Me, My Elf & I

by Heather Swain

  “No!” Poppy shouts. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Shhh,” I hiss. I don’t want Mom and Dad to hear us fighting like erdler kids. “Fine,” I tell her. “You can come but you’re only watching. Not playing.”

  We find a nice flat place in the middle of the meadow and spread out in a circle. Ari tosses the Frisbee to Mercedes and she throws it to me. I catch it, but then I have no idea what to do with it. Timber jogs over. “Here,” he says. “I’ll show you how.”

  I hand him the Frisbee. “See, you hold it flat like this,” he says. “Then you flick your wrist and let it go.” He throws it a short distance.

  Poppy runs after it like a little dog and brings it back. “Thanks!” Timber says to her, but I shoot her an evil look. “Here, you try.” He hands it to me.

  I hold it flat and flick my wrist like he did, but the thing goes all wobbly and lands nearly at my feet. Poppy runs over and picks it up again. “This is fun!” she yells, and puts it on her head like a hat.

  I grab it from her. “Stop it! Go sit over there.” I point to the grass behind me.

  Poppy folds her arms across her chest and squints. “You’re mean, Zephyr,” she says, but she stomps away and leaves us alone.

  “How do you do it again?” I ask Timber.

  “Like this,” he says. He stands behind me and puts his arms around my body. I’m warm and my skin prickles as he touches me. I can feel his breath on the back of my head, which makes the little hairs on my neck stand up. He takes my wrist in his hand and lifts my arm, then bends and straightens it like I’m a puppet. My heart is beating so fast that my legs get wobbly and I’m afraid I’ll fall down. “You have to swing your whole arm,” he tells me as he continues moving it back and forth. “And you step out with this leg.” He pushes his knee into the back of mine, making my leg move forward. “Then, at the very end, you flick it.” We put all the motions together, Timber behind me guiding my body. I flick my wrist and let go of the Frisbee. It sails through the air, making a long, wide arc straight for Ari. Ari jumps and catches it and we all cheer and clap.

  “That was great!” Timber says.

  “Poppy!” I yell. “Did you see that? I did it!” I turn around to make sure she saw it, but I can’t find her. “Poppy?” She’s not in the grass where I told her to sit. “Have you guys seen my sister?”

  Timber looks around. “She must be with your mom and dad.”

  “Mercedes,” I call, jogging toward her. “Did you see Poppy go back up the hill?”

  Mercedes looks over her shoulder to where my family is sitting. “No. I don’t see her up there.”

  Ari runs over to us, tossing the Frisbee up in the air and catching it. “You looking for Poppy?” he asks and I nod. “I saw her go that way.” He points in the opposite direction.

  “What! Why didn’t you stop her? Why didn’t you tell me?” I yell at him.

  Ari drops the Frisbee. “I . . . I . . . I,” he stammers. “I thought it was okay. You sent her over there.”

  “Oh no,” I moan and feel sick. “She doesn’t know her way around. She could be anywhere.”

  “You want me to get your dad?” Ari asks.

  “No!” I say sharply. “We have to find her.”

  I can’t let my parents know that Poppy disappeared. Not after what happened with Persimmon yesterday. If another one of my sisters gets lost, they will yank us out of Brooklyn so fast that I won’t even have a chance to wave good-bye.

  “She can’t be far,” says Timber. “Where’s she like to go?”

  “I bet she wanted to climb a tree,” I say. “That’s what she does at home when she’s upset.”

  “Ari and Mercedes, you guys go that way,” Timber says, pointing toward one edge of the meadow. “And Zephyr and I’ll go this way.” He points to the other edge. “Those are the closest trees. She has to be in one place or the other.”

  Ari and Mercedes take off, then Timber and I start running. “Poppy! Poppy!” I call up into the trees. “Where are you? Come on! I’m sorry that I was mean to you.”

  “Is she good at climbing?” Timber asks. We both look up into the tangle of branches and leaves over our heads.

  “She’s great,” I tell him. “She could be to the top of one these things by now.”

