Page 22

*they don’t all look alike in hairnets*

S CHOOL WAS WEIRD the next day.

Kennedy and Allie acted like everything was normal, but it felt really fake, like they were walking on eggshells, trying not to make me mad.

Which made me mad, which I knew was stupid , but that was the way it was.

At lunchtime, they tried including me, but that only made things feel worse. Because no one at the table cared that I was there, yet no matter what was said, Allie and Kennedy added something about me in a ridiculous way.

You like that show? Oh, Emma likes that show, too.

I was doing my best not to roll my eyes when I happened to catch Jackson’s gaze. He was a few tables over, sitting with Jared, the redheaded kid from down the street, and when I looked at him, he gave me a little smile.

And I suddenly felt better. I leaned over and said to Kennedy, “I’m going to go talk to someone—I’ll be back.”

But I wasn’t going to be back. I took my tray and my backpack, walked over, and sat down beside Jackson, even though the “Hot Hat” girls would probably have something to say about it. I didn’t want to be the topic of their conversation, but I wanted to sit with Jackson enough to risk it.

“Do you care if I sit here?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “but weren’t you the one who was worried about people assuming we were friends?”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I don’t feel like I care today. Do you care?”

“I didn’t ever care,” he said, shrugging.

“Well, I care,” Jared said. “I’m out of here.”

And the guy stood up and walked away.

“What is his deal?” I asked as I sat down.

“Well, he said—right before you came over—that he was going to the library to study, so I think that was his attempt at being funny.”

“Oh, so he’s not very good at being funny?” I picked up a fry and dipped it into my ketchup.

“Obviously not,” he replied, and we both kind of laughed at that. “So, the popular table isn’t doing it for you today?”

I gave him a duh look as I popped the fry into my mouth.

“Well, I’m glad you’re here, because I was thinking.” He held up a finger while he chewed, then said, “We need to go see Archie.”

“What?” That was the last thing I expected him to say.

“I was lying in bed last night, stressing about everything, when it hit me,” he said. “She did say that weird stuff about talking to a hamburger if it didn’t work. Why would she say that if it didn’t mean something?”

“Probably to…” I tilted my head and looked into his blue eyes. “I… don’t know.”

“Right?” He pointed at me and said, “It makes me wonder if there’s a plan B.”

“A plan B,” I said, wondering if he could be right.

“It might be that she’s just… odd, but isn’t it worth it to toss out one final ask before officially giving up?”

“Yes,” I said, realizing he was right. Even if my wish was dead to me, Jackson and his family needed that wish flipped too much for us to give up without trying everything. So I said, “I think that’s a great idea.”

Sometimes I couldn’t tell what Jackson was thinking, but as soon as I said that, his face changed. Relief smoothed over the crinkle between his eyebrows and he sounded excited when he asked, “So, you’ll go with me to the Flordish lady?”

“Of course. We should go right after school, if you can,” I said. “But don’t get your hopes up. Archie is… well… Archie .”

He chugged the rest of his water before setting the bottle on his tray. “You never know, Em. We might’ve missed something simple, and now we can fix it.”

“You’re saying that to make us feel better, aren’t you?” I asked, wanting him to be right so badly.

“Absolutely I am,” he said, stealing one of my fries. “But it’s possible.”

“Right,” I agreed, nodding. “It is.”

“O-kay,” he said. “So listen. I was thinking.”

“Yeah?” I said, suddenly distracted by Evan Winters going through the pizza line. He was wearing a basketball jersey with jeans, which looked so good on him.

“Evan Winters is an alien,” he said.

“Huh?”

When I looked away from Evan, Jackson was watching me with a know-it-all look on his face. He shook his head and said, “You have no poker face, Rockie. You get all goo-goo eyed whenever you look at him.”

“No, I don’t.”

“You actually do,” he said, picking up his slice of pepperoni pizza.

“Whatever. I think the bigger question is how are you still getting away with that hat,” I said, changing the subject.

