A Snicker of Magic Page 2

  Stone/berry

  And that got me to thinking about the spider egg that Mama found in the way-back seat of the Pickled Jalapeño. None of us knew anything about spiders or their eggs, and while we didn’t have anything against them, Mama didn’t want them crawling through the van or nesting in her hair. So she squashed the egg with her rhinestone flip-flop and we soon discovered that’s probably the worst thing she could have done. Because about a million baby spiders exploded out of the egg and scampered across the backseat. Mama screamed and whopped at them with her flip-flop, but I think most of them got away. If they’re still in the van, we don’t see them very often. Spiders don’t make much fuss.

  When Miss Lawson made two words out of Stoneberry, it became a spider word to me. Suddenly, those two words split apart and new words creep-crawled out of them, across the walls and under the door and out into the hallway:

  Ton

  TurboBoy

  Note

  Ruby

  Ruby’s the only word I wanted to keep. I pulled my shoe up in my lap and scrawled R-U-B-Y across the toe. I hoped somebody out in the hall snatched up TurboBoy. TurboBoy wasn’t a real word, as far as I knew. But it sure did sound good.

  “Here’s the truth of it!” Miss Lawson hollered, spinning around to face us all. Her sudden burst of energy surprised me so much that I jumped. But nobody else seemed to notice. I guess they’d had a few weeks to get used to Miss Lawson’s energy. Even though she stood tall and smiled, I could see:

  Jitters

  Impressions

  Impressionable souls …

  STEP LIVELY

  All those words were blooming up like flowers out of her glossy black hair.

  Miss Lawson said, “Every person you will ever meet, and every place you will ever go, and every building you set your foot in — has a story to tell.”

  “In fact!” she exclaimed. “One of my most favorite stories happened in this exact place.” Miss Lawson’s eyes sparkled in such a pretty way when she spoke. I wished I could put words together as easy as she could. Everything about her seemed bright, even her clothes. She wore a polka-dot sweater and a green skirt that swirled like a lily pad when she spun toward us.

  She walked across the front of the classroom while she talked, her purple heels click-clacking against the tiles. “As I’m sure you know, Midnight Gulch, Tennessee, is famous for two things: The first is Dr. Zook’s Famous Ice Cream Factory. For those of you who are new to town” — Miss Lawson winked down at me — “you’ll be happy to know there are forty-five marvelous and mysterious flavors of ice cream for you to try. Cake flavored, bacon flavored. You name it, Dr. Zook’s makes it.”

  I might have been in Midnight Gulch for less than twenty-four hours, but I already knew about Dr. Zook’s Ice Cream. I knew because Aunt Cleo’s freezer was packed full of it. Cleo’s partial to the Chocolate Chip Pork Rind flavor.

  “But!” Miss Lawson clapped her hands. “Midnight Gulch isn’t only famous for ice cream. Midnight Gulch is famous because it used to be a magical place. And the most magical people who lived here, the most famous duo ever to call Midnight Gulch their home, were the Brothers Threadbare.”

  Yes,

  Yes,

  Yes!

  I pressed my hand hard against my ribs so my drumbeat-yes heart might calm down enough for me to hear the story. But it wasn’t just my heart screaming Yes! this time. Even though I was certain I’d never heard anything about those magical brothers before, my ears tingled as though I’d been told some wonderful secret.

  I saw one word appear across the wall of the classroom, the letters even taller than Miss Divinity Lawson, stretching all the way from the floor to the ceiling:

  T H R E A D B A R E

  I heard a steady chorus of yawns and sighs, most likely coming from people who’d heard the story once or twice or ten thousand times. But somehow I knew, before I even heard a single word, that this story would matter to me.

  “Many years ago,” Miss Lawson continued, “this schoolhouse didn’t exist and this land was only an empty hillside. And on this very hillside” — she stomped her high-heeled shoe on the tiles to make sure we understood — “on September 15, 1910, the Brothers Threadbare had their famous duel.

