Hand-Me-Down Magic #1

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “You don’t even want dessert?” Abuelita asked. She and Titi Rosa were busy making majarete. It wasn’t really a two-person job, but they said it was better when they did it together.

  “More love that way,” Abuelita would say.

  “No, thank you,” Del said. “I’m tired.”

  “Must be all that magic,” Alma mumbled. Maybe Alma thought Del couldn’t hear her, but she could. Del stuck out her tongue. Alma turned to one of her drawings. Del noticed that Alma was always drawing. Del preferred the playground. And maybe since Alma had arrived, Del had made fun of the way Alma could sit in a corner for hours drawing a single face over and over. But it wasn’t like the way Alma was making fun of her now. Not at all. That was very, very different.

  “You won’t even give the earrings a chance,” Del said. She thought Alma would be happy to move here. Del had never been happier about anything than she had been about Alma’s move. And she thought Alma would be happy about her good luck. She wanted to share it with her, after all. But Alma wasn’t sharing in all the happiness. Instead she was trying to ruin it.

  “Clip-on earrings,” Alma said. “I don’t have to give them a chance. They’re nothing.”

  This was the meanest thing Del could imagine Alma saying. The earrings weren’t nothing. They were everything. And if Alma could say something so mean, Del didn’t want to be anywhere near her. Even if it meant going to bed a little hungry. Even if it meant missing family dinner.

  Tucked into bed way before bedtime, Del tried to sleep in her magical clip-on earrings. But very quickly, her ears started to ache from the weight of them. They were too tight. She thought they might bring her magical, lucky dreams. But in fact, they made it impossible to sleep. Del put them on her nightstand. She watched them until her eyes started to close, and she drifted off.

  She couldn’t wait to put them on in the morning. And maybe, somehow, the magical earrings would be so lucky that they’d fix what was broken between her and Alma. That would be the best kind of magic.

  13

  An Almost Apology

  -Alma-

  Alma wanted to apologize to Del. That was her plan. It really, really was. She’d said something much meaner than she’d meant to, after all. And when she thought about the sad boy at the stoop sale missing his best friend, she remembered that a best friend was a wonderful thing to have. She owed it to that sad boy to make up with Del.

  But when Alma entered Del’s room after dinner, she saw that her cousin was asleep. Alma wasn’t sure what to do. Maybe she should leave Del an apology note.

  Alma was about to find a piece of paper and pencil when she caught sight of the earrings. They somehow looked even bigger, even more ridiculous, here on Del’s nightstand. They were so pink and so shiny and so over the top.

  It was the earrings’ fault that she and Del were fighting! It was their fault that Del had skipped dinner and Alma had to try to explain why to her whole family. It was their fault that her first week here hadn’t gone as planned.

  All of a sudden, Alma was so mad that these ridiculous, over-the-top, crazy-looking clip-on earrings could cause so much trouble. It didn’t seem fair. It didn’t seem right. And she had to do something about it.

  If the earrings vanished, there wouldn’t be anything to fight about. Alma and Del could go back to being their usual best-friend-cousin selves.

  Alma knew what she had to do. Very quietly, she reached for the earrings. They were heavier than she thought they’d be. There was a tiny clink and clank. A whisper of a jingle and jangle. Del stirred. But she didn’t wake up.

  Alma put the clip-on earrings into her pocket and snuck downstairs. They clinked and clanked and jingled and jangled the whole way down, but no one seemed to notice.

  Over the years, Alma and Del had put many, many things on their stoop during Alma’s visits. It was one of Alma’s favorite things to do when she visited Del. They’d put out books they didn’t like, sweaters that no longer fit, toys they’d outgrown. Once they even put a whole birthday cake on the stoop, just to see what would happen. It was gone within an hour.

  So Alma knew when she put those certainly-not-at-all-magical clip-on earrings on the stoop that someone would want them.

  Since they were clip-on earrings, they practically demanded to be clipped somewhere. She clipped them to the ears of the stone lion-head statue that was atop the stone railing of the stoop. She’d never known why it was there or what it meant. But that lion sure looked dressed up now. Ready for a party.

