Genuine Sweet (11 page)

Travis Tromp! I was on a date with Mister Blackpants Blackshirt Blackington! My gut wrenched. My cheeks burned. How could I have been such a fool as to think Sonny Wentz would ask out bucktoothed, freckle-faced Genuine Sweet? The daughter of Dangerous Dale! I was so embarrassed, I considered very seriously crawling down into a pin sweep at the end of the lanes and letting it brush me into whatever dusty cubby lay beyond.

“Surely no one would find me there,” I muttered.

Nearby, Travis cleared his throat. “Genuine.”

“What?” I said it rudely, I admit.

“I think it's fair to say we're both disappointed,” he said, still measuring his words. “But why don't we make the best of it? Let's at least play a game or two. As friends.”

I looked at the floppy hair hanging into his eyes, his oversized ears, the weird boot chain around the ankle of his Converse shoe—and I couldn't help thinking of Jura saying how she was like him.

I sighed. “Yeah. All right.”

He gave a sharp, almost dignified nod. “All right, then. What size shoe you wear? It's on me.”

 

It was curious that a game of tenpins would inspire Travis so, but jokes started rolling off that boy's tongue like comedy was his calling. He laughed. He capered. Once he even spun me in a two-step! Plus, he said “Thank you”—and
smiled
—when Miz B., the alley owner, came to clear out our yapped-up ball return. Outside of school, the boy was, well, downright likable.

By the end of the first round, I was losing badly but enjoying myself all the same. “You may have won the battle, but I”—I thumped my chest—“I shall win the war!”

Travis laughed. “Best two out of three?”

“Think you're man enough?” I teased.

“Think you're woman enough?” he retorted, raising an eyebrow.

“Just watch me.” I sashayed up to the lane and rolled my ball—right into the gutter. Twice.

Travis hefted his bowling ball. “What did you say right then? Something about winning the war?”

“You'll see! I'm lying in wait. Crouched in the underbrush, fixin' to spring,” I assured him.

And then I lost so soundly—not once, but three whole times—that Miz B. came and took the ball right out of my hand.

“This ain't your game, Genuine,” she said gently.

“It ain't that bad,” Travis defended me.

“It wounds me just to watch her!” said Miz B. “Y'all come have some fries on the house, then get out of here. Leagues are coming in at four.”

It was hard to argue with free fries, so we sat ourselves down and ate until we ailed slightly.

“These are awful,” Travis whispered.

“Awfully wonderful,” I replied.

He nodded his queasy agreement.

Drawing a floppy fry through his ketchup-mustard swirl, Travis said, “Want to hang out again sometime? As friends?”

“Um. All right. Sure.” Truth to tell, I'd had a really good time. “As friends.”

 

When I got home, Gram asked me how things had gone with my young man. I wasn't sure what to say. If I admitted I'd had a good time, she might want to invite Travis over, which could give him the wrong idea. On the other hand, if I told her about the mix-up, she might hunt down Sonny Wentz and thrash him for hurting my feelings.

I finally settled on, “Our buttons and collar tabs matched. He didn't try to kiss me.”

“That's . . . promising, I reckon.” She reached into her sewing bag for a new ball of yarn. “By the by, your new friend, Jura, stopped by to pick up that biscuit you left for her. And she wants you to meet her at the library tomorrow. Something about a cornucopia. Says you should get set for a busy week,” Gram told me.

“A cornucopia?” It took me a minute. “Oh! Cornucopio!”

“What on earth's that?” Gram asked.

“It's a thing with profiles and swaps. And college applications, for Jura, at least.” I bit my lip. Maybe now was the time to tell her about our plans to feed the world. “To be honest—”

“College, huh?” Gram mused. “I don't know but what the smart ones always have some sort of big plan. Well, good for her, I say. Not enough big plans in Sass, of late.”

“No. Right. You're exactly right. Which brings me to—”

“You don't mind if I turn in early, do you, Gen? I worked myself to the bone today.”

