“Only what we learned from you and Thomas,” she tells me.
But it just makes her go redder still.
* * *
We weren’t lying to Maxine’s mom. We do order a pizza and then watch Ghost World, which we’ve all been meaning to see, but none of us have. Conveniently, Jared brought it home when he got back from band practice. It’s so cute watching the two of them sitting there through the movie, holding hands. If I hadn’t been there, I guess they’d have been all over each other.
“That’s so cool,” I say when the bus pulls away at the end of the film.
“We can’t let that happen to us,” Maxine says.
“What? Taking a bus?”
“No, drifting apart.”
“We won’t. But I think we should start following people around—you know, insinuate ourselves into their lives and all.”
Jared laughs. “So you can end up with a fifty-year-old nerd with a jones for vinyl?”
“Careful,” I tell him. “You’ll be fifty someday and you already have the vinyl.”
* * *
It’s kind of weird having Maxine sit in a chair instead of lying beside me on the bed where she’d normally be. She and Jared spent a while saying good night to each other in his room until Mom finally made a bunch of noise in the hall and started talking loudly about how tired she was and how happy she was to finally be able to go to bed. The lovebirds got the message, so now here’s me stretched out on the bed, Maxine sitting in a shadowed corner, and I guess Pelly and his little dream fairies waiting in the closet to start up their orchestra.
I’m so not scared of the dark—even as a kid I never was—but tonight the shadows seem all wrong. They’re like they were last night in my dream. My walkabout. My whatever. They seem to move in ways they shouldn’t, just ever so slightly: a flicker here, caught from the corner of my eye; inching forward there, where they pool under Maxine’s chair.
I feel so stupid. Shadows don’t move on their own. But then I remember snippets of my first conversation with Adrian:
There’s also the darkness ...
And there was something in that darkness, something that he was scared of.
I don’t know what they look like, but I’ve felt them ...
... Tommery says they eat souls ...
... the souls of people who walk at the edges of how the world’s supposed to be ...
Because those people are supposed to carry some kind of shine that attracts the darkness. And I guess I’m sort of walking on the edge of how the world’s supposed to be right now, because tonight I believe way more than I don’t. I can’t stop thinking about it—you know, the way you can obsess on something. Even when you know it’s not for real, it just keeps running through your head. You look at it this way, then that way, turn it upside down, right side up, and you never figure it out, so you start all over again.
Bottom line, I try to convince myself, is that Pelly s only a dream. And I’m pretty sure that all I’m really doing is spooking myself, but it doesn’t feel like that. Because if Pelly and the little gang of whatnots that come out of my closet are real, then maybe the fairies in the school are real, too. And then maybe I am putting out some kind of shine and the darkness really is looking for me.
I sigh and turn my head away from the closed door of my closet.
As if.
I can see Maxine from where I lie, and she can see me. I want to ask her if this all feels weird to her, too, but talking’s not going to bring a new night’s dreams, so instead I close my eyes. I think I won’t fall asleep—never mind what I told Christy—but I drift off almost immediately. Or at least I must have, because suddenly I hear the fairy orchestra start up, that now familiar sound, tinny and distant, and then the closet door creaks open.
The open door hides Maxine from my view, but maybe that’s a good thing because it also hides her from the fairies. I peek through cracked eyelids and watch the little host go streaming over to the window onto the fire escape. Heading off for their evening s rave. What had Pelly called it? Oh yeah, a revel.
And then there’s Pelly, following on their heels. He hesitates at the end of the bed to give me a considering look.
“Heading off again?” I ask as he starts to turn.
He jumps, like I caught him off guard, which strikes me as odd. You’d think fairies would be way too cool to be startled.
“So you’re awake,” he says.
I laugh. “No, I’m dreaming, just like I always am.”
“Ah, yes.”
“So you were telling me about these fairies in the school—how they’re making me dream about you and how that’s a bad thing.”
He nods.
“And that would be because?”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and I figure he’s going to blow me off with some more cryptic babble. But he doesn’t.
“If you accept my being here as real,” he says, “you’ll start to believe in me again and then you’ll be able to see me anytime. That, in turn, will open the closed door in your mind, allowing the Otherworld to become part of your world once more, just as it was when you were a child.”
“What do you mean ‘the Otherworld’?” I ask. “I never saw your little orchestra before, or anything else for that matter. I only ever saw you.”
“That’s only because you never looked for the others.”
“Ho-kay. But you still haven’t said why this is a bad thing.”
He hesitates, the moment dragging out.
“I’m guessing,” I finally say, “that it’s got something to do with this thing called the darkness.”
“Who told you about that?”
“Adrian—the dead kid who lives in my school.”
“And what did he tell you about it?”
“That whatever lives inside this darkness feeds on souls. But not just any souls. Only those of ghosts and, um, people that walk on the edges of the way the world appears to be ... or something like that.”
Pelly nods. “Humans acquire a fairy shine when they interact with us.”
