A Snicker of Magic

by Natalie Lloyd

  “Felicity!”

  I did a quick glance around the room. Nobody was looking in my direction.

  LONELY crawled out from underneath my tray.

  I slammed my hand down fast and hard against it, as if it were some pesky bug I could smash. The sound was so loud that the kids at the table beside me stopped chattering and looked over at me. I didn’t look back at them, but my cheeks felt warm under the weight of their stares. I pulled my hood up over my head and pretended not to notice.

  Fact: I’d give away every word I’d ever collected to have a friend. Just one. Maybe it’s impossible to make a friend unless you stay in a place long enough to memorize somebody’s name. I doubted I’d ever get to find out. It’d take a miracle to make a bunch of gypsy Pickles finally settle down. A big miracle.

  Or a little bit of magic.

  Before I knew it, the day was over and I was on my way to the playground to find a mysterious someone called a Beedle. As I rounded the swing set and made my way toward the tables circled around the edge of the field, the part of me that wasn’t half afraid was half excited. Until I found the bird-poopless table.

  And then all of me was confused.

  “Uh … the Beedle?” I asked. And then I immediately felt stupid for asking, because nothing about this kid looked like a Beedle. I hoped a character called the Beedle would at least have a cape and a mask and a mustache that twirled into curlicues at the edges. I expected a dastardly villain of some sort.

  But the boy sitting at the bird-poopless table looked … normal. He was reading the newspaper and twirling a red pen in his fingers. He had narrow shoulders and a head full of messy-spiky blond hair that reminded me of a crown. He didn’t look at me.

  “Pumpernickel?” I whispered.

  The boy glanced up then. His eyes were the greenest green I’d ever seen, like somebody had taken a neon marker and colored them in just before I walked up to him and called him a Beedle.

  He sighed. “I can’t believe I’m about to do this.”

  I glanced around nervously. “Do what?”

  He folded his newspaper and smiled at me. My heart kicked YES! as strong as a mule kick. My heart had never said yes over a smile before.

  “Most folks call me Jonah Pickett,” he said. “That’s what you should call me, too, from here on out.”

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “But I’m the Beedle, too, sometimes, to those who need me. You definitely need the Beedle, Flea. You got time to talk?”

  “Not exactly.” I shuffled the heavy backpack strap around my shoulder. I wished I had time to talk, though. My heart seemed to like Jonah Pickett an awful lot. I wanted to find out why. But I did not want to be left behind at Stoneberry Elementary School. Mama’s shift at the ice-cream factory wasn’t over until midnight and Aunt Cleo drove like she’d just spilled hot coffee in her lap.

  “I don’t want to miss my bus,” I said, surprised by how easy my words came out. “And my sister will start screeching something awful if I’m not on the bus before she is.”

  “Which bus?” The Beedle cocked his head at me.

  “Bus 5548 — Day —”

  “Grissom!” Jonah hollered. “Day Grissom’s my bus driver, too. Since you’re new here, I’ll lead the way.”

  Instead of standing up as I expected, Jonah Pickett backed out from underneath the table in a motorized wheelchair. He clicked a button on the armrest, then clutched a handheld gear and sped forward, bumping across the playground so fast that I had to take extra-long steps to keep up with him. When we got to Bus 5548, Jonah zoomed around to the back of the vehicle and knocked his fist twice on the side of the bus. A metal lift lowered, clanging as it hit the sidewalk.

  “Hop on,” Jonah said to me. And then he knocked twice on the side of the bus again and yelled, “There’s two of us, Day! Beam us up!”

  “Yeeeee-up!” somebody hollered back.

  The lift whirred as it lifted us off the ground. Once I stepped into the aisle behind Jonah, the lift folded up into the bus with a:

  Clang

  Boom

  Pffff

  “Thanks, Day.” Jonah waved toward the front of the bus.

  Our bus driver, Day Grissom, looked the way I would imagine Santa Claus looked if Santa forgot to trim his beard and got real skinny and started wearing plaid shirts and overalls. Day Grissom saluted us in the rearview mirror. Then he turned up the radio and bopped his shaggy head to the rhythm of the song playing: a feisty tune full of banjos and guitars that had a dancing beat to it. Bluegrass music, Aunt Cleo’s favorite.

