Quill Me Now, page 1
Contents
Book Info
1 DIXON
2
3
4
5 YURI
6 DIXON
7
8
9
10 YURI
11 DIXON
12 YURI
13 DIXON
14
The ABCs of Spellcraft Series
About this Story
About the Author
QUILL ME NOW
The ABCs of Spellcraft 1
Jordan Castillo Price
Find more titles at
www.JCPbooks.com
Quill Me Now. ©2019 Jordan Castillo Price. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Quill Me Now originally debuted in the Bad Valentine collection, with Love Magic by Jesi Lea Ryan, Hidden Hearts by Clare London, and Temporary Dad by Dev Bentham.
ISBN 978-1-944779-03-0
Electronic Version 1.3
1
DIXON
“Nothing good ever came of a valentine,” Sabina declared with great vehemence and utter conviction. “You hear me, Dixon? Nothing.”
I love my cousin. I do. But there’s opinionated…and then there’s Sabina. I said, “You haven’t even heard the details.”
“I don’t need to, either. Everyone knows those contests are a bunch of baloney.”
“Who’s everyone?”
She ignored the question. “And this ‘big prize’… what’s it even supposed to be?”
I squinted at the fine print. It was smudged with barbecue sauce, but if I held it up to the light, enough came through for me to get the gist. “A thousand dollars.”
Sabina waded through the furniture we were saving for someday. She squeezed between two heavy oak dressers, veered around a massive roll-top desk, climbed over a pile of boxes, and worked her way into our kitchen. It was really just an old utility sink and a microwave perched on top of a mini fridge, but both of us liked to keep up the illusion that we still lived in an actual house, not just a hastily converted attic. She attempted to clatter some dishes to demonstrate how ridiculous she thought my idea was, but we’d sold the maple kitchenette on Craigslist to keep creditors off our backs. And since the only flat surface to slam her mug against was a vinyl card table, it just gave off an unsatisfying thwack. She filled the mug with water and stuck it in the microwave, then crossed her arms, turned to me and said, “A thousand dollars for a few lines of schmaltzy poetry?”
“The verse doesn’t have to rhyme.” I slid the ad across the table for her to look at.
Sabina ignored it. “There’s no possible way anyone could afford to pay that kind of money to produce a valentine.”
“But Precious Greetings is the biggest card company in the state.”
“Even if every lovestruck dope in the city bought one, they’d barely recoup their outlay. Plus, who spends money on paper cards anymore when everything’s digital?” She slammed down a box of hot chocolate with an even quieter thwack, then glared at the microwave as if it would heat her water faster. “You’re just the type to fall for this kind of scheme, too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A soft touch. You’re always giving your spare change to that wino down by the underpass. And he probably lives in a cushier place than we do.”
Well, no argument there.
No one would ever take Sabina for a soft touch. As we were growing up, strangers usually thought she was a boy. The weird, too-short haircuts from my Aunt Rose and hand-me-down clothes from me didn’t help. Nowadays, the ratty denim vest and bleach-tipped fauxhawk tomboy look were entirely deliberate. Plainly female…and no one pegged her for a pushover.
Not like me.
Trustworthy. Sensitive. Nice. This was the opinion strangers formed of me before I even said hello. I guess I just had one of those faces.
“Who sends valentines these days, anyhow?” Sabina went on. “Obligated spouses? Sappy girls swooning with unrequited love? Slimeballs looking to get in someone’s pants? Screw valentines. The world is better off without them.”
My cousin wasn’t usually so negative—though I’ll admit, she was never really a happy ray of sunshine—but the two of us always had each other’s backs, and I’d been counting on her support. I was pretty sure this argument had nothing to do with valentines. She was just upset that I’d finally given up on the family Spellcraft business.
The microwave beeped, and she savaged open a cocoa packet and dumped it into her mug. “If you’re so hell-bent on writing something—”
“Sabina….”
“—then maybe you should write something that actually matters.”