  She took one last look at the lion and ran back inside, pretending she’d never been there at all.

  14

  Nowhere to Be Found

  -Del-

  Del woke up on the floor with a loud thump.

  She had never woken up on the floor before. It hurt.

  “Ouch!” Del cried. She must have rolled out of bed somehow. Maybe a bad dream.

  Maybe just bad luck.

  Del rubbed her back and her elbow. It wasn’t a good start to the day.

  The very next thing that happened was that Del felt a puddle of water beneath her. She looked up and saw the problem immediately. She had left her window open overnight. And there had been a storm. She didn’t usually sleep through things like storms. But this must have been a big one. The rain outside had mostly stopped. Inside, though, everything near her window was soaked through. Including Del’s favorite stuffed animal, a teddy bear named Oso. Abuelita had given Oso to Del when she was born, and had given him the name to help Del learn Spanish. Del had always loved him.

  Oso was a little delicate from being loved for so long, but now he looked positively ready to fall apart from all the water.

  It seemed strange, after all that good luck, to have so much bad luck in one morning.

  I better put on my magical clip-on earrings! Del thought. Those will fix things, I’m sure. She reached up toward her nightstand, but her hands couldn’t find the earrings.

  And when she looked at her nightstand, there was nothing there.

  Del gasped. She sank down to the wet carpet and checked all over for the magical earrings. She looked under the nightstand and under the bed and even over by the door, just in case they were so magical that they could float over there somehow.

  But the earrings were not in her room.

  Del flew through the building on Twenty-Third Avenue. She asked Titi Rosa and Abuelita and Tío George and even little Evie. No one had seen the earrings. When she knocked on Alma’s door, she was ready to explode.

  “Have you seen them?” Del asked.

  “Seen what?” Alma asked.

  “My earrings!”

  Alma shook her head. “I haven’t seen them,” she said.

  Even though Del was angry with her cousin, she knew Alma would never lie to her. She and Alma always told each other the truth. That was a very important part of being a best-friend cousin.

  Del went onto the street. She asked Uncle Andy, who was often sitting on a lawn chair in front of his building next door, watching the comings and goings of the neighborhood. He shrugged his shoulders. She asked the Goldberg twins, who were walking to the playground. They hadn’t seen any earrings. She looked under the beautiful sobbing tree and in the bakery and in every nook and cranny of the Curious Cousins Secondhand Shoppe.

  No earrings anywhere.

  15

  A Big, Big Mistake

  -Alma-

  Alma was ready to enjoy the earringless, magicless day. But when she found Del on the playground, she could tell it wasn’t going to be a normal day. She was starting to think there were no normal days on Twenty-Third Avenue.

  Del looked all a mess. She explained to Alma that a bus had driven into a puddle and splashed mud all over her outfit. A bee had stung her cheek, and it was a little swollen. And Del was limping because she’d tripped over a bump in the sidewalk and hurt both of her knees.

  Alma’s stomach turned a little. She didn’t believe in magic, but Del was sure having a
string of bad luck this morning.

  “Please help me look,” Del said.

  Del looked so sad and so messy and so lost that Alma had to say yes.

  The cousins looked all over the playground for the earrings. Alma almost convinced herself they could be there. At every turn, Del’s luck got worse. When she looked by the slide, a toddler coming down fast flew into her. When Del looked in the sandbox she came across a discarded baloney sandwich that smelled simply awful.

  When Del looked over by the gate, she accidentally pinched her fingers in the lock.

  Alma hated seeing so many bad things happen to Del. Even when they fought, she still loved Del more than anyone in the world.

  “This is the worst day of my whole life!” Del cried. “Nothing’s going right!”

  Del and Alma walked home, and another bus drove through water, splashing Del again. A dog barked at her so loudly that she got scared and had to run away from it. Then she accidentally ran into Mrs. Jones, who lived down the street. Mrs. Jones was carrying a big bag of groceries that went all over the sidewalk. An egg cracked on top of Del’s new sparkly red sneakers. And Mrs. Jones scolded Del for being so careless.

