“I see why it might.”
Spiders were playing in Aunt Hilda’s hair, spinning cobwebs down to her shoulders and back again like eight-legged trapeze artists. Aunt Hilda’s familiars seem to like the romance novels too.
“Finding a priceless ring in the codfish leads him to realize she is the amnesiac assassin who was hired by his greatest enemy! She begins to recover her memories and plot against him, even as Storm is plotting against her. Due to their mutual plotting, they turn from enemies to lovers back to enemies back to lovers again, and their fake engagement turns into an arranged marriage!” Aunt Hilda paused for breath, and beamed. “Also,” she added, “Storm is a duke.”
“Right. I don’t know if their marriage is going to work out.”
“Nonsense, Sabrina,” said Aunt Hilda. “True love means forgiving each other anything, including assassination attempts. Do you want to read it after I’m finished?”
“I just don’t know that the book would live up to the experience of you telling me the story,” I told her, which was when I heard the truck.
Hilda and I exchanged a curious look and went to the door together.
It was Harvey. He wore an ecstatic grin as he bounded out of the truck to greet us.
“Hi, Ms. Spellman! Hi, Sabrina! How are you even more beautiful today than yesterday? I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but you make the impossible true every morning! Tommy has a Saturday shift at the mines, and he said he’d drop us off at the fair. My two favorite people both with me. Isn’t that the best way to start the day you can imagine?”
Harvey seized me around the waist and rained down light kisses all over my face and hair. I laughed, delighted but a bit embarrassed, and squirmed away.
“Ah, Sabrina’s always been as adorable as a sweet little maggot in an apple.” Aunt Hilda smiled and waved toward the truck. “Hello, my dear.”
She calls all my friends that. Not that Tommy is my friend, but as Harvey’s brother I suppose Aunt Hilda figures he’s close enough.
Tommy took a hand off the steering wheel and waved back. “Hey, Miz Spellman.”
Harvey’s brother looked like Harvey, but a less complicated and interesting version. There was nothing of the tortured artist about Tommy. His brow was clear, his voice a calm drawl, and his eyes light blue and laughing while Harvey’s were dark and frequently troubled. Not that I didn’t like Tommy. I did, even though I didn’t know him very well. Everybody liked Tommy. He was famously nice. More important than that, Harvey adored him, worshipped him with the hero worship of a younger brother who had never been disappointed in his idol. That was enough for me.
As I hopped into the back of the truck with Harvey, Tommy gave me his usual friendly smile, and I returned it.
“Maybe I wanted to get a look at the town’s latest celebrity,” he said. “Harvey couldn’t stop talking about you yesterday.”
I felt my smile dim. Had he not talked about me before?
“Guess he’s looking forward to the fair,” Tommy continued.
I forced my smile back into brightness. “I am too.”
Harvey linked his fingers together with mine and gave me a shy smile, more like his usual smiles than the wide, sunny smiles of yesterday. I leaned into his side.
“I have a surprise for you,” Harvey told me.
I snuggled in. “Yeah?”
“You remember how I stepped in last year to help with the kids getting their faces painted?”
I remembered. Susie and Roz had gone off on their own, and I’d stayed by Harvey’s side and pretended it was a date like I wanted it to be.
“The lady at the stall said if I’d take over face-painting duties, then me and my pretty girlfriend”—Harvey squeezed my hand—“could go to the fair for free. We can go on all the rides, play all the games, and even get free cotton candy. Pretty good deal, huh?”
This year, it would be a date. And he’d called me his girlfriend …
Harvey’s bright face expected an answer, and it was simple to give him the one he wanted. I cuddled up even closer and whispered: “It’s the best. So are you.”
The red truck took a sharp curve through the road in the green woods. In the side mirror, I saw Tommy Kinkle’s little smile. I wondered if he thought we were dumb kids. My aunts and Ambrose don’t take Harvey and me seriously at all. I heard Aunt Zelda say once that many young witches have passing amusements. It wasn’t like Edward and Diana, she told Aunt Hilda.
How could she be so sure?
It was like Edward and Diana. At least, I hoped it was. I wanted to be like them.
I cleared my throat and said: “I asked my cousin last night where he’d go, if he could go anywhere in the world.”
Up front, Tommy huffed a small laugh.
“Sounds like an interesting conversation.”
“Yeah,” Harvey agreed.
The single word came out small, just as the truck shuddered to a stop outside the fairground. There was a big white sign tied up between two oak trees with the words LAST DAY OF SUMMER spelled out on in pasted-on green leaves. Beyond that were throngs of people still dressed for summer in shirtsleeves or short, bright dresses.
I climbed out of the truck, expecting Harvey to follow me. Instead he sat where he was, his head hanging. It was Tommy who jumped out of the driver’s seat. We exchanged a concerned look.
“Where would you go, Tommy?” Harvey asked, his voice very low, twisting his hands together. “If you could go anywhere?”
Tommy reached over the side of the truck and grabbed Harvey in a bear hug, resting his forehead against the back of Harvey’s neck. I watched as Harvey’s melancholy expression brightened into a faint smile, and Tommy closed his laughing blue eyes.
“I’d stay right here with you, Harvey,” Tommy murmured back. “You nerd.”
There it was, the answer I’d wanted Ambrose to give. I turned away to face the school, ashamed to realize I was jealous. My chest felt uncomfortable, as if there was an animal coiled up around my heart and I could feel it uncurling as it woke.
The sight of them didn’t hurt me, but it made me feel in danger of pain, as if the animal wrapped around my heart had claws that might sink in.
Maybe part of growing up is realizing your heart isn’t safe.
The Last Day of Summer fair was set up between Greendale and the neighboring town of Riverdale, though closer to our town, nestled up close to the woods and not too far from the orchard. There were blue-and-white-striped tents set up on a smooth expanse of green grass, and a Ferris wheel in which every carriage was wrought iron, painted white with fancy whorls and crimson velvet seats, like a fairy carriage Cinderella might take to the ball.
The lady who ran the face-painting stall had set us up with stools and a glass bowl full of gumballs, twice as big as marbles and all the colors of the rainbow. She seemed happy to mostly leave Harvey to painting faces while she went off to enjoy the fair with her family.
I perched on a stool, swinging my legs and enjoying the sight of Harvey being extremely adorable with the kids. He would pick them up and place them gently on a stool so he could reach their faces, then paint with careful tenderness. Sometimes he’d be silent, the tip of his tongue sticking out with concentration as he tried to paint exactly what each kid asked for, and sometimes he would carry on quiet conversations with them, his voice soft and teasing, sounding more like his brother’s voice than usual. There was no trace of shyness or hesitation when he talked to kids. Once Harvey was done, he’d take them in his arms and swing them down. The little kids’ faces shone with laughter and color.