  “Like most people in Midnight Gulch, the Brothers Threadbare were simple, easygoing folks … who just so happened to have a little magic in their veins.” She grinned. “Their real names were Stone and Berry Weatherly. The Weatherlys were farm boys, the same as some of you.”

  Miss Lawson crossed her arms over her chest. I wondered if her heart was pounding as loud as mine.

  “Every family in Midnight Gulch had a different kind of magic. The Weatherly Magic was a particularly wonderful kind, though, because their magic had to do with music. Whenever Stone and Berry played their songs, the whole world seemed to dance. At the first strum of Berry Weatherly’s banjo, the wind would roar over the valleys. The wildflowers would wave from the hillsides. The trees would shake their limbs and clap their leaves. When Stone played his guitar, the clouds swirled into a thousand different shapes: cloud lions, cloud tigers, thunderheads that ran like wild horses across the sky.”

  Desks squeaked and popped as people leaned up in their seats, trying to get as close as they could to the story Miss Lawson was telling. If the right person tells a story, I guess it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve heard it. Your heart still hears it brand-new. And Miss Lawson was an A+ storyteller.

  “And the townspeople!” She clasped her hands together. “They all took to dancing whenever the Weatherly boys played music; their wicked, wonderful, magical music.

  “Even when the Brothers Threadbare were out of town, doing shows in other cities, you could hear their music in Midnight Gulch. The music got caught in the trees and echoed all through town and through the woods. People danced down Main Street all day, every day, back then. They couldn’t help it. They say that Midnight Gulch was the happiest place in the world, back when the magic was still here. Back before the Brothers Threadbare left town and never came back.”

  One of the pencil-machine girls tucked a swirly-twirl of blond hair behind her ear and asked, “Where’d they go?”

  “Excellent question.” Miss Lawson clapped excitedly. “At first, the Weatherlys left town together, on a tour. They traveled from the country to the city, hoping they could make enough money from their music to send back to the farm. They always started their concerts with a few magic tricks. Anybody with magic in their veins can do simple magic tricks, so that was easy enough. But soon, the brothers realized people were more interested in their magic tricks than in their singing. So they focused on the magic: They charmed mountain lions and made fire puppets. They flung handfuls of coal dust into the air and watched the ashes turn to butterflies. They were young and handsome and talented. People couldn’t get enough of them. But sadly,” Miss Lawson sighed, “their fame and fortune became a dividing line between them.”

  She tapped the line on the chalkboard again. “The brothers became jealous of one another. They got so jealous, in fact, that they finally decided to have a duel. Whoever won, they decided, could keep all the money and fame and fortune they’d earned. But the loser would be cursed forever with a wandering heart. The loser would leave town, never return, never settle down. And never do another magic trick.”

  The room felt especially icy all of a sudden, like somebody had turned the air conditioner to “freeze out.” Miss Lawson felt it, too; she leaned against her desk and rubbed her arms.

  “The brothers met right on this hillside,” she sighed. “Newspapers from seven different states sent reporters to cover the event. At nine fifteen in the morning, on September fifteenth, the Brothers Threadbare began their duel. Their magic was wild and powerful by then. So they dueled for three whole days: sweating, shouting, always trying to outdo the other. Finally, it was Berry who cast the winning spell.

  “And poor Stone Weatherly.” She circled his name on the board. “He l
eft town, cursed forever with a wandering heart. Nobody knows what became of him.

  “Soon after he left, Berry discovered that, without his brother, his magic didn’t work anyhow. Eventually, he disappeared from town, too. After that, people got restless and sad. They said Midnight Gulch used to be their favorite secret, their favorite place … but Midnight Gulch didn’t feel like home anymore. People started leaving, breaking apart from their families and heading out in search of what they’d lost.”

  By this time, I had the fabric of my T-shirt all bunched up in my fist. I was even trembling, just a little bit. Because I knew what it felt like to have a family broken apart. And I knew what it was like to always be searching for a home.

