Good-bye, brand-new friendship, thought Lexie. Hello, same old crushing embarrassment.
5
MAGIC RING
Darling, how’re you—” Mina blinked. “Oookay, Lex. Why are you wearing a winter coat indoors?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“Are you hiding something?” Mina yanked off Lexie’s overcoat. “Oh, honey, who knew you took ballet? And you’re so clumsy, too! It must be quite a challenge. But you don’t have to keep that a secret from me—look.” Mina unbuttoned her own, adorable fall jacket to reveal that she herself was dressed in a peach leotard, peach tutu, peach tights, and silvery peach wings.
“I didn’t have time to change out of my ballet clothes before coming over,” Mina explained. “Friday afternoons, I study dance at Hansel Schumacher’s studio. For me, the words human and dancer are always entwined.” She smiled. “Inspiring thought, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh.” Though Lexie was pretty sure that Mina was quoting that last sentence from her PHOLD. But she had replaced the word poet with dancer.
“Well, um, yes, I like dancing, too,” she said. “Although I’m better at karate.”
“I guess you’re at a second-rate dancing school,” said Mina, “because everyone who’s anyone dances for Hansel. Even Kaylee Milquetoast sees him, for VIP lessons. Oh! I didn’t know you had other guests.”
Mitzi and Blix had appeared. They’d managed to stretch themselves all the way to Maddy’s height. Lexie had a hunch this was as tall as their pix tricks could take them, and it made them look overly narrow. She cringed. Even if their heights weren’t suspicious, what would Mina think about their pastel skin? And their wings? And Blix’s cowlick, pointing like a purple stalagmite off the top of his head?
“Hims Blix me Mitzi,” said Mitzi. She squinted, looking Mina up and down, studying her peachy attire. “New World girls copycats pixies, yes?”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Mina, giving the pixies a cautious once-over. “I’m part of Hansel Schumacher’s troupe. But I think I’ve heard of the New World ballet studio. It’s on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, right? Are you in a pageant? I don’t recognize your costumes.”
“We’re all in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” bellowed the always-eavesdropping Maddy as she swept into the room with a plate of frosted cupcakes. “Hi, I’m Maddy, Lexie’s kid sister, and these are my friends. We’re rehearsing our parts for the ballet. We play the fairies.”
“Ew, no way! Us hates stinky fairies,” said Mitzi before Maddy stuffed a cupcake into her mouth.
“Our hallways are really long,” continued Maddy. “They’re perfect for grand jetés and pas des deux-es. Cupcake? They’re homemade.”
Lexie sent her sister an appreciative smile. Nice work, Mads.
“How sick that we all take ballet,” chortled Mina, lifting a cupcake to her lips. “Mmm, thanks. Don’t mind if I—”
“Hands off Blixie’s yum!” Blix snatched the cupcake from Mina’s hand and popped it in his mouth.
“Excuse me. You’ve got some horrible manners,” said Mina. “You must be in middle school.” She reached for another cupcake.
“No eat cutie Mitzi’s snacky, greedy yellow-hairs troll!” Mitzi not only grabbed the second cupcake, she slapped Mina’s hand, hard. Lexie winced.
“Ouch!” Mina blinked, shocked. “I’m not greedy! Or a troll! What school are you kids from? P.S. 114? P.S. 23?” Her eyes narrowed. “You do realize I’m in ninth grade, don’t you?”
“Actually, my friends are from, um, Butterscratch, which is really far away,” said Maddy. “They’re here on ballet scholarships. And the only thing they eat in Butterscratch is brown rice and Vitaminwater. So of course they’re excited to taste something as delicious as a cupcake.”
“Yes, yes,” added Lexie. “Please forgive how rude Blix and Mitzi are. They hardly know English, plus they’re jumpy from eating sugar.”
“Also, the word troll means ‘doll’ in Butterscratchian,” explained Maddy. “So what might sound like an insult is actually a compliment.”
“Ah,” said Mina. “That makes sense. Everyone says I look like a doll with my curls.”
“Say, Maddy, could you take your friends upstairs?” Lexie was getting desperate. The piggy pixies were stuffing cupcakes into their mouths as fast as they could.
The treat did seem to be working its magic, though. With every tasty gulp and swallow, the pixies calmed down.