“And this—what? Automatically sics the darkness on it?” I’m talking brave, like it doesn’t mean anything to me, but my creep-out factor is escalating way big-time. Because I can’t forget how seriously wigged I got last night when I realized the shadows were all wrong and Pelly took off. “Not usually,” he says.
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Except this time ...”
His voice trails off, and he won’t meet my gaze. It’s funny, there’s still this look of knowing too much in his eyes, but it doesn’t bother me like it did when I first started dreaming about him. Now it’s his not looking at me that’s making me feel nervous.
“This time, what?” I ask. “And don’t you dare go all cryptic on me.”
His gaze turns back to me.
“This time,” he says, “I think those fairy friends of your ghost are deliberately bringing you to the attention of what lives in the shadows.”
“Oh, right. Like that’s going to happen.”
“I felt their attention last night, and it wasn’t directed toward me.”
I’d felt it, too, something in those shadows, something that didn’t like me. That didn’t like anything. I don’t feel comfortable talking about it. It’s like talking about it will draw them to me. But I realize I can’t just ignore it.
“This is so stupid,” I say. “Why would they bother to go through all that trouble? What have they got against me?”
“Nothing, so far as I know. It would just amuse them.”
“I didn’t know fairies could be so ... so evil.”
“They’re not, generally speaking. Most of us just are. And the ones you might consider evil aren’t so much that as amoral. They don’t see right or wrong the way we do. I don’t know if they see a difference at all.”
“So aren’t there any good ones we can turn to for help?”
“There are good fairies, certainly, but the trick
is to find them.”
“I still don’t get why these bad ones chose me.”
“Because you came to their attention.”
I give a slow nod. “By going to see Adrian. So what do you think? Did they kill him, or was he a suicide?”
Pelly shook his head. “I wasn’t there to see it happen. It could have been an accident. The fairies in your school might not have been so nasty then.”
“But you said they were amoral anyway.”
“No, I didn’t explain it properly. They become amoral. Those fairies were probably once house spirits, brownies of some sort. Maybe bodachs, or hobs. Their job, their reason for being, is to keep a place tidy. But they need direction, from an older brownie or hob, like a Billy Blind, or from the mistress of the building. Without that, they can go ... wrong.” He pauses, cocking his head to think. “It’s like making homemade bread,” he finally explains. “Baked just right, from goodly ingredients, it can be the best loaf you’ve ever tasted. But leave that same loaf alone long enough, and it becomes moldy and it will make you sick if you eat it.”
“So these fairies went moldy?”
Pelly laughs. “Something like that.”
“When I woke up last night,” I say, “I was still on the street where we were talking. I wasn’t dreaming, was I?”
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“For what?”
“For not doing a good enough job of making you disbelieve what you once knew was true.”
“So this stuff ... you, the little orchestra ... it’s all real?” He lays a hand on my comforter, and those strangely jointed fingers give my foot a squeeze.
“I missed you, too,” he says. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t try hard enough. So now all of this is my fault.”
Before I can say anything, he turns and steps to the window. He’s gone while I’m still trying to figure out what I want to say.
I’m starting to nod off when the closet door opens. There’s a long, squeaky creak, then the door swings silently toward me, cutting off my view of Imogene and the bed.
My first thought is that Jared hid in there while we were in the bathroom getting ready for bed, and I plan to tell him just how not funny I think this is, because my pulse doubled in tempo at that first creak and it’s not slowing down yet. But then I hear the music Imogene told me about, and everything inside me goes weirdly still, like I’m a held-in breath. The music’s just like she described it—the sound of a toy orchestra, muted and quiet, like it’s coming from another room—but it’s indescribable, too. Eerie and impossible, unless ...
I start wondering about a little tape recorder with a cheap speaker when the fairies come into sight.
Real fairies. Diminutive creatures, half of which seem to be made of twigs and vines and bundled grasses. Wildhaired, wild-eyed. Some with animal features, some just plain ugly, some heart-stoppingly beautiful, but with something not right. Something not human.
I shrink back into the chair, trying to hide with nothing to hide behind, but they ignore me. I stare wide-eyed as three of them jump up onto the sill and muscle the window open, then they all stream out onto the fire escape and into the night.
I feel at that moment like I did when I first got my period—flushed and weak and sick. And scared. I mean, I knew there’d be blood, but there seemed to be way too much of it, and I just kind of freaked.
This is like that, too. I’ve wanted to believe in fairies forever. I’ve half convinced myself that I do. But when I see them actually show up in Imogene’s bedroom, it’s not the same. All of a sudden the world is bigger and stranger, and I realize I don’t know anything about it. Not really. No one does. If all these experts can claim to know so much about all the things they go on about, but fairies aren’t in their equation, then what else are they missing?
But that’s not what I’m thinking right at that moment, or at least not clearly. I feel like I’m going to faint. The chair seems all spongy. Any minute I could be swallowed by the floor.
I hear voices talking, but I can’t concentrate on what they’re saying. It’s taking all my concentration to just stay here. I close my eyes tight and grip either side of the chair’s seat and hold on.
