Natalie was on top of the world all week. It was real. Magic was real. She'd read about it in so many books, dreamed and wished for something like this. But she lived in the real world. Nothing like this ever happened in the real world.
She flicked on the lights in her room, then off again, then on again. From her bed. With her mind.
The rest of the week was spent exploring just what she could do. As soon as her dad left every morning, she called out to her new friend, and he came bounding out of the woods. She named him Scrappy, since she couldn't think of anything else and it had been the name of the pet cat in the apartment next to theirs back in Chicago. He could understand her, and in his own way, he could even talk to her. Nothing like a real conversation, but in a lot of ways, she liked it more.
Natalie learned how to move things around more reliably, after the effort spent moving the window into place. She also learned how to choke out fire, using matches (that she wasn't supposed to ever touch) as a source of fire. It was safer than the stove, she assumed, so it was probably okay. Her dad never noticed.
She still hadn't told him. Every time they sat down to eat dinner, she started to, but something held her tongue. He just seemed off, and it made her reluctant. Something was wrong, and she wasn't sure what, but she didn't want to tell him about her amazing new discovery while he was sad. It should be a happy moment, so she waited.
She waited all week, until finally, her dad started a conversation over dinner.
"Your birthday's tomorrow," he said.
"Yours too," she reminded him. They had the same birthday, just like Jenny, but he never really did anything to celebrate it. It was always about her. Natalie wanted to change that for once. She just wanted him to cheer up.
"You never left a wish for the Fairy."
Natalie shrugged. She'd totally forgotten, busy with so many other things all day. She hadn't even played a single game on her phone all week, and only opened her books to try and get more ideas for magic to try out. Most of it didn't do anything at all, but then again, the way she did magic didn't sound anything like those books anyway, so it wasn't that surprising.
"Maybe if you tell me, I can still get it to her in time."
"Can we have dinner with the Wilsons?" she blurted.
"What?"
Natalie barreled on, heedless of however he might react. "Jenny's parents are super nice. Her mom makes the best cookies, and you could be friends with her dad, and then we can hang out all the time and we don't have to be alone anymore—"
"Natalie!"
She paused for breath. "Please?"
He sighed. "Is that really what you want for your birthday?"
"Yes. More than anything."
"What about a new phone? I thought you said that one was having problems."
It was, and Natalie was getting annoyed with it dying all the time when she was out in the fort trying to look up things on the internet. "...I can wait a year."
He glanced around the room. "We don't really have a big enough table to have people over for dinner..."
Natalie shook her head. "They've got a whole big dining table and everything. Her dad made it himself. He's a woodworker with mean Mr. Harrison." She stopped, seeing his face. "Sorry... I meant, Mr. Harrison."
Her dad shook his head. "Natalie, what did I say about going into that part of town?"
"That I'm not supposed to," she repeated under her breath.
"...I guess I'm going to have to go make sure it's safe then," he grumbled.
"...You mean—"
"Do you have their phone number?"
"Yeah!" Natalie smiled, pulling out her phone. To her annoyance, it died the moment she tried to turn it on. "Stupid thing."
"Hang on, turtle." He leaned over and plucked something out of a bag on the counter. "You got the Birthday Fairy confused, so she got you two things this year." He handed her a shiny new phone, black with a pink case already on it.
Natalie grabbed it up and turned it on. "You got me—"
"Brand new, not used this time," he said, smiling. "Go ahead."
She turned it on. "...The signal's being all stupid again," she sighed. "I can't login."
He glanced over at the window. "Well... it's still light out. Do you want to go for a walk?"
"But—"
"Their house isn't that far, right? We can just stop by."
Realization dawned on her. She leaped off her chair and ran to hug him around the waist. "Thank you! Thank you thank you thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
"Slow down!" He ruffled her hair, and she laughed. "Finish your dinner first, all right?"
"Turtles are already slow," she pointed out.
"Not in the water."
"Really?"
"Clear your mouth before you talk, Natalie."
She swallowed. "Sorry."
Her dad smiled, and walked around to sit behind he, brushing her hair. "Turtles can swim faster than people. All the way up to thirty five miles per hour, if they really put their shell into it."
"Wow."
"Happy birthday, turtle," he added.
"It's not the fourteenth yet," she pointed out.
"Well, we'll just call the whole week your birthday week, okay?"
"That's silly."
"I can be silly."
Natalie laughed. "No you can't."
He made a face with the chopsticks for his rice, but he wasn't very good at looking goofy. She just shook her head and went back to her new phone, tapping through the settings to get it how she liked it.
He sighed. "Finish your dinner, and then we'll go on that walk, okay?"
"Okay."
Her dad got up and started cleaning up the rest of the room. She glanced up again, and to her satisfaction, he looked a little less depressed. It was working.
"Hey dad?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you."
He smiled. "I love you too, Natalie."