  “There were no more songs caught in the trees,” Miss Lawson continued. “No more people dancing down Main Street. Even folks with other types of magic started using it less and less and less. And before people knew it, the magic was gone completely. And Midnight Gulch became the same as any other town.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture the kind of town Miss Lawson described — a place where people stayed in one place. Where families stayed together. I’d give anything to find a magic like that.

  “And so,” Miss Lawson said, “when the town built this school, they named it after both of the brothers — Stoneberry. I think it’s time we had a special event to commemorate our tragic namesakes.”

  Miss Lawson spun around and pulled a white chart down over the word she’d hacked apart. She turned on a projector that whirred as loud as a helicopter.

  These were the words lit up on the screen:

  “Except we won’t duel with magic tricks. The Weatherlys took all the magic with them when they left town. We still have the Beedle of course.” She winked at us. “Which is just as wonderful, if you ask me.”

  Before I could ask her what in the world was a beedle, Miss Lawson said: “Our duel will be a talent show. You can sing, play a musical instrument, share an art project, shoot free throws —”

  The blond pencil-machine girl gasped and waved her hand in the air. “I can turn fourteen cartwheels in a row!”

  Of course she could.

  “That’s the spirit!” Miss Lawson clapped. And then she tilted her head and looked down at me, at the blue book on my desk. “Maybe some of you write poems, or stories. You are welcome to share those, too. Your words are pure magic, after all. Your words are necessary enchantments.”

  My heart agreed with her and so did the rest of me: from the tip of my ponytail to the inked-up toe of my sneaker. Plus, I liked the sound of free cotton candy. I thought of how that might look, if words spun up out of a candy machine:

  Sugar-flossed

  Pink and sweet

  Love was the only word I’d ever found with a flavor to it; love tasted as sweet as cotton candy when I said it. When I thought about love and cotton candy, I thought about Mama and Frannie Jo and Biscuit and my aunt Cleo, too, who was most likely sitting at home watching soap operas and smoking a cigarette. She claims this is how she solves the world’s problems. I love her for that reason and a thousand more besides. Love is too heavy a word, though, which is exactly why I don’t like to say it.

  “Any questions?” Miss Lawson asked.

  The boy on my other side spoke up for the first time. He asked, “Why’d they call themselves the Brothers Threadbare?” His voice crackled like an old set of radio speakers. Or maybe like a thundercloud that rumbled and mumbled but couldn’t quite work itself into a full-blown storm. If I had a voice that sounded as cool as that, I’d never shut up.

  “That’s a fabulous question, Toast.” Miss Lawson grinned. “But I want you guys to figure out the answer on your own.” She turned off the projector. “Sign-up sheet for the Duel is on the door. Step lively!”

  Nobody moved.

  Miss Lawson sighed. “Did I mention the winner gets one hundred dollars cash-money and a year’s supply of Dr. Zook’s?”

  A wild stampede of students stormed past my desk and penciled their names on the sheet.

  Miss Lawson clapped her hands and bounced up on her toes. “We’ll duel all afternoon and make Stone and Berry very proud indeed.”

  Realizing this could very well be my opportunity to make my first friend in Midnight Gulch, I smiled at Toast and said, “That’s a fancy robo-chicken you drew.”

  He sighed, and pushed his glasses up on his nose. But he never looked back at me. “It’s a space llama,” he thunder-mumbled. “Not a chicken.” And then he moped up to the sign-up sheet, scribbled something down, and wandered out into the hallway.

  This is a fact I know to be true, thanks to all my world-weary travels: Making new friends, in a new place, when you’re the new girl, is harder than fractions.

  The bell bing-a-linged through the speakers, and kids ran down the hall so fast you’d think the school was on fire. I stood up slowly, held my blue book against my chest, and walked to the list on the door. So many names, all smudged and sparkling. Here’s the crazy part: My heart told me to sign my name. But my head told me that I’d only make an idiot out of myself. Sometimes I daydreamed about sharing my words with people; I wanted to string them together until they became poems. I wanted to stir them into stories. But I’d learned the hard way that the words I caught were for me, and nobody else. My words would come out a mess if I tried to say them.

