Glimmers of Glass

by Emma Savant

  Kyle leaned over the counter, the heels of his tennis shoes just lifting off the floor. I watched, silently cringing and hoping all at the same time. I really didn’t know much about him, except that he was Elle’s best friend and a Glim. But I liked him. I didn’t want to see him get hurt.

  Cortney came through the curtain that opened to the kitchen. She tapped Elle on the shoulder and said something I didn’t catch from where I was sitting. Elle nodded, untied her apron, and leaned across the counter at Kyle. I watched her lips move: “What?”

  This wasn’t any good. I tugged my earlobe a few times. With each tug, the sound of their conversation grew louder, until I could hear Kyle saying, “I’ve been wanting to tell you the truth forever.”

  I almost sent a spell over to knock him out. There were a thousand better times and places for this conversation.

  But I sat on my hands. I’d interfered in people’s lives enough lately, and Elle’s crazy energy was proof of exactly how much good it didn’t do. Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to throw spells all over people’s lives unless I’d been hired for it. On a good day, it was horrible manners. On a bad day, they’d press charges and I’d get a Class Serpent misdemeanor and a fine of a hundred gold pieces.

  “What truth?” Elle said. “Oh my God. Are you gay?”

  The back of Kyle’s neck flushed almost as bright as his sweater. Was she seriously asking that? Even I could tell he was in love with her. “No,” he said.

  “Then why are you so red?” she said. “You seriously look like you’re about to come out to me.”

  Kyle twisted his hands together, then put them flat on the counter. I could feel him trying to steady himself. I bit my lip and tried to send him as much calm, strong energy as I could without actually turning it into a spell.

  “I kind of am,” he said. His voice trembled with excitement. I fought the urge to stop him. It wasn’t my job, I reminded myself. Anyway, the last few weeks suggested that solving messes wasn’t really my thing.

  Elle watched him with eyes that were a little too glassy, like a drunk or tired person’s might get if you told them to focus. After a long pause that made every last part of my body cringe in anticipation, Kyle gave her something to focus on.

  “I’m a Glimmer,” he said. “Just like you.”

  Elle’s eyebrows shot down into a furrow so quickly I wondered if they’d gotten whiplash. “Who have you been talking to?” she said. “Did you talk to Olivia? Did Olivia tell you? She’s not supposed to tell anyone. At least she told me I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, so she’d better not have told you because I’m going to be pissed if she lied to me.”

  “Olivia didn’t tell me about the magical world,” Kyle said, his voice still trembling a little.

  “Oh, good!” Elle said. She let out a giant sigh like it had really been troubling her during the last two seconds. “I didn’t think Olivia would do that. She’s so nice. Olivia is nice. Do you like her? I saw you talking.” She leaned in way too close. “Do you want to date her?”

  Cortney stood on her tiptoes to look over Elle and Kyle’s heads. She looked puzzled, then poked Elle’s shoulder. “Um,” she said. “Could you maybe move? Because, like, I’ve got to work here and there are… customers.” She smiled brightly at the bored-looking guy in his twenties who had just approached the counter. Elle’s head snapped up. In rapid succession she looked at Cortney, then Kyle, then the customer, and then Cortney again.

  “Right-o,” she said, and marched out from behind the counter. She led Kyle into the back corner of the room. There was a tiny table there, but the corner was a little cramped and no one ever seemed to sit at it.

  She put her hands on Kyle’s shoulders and sat him down in the chair, then sat opposite him and leaned in again, staring too hard. “Who told you?”

  I could feel Kyle’s nervous, delighted energy from here. He held out his hand.

  I wanted to reach out and stop him. But it was too late. He turned his back to shield his hand from the rest of the café. When he turned back around, he held a rose. Elle’s eyes were enormous and her mouth hung open in an O.

  “Did Olivia give you that?” she demanded in a whisper.

  He held the flower out to her, but she eyed it like it was about to blow up. “Olivia’s not the only one, you know,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Elle whispered, her voice so fast that it sounded like one long hiss of air being let out of a tire. “What I want to know is how the hell you know. Where did you get that? What are you doing?” He extended the flower even further and she said, “You’re freaking me out. Stop freaking me out!”

