Page 44 of Fairy Godmothers Aren't Cheap

“You.” I pointed to the tallest boy. “Go get his parents.” I turned to Josie. “Call an ambulance.” I already had my jacket off and was pressing it to the wet wound. “You’re going to be okay. Just breathe, okay?”

He nodded, his eyes filled with tears and fear.

Josie, who was dialling emergency services, whispered to me, “Say the chant.”

“What?”

“Thechant.”

I shook my head. Exploiting this poor kid’s awful moment for the betterment of my magical world financial situation felt wrong. So wrong. I was just doing what anyone else would do.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said again to the boy, hoping that I was speaking the truth. He leaned into me, tears still streaming down, and with the hand not holding pressure to his cut, I pulled him against me for a hug. He sniffled into my shoulder and I whispered reassurances and held him while we waited for help.

Despite being in a short-sleeved work blouse, I wasn’t that cold, and I took in the lot. It was actually fairly spacious, and we were protected from the wind by the brick buildings standing on either side of us. There was no alley through the block, and if someone tore down the abandoned warehouse set behind this lot and cleaned everything up, the double lots would make a decent park. There would be room for basketball nets for teens, a real slide for the kids to whiz down, or grass for them to play tag on, or even just a spot for adults to take their dogs. It could be that community piece that Everstone was missing. Something to help it become more than a forgotten collection of old buildings people had decided to live in.

There were likely grants available for creating that sort of green space. But again—how did one set a project this massive into motion?

A minute later, the boy’s parents came running, eyes wide with panic, the ambulance arriving shortly after. Josie and I stepped back through the fence, the paramedics having made the hole bigger with their giant wire cutters so they could bring a gurney in for the injured boy.

“They need a real park,” I said to Josie as we made our way home.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I felt a fire in my gut, anger and injustice swirling to create a desire to help. To make a difference. To give the people of Everstone something like what I’d had back in Eagle Ridge. Safety. Community. Greenery and beauty.

Josie contemplated me for a beat. “I think you may have found your big idea.”

* * *

I might have found an idea,but the next day was a mental dumpster fire. First, I didn’t know how to make a green space for our neighbourhood, and I obviously didn’t have the cash to buy the lots and transform them. I’d looked up grants, but I’d need about a million of them to build the park I envisioned. It didn’t help that I didn’t know what I truly needed or where to start. Plus, what was to say that a park in our tiny, kinda rundown neighbourhood would even start a karmic snowball?

Second on the disaster list was my data entry shift at the Book Emporium. That had been awful for the first time in a very long time. I’d made more mistakes in one day than I had over my entire temping career. At one point, Samantha had hissed at me over her stack of books, telling me to smarten up.

How could she act so calm and like life was normal?

Yeah, I know. She didn’t believe in fairy godmothers, and thought the three of us had simply headed home after not finding the source of the fake invoice while she and Gabby had gone for drinks. That was her reality. And it was a little different from mine right now.

And anyway, if she had this kind of debt, she’d pay it off herself with her fantastic money juggling and investing skills, or simply ask her mommy and daddy to take care of it.

But in my world, none of that was happening. Despite my attempts at proper financial management, I was a long way short of a hundred grand and my parents were no help. My mom had basically disowned me via rampant disinterest, and my dad was on disability and barely making ends meet.

What was really tweaking my brain, though, was the idea that if fairy godmothers were real, other things might be, too. For example, hungry dragons. Ogres. Leprechauns. Santa Claus. Witches. Maybe even garden gnomes were alive and real, like in that movieGnomeo and Juliet. What about Godzilla and zombies? Where did it all end? What was truly fiction?

During my bathroom breaks, I’d half expected Moaning Myrtle to appear, because what if J.K. Rowling had been telling the truth about that particular ghost and she was actually real?

Although Myrtle was part of Hogwarts which was in England. So chances were, I wouldn’t meet Myrtle due to geographical issues. Not to mention that Hogwarts and Myrtle were both fictional.

Supposedly.

Yeah, that was where my brain was at. Doubting everything. Plus, I was tripping over myself to be exceedingly helpful to the point where I was almost knocking people out of the way to open doors for them, muttering Estelle’s payback mantra under my breath, and getting sidelong looks like I was losing my grip on reality.

If only they knew.

Finally at home, eyes closed and splayed on my back, I soaked in the comfort of my bed. It was going to be a very long three months.

I’d even tried being patient with Randy when I gotten in, murmuring Estelle’s chant under my breath while letting him tell me all about the dating app he was on. That had to be worth at least five bucks, right? Especially since the entire time I ignored the fact that my long-awaited order from an online pottery shop that sold ancient Grecian pieces was sitting on the mail shelf behind him.

Honestly, I needed to delete the shopping app from my phone, because whenever I got down in the dumps, I found myself mindlessly scrolling and bidding in more auctions than I should. And right now, I was in a prime mental space to do alotof bidding.

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