She gave her hot chocolate a vicious stir, and a slurry of hot water and half-dissolved powder slopped over the side and splattered on the ad. I tried to yank it away, but too late. It was one of those local ads you find printed on the back of a sales register tape, along with coupons for oil changes and ads selling more ad space, and the ink from the front was already bleeding through.
Luckily, before I said something I’d regret, my phone chimed. Saved by the bell…or in this case, the WheelMeal delivery app. “Gotta go,” I said, and left my cousin fuming in the kitchen.
Write something that matters…talk about a low blow.
I jogged down the stairs, lost in my own thoughts, not stepping as carefully as I usually do. Our downstairs neighbor pounded on the wall so hard, the pictures hanging in the stairwell rattled. Mr. Greaves didn’t like hearing footsteps. Or music. Or especially laughter.
Technically, Mr. Greaves was our tenant, so you’d think Sabina and I would be in charge. But because the apartment we’d cobbled together in the attic wasn’t exactly legal, Mr. Greaves used our situation to his advantage to throw shade a normal tenant would never get away with.
All the artwork that used to decorate the main house now hung in the stairwell, stacked railing to ceiling, four or five pictures high, up one side and down the other. It was the easiest way we could figure to store them while we rented out the downstairs.
I paused at the bottom step and looked up at a picture of Uncle Fonzo. It was a Sears portrait taken sometime in the early seventies when hair was side-parted, sideburns were bushy, and fashionable clothing was plaid. Uncle Fonzo wouldn’t let Mr. Greaves walk all over him like we did. But he wasn’t around to put the guy in his place, was he?
Not that Uncle Fonzo was dead or anything. Just that nobody knew where he was. And yet, he was everywhere. From the house, to the car, to the crippling debt.
Since Sabina could walk to work, I drove the car, a powder blue Buick with bald tires and an unfortunate tendency to stall at stoplights. But it was the only car I had, plus it was paid for. And it started, mostly, so I didn’t complain.
While I waited for the engine to warm up, I thumbed open the WheelMeal app and checked the delivery. It was on the east side of Pinyin Bay at the very edge of my zone, and normally I’d let someone else pick it up. But not only did I need the money…I needed time to cool off. I couldn’t afford to snap at Sabina. She was my most solid ally.
The thing was, she knew I was sensitive about my writing. Our whole family knew—and it was no big secret. In fact, if there were people living on the moon, I’d be surprised if they hadn’t heard about the giant fiasco.
My whole life, I’d had a way with words. Not spoken, but written. I’d always known how to set just the perfect tone and evoke any emotion I chose with a well-turned phrase. Everyone held me up to be an aspiring Scrivener, the golden boy, the one with all the talent—the one who’d finally help the Penn family make their mark in the Spellcraft circuit. And then…to be the only one I’d ever personally known to fail the Quilling Ceremony?
Beyond humiliating.
Even worse than the lime green WheelMeal visor I wore to make the deliveries.
I stopped off at Bam Burgers to pick up the order, which was supposed to be ready by the time I pulled up…but of course, it wasn’t. Bam Burgers usually ran late, but tonight, they were in rare form. I opted to wait inside. I burn through less gas that way.
As I crammed myself into the sea of hopeful diners waiting for a table to open up, I glanced up at the ill-conceived piece of Spellcraft that was responsible for all the congestion. To the Handless—the uninitiated—it would just look like a kitschy little piece of artwork—a quick painting of a table with burger, fries and drink, and arched over the top of the scene, the words “Come for the Food, Stay for the Atmosphere.”
But I knew it for what it was. Spellcraft.
Poorly worded Spellcraft, at that. Because of the words the Scrivener chose, no one ever wanted to leave. The waitstaff got stuck refilling drinks all night, and regular customers resorted to carryout. But even the carryouts felt compelled to linger, chatting with old acquaintances or striking up new ones in the lobby. And amid the chaos, harried staff handed out orders seemingly at random. The customers who got home to find the popcorn chicken where the cheese fries should’ve been came back to fix their orders and got sucked right back into the fray.
