by Skye Allen
I lay in bed with the light on until my alarm clicked over to KOAT celebrity gossip at 7:10 a.m., and I woke up with the silty feeling of having taken a nap in the car. “So Prince may bring that tour to a stadium near you,” the giddy announcer finished, and my mind filled with the image of Timothy, cheeks flushed with whatever was in his flask, hair in his eyes, kicking the ground. If the Summer Court was royalty, he was its prince. I wondered what that made Nicky. I eased my way into the bathroom. Mascara rings around my eyes, pillow streaks on one cheek, the same T-shirt I’d gone out in last night. Older and wiser. Make sure the next girl you fall for has a normal lifespan, I told the mirror. Or at least is actually single.
I hoped I wouldn’t see Nicky at school today. Oh. She probably never even went to McLean in the first place. There was no bottom to how stupid I felt. Humiliated and vulnerable and tricked. I shouldn’t have let my guard down, but what was I supposed to think when the hottest girl I’d ever even seen was kissing me, with obvious intent to proceed?
I unfolded my latest Frankengown, a Kill Rock Stars T-shirt intercut in up-and-down stripes with the fabric from a vintage rice sack. The Chinese writing marched across my knees. Today was a day to wear something that made me feel, if not pretty, at least like I was creative.
I sat on the edge of the mattress to lace up my shoes. The sight of the paper girl in her poppy dress, propped against the blue back wall of the puppet theater, wilted all my crisp resolve. Pretty Peg. The name suited her: half down-to-earth medical student, half desperate girl who ran away to fairyland. Why didn’t I ever know that side of my own sister? But it wasn’t like I’d ever known her very well. She was six years older than me, and she’d left for college when I was still in grammar school. She was hardly going to confide in her fat, nerdy, twelve-year-old sister.
I pulled down Margaret’s Afghani shawl from where it was draped on two nails on the wall, planning to drop it over the puppet theater like a birdcage cover to silence a parakeet. I still wanted to find out what happened to her. I just wasn’t going to have anything to do with backstabbing fairies who led me on and then laughed at me for liking them. Ever again.
“Like” didn’t exactly cover the rolling wreckage of my feelings.
The fey were immortal. Nicky was probably old enough to be my grandmother. Maybe that thought would stop me from going mindless on those other thoughts, the ones about her wide mouth and the tattoo on her wrist.
I stopped with my hands full of soft blue shawl. There was an oak leaf on the brown stage floor. I picked it up and ran my fingers over the prickly edges. It hadn’t been there last night; I would have seen it when I laid the Margaret puppet down after I ripped its base.
My skin prickled. The leaf didn’t get there on its own. That meant someone had put it there, and I knew it wasn’t Laura. How was this happening?
I turned the leaf over to see written on the underside in gold: Indian Rock, sunset. Stamped below the letters was a flower with four petals.
A flower just like the one on Margaret’s necklace.
I thought: It’s an invitation.
And I thought: The Folk must have given her that necklace. Not Dad. Fairies.
The fey had all talked about my sister like she was something unimaginably precious that couldn’t be replaced. I thought about the Woodcutter, how nobody knew who he was or where to find him. But I knew what he would do when he found Laura. What he could do to a woman he pinned down to the road surface half a block from where she lived. What it would be like to keep on living after the Woodcutter had plunged a weapon into your family and pulled out its heart.
There was no way to avoid it. I had to go through with the binding to the Faerie Realm, or… I couldn’t finish that thought. Or Laura would die. The house would always be silent: no more piano player. And that would be my fault. I had already lost one sister, and I wasn’t doing so well with that, if the insomnia and the horrors I saw before I finally did go to sleep were any indication. I wasn’t like Mom, retreating into the loving arms of her orange pharmacy bottles, but that didn’t mean I was fine.
Mom. She would never survive losing two daughters. Or three.
I looked at the clock and rushed to stuff the rest of my things into my bag. I had to get to school. It was not even a month into the semester, and I already had two tardies. Three strikes counted as an absent day, and after that it would be a lot harder to stay on honor roll, and I was definitely not going to get decent scholarships if I lost my place on honor roll.
