Wicked Hungry

Enrique opens the door.

“¿Qué pasó?” he asks his brother, and they shake hands like gangsters. Enrique has tried to teach me the sequence but I always mess it up.

Andres looks around and whistles. “Órale, hermano. What are you all up to in here?”

“Come on in and shut the door,” Enrique says.

Andres’s eyes widen. He’s looking at the jaguar, glowing still, in the middle of the Ouija board. And then at the candles, and the books that lie open around the board.

“Oye, hermano. Those aren’t comic books, ¿verdad?” asks Andres.

Enrique shakes his head.

Andres turns his head. “I look at them at first, and I see a comic book. Then I look again, and I see an old leather book with funny writing. This is magic?”

We nod.

“Not our magic, though,” Enrique says.

“You bought it at that shop, didn’t you?” Andres asks.

“What shop?” I ask.

“Don’t act stupid,” Enrique says. “I trust my brother.”

“Sorry,” I say. “You mean Natural Magic?”

“The one and only,” Andres says. “Although I hear they are going to have a bigger shop right in the middle of the new mall.”

“The mall?” I ask. “You mean here in Lansfeld?”

Andres nods. “Right now they’re just digging the foundation. I hear rumors they found some weird stuff down there. Anyway, feliz Día de los Muertos. Happy Day of the Dead. I need to go help Mom with some stuff.”

Before he can walk out the door, though, a phone is ringing and buzzing. It takes me a minute to realize it’s mine and to pull it out of my pants.

I just stare at it dumbly.

“Who is it?” asks Jonathan. “Your mom, or what?”

“No, it’s your mother,” I say.

“Dude, you are so not funny,” Jonathan says, and looks over my shoulder at the ringing phone. Then he belly laughs.

“Stanley and Meredith, sitting in a tree,” he says. “K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”

“What?” Andres says from the doorway. “You have a girlfriend, Stanley? Is this true?”

I nod sheepishly, still staring at the ringing phone.

“Answer the phone, Stanley,” Enrique says. “We’re not listening.”

I push talk. “Hello?”

“Stanley?”

“Hi,” I manage to croak out.

“You okay? It’s me, Meredith.”