  At my last school, in Kentucky, I tried. I wrote a paper called “Great Farm Artists of Kentucky” and my teacher enjoyed it so much that she asked me to read in front of the whole school at our weekly assembly. I managed to say my name fine, but in my introduction, I accidentally said “Great Arm Fartists of Kentucky” on account of being so nervous.

  And you’d think fartists was the funniest word that had ever been spoken, because people started laughing so hard that the bleachers in the gym shook. Suddenly, the skin above my mouth got cold and sweaty. My nose hairs started tingling. My vision blurred around the edges. One of the eighth-grade girls sitting in the front row pointed to my face and laughed, probably because she saw my mustache of sweat.

  That was possibly the worst three minutes and twenty-four seconds of my life. For six weeks after that, right up until the day we moved to Tennessee, people made fart noises when I walked down the hall. When I finally told Mama about it, her solution was the same as every other time I’d had a problem at school: She said it was time for a new beginning. So we packed up the Jalapeño and zoomed out of town. And while leaving all your problems behind and starting over sounds like a fine solution, it never really worked for me. My heart’s a lot like Frannie Jo’s blue suitcase: I can’t seem to help packing up all the bad memories and taking them with me no matter where I go.

  So I would never, nohow, no way, share my words again.

  As I pushed my way out into the hall, a wad of paper whopped me in the forehead.

  I might have walked off and left it there if I hadn’t looked down and seen so many words spinning around the paper, thin as wire rings around a clay planet. The paper had a noise to it, too. Most words don’t sound until they hit the air. But the paper hummed like an electric wire, right up until the second I touched it. I fanned it open and read:

  I sighed and shook my head. I might as well have stood up and introduced myself by saying, “Hello, my name is Dog Tick.”

  LONELY

  The word slithered across the cafeteria table, which didn’t surprise me at all. Lonely had followed me around for as long as I could remember. I never caught that stupid word in my blue book, but it kept showing up anyway. I knew it didn’t make much sense to see lonely in a place like the Stoneberry cafeteria, because there was a constant clatter of noise: forks and spoons clanging, lunch trays smacking down against the tables, and people yelling things at each other like “Save me a seat.” There were hundreds of people in there, or at least fifty, so I shouldn’t have been lonely.

  But there it was. I’m fairly certain lonely’s most natural habitat is a school cafeteria.

&nbs
p; I tried to ignore it. I settled into the last seat at a corner table and took a tiny bite of my apple slice. Just as I figured, the apple wasn’t sweet. Some words have a taste, and lonely is one of them. It doesn’t matter if you’re eating apples or chicken fingers or peanut butter cookies — once you see lonely, everything tastes like sand.

  I pushed the tray away and pulled my blue book out of my backpack. I caught some of the other words I saw skittering across the room:

  Pocket

  Bubble

  Cage

  Confine

  Isolate

  “Felicity!”

  I stopped writing. I could have sworn I heard somebody yell my name. I knew my ears must have made it up, though. Nobody in that school remembered my name, probably. Except for Frannie Jo and Miss Lawson.

  And some character called the Beedle.

  I slipped the Beedle’s note from the pocket of my hoodie and flattened it out over the table.

  When the note first whopped me in the forehead, I figured somebody was playing a joke on me. Had to be. What if the Beedle was fake, and once I ran outside and found the bird-poopless table, all I really found was a bunch of kids standing in a circle laughing at my idiot stupidity? But even Miss Lawson had said the Beedle was the most magical thing in Midnight Gulch. I needed magic like that, the kind that made people want to stay in one place. The kind that made people want to stay together.

  My shoulders slumped as I thought about Mama and what she might be doing right then. Her shift didn’t start until late in the afternoon, which meant she had all day to roam around in the Pickled Jalapeño. That’s exactly what she’d be doing, too, just roaming. That’s all she ever wanted to do. She couldn’t stop.

  I tried not to think about what I’d do if she up and decided to go without me.