Hello future me, p.9
Hello, Future Me, page 9
BIGFOOT_GRL: But why not? It could be.
JUNIEPIE28: No! It can’t!
BIGFOOT_GRL: You saw the stuff at that weird shop! If it’s real, then there’s a chance they have something there that could help.
JUNIEPIE28: N. O. As in no! As in this is a TOTALLY TERRIBLE idea!
BIGFOOT_GRL: What do you know anyway? It’s not like … wait a minute. If you’re trying to warn me, then that means you went back! To the shop! You used the magic too, so why shouldn’t I?
JUNIEPIE28: Hello, older and wiser over here! Do you even understand the concept of a warning?
BIGFOOT_GRL: But you did go back?
I watched the dots scrolling at the bottom of the screen. I was sitting bolt upright now, waiting for her answer.
JUNIEPIE28: Fine, I went back, and that’s why I know that you shouldn’t. Magic is dangerous. It might seem like the answer to all your problems, but it’s so totally not.
BIGFOOT_GRL: But why? If you’re so stuck on playing Warning Girl, then give me details. What did you try, exactly? Did it make things worse?
JUNIEPIE28: No and no. I’m here to warn you, not give you tips on world destruction. Listen to Calvin. It’s shocking, I know, but he’s actually right on this one.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Right? He wants me to give up. That is SO not happening. Are you sure you’re me?
JUNIEPIE28: Look, I know how you feel. It sucks, big-time. Like Mom and Dad are dropping a bomb on your perfect little vision board future, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
BIGFOOT_GRL: How can you tell me to sit back and do nothing?
JUNIEPIE28: It’s not about doing nothing. It’s about accepting that there are some things in life you can’t change. Setting goals is one thing. You make a list, mark things off. You do a bunch of tasks in the right order, and hey, you get what you wanted. This is different. Getting two people to stay in love … it’s not about lists.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Okay, I get it. No more lists. That’s why I need something else. That’s why I need magic.
She didn’t answer right away. I couldn’t understand her, I mean me. Wow, this could get really confusing really fast. But why was she being like this? So what, magic was dangerous, but did she really expect me to give up on Mom and Dad?
BIGFOOT_GRL: Please, all I’m asking for is a little help.
JUNIEPIE28: Sorry, no can do, so you might as well stop asking.
I stared at the screen. Why was Future Me trying so hard to ruin my life?
JUNIEPIE28: Sigh. Don’t be mad, okay?
JUNIEPIE28: Double sigh. Maybe it doesn’t matter anyway. What is it they always say? The past is doomed to repeat itself? But hey, I had to try. I just hate to see you go through all that. Again.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Go through all what?
JUNIEPIE28: Spoilers! Jeepers, I’m giving you an F in the listening department.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Hey!
JUNIEPIE28: Sorry. Look, clearly you’re going to go all Magicville, and there’s nothing I can do to stop you. But let me give you one piece of advice, okay? Watch out for
The screen started to flicker, bolts of green lightning breaking apart the image.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Hey! Hello? Watch out for what?
The keyboard whirred and clicked, sending up tiny puffs of smoke. There was a pop, more smoke, and the screen went black.
No! My laptop!
I blew away the smoke and was surprised to find that the keyboard wasn’t even hot. I pressed the on button, praying under my breath, and the screen instantly came to life. Like it had just been sleeping. Everything on the desktop looked normal, the pictures, the shortcuts. Hi-hi! was still open, but the chat box with JUNIEPIE28 had disappeared.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but I woke up to bright bars of sunlight burning my eyes. My body was one big ball of aches and pains and sweat. Don’t forget about the sweat. It was at least a million degrees in my room, especially in the square of fiery sunlight I’d chosen for a bed.
I sat up, rubbing the sweat from my eyes, and that was when I saw the time. Eleven thirty in the morning. Seriously?
My head had that full feeling, like when you have a cold, but I wasn’t sick. Just tired and sore and a little out of it. I still remembered the chat from the night before. All the gory details. Well, most of them anyway. I felt a little silly for all that magic talk. Despite a zillion pieces of evidence to the contrary, I still had a hard time believing The Shop of Last Resort actually dealt in magic. But still, I had to try.