  Alma had never seen Del look so sad. Del being sad made Alma feel sad.

  Alma felt something else too. A little guilty.

  Then a lot guilty.

  “Now do you believe in the earrings?” Del asked Alma.

  Alma wasn’t sure what to say. She didn’t know what to believe. The one thing she was sure of, though, was that she’d made a big, big mistake.

  16

  No More Words

  -Del-

  Back home, Del went up to her bedroom and closed the door. She felt terrible. After such a perfect, magical day with the dangly gold-and-pink beaded clip-on earrings, she felt absolutely hopeless. She wanted a hug from Oso, but he was still waterlogged and lying out to dry in Abuelita’s garden with all the laundry.

  There was a knock at her door.

  “I don’t feel like talking to anyone,” Del said. She was trying not to cry, but it wasn’t going very well.

  “I have to tell you something,” Alma said. Del noticed that she was blushing. She knew her cousin very well. If Alma was blushing, it meant that she’d done something bad.

  “What did you do?” Del asked.

  Alma did her imitation of an Abuelita shrug.

  “What did you do, Alma?” Del asked again.

  “I stole and I lied,” Alma said.

  Del’s heart fluttered. Her feet itched. Her nose stung. Her eyes clouded. Her back got wet. Her stomach flipped.

  “I stole the earrings. And I told you I didn’t know where they were. But I do know.” Alma did the Abuelita shrug again. A sad, guilty version of it.

  “I put them outside,” Alma said. “But then I changed my mind! Really quickly! I went out to get them back, but they were already gone!” Alma’s voice was high and fast, the exact opposite of Del’s.

  “You put. My magical earrings. On the stoop?” Del asked.

  “No!” Alma said. “I put them on the lion’s ears, actually. He looked really good in them. Distinguished.”

  Del couldn’t find any words. This was bad luck too. She needed to speak. She needed to yell at her cousin. But the words were all gone.

  “I don’t know why I did it,” Alma said.

  Del said nothing.

  “I was tired of talking about magic,” Alma said.

  Still, Del said nothing.

  “Every day since I’ve been here, all you do is tell me about magic. And tell me all the things you know and all the things I don’t know. I feel left out of my own family.” Alma spoke quietly, but Del heard the words as if they were very loud.

  Del still didn’t know what to say. All she wanted was for Alma to like magic, the way she liked magic and the way Abuelita liked magic. All Del wanted was for Alma to have fun at her new home, and to be excited to be together, just like Del was.

  “No one talked about magic at my old home,” Alma said.

  For the first time, Del realized Alma might miss her old home. Maybe Alma was happy to be here and sad sometimes too.

  “I don’t know anything about it. Or anything about the shop. Or anything about our family, I guess.”

  Alma looked a little sad and a little lost. Del didn’t want her to be either of those things, but she was still mad about the earrings. And she was pretty sure she was getting a cold. And her foot was falling asleep. And clouds were coming in, ruining the day even more. And it was all Alma’s fault.

  Del finally had something to say. But she needed to say it to Abuelita.

  17

  Curious Cousins

  -Alma-

  Alma didn’t like the way Abuelita was looking at her.

  “She stole my earrings! She gave them to a lion! A stone lion! Not even a real one!” Del said. “Then she lied about it!”

  “And has the lion been lucky?” Abuelita asked.

  Alma and Del hadn’t thought to check. They looked out at their building’s stoop. The lion head was there, as usual. It was pretty hard to tell if a stone lion was lucky or not.

  “Probably,” Del said. “Since it had the earrings.”

  “I wonder what a stone lion considers lucky,” Abuelita said.

  “Maybe someone dropping ice cream on its face?” Alma asked. “So it could get a taste?”

  “Or someone planting nice-smelling flowers right under its nose?” Del suggested.

  “Someone putting another lion head across the street so it has someone to hang out with?” Alma said. She was starting to giggle.

