A Snicker of Magic: Chapters 13–17

“Poets and paupers,” Jonah said.

I reached for the pint of Uncle Duane’s Sublime Key Lime Pie.

Soldiers would walk in there and tell Nancy certain secret information. And, somehow, Nancy Smith could bake that information into the pie. There were no slips of paper. No number codes. No tangible pieces of evidence. It was the secret she baked in. Soldiers could taste those pies and know all sorts of important things.

“Word collecting’s not magic,” I argued. “It’s just a quirk, just how I am.”

“Then start believing me!” He leaned closer to me and whispered, “Beedle intuition is always spot-on.”

She was mumbling the words of her story, so happy to be reading that she didn’t notice the pink dollop of ice cream on her chin.

The only perk of my impending Dueldom was spending more time with Jonah.

I was thinking the other day, when Oliver talked about Eldee Mae helping him out all those years, that it’d be nice to have an accomplice.

She was busy sweeping the sidewalk around her storefront, a polka-dot apron cinched tight around her waist.

I pulled out my blue book to collect the words Ponder was sweeping up alongside all the dust and dirt and feathers around her door:
Whimsy
Wonder
Celebration
Sorrow

But the farmhouse where I lived with my granny Opal stood tall; not even a shingle was blown off our roof.

Words that belonged in a sanctuary filled up the spaces between the three of us. But those words looked as fine there as they’d ever looked in a church, and I wondered if there was something sacred, something everlasting, about melted ice cream and summer days and good stories.

“And it was a humdinger of a curse: Cursed to wander through the night, till cords align, and all's made right.”

“But that was a long time ago. That’s got nothing to do with us, right?” His voice sounded shrill and crackly.

“Cleo!” Boone clipped. He was the only man brave enough to yell at my aunt.
“Fine!” Cleo seethed.

I pried at the locket with my fingernails but it wouldn’t budge.

The locket was kind of big and tacky but spindiddly, too.

Foolish heart who fought and failed,
Where talent bloomed, your greed prevailed,
Cursed to toil, till labor-worn,
You'll spin up ashes, you'll harvest thorns.

Foolish heart who fought and failed,
Where talent bloomed, your greed prevailed,
Cursed to toil, till labor-worn,
You'll spin up ashes, you'll harvest thorns.

Jonah said the shop came about because his mom, Jewell, had two great passions in life: tinkering with carburetors and coloring people’s hair.

Now every mechanic Jewell hires has to be well versed in rotaries and acrylic nails.

I’d mess it up, no matter what. We would leave town, no matter what. I freewrote about my dilemma in the blue book...

He tapped his foot to the music on the radio, antsy for his haircut to end so he could get back to dancing.

Working beside Jonah was a rotund man with a shiny bald head. He wore sparkly diamond earrings and had muscles in his arms the size of cantaloupes.

They were scuffed-up brown and embroidered with red roses. I crazy-liked those cowboy boots.

I thought I was too old to set out for Nashville and be a singer. I thought nobody’d listen to me since I wasn’t no young, flouncy little spring chicken.

Jewell Pickett walked to the front of the shop and stared down into the wondrous abyss of Oliver’s cooler.

They say Owen Triplett could catch starlight in glass jars. He got in trouble for selling his starlight jars to tourists, though. People’d no more than pay for their jars when the starlight would bust loose and head back for the skies. Starlight doesn’t take good to domestication.

“Note to self,” Jonah whispered to me. “Stars don’t make good pets.”
“Duly noted,” I agreed.

Oliver continued, “Some families had a purpose to their magic, though. The Terrys could conjure up the rain. The Smiths could bake secrets into their pies.”

“In fact, back then, the most notorious woman in all of Midnight Gulch was a young lady named Isabella Thistle.”

She ended up turning both of the boys down on account of their stupid antics.

“My mama could paint the Gallery, easy. She’ll paint something wonderful and winsome all over that wall. She’s an exceptional artist.”

Oliver thought that was a fine idea. I locked eyes with Jonah and saw a halo of words spinning around his spiky blond hair:
Clever
Stalwart
Brilliant
Splendiferous

That night, while everybody else was sound asleep, I sat on the floor of my makeshift bedroom, spilling my heart out to my dog.