  Finally, much too late, Kyle realized that this wasn’t going to be whatever grand scene he’d pictured in his head. I held my breath. He frowned and pulled the flower back, looking hurt.

  “I thought you’d like it,” he said quietly.

  Elle folded her arms and scowled at him, more confused than angry. “Like it?” she said. “Like what? This is weird, dude.”

  He was too far gone to back out now. He shrugged, defeated, his shoulders tiny inside the red fabric. “I’m a Glimmer,” he said. “A magician.”

  Silence hung like bricks between them. I felt him grow more worried but hopeful by the second. And I felt Elle, too, and her emotions made my whole body brace for impact.

  “You lied to me?” she shouted. Her voice was so loud in my volume-enhanced corner that I winced. Half the café glanced over, then tried hard to pretend they weren’t listening. Her voice dropped back to the hiss. “Kyle effing Dennis, you have been lying to me for the last however many years?”

  “It wasn’t lying,” he said. He didn’t feel guilty, just nervous, but he’d jumped in too quickly and he sounded like he was trying to cover something up. “I just wasn’t allowed to tell you. It’s illegal to tell non-Glimmers about our world unless you’re marrying one of them, and then you have to wipe their memories if they freak out and leave you for it.”

  Her anger was interrupted by a tiny, distracted bubble of incredulity. “Who would leave someone for that?” she said. “It’s awesome.”

  “I know,” Kyle said. “But some people really can’t handle anyone who’s different.”

  “You know what else some people can’t handle?” Elle said, back to the whisper. Listening to her was like being on a roller coaster for my ears. “Liars. You lied to me. That is a huge thing to lie about. Did you know about me?”

  “No!” Kyle said, again too quickly.

  “Liar,” she said again. It seemed to be the only word she could come up with for him. I cringed as I felt the word hit him.

  He shielded himself from the room again, although this time it wasn’t to work magic. My cheeks burned in sympathy with his.

  “Elle,” he said in a low voice. “I’m trying to share something important with you here. I would have told you if I could.”

  “But you didn’t,” she said. “I’ve told you everything about myself. You were the only person I talked to for like a year after my mom died. And all that time, you were hiding the most important thing about yourself from me?”

  “It’s not the most important thing,” Kyle said. His voice was a little stronger, and he sat up a little straighter. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Why the hell am I the stupid one?” she said. “I didn’t lie.”

  “How is my ethnic identity the most important thing about me?” he demanded. “Are you seriously that racist?”

  “You’re white, dude,” Elle said.

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t have a heritage,” Kyle said. “Geez.” He was mad at her now, too. Their anger hovered at the same level. Elle’s felt frantic like fireworks, but Kyle’s was a slow low burn.

  “I would have thought that something else about me might have been the first thing to come to mind. Like, I don’t know, that I’m your best friend.” He scoffed. “But that’s not right, is it? They’re your best friends now.” He jerked a thumb toward Tyler and his crowd over on the brown sof
as.

  Tyler watched Elle with a look of vacant contentment while his friends gossiped and laughed around him. I saw his mouth move, and only my enhanced hearing let me pick up his muttered words: “She has such a nice ass, you guys.”

  Why did everyone I touched end up drugged and stupid?

  Elle tossed her ponytail and scowled at him. “Maybe they are,” she said. “At least I know they haven’t been keeping things from me since I was a kid.”

  “You’re still a kid,” he said. He pushed away from the table and stood up. “And lay off the charms. You’re acting like an idiot.” He stalked back across the room.

  I tried to think of something to say to make him feel better, but he blew past me without a glance and marched out into the rain. A moment later, he was just a red blur through the window, and a moment after that, he was gone.

  Chapter 22

  Reflection was a bad trait in a faerie godmother. Unfortunately for everyone, I had scored high on the Introversion and Neuroticism scales during our Career Preparation class last term and nothing in my life was suggesting the test had gotten it wrong. I’d spent most of the day alone or with Imogen, and all of it thinking.