Then Mitzi burped. Blix passed a squeak of gas. Both of them rubbed their full stomachs and licked up the last of the cupcake crumbs.
The others went silent with horrified wonder.
“Dance now!” crowed Blix, snapping his spindly fingers.
“Loves it, Blix!” sang Mitzi. “Us dance the Wiley Eye Rabbit.”
Without further ado, they clicked on the Livingstones’ sound system, snatched up the other girls’ hands, and swung them all into a Mitzi-Maddy-Mina-Blix-Lexie-back-to-Mitzi circle.
Whirling and twirling.
Swirling and skipping.
“Hey, the Wiley Eye Rabbit is fabulous!” enthused Mina. “And you’re so light on your feet, maybe you should audition for Hansel Schumacher. Well, not you, Lex. Wheee!” She made a parrot-squawking noise.
Lexie wished she wasn’t such a klutz. Even in this simple dance, her long feet kicked like clunky cinder blocks. She hoped that when she shed the last of her vampirishness, she’d inherit some grace.
The Wiley Eye Rabbit wasn’t hard, but it was fast, and the pixies kept upping the tempo. And soon Mina, the only fullblood human in the dance, began to tire.
“Okay, okay, time-out,” she huffed. “I need to rest.” But the pixies wouldn’t stop. They were singing a strange tune that had no words, only foghorn sounds, with some giggling thrown in.
Uh-oh. Warning. I think this is a fairy ring, Maddy bounced to Lexie. You can’t break free, can you?
A fairy ring? Oh, noooooo. Lexie struggled to unlatch her left hand from Mitzi’s. No luck. Then her right hand from Blix’s. No dice. It was as if both of her hands had been coated with superglue.
Just like “The Stolen Child” poem, thought Lex. But in that poem, the phrase “a faery, hand in hand” had sounded charming and quaint.
The reality was a nightmare.
Can’t get free. I’m totally stuck, she bounced.
The oldest trick in the Old World book, bounced Maddy. Dumb us. We could be locked up in this ring forever if we don’t hatch a plan.
The threat was real. Pixies have absolutely no sense of time, which is very dangerous, especially when a favorite pix trick is to sneak a human into a fairy ring for an enchanted dance that can last from seven minutes to seven years.
Quick, get Hudson! Lexie bounced. He needs to crash through the ring from the outside.
I’m right here. Hudson had been watching all along, sitting cross-legged on the mantelpiece. And he had his own ideas.
I’ll break the ring, on two conditions, he bounced. First, from Maddy: I want to wear your green pixie costume for one day of Hallo-month. Second, from Lexie: I want you to bake another batch of butterscotch cupcakes, all for me.
Okay, okay! bounce-chorused the girls.
And hurry! Lexie could see that Mina was losing it.
“I’m done with this dance.” Mina was jerking and twisting, trying to break free. “Let me go. It’s hurting my feet.”
“Ha ha ha,” shrieked Mitzi.
“No, I mean it,” said Mina. “I’m all sweaty and my ankles are sore.”
“Pixies dances your feets to bloody stumps!” croaked Blix.
“Are you insane?” Mina screeched. “What’s wrong with you crazy kids?”
“Pixies dances till your hairs turns gray and your trolly eyeballs falls out,” sneered Blix.
“I don’t think they mean ‘doll’!” cried Mina, turning to the others. “These Butterscratchers are so hostile. Why can’t we stop dancing?” Her eyes dashed with tears. “Does anyone know the Buttersc
ratch words for ‘I am going to call the cops if you don’t let me go this minute’?”
But by now, Hudson had swooped in between the linked hands of Mina and Maddy. Using all his strength, he shoved a firm foot into the middle of the ring, then shouted the de-spell: “Jump-stump-bump-thump, from magic ring to weary lump!” and rammed his full weight against the girls’ locked hands.
The pixies wailed. Mitzi stomped on Hudson’s foot.
“Yowch!” he cried as Mina’s grasp slid from Maddy’s and the dance collapsed into a shrieking pileup.
Lexie could feel her spell wings evaporate as she rolled away and looked around. Mina, gasping where she’d fallen, had curled up and closed her eyes. And Maddy, who easily got motion sickness, was green as boiled kale.
Hudson stood and hobbled off, muttering about an ice pack for his toe.
