Once I’m finished lacing my boots, I find Luna sussing out a way to stuff acorns and a Ziploc baggie of watermelon chunks in my bags. “Upon every single word, Luna.Whatare you doing now?”
“Watermelon is ninety percent water and full of antioxidants. The acorns will bring you luck.”
“Do you think I’m going off to war?”
She pokes me. “I don’t like that you’re doing this alone. Iknow Morgan will be there, too, but he’s useless. You should at least bring Alex—he knows his way around a campfire.”
“Don’t worry, Lune. It’s a full harvest moon tonight, so we’ll be covered in luck.”
I press the watermelon back into her hands, but my sister is so forlorn about my antioxidant intake that I cave, strapping the bag to a suitcase with duct tape. Ash, Romina, and Luna take turns squeezing me as tightly as possible, until it becomes evident that they’re just trying to see how long I’ll put up with it. At last, I open the front door of The Magick Happens and step into the twilight. How I let Luna talk me into waiting around all day is beyond me. Bossiness is her superpower.
Morgan’s still not here yet. I tap my foot on the pavement, frowning into the glowing windows of Wafting Crescent.
“Hazelnuts!” Luna cries from behind. “Wait! I’ll be right back. You need manganese.”
Oh no. “I love you, bye! Gonna go get Morgan now.”
Luna flees into the building, and Romina waves me on. “Hurry, or you’ll never be able to escape.”
She’s right. I fully expect Luna to hire crop dusters to parachute gift baskets into my camp while I’m gone, and the thought makes me smile. I can always count on my older sister to give me more than I would ever think to ask for.
The drama of my bon voyage ceremony is marred when I don’t get more than three feet without stumbling.
“Lift with your back!” Romina calls helpfully. Her advice makes no sense, as I’ve got a backpack and two rolling suitcases, but her boyfriend gazes adoringly at her as if she’s just invented penicillin.
The wheel of one suitcase catches on a tree root. As I lurch it up and over, the bag of watermelon falls off and my other wheel gets stuck in a sidewalk crack. I mutter curses, cajoling it free.
Luna’s returned. “Come back for your hazelnuts. They’re organic and non-GMO.”
I am a five-second walk from home. “Too late to go back now, sorry!”
“Catch, then!” Luna scatters her non-GMO hazelnuts to the wind. I struggle to roll my suitcases through a patch of crumbling cement. What are my taxes going toward? Pedestrian infrastructure around here is total gas, I say.
“You can go back inside now!” I shout. “Bye! I’ll miss you someday!”
They watch for a while longer, with varying degrees of pity, until Romina points out that with me gone, there won’t be anyone to obnoxiously call out the historical inaccuracies in their favorite romantic dramas. They dash inside to binge-watch TV.
I give up trying to roll my luggage and sprint across the street to find my wayward adventure partner.
“I cannot even begin to guess what is taking him so long,” Bushra says by way of greeting me. Upstairs, there’s a racket of footsteps and what sounds like heavy furniture moving across the floor.
I tip my head back and yell out a “Morgan!”
“Hang on! Sorry!”
There are a few morethuds, and then he appears on the stairs, wild-eyed and grinning. He is dressed for a visit to SixFlags in 1993, lime-green fanny pack looped about his waist. “Sorry for being late. I got distracted.”
I shrug. “It happens.”
His grin twists into a different kind of curve—one of pleasant surprise and understanding. I know better than anyone what it’s like to be led by the leash of a scattered brain, after all. “I’m ready to go. Did you pack a compass? Never mind, I’ve got four. And plenty of hazelnuts, don’t worry—we’ll need our manganese, and hazelnuts provide seventy-six percent of your daily value.”
I try to lift the flap of his bag to see what he’s packed, but he swerves me. “What’ve you got in there?”
“Things for science. And Cocoa Puffs. I don’t go anywhere without my Puffs.” He snaps his fingers. “Hang on, I forgot something.”
Morgan runs up the stairs. More crashing noises above. Bushra and Zaid raise eyebrows at each other. Morgan thunders back down with another lumpy shoulder bag. “Oh, hang on some more, I forgot to use the bathroom.”
He runs into the men’s room. When he reappears a minute later, he looks at me, turns on his heel, and goes back into the bathroom again.