  “Someone bringing a real live lion by!” Del said.

  “Yes!” Alma exclaimed. She was getting excited by these ideas. This is what she and Del were best at. Coming up with ideas, making jokes, imagining funny or fantastic things. It’s what they always did during their summers together at the lake house. It’s why they were best friends.

  “Wait,” Del said. “That’s not the point. The point is Alma did something wrong, and she has to get in trouble.”

  “Ah,” Abuelita said. But she didn’t send Alma to her room or tell Alma she’d been bad. Alma didn’t know what to make of it.

  “I made a mistake,” Alma said.

  “A huge mistake,” Del said. “A mean mistake.”

  “You know,” Abuelita said. “Your titi Rosa and I had a hundred fights like the one you two are having.”

  “You did?” Alma asked. It was hard to imagine Abuelita and Titi Rosa fighting. They were best friends. They had started the Curious Cousins Secondhand Shoppe together. They finished each other’s sentences. Sometimes they laughed so hard that the whole neighborhood seemed to rumble and shake with their joy.

  “We sure did,” Abuelita said. “About magic.”

  “Titi Rosa hated magic too?” Del asked. Alma wanted to say how unfair it was to say it like that, but she kept her mouth shut. She was the one who had stolen and lied, after all.

  Abuelita chuckled. “I used to see it that way,” she said. “But that’s not quite right, is it, Alma?”

  Alma shook her head. “It’s not right at all! I don’t hate magic! I just don’t— It doesn’t seem— I don’t see it everywhere like you do. I don’t really—”

  “You don’t understand it,” Del said. Alma loved that Del knew how to finish her sentences. Maybe not as well as Titi Rosa could finish Abuelita’s. But close.

  “I guess I’m curious about it,” Alma said. “When I’m not mad about it.”

  “I’m curious about it too,” Del said.

  On that they could agree, at least.

  18

  Belonging

  -Del-

  Del wasn’t ready to forgive Alma completely, but she was ready to talk to her.

  “Do you believe a little bit?” she asked her cousin while they sat in the backyard sipping Abuelita’s famous lavender lemonade. Del was pretty sure the lemonade was magical too.

  And there was
no denying that the clip-on earrings had brought luck, as far as Del was concerned. She had been lucky when she wore them and very, very unlucky when they were gone. How could Alma not see how totally real magic was? Would she start to believe, the longer she lived here?

  “I don’t know what I believe,” Alma said. “But I like the way you believe. And I like the way Abuelita believes. And maybe someday I could believe too.”

  “Really?” Del asked.

  “I’ve never seen so much bad luck in my whole life!” Alma said. “So maybe there’s something to those earrings after all. Maybe if I’d lived here my whole life like you—”

  “Then you wouldn’t be you,” Del said.

  “But I’d be more part of the family,” Alma said.

  “You’re already a part of the family.” Del said. “You always have been. Even when you lived on the lake.”

  “Even though I don’t know all the jokes and rituals and everything about stoop sales and magic and the city and cremita?” Alma asked.

  Del nodded. “Of course. Plus, you’re a stoop-sale natural.” Del saw Alma’s smile, and it was the best, biggest smile she’d seen from her cousin since she’d arrived. This whole time, Del had thought her job was to tell Alma all about her new home. She hadn’t realized that what Alma really needed was to be told she belonged there.

  And of course she did. She belonged right here, next to Del, drinking lavender lemonade.

  19

  Not a Unicorn, Not a Mouse

  -Alma-

  Alma and Del had just finished their lemonades when they heard the noise. It was a scuttling and breathing and rustling sound.

  “Do you hear that?” Alma asked.

  “Must be magic afoot,” Del said. Maybe Del was always going to think everything was magical. But Alma was pretty sure the sound was coming from the garden. Maybe a mouse. But it was too loud for a mouse. Maybe Oscar had gotten off his leash again and escaped into their backyard. She wondered if he’d done that before. But Oscar always barked at squirrels when he was outside, and she didn’t hear any barking.