Finally, Blix and Mitzi scurried out of the room to find a cozy, private spot to rest. “Us sleepy,” they muttered. Then, in true pixie fashion, they scrabbled under the warm radiator and turned themselves into hedgehogs. All you could see of them were their pink hedgehog noses.
Lexie glanced over at Mina, but she was still collecting herself, slowly standing up. One wing had torn off her ballerina costume, and her tulle was ripped and trailing.
She had no idea, thought Lexie, how lucky she was. If they’d truly been trapped in the magic ring, the next time Mina would have walked out of the Livingstones’ house, she’d have been a full-grown, twenty-one-year-old adult.
But Mina didn’t know that. “Um, Lexie?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“I guess I’m not in the mood to do speechwriting anymore.” Mina looked pooped. “Where are those awful Butterscratchers? I want to give them a piece of my mind. I feel like I just ran a marathon. My feet are throbbing.”
“They went . . . to the store. Hey, maybe we can work on the speech tomorrow?” suggested Lexie. “At your place.”
But Mina, grumbling, was already on her way out the front door.
There was only one person who could help Lexie with her pixie plight. Even if he’d most likely want to give Blix and Mitzi a high five for dancing Mina off her feet. “But maybe I don’t have to mention Mina specifically,” Lexie decided as she went off to find him.
6
THE LONELIEST NUMBER
Bad, bad, bad,” said Pete as he and Lexie slurped their Garden of Diva smoothie. They were enjoying a mid-afternoon break at their favorite weekend hangout, the Candlewick Café. The smoothie was made from banana, soy, cucumber juice, honey, cinnamon, and a pinch of bee pollen. “A pixie influx in your house can be a big problem. They used to drive my mom and dad bonkers back in the Old World.”
“What would your parents do to control them?” asked Lexie.
“Well, they bribed them with cupcakes, of course. And they left ragwort branches in the corners for the pixies to jump on and, hopefully, fly away on—ragwort is like a Porsche to a pix. And they tunneled pix holes for them in case they wanted to leave by ground.”
“The problem is, we can’t drive them out. We’re host ing them,” Lexie explained.
“You need to keep them happy, or they’ll make you miserable. One thing they like is . . .” Pete’s voice trailed off as he checked his text messages.
“Is what?” Lexie sat back. Pete had been way over-checking his texts during smoothie time.
“Is . . . ah . . . walnuts . . .” Pete’s fingers were a blur. He smiled down at his screen. A private-joke type of smile.
Lexie banged the table. Smoothie goo spattered.
“What?” Pete blinked.
“Pete, this whole time you’ve been speaking to me with half your brain and using the other half to text. To be honest, I don’t think you’ve got enough mental power for both activities.” Lexie snatched his phone and looked in on his conversation.
“Who is Crunchee?”
“Give that back!” Pete blushed. “She’s my friend. We met at a Save the Chimps convention.”
“I didn’t know chimps needed to be saved.” Or that Pete blushed. Or had a secret friend.
“Well, they do, and I’m helping save them,” said Pete, grabbing back his phone. “I’m also meeting Crunchee later on at a Save the Dolphins rally downtown.” He paused. “You could come along.”
“Three’s a crowd,” said Lexie lightly. Though she did want to help save dolphins, she mostly wanted Pete to tell her that it was Crunchee, not her, who’d turn three into a crowd. She sat back and waited for him to say this.
“Suit yourself,” said Pete.
Lexie’s fangs itched in surprise. So Pete didn’t want her to come. Had that ever happened before? “Maybe Mina and I could go to the rally together, and we could all meet up,” she suggested, just to remind Pete that he wasn’t her only friend. “I’m sure Crunchee would like Mina.”
“I’m sure not. Mina’s a dung beetle, and Crunchee’s adorable.”
Another surprise. Lexie couldn’t remember the last time Pete had used the word adorable.
Except Pete used to think I was adorable, she reminded herself. Did he still?
They paid the check and parted ways. It was Saturday, and once Pete had deserted her for dolphins and Crunchee, left-behind Lexie didn’t have much else to do. Maybe she’d put the last touches on Mina’s notes for Monday’s speech. Then she could just walk it over to the Pringle apartment to drop it off.
No big deal.
And if Mina was home and offering peach bars—well, that would be an awesome bonus. Lexie hadn’t seen or heard from Mina since yesterday’s pixie escapade. She hoped her new friend wasn’t holding a grudge.