I looked at the clock. “It's not even five.”

“Old people tucker out fast.”

And with that, she shuffled off to her room.

She'd left me a frittata in the skillet, still warm, so I helped myself. After a little homework, I grabbed my starlight cup and headed into the woods.

It was a Saturday night, so the older kids were out being rowdy. I could hear them in the distance hooting and laughing, engines revving and tires a-squealing. It was all the usual business, and I was used to it, so it wasn't hard to put it out of mind.

The air was a little cool. Winter'd be upon us before long, and I remembered I still had to figure a way to negotiate with the power company. It was one thing to trade for wishes with a person, but businesses, I guess, didn't have spots in their ledgers for payments in wish biscuits.

Wasn't long before I forgot about that, too, though. The stars shone so brightly, and even the white wisps of the Milky Way were on display if you relaxed your eyes and let yourself take it all in. I was standing that way, looking but not exactly staring, when I thought I heard something like a song.

I reckoned it might be the high schoolers fooling around, but no, it wasn't. The Fort brothers never belched out a sound like this. It was high and sweet, and a little tricky, so I couldn't be sure I'd really heard anything at all.

I plugged my ears with my fingers to see if it was something coming from inside my own head, but the sound disappeared until I unplugged them again.

“Hello?” I called into the night.

The song didn't stop, but I thought it might have grown just a little louder. And maybe—were those
words?
Sometimes it seemed they were, and sometimes it seemed the words were my name. But when I tried to listen harder, it wasn't my name at all. It was something else. Bells. Or a sound like the metal triangle the drummer plays in band, but constant, a single, long ringing, so high and silvery it wasn't quite real.

It was coming from the sky, I realized.

The stars were singing.

For a while, I could only listen. But then, as the music swirled and grew, I couldn't help opening my own mouth and trying to sing along. And I'll tell you what, I am no singer, but it seemed to me, in that starlit clearing, that my voice suited that music just perfectly, and I knew the words to the song, even though I couldn't hear them with my ears, precisely.

 

    All shall be well and all shall be well

and all manner of thing shall be well . . .

 

And everything
was
well. Electricity or no. Pa, drunk or sober. For just that moment, I felt safe and content. I felt one other thing, too: my ma was there, and somehow, she was hugging me and loving me through that song.

I'm not ashamed to admit I cried a little. But it wasn't because she was gone and I missed her. It was because she was there, right there, and—in a way I didn't quite understand—she always had been.

There came a time that it felt right to raise my cup and whistle down some magic from the stars. It was then that I realized: the light
was
the song, which
was
the light. It was more than that, too, but
what
more, I couldn't fathom. It was a mystery far bigger than me.

And you know what? I took a great deal of comfort from that.

 

After I made a double batch of wish biscuits—an especially fine-looking bunch, if I say so myself—I used the last of the starlight to light the stove for a batch of plain old breakfast biscuits. I couldn't help feeling pleased as I tucked them in the breadbasket and folded the cloth over them. Having those biscuits made would save Gram a little work in the morning.

The bag of miracle flour was as full as it had been when I first brought it home.

11

O
NE OF THE NICE THINGS ABOUT THE PUBLIC
library sharing a building with the Sass Police Department is, even if the librarian goes home, the library itself is never closed. True, it's no fun having to do your studying in full view of a holding cell where a certain town drunkard might be sleeping it off, but every rose has a few thorns.

Jura was there when I arrived.

“So-o?” She pushed her face at me and fluttered her lashes.

I laughed. “‘So' what?”

“Yesterday! Your date!”

I'd told her about the notes from Travis, of course, though at the time I'd thought they were from Sonny. Now the whole thing was just embarrassing.

I fessed up.

“Travis!” Jura exclaimed. A look of concern crossed her face. “You were nice about it, weren't you?”

“Nice? I bowled three games with him!”

She gave me an approving nod. “Good for you.” Then she added, “So,
was
it? A date?”

