A Snicker of Magic (10 page)

Boone didn’t argue. He scraped the toe of his boot back and forth across the grass, making an invisible line.

Boone on one side. Cleo and the Pickles on the other. I didn’t care for that at all.

“I don’t care what you call yourself,” I said softly. “I’m just glad to have an uncle.”

One side of Boone’s mouth tipped up in a grin. I’d seen that grin before. When that grin stretched out into a full-blown smile, it would be a dancing smile. A painting smile. Just the same as Mama’s.

We all got real quiet then. Boone kept blinking at Cleo with those lonesome blue eyes and I could tell — by the way he was chewing on his lip and clutching that banjo strap — that he thought she would turn him away. But I knew Cleo wouldn’t do that.

“C’mon, then, I reckon.” Cleo sighed.

And while we followed her in, I kept glancing back at my uncle. I didn’t know if Boone was magic or a miracle, or an answer to some prayer I didn’t know I’d prayed. It didn’t matter how he got there.

I believe a family’s still a family no matter if you have two people or ten, no matter if you’re raised by a mama or a grandpa. A family can look a hundred different ways, I knew that. But ever since I came to Cleo’s, and from the first spindiddly second I knew Boone was my uncle, I felt like puzzle pieces that I didn’t know were missing started
snapping together against my heart. I didn’t just want to belong to a place anymore. I wanted to belong to my family, and I wanted them to belong to me.

Boone’s boots thudded heavy against the sidewalk. His heart was weighing him down, I could tell. The words above his head were long guitar strings. They trembled, as if some invisible hand strummed against them:

Failure

Failure

Failure

But Cleo’s were the same as they always were:

Patch it

Mend it

Stitch it back together

My aunt and uncle both seemed so sad that I almost felt guilty for being happy. Not just happy, but the happiest I’d ever been.

I had Mama and Biscuit and Frannie Jo. And now I had an aunt and an uncle, too. I had a best friend named Jonah and I knew secrets about the Brothers Threadbare that nobody else knew.
Lonely
had followed me around for so long. That word was always perched somewhere close, always staring down at me, waiting to pounce out my joy. But I hadn’t seen
lonely
near me in a while. And I hadn’t seen it near the people I loved, either.

“I love this music!” Frannie Jo hollered. And she started grabbing fistfuls of silent, summer air.

Cleo sighed and kept walking and Boone nodded and
stared down at the pavement like he’d remembered, for the first time since coming here, that his family was a bunch of lunatics.

But suddenly, I stopped right on the sidewalk. I didn’t hear music, but I did hear something, and at first it was so faint I thought it was just the wind or the birds in the woods. But the sound wasn’t any of that. I heard the sound of wind chimes, far away but moving closer.

Boone and Cleo kept walking, like they didn’t hear a thing.

I heard it, though. I looked across the parking lot and into the woods. As the sound of the wind chimes faded, I remembered something peculiar Oliver had said:

“And then he told me the
real
story of the Brothers Threadbare and why they quarreled … or
who
they quarreled over, I guess I should say.”

“Well, that’s got nothing to do with me,” I said out loud to the creepy-chimey wind.

The wind didn’t answer me, but my heart sure did.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

I realize it’s not such an uncommon thing for people to have aunts and uncles, but I’d never met my family before we moved to Midnight Gulch. I’d talked to Cleo on the phone a few times, and Mama’d shown me pictures of Cleo visiting me when I was a baby. I’d never even seen a picture of Boone Harness. I always knew he was special, though, because of the way Mama said his name.

For the longest time, I thought she was calling him Boom. I finally asked her one day, “Is his name Boom, like a firework?”

“Not Boom,” she’d laughed. Then she fluttered her hand against her chest. “His name is Boone, like a heartbeat.”

And now Boone-like-a-heartbeat was sitting right in front of me in the Pickled Jalapeño.

Cleo was driving through town like a mad woman, swerving around street corners so fast that the tires squealed. Mama didn’t seem to mind Cleo’s crazy driving today. She was happy to have the day off from work, and I was happy
to see her in regular clothes again, in her paint-stained jeans and a white T-shirt. She still hadn’t painted anything, but I figured the fact that she was wearing her paint clothes was a good start. Mama sat in the front seat, angled around so she could catch up with my mysterious uncle.

All of us were fascinated by Boone, Frannie Jo especially. She sat right up against him in the middle seat, blinking her big blue eyes up at him like he was the King of the World.

