“No, I’m serious. I mean, I’m okay on the guitar, but my lyrics are terrible. I mean truly terrible. Like, ‘unholy love-child of Dance of the Vampires and Carrie’ levels of terrible.”
“Huh.”
For a second I thought he might ask me to play something anyway, but I was saved by the arrival of Vicky and Miss Delisio, both bundled in coats and armed with scripts.
“How’s the song coming?” called Miss Delisio cheerfully as she came down the aisle. “Are we ready?”
“We are darn ready,” I replied. George snickered.
As soon as Vicky shed her coat, we dove right in. I was eager to show off the song that had completely changed the way George looked at me—but when you’re in a scene with someone, you can’t just decide how you’re going to sing your song, and then do it. You have to react to the other people onstage with you. You have to connect with them, let them influence you, interact with them like real people do with each other.
Unfortunately, with Vicky being her usual monotonous self, there was nothing I could connect to. I sang at her, but she just stared at me and recited her lines like a robot, which made me feel like my own lines were being sucked into a black hole of awfulness. It was infuriating.
George didn’t say anything when we finished. All Miss Delisio said was, “Lovely, ladies! Let’s take it again, from the top of the song.”
It was anything but lovely, but I couldn’t exactly say so out loud. Silently seething, I moved back over to stage left, where I was supposed to start the scene. George began playing, and I began singing, and with every lyric I willed Vicky to connect with me, willed Miss Delisio to see how terrible she was, so she could find a way to fix it.
I plowed through the song ruthlessly, infusing “Listen to me, just listen to me” into every note. It came out harsh and cracked and sometimes even off-key—but to my surprise, it felt absolutely real that way. I didn’t have to care that Vicky wasn’t really listening. In the scene, Mrs. Lovett wasn’t listening to Toby, either. So he, like me, had every right to be pissed off.
When the scene ended, I found my heart was racing. Slowly I fell out of Toby’s posture and back into my own. George was staring hard at me, his lips pressed into a thin line. He gave me a single, firm nod, and I saw him mouth the word yup.
Miss Delisio looked back and forth between Vicky and me, absolutely beaming. “Vicky, Margo, that was—”
“Can I take a break?” came Vicky’s small voice, before Miss Delisio could finish. She stood a few feet away from me, her shoulders hunched miserably. Guilt flared through me. Vicky was a terrible actress, but that didn’t mean she was stupid. And I’d practically yelled the whole song at her. I tried to catch her eye, but she wouldn’t look at me.
“Go ahead,” said Miss Delisio. Vicky jumped off the stage and dashed out of the auditorium.
“Told you she couldn’t handle it,” said George, carefully flexing his fingers.
Miss Delisio gave him a sharp look. “We’ve talked about this,” she said, and moved toward the piano where he sat. I would have asked what exactly they’d talked about, but their conversation quickly became too hushed for me to hear. Which left us with one absent actress, a director and a musical director who were about to either fight or make out, and me.
Without bothering to excuse myself, I hopped off the stage and went to take a bathroom break.
I half expected to find Vicky outside the auditorium, maybe making a phone call, maybe huddled in a corner and crying to herself. She wasn’t there. But when I reached the girls’ room and began to push the creaky door open, I heard someone turning on the sink inside, and I actually hesitated.
But there was no reason for me not to go in. If she’d wanted to be alone, she’d have gone someplace a little less obvious. I swung the door open. Vicky met my eyes in the mirror, but she quickly looked back down at the sink. As she scrubbed furiously at her hands, I slipped into a stall.
She left almost immediately, but I took my time, hoping she’d deal with whatever issue she was having before I got back to rehearsal. I even paused for a second to check myself in the mirror, though there wasn’t much to check. Hair: still short, but starting to get too long for the pixie cut I’d gotten last month. Two tiny zits right by my nose: still covered with foundation. Minimal eye makeup: still not smudged. Little glint coming from the window behind me—
Well, that was new.
