“Really?” She touched her hair. “It shows?”
I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe deeply. “Well, yes. That is, you haven’t exactly welcomed me with open arms.”
She raised her chin defiantly. “Why should I? You’re just another greedy human looking for something you don’t deserve.”
Her bitterness was so strong, it felt like a wall pushing against me. I took a step backward. “That’s not true,” I said. “We were hunting . . . It was just a game . . .”
‘‘Oh, right. A game. A game where the winner ends up with the greatest thing they can imagine. That’s not a game, Preppy Girl. That’s a deal with the devil.”
“Wait a second—”
“As you’ll soon find out.” She curled her lip at me.
I felt my butt trembling, the way it does when I’m really freaked about something. “The devil?” I squeaked.
“Well, maybe not that, exactly.” She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture.
I frowned. “What is it, then?”
She shrugged.
“And I am no Preppy Girl.”
“Whatever. Just tell me what you want.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, just let me think.”
She smiled nastily. “So what’ll it be, you lucky lady? A billion dollars? Wanna be a movie star? How about your own TV reality show, Witches Gone Wild?”
I knew it was a lame thing I was going to wish for, a shameful thing. But I’d given thought to what I really wanted, and it wasn’t money, as I’d believed when I went fairy hunting with my friends. A fancy car, a vacation in paradise . . . What did those things matter, really, if I still had to be a geek that the cool girls didn’t even bother to talk to? I wanted to be known, to be admired. I wanted to be the kind of girl the Muffies thought would be right for Peter.
“I want to be popular,” I said.
“My, how original.”
My cheeks burned with embarrassment. I didn’t think I’d ever really speak those words to anyone, but they were what was really in my heart.
“Yes, that’s what I want,” I said.
“You and everyone else.” She smirked. “Until you get it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked hotly.
“Nothing. Just the bitter ramblings of a loser fairy.” Her eyes met mine, and for a long moment we just looked at one another. There was a sadness in her that I couldn’t fathom. In a moment of—what? Compassion? Curiosity? I didn’t know what my motives were, but I sank to my knees beside her and took her hand.
Despair emanated from her like heat. She was bleak and hopeless, and everything she saw was touched with gray. And in the center of her sad universe was a fear that shone like a lightning bolt, directing her, forcing her to do something she detested.
Get away, something inside her said. The words came from that lightning bolt of fear, that harsh, piercing yellow light. And then, clear as day, I heard a woman’s voice saying, Get away from her, Artemesia.
Almost immediately she pulled away from me with a gasp. “What did you do?”
“I can read people by touching them,” I said. “You’re afraid of something.”
She stood up. “That’s stupid. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And someone speaks to you. Controls you, from your reaction.”
“Go pound salt.”
“What did she call you? The voice inside your head?”
“Tinker Bell.”
“No, really. I heard something—”
“Have a good life,” she said, and then vanished before my eyes.
“Wait . . .” I tried to remember the name I heard when I’d touched her hand. It danced around the corners of my mind. “Annabelle?” I tried. “Abigail?”
Then the name was gone, just like its owner.
9.
It was nearly eight at night when I got back to the Meadow, but the Beltane festival was still going strong.
Gram and Agnes were riding the Ferris wheel, stopped near the top. I waved to them.
“Hey.” It was Peter. I jumped at the sound of his voice. “Listen, Katy, I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what got into me earlier. I was acting like a jerk.”
Whew, I thought. I guessed Tinker Bell was as good as her word. My wish had been canceled. “It’s all good,” I said. Clichés are good for waffling. “Er . . . Here’s your phone.”
He took it. “Thanks. They’ve got the bonfire going.” He gestured toward a gathering crowd. “Want to jump it with me?”
I smiled. “You know I do,” I said.
We walked together toward the fire, where couples were lined up, hand in hand. Hattie and the other cooks were waiting at long groaning tables filled with food. We waved to her. She pointed a spatula at us in warning. Peter blushed. “I was such an ass,” he muttered.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said as we got in line.
“Of course it was, Katy,” he countered. “No one forced me to grab you like some sweaty thug.”
“Well, in a way . . .” I was about to tell him about the wish I’d made, when the couple in front of us turned around.
“Are you Katy Ainsworth?” the girl asked, looking surprised and delighted.
“It is!” her boyfriend exclaimed, grabbing Peter’s hand. “You’re a lucky man, dude,” he said.
“I am?” Peter coughed. “I mean, yes. Yeah. Darn right.” He put his arm around me unconvincingly. “Lucky dude,” he repeated, although he was drowned out by a gaggle of middle-school girls who came shrieking up to us.
“Katy! It’s Katy A!” one of them screamed. Another took out a spiral-bound notebook and pencil. “What’s your favorite color?” she asked, popping her gum.
“Er . . . blue?”
“Where do you shop?”
“Are you with the school paper or something?”
The girl shook her head. “I’m going to post this on Facebook.”
“And YouTube,” another girl chimed in, holding her phone aloft for a picture of me.
“Pinterest,” a third girl said. “What do you think of Justin Bieber?”
