by Cyn Balog
His bottom lip quivers. "Uh, no. I wouldn't know what to do."
"Just go up to one on Monday in school and say, 'Listen, there's a party on Friday, and let's go together.' That's it."
"That's it?"
"Yeah, it's easy. But pick a cute girl. Aim high. You're totally worth it," I cheerlead, then realize that maybe the Percocet is kicking in a little too nicely.
Still, he gets this inspired gleam in his eyes. "Well, okay. Maybe I will."
Yawning, I say, "You just need the right girl to fall in love with. I was lucky to find the right guy as early as I did."
"So you know that Cameron is your true love?"
"I'm positive."
He clears his throat. "In that case, there's something you should know."
He sounds so serious that I lean in, wondering all the time if it's going to be an Edenism, like, "I have ten toes!" or "The sky is blue" "What?"
"We have to be very quiet, or else," he whispers, those clear eyes piercing mine. "But I know a way to keep Cameron here with you."
Chapter Twenty-four
NOW I'M SITTING on the front porch, in darkness, waiting for Cam. There's a baby cricket in one of the rosebushes, and I can see its new, wet wings glistening in the yellow streetlight. I wonder if that's how Cam feels, struggling to keep up with the parts of his body that are so new and unfamiliar.
After Pip left, I'd tried to go to sleep, thinking it would be easy, since the painkiller had made me so wonky I could barely stand. Instead, fueled by what Pip had told me, my mind kicked into overdrive, assembling a giant jigsaw puzzle, fitting each piece together until I sprang from my bed, forgetting the pain of my bruised arm, and called Cam to tell him to meet me outside, stat.
It is possible.
I hear the creak of his screen door, and, realizing I've been so excited that I completely forgot to primp, I smooth back my hair and wipe any errant toothpaste from the comers of my mouth.
"Hey, Boo," Cam says, coming through the bushes. One half of his hair, the side he sleeps on, is spiked, standing straight on end like the bristles of a comb. His face looks puffy, and there are dark circles under his eyes, not much different from the black gunk he puts on before each game. He looks at my arm. "Damn. Pip told me."
He leans over to give me a kiss, but before he can, I burst out with, "So you talked to Pip?"
He blinks, surprised. "A little. Why? What is this about?"
I cock my head toward the garage and whisper, "I think my dad's up. Can we take a walk?"
He nods and says, loudly, "Okay, let's take a walk, and you can tell me everything I missed at the… at the meeting of the… oh, screw it. Sorry, Mr. Sparks."
A second later, there's the sound of movement, the noise of metal against metal, and shuffling. But I'm focusing my attention on Cam. Though he's a terrible liar, he is usually never at a loss for words. Not like this. While my dad huffs up the staircase inside with the last of his dignity, I say, "Things are bad?"
"What do you think?" He pulls me from the stoop with both hands.
I dig my feet into my flip-flops and stand up to face him. I stick out my chin, shrink down. Stand on my tiptoes. "You've…"
"Lost a few inches. Yeah. And get a load of this." He turns and pulls up his T-shirt and in the small slash of light, I can see that there are rips in the bandages, and this greenish, black-veined scale is poking through. I try to swallow the disgust, but it doesn't look pretty or soft or nice, like fairy parts should look. It looks like a gigantic fly wing. And the lump on his back is now twice as big as it once was. He faces me, eyes full. "I am officially a freak."
I take him by the hand, and we walk down my driveway, into the street. Everything is silent and still save for a few crickets and frogs and the tat-tat-tat of our neighbor's automatic sprinkler. I pull a plastic bag and a rubber band out from the pocket of my sleep pants. "I have something amazing to tell you. Let's go for a swim."
As I’m fastening the plastic over my arm with the band, he looks across the street and mutters, "Can yon reverse this?"
"No, but I can-"
"Then I don't want to know," he sighs, running his hands through his hair. "I don't want to get wet. I'm tired, and I'm going back to bed."
As I mentioned, he's a total Mr. Grouchy Pants when he doesn't get enough sleep. I grab him by the elbow and push him toward the sprinkler. "Trust me. You're going to feel a zillion percent better when I tell you this."
"If I've told you once, I've told you a million times. Don't exaggerate."
I'm happy for the old Cam humor, until I see the glower on his face. Still, he digs his hands into his pockets and follows me.
In the cool early-October air, the drops soak clear through to my bones. The sprinkler is the kind that slowly moves around, spreading water as it goes, then returns fast, like a typewriter. I grab him and we walk in time with it, then race back to the beginning when it returns. I say, "Remember how we did this when we were kids?"
He stops and faces me, emotionless, his hair matted against his eyes, so that I can barely see them. It melts into his black eyes and stubble, so that his face is just one big mess of darkness and despair. "Your point?"
