It was a measure of true friendship that Caro instantly agreed—no questions asked.
Jennie opened her eyes. “A cake can’t be all that hard. How about I be your intrepid assistant, and we give it another try?”
Elsie looked askance at the cake in her hands. “Are you a good baker? I think I need more than an assistant.”
“No, my dear.” Jennie felt the laughter rolling up from her toes. “I’m an awful baker. But I can absolutely, totally promise you—in these parts, it’s the thought that will count.”
~ ~ ~
––––––––––––––
To: [email protected]
From: Jennie Adams
Subject: A fascinating morning.
––––––––––––––
Dear Vero,
I met with both my students this morning, and you are already correct. Today will not go quietly.
One of Lizard’s professors has noticed her talent, and she’s ready to run screaming into the night because of it, holding tight to her chains with both hands. Which might sound less empathetic than I mean it to be. I was there—she’s scared down to her toes.
I pushed as much as I dared. I know all too well that nothing makes you cling tighter to those chains than someone else trying to cast them off for you. If Melvin’s got a bravery-boosting spell in his back pocket, Lizard could use one right about now.
I know I often leave Elsie until last in these updates. Today, it is finally for the right reasons. Whatever sat in my heart and made it hard for me to truly love this girl has fled, chased off by one marginally passable cake and enough flour to turn half of Berkeley white. I guess I can finally stop being ashamed of the guide I’ve been for her.
I know I’ve done well enough by her. And by any standards I know, that’s not nearly good enough. She deserves my best—and now I know I’ll be able to give it. Today, we were magnificent.
All my love,
Jennie
~ ~ ~
It was the first time she was jumping on Freddie’s bus without fare in a long time. Maybe he’d take money instead of biscuits. Lizard dug in her pocket, hoping she had some change chasing around somewhere.
“Since when do you pay to get on my bus, girlie?” Freddie looked seriously indignant.
Oops. “Sorry. I don’t have any biscuits today. I can afford to pay, though—I have a good job now.”
“Course you do. And that ain’t gonna change the rules any at all. You go have a seat and tell me a story or two, same as always.” He pulled the door shut behind her and grinned. “You can bring me two biscuits next time. And a word. I haven’t had a new word in weeks.”
That much she could give him. “‘Vacillating.’ It means someone who can’t make up her mind.”
“One of those days, huh?” He waved her back. “Out of my doorway, girlie.”
Lizard sat in a seat just off to the side, glad the front of the bus was empty. She was well aware she’d come to the guy who’d always given her straight advice, most of it pretty decent. “So I’m taking a class at the college now.”
Freddie raised an eyebrow. “You get that high school diploma while I wasn’t looking?” It had always been a point of contention between them.
“Nope. But a friend of my boss helped me get into the campus downtown. Taking a couple of classes.”
“That’s good, girlie. Real good. You come ride so I can help you with your homework?”
He’d helped with plenty in the past, right after giving her grief because it wasn’t done. “No, I’m keeping up with it all, so far.”
Freddie just drove, whistling patiently. He’d done that for hours the first time she’d climbed on his bus. Just waited her out, figuring she’d talk eventually. And much to her surprise, she had.
Jeebers, she was getting all nostalgic today. Lizard tapped her fingers on the bus window. “I’m taking this class about dead poets.”
“Dylan Thomas dead, or Shakespeare dead?”
“Somewhere in the middle. Snuck Dylan in to one of my papers, though.” Dylan was one of Freddie’s favorites.
He chuckled. “Well, the man’s dead, ain’t he?”
“Yeah.” Lizard paused, pretty sure the next part was going to sound stupid. “So I wrote an essay about Dylan and Byron and emotional context and stuff, and my professor said I should come take this other class he teaches. This totally hard class.”
Now she had Freddie’s complete attention. “Somebody finally figured out you’re a smart cookie, did they?”
She just shrugged. Freddie would kick her off the bus if she called herself stupid. She had the boot marks on her butt to prove it.