I dropped the leaf into my jacket pocket, and it lit up with a blue glow. For one second I thought that was more magic, until I realized it was my phone ringing. I ignored it. I’d check my messages on the bus.
I tugged the front door shut behind me and struggled to get the dead bolt to lock. I breathed in thick overcast air and the smell of cut grass and motor oil from Mr. Hegel’s lawnmower, already sawing through the quiet at 7:45 a.m. I turned around, and there was Neil in the driveway in his mom’s ancient green Honda Civic. “What, now you don’t take my calls?” he yelled out the window.
I did the trick with the car door handle—ease it outward, then up—and sank into the passenger seat. “You picked me up! Wait, where’s the girls?” There was a tiny pink jacket on the seat that I tugged out from under my knees. I smoothed it over my lap and made the arms wave.
“Dropped them and Mom off. You’re my last stop.” He grinned his disarming grin, where his eyes lifted, and he looked like a little kid getting a treat.
“You’re awesome.”
“I heard there was gossip.” He stopped at the stop sign at the end of the block, turned on his right signal, and looked both ways. Soccer Mom Neil. He glanced in my direction as he pulled out. “So this is about the hot girl?”
“You’re not gonna believe me.”
He reached with a crisp-shirted arm to flip the sun visor down. His carefully messy hair fell over his aviator shades. “It’s meth, isn’t it?”
“Please.”
“Did you break into Novartis and let all the lab monkeys out?”
“I saw a girl turn into a bird.” It sounded so stupid out loud in the glare of an ordinary Wednesday morning that I shrank down in my seat. I found a scrap of hangnail on my right thumb to bite. My body felt too hot all of a sudden.
“Yeah, right.”
“Neil…,” I started. We were stopped at a red light. He turned to look at me full-on. “I’m serious. Something really weird happened last night. A bunch of weird things.”
“Well, talk, woman.”
I explained as much as I could.
He interrupted me after a while. “Wait, so you saw that freaky furby guy before you ate the weird peach?”
“Ew. And that thing was not a costume. Look, I thought it was just a big fetish party too until the bird. I was totally skeptical. But something seriously happened back there.” The little girl’s jacket, it must have been Sofia’s, was zipped all wrong, white plastic teeth gapping unevenly. I eased the zipper tongue down the quilted fabric and thought about what I would do if Neil rejected me. How I would survive the rest of senior year, not to mention the rest of my life, with no best friend.
He gave a full-body shrug. “My mom believes the Virgin Mary was pulled up to heaven by angels. Little baby naked ones with wings. And the world was created in forty days or whatever. People believe some wack shit. But that doesn’t make it real.”
I giggled. “Seven. And it’s not that I believe it—I saw it. Actually saw it. A girl with two faces. All that stuff.”
“Yeah, but you said they dosed you.”
I had to admit I didn’t know what the effect of that peach was. “After, though. After I saw the first stuff. And there’s more. Last night I went back out, and there were more—there were some seriously scary people this time.” I filled him in on what happened at Flea, the threatening Winter Folk, what Timothy said. When I got to the part where Nicky had a girlfriend, Neil slapped the steering wheel.
&n
bsp; “Oh my God, she’s pure evil. Why do people have to act like ass? Nicky doll, I stab you.” He mimed it.
Here in the burning sunlight, breathing in the faint sour-milk smell of the Hernandez family car, it was hard to explain why my feelings were so strong after only knowing Nicky for two days. Less than two days. I didn’t say anything.
He went on, “But seriously, same day. It could be the same, you know, roofie effect.”
“I don’t know. And even if it is, that doesn’t mean Laura’s not in trouble. She is. And they did dose her.”
“Wait a minute, go back. Your sister’s boyfriend was a—what do you call it?”
“Elf, I guess. Fey. Folk.”
“And you think it was a… an elf… that killed her. I mean, whatever their cosplay game is, he’s probably one of them. Right?” His look said: are we thinking the same thing?
