by Sarah Peters
Wait hold up a hot second.
1) Tobias had DEFINITIVELY informed me that he did not go by Toby and,
2) What the hell was Tobias doing telling people about my poor wardrobe choices?! But most importantly,
3) Becca and I look nothing alike and it was a bit insulting for a bunch of fairies to not recognize who’d screwed up their ceremony three nights ago.
Although I guess it had been dark, and I had been wearing a fairy-made disguise on my face.
Still!!
“Let’s do this before anyone walks by,” Mask-Face said, and the fairies suddenly all grabbed each other’s hands, trapping Becca in a ring between them. They shut their eyes, made faces like they were working on a tough poop, and with a POP, an explosion of opaque blue smoke covered my friend. It smelled like dog food.
A few of the fairies snickered and one definitely pushed me over as they all scampered back into their car and zoomed off all before the smoke cleared.
I brushed myself off and climbed back to my feet. “Buncha yahoos!” I said scornfully. “You ok, Bec?”
“Ummm… I feel kinda weird.”
She stood up and I stared at her silhouette through the clearing smoke, trying to connect what I saw with what my brain knew.
She turned towards me and my mouth hung open and quite involuntarily, I squeaked. Before I could let out another noise, I smacked my hands over my mouth.
Rising out of my periwinkle kitten sweatshirt, where Becca’s normal head had been seconds ago, was now the furry, curly white head of a sheep.
It blinked at me and in Becca’s voice asked, “What’s wrong??”
Ooooh crap.
Head’s on Weird
We did not make it to JJs Sub Shop. Instead I struggled out of my sweatshirt and wrapped it as best I could around Becca’s face. Her sheep nose still poked out.
I finished tying the sweatshirt and stepped back.
“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” her head was bowed, misery thick.
“It’s… it’s not so bad.”
Becca’s sheep eyes bulged. “You hesitated.”
“No I didn’t!”
I’d definitely hesitated.
She gulped and pressed her hands over her face, which did little to hide the sheer sheepness of it. “Why did they turn me into a sheep?!”
Becca rarely got so upset. I reached out and patted her shoulder. When this proved to offer no comfort, I swallowed down my nausea and wrapped my arms around her. My cheek brushed the soft fur of her head and I shut my eyes, pretending it was just her normal hair. Her normal hair which was normally straight as grass, now curly. “We will figure it out,” I promised. I had no idea how but that’d never stopped me. “We know some guys, right? We’ll get you back to normal.”
Ok, so she had a sheep’s head. We could deal with this.
“Your nose looks really soft,” I offered. And, because I’m me and can never stop while I’m ahead I added, “even though you have evil goat eyes now.”
“Evil goat eyes?!” Becca cried.
“Sheep eyes,” I corrected. I mimicked them, with the sideways pupil. “I don’t think anyone will notice.”
Her mouth opened, revealing alarmingly wide and straight sheep chompers. “You don’t think anyone will notice?! Cat, I hate to break it to you, but I DO NOT HAVE A HUMAN HEAD. How will I ever get Doug to kiss me NOW?!”
It turns out that angry sheep are not pleasant to look at. I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. I had QUESTIONS about her wanting Orchestra Doug to kiss her, but that would have to wait!! “Just don’t move your mouth or blink and we’ll tell people it’s a mask. It’s like that goat mask I wore last year, remember? I’m Creepy Cat and you can be Creepy Becca, no biggie.”
“I might as well not breathe,” she muttered, but she obligingly got behind me on the bike and held onto my shoulders as I sped back to my house. The fresh air and my precariously balanced cycling helped calm her. “We’ll get Finn first,” she decided. “And if Finn can’t help me, maybe Anna or Jake can.”
Neither of us brought up Tobias. We’d both heard what those hooligan fairies had said. They’d said Tobias had told them about my sweatshirt.
But no time to obsess over that now.
Passerby in cars stared, and two kids playing on their lawn outright pointed and laughed as we zipped past.
“Kids these days!” I griped helpfully.
Becca said nothing.
“We’re close enough to Halloween for this to not be weird,” I offered.
“It’s in a month,” Becca hissed, but I don’t think she was mad at me. Or at least, I didn’t think she was mad at me until I skidded to a stop next to my garage and she bonked her fist down on my head. “Why did you just let them curse me?!”
“I did not!” I protested, rubbing my head. That’d hurt. “They didn’t give me any time to correct them!!”
Becca was instantly sorry, and she rubbed the top of my head for me. “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to bop you, it’s just that I’m sort of freaking out.”
“Let’s hide you downstairs and we’ll call Finn,” I advised. I went inside first and distracted Erica (who’d been lurking in the kitchen watching Dad cook dinner) with a very boring story about how cheese curds were made. Once she’d groaned and flounced away, I helped sneak in Becca while Dad’s back was turned.
We thundered down the stairs and I unwrapped my sweatshirt from around her head, pulling a blanket over it instead. “Just hide under this if any of my dumb sisters come down,” I advised.
