What’s happening?” Morgan Angelopoulos wants to know, trundling in with his laptop and coffee, dark eyes wild with confusion, his silky black hair windswept. “Are we finally getting a burrito bar?”
He works at Zelda’s old desk, positioned in front of a window that he claims holds the most inspirational view in town, maybe the world. Two years ago, he was dragged into The Magick Happens by a girlfriend. While she browsed, he loitered by the window and stared out at the scenery: the intersection of Foxglove Creek and Twinstar Fork, banks swarmed with love-in-a-mist and flowering trees. A rounded red bridge. A bronze telephone booth in a neighbor’s front garden. He sat down at Zelda’s long-neglected writing desk and began taking notes. Then, he wrote an entire chapter of a book in a single hour while his girlfriend tapped her foot impatiently by the door. When we asked him what he was doing, he said he was a writer, that he’d been struggling with writer’s block for eons, unable to scrape a single word out. He asked if he could rent that desk as a workspace for fifty dollars a month. He’s since abandoned both the girlfriend and manuscript-writing (although he still writes for the local newspaper), but The Magick Happens remains a tried-and-true muse. His current love is the paranormal. He’s utterly devoted to his podcast that nobody listens to, in which he talks to himself about Moonville’s lore and ghost stories.
“Trevor’s dad’s in town,” I tell him. “He wants Trevor to meet him for lunch.”
He nearly drops his coffee. “For real? He’ll give us a loan?” I smile at his us since he doesn’t actually work here.
Trevor’s glow could light a fuse. “Probably!”
“Ahhhhh!” Morgan exclaims, shaking Trevor’s shoulders.
Trevor shakes him back, the glee contagious. “Ahhhhh!”
“Ahhhhh!” Luna and I pitch in, shaking each other. And then Aisling, her eleven-year-old daughter, emerges downstairs and we have to explain what we’re ahhhhh-ing about. Ash tries to muster the jazz for us, but gives up. Adult ventures such as asking our landlord’s rich father to give us money can’t compete with the allure of Morgan’s unattended macchiato.
Morgan dashes outside. “I’ll be right back! I need to grab celebratory donuts.” The man will seize upon any excuse to procrastinate. Often, he stretches out in his chair and naps, Snapdragon curled up on his lap, or lends unsolicited advice concerning which scents we should use for a particular new product. He keeps giving the wrong recommendations to customers and thinks he’s an expert now.
“Eleven,” Luna’s repeating under her breath. “Okay, everybody, where are the papers? Trevor, I think you were looking at them on Friday.”
We sweep the store from top to bottom. No sign of the twenty-page business proposal that we typed up a couple weeks ago in the hopes that Mr. Yoon would help us. From what I’ve heard about him, simply asking for money isn’t going to cut it. Regardless of his love for his son, when it comes to business, he thinks in numbers only.
“I’ll go reprint!” Luna makes for the printer so fast that she knocks over a row of white orchid candles molded into pumpkins, and Trevor slams his index finger through the air.
“Ah-ha!”
“Okay, but you do it all the time,” she shouts over her shoulder. “I did it once.”
He grins at me, triumphant. “I love it when she messes up.”
“Why’s it saying the printer’s offline?” Luna calls after a minute, close to tears. “We’re doomed.”
Aisling grabs a donut from Morgan’s box as he returns, then tries to help her mom figure out how to make the printer cooperate. None of us are able to get a hold of Zelda, a night owl who doesn’t get out of bed until nine. She’s going to be apoplectic when she hears she missed this news. “Can I come with you guys?” Aisling asks.
“Nice try.” I tousle her hair. “Go to school so you can learn something.”
She keels over and dies, emotionally. “I hate school. They force us to do labor all day, which we don’t even get paid for. It should be illegal. If I come watch you negotiate a business deal, isn’t that valuable real-world experience? Someday I’ll inherit this store and run it into the ground because I won’t have practice talking about loans.”