“Right. I know. It’s always the boyfriend. But if it’s Jerome, why haven’t they caught him already?” I said.
“Maybe they can’t find him? Is he still in Afghanistan? You need to stay away from these freaks. You don’t know what they put in your head. You’re not going to see them again, are you? Wait. You are. Look at you. Holy crap. You’re in love.”
Don’t say anything. Do not. I turned to look out my window so he couldn’t see whatever was displayed on my face. “Dude, animals can predict tsunamis. There’s things out there we don’t understand, tons of things. Who says elves aren’t real? Do we have any actual evidence?” I said.
“Oh my God, you are my mother.” He smiled the smile he gave his sisters when they wanted to dance to one more Lady Gaga song before bed. “Okay. There are some weirdos who may genuinely be violent. They know some stuff about Margaret that makes us think they really did know her. I’ll follow you so far. And if they say Laura’s next—I hate to scare you, but she probably is. They’re probably serious about that part.”
He doesn’t have to believe me about fairies. He just has to believe me that the danger is real. “I think so.”
“So you think you have to take care of this Laura business yourself now,” he said.
I told him about the Indian Rock leaf. “Okay, I don’t know how they’re doing that puppet thing. But they want you. They want you, and they know where to find you,” he said.
We were in the school parking lot now. I slumped down in my seat out of instinct as a pack of cheerleaders bounced past the car. “Yeah. And I know I have to go. But listen, absolutely, for sure, never again, no more Nicky. Hold me to that.”
“I mean, you don’t have to talk to her or anything, but you’re right, we do have to go.”
“We?”
He just looked at me. I was torn. I didn’t want to get him involved. But the heart kept bobbing up behind my eyes like a sick movie. The puppet Woodcutter hoisting up that horrible red lump. It was going to be Laura next. Like it or not, I was already in neck-deep. I was secretly glad Neil wanted to come with me.
“We’re gonna go, and we’re gonna see these little bastards for ourselves,” Neil said. He pulled the key out of the ignition and shoved outward on his door.
“They’re not that little. If they were little, you could spot them before they messed with you,” I muttered, and I climbed out of the car.
I DIDN’T see Nicky all day at school. I hadn’t really thought I would, but every time someone of the right height with curly dark hair walked by, my head turned on its own. It was always a boy. I didn’t know what I would do if I did see her. Thinking about her just made me want to curl up into a ball and cry, but I never cried at school if there was any way to stop myself. Too many blood-scenting sharks. I didn’t want to end up even more humiliated by having a homecoming princess catch me trying to fix my eyes at the bathroom sink.
At lunch I went to the library, not much of a place to hide, unless you stepped away from the computers and actually ventured into the stacks. I headed for the Middle East shelf, where I’d been slowly working my way through their one book about Afghanistan without checking it out and making the librarian feel sorry for my family, since she’d been at McLean long enough to remember Margaret. I sank down cross-legged out of sight of the front desk and ate my emergency stash of banana chips as silently as I could. One more thing I’d have to figure out while Mom was gone. I did most of the household chores, but she always drove me to the grocery store. I’d have to talk Laura into going with me now. That was, if we were still alive by the time the milk expired. I swallowed the last of the too-dry chips, wishing today was not Neil’s day to meet his lab partner at lunch, and headed for American Government. I walked slow, not wanting to look like I was avoiding Nicky in case I did see her. But I was still the first to slide into my orange plastic seat.
Neil texted me after the bell rang. i’m in chem lab.
He was always in chem lab for third period. I typed back: and?
The classroom was full of kids now. I hunched over my lap and thanked the foresight that led me to pick a window seat when the semester started. We didn’t have assigned seating unless there was a discipline problem, and this was an honors class. The teachers liked to pretend those were like college. I wondered if in college the administration still called your parents if the Youth for Christ kids planted pot cookies in your locker like they’d done to Neil last year. I was on track to apply in the spring to the one school we could afford even with scholarships: CSU East Bay, where I could save on housing by living at home, like Laura. I wanted to get into their design program.
and ms patel says no such thing as fairies.
