They watched as Tuesday’s last customer picked up objects and put them back down. She looked extra hard at a hippo figurine and an ancient quilt. She considered a tiny lamp with a fancy red shade.
She didn’t buy anything.
“More evidence that she’s magical!” Del said as they watched her walk out the door. “Magical people come to stores and look at everything and buy nothing!”
“Lots of people do that,” Alma said.
“Maybe lots of people are magical,” Abuelita said with a shrug. Abuelita had a special way of shrugging. It was one slow shrug followed by one very fast shrug and a lift of her eyebrows.
Del and Alma loved that Abuelita shrug.
“I wonder where she lives,” Del said.
Alma had only been living on Twenty-Third Avenue for two days, but she knew what was coming. It seemed that Del was always ready for an adventure while Alma was always ready to slip back into their apartment building and play Guess Whose Footsteps Those Are in the stairwell.
Alma was learning it was hard to say no to adventure-loving Del.
In fact, it was pretty much impossible.
4A Belief in Silliness
-Del-
“We have to follow her,” Del said. She needed to know more about that mysterious last customer.
“We can’t follow a stranger!” Alma said. Del was getting used to Alma saying no. So far, since Alma had arrived, she had said no to dying her hair purple and going to a fortune teller and spending the night in the maybe-magical attic of 86 ½ Twenty-Third Avenue. Del thought the attic was probably a magical place where fairies and elves might visit. Alma thought it was just a dusty old room that made creaky noises and had too many shadows on the walls. Plus, it made her sneeze.
“Well, I’m going!” Del said. She marched right out the door of the shop. She knew Alma would follow her, and Alma did.
Alma followed behind her, past one dozen posters of missing Oscar and a very busy ice-cream truck, all the way to the bottom of the street, where they could both see the mysterious woman turn a corner and seem to vanish.
“Oh my gosh, she turned herself invisible!” Del said.
“She’s not invisible; she just turned a corner so we can’t see her,” Alma said.
Del sighed. “You don’t get it.”
Alma’s face fell, and they walked back to the shop in silence. Abuelita met them outside. She put one strong hand on Del’s shoulder and one strong hand on Alma’s. “I need some help closing up,” she said.
“Did you think she was magical?” Del asked Abuelita when they were all back inside. Abuelita had kind eyes and black hair and a pretty blue scarf always tied around her neck. Del was proud every time someone said she looked like Abuelita.
Abuelita did her Abuelita shrug. “Maybe we’ll find out,” she said.
“I bet we will!” Del said.
“Look, I can go invisible too!” Alma said. She ran down the street and hid behind a fire hydrant. “See? Invisible!” she called out, laughing. Del laughed too. Alma might not believe in magic, but she believed in silliness, and that was almost as good.
5Part-Time Magic
-Alma-
Alma loved empanadas more than almost any food, even chocolate cake.
“We should call them Alma-nadas,” Del said.
“What a delicious Alma-nada,” Alma’s mother said with a smile. She’d tried making them for Alma at their house on the lake, but they weren’t as good as the ones Abuelita made.
“More Alma-nadas please!” Evie said. Her plate already had a pile of empanadas. Her mouth was full of them too. But that didn’t stop Evie from reaching for more. Like Del, Evie had lived right here for her whole life. Even she knew more about Twenty-Third Avenue than Alma did.
Alma wished she could live here on Twenty-Third Avenue with her big fun family and back at her quiet old home on the lake. She wanted to sit at Abuelita’s table and eat empanadas and sit on the dock at the house by the lake and skip rocks. She wished she could be in both places, all the time. That would be the best kind of magic.
“We saw an invisible woman today!” Del announced after Alma had eaten her third empanada.
“Me too!” Evie said. Alma smiled at her youngest cousin. Evie just wanted to fit in, like Alma.
“Well now, that doesn’t make any sense at all,” Titi Rosa said. “How can you see an invisible woman?”
“We saw her before she turned invisible,” Del said.
“Ah, so she’s a part-time invisible woman,” Titi Rosa said. She winked at Alma. Alma loved that wink. She tried to wink back, but she was pretty sure it didn’t come out quite right.
“Part-time magic is very common,” Abuelita said. Everyone listened when Abuelita spoke. Alma wondered if she was the only person in her whole family who didn’t believe in magic. At the house on the lake, they never talked about magic. But then, at the house on the lake, it was only ever Alma and her mom and dad, not a whole big family.
“See?” Del said to Alma. “Abuelita believes in magic too. It’s part of our family! You’ll start believing in it soon, I bet. Don’t worry.”
Alma’s shoulders drooped. There was so much she didn’t know about her own family. She wasn’t sure if she could ever catch up. She wasn’t sure she would ever fit in anywhere at all. Not like Del did.
Titi Rosa shrugged. “I never felt much magic anywhere at all,” she said. She winked at Alma again. Titi Rosa had been living on Twenty-Third Avenue for even longer than Del and Evie and Alma had been alive. If it was okay for Titi Rosa not to see magic everywhere,
