Austentatious

I glanced at Beck to see her frantically waving me over.

“Go—you’ve got a minute before your ball comes back. And we can let that guy cut in if we need to,” she said in cavalier fashion.

“Okay ... since brunch ...” My normally ordered mind was stumbling over all the unexpected happenings of the last day and a half. Probably best to go chronologically. “Let’s see: I got passed over for a promotion—again, decided to switch jobs, found the key to the journal—you have no idea!, had a surprise visit from Sean at work—he brought flowers, we went to dinner, I got serenaded. We kissed, and I agreed to another date. The complete nutshell.” I glanced back toward the ball return to see my ball waiting patiently. “I’m up.”

Feeling slightly more relaxed now that it was out in the open, I stepped up, swung the ball, and watched it glide smoothly down the lane. This time it hit just right of dead center, and with a satisfying crack of pins, I picked up the spare.

“You, my friend, are unstoppable!” The smile Beck flashed had my lips curling up cautiously in response. “Tell me about the journal—is it even better with the key?” Her eyes were impossibly wide and her attitude unflinchingly giddy.

I met her gaze, wondering if Beck was above I-told-you-sos. “Turns out you’re pretty in tune with the wackiness in the world. The journal was a gift from Jane Austen—the Jane Austen—to her niece.”

Beck’s eyebrows dropped into a wrinkle of disbelief. “You have proof?”

That knocked me on my ass. “Proof? Seriously? You need proof, Mulder?”

“I don’t need proof; I just assumed you had proof. Besides,” she said with a smirk, “it’s not long before I’m a full-fledged, degree-toting engineer. I gotta walk the walk on occasion.”

“Okay, fine. My proof is that I saw the signed inscription she wrote, and it looks legit.”

She interrupted before I could continue with my seemingly impossible explanation.

“So why didn’t you see it before?” she quizzed, hefting her ball from the ball return.

“I needed the key. The key brings back everything that’s been written in the book since the very beginning —we’re talking a veritable tomb of diary secrets. My entries, the ones that disappeared and were replaced with snarky little instructions? They’re back. The book is huge with the key in and a skinny mini with it removed.”

“Whoa.” After a pause, she said, “I should probably bowl. Be right back.”

Despite glancing curiously back at me several times while she waited her turn in the bowling queue, Beck evidently managed to shake off the shock and come back raring to gossip.

“And there’s more weird where that came from,” I told her. “And honestly, I need some advice.”

“Shoot,” she said, sipping from a jumbo Diet Coke.

Taking a deep breath, I confided, “I think Fairy Jane may have left the journal. So to speak.”

Beck squinted. “She’s gone? What makes you think so?”

“No, not gone per se, just foolin’ around.”

“You’re saying Jane Austen is fooling around in Austin, Texas?” Her gaze was unwavering.

“Well, I don’t know how else to describe it! She’s messing with the calendar in my kitchen, and she’s finagling things I don’t want finagled!”

“Come again?”

I closed my eyes, digging deep for a calm, rational-sounding response. “Today I not only agreed to transfer departments at Micro, thereby backseating my bid for management, but I agreed to go out with Sean after I promised myself I wouldn’t get involved. That doesn’t sound like me, does it?”

“You’re switching out of Product Engineering? Into what department? Will I stay where I am, or can I come along as your intern, sort of a two-for-one package?”

Hell, I’d forgotten all about Beck. I shook my head. I’d deal with that later.

“Try to stay focused. What I’m saying is, I don’t think I did either of those things on my own—I think someone interfered, worked some magic, messed with my head. Does that seem possible to you?” I couldn’t believe I was asking this. “Is that common for ... magical things?”

A grin stole over Beck’s face. “This is painful for you, isn’t it?”

I rolled my eyes. “A little, so could we just get to it?”

“Go bowl. Let me think on it for a minute.”

I couldn’t concentrate knowing that no matter what it was, I wasn’t going to like Beck’s answer. I’m lucky I managed to bowl down the right lane. I think I downed a total of two pins in the entire frame. When I got back, her mouth was set in a grim line. “Come up with anything?”

“Well, I should probably preface this by saying that I have no real-world experience with anything magical, other than your journal.”

“Lucky you,” I muttered.

“And,” Beck continued, “any magical advice I’m able to give you is drawn from books, movies, mythology, etcetera.”

“Talitha’s not into magic?”

“Sadly, no.”

“Fine, fine,” I assured her. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”

She held up a finger. “Probably best if I played this frame.”

I waited for what seemed an eternity for her to come back.

“Okay,” Beck said, “so now that you’ve actively engaged the journal, i.e., the magical item, it’s invested in you. The spirit that’s enchanting it—we believe, Jane Austen—clearly has an agenda, which you, in both words and actions, are resisting. So it would appear that she’s stepping beyond the bounds of the journal to convince you.” She nodded sagely. “Sorta scary shit,” she said, grinning hugely.

“So she’s not going to let up?”

“I don’t know ... maybe?”

“Maybe? This is my life! How the hell am I supposed to deal with this?”

“Well, how bad would it really be to go along with it? She’s not asking you to do anything dangerous or illegal.”

I stared at her, taking in her pink hair, sock monkey pajamas, and the bowling alley around her. Honestly, I couldn’t believe any of this was happening. She slung her arm around my shoulders.

“Okay, executive decision: Let’s put a kibosh on the magic stuff. I’m willing to take a lot on faith, but for obvious reasons, I’d like to see this stuff for myself. Right now, why don’t you relax and tell me about Sean. We’ll get to the Micro situation later—it can wait.”

In no time, Beck and I had developed a rhythm, seamlessly alternating bowling frames and concentrated bouts of gossip as I temporarily tried to overlook the invasion of magic into my well-ordered life.

“What kind of flowers?”

“Red gerbera daisies.”

“Definite points for originality.”

“As a bribe, they worked wonders.”

Beck raised her eyebrow, but I could tell she was impressed. I hurried up to bowl with a blithe smile on my face and remained undeterred by my paltry two-pin showing.

“He drives a motorcycle,” I told her in a break between frames. “So we drove separately.”

“What? Why? Have you ever been on a motorcycle? It’s awesome, particularly in this roller coaster of a city.”

New frame, new subject.

“He kissed me in the lobby.” I skimmed my fingers over the spot just above my left eyebrow, remembering.

“And?” Beck’s grin was as bright as the neon orange bowling ball she balanced in her palm.

“I have very little memory of the afternoon after that. Except,” I specified, finger in the air, “that I finally set a lunch date with Brett.”

Beck wrinkled her nose, unimpressed with my second bit of news, and rerouted the conversation back to Sean. ”How’d he track you down at Micro?”