“And Harry Styles!” someone else shouted.
“Excuse us,” Peter said, breaking through the crowd to resume our place in line.
When it was finally our turn to jump over the fire, it seemed like a thousand flashbulbs went off.
“What’s all this about?” Peter asked, bewildered.
I shrugged. “I guess I’m just popular,” I said with a smile.
As we jumped over the fire, I used my free hand to wave to my fans.
The next day at school, I saw a row of poster-size photographs of the girls who were in contention for the title of Junior Class Prom Princess mounted on the wall just inside the main entrance. To my astonishment, my picture was up there with them! It was just my yearbook photo, but someone had plastered heart stickers and Post-it notes saying things like “Yes!” and “She’s the One!” all over it.
As I was reading the little notes, some girls ran up to me, smiling and waving hello. They all looked sort of familiar, although I couldn’t put a name to any of them.
“Hi,” I said.
“She said hi to me!” a girl with long dark hair and bangs exclaimed.
“That was me she was talking to,” said another, also with long dark hair. And bangs.
Actually, they all had long dark hair and bangs, just like me. And they all had green eyes, although a few were kind of weepy, apparently bothered by contact lenses they weren’t used to. They were dressed like me, too. That is, they were all wearing white T-shirts and red blazers, just like the clothes I was wearing in my yearbook picture.
“We hope you win,” one of them gushed. I could tell that the others wanted to speak to me, too, but my little cluster of
clones took off when the Muffies of Death—that is, Summer, Tiffany, A.J., and the horrible Suzy Dusset—came my way.
I wanted to run away with the Katy clones, but by the time I saw the Muffies, they were too close for escape to be possible.
“Hi, Katy,” Summer said mildly. I figured she, of all the Muffies, would want to hurt me most, since she was one of the candidates for Prom Princess herself. “I like your picture,” she said.
I glanced up at the blowup of my yearbook photo, prepared to watch her and her friends deface it in front of me. My money was on A.J. to draw the moustache.
“Tiffany’s the head of the Prom committee,” Summer said. “She’s the one who got you onto the roster of candidates.”
“Yeah,” Tiffany said. “Sorry about having to use your yearbook picture, but the others already had photos taken in their gowns.”
“Er, that’s okay,” I said. “Only . . . why?” I couldn’t help but wonder.
“Because my phone wouldn’t stop ringing last night.” Tiffany twirled a strand of her lemon-colored hair. “About a hundred people called to say you should be up for Prom Princess.” She smiled. “I agree. You’re the bomb, Katy. Do you think I should go dark?”
“Huh?”
“My hair. I’d like to look more like you.”
“Where’d you get that sweater?” A.J. asked, fingering the gray wool cardigan that Gram knitted for me last Christmas.
“My great-grandmother made it,” I said.
“Ooh, do you think she’d make me one?”
“Me too!” Suzy Dusset said.
Fortunately, the morning bell rang, and we all had to disperse to our homerooms.
“See you after school,” Summer called.
“What’s going on after school?” I asked, alarmed.
“Pep rally,” she shouted above the din of students swarming through the hall.
“Right,” I muttered under my breath. Pep rallies were almost one hundred percent Muffy, since witches generally didn’t gravitate toward sports except to occasionally serve as punching bags for angry athletes. Besides, I had to be at my after-school job at Hattie’s by four o’clock.
But then when the final bell rang, a big crowd waiting outside my classroom burst into cheers when I came out.
“Katy! Katy!” they shouted.
“Hey Katy!” Familiar voices. On the outskirts of the growing crowd, Verity and Cheswick were waving excitedly. “What’s going on?” Cheswick yelled through cupped hands.
“Eww, who’s that?”
Surprised, I looked over. Suzy D. was beside me. I guessed the crowd had parted to let her through. “You don’t want to know people who dress like that,” she said.
“But they’re friends—”
“Go,” she said, propelling me forward. “Hangers-on will only hold you back.”
“Katy!” Cheswick called again.
Suzy swatted at him as if he were a fly. “Sheesh,” she said. “As if you’d have anything to say to him. Or the nonentity he’s with.”
She said it too loud. I think Verity heard her, because all of a sudden Verity’s smile dropped off her face. Cheswick kept trying to get closer to me, but Verity pulled him back.
I wanted to say something to them, but Suzy directed the mob around us to lift me onto their shoulders and carry me to the gym. On the way, we passed Peter and Becca, who stared at me as if I were a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I put a smile on my face and waved to them, but it wasn’t having the desired effect. Peter just narrowed his eyes and looked at me as if I were a traitor, which I guess, in a way, I was.
But I didn’t want to feel bad. I’d been feeling bad about myself for most of my life. Now, these people were cheering for me. Me. And I wasn’t going to feel bad about it. So I made the “call me” sign to Peter and smiled like crazy.
I must admit, the gym is an alien place for me. I don’t know what those geometric markings on the floor mean. And the place always seems to smell like sweat, or at least humidity. So it felt weird when I was plunked down in the front row of bleachers, surrounded by admirers, while all the players on the basketball team whizzed past me one by one, each bouncing the ball once in front of me before passing it to the next man. One of the guys—the cutest one—even winked at me.