“When’s the class start?”
She blinked. Of all the things she’d figured he would say, that one hadn’t been on the list. “Next week sometime. Why?”
“You find out where, and you find out when, and you let me know.” He looked at her in his big mirror, pride shining in his eyes. “I haven’t never been to college, girlie, but sometime next week, Freddie Grenadine’s gonna sit on this bus and know you’re walking into that class. And you better be walking big and tall so I can be proud of you.”
Well, frack. Apparently somebody was going to get to see her cry after all.
~ ~ ~
Elsie nudged through the door of Knit a Spell, arms precariously laden with supplies. The plates and cups were pretty—the cake, not so much. And while she couldn’t entirely shut off her embarrassment at bringing something far less than perfect to share, she could also feel pride bubbling up.
It was a truly ugly cake—but she’d made it herself. And somehow, in the wildly incompetent hour she and Jennie had spent assembling it, Elsie had managed to find an important truth. The cake wasn’t the message. The love that made it was.
“Need some help there?” Marion bustled over and reached for items sliding off the top of Elsie’s pile. “Jodi, come take some of this, would you? Helga will be here any minute.”
“Oh, the napkins are pretty.” Jodi neatly evaded her son’s grasping hands. “You can have some cups to play with, silly boy. Just give Mama a minute to get things set up.” She grinned. “This is his first birthday party, so he’s a little excited.”
Elsie juggled the cake dish and freed a hand, quickly forming a small fireglobe and pushing it over to Sammy. The baby babbled in delight and made a small light of his own.
Jodi giggled. “Don’t encourage him. He sleeps in a cradle next to our bed, and every time I open my eyes at night, he’s floating one of those light balls around.”
“Practice is good,” said Caro, coming out of the back room. “It might look like a game, but he’s getting some nice control.”
“Uh, huh.” Jodi’s eyes twinkled. “He tried to chase the cat with a firelight yesterday. She might not come out from under the couch for a week.”
“That’s nothing.” Caro set down a teapot and cups. “When Jamie was little—he’s the trainer I introduced you to—he made a full-sized dragon illusion, complete with flames, and sent it into his sister’s bedroom.”
Waking up to a fire-breathing dragon would have sent Elsie hiding under the couch with the cat, but she was pretty sure Aervyn’s mama was made of tougher stuff. Then again, maybe there was a reason she seemed impervious to magic tricks.
“You’re a fire witch.” Marion raised an eyebrow at Caro. “What stories would your mama tell us about you?”
“She’d tell you I was an angel of a child—never gave her a moment’s pause,” said Caro, pouring tea. Then she winked at Marion. “Didn’t come into my power until I was a teenager. You might not want to ask her about that part—I think it still gives her the shakes.”
Elsie set down her cake, caught by the unexpected tendrils of sorrow growing out of her belly. She was a fire witch—and if her mother had any stories to tell, she’d never heard them. She didn’t have the magic to make a dragon, and they’d never had a
cat. But maybe she’d at least made a firelight dance in the night.
Good grief. She was jealous of a baby. Elsie shook her head, trying to toss off the momentary gloom. They had a birthday girl coming. Carefully, she pulled the aluminum foil off the top of the cake plate. Darn. It had gotten a little squished on the way over. Not that it probably mattered a whole lot—when they’d tried to draw a picture with icing on the top, she and Jennie had discovered their artistic talents were well matched to their cake-baking skills.
She looked up, apologetic. “It’s supposed to be Helga, holding a water pistol.” It looked like a stick figure holding a mangled state of Georgia.
“Of course it is,” said Caro, lips twitching. “You can be on my Pictionary team any time you like.”
Elsie stared at the cake and the poorly concealed amusement of her friends—and cracked up laughing. “We tried. We really did.” She held her ribs as the giggles poured out. “I should have brought the photograph we worked from and just put that on top of the cake instead.”