I blew air upward until I saw a flutter of pink bangs. shes just jealous.
I listened to the lecture about Watergate with half an ear. I was watching the front lawn, the place I’d first seen Nicky.
My phone vibrated again. I had my hand resting on it, and it startled me so much I let out a squeak. Eighteen pairs of eyes judged me. I covered my mouth and made a “Sorry” face to Mr. Howth. His sweater-vested back was already to the class again as he smeared marker all over the wobbly timeline on the white board. I peeked at my screen. Neil’s text said: i’m devising a test. need dna sample.
vay funny, I answered. I was glad Neil was going to meet the fey now. He’d see for himself how treacherous they could be.
AT HOME that night, my phone buzzed again. Another text from Neil: sunset = 6:51. I was slogging my way through a Spanish essay and listening to Rodrigo y Gabriela on headphones to drown out Prokofiev’s First Piano Concerto, the piece Laura had played last winter when she’d won the big San Mateo Youth Orchestra competition. I guessed she was in a bad mood now. She only played old winner’s circle music when she was looking for a fight.
It was six now. I pushed away from my homework station at the kitchen table and went to microwave leftover spaghetti. I waved my arms at Laura from the position in front of the sink where I knew she could see me, but she didn’t look up. Fine, she could fix her own dinner. Her frizzy brown hair was pulled back in one of Mom’s threadbare pink scrunchies, and there was a plate with a half-eaten slice of toast on the chair next to her. I have to buy bread, I thought. And then save the child prodigy from some supernatural serial killer nobody can find. Despair balled up in my stomach like wet clay. A killer who, for all I knew, was eighteen inches high and made out of a fern in real life. I sighed and stabbed rubbery noodles with more force than I meant to.
“Everything okay over there?” Laura was looking at me with giant bug eyes, her hands on the bench instead of the keys. I pulled out my earbuds, and the silence pulsed.
Sometimes, when one of my relatives was nice to me, not just generically nice but actually noticed something about me and said something kind, my brain short-circuited, and I let myself believe my family was normal even though I had a mountain of evidence that it was anything but. I was worried about Laura, and I was craving an interaction that would make her seem okay. “Yeah. Look, do you want to hang out or something later on?”
She snorted. “What
, you mean like go to the mall? I have to practice. You don’t get how much more pressure there is on me. God, I wish I was still at McLean. It was so easy, and I had no idea.”
I was hurt but relieved too. She seemed like herself again. And she was right. We weren’t that kind of sisters. I pictured Laura in her dress-up 1901 pompadour at Flea, holding a red plastic beer cup and tolerating the band. Not in a million years. My head slid backward into the fantasy where Margaret was still here. I hadn’t lived with her since I was twelve, but sometimes I’d pretend I had a big sister at home for dumb things like telling me if my skirt was too tight. Or poker. Neil played card games with his little sister Ariela. Maybe it was him I wanted as my older sibling.
My phone went off again: on my way. I added my spaghetti bowl to the other dirty dishes in the sink and sorted through the coats on the back of the door. I remembered being frozen after standing outside all last night and felt for wool.
The Grant family was sloppy. Even before Margaret, the house was more chaos than order. It had taken me and Laura four months to get all of Margaret’s stuff from Doctors Without Borders out from behind the couch and into the garage, although having Mom there didn’t help, the way she hovered with her double-dose valerian root tea and her sleeves full of old Kleenex, begging us in the voice of a small child not to put that gummy copy of The Lorax in the Goodwill box. Now I excavated a wool jacket that I was pretty sure was Dad’s—the man had moved out years ago, but he still had a coat in the closet—and stuck my arms in the sleeves. I tested the pockets for holes and stashed my phone in the one that was not ripped. There was a fuzzy hat in the other pocket.
Neil arrived at the front door in a puffy jacket that managed to hang on his thin body without making him look like he was bubble-wrapped. I felt huge and lumpy and totally unattractive. He read my mind. “You look great. Girls’re gonna be all over you.”