I checked Hi-hi!, just in case. Nothing from Calvin, which was okay by me, because I still wasn’t sure I was ready to talk. There was one message, though, straight from Magicville.
JUNIEPIE15: Good morning, sleepyhead! Rise and shine.
JUNIEPIE15: Did you work everything out with Mom and Dad?
JUNIEPIE15: I was right, wasn’t I? You were just being a big poopy head. Mom and Dad are so totally lovey-dovey now, huh?
I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Past Me was so naive, as in totally clueless, while Future Me was this super-annoying ball of negativity. What was that all about?
BIGFOOT_GRL: Don’t call me poopy head!!!
BIGFOOT_GRL: But yes, they’re definitely still in love.
Or at least they would be. With that, I shut my laptop and put my most daring plan yet into action. Not that I had much to go on. My plan was to head back to The Shop of Last Resort and search for something, anything, that might help Mom and Dad.
First, breakfast. Dad was already at the table, serving up more heaping plates of bacon and eggs. He looked like a shaggy dog that had spent all night out in the cold and rain. Poor guy. I did my best to cheer him up, but bigfoot jokes can only go so far.
By the time I rode off on my bike, leaving him to work on Honey Pie by himself, he was still half man, half world’s saddest rain puddle. Seeing him like that, all depressed and droopy, just added to my resolve.
I pumped my legs harder and harder, doing my best to outride the feeling that my new plan, if you could even call it a plan, was doomed. Magic? Seriously? That was the answer to all my problems? The certainty of the night before not only faded as I rode into a wall of muggy heat, it straight-up evaporated. What was wrong with me? Okay, the painting had been a little weird, but they could make holograms with phones now, right? Who was to say they couldn’t design pictures that changed based on your mood using super-tiny computers?
And the laptop? Maybe it wasn’t so much magic as it was me, sitting alone in my room, talking to myself. Maybe what I needed was a psychiatrist, not a trip to some “magical” tourist trap?
My wheel hit a rock, and I had to jerk the handlebars and do some fancy pedal work to keep from falling. Downtown was just around the corner. I could already see the tops of the colorful shops, stacked up all hodgepodge, and the foot poking out above the bigfoot tour bus and the … garden gnome floating through the twisting chimneys, his stomach swollen like a balloon, shouting curses at the people down below.
Wait. What now?
I skidded around the corner, tires hopping as the street changed from smooth asphalt to bumpy cobblestones. A boy of maybe five or six raced past, eyes wide and scanning the rooftops.
“Gomo! Come back! I didn’t mean to make you fly away!” Before he turned the corner, I caught a glimpse of a plastic balloon pump gripped in one chubby fist.
“Curses on you and all of your kin!” shouted Gomo in response as he bounced down the sloping roof of A Yeti Sits Down for Tea.
My first instinct was to follow—hello, talking garden gnome!—but a group of tourists nearby exploded in fits of laughter. It was the hold-your-belly, try-not-to-snort kind of laughter. I climbed off my bike and stepped closer. They were all wearing pairs of ridiculous oversized glasses, just like the Laugh-o-Matic specs from The Shop of Last Resort.
Okay, this was all way too weird.
As Gomo’s cries retreated into the distance, I left my bike in its usual spot outside The Friendly Bean and headed toward the shop. It should have taken no time to get there, since it was just around the corner, but the streets were packed full of people. And not just the ordinary bigfoot tourists with their cameras and fanny packs. All kinds of people buzzed around Main Street, most of them huddled in clusters, whispering over some strange object sporting a familiar pink tag.
What was going on?
I pushed my way through a group of kids holding a broken retainer up to the sunlight. “Try it,” one of them said.
A girl with cool purple braids snatched the retainer and stuffed it in her mouth. A moment later, she spat out a dozen Hershey’s Kisses, thankfully still in the wrappers, and the other kids dove to claim their sticky prizes. Gross.
The alley leading to The Shop of Last Resort was just as dark and chilly as I remembered, except now it was crawling with people. They milled here and there, chatting excitedly and showing off their latest purchases.
“The tag says it can make nose hairs disappear!” squealed a round woman holding up what looked like a broken toothbrush.