Lexie dashed back to her house, then tiptoed inside. She didn’t want to wake Blix and Mitzi, in case they were napping. Unfortunately, they were both awake, shrunk down to their plumpest, shortest selves, and hanging upside down from the swing bar of their gilded cage, where they were reading Learning New World Slang.
As soon as they saw Lexie, though, they began to whine. “Make cupcakes, please, Sweet Cheeks!”
“Here,” said Lexie, throwing them a bag of walnuts instead.
“Eeee!” They ripped open the bag and began to devour the contents.
Lexie shuddered. She’d forgotten how the elf-pix-fairy kingdom could crack nutshells by jacking them under their brittle armpits and then pick out the meat with their triangle teeth.
“O Punkin,” crooned Mitzi, spitting out walnut as her eyes lit on Lexie. “Me still hungry needs to go to market, to market.”
“I doubt you’re starving, Mitz,” said Lexie. “Considering you and Blix have each eaten one dozen homemade cupcakes apiece since morning and now you’ve almost finished that whole bag of walnuts.”
“O Lex with the honey voice,” chimed in Blix, “carry poor Blixipoo to Central Park?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” said Lex. “Maybe you could turn into hedgehogs and take a nap or something.”
Which made the pixies jump right-side up and throw walnut shells at her. Lexie sighed and ducked. She’d forgotten. No matter how many times they’re told, pixies don’t believe that they can turn into hedgehogs when they sleep.
It had just been so long since she’d dealt with pixies.
“Ouch ouch ouch.” The shells hurt. Lexie ducked them and rushed up the stairs.
She didn’t want to be insensitive. But a pix in the park? Please.
“And if those pixies escaped on my watch, they’d be nothing but trouble to the New World. Orville would dock one of my human privileges for sure. Like appearing in mirrors and photos,” Lexie thought out loud as she logged on to her laptop.
It was only last month that the Argos had bequeathed Lexie the honor of showing up in mirrors and photos. She had celebrated by moving all the mirrors in the house into her own room so that she could see herself from every angle. She’d come to the conclusion that while she wasn’t gorgeous like Hudson or sassy like Maddy, she definitely had “eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass” as he
r favorite doomed poet, Emily Dickinson, had once poetically described her own.
Did Dylan Easterby appreciate her soulful sherry eyes? She knew he admired her double-jointed karate kicks. Last spring, when he’d sprained his ankle, Lexie had been the one to pick him up and carry him all the way to the emergency room. That had been a soulful moment, and Dylan hadn’t been one bit intimidated by Lexie’s strength. “You must be part bionic,” he’d remarked, his voice filled with admiration as she strode through the hospital doors.
Being strong and soulful was one thing. Being pert and perky like Mina was another. And why did she have a nagging suspicion that even Dylan himself didn’t know exactly which type of girl he preferred?
“Bonjour, Lexington.” She blew a kiss to her thirteen reflections, who all bonjoured and kissed her back. This made her feel a bit better as she pulled up her M. Pringle Speech Points document.
“Me has pixie prezzies for Lex,” squealed Mitzi from downstairs. “Dlog, sdnomaid, revlis, dna selkcip!”
“No, thanks. I’m busy now,” Lexie yelled back. She pressed the Print key.
From below, the conspiring pixies snickered. Blix and Mitzi possessed way too much energy for just one house, thought Lexie. And they had no idea how to channel it into anything useful. When she stepped out to the hall-closet printer, she learned their latest trick.
Mitzi had changed the printing-paper color from white to pink, and Blix had switched the print ink from black to purple.
“You two are super-annoying,” she told them.
“Us only wanted to help,” said Mitzi.
“Hunger pains makes us extra-mischievous,” added Blix.
So Lexie relented and whipped up a couple of batches of butterscotch cupcakes before she left.
“Sweetie-punkin Lex really loves her pixies,” Mitzi crooned as Blix hummed between bites.
“Yeah, yeah.” She was out the door before she had to hear more pix nonsense. How long would Blix and Mitzi be here? Orville hadn’t exactly answered this question when he’d stopped by yesterday. Sure, he’d been a help. He’d coaxed the pixies back to their cage, but only after they’d made a mess of the entire house, shredding curtains, throwing pots and pans all over the kitchen, and drawing tasteless pictures on the walls with their glitter pens.
V is for...Vampire Page 3