When I take off running, I can hear Nila Wister shout at me, “Big mistake!” But I keep going. Fast. Because when you don’t have your charm in your pocket, the only thing you can do is try to outrun the Bad Luck.
I run past slow people on the sidewalk, weaving in between them, and I dart around a lady with a stroller and then a dog walker. I’m nearly flattened by the stroller and eaten by a pack of poodles, but somehow I make it back to Portwaller’s Blessed alive, thank lucky stars.
I stop to get my breath at the front door, but I don’t stand still for too long. And then after I put a look on my face that says, I Definitely Did Not Just Help an Old Lady Escape, I go inside.
A crowd of people are gathered around Arlene’s desk and they all stare at me when I come in. “I didn’t do anything,” I say, trying to act all normal and not like I just stole an old lady in a wheelchair.
“That’s her,” says Arlene to one of the men in the crowd. And she’s pointing at me.
I want to say it’s not polite to point and then go about my business, but then Mom and Terrible and Grandpa Felix are here and they ask me where I’ve been.
“Outside,” I say.
“You are so in trouble,” says Terrible.
I guess our crowd starts to get noticed, because the next thing I know, Patsy Cline and Vera Bogg and Mr. Rodriguez are here, too. And Patsy Cline says, “What’s all the fuss?”
Then a man in a suit tells me he wants to talk. He looks like he might be from NASA, but when I ask him if he’s on alien business, he says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about and would I please sit down on the couch. This is code for Yes I Am. I’m pretty sure.
“Do I have to?” I say, because I’ve got an old lady out in the street by herself with non-working legs, and it’s not really a good time for alien talk.
The man almost smiles, but my mom doesn’t at all. She tells me she wants me to sit down and answer this man’s questions, Right Now. I look toward the front door, wondering what Nila Wister must be thinking. Now that the Bad Luck has found me and she’s out there alone.
I sit down, facing the door, and the man sits beside me. He says his name is Martin, and he has a regular-size nose that isn’t very stand-out at all. The kind that you wouldn’t notice if you saw him on the street, and that’s really too bad.
He says he’s Portwaller’s Blessed administrator and wants to know what I did with Nila Wister.
“You mean you’re like the Boss?”
He nods. “I guess you could say that.”
“I was a Boss for a couple of days,” I tell him. “It’s hard work.”
He says it sure is. And then maybe because he’s a Boss too or because I’m so tired after pushing Nila in her wheelchair, or because I’m kind of relieved I don’t have to go through with helping Nila escape, I take a deep breath and tell him everything. About the Bad Luck, about the charms, and about Nila Wister.
Martin says he’s mostly interested in the fact that Nila Wister is safe and sitting in her wheelchair just around the corner. He doesn’t so much want to talk about the charms or the Bad Luck. But if he doesn’t know that the Bad Luck is out there somewhere, ready for the sneak attack, then I guess I’m not going to be the one to tell him.
Then, when he sends somebody outside to bring back Nila Wister, I tell him that she wants to go home. “She doesn’t have any friends here,” I say. “Just me.”
“Nila Wister?” says Patsy Cline. “The fortune teller?”
Vera Bogg says, “She’s an old person?”
I nod and Patsy Cline crinkles up her nose like she’s trying to remember everything that I said about Nila and trying to figure out whether or not I made it all up.
“Do you think she would tell me my fortune?” says Vera Bogg.
Good gravy.
After that, Mr. Rodriguez tells Patsy Cline and Vera Bogg that whatever is going on is not their concern and then he leads them back to the mural party. Which is where I would very much like to be.
“Why did you do this?” Mom asks, with a look on her face that says, This Is a Hundred Times Worse Than a Note from Miss Stunkel.
“Nila asked me to,” I say. “She needed my help. And I am her Favorite.”
“Favorite what?” asks Grandpa Felix.
But before I can answer him, Nila Wister comes rolling in through the front door. And she looks like a fish that’s been reeled in too close to suppertime.
“Nila,” I say, going to her. I kneel beside her wheelchair and in a low voice tell her I’m sorry, very sorry, she didn’t get to go home but that everything is going to be okay because she can still be my Favorite, and now that she’s here we’ll still be able to see each other. And I say it’s going to be okay over and over and that I’m sorry I didn’t have my charm.
She doesn’t look at me, and her fingers are wrapped tight around her acorn charm. She’s wishing I would just go away, that we all would, or that she would. I’m pretty sure. Finally she says, “I told you not to come back.” And she says it in a way that I know I’m not her Favorite anymore.
Martin comes over to us and taps me on my shoulder. He tells me he’s done with me, and that he wants to talk to Nila alone.
“Is she in trouble?” I say.
Mom pulls on my arm before he has a chance to answer me, and the next thing I know, I’m in the car and we’re going home.
It takes me the rest of the day to find the butterfly charm in the Heap. But I do find it, thank lucky stars, and when I do, I make a wish on it. For Nila.