Curious, I turned around and peered at the sill. I had to stand on my tiptoes to do it, since all the first-floor bathroom windows were ridiculously high up, probably to keep us from using them to escape during school hours. Although, if you wanted to play hooky, it was a whole lot easier to walk out the front door.
There was a silver ring there, shiny enough that it caught even the dim fluorescent bathroom light. The band was thick, and deeply engraved with a wavy pattern that looked like one of those Celtic knots.
I couldn’t remember seeing anyone at school with a ring like this, but this was a public bathroom in a big school, and I was hardly the most observant person when it came to jewelry. It could have belonged to anyone.
I picked it up, rolling it between my thumb and index finger so I could get a better look at the design. It was a really pretty ring, actually, and for a second I was tempted to keep it for myself. But even if I could justify keeping it, I would have no reason to. I had a small collection of jewelry, mostly given to me by my mom, but I never really wore any of it.
Lost and found, then. I tossed the ring in the air and caught it, the way I thought Toby Ragg might do if he’d found it instead of me. Grinning at the thought, I pocketed the ring and headed for the door. But the door opened before I could get there. Into the bathroom, wearing jeans and a gray hoodie, walked Oliver Parish.
“What is it?” he asked—and his eyes locked with mine. He snapped his mouth shut with a frown. Drawing his head back warily, he said, “Margo. You’re not Vicky.”
“Very observant,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Here’s another observation: This is the girls’ room, and you are a boy.”
“But it came from in here,” he said. Squatting down, he peered under the stall doors. “Where is she?”
“Probably back at rehearsal,” I said. “Which is not in the girls’ bathroom. What the hell are you doing in here?”
Oliver straightened suddenly, his shoulders tensing like he’d just gotten a chill. He pressed one hand to his temple, then looked at me with eyes grown just a little bit too wide. If we hadn’t been in a bathroom in a high school, I’d have said that he looked almost scared. I crossed my arms, waiting.
When he finally spoke, his voice quavered. “I’m looking for a ring. You, um . . . you didn’t happen to pick up a ring, did you?”
“A ring?” I repeated.
“Yeah. A silver one.” He made a small circle with his fingers, like maybe I didn’t know what a ring was.
I nearly reached into my pocket to retrieve it, but then stopped. Something didn’t make sense here. “Why would your ring be in the girls’ room?”
“Vicky must have left it,” he said. “I should give it back to her.”
“Wait, okay, time out for a second,” I said, making a little T sign with my hands. “If Vicky sent you in here to get her ring, then why’d you think I was her?”
His expression remained carefully neutral. “Because she was the last person who had it. Please, Margo, do you have it or not?”
“Yeah, I do.” Oliver took an eager step toward me, and for the first time I was aware of the height difference between us. He wasn’t unusually tall—about average for a guy—but he still had more than six inches on me. I took a step back, putting up a defensive hand. “But if you want it back, you’d better tell me why you’re here. Especially since you weren’t at rehearsal tonight. Why are you even in the school?”
“If you’d just,” he began, and then stopped abruptly, wincing. Rubbing at his forehead like he’d just gotten a migraine, he muttered, “Ohhh, this is a
wkward.”
“What is?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
“This,” he said through clenched teeth, looking at me with painfully squinted eyes. “All right, all right. I’m here because the ring called me here, okay?” And then he let out a whoosh of breath, dropped his hands, and let his face relax—like his migraine had disappeared as fast as it showed up.
“Did you just say it called you?” I said, one hand wandering downward to linger protectively over the pocket of my jeans.
“Yes, I did,” he said, the sharp look in his eyes daring me to contradict him.
“Are you gonna tell me what that’s supposed to mean?”
“No,” he said. “Don’t you have to get back to rehearsal?”
He had a point. I’d been gone way longer than I should have, and they were probably wondering where I was. But still . . .
“Come on,” I said. “What’s the short version?”
Oliver’s expression grew pained. “The ring is tied to me. When someone touches it with their thumb and forefinger, it calls me. And here I am. Ta-dah,” he said, making the most unenthusiastic jazz hands I’d ever seen.