Could I get away with knocking that failed bit of Spellcraft off the wall and “accidentally” stepping on it hard enough to smudge out the image? Maybe. But it wouldn’t get me my order any faster. Plus, all the Handless would wonder why the WheelMeal delivery guy was flailing around.
I sighed. Funny
, how I still thought of myself as a Spellcrafter. Even now that it was obvious the Penn family’s Scrivener talent skipped me entirely.
I’d spent the last year doing my best not to think about it, but sitting there staring at the lousy spell, I couldn’t help but mentally re-Craft the words. Come Hungry, Leave Happy had a nice ring to it. Not only would it encourage repeat business, but once people were done eating, they’d actually make room for more customers.
But what did I know? I was just the guy in the lime green visor.
I got the order with no time to spare and high-tailed it out to the car, half expecting to be caught stepping too loudly and hear Mr. Greaves pounding his complaint somewhere in the distance. On paper, WheelMeal didn’t pay too bad, a guaranteed ten dollars an hour, plus tips.
Unfortunately, you only got that ten dollar guarantee if you met a number of criteria, and one of those was delivering the order in half an hour or less. Not a problem…if the food is waiting for you when you get to the restaurant, like it’s supposed to be. But, like a failed piece of Spellcraft, the “on paper” bonuses were nothing more than a colorful idea and a few nice words.
The tips weren’t really all they were cracked up to be, either. “You’d make better tips if you flirted a little,” Sabina always told me. “You’re cute—you should definitely flirt.”
As if wearing a lime green visor wasn’t awkward enough.
I found my delivery address without too much backtracking and hurried up three flights of stairs. By the time I got to the top, I was winded, but I’d made it, by the skin of my teeth.
Until I stood there in the hallway for nearly three minutes waiting for the customer to open the door.
I gave a polite tap and called out, “WheelMeal!”
“Just a minute,” came a man’s reply—directly from the other side of the door. I didn’t think much of it, initially. For all I knew, he was naked and needed some time to pull on a pair of shorts. Although I didn’t hear any sounds of shorts rustling. But they could be very quiet shorts.
Although, the more I pondered it, the more I thought…wouldn’t you put some clothes on if you’d just ordered food? Maybe the customer had his evening routine down to a science, I decided. Maybe he put in his Bam Burger order and had just enough time to get home and shower before the food showed up.
But if that were the case…why was he right there on the other side of the door? It must be Sabina’s flirting idea that had me convinced I’d caught the customer in the act of pulling up his pants. Would it be weird if I flirted with a guy who was just naked a few minutes ago? I didn’t want to come off like I was desperate—I just wanted a bigger tip.
Needed a bigger tip, was more like it. Because thanks to that crappy Spellcraft at Bam Burger, no way was my hourly minimum gonna happen. Fine. I could flirt. I was perfectly capable of flirting. I’ve been told I have very nice eyelashes.
My app figured out what the customer was doing a split second before I did. I hadn’t yet figured out how to mute all the dumb sound effects that the user interface made—you’d swear they were thought up by a teenaged boy with a lowbrow sense of humor—and so it was with a tinny sad-trombone sound that my phone informed me my delivery was late.
Just as the wah-wah faded, the customer opened the door. Fully dressed. And smirking.
I said, “Did you just make me wait for two minutes so you could mark me as late?”
“Nothing personal.” He grabbed the Bam Burger bag from my unresisting hand. “When your food’s late, you get 15% off your next order.”
He shut the door. No tip. Not even a thank you. I stood there and stared at the closed door and wondered if it would’ve mattered if I’d managed to flirt.
Probably not.
I sighed and trudged down the stairs. Between the lack of a tip and the fact that he’d marked me late, all I’d earn was two dollars for the whole delivery, and I strongly suspected the Buick ate most of that in gas. And when I checked the WheelMeal app to see if there was another delivery I could grab to make the whole outing worth my while, there was nothing.