I plopped down on the couch next to her and pulled out my phone.
I called Finn, and he didn’t pick up.
“Ok, fine,” I grumbled. “You try.”
Becca called him, and he still didn’t answer.
It wasn’t like JJ’s Sub Shop ever had more than one customer in it at a time, it was a Monday night and all the tourists on their way up north were back in school now. Finn usually spent his time at work scrolling through Twitter or making videos on TikTok throwing chopped onions and catching them on his nose.
I tried calling again.
Becca sent him a text message indicating this was an urgent matter, but it remained unread.
“Is he dead?” I wondered, staring at my phone. It’d never been this hard to get a hold of Finn before.
“He was acting weird today,” Becca reminded me. I pointedly didn’t look at her. Like yeah sure I’d held onto Jake as he’d turned into all manner of rude animals, but it was very different than trying to hold a conversation with a sheep’s head placed on top of Becca’s slightly pudgy, familiar shoulders during daylight hours. “Do you think he’s ok?”
He’d worn a sweater today. I shuddered at the memory.
“Well,” I said, feeling unusually pragmatic, “we won’t know until he calls us back.” I scowled down at my phone. “Does this mean we have to reach out to the Spit-Exchange Squad?”
Becca lifted her phone. “I’ve got Anna’s number; I’ll give her a try.”
“WHAT?! Why do you have her number?! You guys aren’t even in any classes together, are you?!!?”
“We exchanged numbers last week while we were planning how to save Jake,” she said, as if this was the most sensible thing in the world. “Why don’t you have her number?”
“Because she hates me!” I flopped back into the cushion. “Jeez.”
Anna Flores proved herself to be more reliable than my soulmate Finn and picked up after the second ring. Becca, whose ears were no longer in a position close to her mouth, popped it onto speakerphone.
“Heyyyy girllll,” I said.
Anna grunted.
“Hi Anna, it’s Becca and Cat,” Becca said, glancing at me with one sheep eye. Those things really were deeply disconcerting. “We’ve got a bit of a problem.”
“A fairy problem,” I clarified.
Anna sighed and I could just see her pushing her halo of brown curls out of her face. “What happened?”
&nbs
p; “Can you come over to Cat’s house? And maybe bring Jake?? It’s… not really something we can meet up to talk about.” Becca reminded Anna of my address before I could remind her that I did NOT want that nerd returning to my house, and then she buried her face in her hands, head bent. “This is the worst day of my life,” she decided.
“I thought I was the overdramatic friend,” I said in sympathy, rubbing her back in comfort. “Don’t worry, though. Anna and Jake will fix this. They owe us one. A big one. They’ll make it all ok.”
Anna and Jake did not make it all ok.
Jake, (tall, broad shouldered, blond and handsome as a fairytale prince) towered over Anna (small, skinny, reminiscent of a mouse with a disease) as they both shook their heads.
“This is beyond me,” Anna said, twiggy arms crossed. “They put a proper curse on you. That’s the sort of thing only they can take off, or someone stronger than the whole group of them.” She jerked her head towards Jake. “The two of us combined are not strong enough. Even three of us wouldn’t be. You’d need a couple of people from an older generation, or else at least ten kids.”
“It’s a baaaad curse,” Jake added, pointing finger guns at Becca and grinning at his own joke. Ok, it’d been a little funny. BUT I REMAINED UNMOVED.
I’d spent the entire encounter so far shooting death-glares at Jake. I lifted an accusing finger, like a Puritan about to name a witch. “This is your fault,” I informed him, jabbing the finger into his shoulder.
“Yeah, yeah, get off it, Cat.” Jake brushed my finger away. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m feeling sheepish about this too, ok?” He did not look sorry, and he had laughed his butt off the second he saw Becca, and now found himself incapable of not inserting a sheep joke into everything he said. I mean, mad props, but Becca had a sheep’s head and alas fairy curses were apparently not fixed by puns.
“What are you going to do about this?”
“What she means, is there anything you can do to help?” Becca said, giving them a sinister sheep look. “I can’t even go outside right now.”
Anna uncrossed her arms, only to place them on her hips. She surveyed Becca with an impressive frown and then turned her scowl to me. “A glamor maybe could help? There’s no guarantee you’d look like yourself, but we can tweak it so you don’t look like a sheep at least. Cat lost that glamor we gave her,” (this was true), “so we’d need to make a new one, which that changeling friend of yours is best at. Where is he anyway?”
“We don’t know either,” Becca said. She sighed. “Can you give me a disguise like you gave Cat? Or make me invisible or something?”
Jake tapped his finger against his chin. “Anna’s good at making one thing look like something else, but not so much perfect replicas of someone alive. And I’m no good at that kind of stuff. Better idea. We can scramble your parents’ perceptions, so it looks like you’re just sick. They’ll call you—sorry, ewe—in from school until you get it figured out.”