I burst out laughing.
Oliver didn’t.
He looked down at his shoes, his hair falling forward and into his eyes. My laughter faded into an awkward “Heh.” Biting my bottom lip to shut myself up, I looked for some crack in his serious veneer. There wasn’t one. “So . . . you’re trying to tell me that this is a magic ring.”
Annoyance darkening his expression, he looked up at me again through unruly bangs. “No, I’m trying to tell you that it’s my magic ring, and I want it back.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I thought you said it was Vicky’s.”
“No, I didn’t. I said Vicky must have left it.” He frowned, looking around like he was lost. “And that’s worrying enough as it is. But the point is, I need it back.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Look, you and Vicky can play Lord of the Rings all you want. I’m just here for rehearsal. But I think it’s incredibly weird, and maybe a little bit creepy, that you followed me into the girls’ bathroom for this thing, so if you don’t mind, I’ll just go give it back to her myself, okay?”
Oliver looked like he was about to protest, but after a moment’s thought, he gave me a curt nod. “That’ll work.”
I blinked at him, slightly thrown. Why did that seem too easy? “Um, okay,” I said slowly. “Then I’ll just . . .”
A knock sounded on the door, making me jump. “Margo, are you in there?” came a voice from outside. Miss Delisio. The door began to creak open.
Oliver tensed, a panicked expression crossing his face. I didn’t blame him. Eli Simpson had been caught in the girls’ room last fall, and on top of the detention he got, Coach Kendall had actually kicked him off the baseball team. I raised my eyebrows at Oliver, waiting for him to hide in a stall or behind the door or something. But he did neither.
Instead, he disappeared.
Chapter THREE
It was as simple as that: One second he was there, and the next second he wasn’t. And there I was, gaping like a complete moron, as Miss Delisio poked her head inside and peered at me, clearly worried. “Is everything okay?”
“I, uh,” I faltered, as my eyes darted around, looking in vain for signs of Oliver. “Yeah. Sorry, I was just . . . um . . . Is Vicky ready?” I hoped she wasn’t. There was no way I could force myself to concentrate through the rest of our rehearsal.
Miss Delisio smiled wanly. “She asked to go home early, actually.”
There was a pause.
“So you can go home, too, if you want,” she said, raising an eyebrow. Right. I hadn’t moved.
“Yes,” I said. “Good. I mean, not good, but . . . okay.”
Giving me a bemused smile as I headed for the door, she said, “I’ll see you tomorrow. Get some sleep.”
I would indeed get some sleep, but not until I found out what was going on. I’d spent the better part of eighteen years thinking magic just meant card tricks and Harry Potter books and questionable vampire movies—and here was what seemed very much like the real thing, right in front of me. Even though I knew it was impossible.
After a quick stop back at the theater to pick up my stuff, I headed for my car, thinking about what Oliver had said. Just a touch of my thumb and forefinger.
Oakvale, the little town where I’d lived my entire life, was right in the middle of northern New Jersey. Drive too far east, you got those towns squished so close together that you couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. Too far west, you got towns that looked like permanent campsites between vast swathes of woods. To the south, you had tangled messes of factories and highways and all the pollution New York City didn’t want. And to the north, a mere ten minutes away, you had New York State. Oakvale managed to be a happy medium among all these things—which meant it had very little personality of its own.
What it did have was the centerpiece of every self-respecting New Jersey town: Tom’s 24-Hour Diner, festooned with neon lights and proudly situated across the street from a gas station. Not to be confused with the Tom’s Diner of song and legend (which was supposedly somewhere in New York City), our Tom’s was the favored weekend hangout of elderly couples, families with small children, bored high-schoolers, and even the occasional group of surly college students who were too young to drink at the Sand Bar down the street. During the week, though, it was usually just as empty as every other place in town.