I keep running in a circle, like a two-year-old, hoping he'll catch the fever. "Just reminiscing."
He scowls. "I don't want to reminisce. I am free-eez-in-g." He whines the last word as if it had four syllables, with a big "guh" at the end.
"Okay, okay." I stop and collapse on the ground, running my Popsicle toes through the wet glass. I try to keep it a whisper, just in case, but my excitement gets to be too much for me. "Pip said there is a way to keep you here!"
He is silent. First, he looks up at the sky, and for once I can't tell what he's thinking. He gnaws his lip, then walks toward me, finally falling on his knees beside me. "Yeah?"
"Yes!" I say, grabbing him by the neck. "Pip is ninety-nine percent sure that it will work. And you and I will be together, just like we planned."
He looks into my eyes, and looks away, like he needs more reassuring. "But is it-"
''Yes. Totally safe." Well, nothing is totally safe. But it's close. "See? Everything is going to work out."
He doesn't speak for a long time. "It is? Did you envision it?"
I catch my breath, shocked that he would ask. He has never, ever wanted to know his future before. But maybe that was when my predictions involved who would win the next football game. This is more serious. This is his life. Our life. I’m quiet for a moment, knowing that the longer I pause, the less truthful I'll appear. Quickly, I force the words out, so that they tumble over one another. "Yes. And you know my visions are always right."
I'm still dwelling on the lie, feeling its bitter taste on my tongue and wondering if it will come back to haunt me later, when he says, "Why? Why would you want to be with me? I’m going to be a freak. Nothing can stop this."
"I've always thought you were a freak," I say, grinning down at him as he puts his head in my lap. In the moonlight, he's more beautiful than ever; his face looks cut from marble, his lips look
smooth and kissable, and the bit of light brings out the speckles of brown in his normally black eyes. Breathing heavy, he lets the water hit his face, unmoving, like a statue. I stroke my hand through his wet hair, over his grizzled jawline, and lean over to give him a kiss. "And you're right about one thing. Nothing can stop this.''
Chapter Twenty-five
I'M SITIING AT my desk, eating a Hot Pocket and trying to scrape a smear of tomato sauce off my homework, when my mother opens the door a crack. Without knocking, of course. I'm about to launch into my standard "Hello? Privacy!" rant, but she's already talking loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear. "We received a call this morning from Mrs. Nelson. She wanted to thank me for the sfogliatelle and inform me that some young lady I might know was"-and she whispers this part, though even her whisper is louder than regular speech-"fornicating on her front lawn?"
"We weren't… I mean, seriously," I blubber, so mortified I can barely hold my pencil. "She's been watching too much late-night cable. I just had an urge to… play in the sprinklers."
As the excuse leaves my mouth, I am fully aware of how dumb it sounds.
"At one in the morning?"
I shrug. "Serves her right for watering her lawn in October. She needs to let it go."
She rolls her eyes. "She probably forgot to turn off the automatic setting. Mrs. Nelson is going through a very trying time, what with poor Gracie."
"Is Gracie any better?" I ask, grateful to sway the conversation away from our late-night improprieties. I mean, seriously, adults can so overreact.
"No. Mrs. Nelson told me it will be any day now/'
"Oh, that's horrible. Maybe your sfogliatelle will help bring a miracle," I say, though I truly doubt it. I’m just, being angelic in hopes of cleansing her of the mental image of her only child doing the nasty on the front lawn.
"Maybe," she says. She continues to stare at the ground, lost in thought.
"I have homework," I finally say, hoping to nudge her out the door. "Anything else?"
"Oh." She opens the door a little more, and I see Pip standing there. He's wearing another Gap outfit, and it's cute to see that he really has been making an effort to muss up his hair the way I taught him to.
"Good," I say, leaning over and pulling him into the room.
"I'll just leave you two alone," my mother says, beaming. And, get this, she actually closes the bedroom door behind her! Now, she's never had anything against Cam, but why is she so head-over -heels for Pip? Is it because Cam oozes sex, and Pip carries the Good Mothering Seal of Approval on his forehead?
I’m still contemplating this when I realize he's fidgeting. "Sit down. We have work to do."
He glances at my bed, which is the only open seat in my room, and then, bashful, Indian-squats on the rug.
I pull the paper off my desk and wave it in front of him. "Voila. I wrote everything out to make sure we're all clear."
"Does Cameron know about this?"
Last night, despite his protests, I'd managed to convince Cam that I would love him no matter what and that staying with me, no matter how he looked, was better than leaving. He agreed wholeheartedly that he didn't want to leave me, but his big concern was that I would drop him because of a few silly wings. As if I were that shallow. I nod and say, "But Dawn is always on his back, so he can't help us. It's up to us to save him."