  It had been hard not to think after yesterday. I couldn’t tell if it was Kyle being upset or Tyler acting like a drunk Neanderthal or just the awareness that I was completely manipulating these people’s lives with no good reason except that Elle’s dad had said so. Everything was a tangle in my head. I’d tossed and turned over it last night and then spread worry over my bagel along with the cream cheese this morning, giving it the slightly metallic taste of anxiety that I could only explain to another faerie who’d done the same thing even though we all knew better.

  Does Kyle go to our school? I wrote to Imogen in the middle of study hall.

  She frowned a little and wrote back, Nope. Elle said he’s homeschooled.

  Lots of Glimmers were. My parents had sent us to public school. My dad wasn’t wild about Humdrums, but he knew as well as anyone that we had to learn to blend in. The more normal we seemed, the better we could keep our world hidden. He probably regretted that decision by now, though. It had definitely backfired, at least if the state college brochures hidden under my bed were any sign.

  But a lot of Glimmers didn’t bother with the “normal” world if they could help it. Glimmering homeschool co-ops stretched across Portland like a web, connecting Glim kids and making sure they carried on their cultural traditions without Humdrum interference. I would have gone crazy around that much magic all the time.

  I brushed aside the cobwebby, half-formed idea of hosting an intervention with Elle and Kyle. It was a stupid thought, anyway. Elle wasn’t about to listen to me on anything, and even if she did come to her senses, Tyler was still going to be drugged until the spell wore off after prom.

  My final decision just after the final bell rang wasn’t a noble one, but it seemed like the most logical course of action: Lie low, stay out of everyone’s way, and let this whole ridiculous charade run its course.

  This would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t run into Elle outside her locker.

  I felt the tension radiating down the hallway before I saw them. She stood as part of a tight circle, with Kyle on one side and Tyler on the other. I could see Tyler’s face clearly but only part of Kyle’s profile. But I didn’t need to see anything to know he was upset.

  “Are you serious?” Kyle said. “We’ve been planning on working on this for two months. I drove clear across town to pick you up.”

  “Oh, come on,” Elle said. She felt annoyed, but her voice came out cheerful and flippant. The annoyed feeling was a low buzz coming off her, and it felt like the staticky sensation my brain always got after I stared at a computer or complicated textbook for too long. She was overstimulated to the max, but she hadn’t even noticed anything was upsetting her.

  I inched closer, pretending to look through the papers in my binder. Enough students passed us in the halls, shuffling to their next classes, that I was just another body in the crowd.

  “I’m not going to come on,” Kyle said. Tyler was sizing him up, but Kyle ignored him. “You made a commitment to me and now you’re just dropping it because this guy—” he jerked his thumb at Tyler “—wants you to go to his house and watch a movie I happen to know you hate?”

  “Hey,” Tyler said. “Elle likes Star Wars.”

  “She likes the original trilogy, you idiot,” Kyle said without bothering to look at Tyler, whom he seemed to regard about as seriously as a bug on the carpet. “Elle, we have to get these costumes together. NebulaCon is the end of next month and we haven’t even started.”

  Elle waved him off like she was trying to shake water off her hands. “Big whoop,” she said. “I have too much going on right now to waste time with a guy who can’t even be bothered to tell me the truth about himself.”

  “Are you gay?” Tyler said, with all the tact of a brick through a window.

  “Yes, he’s gay,” Elle snapped. I frowned. Her sarcasm, judging by the satisfied expression on Tyler’s face, had been entirely lost on him. She jabbed a finger into Kyle’s chest. “You don’t get priority with me,” she said.

  “I can see exactly where your priorities are,” Kyle said. He gave Tyler a quick up-and-down, then, unimpressed, leaned in. “Take off that jewelry, Elle. It’s messing with your head.”

  “No, you are messing with my head,” she said.

  I abandoned the pretense of looking through my papers. Kyle stiffened when I tapped his shoulder. When he turned just enough to see me, he relaxed, but only barely.

  “Everything okay?” I said.