  Timber laughs a little.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “No, no.” Timber puts his hand on my shoulder. “I’m not laughing about your sister running off. It’s just that, you guys are all so interesting. I don’t know girls who’ve never seen a Frisbee but can climb to the top of a tree. That’s all.”

  “I don’t think this is working,” I say, shrugging off his touch. “You go that way and I’ll go this way.”

  We split up. I walk into the middle of the trees and close my eyes. I try to conjure up my mother’s trick of calling her children back. I concentrate on Poppy, trying to see her and feel her lost, but I’ve got nothing. Probably because I’m mad at her so my magic won’t work right. I have to calm myself down, remember to love her so that she’ll want to come back into my heart. “I’m sorry, Poppy,” I whisper. “I love you. You’re my sister. Please come back.” I lift my arms. I hear a hawk screech, a dog bark, people shouting, but nothing from Poppy. Then I hear Timber yelling my name.

  “Found her! I found her, Zephyr!”

  I run toward his voice and find him standing beneath a big oak tree with his hands on his hips, looking up. I follow his eyes to see Poppy’s feet dangling from a large, low branch.

  “Oh, blessed Mother Earth and all her creatures great and small!” I yell and throw my arms around Timber’s neck. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

  Timber wraps his arms around my back. I squeeze him tighter and he lifts me off the ground a few inches. I look into his face to tell him how relieved I am that he found her, but as soon as our eyes meet I can’t speak. He stares hard at me. His eyes are beautiful, like the early evening sky, and I’m a bird soaring. A little grin lurks on his lips. He gently puts me down on the ground then leans toward me with his eyes closed. That’s when I remember what Ari told me. That erdler guys and girls don’t hug and touch unless they want something to go on between them. But as soon as I’m about to pull away, Timber tugs me just a little bit closer so our noses nearly touch, then he tilts his head to one side and presses his mouth against mine. We kiss and my whole body goes liquid, as if someone has turned me into warm water.

  He pulls away slowly and blinks his eyes open. “You’re welcome, Zephyr,” he says.

  I step back and press my fingers against my tingling mouth. I can’t believe what just happened. I’m not sure I understand it. But when I look up, I see Ari and Mercedes, peeking out from behind a tree with their mouths hanging open. On the branch just above them sits a beautiful red-tailed hawk. I wonder if the hawk is an omen. Good or bad. I don’t know what it could mean.

  “Should we get her down?” Timber asks me.

  “Huh?” I say, completely forgetting for just a moment about Poppy in the tree. “Oh, right, yeah, my sister.” I shake my head to clear my thoughts, but that kiss, that delicious kiss, will not leave my mind. Timber kissed me. I kissed him. We kissed. Right here, beneath the oaks, I kissed an erdler boy! I want to sing and dance. Pluck flowers from the ground. Skip and shout. Tell it to the world. I wish Briar were here.

  “Do you want me to do it?” Timber asks, and for a second I think he means kiss me again.

  Oh yes, I want to say, but then I realize he means do I want him to get Poppy down.

  “I’ll do it,” I say, quickly pulling myself together. I plant myself below her feet. “Poppy,” I call up gently. “Pop, it’s Zephyr.”

  “Go away,” she says.

  “Aw, Pop. Come on. I’m sorry. I’m really really sorry that I was so mean to you. You can play Frisbee with us now.”

  “Don’t want to.” She rustles in the leaves.

  “Please. My friends want you to.” I look at Timber and Ari and Mercedes, who’ve com
e to stand below the tree with us.

  “Yeah,” says Mercedes. “Come on down. You can be my partner.”

  “Please, Poppy,” I plead. “Mom and Dad are waiting for us.” Poppy is silent. Now I’m getting desperate. “I’ll tell Mom that you ran off,” I threaten Poppy. “And remember how mad she got when Persimmon disappeared yesterday.”