Caro had a decent case of the giggles too. “Just tell me that Jennie took a picture of this fabulous cake.”
No, they hadn’t. But as Elsie looked around at laughing women, a mangled cake, and Sammy’s dancing fireglobe, she knew it wouldn’t have been the right picture anyhow. This was what she wanted the next picture to be.
~ ~ ~
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To: [email protected]
From: Vero Liantro
Subject: Re: A fascinating morning.
––––––––––––––
Lovely Jennie,
It’s Melvin again.
You’re wrong—you’ve done far more than “well enough” for Elsie. You’ve done as much as we might have imagined. But now I can see we didn’t dream big enough, because I know the power that sits in the heart of Jenvieve Adams.
You’ve asked your students to find their next picture. They might still be flailing a bit, but I believe you’ve found yours, and it’s a truly lovely one. You’ve got a rich and beautiful soul.
And now that I’ve completely embarrassed you, let me admit to some giggles at the idea of the two of you bonding over an activity at which neither of you possesses a smidgen of skill. How delightful.
As for Lizard, you have chosen rightly, as you already know. Her chains are hers to cast off—and mighty though you are, I don’t think I’d want to be in a tug-o-war with that one. She’s got a warrior’s heart beating inside, or rather, a warrior poet’s. I’m delighted that you’ll have some help enticing the poet into the light. The strongest warriors are the ones who truly know their own hearts.
One day, I hope to hear the words she holds so close. I’m sure they will be magnificent—just like Elsie’s cake. Pure treasure.
Much love,
Melvin
Chapter 12
Sometimes, a few words could stop a day dead in its tracks. A whole paragraph… Jennie read Lizard’s text one more time. I signed up for the class. Here’s my next picture—I don’t want to feel like an idiot. And maybe a little less like a juvenile delinquent drop-out and a little more like something else. I don’t know what yet, though. I’m not a freaking photographer.
She danced a quick jig, narrowly avoided knocking over a nice old couple walking down the street, and sent a return text. It’ll do.
“You know this morning’s class is hip openers, right?” Caro, more sprightly than the nice old couple, had managed to avoid getting bumped by Jennie’s exuberance. She leaned against the wall of Spirit Yoga, looking highly amused.
Jennie grimaced. “Don’t remind me. I have no idea how I get talked into trying to make my hips do things they’re only meant to do while giving birth.”
“Then how come I have to do them too?” Jamie leaned in, kissing Jennie’s cheek. “Because trust me, these hips of mine were never meant to do any of the stuff my wife thinks they should do.”
“She’s just getting even with you for what hers will have to do during birth.” Caro grinned. “And trust me, you’ve earned every minute of it.”
Jamie linked arms with the two of them. “Just for that, I’m going to do Nat a favor and make sure you two actually enter the building. She seems to think you occasionally ditch class in favor of the coffee shop down the street.”
Busted. “Only once or twice.” And almost always on hip-openers days. “Aren’t you supposed to be babysitting this morning?” Nell and Daniel were delivering their older kids to summer camp, and the last Jennie had heard, Jamie had been designated to keep Aervyn out of trouble until they got back.
“Nope.” He grinned. “Elsie’s doing it—Aervyn’s trying to talk her into baking cookies.”
Jennie’s heart quaked. “You left the two of them alone together?” She had seen with her own eyes the destruction either one of them could wreak with a bag of flour. Put them together and they could easily be dealing with baking Armageddon. “You’re on cleanup squad, nephew mine.”
Jamie’s lips quirked. “I ported the flour to safety. They’re at the park, playing in the sand. It’ll be fine, and if it’s not, Elsie knows how to use a phone.”
Jennie looked at Caro as Jamie veered off to say hello to his wife. “Am I silly to be concerned?” Elsie was a grown woman, and a highly responsible one.
Caro snorted. “That girl’s going to discover her sense of adventure one day, and Aervyn would be more than happy to help her find it. We’ll walk down to the park after class and check up on them.” She grinned. “Then we can bring them back to the store to help with the leftover cake.”
