Page 24

*you can’t change a burger back into a cow*

W E DIDN’T TALK on the way to the hamburger stand, mostly because Auntie Bev had her classic rock cranked so loudly it was pretty much impossible. Jackson kept looking at me like he knew something was wrong, but I kept trying to seem chill as I convinced myself it’d be fine.

Odds were not in our favor that this was going to work, and if it somehow did, no way would it screw up the existing magic. I mean, Archie hadn’t said anything about that, and she’d been very specific about everything else.

Still, I kept picturing Allie’s face as she talked about her paranoia.

Please, Nana—help me out with this one.

When we pulled up to the street where the hamburger stand was parked, Jackson basically jumped out of the car like he was a man on a mission. Auntie Bev looked at me in the rearview mirror as I unbuckled my seat belt.

“I hope you get what you’re looking for.”

“Thank you,” I said, giving her a nervous smile. “I’m looking for a burger, so the odds are in my favor, right?”

“Sure, kid,” she said, shaking her head like she knew I’d told a blatant lie. “Now get outta my car so I can cruise for a while.”

“Getting out,” I murmured as I climbed out of the car and shut the door.

The car immediately peeled rubber and squealed away.

“We should really take her keys away,” Jackson said with a grin as she disappeared from our sight.

“She’d probably run you over if you tried.”

“Yeah,” he said. “She totally would.”

There was a huge line at the hamburger stand, which wasn’t uncommon. Everyone knew that the truck was perpetually swamped until Hamburger Man ran out of burgers for the day, and then he’d yell “GO HOME!” and slam down the sliding shade.

We got in line, and while we waited, I watched him.

The Hamburger Man.

I found him to be a little scary, to be honest. He was short, bald, and round, wearing a tuxedo T-shirt and a stained apron with a huge H on its center. And he had a literal tattoo of a hamburger on his right biceps.

How can this man possibly fit into the magic?

But something about his bright eyes freaked me out. They reminded me of Archie’s, like they were staring into my soul; intimidating, like they hid some sort of power inside his hamburger-wielding self.

Not only that, but he really didn’t seem like a very nice person. A tiny blonde lady got to the front and wasn’t sure what she wanted, and instead of helping her, he yelled, “I don’t have time for wishy-washy customers—get outta my line!”

“Call me crazy, but it might be difficult to get him to talk to us,” Jackson said, giving me a look. “He doesn’t exactly seem like the type of person who’s excited to help people.”

“Right?” I agreed, a knot in my stomach. This super-rude man was our only chance, our last hope, and I didn’t find that to be very promising at all.

“Don’t worry,” Jackson said, reaching out to squeeze my arm. “We didn’t expect Archie to help, but it almost seemed like she knew we were coming. So let’s see what happens.”

“I guess we have no other choice, right?”

“That’s right, Rockford,” he said, giving me a half-smile.

Something about Jackson—his face, his voice, his eyes—reassured me. It always felt like everything would be okay when I was with him.

Which was a little next-level when it came to this, because he had as much at stake as I did. His family might fall apart if we couldn’t fix this, yet here he was, telling me it was going to be okay.

“Thanks for being so cool about… um… everything,” I said, shrugging and trailing off in embarrassment.

“That’s what friends are for, right?”

He grinned and once again, I felt a little lighter, like he’d taken a pound off my shoulders.

“Right,” I said, grinning back. Honestly, I was so busy looking at his reassuring face that I didn’t notice we’d made it to the front of the line until Hamburger Man yelled at me.

“What do you want?”

Suddenly his freakish eyes were on me, pinning me in place as I tried to remember how words worked. I cleared my throat and leaned a little closer, lowering my voice so the people behind us didn’t hear when I said, “We need to talk to you for a sec—”

“I’m not serving conversation, I’m serving hamburgers,” he interrupted, glaring at me like I was offensive for suggesting he allow me to speak. “Do you want one or not?”

“We have a really quick question,” Jackson said, using that adult voice (aka my third wish), which had worked for him so far during all of our expeditions.

“I don’t answer questions unless there’s a hamburger in your mouth,” the guy grumbled. “Get out of my line. If you’re not gonna eat, I don’t have time for this ticky-tack back-and-forth.”

What does ticky-tack back-and-forth even mean?

“Okay, well, give us two burgers,” Jackson said urgently, like he needed to hurry up and get to business.

“No pickles because I’m allergic,” I added quickly, glancing behind me at the growing line of impatient customers.

That made Jackson pause and give me a skeptical look, like I’d shocked him. “No one’s allergic to pickles.”

“Well, I am,” I said, smiling in spite of everything because Jackson .

“I don’t care!” Hamburger Man snapped.

“So can she ask you a question, now that we’ve ordered?”

“Make it quick,” Hamburger Man said around a big fat sigh, like we were sucking the patience out of his body. “Because I’m busy.”