“A, there was no question. I was calling you out on your crush, and you’re trying to change the subject, Rockford,” he said with a smirk. “And B, my mom called the principal about my Marie Antoinette hair, so it’s allowed—I got the override.”

I rolled my eyes, but it was a waste because I couldn’t hold back my smile.

So I grabbed a fry and asked, “Well, now that you might be stuck with Marie’s hair forever, are you going to ditch the beanie soon?”

“Are you missing my hair? Is that it?” he teased.

I shook my head but my cheeks were warm when I said, “I forget you even have hair, Matthews.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what I’m going to do about it,” he said with a shrug. “I guess I’ll have to take it off at some point, but I’m not looking forward to the reactions.”

“I get that,” I said, because people were going to freak when they saw his hair.

The bell rang a minute later, so Jackson hurried off to class.

As I watched him walk away and started walking in the other direction, I wondered how things were going to go with Archie after school. Was there a chance she’d have another option for us? I knew the odds weren’t in our favor, but I really hoped there would be something for us to try.

“Em!”

I looked over my shoulder, and Kennedy and Allie were both running to catch up with me.

“Hey,” I said, feeling awkward as I waited for them.

But as they came over, Allie looking like a middle school goddess and Kennedy moving with the confidence of an influencer, my stomach hurt with how much I missed them.

With how much I missed us , the us from before the lore.

And it occurred to me that maybe I was being a fool.

I didn’t like the changes in our friendship, but that wasn’t worth losing it entirely.

And I could try to get to know their new friends, right? Suddenly I felt like I’d been making everything harder than it needed to be.

“Listen, you guys, I’m really sorry,” I said, meaning it. “We should do a movie night tonight, if you guys don’t have anything going on.”

“We totally should,” Allie said, nodding and smiling, looking relieved.

“Like old times,” Kennedy agreed. “I’ll bring the Milk Duds.”

“I’ll bring the popcorn,” I chimed in.

“And I’ve got the soda,” Allie offered, grinning at the way we always fell into the same roles. “And you know, Em, we won’t be mad if you want to bring Jackson.”

“Jackson?” I searched her face, trying to see if she was accusing me of something more than friendship with him, but she looked like she was for real.

“I know you said he’s your friend now,” she said, “so it’s okay with us if you want to include him.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering what that would be like. I’d never thought about the four of us hanging out together before, but I kind of liked the idea. “Let’s just do the AT3 tonight. But he is really cool, so we should all do something together sometime.”

Would he want to? I kind of felt like he might.

“So, what do you two talk about?” Allie asked with a little smile. “Like, I know you have a class together and all that, but when Ken saw you going somewhere with him and his grandma, where were you headed?”

My guilty stomach dropped. Did they somehow know we’d been messing with the magic?

“Platte River State Park,” I admitted, wondering if I could tell them about the fish now, since it obviously hadn’t worked. Maybe they’d understand and find it hilarious. “It sounds ridiculous, but I thought that if—”

“You didn’t go to the place , did you?” Kennedy interrupted in an annoyingly loud whisper, her eyeballs so huge they nearly bulged as her eyebrows went all the way up.

Okay—question answered. Kennedy looked like she was on the edge at the mere mention of Platte River State Park. I said, “If by place you mean marina , then yes—we went to the place. ”

For half a second, I’d been foolish enough to think I could tell them the story and they’d be amused that I’d failed.

Obviously I’d underestimated what their response would be to magic-messing.

“Ohhhhhh,” she said, her eyes and brows returning to normal. “Got it. Sorry—I’m a little paranoid about… things , if you know what I mean.”

“Understood,” I said, nodding.

“It’s weirdly stressful,” Allie said quietly, a crinkle in her perfect forehead. “Getting what you want all of a sudden. I constantly feel like it’s going to disappear.”

I looked at the worry on her face and for the first time since she’d changed, I felt bad for her. Because what would that feel like, having everything you wished for but constantly worrying that you might lose it?

“Right?” Kennedy said, nodding. “I feel the exact same way, like, all the time.”

“And the day I kept falling when I did my flips? I was freaking out,” Allie said, laughing to herself. “Thank goodness I went back to normal—well, new normal—the next day.”

