Page 94 of Witch You Would
“Yeah, same.” I tapped the pencil on the table a few times, then stopped. “Why are we trying to do fancy?”
“So we can beat the other fancy people? Be impressive for... reasons?”
He meant me. He was trying to make me look good, because he knew I needed to advertise my skills. That had been the wholepoint of this, from when I first applied because Rosy twisted my arm. To get a better job, to stop working my ass off at Espinosa’sfor shit pay and shit treatment.
But this wasn’t all about me. It was about Gil, too. He needed to look good so his charity would get donors. So he could getmore subscribers and advertisers. He had a brand. Why weren’t we leaning into that?
“Forget fancy,” I said. “What would be fun? What kind of stuff would kids like?”
Gil’s eyes got big behind his safety glasses and he grinned like I’d given him a present. Excellent.
“Piñatas,” he said.
I wrote that down. “Yes, yes, yes. Ooh, they should like, pop on their own? Maybe in a cloud of glitter? Not real glitter, magic glitter.”
“Easier than confetti, probably.”
“Okay, but we have to put stuff inside the piñatas.”
“Bubbles?”
“Hmm, what could the bubbles do?”
“Animal shapes!”
“Oh, that’s good.”
Gil leaned on the counter, close enough for me to smell his deodorant, which is what I’d finally figured out gave him thatappley goodness. “It’s too bad we can’t make something that would let kids do their own magic. Nothing big, just something...flashy.”
“Presto?” I finished.
“Yeah. Presto.”
An idea kicked down my brain door. “We totally can. All we need is a closed gather-and-release loop.”
“How can we do that twenty-four times, though?”
“We don’t. We do it once and let the law of synecdoche do the work for us.” I started sketching out my idea on the page, listingpotential ingredients and steps.
“Ohh,” Gil said. “That’s genius. What spell are we going to enchant them with?”
“Dealer’s choice. What do you think would be fun? What do kids love to see you do?”
“Fireworks,” he said. “Fake ones, obviously.”
“Perfect. What do we need for that?”
We jumped into planning with both feet. Recipe, reagents, timing . . . we made our step-by-step plan for both days so fast, it was like we were living in each other’s brains. This time, though,we also quietly worked in space for Leandro Presto to do goofy stuff, including an apparent spell oopsie that would come near the end of the night.
I loved it. Everything felt good, and right. The rhythm we’d found in the other rounds beat stronger now.
We even managed to tag-team watching out for sabotage. Nobody got close to our spell without one of us noticing, especiallynot Felicia. I deployed my full retailcan I help you with something?smile like a shield on Syd; Gil turned an almost-touch from Doris Twist into an adorable juggling act. Even when I explainedwhat we were doing for the judges, I made sure they were standing several feet away from the casting circle Gil had drawn.
We weren’t taking any chances.
By the time we wrapped for the day, both of us were exhausted, but all the piñatas were finished, and the raw materials hadbeen prepped for the surprises inside. We’d even made extras and hidden them in a cabinet, just in case.
Dinner was short and sweet, all of us eating like machines and commiserating in vague terms about the day’s struggles. Dylanhad gotten a steam burn on his arm while making some kind of jam filling. Leandro had slipped on a piece of chalk and fallenon his back, ending up with flour all over his face—the fall was fake, the flour was real. No accidents for me, but my handswere raw in places from cutting paper for the piñatas. Gil claimed he had a lotion for that in his room, so we went to getit and spent way longer than we should have saying good night.