Suddenly, the van lurched a hard left so fast that Frannie smooshed into Boone, and I smooshed into the window.

Mama shoved her sunglasses up into her hair and glared at Cleo. “Where you going? The creamery’s downtown.”

“You don’t think I know how to get downtown? I
live
here. I decided to take the girls to Snapdragon Pond.”

“Oh.” Mama shrugged at the same time Boone slid down into the seat and asked, “Why?”

I rested my chin on the middle seat. “You don’t like the pond, Boone?”

Boone shook his head. “I just … I didn’t want to get out so soon. I don’t mind riding in a car, but I don’t want to be outside. I don’t want to see anybody. I need a few days to … you know …
recover
.”

Frannie rested her hand on his arm. Her fingernails were painted bubble-gum pink. “Are you sick somewhere?”

“Right here.” Boone tapped his heart.

“Boone,” Cleo groaned from the front seat. “There ain’t nothing about sitting all by yourself all day, crying into a
bucket of ice cream, that’s gonna make that broken heart heal any faster. You need fresh air and sunshine. There’s nobody at Snapdragon Pond this time of year anyway.”

Boone let out a quick sigh of relief. “That’s good to know.”

Cleo grinned in the rearview mirror. “I was hoping maybe you could play some songs for us. The girls ain’t ever heard you play. You bring your banjo?”

“Nope,” Boone clipped. He chewed on his bottom lip, the same way Mama does when she’s nervous. “Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever play that banjo again. Every good love song I played came to me because of
her
. Now they’re all ruined.”

Mama turned around and patted Boone’s knee. “I’m sorry, sweetie.” She said it the same way she talks to us when we’re hurt or sick or sad.

Aunt Cleo wasn’t quite as comforting as Mama.

“Boone!” Cleo hollered. “Stop being so dramatic. Holly, don’t baby him. If he’s a real musician, then he’ll find a new song. A better song. It’s time to face the world again! Ain’t that right, girls?”

“Cleo’s right,” I said quietly. I patted his shoulder. “You’ll find a better song.”

Frannie Jo lifted her arms up toward heaven, like she was about to shout “Hallelujah.” “Felicity can help you! She catches poems for me! She sees words on people sometimes.”

I shook my head at Frannie Jo and tapped my finger against my lips.
Shhhh.
I didn’t want Boone to know about
my word-collecting ability because I didn’t want him to think I was a freak.

“Is that right?” Boone turned around to look at me. I felt my cheeks go red, every freckle on the bridge of my nose tingling like a little lava drop.

Boone smiled. “Do you see any words hovering around me right now?”

I nodded. I definitely saw some words:

Regret

Has-Been

Idiot

Deadbeat

“Well?” Boone blinked at me. “What words do you see? Can I use them in a new song?” Boone had the same blue eyes as Mama and Frannie and Cleo. My eyes are a different color from theirs. I wonder if my eyes look as sad as theirs, though. I wonder if I see things the same as they do.

I know I see words they can’t see.

I wonder if I can see other things they can’t. Jonah can read a sad story in the newspaper and find a way to help somebody. I’d like to do that, too, see things better than they are.

“New beginning,” my voice crackled. “Those are your words:
new beginning
.” I didn’t make eye contact with Mama. She’d know it was a fib. And anyhow, I wasn’t lying, not
exactly
. I might not have seen those exact words sitting on my uncle’s shoulders, but they were still true words. They
could
be, at least.

“Yeah?” Boone’s cheek dimpled like he was about to smile at me. “New beginning?”

I nodded. “Your words are shaped like sparrows. They’re perched right on your shoulders.”

“Ain’t that something,” Boone said softly, like he was amazed by my skills.

Frannie Jo smiled back at me as if I was the coolest girl who ever lived. Someday she’ll probably stop looking at me that way, but I hope it’s not for a long time. Mama wasn’t looking at me. She had her face turned toward the light of the window. The sun was doing its best to shine on her, to warm up all the cold places down in her heart.

Aunt Cleo caught my eye in the rearview mirror, though. She winked at me. I winked back.

“New beginning,” Cleo drawled. “You heard it, Boone. Today’s your day for starting over.”

A smile stretched full and easy across Boone’s face. He sat up taller in his seat and nodded, just once. Affirmative. He believed me.