“They make every song sound like death metal,” said a kid around JUNIEPIE28’s age, dangling a pair of earbuds from his black fingernails. “How rad is that?”
This was all so totally not happening.
Except it was. All around me, strangers and people I knew from town were oohing and aahing over their latest discoveries. I squeezed my way inside and gasped. If the shop had seemed packed before, now it was practically overflowing. Every inch of the tiny shop was crammed with people grabbing for any item they could find.
And that wasn’t the worst part. The shelves were almost empty.
I pushed into the nearest opening and fumbled for something, anything that might help. A group of bigfoot tourists had gotten there first, though, and I watched as they snatched up a bent spoon, a bag of old batteries, and a broken pen. No! I couldn’t read the pink tags, but they had to do something. Maybe they could have helped.
I tried again, turning around and diving into a gap in the crowd. I couldn’t see through all the butts and fanny packs, but my fingers felt along the empty shelf until … victory! I cupped something cold and metal in my fist.
Prize in hand, I fled to an empty space near the front counter to sit and examine my find. All around, people were shouting and pushing. A high-heeled shoe flew through the air and hit the bigfoot bus driver in the head. Things were really getting out of hand.
Carefully, I opened my fist to find … a broken Hot Wheels car. The pink tag read, “Spin the wheels and feel instantly carsick.”
Seriously?
My heart sank to the floor. I watched it sitting there, all sad and oozing, throbbing out my final dying heartbeats. All around, the noise grew to a deafening pitch. The room started spinning. It wasn’t just the magic or the fact that my world had literally turned upside down. It was the realization that maybe Calvin and JUNIEPIE28 had been right. There wasn’t anything I could do. Magic, or at least something that looked a whole lot like magic, was real, but even that wouldn’t help. Who wanted to make themselves carsick?
I let the toy car fall from my hand, where it plopped down right next to my heart. An old lady in silver yoga pants snatched it up—the car, not my heart—and that was that. Total plan failure. I told myself to get up and dive back into the fray. There were a ton of other mostly empty shelves I had yet to explore, but what was the point?
All this magic was small, silly. Turning a garden gnome into a super-angry balloon? Getting rid of nose hairs? Nothing here could help me with Mom and Dad. Suddenly, I was more tired than I’d been in my entire life, like an invisible vampire had come and sucked out my life force. Or maybe it was the fact that my heart was still sitting there bleeding on the carpet.
I started to push up to my feet, ready to make a break for the door, when a ball of patchy fur brushed past my arm. Yikes! It was Mr. Winkles, except his fur wasn’t as patchy as it had been before. It had blossomed into a thick coat of black and orange stripes. He looked like a tiger, if the tiger was round and about the size of a beach ball. Weird, because I didn’t remember him being so large the other day. And double weird, because his wrinkles were gone too, or maybe they were just hidden under all that fur.
“You’ll have to excuse Mr. Winkles, hon. He doesn’t know the first thing about personal space.” Mag craned her bony neck down so that her nose was almost touching mine.
“Oh, um, hi there,” I said. Can you tell at this point that my Freak-o-Meter was ringing to the max? No, not to the max. My Freak-o-Meter had exploded in some kind of earth-shattering nuclear blast, and now my brain really was a bowl of mush. As in literal mush. Because here’s the thing. Mag’s neck wasn’t covered in green veins like it had been before. Her wrinkles, the ones that used to drip down her face like strips of human seaweed, had been sucked back into her cheeks. They were still there, sure, but she looked way less old. Or maybe it was just the light. As if.
“Is there something I can do for you, honeycakes?” she said in her sugary-sweet voice, ignoring the chaos going on all around. “You look like you’re in search of something special, am I right? How about you come on into the back and tell me all about it?”
Her long, thin fingers played a tune on the beaded curtain leading into the Restricted Section. She offered a sweet smile, and I found myself standing up and following her through the softly tinkling curtain.
As soon as the beads settled behind us, a hush fell over the small, cozy room. Like the beads formed a thick wall separating us from the sounds of the shop. The room was about the size of our kitchen at home, except nearly every inch was covered in thick purple fur, including the ceiling. The light came from three Chinese lanterns, each giving off a soft pink glow. There weren’t any shelves like in the rest of the shop, just a long glass display case with a few dozen objects resting on purple velvet.