When I left rehearsal, Tom’s was the first place I thought of: a big, bright space full of shiny tabletops and vinyl seats. There were two giant jukeboxes, neither of which actually worked, and the walls were lined with framed prints of smiling cartoon food. If ever there was a competition for Place Least Likely to Contain Magic, then Tom’s was a surefire winner.
I parked my car in the lot out front, got myself a back-corner booth under an unnaturally happy fajita, and told the waiter I was expecting a friend. Then I reached into my pocket and touched the silver ring with my thumb and forefinger, just like Oliver had said. My breath falling shallow in my lungs, I watched the front door with eagle eyes. The sooner he showed up, the sooner I could find out what the hell was really going on. Once I’d set my mind at ease, I could eat some dinner, then go home and finish tomorrow’s homework.
It only took him five seconds. As I watched, Oliver appeared just inside the door, still not wearing anything heavier than that gray hoodie. Even though it was freezing outside.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t actually seen him come through the door.
He stood there for a second, scanning the diner for me. His hands were tucked casually into his pockets, and his shoulders were set back, like an actor. His stance radiated confidence, and even his shaggy hair now seemed less like a shield and more like a fashion choice. The whole picture was a far cry from the jumpy, pissed-off Oliver of only twenty minutes ago. A bright smile lit up his face as he spotted me, and he came over and slid into the seat opposite mine.
“Good choice,” he said, picking up one of the old, cracked menus. “I’m starving. Do they have nachos here? I could really go for some nachos.”
“Nachos?” I repeated vaguely. Disappearing, reappearing, then nachos. I could feel my brain about to short-circuit.
“Or a milkshake, maybe,” he mused, skimming the menu. “Or waffles. Ooh.”
“Waffles, sure,” I said, staring at him in disbelief. “Did you follow me here?”
“Nope.” He grinned up at me. “You called me and I came. I thought you might. And I’m glad you did.”
Our waiter appeared, clad in a wrinkled Tom’s T-shirt and bravely wielding a notepad and pen, and I managed to mumble something about a cheeseburger deluxe with extra bacon. Oliver very enthusiastically ordered a Belgian waffle with three kinds of berries, vanilla ice cream, and sprinkles. And then he asked for a cherry on top. The waiter, who didn’t seem to notice anything odd about Oliver’s aggressive cheerfulness, took
our menus and slipped away.
“So!” said Oliver, folding his hands on the table and leaning eagerly toward me. “Where do you want to start?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. Without bothering to ease into it, I lowered my voice and said, “You disappeared.”
“Yes,” he said proudly. “Yes, I did.”
“And then you reappeared,” I continued. “And suddenly you were all happy and ‘Let’s have nachos’ about everything.”
“Waffles,” he corrected smoothly.
“And that, I might add, was after you materialized out of thin air, instead of walking through the door like a normal person who, I dunno, wears coats and stuff.”
A slight frown creased his forehead. “A coat,” he said, looking down at his hoodie. “I knew I forgot something.”
“You materialized,” I said, spreading my hands to emphasize that this was far more important than coats. “Out of thin air.”
“It’s just like I said: You called me. I came. That’s how my magic works.”
“Magic,” I repeated flatly. “You’re still trying to tell me this is magic?”
“Indeed I am,” he said, with a grin that made the skin around his eyes scrunch up. Bright green eyes, I noticed, framed by dark lashes. “And you’re still trying to tell me you don’t believe me?”
“Obviously,” I said. “Magic isn’t real.”
“Says the girl who just saw me materialize out of thin air.”
He had me there.
“The ring holds the same magic that I do,” he explained. “It’s part of me. Or, I guess what I mean is, it has part of me inside it. That’s why you can call me with it: Because it’s me, more or less. It’s called a spirit vessel. Does that make sense to you?”
“A spirit vessel,” I repeated, nodding. This whole conversation might be making my head spin, but at least I could handle the terminology. Good for me. Twisting my paper napkin around one finger, I asked, “So what does the spirit vessel do?”
“It binds me to whoever holds it, and lets that person use my magic for themselves.”
The Art of Wishing Page 3