“You’ve already missed seven days this year,” her mom says. “If you get braces, you’ll probably miss chunks of school all the time for orthodontist appointments. Can’t let you take fun days anymore.”
Aisling growls. Luna let her play hooky once in fourth grade to go to the movies, then once again in fifth grade to attend a Tributales convention. Luna cited them as “fun days” that were necessary for the well-being of preadolescent youths, and Aisling asks every single morning for another one.
Aisling sighs. “Guess I’ll be sad forever.”
“Go be sad while you brush your hair,” Luna replies indifferently. “I shouldn’t have to remind you to do that.”
Aisling makes her dismay known by clamping her donut between her teeth and walking on her hands and knees toward the stairs, as slowly as possible.
“I’ll take you to dance in a fairy ring under a full moon this summer, if you’re good for the rest of the month,” I tell her as she drags by.
She tosses her head. “Mrffmrfppph mphhhhhhff.”
I remove the donut. “No talking with your mouth full. You could accidentally set a curse on someone.”
“Don’t tell Mom.” She licks her lips to get the chocolate icing off. “But I just remembered I have homework due today. Can I still dance in a fairy ring under the full moon? Oh please oh please oh please?”
I spear my fingers through my hair. “Ash! You didn’t tell me that. I didn’t hear it.”
“Can I finish your coffee?”
She has a lot of nerve to ask for my coffee when she’s wearing my shirt, again, without permission, and it’s stained from the last time she snuck my coffee and spilled it on herself. “You had all weekend! Did you really forget, or did you just put it off?”
She doesn’t respond for a full five seconds. “I forgot that I put it off.”
Luna’s head pokes around the stairway. “What did I hear?”
Aisling bolts to the top of the steps with a shriek.
“You’re helping your aunt weed her garden tonight!” Luna yells up. “From now on, you’re doing your homework as soon as you get home from school. No more waiting until after you’ve wound down.”
Aisling emits horse noises.
I turn to Luna. “How dare you suggest that my garden has weeds.” Then I laugh at her frenzied expression. “What’s it like to raise a little me?” Aisling certainly does not take after Luna, who has Oldest Child embedded in her DNA and spent her youth pleasing adults by anticipating and diffusing conflict. When she was little little, our parents found this behavior a nuisance. They’d yell at her for inserting herself in other people’s squabbles, so she’d hide in her room crying, not knowing what to do. But by the time I was around ten, she’d gotten so masterful at concealing her fear and anxiety that my parents began to depend on her to be the peacemaker between them, between Zelda and me if we were spatting, between a neighbor dog and our own—whoever.
Luna paces. “She’s such a smart kid! She reads about ten books a week! If she’d just pay attention in school, she might find that she actually enjoys learning.”
“Luna, haven’t you learned anything from television? Cool kids don’t pay attention.”
She snatches a rubber band off a stack of to-be-mailed parcels, then snaps it at me.
“Ha-ha. You missed.”
She doesn’t miss the next time, and my arm’s still smarting when Aisling leaves for school. I weave together crowns of silver dollar eucalyptus, bay laurel, and heather for us—then a couple peonies for good measure. We need all the luck we can get. “You think I should change my clothes?” Luna muses, pulling at her cropped tank. Luna likes to wear shirts that display the stretch marks on her hips, which she says are self-grown tattoos that chose their own pattern. Hers resemble palm leaves, symbolizing victory.
“You look like a goddess.”
“Correct, but that doesn’t answer my question.”
Luna’s hands are shaking as we staple four copies of the proposal. I wrench her down into a tight hug, our optimism switching bodies. “We’re going to do great. What’s ten thousand dollars, to a rich person? Crumbs.”
Nobody wants to think about what will happen if Mr. Yoon says no, like all the banks in town already have.
After purchasing the lot and snatching up the keys to the greenhouse, we eagerly opened the door to discover a wood floor covered in sewage. So, right away, the floor needed replacing. Not so bad! We needed to replace a few missing windows, anyway. The budget would be a bit snug, but no big deal.
