“I’m sorry! I’m so-o-o-o-o sorry!” Luowski crowed.
At that instant, the Jell-O flew off the dish and into Luowski’s face and for a moment he wore a slimy green mask with only his eyelids popping through. Then the wind stopped all at once, as if a door had been shut, and the forward-leaning Luowski fell flat on his face, to the delight of most of the cafeteria.
There were cheers and applause.
Finn looked across the table to see Amanda’s face filled with the light of mirth, her eyes sparkling, her smile a mile wide. She chortled and covered her laughing mouth with her hand, and for the first time looked away from Luowski and over at Finn, whose startled expression clearly caught her attention. He shook his head faintly side to side. She wiped the smile off her face, suddenly self-conscious.
“I think the school ghost has your number, Greg,” she said, as she grabbed her tray and stood up. “I’d be careful of making threats if I were you.”
The green-faced Luowski rolled over and looked up at Finn, about to say something when he thought better of it. Instead he turned his growl onto Horton, who had laughed himself to tears.
“Where are we meeting after school?” Amanda asked Finn calmly as they were returning the silverware and dishes off their trays.
“That was you,” Finn mumbled. “You can direct it like that?” He’d seen Amanda use her power once before. There was no denying she was different.
“There are all sorts of things I can do that you don’t know about, Finn.”
“You can’t just…do that in school.”
“Of course I can,” she said. “Who’s going to believe anyone can do something like that? There will be a dozen explanations for what happened to Greg. None will involve me. Just wait and see.”
They left the cafeteria, on their way back to their lockers.
“Do other Fairlies act so—”
“Bravely?” she said, interrupting.
“I was thinking more like…stupidly,” he said.
“Ha, ha!”
“I’m serious. That was stupid.”
“Greg Luowski was going to smear green Jell-O into your hair. The least you could do is thank me.”
“You’re right: thank you. But you should follow the same rules as the rest of us. You’re a DHI now. You can’t draw suspicion.”
“I’m a DHI who’s about to be sent back to Maryland to a halfway house full of Fairlies. I’m desperate, Finn.”
“And how is misbehaving going to help your situation?”
“How’s it going to hurt it?” she asked. “If I can do a little good before I leave, isn’t that better than doing nothing at all?”
He knew he should have an answer for that. Even something trite would have been welcome. But a part of him understood that she was right: when it came to doing good, it was better to do something risky rather than nothing at all. He felt the same way about attempting to find Wayne.
“Where and when?” she asked, just before they split up off the stairs.
“Jelly’s place right after school.”
“Gotcha,” she said, ascending the stairs effortlessly, as if a stiff wind blew at her back.
* * *
Maybeck lived above Crazy Glaze, his aunt Jelly’s pottery shop. The shop’s front room was crowded with shelves of pale, unfired clay vessels that customers painted and adorned with glazes and other treatments, while its back room contained more raw stock, a desk in the corner, and a small kiln. The two big kilns were out back, as were three motorized pottery wheels, and two manual ones; the whole back area was covered in a gray wash that spoke of years of use. Adjacent to the desk in the back room was a drafting table, and next to it a sewing machine and a light table, each pertaining to a particular hobby of Maybeck’s multitalented guardian.
The heavyset woman, whose real name was Bess, had not been given her nickname as a result of her girth—substantial though it was—but on account of her own mispronunciation of the name Shelly as a child. Jelly had a choir girl’s smile, kind eyes, and four chins. Her voice was low and husky, and when she looked at you it felt as if she could see things others could not—like a fortune-teller or priest.
With all the Kingdom Keepers assembled in the tight space, Jelly opened the kiln and carefully extricated a baking sheet containing a dozen chocolate chip cookies, which explained the incredible smell of the place. She moved some bricks and pulled out a second sheet of the oatmeal variety. Maybeck headed upstairs and returned with a box of cold milk and the after-school ceremony began. Once lips were properly licked free of remaining crumbs and the last drops of milk had slid down sugary throats, Jelly left them, shutting the door to the outer room to deal with her customers.