Craziest thing happened then:

Regret, Has-Been, Idiot, Deadbeat …

I watched every last one of those words pop like bath bubbles and disappear.

My heart kicked hard against me:
Yes. Yes. Yes.

Maybe sometimes the words I say are as magical as the words I see.

“I used to be that way,” Boone said. He looked out the window, at Midnight Gulch blurring past us. But I knew he
was talking to me. “When I was a kid, I could see things, too. Not words, like you see. But when somebody played a piano, I saw the notes like colors. It’s a hard thing to explain. But if somebody played C-sharp, I’d see purple. They’d play A-flat and I’d see yellow, and on and on. Same thing happened when I heard somebody play a guitar or a violin. Or a banjo.” He grinned. “Music notes looked like colors to me. That’s why I started playing, because it was like painting with no paintbrush. I learned to paint songs. Seemed as cool as any magic I’d heard of in Midnight Gulch.”

I propped my arms on the middle seat and rested my chin on my wrist. “Do you still see colors when you play?”

I’ve wondered if words will be harder to collect as I get older. I wonder if, someday, they’ll just become flat letters in books. I’d like to keep seeing words the way I do now, if I can, but there’s a chance they could disappear someday. There’s a chance they could disappear tomorrow.

“Sometimes I still see colors.” Boone glanced back at me. “When I’m playing my best, I still see colors.”

I sat back and smiled. Maybe I’d see my words forever, too. Maybe I could paint pictures with my stories someday. And if not, maybe an even better magic would find me.

That’s a wonderful word:
maybe
. I watched
maybe
stretch out, long and starry. The letter
y
looked as fiery as the tail of a comet; it looped around our shoulders, connecting us all together.

“Welcome to Snapdragon Pond, girls!” Cleo swerved the van into a gravel parking lot and stomped the brakes so hard I heard all of our seat belts catch. There were no other cars in the lot. As far as I could see, there was no water, either.

“Aunt Cleo,” I asked, “is Snapdragon Pond … made of rocks?”

Boone chuckled. “Pretty much.”

“Pond’s a short walk that way.” Cleo pointed to a path swirling into the woods. “Everybody grab a camping chair out of the back. Boone, you can carry the snack bag, too.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Boone saluted.

“Also,” Cleo said, “I brought us a box of wings.”

Frannie gasped.

Boone’s whole body went still. “A box of
what
?”

“Wings,” Cleo said louder. “Frannie Jo wanted to play fairy kingdom, so I made everybody their own pair of wings. Y’all strap on a pair of wings, grab a camping chair, and then we’ll walk to the pond.”

Frannie Jo was so excited that she started bouncing in the seat, fluttering her hands together.

Boone remained perfectly still. He seemed to be pondering the situation carefully. “Think I’ll wait here in the van.”

“Boone! It won’t kill you to have fun!” Cleo’s holler was persuasive. But it wasn’t Cleo’s hollering that melted Boone’s broken heart. It was my little sister.

“Boone.” Frannie said his name like a heartbeat, the same way Mama did. She twisted her hands together and shrugged her shoulders. “Is it a stupid game? Is that why you won’t play?”

“No! It’s not stupid!” Boone tried to smile at Frannie, but I could see the panic in his eyes. “Fairy kingdom …” he sighed. “It’s … an
awesome
game.”

Frannie stared at her lap and smoothed the fluffs of her yellow tutu. “But you won’t play?”

Mama raised an eyebrow at Boone, an I-dare-you smile pulling at the corners of her mouth. Cleo slid out of the van and heaved open Boone’s door, holding out a pair of grown-up-size wings. The wings were made of wire and gauzy camouflage. I didn’t even know gauzy camouflage existed, but it looked so tough and pretty. I hoped Cleo made mine the same way.

Frannie Jo tapped Boone’s leg and smiled up at him. “I have a fake sword in my suitcase. You can be the fairy prince! I’ll be the princess.”

Boone nodded toward my aunt. “Is Cleo the wicked witch?”

Cleo narrowed her eyes. “I’m the Boss Fairy.”

“Obviously,” Boone sighed. He zipped his hoodie with one quick
zrrrrrp
. He reached for his wings. “Lead the way, Boss Fairy.”

I sat on the banks of Snapdragon Pond and freewrote. The grass was cool and prickly against my legs. The shadow of my gauzy-camouflage wings made pretty patterns on the page of my blue book.