17Curious Cousins
-Alma-
Alma didn’t like the way Abuelita was looking at her.
“She stole my earrings! She gave them to a lion! A stone lion! Not even a real one!” Del said. “Then she lied about it!”
“And has the lion been lucky?” Abuelita asked.
Alma and Del hadn’t thought to check. They looked out at their building’s stoop. The lion head was there, as usual. It was pretty hard to tell if a stone lion was lucky or not.
“Probably,” Del said. “Since it had the earrings.”
“I wonder what a stone lion considers lucky,” Abuelita said.
“Maybe someone dropping ice cream on its face?” Alma asked. “So it could get a taste?”
“Or someone planting nice-smelling flowers right under its nose?” Del suggested.
“Someone putting another lion head across the street so it has someone to hang out with?” Alma said. She was starting to giggle.
“Someone bringing a real live lion by!” Del said.
“Yes!” Alma exclaimed. She was getting excited by these ideas. This is what she and Del were best at. Coming up with ideas, making jokes, imagining funny or fantastic things. It’s what they always did during their summers together at the lake house. It’s why they were best friends.
“Wait,” Del said. “That’s not the point. The point is Alma did something wrong, and she has to get in trouble.”
“Ah,” Abuelita said. But she didn’t send Alma to her room or tell Alma she’d been bad. Alma didn’t know what to make of it.
“I made a mistake,” Alma said.
“A huge mistake,” Del said. “A mean mistake.”
“You know,” Abuelita said. “Your titi Rosa and I had a hundred fights like the one you two are having.”
“You did?” Alma asked. It was hard to imagine Abuelita and Titi Rosa fighting. They were best friends. They had started the Curious Cousins Secondhand Shoppe together. They finished each other’s sentences. Sometimes they laughed so hard that the whole neighborhood seemed to rumble and shake with their joy.
“We sure did,” Abuelita said. “About magic.”
“Titi Rosa hated magic too?” Del asked. Alma wanted to say how unfair it was to say it like that, but she kept her mouth shut. She was the one who had stolen and lied, after all.
Abuelita chuckled. “I used to see it that way,” she said. “But that’s not quite right, is it, Alma?”
Alma shook her head. “It’s not right at all! I don’t hate magic! I just don’t— It doesn’t seem— I don’t see it everywhere like you do. I don’t really—”
“You don’t understand it,” Del said. Alma loved that Del knew how to finish her sentences. Maybe not as well as Titi Rosa could finish Abuelita’s. But close.
“I guess I’m curious about it,” Alma said. “When I’m not mad about it.”
“I’m curious about it too,” Del said.
On that they could agree, at least.
18Belonging
-Del-
Del wasn’t ready to forgive Alma completely, but she was ready to talk to her.
“Do you believe a little bit?” she asked her cousin while they sat in the backyard sipping Abuelita’s famous lavender lemonade. Del was pretty sure the lemonade was magical too.
And there was no denying that the clip-on earrings had brought luck, as far as Del was concerned. She had been lucky when she wore them and very, very unlucky when they were gone. How could Alma not see how totally real magic was? Would she start to believe, the longer she lived here?
“I don’t know what I believe,” Alma said. “But I like the way you believe. And I like the way Abuelita believes. And maybe someday I could believe too.”
“Really?” Del asked.
“I’ve never seen so much bad luck in my whole life!” Alma said. “So maybe there’s something to those earrings after all. Maybe if I’d lived here my whole life like you—”
“Then you wouldn’t be you,” Del said.
“But I’d be more part of the family,” Alma said.
“You’re already a part of the family.” Del said. “You always have been. Even when you lived on the lake.”
“Even though I don’t know all the jokes and rituals and everything about stoop sales and magic and the city and cremita?” Alma asked.
Del nodded. “Of course. Plus, you’re a stoop-sale natural.” Del saw Alma’s smile, and it was the best, biggest smile she’d seen from her cousin since she’d arrived. This whole time, Del had thought her job was to tell Alma all about her new home. She hadn’t realized that what Alma really needed was to be told she belonged there.
And of course she did. She belonged right here, next to Del, drinking lavender lemonade.
19Not a Unicorn, Not a Mouse
-Alma-
Alma and Del had just finished their lemonades when they heard the noise. It was a scuttling and breathing and rustling sound.
“Do you hear that?” Alma asked.
“Must be magic afoot,” Del said. Maybe Del was always going to think everything was magical. But Alma was pretty sure the sound was coming from the garden. Maybe a mouse. But it was too loud for a mouse. Maybe Oscar had gotten off his leash again and escaped into their backyard. She wondered if he’d done that before. But Oscar always barked at squirrels when he was outside, and she didn’t hear any barking.
Alma got up and looked around their little backyard. There were all of Abuelita’s beautiful flowers and all of Titi Rosa’s vegetables and herbs. There was a discarded picnic blanket in one corner and a worn lounge chair in the other. Alma nudged Del. She pointed at the picnic blanket. At first Del looked confused. But then she saw what Alma had seen. A little bit of movement under the blanket.
“A raccoon?” Alma suggested.
“A unicorn?” Del said.
“A squirrel?”
“A fairy?”
They went back and forth, Alma naming animals, Del naming magical creatures, and it looked like they might start fighting again, as their suggestions got more and more spirited. It was right after Alma suggested a bunny and Del insisted it must be an elf, that the picnic blanket flew up