“Course not. I was real clear. Friends only.” I felt my cheeks turn red. “Could we get down to business?”

A little smile played on Jura's lips, but she took her place before the computer and signed us in to Cornucopio. “Okay. Let's see what we've got.”

She frowned at the screen.

“Ho-ho-ho-ly Christmas,” was what she finally said.

“What? What?”

She turned the screen my way and tapped on it. It read,
Welcome,
Wish to End Hunger.
You have
74
new messages.

We clicked. We read. We clicked again and read some more. They were—every single one of 'em—real wish requests. Folks wrote us from as far away as Russia and as close as Ardenville, Georgia. We heard from tiny efforts operating out of garages and mega-outfits that were working to feed continents.

Dear Wish to End Hunger,
one message began.
We know your posting is probably a prank, but after hundreds of layoffs in our community, we're not too proud to hope for a little magic.

Dear WTEH,
said another.
We've got plenty of non-perishable food, but no way to deliver it to remote mountain families. If we don't get truck repairs and volunteers fast, people are going to starve this winter. If there is anything you can do, magic or otherwise, PLEASE HELP.

That one was fairly worrying, but the next message tore me up something awful.

It said,
Last month in our village, three children and one elder died of hunger. If we do not have help, we expect at least fifteen others will die before the year's end.

My knees threatened to buckle. Four people dead of hunger! Three of 'em kids like me! And an elder who could have been somebody's gram, as precious as my own and loved just as fiercely.

And there were so many more.

“I don't think I made enough biscuits last night,” I said softly.

Jura gaped. “This is . . . wow. This is intense.”

That afternoon, Jura and I picked out our first eight wishes—because that's how many biscuits I had made. Then I whispered to the bread, staying faithful to the wishers' requests—after all, they knew what they needed far better than I ever could.

With sixty-six wishes remaining, I brought a bucket that night, rather than a cup, to hold all the starlight. The stars obliged and filled it to the brim. Thanks to Dilly's flour, I had more than enough fixin's, but it was nearly daybust before I finished baking all that dough.

 

Jura met me at my house on Monday morning. From there, we went to the post office, where a little pre-planning—by which I mean a biscuit held back for a certain purpose—paid off.

“There's just no way I can give you free boxes and postage,” Postmaster Marion said, her face squinched with regret. “I'd get in terrible trouble. I wish I could help you.”

Did somebody say
wish?

“Miss Marion, have you eaten breakfast yet?” I asked.

“Why, now that you mention it, I've been so busy since the truck came in, I haven't had a chance.”

Jura pulled a biscuit from her purse and wafted it under Marion's nose. “Have you heard about Genuine's dee-licious biscuits?”

“I might have,” Marion admitted. “Is that . . . one of 'em?”

I whispered Marion's wish to the biscuit and offered it to her. Two minutes after her last mouthful, the phone rang. Marion answered it.

“Yes, ma'am,” she said to the caller. “Yes, ma'am. I surely will, ma'am. You, too. Goodbye.” She hung up the phone.

“You already know what I'm going to say, don't you?” Marion asked.

“We got our boxes and stamps,” I replied.

“Headquarters wants all the postmasters to choose a local charity and cover their shipping costs, postage, boxes—everything down to the last scrap of packing tape. Some new public affairs campaign.” Marion gave her head a shake. “Looks like I choose you two.”

Some butt-waggling victory dancing followed, but not too much. We had important biscuits to ship.

 

At homeroom, Jura showed up at my desk with a stack of papers printed off the school computer. Forty-three new wish requests.

Another twenty-six came in before lunch.

There were eighty, total, by the time the last bell rang. I was in for another sleepless night.

 

That evening, Gram watched from the kitchen table as I darted between the raindrops, bringing in my second bucket of starlight.

“My goodness, Gen. You starting a factory operation?” She picked up a rolling pin and started kneading flour.

“Something like that,” I replied, surly with weariness.