“Can’t you just get enough fairies together to take this off her?” I asked, doing my best not to crack even a hint of a smile. It was hard. Very hard. Serious Cat, BE SERIOUS. “Like, to actually fix it??”
Anna and Jake exchanged an uneasy glance.
“That’s kind of the problem,” Jake said with an apologetic grin. “Most of the people we know aren’t exactly strong to begin with—the Silveridge crowd’s better at magic, but they don’t hang with riffraff like us—and most everyone else we know is pissed as wet cats right now. Even if I explained that the wrong human got fleeced, they wouldn’t do anything to help. They’d just laugh and say you deserved it for messing around in fairy business. And stop glaring at me Cat, I really am trying to help.”
“I can’t believe you nerds play Dragon Crusader,” Anna added as an afterthought, her eyes now on the paused game.
NERD, ME?!
“You’re the one who plays games on your calculator,” I retorted, deeply offended by this. I never should’ve let Anna Flores into my house again. In fact--! “If you’re done being useless, get outta here!”
I tried herding Anna upstairs.
“Can you really make it so my parents think I’m just sick?” Becca asked Jake, ignoring me and Anna as we had a stand-off near the stairs.
“No problemo,” Jake declared, which I trusted about as much as I’d trust skunk dressed up like a cat.
Still, Becca didn’t call me in frantic panic after Jake drove her home, and when I texted after dinner she said everything had gone fine, and that her parents now thought she had the chicken pox, but weren’t questioning why she was getting it again 10 years after the first time.
I tried calling Finn five more times, but he still didn’t pick up.
After I finished my homework (I tried reading two more chapters of The Count and only got through half of one) I sprawled on my bed.
I now had far too much time to think about things.
Namely, Tobias Monday.
Ok, so like, did he actually go by Toby but only his friends could call him that??? Not like it was important or whatever, BUT why the hell had he told his posse about my periwinkle kitten sweatshirt?!?!?!?! That was practically equivalent to betraying the US government and exposing the truth about aliens to the public.
I flopped onto my belly and grabbed my dragon pillow, burying my face into it. Ok so yeah, he’d straight-up told me he was working for the queen, but he’d strongly insinuated he was also protecting me. Telling his friends about me and then letting them curse (who they thought was) me with a sheep head seemed like the opposite of protection.
I punched my dragon pillow a few times, frustrated by the implications. Of all the boys to be into, why him?! And I just knew he was taking advantage of my attraction to him, BUT WHAT WAS UP WITH THAT WHOLE “MY PUNISHMENT WILL LEAVE YOU SPEECHLESS” THING?!?!?!
I bopped my forehead against the pillow a few more times and kicked my legs for good measure.
I’m not good with duplicity. I can lie and distract, but plotting and scheming just aren’t my thing and although I’m can be as untrustworthy as an orange balancing on top a stack of plates, I didn’t like it when I didn’t know where I stood with people.
“UGHHHHHHHHH” I groaned.
“You having a seizure?” Meg wondered and she hopped into her bed.
“What is wrong with BOYS?” I demanded, flopping onto my back. I kicked again. “WHY DID HE MENTION THE SWEATSHIRT.”
“Problems with Tobias, then.”
I covered my face with my pillow. Maybe it would suffocate me and I’d save the fairy queen the trouble of killing me herself. I wrapped my arms around it, hoping to embrace death all the faster. “Have you ever heard anyone call him Toby?”
“Toby?” she thought about it. “Maybe. I think his friends from school do? They don’t come by Haven Hideaway too often, though.” In a conspiratorial tone she added, “I think they think they’re too cool for it.”
I thrashed my legs.
“Tobias is nicer sounding than Toby,” Meg continued, either oblivious or disinterested in my trashbag of emotions. After a few seconds she asked, “are you two dating?”
“HNNNGGG.” The pillow wasn’t suffocating me fast enough. I threw it off my face. I’d wanted to spend this week curling my toes whenever I thought about the possibility of kissing Tobias’ face, not doubting his reasons for hanging with me.
This was the worst.
Bad Friends, Good Friends
“I think you’re missing the point,” I decided, slapping my hand against the lockers to stop him from escaping. “It’s not about magic. It’s the principle of the thing.”
Finn gave my hand an irritated glance. I’d followed him from lunch all the way to the Art Quad, even though it wasn’t on my way to Calculus. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said, ducking under my arm. “Literally nothing.”
Finn never says ‘literally’ unless he’s literally talking literature. He’d made such a big fuss about it in Ninth Grade that the teache
r had resorted to kicking him out of Honors English class for the day.
He’d explained that he’d lost his phone (the reason for missing our calls), and then explained that he couldn’t do anything to help Becca.
‘Literally nothing’ to be exact.
“But she’s our best friend,” I protested, scrambling after him. He has long, leggy long legs, the kind that make him excellent at striding. I always told him he’d make a great romantic-era hero, pacing through the haunted halls of his family’s ancestral, moorland home.