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I said a silent prayer for sanity and patience before turning around to see what was happening now.
What ever had made me think that life would be quieter and simpler back home? The newcomer turned out to be Gene Ward, the subject of Mom’s pharmacy gossip.
“Hey, Teddy,” he said, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. One of the loops immediately tore off.
“Hey, Gene,” Teddy responded as he continued trying to settle Davy down. “Can we help you with something?”
Gene had been in Teddy’s graduating class, which meant he must have been around thirty. Aside from clearer skin, a couple of fine lines around his eyes, and a hairline that had just started to recede, he looked like he’d been stuck in suspended animation since high school. In fact, he seemed to be wearing some of the same clothes he’d had then. He’d been something of a nerd—smart, but with next to no social skills. He might have been the first male under the age of sixty that Sherri didn’t throw herself at as soon as he came through the door.
“My dad sent me in for some stuff,” he said with a shrug as he handed a list to Teddy. Even there, he was stuck in a time warp, acting like a resentful teenager running errands for his parents.
Mom was still staring at him like she expected him to sprout horns, and he glanced warily at her a time or two while Teddy handed Davy back to his mother and went to put together Gene’s order.
I decided that pulling Mom away from the situation was probably the smartest course of action. We didn’t want to face the fallout that would happen with Gene’s dad if she said or did something crazy.
“Mom, I need your help with something in the office,” I said.
She tore her gaze away from Gene. “Okay.” She sounded a little shaky, and far too meek.
Once we were out of earshot from the front of the store, I asked, “What was going on with you out there? Was Gene the guy you saw in the square?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t see his face. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t wearing those shoes.”
“Then why did you scream when you saw him? And why were you giving him that funny look?”
“My nerves are a little on edge right now. He just startled me. And as for a funny look, have you ever seen a boy who deserves a funny look more? He’s Teddy’s age, and he’s still living with his parents, still doing nothing with his life, and going nowhere.” I declined to point out that I was only a few years younger, and I was still living with and working for my parents.
“Well, you really gave us a shock. I think maybe you ought to go to the doctor, and I don’t want you driving until we figure it out.” I knew that the things she described were entirely possible, and they sounded an awful lot like the kinds of things my enemies liked to do. Come to think of it, my friends had done similar things when they tested my immunity in the first place. They’d made weirder and weirder things happen until I’d had no choice but to react so they could be sure I was seeing things that were magically hidden from normal people.
The problem was that things like that didn’t happen here. In New York, you expected weird stuff, magical and otherwise, but I’d been assured by no less than Merlin himself that my hometown was practically a magic-free zone.
Even if this was all caused by magic, I wasn’t allowed to let anyone else in on the secret, so there wasn’t much I could do about it. If I started agreeing with Mom, everyone else would think I was as crazy as she was. But someone needed to get to the bottom of this, and it was probably best to rule out the simplest explanations. That was the way Owen tended to approach problem solving.
“Come on, Mom, I’ll take you to the doctor so we can be sure you’re okay.”
“You need to take me to the beauty shop first. I’m only a little late for my appointment.”
It was one of those situations where arguing would only cost me time and effort, so I decided to just go with it. Mom handed me her car keys, and we took her car to the town square, where the beauty shop was. Although the smell of permanent solution and hairspray usually made me sneeze, I hung around in the salon while Mom got her hair done so I could eavesdrop on the gossip. If anything at all had been happening on the square that morning, these women would be chattering about it. I noticed that Mom kept her mouth shut. She must have been tired of people treating her like she was crazy.
Unfortunately, the topic of conversation in the salon had nothing to do with weird goings-on on the courthouse square. Instead, I was the star of the show. “Lois, you’re so lucky your little girl came back home,” one woman said as the stylist wrapped her hair in tinfoil.
“I guess she didn’t find herself a husband when she was off in New York,” another one shouted from underneath a hair dryer hood.
“We thought at Thanksgiving that she was getting close,” Mom said, “but that didn’t work out. It was a real shame, too. He was a lawyer, and he had a Mercedes.”
“It wasn’t my idea to break up with him,” I muttered, then realized I’d admitted to being dumped, which wasn’t much better. I’d been the one to break things off with Owen, but as I’d never told anyone in my family about Owen in the first place, I had to keep my mouth shut about that.
“Well, you know, some girls are just unlucky at love,” the stylist said, giving me a pitying look. I wasn’t entirely sure if she was pitying my sad state of romantic affairs or my hair, which needed a good cut. That was something I wasn’t likely to find here, so a ponytail was fine for the time being. It was certainly better than a big-hair bouffant or tight sausage curls, the two specialties of the house.
Mom finally emerged with her very own bouffant, and I drove her to the doctor’s office a few blocks from the square. She was likely to get in with the doctor and then suddenly claim to be fine, so I insisted on accompanying her into the exam room. Dr. Charles had been my doctor when I was growing up, and I still couldn’t look at him without thinking of booster shots.
“What seems to be the problem, Mrs. Chandler?” he asked, looking at us over the top of his reading glasses.
“Oh, I’m just fine,” Mom said.
o;Mom, I need your help with something in the office,” I said.
She tore her gaze away from Gene. “Okay.” She sounded a little shaky, and far too meek.