  “You want to do something about your ‘friend’ here?” Kyle said. “She appears to have taken a permanent rain check on reality.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  Elle looked at me, her emotions tangled and murky. If the jewelry had been off, I might have called her curious. As it was, she was wandering around somewhere at the intersection of Annoyed, Confused, and Batshit Crazy.

  I was rescued a second later by Imogen. I didn’t see her, but I felt her walking up behind us. I sent a wave of emotion at her: Help.

  Elle looked at me intently, like she was trying to figure out what I was doing there, then turned away from me with an aggravated sigh and said, “Look, don’t make such a big deal about it. I don’t even know if I’m going to NebulaCon.”

  Kyle’s face flushed. “You what?”

  “Oh, come on,” Elle said. “We were only going as a joke. You knew that, right?”

  Kyle’s face flooded with color. His hands bunched into white fists at his side. He looked furious, but underneath his twitching jaw, I felt the splintered pain that was at the root of his anger. I put a gentle hand on his arm.

  “This isn’t real,” I said in a low voice.

  Tyler had been eyeing Kyle for the last little while, trying to decide if this geeky kid was a threat. Now he seemed to decide that he wasn’t, maybe taking Kyle’s hot face for embarrassment. He threw in his two cents. “That thing’s on prom night,” he said.

  “Not that anyone’s asked me,” Elle added, a little too much flirting in her voice.

  I was a little impressed that he knew when NebulaCon was. Maybe the love spell was at least good for encouraging listening. Or, I thought, maybe Tyler actually was a good listener and I hadn’t given him a chance because he fell into every single rich-preppy-dumb-jock-douche stereotype I’d ever picked up from a high school movie. I reminded myself that I should never rely on a stereotype as truth.

  Then, this newly-complex person added, “Elle is too pretty to waste that night on a geeky fag-fest.”

  Or maybe stereotypes existed for a reason. Imogen tensed behind me. Elle’s eyes flicked toward her, then back at me.

  My fingers hurt, and I realized I’d been gripping Kyle’s arm. I let go, the air suddenly cool between my fingers.

  I looked up at Tyler, scanning his face and seeing nothing but evidence of my o
wn bad godmothering decisions. “Where the hell do you get off?” I said.

  “Oh my God, Olivia!” Elle said. The weird tangled ball of emotions inside her shifted to accommodate embarrassment. It was about damn time. She had plenty to be embarrassed about, starting with this jerk.

  “You know better than this, Elle,” I said. “Yes, he’s shiny and popular and will bring lots of people to your café. But you didn’t strike me as the kind of woman to throw your integrity under the bus for some nice abs and social cred.”

  Her lips and eyebrows both drew together. Her brown eyes filled with hurt, sharp enough to cut through the charm fog, but then she slipped back into the mist and scoffed. “Give me a break,” she said. “First you’re trying to throw this guy in my lap.” She gestured toward Tyler, who was looking confused. “Then you try to get me to ditch him. No offense, Olivia, but you kind of suck at your job. Make up your mind.”

  “You’d have slapped someone who used that kind of language toward your best friend a month ago,” I said.

  “Amen,” Imogen muttered behind me.

  Elle rolled her eyes, like she actually had the nerve to be disappointed in my answer. “You both seem to have forgotten one tiny little detail here. Yes, Imogen, both. I heard that. The thing is: It’s my choice.” She grabbed Tyler’s hand, hard enough to make him wince for the briefest second before he hid it. “Whose faerie godmother are you anyway?” she snapped, and turned and walked off, dragging Tyler along with her.

  Chapter 23

  I imagined if there was a God, he saw something like our school cafeteria every time he looked through his microscope. The room was a microcosm of humanity. It wasn’t quite goths here, cheerleaders there, but it was clear who was with whom, and who didn’t want to be seen anywhere near another group.

  Tyler’s clique was full of rich kids, the kind who had latest-generation smartphones and liked to talk in loud voices about how poor people wouldn’t be so poor if they’d stop buying McDonald’s. It was the kind of group that normally would have driven Elle up the wall, but she sat in the middle of them, listening to their conversation and looking like she’d never been anywhere else in the world. She’d gotten her hair highlighted since the last time I’d seen her, and I was pretty sure her pink nails were fake.