  As I slid onto the seat, I saw Frannie Jo climb on the bus. The little girl holding Frannie’s hand chattered as fast as a songbird, but I could tell Frannie wasn’t listening. Her eyes darted frantically around the bus until she saw me waving. She smiled at me and waved back and settled into the seat beside her new friend. The words swirling around their hands were snappy:

  Snickerdoodle

  Dump truck

  Alphabet soup

  I let out a happy sigh of sweet relief. Frannie was already making friends in Midnight Gulch. Maybe the magic was working fine, for one of us. “Your sister looks like you,” Jonah said. “Different hair color is all.”

  “Frannie has Mama’s hair color. I have my dad’s red hair.” My throat got tight, but this time it wasn’t my nervousness. My throat always closes up that way when I talk about Roger Pickle, so I changed the subject.

  “So,” I said. “You gonna tell me why the hayseed you call yourself a Beedle and what that has to do with me?”

  “Shhh,” Jonah said as the bus rocked us side to side. “Most people don’t know I’m the Beedle. That’s my business moniker, and it has to stay secret.”

  I liked moniker. The word dangled monkeylike down from the ceiling.

  Jonah said, “I figured, considering what I need to tell you, it was best to go ahead and mention … pumpernickel. But only like four people in the whole world know about my alias. You’ve got to keep it all secret. Okay?”

  There were approximately fifty-seven questions sitting on the tip of my tongue about the Beedle, but the one I asked was: “Why would you tell me an important secret if you don’t know me?”

  Jonah shrugged. “Maybe because I know what we got in common. My family’s busted all to pieces right now, too.”

  My throat felt tight again. “My family’s … busted?”

  “My dad’s not here, either, not right now. He’s a soldier. He’s been deployed for eleven months and fourteen days.”

  “All we have in common is the ‘not here’ part,” I said. “My dad isn’t deployed. He’s just gone for a while. Work stuff.” My voice broke a little bit over the words. I cleared my throat and said, “He’ll catch up with us eventually, though.”

  “Do you miss him?” Jonah asked.

  I nodded.

  “Then we have that in common, too. And I’ve moved around a bunch, same as you. We’ve been in Midnight Gulch for a few years. My dad grew up here. But before that, I lived all over the place.”

  I narrowed my eyes at Jonah the Beedle. “How do you know so much about me? My family just moved here yesterday.”

  “My mom does your aunt Cleo’s hair,” Jonah said, taking special notice of the too-long bangs hanging down over my eyes. “She does everybody’s hair in Midnight Gulch. People tell her all sorts of things. Mom says you’d be amazed what people tell you when you know how to give a proper shampoo. She’ll snip those bangs for you.”

  “Maybe,” I said. But maybe not. I felt hidden behind my bangs and I liked the feeling.

  “Mom told me to search you out when you showed up at Stoneberry. But even if she hadn’t, I would have tracked you down the minute I saw you staring at the sign-up sheet on Miss Lawson’s door. Because my know-how kicked in.”

  And then he smiled as if he’d just handed me a Christmas present. As if the words he said made perfect sense. “What’s a … know-how?” I asked.

  Jonah leaned in clos
e to me and said, “It’s not easy to explain … but I got this way about me. I know how to fix what’s ailing people. My granny’s the one who first called it my know-how. I see something wrong. I know how to make it right. Before Granny passed on over, she made me promise I’d never waste my know-how.”

  “I’m sorry she … passed on over.” I clutched my blue book close to my heart. “I’m sorry she died.”

  “Died?” Jonah laughed. “She didn’t die. Granny Effie’s a bounty hunter. She passed on over the state line to track down some rascal who stole money from Trixie’s Tanning Salon. She’ll be back soon enough. But what matters now is you — something big is bothering you. And lucky for you, I know how to make it right.”

  Jonah’s face was so close to mine that I could count the small cluster of freckles across his nose. Ten freckles, that’s all. Just a small constellation. His eyes looked even greener up close.

  First thought: I hope I don’t have anything crusty dangling from my nose.

