“Do you have a fever?” I asked.
“Naw. M’fine.” He turned away and waved a hand like he was swatting a fly.
Just then, Travis tromped up. It was hard to tell, but I thought his hair might’ve been combed some. “I notice you’re done with your tray, Genuine. Can I hump it to the trash for you?”
Scree burst out in peals of giggles. “Hump it?”
“I mean, what I meant was—” Travis floundered.
“No, Travis,” I cut in. “I’ve got it.”
“You can take mine,” Jura said, real out of the blue. “If you want.” I could tell she felt sorry for him, but of course, that was only because she didn’t know him yet.
Travis gave Jura a confused look.
“Travis Tromp,” I said, “this is Jura Carver, Trish Spencer’s kin.”
“Pleasure,” Travis said, taking her tray. “Any friend of Genuine’s is a genuine friend of mine.”
I rolled my eyes, but Travis was already gone.
“You don’t have to be nice to him on my account,” I told Jura.
She shrugged. “He seems like the kind of guy who doesn’t have many friends.”
“That’s a fact,” I agreed.
“Do people tease him and stuff?” she asked.
I’d never really thought on it before. “Sometimes,” I said, and realized it was true. Before Travis had had to repeat the fourth grade, he’d been in a class with me and Donut and the rest. None of us had bothered him, but the older kids gave him a hard time. Once, Travis had written a poem and Doug Talley read it out loud in the middle of the courtyard—right before he shoved it and the rest of Travis’s papers in the slimy cafeteria trash can.
Jura sighed, a whiff of anger on her breath. “Me and Travis have a lot in common.”
“You do not!” I insisted.
“Enough that I had to come here.” She looked away. “At Ardenville Central Middle, ‘Teasing Jura Carver’ was pretty much an extracurricular sport.”
“Gosh. I’m sorry.” It was the best I could come up with. What do you say to a thing like that? “I’m glad you’re here now.”
Jura brushed a few crumbs off the table. Then she seemed to make a decision. She sat up straighter and threw her shoulders back.
“Me, too.” She held out her fist.
I looked at it for a second or two. “What?”
“Bump it!” She laughed. “You don’t do this here?”
I tapped her fist with my fist. “What’s it mean?”
“It means, you and me, we’re tight,” Jura replied.
“Huh. I’ve never been tight before,” I confided. “What do we do now?”
She thought it over. “How about I help you save the world?”
“Ye-ah, I’ve gotta figure out how to feed myself first.” I told her about my sad attempt to raise a little cash at Faye’s. “Folks just don’t have the dollars to spare.”
“Hmm.” For a time, Jura vanished down some dusty trail in her mind. “If money’s the problem . . .” She bit her lip. “People do grow their own food around here, right? Why couldn’t you offer to trade wishes with farmers—for vegetables and meat and stuff? You know, like bartering?”
It didn’t take me half a blink to see the wisdom in that. “I might even be able to trade for house repairs!”
“And who knows?” Jura added, getting excited now. “Maybe the president of the electric company has a dream only a wish fetcher can fulfill!”
“Bartering!” I marveled. Heck, even my ma had done it, trading wishes for the promise of good deeds paid forward. “You got a head full of sense, girl!”
“And then we can save the world.” She smiled.
I raised my eyebrows. “You really think we could?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“All right, but I’m not sure how to go about it,” I said.
“I’ll research it. You just focus on your bartering.”
In the time it took me to walk home, a mantle of gray clouds set in. I found Gram pacing the front porch, wringing her hands. My heart sank. Had she heard about the dustup at the salon? Was she upset? I waited for the verdict.
But all she said when I walked up was, “Hungry?”
I said I was.
Gram insisted she didn’t need help with dinner, so while she worked, I went ahead and told her everything that had gone on at Faye’s, particularly Penny Walton’s wish-hampering fit.
“I don’t know why she had to take it so personal!” I was fairly riled, now that I thought on it.
Gram smiled weakly as she turned the opener on our canned hash.
“She’s got a bee in her bonnet, is all,” she finally spoke. “It’s nothing against you, precisely.”
“Sure seemed like it was!” I started chopping one of the last carrots from this year’s pitiful garden.
“Folks just don’t like to be poked.” She took the knife from me and started in on the carrots. “Maybe you ought not to do something like that again.”
“Poked?” I gaped. “Gram! I didn’t go there to poke anyone! I was trying to scrounge up some money for bills!”
Gram dropped her head. “Sit down for a minute, Gen. I want to say something to you.”
I huffed, but I sat.
She joined me at the table and set her hand on my hand. “Worry never filled a belly.”
“But—”
“Birds don’t sit awake at night wondering if they’ll find seeds in the morning—and yet good folks keep filling bird feeders, don’t they?” Gram asked.
“Yes, but—”
“Can you break a drought by pacing the floor and thinking on how dry you feel? Can you force a flower to bloom by pulling a bud apart?”
“No, but—”
“No. You’d only ruin the flower.” Gram held up a finger before I could object again. “Listen. I’m not saying you do nothing while you waste away of starvation. Living in this world takes action. What I am saying is, consider what actions you take.”
“But even you said you were worried about practical things!”
Gram started to say something more, but her hand fluttered to her mouth and she fell quiet.
After a time, she took up her spoon. “Just promise me you’ll be more careful, all right?”