I lower my megaphone, confidence wavering. “No! Because... I’m licensed! Frankly, this isn’t the reception I was hoping for. I’m in a goddamn hot-air balloon! Why aren’t you people clapping?”
“Who’s that?” Felix asks, pointing at Hall.
Hall points at himself, grinning.
“My boyfriend,” I reply soulfully. We bounce a bit along the ground, not stable yet. Hall conjures some sandbags on the floor of the basket, weighing us down properly. The flame in the balloon dies out. If I weren’t me, I would throw myself upon the earth in a withered ball of envy, and then perish. Of envy.
While Grandpa claps me on the back and slips me twenty dollars, Athena smirks and murmurs, “Another boyfriend?” I don’t know how she’s still standing right now, when she should be perishing of envy.
“Mylong-termboyfriend,” I add, with emphasis. “We’ve been keeping it under wraps, like mature adults. He’s loyal and devoted and we areserious.”
“Of course you are,” Athena replies sardonically.
She and her husband exchange smug, self-satisfied looks. A child whose name is either Terracotta or Ricotta rolls her eyes.Target once paid her fifteen grand to do that in a commercial, so now she keeps doing it. I glare at her. She isn’t better than me.
“I proposed to my second wife in a hot-air balloon,” Felix adds with an expression of distaste, banishing hot-air balloons to the Realm of Old News.
“That does it,” I snap. “Hall!”
“Yes?” He springs so close that we knock elbows, his head cocked in that intent, absorbed way he has, as though every word from my mouth is spun from gold. He’s about two inches taller than me, but in my modest platform shoes, we’re eye to eye. I should ask for more height, so that I may look down on everyone both figuratively and physically.
“Make Felix flat.”
I tack on the magic words, he makes Felix flat, and my family shrieks with terror again. It is very worth it.
“Take three!” I call, stomping away from the scene. “Or four, I don’t know which we’re on. I am too busy to care about consistency issues!”
*
“And here is myfiancé,” I announce as I alight from the onion carriage fromShrek, which is pulled by unicorns, proffering my hand so that they all might weep over the glorious diamond (thirty-three carats) weighing down my ring finger. “My loyal, devoted fiancé, which is even better than a serious boyfriend.”
“That ring looks like the one Richard Burton gave to Liz Taylor,” Grandma observes, correctly.
“Fascinating,” Mom is remarking, bending her face close to aunicorn’s head. “You can’t even see the strap that keeps the horn on.”
“That’s because it’s a real unicorn,” I tell her, at which she laughs.
My siblings stare at the carriage with bulging eyes. They have no words. It is awesome.
“This is good footage,” I murmur out of the corner of my mouth to Hall. “We’ll use this one.”
*
Chapter Six
IT’S ALL EYESon me at dinner, and I amliving.
“So as you can see, I am more independently wealthy than ever,” I gloat. “I independently found Hall and got engaged to him, so now his vast fortune is all mine.” I slap a generous scoop of sweet potatoes onto my plate next to an entire turkey leg. “On top of my own fortune, of course, as a beloved influencer.”
“What kind of fortune are we talking about?” Grandma inquires, sharp black eyes pinning my new fiancé.
The wordfortuneis Kaia’s reminder to whip out her tarot cards. She doles out readings at every gathering, mostly for Mom and Grandma. Her cards are illustrated with skeletons that have flowers in their eye sockets and they creep me out.
Hall’s forehead is sparkly with sweat. Inordinately sparkly, in fact, and unlike everyone else who perspires, his perspiration has a sweet smell to it. I peer closer. Holy cow. This man sweats sugar.
“Investments,” he supplies, swallowing thickly.
“Hall’s a movie producer,” I inform everyone. “He invests inmovies. Just finished wrapping up the most incredible project—tell them all about it, honey.”