  “All right,” Poppy says with a defeated sigh. “I’ll come down, but you better not tell.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Poppy crawls over the large branch and then shimmies down the trunk. Timber reaches up for her and helps her to the ground. Despite being annoyed with her, I drop down and wrap her in a big hug. “Please don’t do that again,” I say. “You really scared the daylights out of me.”

  Poppy hugs me back. “Then be nice,” she says.

  I pick her up. “I will. I promise. Now let’s go.”

  “You want a piggyback ride?” Timber asks her.

  “Yeah! ” Poppy yells. Mercedes lifts her onto Timber’s back. Although this is really nice of him, I feel kind of jealous.

  As we near the hill, I hear my family before I see them. They’re making music. Dad and Grove are strumming hard on their guitars while Mom plays the flute. Even Willow has joined in the beautiful four-part harmony. Bramble has a penny whistle and Persimmon dances around in just her underpants, rattling a shaker full of dried beans. They’re singing an old elf song called “The Craggy Rocks of My Heart.”

  I love this song. It reminds me of Grandma Fawna and late nights around full moon bonfires with all my cousins. Part of me wishes that I’d brought my lute so that I could run up the hill and join right in. But what would Ari, Mercedes, and Timber think? I’m certain their families don’t do strange things like this. Of course, Ari is thrilled. He’s the first to reach the blankets and plunk himself down near Dad and Grove. Even Mercedes seems to think it’s okay because she shrugs, then ambles over to listen.

  Timber is the only one who stops. He sets Poppy down and she races to the wagon to grab a tambourine. I stand beside Timber, trying to think up excuses for why my family is so odd, certain that he’s regretting our kiss now. But he turns to me and says, “I thought I recognized your dad. He’s that singer, isn’t he? Drake something?”

  “Addler,” I say.

  “Yeah, now it all makes sense,” he says, nodding at me. “The clothes. This whole thing. I get it.”

  “What thing?”

  “It’s your dad’s schtick. This whole out-in-the-woods, hippy trippy kind of vibe. It’s brilliant. The folkies love him, the goths think he’s cool, and he can really rock, so he’s got good crossover potential.”

  I have no idea what any of that means, but just to keep up the conversation I say, “One of his songs charted, but I don’t know where.”

  “Really?” Timber asks, clearly impressed.

  “I guess so,” I say. “Something about a billboard and then he’s going to be in a show about foxes.”

  “What?” Timber says, laughing.

  My cheeks grow warm. “I don’t know,” I mumble. “I guess the song gets played on lots of radio stations and now on TV or something.”

  Timber shakes his head, but he’s also smiling. “God, Zeph,” he says. “Your family is so cool!”

  Wow, I think, as he joins the others. That’s the second most shocking thing that’s happened today.

  chapter 8

  THE MINUTE I walk up the school steps on Monday morning, I get dizzy and woozy. My head feels like a balloon floating above my body held by a thin string. The whole rest of the weekend all I could think about was the moment I would see Timber again. And now that it’s almost here, I’m freaking out!

  I’ve been dying to talk to someone about what happened under the trees, but only Ari and Mercedes know. I couldn’t tell my mom and dad because first of all, weird. And second, even if it wasn’t weird to talk to your mom and dad about the first guy you kissed, I don’t know how they’d feel about me kissing an erdler instead of an elf. I definitely can’t tell Poppy, because she’d just blab it all over the place until even the pigeons would be discussing it. Normally, I’d talk to my cousin Briar, but obviously she’s not here. Or Willow, but she’s so miserable without her boyfriend that telling her I kissed a guy would be cruel. I thought about talking to Grove, but then I felt weird because really I want to talk to a girl, plus he’s never had a girlfriend, so what would he know. I begged my mom and dad to let me hang out with Ari and Mercedes on Sunday so we could work on the audition (and talk about Timber, of course), but they said no. They wanted family time. As if hanging out in the park all day Saturday from ten in the morning until dark wasn’t enough?

  So now, after a torturous forty-eight hours, it’s finally Monday morning and I’m about to walk into school, where I know at some point I’ll see Timber. And yet, for some reason, I just can’t seem to open these big green doors in front of me.