“It’s about the lore of four,” I said quietly, leaning closer to the window while handing over a ten-dollar bill for the food.

That made him focus those strange eyes on me. He stared me down for a minute, amber eyes burning into mine, and then he said, “What the heck are you even talking about?”

I swallowed and said, “Archie said you were the one to talk to. Because there’s a problem with my wishes.”

“No problems—there are no problems. Once the wishes are wished, that’s it—they’re done,” he said through a clenched jaw, like he was trying to keep his voice down while wanting to yell at me. “I mean, that’s what I heard. I don’t know anything about stupid legends, but the definitive party line I’ve heard is that you make your wish and it is done. Boom boom boom.”

“But—”

“Boom boom boom. No buts. You can’t change a burger back into a cow, missy, and you can’t change a wish that’s been wished. Period.”

He gestured for me to move out of the way so the next person in line could order, and I could tell I was losing him. He was going to yell at me to leave any second now.

Be. The. Cow.

“But there’s a problem with my wishes,” I said, louder this time.

“Problem, what problem?” he snapped, obviously annoyed with me. “Not everyone gets their wishes, and people shouldn’t see that as a problem. It’s life.”

“But we think I got her wishes,” Jackson said from beside me.

“Yeah,” I added. “He got my wishes, and if he gets my last one, things are going to get all messed up for his family.”

Hamburger Man froze. For the first time since we’d arrived, he stopped moving and gawked at us like we were terrifying monsters who’d dropped in for some oversalted fries. He said, very slowly, “They aren’t oversalted, young lady, and what do you mean, he got your wishes?”

I gasped.

Because… he’d read my mind.

I felt breathless as he stared me down, but I told him about what had happened with the rock, the way Jackson hit my wishes at the very moment I was tossing them into the hole. I wasn’t sure if it was his strange gaze or the crowd behind us, but for once I was able to tell a story without the unimportant rambling details.

Hamburger Man’s eyes were wild as he listened. They moved all over the place, like he was memorizing my words and thinking through the entire thing, and his breath was a little wheezy—I could hear him taking breaths.

And then he leaped into action.

“We’re closed!” he yelled abruptly, switching off the sign that said OPEN . “Everybody go home. Now!”

“Wait, what?” I said. He couldn’t leave .

Hamburger Man started grabbing burgers and hurling them out at the crowd, reminding me of someone chucking snowballs in a snowball fight. The adults all looked shocked and horrified, supremely insulted, but the kids started jumping up in the air, trying to catch them like it was a game where the ultimate prize was a delicious cheeseburger.

I ducked to dodge a burger, which caused it to bounce off the forehead of a lady behind me, who bellowed “Gah!”

“Here!” Hamburger Man scooped a couple of drink cups into the fry bin, filling them with crinkled potatoes. Then he pulled back his arms, flipped his wrists, and let the french fries rain down upon the people who were now less in line and more defending themselves from the barrage of incoming foodstuffs. “Take it all!”

“Dude!” Jackson caught a wrapped burger as he yelled at Hamburger Man, who was reaching for the window shutter to slam it down and lock it up tight. “What should we do? About the wish fiasco?”

“I’ll have to get back to you,” Hamburger Man said, not even looking in our direction as he grabbed the bottom of the window.

“But—”

Someone started laying on their horn in the parking lot, and then I heard, “Jackson! Emma! Get over here!”

We both turned, and Auntie Bev was hanging out of her car window, shouting in our direction with her hands cupped around her mouth.

“One sec!” Jackson yelled, but when we turned back around to the action, Hamburger Man jumped into the front of the food truck and started it up.

“Wait!” I shouted.

“Stop!” Jackson bellowed.

But as we stood there screaming, Hamburger Man raced off in that truck, leaving us in the literal dust.

I watched the taillights disappear, frozen in place by my disbelief.

“What do we do now?” I whispered, to myself more than to Jackson.

“I guess we’d better go,” he said, and his voice cracked.

He looked as dumbfounded as I felt, utterly defeated, because it’d seemed like we were close, and now… now we were back to nothing.

“Come on,” he said, shaking his head as he grabbed my sleeve and pulled me along with him toward his aunt’s car. “Auntie Bev is waiting.”

When we got into the car, all Auntie Bev said was, “I saw that guy snap and wanted to get you kids outta there before it got too wild.”

“Thanks,” Jackson said, handing her the hamburger he’d caught.

“What, no fries?” she said with a grin as she unwrapped it.

“There are probably some in Em’s hair,” he joked, but there was no amusement in his voice.

They started talking, but I closed my eyes and rested my head on the back of the seat, suddenly so, so tired.

Because it was crushing, the fact that we weren’t going to get any answers.

We’d come so close to finding hope, but now we were back to having none.

It was exhaustingly depressing.

Which explained how I was able to fall into a deep, dream-filled sleep.