But then.
We discovered black water gurgling in the sink, and bam, now we’ve got to replace the entire sewer line. Old clay pipes plus tree roots equals extensive damage. The quote we were given to fix it was about seven grand, not including the cost of demolition and repair of the asphalt. On top of what we need to spend for a new greenhouse floor, windows, booths for the night market, additional gardening materials. Trevor rented a jackhammer in a woefully misguided attempt to do some of the job himself, trimming costs, and now the pavement is riddled with holes. Even if we wanted to ignore the sewer line and set up the market, anyway, we can’t because the pavement’s all messed up.
Luna worries her bottom lip with her teeth, springy blond hair a cloud around her face. She’s sweating like a glass of iced tea. “The GoFundMe hasn’t moved in a week.” There was an explosion of donations right when we announced our fundraiser in March, but it’s since petered out. If it weren’t for the fact that (1) The Magick Happens is Trevor’s only successful business endeavor, after tanking the three other businesses he bought when he first set out to be an investor like his dad, and (2) the banks gave us side-eye for not doing our due diligence before buying the property, we might have been able to secure a proper loan. Trevor, who has a somewhat tense relationship with his dad, didn’t want to ask him for the money, so it was a last-ditch effort when he called him up at the beginning of this month to ask if he’d help us. Mr. Yoon gave him a vague brush-off, said they’d “talk soon,” but hadn’t reached out until now.
Our building accommodates Luna’s candles and Zelda’s books, but the porch and back garden simply aren’t cutting it when it comes to my part of the business—every festival, I sell out within an hour of setting up. Imagine if I could grow more product and came prepared with enough flora (that I’ve grown and tended myself, which is crucial—magic doesn’t seem to respond as well to flowers I’ve purchased or picked in areas outside of my garden) to last the whole day? I could afford a real vacation. Not to mention, Trevor’s idea to create a night market has morphed into a full-on obsession. He’s always saying to Luna and me: “You both already have your thing!” He’s itching to put his own creative stamp on The Magick Happens.
At last, we’re ready. “Don’t let anyone in till after we get back,” we instruct Morgan. And to Snapdragon: “No parties.”
“I won’t tell them if you won’t,” Morgan whispers to the cat as he scratches behind his ears. Snapdragon gets so into it that he flips backward into a cord, unplugging a lamp.
And then Luna’s phone rings.
She stares at the screen. “It’s the school.”
Morgan rolls his computer chair away slowly.
Luna turns, heel of her hand pushing hard against the space between her eyes. “Hello? Uh, yes. I’m her mom.” A few beats elapse. My sister is turning raspberry. “You’ve got to be joking.”
My stomach sinks.
I know that look. It’s the one she wore when I told her what happened with my ex-boyfriend, Spencer. When she found out our mother sold the store. When Ash’s dad promised he’d take her to Cedar Point for her tenth birthday and then never showed up.
Trevor and I squeeze each other’s hands. A second later, Luna stuffs her phone in her pocket and screams.
Loud.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“I have to get down to the school. Do you think we can put off the meeting for a couple hours?”
Trevor grimaces. “If I ask him to wait, he might get offended and decide to take off. He’s super big on punctuality. Last time he was in town was . . . four years ago, I think. He was in and out in twenty minutes. Not too fond of Moonville.”
She kicks a file cabinet, then hops around in pain. “Damn it.”
“What’s wrong with Aisling?” I ask again. “What’d they say?”
Luna grips her purse so hard that her knuckles whiten, pointing at us as she backs out the door. “You’ve got this. I trust you.”
“I don’t! We can’t do this without you, it’s a team effort. Trevor’s got the charisma and I’ve got the big Disney eyes that make people feel sorry for me, but we need your backbone to pull this off. You always know how to get your way.”
“I have utmost faith in you. I have to go meet with the principal. We’ll celebrate when I get back.” Before she runs out, she adds, “They said she put drugs in her teacher’s tea.”