  Second thought: Jonah the Beedle might be the only person I’ve ever met who’s as weird as me.

  “Okay, then.” I scooted back in the seat just a little bit. “What’s your know-how over me?”

  Jonah smiled triumphantly. “It’s the Duel. That’s when the know-how first stirred up, when you were staring at the sign-up sheet on Miss Lawson’s door. Felicity Pickle, I’m going to help you win the talent show.”

  I gripped the seat in front of me. “That is a spectacularly bad idea.”

  “It is?” Jonah’s smile faded. He raked his fingers through his blond hair. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. “I appreciate your … know-how. But did you hear me today when I tried to introduce myself to Miss Lawson’s classroom? I got so nervous I nearly upchucked. Besides that, I have no talent.”

  “Everybody has talent.” Jonah gave me a searching look.

  I shook my head. “There’s not much I’m talented at. Except climbing trees. And I can drink a milk shake real fast and not get brain freeze.”

  I lowered my voice to a whisper and said, “And I like words; I collect them. I like poems, songs, stories … everything. But words never sound right when I try to string them together and say them out loud. They’re just for me to keep.”

  Jonah’s forehead crinkled. “Explain.”

  Since Jonah’d told me his secret, I figured it was okay to tell him mine. “I’ve always seen words,” I said. “I see them as clearly as I see you. Sometimes they have wings and sometimes tap shoes and sometimes zebra stripes.”

  That sounded ridiculous when I said it, so I hushed. But Jonah didn’t laugh at me. “Keep going,” he said.

  “Sometimes I see words hovering around people,” I told him. “Most people, anyway. The more interesting the person, the more fantastic the words. Words come in all sorts of shapes: stars, spaceships, pretzel words. Some words glow and some words dance. Sometimes I think I see words people are thinking about, or the words they want. The words that circle around my aunt Cleo’s head are usually words I’m not allowed to say.”

  Jonah laughed at that. Making somebody laugh, without them laughing at me, felt a little bit amazing. So I kept going. “Most of the time, I figure I see the words that a person’s mind doesn’t have enough room to keep. I keep them, though. I collect them. You know how some people collect rocks or hedgehogs or belly-button lint?”

  Jonah’s forehead wrinkled. “Who collects hedgehogs?”

  “Aunt Cleo.” I nodded. “Not real ones. Plastic ones and porcelain ones and wax ones and stuff. I collect words, is the point. I keep them in my blue book.”

  I handed the book over to Jonah. It only occurred to me after he’d reached for it that I’d never let anybody touch that book before. My ears burned and my fingers prickled, but my heart said YES. So I didn’t snatch it back.

  “Mama calls me her poem catcher,” I said. “I know how to catch words and keep them. But I can’t get them to come out of my mouth exactly right.”

  “But you will.” Jonah smiled. He didn’t open my book, but he handed it back to me as gently as if it were a newborn kitten. “Obviously, your talent has to do with words.”

  “Words aren’t a talent on their own,” I added quickly.

  Jonah tapped his forehead. “My know-hows are never wrong, Flea. You see the best words floating around crazy people, right?”

  “Interesting people,” I clarified.

  “Same thing.” Jonah chuckled. “Midnight Gulch is full of … interesting people. I’m friends with pretty much everybody….”

  That didn’t surprise me.

  “I’ll introduce you to the most interesting people I know. You’ll collect their words, and then you’ll be so excited that you’ll be jumping to share them at the Duel.”

  Before I could thank him politely and tell him nohow, no way would I do the Duel, Jonah spoke up again. “When Miss Lawson was talking about the Brothers Threadbare, you seemed really interested….”

  “Wait … you were in that class?”

  He nodded. “I have lunch the same time as you, too. Did you hear me yelling your name? Probably not, since it gets so loud in there. Anyway, you seemed interested in the Threadbare boys. Am I right?”

  As soon as Jonah said their name, the same wondrous feelings came rushing up inside me: the kick-thump of my heart and the catch of my breath. I tried to rub away the tingly sensations rolling up and down my arms. It seemed as if the air all around me was full of static electricity. I nodded. “Do you know much about them?”

