Free A Little Bit of Spectacular by Gin Phillips Page A

curious,” she said, like it was obvious. “Why does anyone ask anything?”
    That made me smile. Any annoyance sort of drifted away. Because, honestly, Amelia was possibly the most curious person I’d ever met.
    â€œTo be back home in Charleston, I guess,” I said. “That would be my wish.”
    She studied me with her scientist face, narrowing her eyes and cocking her head. “No way,” she said.
    I started to argue with her, irritated that she’d ask for my wish and then tell me I’d named the wrong one. It’s not like you could measure the truthfulness of wishes, like she could keep track of my facts and figures like she kept track of her frogs.
    â€œLook,” I said, “that was . . .”
    She was already turning away, pointing at her mother, who was gesturing for us to come back to the car.
    â€œHey, I still haven’t seen that cool wall at Trattoria Centrale,” Amelia said. “Will you show it to me? Before we take you home?”
    I could have argued with her about wishes. Or I could go get a tasty cup of coffee and enjoy showing a friend—a brand-new
friend—my favorite place in town. I was prepared to let the wish thing slide.
    By the time we got to Trattoria, I really had to pee. For the first time in I couldn’t remember how long, I actually needed to go to the bathroom for a reason other than staring at the walls. I was in such a hurry that I didn’t even look at the purple writing when I first came in. I mean, it had said the same thing for the last couple of weeks. Only when I was turning on the water to wash my hands did I notice that something was different.
    I turned slowly, not quite believing what I’d seen from the corner of my eye.
    There was more purple writing than there used to be.
    There were the first couple of lines in purple, then my colored-in block letters finishing the verses. And then, where I’d stopped, more purple writing had been marked—heavily—over the other comments that had been on the wall. Now I read:
    We are Plantagenet. We are chosen.
    WE WILL NEVER GROW OLD.
    WE ARE PLANTAGENET.
    WE WALK NEXT TO YOU.
    BUT WE ARE NOT ONE OF YOU.
    WE ARE PLANTAGENET.
    OUR HOME IS IN THE STARS.
    We are Plantagenet.
    You could be, too.
    I forgot about everything—Amelia, coffee, the soap on my hands, Gram and Mom expecting me home soon. I kept rereading one word over and over:
you
. This wasn’t just a message. It was a message to me. An invitation.
    The Plantagenets wanted to meet me.

Chapter 8
    RSVP
    Amelia and I sat in my room. Well, I sat. She stood by Gram’s old sewing machine, pushing buttons and pulling levers. She’d lined up at least a dozen spools of threads and was trying to fit a bright red one onto the machine.
    â€œThis thing is so cool,” she said. “Can you sew?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “But Gram can make anything.”
    Amelia gave up on the thread. She took a step back and strained to reach her foot under the sewing table, pumping at the machine’s pedal like she was keeping time to music. I thought about telling her you had to plug it in to make it work, but I was afraid she’d sew herself to the table.
    â€œI can’t believe you wanted to go to my house again,” she said. “I love your room. Look at all this stuff!”
    She swept her arm around, past the odds and ends of useless things Gram kept in my bedroom: an old treadmill, a tiny rocking chair Mom had as a kid, an iron birdcage, an old-fashioned hair dryer that looked like it would melt your brain, a recliner, an ironing board, high-heeled boots that Catwoman might wear, a deflated basketball.
    I shrugged. I was used to Gram’s junk.
    â€œSo how do I find them?” I asked.
    Two days after I’d found the invitation scrawled on the wall, my giddiness had faded a little. Because meeting whoever was writing those messages was a lot more complicated