Unfortunately, the app prioritized drivers who were on time.
Nothing personal.
I slipped behind the wheel of the Buick, logged out of the app, and wondered how it was that my life had taken such a dismal turn. Scrivening runs in families. Both of my parents, my cousin and Uncle Fonzo all had the gift. Three of my four grandparents had it (God rest their souls). And the fourth, Papa Tobar, made such exquisite apple turnovers, no one held his lack of talent against him.
All the odds were in my favor. It was presumed I’d join the family business just as soon as I earned my quill. We were all so sure of my talent, I’d even taken some gap years after college, bummed around Europe with a knapsack over my shoulder, seen the inside of many a youth hostel, and cried over the blue-eyed French boy who proclaimed his undying love but ditched me at the bus station with a stubborn case of mono. Only when my tame bout of wanderlust was exhausted did I come back home….
And discover I was no Scrivener after all.
The smell of the Bam Burger lingered in my car—and something else, too. I retrieved it from the floor. Just a menu that had fallen from the bag, with that terrible Spellcraft slogan front and center: Come for the Food, Stay for the Atmosphere! It wouldn’t influence reality as digital typography on a printed menu, of course. It was just an attempt at pretending the thing hanging in the dining room was a slogan, not sorcery.
I turned it over in my hands despondently, then realized something else was stapled to the bag: a receipt. And while the WheelMeal app prides itself in customer and driver anonymity, the Bam Burger ordering system did not. There was the order: Bam Burger Supreme, no onion, extra mayo, with a side of fries and a diet cola. And there below it?
The customer’s name.
Brad.
Did Mr. Cheater look like a Brad? Yes. I could see it.
And I could see myself lettering that name in my best Scrivener-trained calligraphy.
The thing about Brad, when he acts like a cad, it comes back to burn him…but twice as bad.
Spellcraft doesn’t have to rhyme—but when it does, it’s epic.
It wasn’t the rhyme that was unusual about that particular Scrivening, though, but the inclusion of a proper name. Uncle Fonzo always told me, “If you pen someone’s name in a spell, it’s got just as much chance of working as any other Spellcraft. But actually doing it? Felony. Even if it’s only designed to clear up someone’s pimples. People say it’s a matter of public safety, a precaution against a badly-worded spell misfiring.” He gave me that knowing look of his. “But you and me…we know different.”
“The Handless are scared of anything they can’t control,” I said. So cocky. So oblivious.
“Especially Spellcraft, kiddo. Especially Spellcraft.”
I had no idea what it would be like for my Spellcraft misfire. And I never would. How…fortunate for me.
I tucked away my brief daydream about getting even with Brad where I kept all the rest of my unfulfilled fantasies. There were so many, you’d think I’d have nowhere left to store them anymore. I guess they don’t take up much space. Either that, or I had a vast capacity for disappointment.
I tossed the paperwork onto the passenger seat and figured I might as well head home. Sabina’s remark about writing something important still stung, but we Penns are a tight-knit clan. Hearing about how Brad bilked me out of my ten bucks would be a bonding moment that would leave the two of us united against a common foe. Doubly so considering he hadn’t even tipped.
But as I started up the Buick and peered out at traffic, debating the wisdom of saving a few minutes by pulling a U-turn, the menu beside me settled with a quiet rustle of paper, snagging my attention.
I glanced down and saw it had fallen on its side, with the receipt flipped over to reveal the printing on the back. More ads. A dollar off a car wash. Pedicures, buy one, get one half price.
And a certain greeting card contest with a thousand-dollar prize…with a deadline, I now realized, of midnight.
2
Over the course of a normal day, most people will find themselves needing to write something at least once, even if it’s as dull as a shopping list. But while the majority of adults know how to write, it’s another thing entirely to have a talent for writing.