  Jonah smiled. “I know people who do. And when we start asking questions about the Brothers Threadbare, you’ll definitely see awesome words.” He leaned in close again and whispered, “I know how to help you, Felicity. I’d like to be your friend, too.”

  When Jonah Pickett called me his friend, my heart might have grown legs and crawled up into my throat. The word friend looked buggy, too, when it wriggled through the air — FRIEND grew six sets of legs and six sets of arms, and all the letters danced together, then kicked, then danced, then kicked again.

  Jonah must have misunderstood the look on my face, because he said, “Is it okay … if we’re friends?”

  “Better than okay.” I smiled, watching the friend-word squeeze out of the open window and flutter toward the sky. Fact: I had absolutely no intention whatsoever of participating in the Stoneberry Duel. But I could explain my dueling woes to Jonah some other time. Spending more time with him seemed too spindiddly an offer to pass up.

  “Cool.” Jonah smiled back. “And by the way, if you’re interested in the Brothers Threadbare, you should also ask Cleo about them. That woman knows everything about everybody in Midnight Gulch.”

  When the bus screeched to a stop in front of the Sandcut Apartments complex, I stood up and said, “You never told me why you called yourself a Beedle.”

  “SHHH!” Jonah cautioned. “You can’t go telling people you met the Beedle!”

  “Right.” I nodded.

  “We’ll talk about pumpernickel on Monday,” Jonah said. Monday. Nothing good had ever happened to me on a Monday, magical or otherwise. But Jonah said Monday so easy, like we could handle ten thousand Mondays because we’d be friends through all of them.

  “See you Monday, then,” I said.

  Day Grissom said my name as I stepped off the bus, except he said it this way: “Fliss-tee.”

  I looked back at him. “Yes, sir?”

  “You kin to Cleo Harness?” he asked.

  I nodded. “She’s my aunt.”

  Day rubbed his fingers down the length of his scraggly beard. “Will you tell her …” He sighed. He chewed on his lip. He sighed one more time. “Will you tell her … that I said … hi?”

  “Sure.” I answered.

  Halfway up the hill, I caught up to Frannie Jo. She was swinging her hips and bopping her head.

  “I like this music!” Frannie hollered.

  “What music?” I asked. Because all I heard was the good-bye-s
ummer breeze pushing its way through the woods.

  “This music!” Frannie Jo swung her hips side to side, the yellow tutu sparkling all around her.

  Just as I was about to say something else, I saw a familiar word flickering up ahead. I stopped walking so fast both of us nearly toppled over.

  T H R E A D B A R E

  This time it was ripple-sparkling, hovering across a window on the third floor of the building: Aunt Cleo’s apartment.

  “Spindiddly,” I mumbled.

  “Do you hear the music?” Frannie asked.

  “Nope,” I said. But at the sight of that word, I heard something else loud and clear:

  Yes,

  Yes,

  Yes!

  I poured myself a glass of milk.

  Swig

  Swallow

  Gulp

  I watched the words come splashing out of the milk carton and dissolve down in my glass.

  The crickets were singing twilight songs outside Aunt Cleo’s window. The moon had bloomed starry white in the autumn sky. Dinner was over. Mama was working a late shift at the ice-cream factory.

  “Aunt Cleo, do you know anything about the Brothers Threadbare?”

  Cleo coughed and sputtered her tea. Her sewing scissors hit the floor, and her hands stilled. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and stared at me, as if she suddenly needed to study me especially carefully. “Why do you want to know about those boys?”

  “Miss Lawson was talking about them in class.” I poured a second glass of milk for Frannie Jo, then nudged the refrigerator door shut with my hip.

  “Your teacher told you about …”

  “The Brothers Threadbare.” I nodded. I could have sworn I saw Cleo’s hands tremble as she reached for her scissors. “So do you know much about them?”

  “Only a little bit,” Cleo mumbled. She drummed her long red fingernails against the table, collecting all her thoughts about the Weatherly brothers. “But I don’t know if we oughta talk about those boys.” Her hand was trembling for sure when she lit her cigarette. Just the fact that Cleo was so suddenly nervous over dead-and-gone magician farmers made me want to talk about them even more. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who shivered just at the sound of their name.