When the procession was done, the team lined up against the wall while Tiffany Rothstein walked to the middle of the floor and signaled for quiet as she adjusted the microphone in front of her.
“As you know,” she began, “a new name has been added to the roster of candidates for this year’s Prom Princess,” she said. There was a roar of approval as a dozen hands patted me on the back. “Since she wasn’t presented in Assembly along with the other candidates, we’d like to introduce her to you now, so that you can get to know her better. Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Katy Ainsworth!”
She extended one arm in my direction. I froze. Tiffany wiggled her fingers for me to come join her.
“Go ahead,” Summer urged, poking me in the back. Two other girls pulled cheerfully at my arms until I was standing.
“Am I supposed to make a speech or something?” I asked as they dragged me to the center of the gym.
Loud applause surrounded me. Someone shouted, “Go, Katy!”
Suddenly I felt like I was having this great dream—a little scary, but thrilling. Every eye in the place was focused on me. For once, it was all about me.
“Hi, everyone,” I said into the microphone.
The audience stomped their feet and shouted as if I’d just won the championship game of the season.
“It’s great to be popular,” I said. “Er, I mean, to be here,” I corrected. The microphone squealed feedback. “I hope I can be worthy of your confidence in me.”
I said it before I realized that the Prom Princess didn’t actually do anything, or require confidence for anything besides, perhaps, the application of mascara. “And . . . er . . . I promise to look cuter by Prom,” I finished.
The gym reverberated with cheers. It didn’t matter that I’d just given the worst speech in human history; the marching band struck up a booming rendition of “Firework.”
I spread my arms wide, as if by expanding, I could pull more of the mass love I was feeling toward me. Being popular was wonderful. I was special, on a level somewhere above ordinary people, and recognized by all these ordinary people as being somehow better than they were. Me, me, me. A sea of me.
But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Peter and Becca and my other friends standing by the door, staring at me like I was Dracula.
“Oh, one more thing,” I said into the microphone. “My friends . . .” But the band completely drowned me out. “I’d like to thank my best friends . . . ,” I said, louder. The bandleader cut off the music, so that I was standing once again in utter silence, with my words “best friends” reverberating through the gym. “My . . .” I smiled at Peter and Becca and the rest.
I don’t know what I’d hoped to accomplish—maybe I wanted to make it clear to them that I hadn’t deserted them, even though I was now one of the popular girls—but whatever I was thinking, my endorsement wasn’t working. Peter just shook his head. Becca waved me away with a flick of her hand, exactly the way Suzy Dusset had dismissed Verity and Cheswick in the hall. She did that so I’d know she’d seen that little snub. And that she’d also seen that I hadn’t done anything to defend my friends against Suzy’s meanness. Cheswick made a face at me, pulling at his nose in the universal gesture for “liar.” Verity didn’t do anything but stare at the floor, so I knew she was still hurt.
I held out my arm, trying to include them in my bubble of popularity, but they weren’t interested. One by one, they filed through the gym door and disappeared.
“. . . best friends,” I finished in a whisper. They were all gone.
After a while,
the crowd in the gym started to fidget and murmur as they waited for me to finish what I’d been trying to say. My friends had bailed, so I took a deep breath and spoke clearly into the microphone: “ . . . my friends,” I repeated, “Summer, Tiffany, A.J., and Suzy!”
The four of them stood up to acknowledge the roar of applause that rose up out of the bleachers.
“Excuse me,” I said. Then I set down the mike and ran out, feeling like I’d lost my best friend. Or friends, I should say. Because I had.
How could Peter have done that to me? I thought as I ran into the Meadow.
And Becca? She was my best friend! And Cheswick, too, and . . .
But I knew why. My friends had deserted me because I’d been acting like a jerk. I’d ignored them to be with the cool girls, pretending I was a cool girl myself, making speeches and drinking in applause as if I’d done something to deserve the adulation I’d been getting. They did it to show me that the people who really cared about me didn’t care if everyone else wanted to be with me. This wasn’t Facebook, where the number of “likes” you got was supposed to mean something. This was life, where the people you’d least expect turned out to be heroes. Where nerdy guys with arms like spaghetti became billionaires, and gawky girls grew into fashion models. Where ordinary people changed the world.
I stopped at a tree and leaned against it, wishing I’d done it all differently.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a name popped into my head. A witch’s name. It was the name that the fairy was thinking when I’d touched her. Get away, Artemesia. That was what she’d been thinking. Yes, that was it.
“Artemesia,” I said out loud.
“Ding dong. Destiny calling,” proclaimed a bored voice behind me.
10.
I jumped. It was her, Tinker Bell, looking like Goth Girl again. “What are you doing here?” I asked.
She sighed. “You summoned me.”
“I did?”
“You called my name.”
“And that means . . .”
“It means I’m your servant, ridiculous as that truly is.” She looked trapped. Trapped and resigned. “So here I am at your beck and call, Master.”
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