I smiled, but it was hard to get my lips to slide upward when so much guilt was pulling them down. Guilt over messing with the magic, over telling Jackson Allie was a grantee, and over the fact that we were still trying to mess with it.

“I never thought about that,” I admitted, and then I added, “But that’s not going to happen. You and your life are a thousand percent you and your life—no givebacks.”

That made the crinkle disappear, and a huge smile crawled over her face, a smile that reminded me of the old Allie and made the guilt even worse. “That’s right. No givebacks.”

I was torn between feeling better as I went to the rest of my classes, because my friends and I were headed back to solid ground, and terrified that I might do something to ruin their happiness.

But as soon as I met Jackson at his locker after school, I got crazy-nervous for a different reason altogether.

These were the last few minutes of hope.

Once we saw Archie and she officially told us we were out of luck, we’d have to accept the final verdict—that we were never getting that wish transferred.

It was like Jackson somehow understood that, because he cracked jokes the entire walk from the lockers to the cafeteria, as if he was trying to distract me.

But when we walked into the kitchen, all the lights were off.

There was no sign of Archie.

I walked farther into the darkened room, needing to find her. My eyes dipped into every corner of that empty space, because we couldn’t not talk to Archie.

Without Archie, we had nothing.

“She has to be here,” I said in a panic. “Maybe we can come up with some story and ask the office to page her. What if we—”

“Wait,” Jackson said, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes. “Listen.”

There was a sound coming from the back room—it sounded like chopping.

Oh, thank God.

Relief settled over me as I looked at Jackson and listened to the chopping.

Archie was there. It was okay.

I followed him over to the door, but when we looked inside, it was a different lunch lady.

I gasped in shock, which made her look over at us. “Hey, kids, do you need something?”

We need you to be someone else!

“Um, yeah,” I stammered. “Uh, do you know where Archie is?”

“Archie?” she said, looking confused. “Archie’s gone. She retired last year.”

Jackson’s eyes narrowed. “She retired ?”

“That can’t be right,” I said, shaking my head while trying not to panic. “We talked to her last week.”

“In Florida?” The lady looked from me to Jackson like she was trying to crack a code.

“No,” Jackson said slowly. “We spoke to her right here.”

“You must be thinking of someone else,” she said, shrugging. “Archie’s been in Florida for weeks now.”

“Impossible,” I said, my stomach feeling weird as I tried making sense of it. We’d talked to her last week, in this very kitchen.

So how could she have been in Florida for weeks?

“Sorry, kiddo,” the lady said. “We all look alike in hairnets, though. Can I help you with something?”

“No, no,” Jackson said, taking over. He was so good at faking it around grown-ups.

And then it hit me—my third wish.

Is that why he was always so smooth with adults? Because he’d gotten my wish to be not awkward ? Something about that realization, the reminder of the magic’s power, made this feel even more urgent.

Jackson smiled, looking charming and smart as he said, “We’ve been helping her with a few things and we wanted to follow up and see if she needed more help. The last thing she said was something about a guy she referred to as a hamburger, but I can’t remember the details of that. You don’t by chance know who that might be? Is he in administration or something?”

I was a little impressed and a little terrified by how easily he was able to come up with a cover story, especially when he had to be freaking out inside, just like I was.

I also couldn’t help but wonder—would I have been that charming if I’d gotten my third wish?

The woman gave him a weird look, so I was positive she wouldn’t be able to help us, but then she said, “I wonder if she means Hamburger Man.”

Jackson looked at me and said, “Hamburger Man.”

“The Hamburger Man,” I repeated. Could it be that easy? “Do you think that’s it?”

“What’s it, kids?” the lady asked.

The Hamburger Man was like a local celebrity, if celebrities were grumpy and uncool. He owned a hamburger food truck, and everybody in town knew it was good. Like, the best burgers you’d ever tasted in your entire life.

People stood in line for hours when they saw the neon green OPEN light buzz to life.