I don’t know how long I’m like this, but it feels like a long time. A really long time.
“Maxine ... Maxine ...”
I hear my name, but it seems to be coming from far away. Someone seems to be touching me. I open my eyes and a hundred Imogenes do a slow spin in front of me. I start to feel sick again, my eyes rolling back in my head.
“I ... I ...”
Can’t speak, I want to say. Can’t hardly breathe, but the words won’t come out.
“Put your head between your legs,” those hundreds of faces tell me in one voice, and that just makes me feel dizzier. “Here, let me help you.”
Someone—Imogene?—helps me lower my head.
The next thing I know, I’m stretched out on Imogene’s bed and she’s sitting beside me, holding a cool washcloth against my brow She’s got this worried expression on her face that lightens when she realizes I’m awake and looking at her.
“Way to go, Chancy,” she says. “Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
I start to sit up but I don’t seem to have any strength. Imogene tries to keep me lying down, but then gives up and helps me rest against the headboard with a couple of pillows behind me.
“What ... what happened?” I ask.
“I thought you could tell me.”
And then I remember.
“There ... there were ...”
Just remembering makes me feel all weird again, but I force myself to deal with it.
“Fairies,” I manage to say. “I think—no, I for sure saw your fairies.”
Imogene doesn’t even look surprised. Instead, she looks kind of mad.
“What did they do to you?” she asks.
“I ... they didn’t do anything. I kind of did this to myself. I saw them and I just wigged out.”
“So they didn’t hurt you.”
“I don’t think they even saw me. But I sure saw them.”
I can see her relax. It’s funny, I keep forgetting how she can slip into this Mother Bear mode. It usually only happens when someone’s being mean to me at school, and even then I think I’m the only one that sees it. She’s so determined not to make waves.
“I don’t understand,” she says. “You’re the one who’s been telling me to keep an open mind about them.”
Just talking is making me feel more like myself, even talking about all of this. I guess it’s true: people can get used to anything.
“Yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it?” I say. “You’re all calm, and I’m totally freaked.” I give her a closer look. “ Why are you all calm?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s just ... Pelly, I guess. He used to be real to me, and now I guess he really is real.” She grins. “And isn’t that being articulate?”
“Which one was Pelly?”
“How could you miss him? He was the tall one that was talking to me by the bed.”
“I never saw him. I lost it when that whole gang of fairies went out the window.”
So she tells me what he had to say, and that brings my nervousness back again, only this time I’m trying to see past her into the shadows. Because I totally buy into the danger. After all, I’ve seen the fairies.
“So what do we do?” I ask, hoping she doesn’t have some mad plan to go confront the danger head-on.
But she only gives me another shrug.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I have to think about it. Do some research.”
“What kind of research?”
“Well, now that we know they’re real, it’s time to find out what can hurt them.” I guess she sees something in my face because she quickly adds, “Just to get them off our case.”
And that makes me feel weird all over again. Because she’s right. Now I’m a part of this, too. What happened to me tonight has p
ut me with her right out here on the edge of how the world’s supposed to be.
I just wish I felt as brave as she seems to be.
Maxine’s too nervous to go to sleep until I finally convince her that we’re safe enough for now because Pelly’s drawn off whatever nasty beasties might have been lurking in the shadows. I know it’s not exactly true, but I don’t feel a presence in the dark corners of my room—malevolent or otherwise—and she can’t argue with me because she never really heard the conversation I had with him. Anyway, there’s nothing we can do about it right now, and she needs her sleep because she’s getting way too worked up.
We talk a little more, her voice getting sleepier and sleepier, until she drifts off, and then it’s only me who’s still awake, and I’m only up because my brain’s too busy, not because I’m worried about the shadows.
I sit with my back against the headboard, Maxine stretched out beside me, and try to think of where to start.
I know I have to go into serious research mode, but how do you seriously research something that everybody else thinks is make-believe?
I fall asleep like that, still sitting up, and have the worst crick in my neck when I wake up the next morning.
* * *
I decided that it was pointless to ask any adults for help, mostly because the few in my life aren’t exactly poster people for this kind of problem. I mean, my teachers are right out—I can just imagine the looks I’d get—and ditto with Maxine’s mother. My dad would probably have all kinds of advice, but the trouble with him is it’d be coming to me through a veil of whatever he’s smoking today, and while that can be funny, it’s not particularly useful. Mom would be better, but she has no interest in mythology or fairy tales beyond how she can co-opt them into some anti-corporate, the-patriarchy-sucks rant that has nothing to do with my problem.
There’s always Christy Riddell, of course. Maxine said he was the first person we should talk to about this, but I find myself wanting to use him as a last resort, if at all. I don’t know why. He seems smart and kind and levelheaded and ... well, if I’m going to be honest, more interested in the anthropological listings of strange creatures and their habits than in helping anyone get them out of their life. And I feel that I’m more likely to end up as a case study in a book than actually have my problem solved.
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