Free Genuine Sweet by Faith Harkey Page B

boy.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?” I opened the stove and touched a bit of starlight to the heating element. It glowed red.
    â€œI guess life hasn’t been easy for him.”
    â€œHe doesn’t make himself easy to like,” I retorted. “He’s snarky with everyone except me, and there, he’s like something stuck to my shoes: unpleasant and hard to get away from.”
    Gram shrugged. “I reckon he feels that way about himself, too.”
    Truth to tell, I didn’t fully understand what she meant by that, so I moseyed on to a different topic.
    â€œWhere’s Pa?” I couldn’t help wondering, if I
did
manage to wish-trade a job for him, would he even bother to show up for it?
    â€œOh, I imagine he’s off somewhere being snarky or hard to get away from,” Gram replied.
    I rolled my eyes. She was probably right.
    Â 
    Let me tell you, that next Monday, the stars
really
started showing off.
    A noise woke me early that morning—a banging sound that, at first, I feared was Pa on some kind of rampage. I put on my robe and rushed outside, index finger all poised to preach, but what I found was Gram standing on the porch, hands on her hips, smiling away as she watched Handyman Joe replace some time-and-termite-eaten boards on the side of our house.
    Joe looked up from his work. “Well, if it isn’t Genuine Sweet, genuine wish fetcher. You know what? My daddy’s medal turned up last night.”
    â€œIt did?” My belly fluttered with the excitement of it. “Where?”
    â€œMy sister found it under the cushion of an old sofa I gave her some years back,” he replied. “She drove all the way from Ardenville to bring it to me. Said she had the strongest sense I might like to have it. Ha! That’s some knack you ladies have.” He nodded my way and tilted his head respectfully in Gram’s direction, too.
    Also on the porch that morning was a basket of
three
dozen eggs! A note tucked inside it read:
    Â 
Miss Genuine,
 
A detour sent me past the Beaks Chicken Ranch yesterday. There was a sign by the road: “Free hen houses—U haul ’em.” Mr. Beaks is trading it all in for a hacienda in Mexico! Bless you, Genuine. Your eggs are free for as long as I have hens.
 
—Caroline Snopes
    Â 
    Gram and I had fried eggs over miracle-flour toast that morning. No breakfast ever tasted so good!
    Then, at school that day, we had pizza for lunch! I don’t mean the soggy, soy-cheese variety we knew so well. The real, delivery kind, all the way from Pitney! Missus Forks told us the cafeteria oven had breathed its last, so we’d be eating takeout till the replacement came in! Between delicious bites, Jura told me she was working on the perfect plan for saving the world.
    â€œAnytime you’re ready,” she told me. “How are things going with the barter?”
    I told her all about my barter buddies, the eggs, and the repairs on the house.
    â€œYes!”
She shot a fist into the air. “Genuine, I am
so
glad! I’ve been lying awake nights, worrying about you being hungry and cold.”
    â€œYou have?”
    Jura’s brow wrinkled. “You sound surprised!”
    â€œWell, it’s awful nice of you, but I guess I wonder why.”
    â€œWhy worry about you? That’s a silly question. Because we’re friends!”
    Of course, I already knew that. But hearing it from Jura’s own mouth, it warmed my heart—and gave me a certain pride. Down-home Genuine Sweet and fancy city-girl Jura Carver. Friends. Wasn’t that a peach?
    Â 
    Now that the stars were doing their thing, I reckoned I could stop worrying about wish management for a while. I decided to use my study period to ready myself for our
Macbeth
test.
    While I was reading—real absorbed, you know what I mean? When everything but the story disappears?—something bumped up against my elbow. It took me a