But he was only open when he felt like it, he was rude to customers for no reason, and sometimes he denied people hamburgers simply because he “didn’t like the looks of their faces.”

The Hamburger Man was an enigma.

But… was he a magical enigma?

It was pretty far-fetched, but then again, his burgers were out-of-this-world good.

Jackson shook his head with a smile, like he was being silly. “We forgot that she’s friends with him. Now it makes sense.”

“Well, good,” the lady said, smiling back at him. “Because I have to get back to my chopping now so I can go home.”

We thanked her and said goodbye, but the second we stepped out of the kitchen and into the hallway, I freaked out.

“How can she possibly be living in Florida, Jackson Matthews?” I whisper-yelled, squeezing his arm and shaking him back and forth. “She was here last week!”

“I have no idea, Emma Rockford,” he whisper-yelled back, grabbing my arms and shaking me while also shaking his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. What was she, the ghost of a lunch lady or something?”

I couldn’t tell if he was reading my mind or mocking me.

“She must’ve come back for a day,” he said, as if that was the only explanation.

“Yeah, because senior citizens love to leave Florida to go clean out kitchens at their old job,” I said, making a come-on face, because that didn’t make any sense at all.

“Maybe she missed us,” he said, but we both knew he didn’t mean that.

“Sure, that’s it,” I replied with an eye roll.

“It seems ridiculous,” he said, looking behind me to make sure no one was around, “but what other explanation is there?”

“I think you know,” I said, certain that the magic was at play here.

“I do,” he agreed, his eyes moving all over my face as it felt like we had an unspoken conversation. “So, what’s our plan?”

“I have no idea.”

He let go of me and shook his head again. “Same.”

“Well, I know we can’t go to Florida,” I said. “So—”

“We don’t need to go to Florida, we need to go to the hamburger stand.”

“Oh.” My mouth snapped shut. “Yeah. Duh.”

“Tonight, if possible.”

“Well, I’m supposed to go watch movies with Ken and Allie,” I said. “But I can—”

“I can’t until later, either,” he interrupted. “My grandparents are coming over. And you need to hang out with your friends tonight, Em. You miss them.”

I don’t know why, but that made me feel a little pinch in my chest. His blue eyes were nice, like really nice, as he smiled at me. I said, “I do?”

He tilted his head. “You should see your little face when you talk about them. Go chill with your besties tonight.”

“Yeah,” I said, surprised that he was so in tune with my life. “Okay.”

“But Auntie Bev loves going for late-night drives,” he said, his eyes twinkling as he talked about his aunt. “So if you can sneak away at, like, nine, we can knock it out tonight.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Nine is kind of late on a school night, and I hate lying to my mom.”

“Can you just say you’re going with your friend Jackson to get hamburgers? Wait, wait, wait,” he said, interrupting himself. “Don’t word it like that or she’ll think it’s a date thing. Maybe say that my aunt is going on a hamburger run for a whole bunch of people, and you want to go.”

“A hamburger run?” I repeated, my cheeks hot at his mention of dating. Why are my cheeks hot? “If I make it sound like Ken and Allie are going, she’ll for sure say yes.”

“Excellent.”

He called Auntie Bev and she was all in on burgers, so we made plans to connect after movie night.

Just as I was shoving a box of microwave popcorn into my backpack so I could walk over to Kennedy’s, my phone buzzed with a text.

Jackson

Pic of my ACTUAL best friend

And it was a picture of a fat orange cat who appeared to be lying on Jackson’s neck. I snorted and texted:

I’d be jealous but he’s too cute. Name, please.

Jackson

Orange YouGlad

I replied: Please tell me you’re kidding

Jackson

Sadly, no. I named him when I was six and super into joke books.

That was adorable. I tried picturing Jackson as a kindergartener, but it was impossible because now I could only see Jackson in a hat, or with shimmery blond hair.

Neither of which he would’ve had when he was little.

I sent: Do we have a plan for hamburger stand yet?

Jackson

Auntie Bev will pick us up in my driveway at 8:45. Think your mom will go for it?

I texted: She already said yes. See you at 8:45.