Pip swallows. Then he swallows again. His face is turning red. Pip is not used to defying authority. Hell, he probably isn't used to defying anyone.
"Don't be afraid. You said yourself-and I read from the paper-" 'A fairy must cross over to Otherworld of his own free will.' And he doesn't want to."
He opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again, like a guppy gasping for air outside of its bowl. "They will be angry if he doesn't go."
"So What? We had nothing to do with his decision. It's totally up to him," I explain, watching his ears turn the color of lobsters. "And besides, what can they do?"
According to Pip, at a fairy's Becoming, the portal will open at midnight and will not close until a young life has crossed into Otherworld. But the fairy must go of their own free will. There have been stories of humans accidentally crossing into the portal before the fairy could make it across, leaving the poor fairy stranded in this world. So if, by some strange twist of fate, someone else takes Cam's place, he will be forced to stay here. With me. Forever!
I like the sound of that.
"They will be angry," he repeats. "I am not sure what they will do."
"What happened to the other fairies in the stories you spoke of? The ones who were stranded in this world?"
He says, "I do not know. They were never heard from again."
"Oh. Still, it's worth a try.”
"But remember: somebody has to go in his place, or otherwise the portal will remain open and the balance between Otherworld and this world will be destroyed. There's a legend that says if the balance is ever upset, both worlds will be thrown into turmoil, consumed by fire for a thousand years."
I raise my eyebrows. "Seriously?"
He nods.
I imagine the guilt I’d feel knowing my stupid boyfriend-saving plan was the sole source of our world's global warming crisis. Leaning back in my chair, I say, "Okay, right, we can just substitute some other poor sucker."
Pip whispers, "It's important that they not find out about this. Dawn's only objective is to convince him to return to Otherworld, and I do not know how far she would go to remove the barriers in her way."
"You're talking about me."
"Yes."
"Like what? Turning me into a horse?"
I'm only half joking, but he nods like it's a serious possibility. I stamp out the feeling of nausea that's beginning in my stomach.
"Relax," I whisper, more to myself than to him. "By the time they realize that he doesn't want to go, it will be too late. I've told Cam to just play it cool, act like he's really into being a fairy, and then, at the last minute, he can pretend like he had a change of heart. And by then, Dawn won't have the time to do anything to convince him."
He nods, but I can tell he's still uneasy. Finally, he says, "We won't be able to protect the… the 'poor sucker' she takes with her, though."
"I know-," I say solemnly, thinking about how we could possibly make Sara Phillips, the way-too-peppy and beautiful captain of the cheerleaders, enter into the portal on his behalf. Promise a free pedicure? "She-I mean, whoever it is-will be our sacrifice."
He takes a deep breath and looks at the ground. "I think I may have failed to mention this. The person Dawn takes with her… it has to be someone who is also turning sixteen on October fifteenth."
I nearly fall out of my chair. "What?"
"Um, yes. Humans, too, can only cross into Otherworld on either their day of birth or their sixteenth birthday. No other time."
His eyes are wide, as if he's afraid of me. Me. So I quiet my voic
e and calmly say, "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
"I don't know. I…"
I think for a minute, about our entire high school class. Nope, out of everybody, it's only Cam and I who are October 15 birthdays. And it's not like I'm going to sacrifice my life on Earth just to keep Cam here; that would be defeating the purpose of this glorious plan to save true love. So what can I do? Advertise on MvSpace to see if I can get any poor soon-to-be-sweet-sixteens to come to our party? Take out an ad on Craigslist?
Hopeless.
"This is a major problem. I don't know anyone else who was born on the same day Cam and I were." I sigh.
"Yes, you do." He gulps. Then he gulps again. "Me."
Chapter Twenty-six
"I CAN DO it," he says, his voice unwavering.
For the first time, as he kneels in front of me, he looks rather strong and substantial, like a knight readying for battle. "I am not afraid. I've lived there before, and I can do it again."
I shake my head. Pip is a good guy, strange as he may be. He didn't deserve the cruelty of the fairies the first time, and he certainly doesn't deserve a second helping. "But you said that they treated humans badly there. They were mean to you."
He leans toward me, his eyes turning dark gray, then plucks at the carpet. "But do I really fit in here?"
It's true that he's a bit of an oddball. But in a good way. It's obvious he doesn't see himself, doesn't see that his differences make him interesting, not an outcast, like he was in Otherworld. A few days ago, I was laughing with the others about the new kid, but now I see that this "freak" is a faithful, good person. A person who doesn't deserve to be treated badly… by anyone. "You fit in among those that matter."