His gaze flicks up to mine, stern. “The chicken nuggets thing.”
I have to snicker. Tabloids, paparazzi, and anyone who’s ever sued me has had their taste receptors tinkered with, so now sweet foods taste sour, and salty foods taste exactly like if you microwaved Stouffer’s chicken nuggets for half the recommended time, so they’re partly soggy, partly frozen. Are they eating chips? Fries? Pretzels? Not anymore! It’s all flavorless chicken nuggets now!
“Then, there’s the laundry list of requests I had to reject because they cost too much magic, or would change the fabric of history, or would punch a hole in time, et cetera.” Hall conjures a second receipt from nowhere, unfurling a naughty list so long that it rolls across the street, right up the steps of Town Hall.
It’s not as bad as he’s making it sound. All I wanted was to put myself somewhere in the background ofThe Wizard of Oz, holding a cell phone, to confuse people in the present day. It would spawn so many delicious conspiracy theories.
Figuring out what Hall is and isn’t able to do has been a fun system of trial and error. The rules of magic are ironclad in some areas, but overall, they bend toward randomness. Magic wouldn’t allow me to illegally streamLost, for example, but it let me conjure up the box set of DVDs. It said no to an inflatable pool filled with chocolate pudding for some reason, but yes to fireworks that yelled “Boom” with the voices of The Black Eyed Peas whenever they exploded. Sometimes it has high-strung principles and says no to requests, but after rephrasing them creatively, I get my yes. I’m the loophole whisperer. Hall is the unwilling admirer of this, since I can tell it amuses him whenever magic swerves me forty times and then I finally win. This has led to himwantingto grant most of my wishes, because his amusement amuses me in turn, andmyamusement gives him that nice, bubbly feeling of doing his job well. Very symbiotic.
“Just one last thing before we go,” I insist. “I would like a dead mackerel, please.”
He conjures a dead mackerel. It has plastic googly eyes and is glued to a plaque, but close enough.
“I want you to put this in Ally Whitcross’s pillowcase.”
“The woman from theBeverly Hillbilliesrevival?”
“She’s got it coming. We were best friends until she started leaking all my personal stuff to the press.” Before he can interrupt, I add, “Make my wish come true.”
I think it was a success, because he gags a little. “Reverse Apple Jacks taste so bad.”
“Here.” I hand him my thermos of orange juice (it’s mostly absinthe). He takes a deep swig before spraying it out of his nose.
Hall is using a child-size box of Yoo-hoo as a neti pot when my mother texts to ask how far away from my grandparents’ house I am. I bet she thinks I missed my flight and I’ll be the last to show up, as always. To be frank, I have had it up to here with everybody treating me like I’m a flake with no sense of responsibility.
My sense of responsibility throws me a gloomy, end-of-the-world look over his shoulder. He’s standing at an easel, painting a portrait of Lacey Chabert (who, he’s told me on three separate occasions, has starred in more made-for-TV Christmas movies than any otherAll My Childrenalum). Not being punctual is one of the many (many, many) things about me that gives him a queasy stomach. It’s not that I’m stalling. (It’s only a little bit that I’m stalling.) It’s mostly that after getting a taste of revenge, I don’t know how to stop. I’ve got a long list of people who need their comeuppance. Ally Whitcross, Niall Horan, and Kelly Frederickwere only the beginning. My ex-boyfriend, Lucas Dormer, has hell on his horizon.
“It’s four forty-five,” he reports forlornly. “We’re going to be late, and your family will hate me, and I won’t be able to live with myself, and I’ll melt into a puddle—”
I hold up my hands. “We’re going! We’re going. We can do more dead-fish stuff later.”
He spins around, emerging from a Hall tornado in a sweater that has a fireplace on it with fiber-optic lights, which somehow smells like gooey chocolate chip cookies. “This is so exciting! I’ve watched all of your grandmother’s films.”
“Really? Wow. Even I haven’t seen all of them.”
“She’s the best actor who ever lived.”
“Please don’t tell her that.”
“Does she like green bean casserole? Does she have a subscription to Discovery Plus? I should know as much about your family as possible, since I’m supposed to be your boyfriend.” It’s the only rationale for bringing Hall along that makes sense. He trips over the wordboyfriendas he says it, unable to meet my eyes.
“It doesn’t have to be weird, Hall. Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird! I’m just... thinking.” I step in front of him, but he doggedly won’t look at me. What is eye contact? Hall doesn’t know her.
“You’re overthinking.”
“I’ve seen every single romance film in existence, so I know how boyfriends and girlfriends interact.” His cheeks are scribbles of pink, color seeping up his neck. “So, I was wondering, do you need me to kiss you in front of them?”
“God, no! You don’t have to do anything like that. We’re too repressed to show affection in front of other people.”
Oh dear, I’ve broken his heart. It happens so easily with Hall.
“You don’t show affection in front of your family?” he repeats softly. “Bettie, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.” He drapes a hand over his chest, and the fiber-optic fireplace on his sweater begins to smoke between his fingers.
“I show affection to Grandpa Lawrence. Really nice guy, just the loveliest person on earth. Used to be a set designer. Now he works on a miniature version of Teller City in his basement and collects wooden mallard ducks.”
“And your grandmother?” He motions for me to join him in the truck. “Just think of the place, and we’ll be there.”
