Genuine Sweet by Faith Harkey Page B

and ate until we ailed slightly.
    â€œThese are awful,” Travis whispered.
    â€œAwfully wonderful,” I replied.
    He nodded his queasy agreement.
    Drawing a floppy fry through his ketchup-mustard swirl, Travis said, “Want to hang out again sometime? As friends?”
    â€œUm. All right. Sure.” Truth to tell, I’d had a really good time. “As friends.”
    Â 
    When I got home, Gram asked me how things had gone with my young man. I wasn’t sure what to say. If I admitted I’d had a good time, she might want to invite Travis over, which could give him the wrong idea. On the other hand, if I told her about the mix-up, she might hunt down Sonny Wentz and thrash him for hurting my feelings.
    I finally settled on, “Our buttons and collar tabs matched. He didn’t try to kiss me.”
    â€œThat’s . . . promising, I reckon.” She reached into her sewing bag for a new ball of yarn. “By the by, your new friend, Jura, stopped by to pick up that biscuit you left for her. And she wants you to meet her at the library tomorrow. Something about a cornucopia. Says you should get set for a busy week,” Gram told me.
    â€œA cornucopia?” It took me a minute. “Oh! Cornucopio!”
    â€œWhat on earth’s that?” Gram asked.
    â€œIt’s a thing with profiles and swaps. And college applications, for Jura, at least.” I bit my lip. Maybe now was the time to tell her about our plans to feed the world. “To be honest—”
    â€œCollege, huh?” Gram mused. “I don’t know but what the smart ones always have some sort of big plan. Well, good for her, I say. Not enough big plans in Sass, of late.”
    â€œNo. Right. You’re exactly right. Which brings me to—”
    â€œYou don’t mind if I turn in early, do you, Gen? I worked myself to the bone today.”
    I looked at the clock. “It’s not even five.”
    â€œOld people tucker out fast.”
    And with that, she shuffled off to her room.
    She’d left me a frittata in the skillet, still warm, so I helped myself. After a little homework, I grabbed my starlight cup and headed into the woods.
    It was a Saturday night, so the older kids were out being rowdy. I could hear them in the distance hooting and laughing, engines revving and tires a-squealing. It was all the usual business, and I was used to it, so it wasn’t hard to put it out of mind.
    The air was a little cool. Winter’d be upon us before long, and I remembered I still had to figure a way to negotiate with the power company. It was one thing to trade for wishes with a person, but businesses, I guess, didn’t have spots in their ledgers for payments in wish biscuits.
    Wasn’t long before I forgot about that, too, though. The stars shone so brightly, and even the white wisps of the Milky Way were on display if you relaxed your eyes and let yourself take it all in. I was standing that way, looking but not exactly staring, when I thought I heard something like a song.
    I reckoned it might be the high schoolers fooling around, but no, it wasn’t. The Fort brothers never belched out a sound like this. It was high and sweet, and a little tricky, so I couldn’t be sure I’d really heard anything at all.
    I plugged my ears with my fingers to see if it was something coming from inside my own head, but the sound disappeared until I unplugged them again.
    â€œHello?” I called into the night.
    The song didn’t stop, but I thought it might have grown just a little louder. And maybe—were those
words?
Sometimes it seemed they were, and sometimes it seemed the words were my name. But when I tried to listen harder, it wasn’t my name at all. It was something else. Bells. Or a sound like the metal triangle the drummer plays in band, but constant, a single, long ringing, so high and silvery it wasn’t quite real.
    It was coming from the sky, I