Free The Spell Book Of Listen Taylor by Jaclyn Moriarty Page B

passed the cake toward her. She took the cake, and he withdrew his hands, palms upward.She saw that his palms were calloused. Then he saluted, with the same glint in his eye, and ran down the steps of her porch.
    Rather than crossing directly to his own porch, he took the driveway, walked along the street, and then walked back up his own driveway. She found this extremely moving.
    Driving to the Zing Family Meeting the next night, Fancy felt very happy. She was excited about dinner that night—it would be roast chicken, as usual—and about the meeting afterward (she had prepared a slide show). She also felt relaxed about Cassie’s birthday tomorrow. How wonderful that Marbie, Nathaniel, and Listen were hosting it! She might go to the gym before the party. How thin she was these days, now that she was going to the gym regularly. And she could always get an extension for her wilderness romance.
    She leaned back into her seat, humming along with the tune that Cassie was singing in the backseat.
    Then Radcliffe said what he said. “You remember Gemma in the pay office?” he said, changing lanes.
    â€œNo,” said Fancy.
    â€œCome on! You must remember Gemma. She’s the one who spilled her drink everywhere at the office Christmas party? Remember?”
    â€œNo,” repeated Fancy.
    â€œWell.” He shrugged. “Well, trust me, there’s a Gemma who works in my pay office. She works afternoons only, lucky duck. Anyhow, turns out she had some kind of laser treatment done on her moles. You know, you’d call them freckles, but they’re really moles. Anyhow. Extraordinary. She got about ten of them zapped.”
    Fancy could not believe it. She lowered her chin to check the freckles on her bare shoulders: nicely spaced, attractive freckles. Beauty spots, really.
    â€œWhat exactly do you mean by that?” she said coldly.
    Radcliffe turned swiftly toward her, a hurt, confused expression on his face. Then he looked back to the road.
    Tomorrow, it would be Cassie’s birthday. It was a secret, almost scary, wonderful fact which she’d been carrying around the last few weeks, like a smile about to happen on her face.
    But what Cassie was actually realizing today was that it used to be better than this, back when she was little. Maybe when she turned five or six, it was more than just a smile: It was like everything was whispering and just about to skip. Now, turning seven, her excitement felt a bit wrong.
    It’s because I know you can get disappointed, she realized. One time, she got too excited on her birthday and jumped on the table where the grown-ups were sitting, and at first they laughed, but then she knocked over their champagne and champagne spilled onto her dad’s lap and she got in trouble.
    She cried, and you should never cry on your birthday.

Three
    In the hot noon light of a summer day once, Marbie, nine years old, was almost killed by an umbrella.
    She was distracted at the time.
    The day before, her sister Fancy had walked into the beach house at sunset and announced that she had done something incredible.
    Marbie was supposed to be washing the sand off her feet, but hearing this, she ran inside. She made herself invisible by placing herself in the shadows just beyond the open sliding doors.
    Fancy was standing in the center of the main room, her hands on her hips, waiting for her parents. Mummy leaned in from the kitchen, where she was making a beetroot salad. Daddy leaned in from the bathroom, where he had just had a shower.
    â€œWhat incredible thing did you do, sweetheart?” called Mummy.
    â€œWhat’s up, Fance?” said Daddy.
    â€œI told Radcliffe the Secret.”
    Now there was a stampede of parents—Mummy’s purple hands flying, Daddy’s bath towel flapping—and they gathered around Fancy. Daddy straightened the towel around his waist.
    â€œYou did not!” cried Mummy.
    â€œI did,” said Fancy defiantly.