Jennie winced. “Was it edible?”
Caro’s laugh blew through the normally quiet murmur of Nat’s yoga studio. “It tasted better than it looked, but that’s not saying much.” She picked up her yoga mat, still chuckling. “Helga adored it.”
Of course she had. And maybe they could just bury the rest of the poor, sad cake, and not give Aervyn a tummy ache.
~ ~ ~
What, fancy San Francisco start-ups didn’t have fax machines? Or elevators? Lizard grumped as she marched up four floors to the funky warehouse offices of the company where Josh worked. He’d asked her to bring over the final paperwork on his townhouse, so she’d spent two hours on a freaking streetcar caught in a traffic jam just to get him to sign a stupid piece of paper.
Maybe she was giving up on the whole delinquent thing a little too fast.
She yanked open the door of suite 406 and looked for someone resembling a receptionist. Instead, what she saw was chaos. Computer screens everywhere, some of them bigger than she was. A pool table, Pac-Man arcade game, two guys swimming in a huge pool full of plastic balls, and the thrumming beat of a rap song. Sung by a guy over in the corner with dreads and some very cool tats.
“Welcome to chaos,” said Josh’s voice over her shoulder. “Thanks for coming up.”
She looked around one more time. “Is it always like this?”
“No.” He grinned, catching a Superball aimed at his head. “Half the staff don’t get here until noon. This is quiet. Come on this way—I’ve got something to show you.”
Rap-singing dreads guy winked as she followed Josh through a set of huge doors—into total quiet. Lizard stopped dead, feeling like she’d stepped through a wormhole. Here was the tastefully hip and cool start-up—clear glass cubicles, funky art, and employees who look like they’d graduated college instead of being kicked out of kindergarten.
Lizard was pretty sure she belonged on the other side of the doors. “You work here?”
Josh grinned. “And back there in The Pit. This is the business side—strategy, marketing, partnerships. The Pit’s our product development guys. I’m one of the few people who goes through that door on purpose.”
Yeah. The college types would get eaten alive in The Pit. She looked around again—and realized Josh was on the move, headed through some glass doors.
She followed him through—and then froze, recognizing the explosion of color up on the monitors. Her maps. Or not her maps. Highly jazzed-up versions of something resembling her maps. What the hell. “What is this?”
Josh was watching her carefully. “It’s a mock-up—an idea of what could be done with a little programming muscle behind your ideas.”
She knew what the frack a mock-up was. How come they were they playing with her maps? “Why?”
“Because it’s a creative, smart idea you had. I think it could maybe be turned into something other people would pay a lot of money for.” He held up a hand as her brain fizzed fury. “Give me two minutes, okay? Let me show you some of what it can do.”
He grabbed some fancy remote-control toy and pointed. “See here? This takes restaurant recommendations from five review sites, filtered by user demographics. That way, you can find places to eat that are preferred by people most like your clients. And here? This pulls in the census data through an API, so you don’t need to manually load it. You can find Thea a grandma without having to work so hard.”
When the hell had Josh met Thea?
He moved the remote thingy again. “And here, you can put in the parameters of your client’s budget and preferred neighborhood feel, and it will narrow down the top five areas to look. You can overlay listings on that too, and do the usual things with price ranges and bedrooms and stuff.”
Her fingers itched for the remote. Right after she killed him. It was totally awesome—and it wasn’t hers anymore. Lizard tried to stay professional. He hadn’t signed the paperwork yet. “What are you going to do with it?”
He looked… hurt. “That’s my question for you. This was just me goofing off a bit with a couple of the guys from The Pit. Mira and Danny—he was the guy rapping back there—have a bunch more ideas, but this is a pretty decent prototype.”
She was way lost. “A prototype for what?”
“To sell to investors. This is a genius idea, Lizard. You could make a ton of money selling it. We’d like to help.”
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