nobody else in the shop would hear.

“You’d already told me where Florentine came from. So I asked her how in the world she ended up here, in Midnight Gulch. I could see in her face that she didn’t want to tell me, that she wanted to keep it a secret. She’d left that bag she’s always toting along over in the waiting chair and she kept glancing at it, then back at me, real nervous-like. Finally, she sighed and told me exactly how she wound up here.”

Jewell stood back and smiled proudly in the mirror. “She said that her great-grandmother was born and raised here in Midnight Gulch, but that she left town because she wasn’t welcome here anymore. Florentine said her great-grandmother stole some burdens that did not belong to her … but she left a perfect memory in their place.”

Jewell squirted a golf-ball-size dollop of pouf mousse into her hand and worked it through my hair. “Florentine figures if she can find the perfect memory, she’ll be able to lay those burdens down.

“Now.” Jewell propped her hands on her hips and looked back at Jonah. “You gonna ask me who that great-grandmother was?”

Yes, yes, yes.
My heart pounded so loud I nearly said the word.

Jewell winked at me in the mirror. “You got it, kids. Florentine’s great-granny was none other than Isabella Thistle.”

As soon as Jewell finished drying my hair, I shot up out of her chair and ran out of the salon. Jonah was faster than me in his wheelchair. He had to keep slowing down, waiting for me to catch up.

“Sorry,” I said. “My legs are too short for running.”

“It’s no problem.” Jonah smiled. “Your hair looks cool, Flea. Messy but in a spindiddly way.”

“I don’t want to talk about my hair,” I said. “I can see every single thing around me and it’s weird.”

My hair felt good, though, feather-light and bouncy. I ran faster so I could feel it swoosh into my face.

Then I tripped over my own sneaker and decided the swooshing probably wasn’t worth falling over.

“Is she there?” I yelled ahead.

He shook his head no.

“What if she already left town?” I said. “What if she’s gone? She could have helped us, I bet. She’s Isabella Thistle’s kin. She’ll know how to break that stupid curse.”

I waited for Jonah to give his usual speech about Isabella’s curse, but he didn’t. Instead, he nodded and said, “Then we’ll find her.”

Even Jonah had to face the truth: Our time was almost up.

And goodness knows we tried; we searched every shop on Main Street, asked everybody we passed if they’d seen her. We called out her name. We searched. We waited. And hoped. We never found her. And nobody knew where she went. By the time night dropped its starry curtain over the mountains, Florentine still hadn’t turned up anywhere. My family was still cursed. As soon as the Duel was over, we’d wander away again.