The glow of the lanterns illuminated the tags, but in this room they weren’t pink, but silver. “For sickness,” one said. “For prosperity in business,” read another. Like in the main room, the tags were attached to ordinary objects: a burnt-out lighter, a dented bottle cap, an empty pack of chewing gum.
I watched Mag take a seat in a cushy purple armchair near the display case. “You look different,” I said, my voice taking on an eerie faraway quality in the strange, furry room.
“Do I? Well, thank you very much, hon. It must be my new hairdo.” She primped up her hair, which I now noticed was wound into elaborate, bouncy curls. It did look different from the other day, more white-blond than pure white, but that wasn’t all. She looked younger, almost like a different person.
Mr. Winkles waddled over to her side, rubbing her shins and releasing a loud, motoring purr. And what was up with her cat? Hair like that would take weeks to regrow.
“Lil’ Binky Winkles got a haircut too,” she said, fluffing up his fur. “Perked him right up, didn’t it? My Little Booboo Winkle Cuddle Puss.” I stared, wide-eyed, as she nuzzled the puff ball she called a cat. “Now, let’s get down to business, shall we?” She waved me closer, taking a key from a hidden pocket of her dress and unlocking the display case. “Tell Miss Mag how she can help. Can’t keep my customers waiting too long.”
I stepped forward, but my voice had gotten swallowed up by way too much weird. What was even happening? Had the whole town of Tanglewood Crossing gotten sucked into The Twilight Zone right along with me and Mom and Dad? Apparently, yes. Flying gnomes, anyone?
Deep. Calm. Breaths.
Okay, this was really happening. The important thing was to remember why I was here. This was for Mom and Dad.
Mag tapped her long pink fingernails impatiently on the glass. “Anytime now, hon. Don’t mean to rush you, but it’s getting wild out there.”
“I need …” My voice cracked, but I pushed onward. “I need a love spell. A love … thing, whatever you call it. For my parents. So they won’t get divorced.”
“Ah, now we’re cooking.” Mag pushed up to her feet and lifted the top of the glass display like a lid. She propped it up and studied the items inside, kneading her way-less-wrinkly chin.
“Is this stuff really magic?” I said, letting out one of the zillion or so questions zinging around inside my head.
“ ‘Magic’ is a tricky word, now, don’t you think?” she said, turning to me with a twinkle in her eyes. “People think it’s all some big illusion. Smoke and mirrors. Well, to those people I say phooey! Real magic is all about energy. What I like to call the spark.”
I watched as she lifted up a broken hairbrush, examined it, then laid it back down again. “Taking energy from one place and directing it to another place. It all takes energy, hon. Remember that. You can’t do any real magic, no matter how big or small, without a little of that good sparkly stuff changing hands.”
She leaned down and retrieved a small gold padlock, about the size of a bottle cap, with a matching key dangling by a piece of string. The key was bent, and the padlock all scratched up, but otherwise they looked totally ordinary.
“I think this might do the trick,” Mag said, holding the lock up to the dim lights. The tag read simply, “For love,” with no further instruction. I had a lock like that on one of my old diaries at home. How could something so normal help fix Mom and Dad?
“How does it work?” I said as Mag dropped the lock into my open palm. I was surprised by the weight of it. The metal sent cool shivers tingling up my arm and into my fingertips.
Mr. Winkles growled as Mag nudged him off her foot, and he stalked away, back through the clinking beads. I caught a glimpse of the utter chaos erupting in the shop beyond, then once again the room fell silent.
“It’s always hard to say with the really powerful magic,” Mag said, giving my arm a motherly pat. “But if I were you, I’d wait till they were in the same room to use it.”
“ ‘They’ as in Mom and Dad?”
“That’s right, puddin’ cup. And don’t be surprised if there are a few teensy-weensy … side effects. Like I said, magic takes energy, and all that energy has to come from somewhere.” Her lips curled into a pretty smile. Her teeth looked different than the other day, whiter and more like real teeth.
