“You forgot your hat,” he points out.

“I’ll be fine.”

“It’s cold outside. You need a hat. Here.” He taps that cheap plastic magic wand of his against a gloved palm, and my lumpy knitted hat shoots out of the white-capped end.

I seize the wand, inspecting it closely. “How’d you do that?”

“Magic.” He raises his eyebrows, chin tilted up with airs of superiority.

“No, really. Did you have my hat up your sleeve? Or inside your coat?”

“I’ve been telling you all along that this is a magic wand, Bettie. The real trick is getting you to believe it.”

“Oh, fine, then, don’t tell me,” I huff, and he laughs.

As we walk side by side down the road into peaceful blue twilight a little ways behind the rest of our family, our amusement melts into small, contented smiles and hands clasped like they cannot bear to let go, and nothing—nothing else has ever mattered as much as this man’s off-key singing that makes the world a more joyful place to live in, and his frequent, grateful, so-happy-to-be-here kisses pressed to the back of my hand, and his love in my heart, where the magic lives on.

“And for my next trick.”

Hall flicks his wand once again toward the North Star, and, in a truly remarkable coincidence, snowflakes begin to flutter down from the sky.

The End

And Happy Holidays

*

Acknowledgments

THE IDEA FOR this story popped into my head one morning when I was half-asleep. I opened Twitter and began to type up the idea as a joke, because of course it was a joke, but then I tilted my head and thought . . . well, what if I actually wrote it? I saved the Tweet to my drafts and did just that. Bettie and Hall’s story is a level of bonkers that I found personally very fun to play around in, but I wasn’t sure if anyone would actually want to read something like this. I mean, the source of magic in this world could very well canonically be the chicken parm sandwich from Domino’s, depending on whether Hall was serious about that (and he might have been). I am endlessly shocked and grateful to have such a brilliant agent, Taylor Haggerty, who was supportive from the jump.

Thank you to my editor, Kate Dresser, for your invaluable guidance, to Tarini Sipahimalani, Jasmine Brown at Root Literary, Emily Mileham, Maija Baldauf, Linda Rosenberg, Hannah Dragone, Marie Finamore, Tiffany Estreicher, Katy Riegel, Erica Cuculic, Lyris Bach, Heather Lewis, Christopher Lin, Sally Kim, and to everyone else at Putnam who has had a hand in bringing Just Like Magic to life. Thank you so much for publishing me.

I have tremendous appreciation for my author friends whose texts and emails have kept me from turning off the Internet and escaping into the mountains forever. There are many of you, but I have to mention Martha Waters, Sarah Grunder Ruiz (shout out for helping me brainstorm the Dancing with the Stars scene), Chloe Liese, and Mazey Eddings in particular. Thank you so much to the authors who kindly agreed to read early copies of this book, and who have said lovely things about it, or even kindly offered blurbs. You’re all my heroes!