  “What are you waiting for, your handmaiden?” a voice says behind me. I turn around to see that awful pixie lady bustling up the steps, barking at me. “Overprivileged little princesses. Can’t even open doors for yourself. Or do you think it’s automatic? Wait till I tell the gals in the office about this one.” She pushes past me and swings the door open, bumping me off the top step in the process.

  At first, I’m so shocked that I can’t think of anything to say. But then I’m mad enough to stomp through the door, ready to zap her. She’s disappeared, though. Maybe she really is a pixie and she scurried off to a mouse hole where she belongs with the other rodents.

  I’m left standing alone right inside the doors. I scan the hallway for signs of Timber or, worse, Bella and her underlings. What will happen when I see Bella today? Did Timber tell her that we kissed? Did they break up? Is he my boyfriend now? The truth is, I don’t know how erdlers do this whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing. In Alverland there are strict rules about who can date (only people from different clans) and when you can meet (at festivals and celebrations when all the clans get together). Also, an elf would never secretly kiss someone if they were already dating another person! I have no idea if what happened in the park with Timber was typical erdler stuff. Who knows what they do! Maybe they go around kissing anyone they take a fancy to, which frankly I’m not into. And it worries me a little bit that I kissed someone else’s boyfriend. Maybe that’s just the nicey-nice elf in me talking. Because another part of me is really excited about it. I wanted so badly to ask Timber all of those questions at the picnic, but I couldn’t with my family around. It was maddening! I had to sit beside him wondering what was going on in his mind while he was singing with my family, then trading stories with Dad and Grove about being on the road with a band. Maybe today I can steal him away for a little bit and ask him what all of this means.

  Since I don’t see anyone I know in the hall, I head for the courtyard. Luckily, the first person I see that I know is Mercedes. She’s sitting at a table in the sun with her headphones on, finishing her geometry homework. I plunk down in the chair beside her.

  “Hola, chica! ” she says, taking off her earphones. “Oh, don’t we look nice today. Getting dressed up for someone?” she asks with a knowing grin.

  I look down self-consciously at my dark green tunic with deep pink roses embroidered around the hems. It’s true, I wore this on purpose because it fits a little bit more snug than some of my others and the color makes my eyes sparkle. I even put on my three favorite amulets: a hawk’s feather for luck, a clam shell for laughter, and a sachet of dried lavender for love.

  Mercedes leans in close. “Did he call?”

  I shake my head no.

  “Figures.” She snorts. “Men! Always pigs.”

  “But he doesn’t have my phone number,” I tell her.

  She gives me the look with an eyebrow up and her lips crinkled to the side that means I’m being really dumb. “He could find it. Or he could have asked you for it. But he didn’t.”

  My heart sinks and la
nds like a rock in the bottom of my belly. “But why did he . . . you know? The kiss. Is that, uh, normal?”

  “For him it is,” she says.

  “Is that good?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know what to think!”

  “Do you have ensemble with him today?”

  I nod. My heart buoys back into my chest and starts thumping like a rabbit being chased by a fox. “What should I do?”

  “Listen.” She grips my arm. “You play it cool, Zephyr. Act like nothing ever happened. He’s the one who kissed you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Let him bring it up.”

  “But what if I see Bella?” I whisper, glancing around to make sure she’s nowhere near.

  “Who cares about her? After all the smack she talked about you? Don’t you get it yet? She’s evil, Zephyr. Pure evil!”

  “But I don’t want to be mean,” I say.

  Mercedes slaps my leg. “You gotta get over that right now, mija.”

  The bell rings. I jump. Nothing new.

  “Find me at lunch,” Mercedes says, shoving her book and tablet back into her bag. “Can’t wait to hear what happens.”

  My legs are so wobbly on my way to ensemble that I’m afraid I’ll fall down in the middle of the hallway. My eyes dart everywhere, checking the faces of every kid who passes me, hoping and then fearing that I’ll see Timber on my way to class. Everybody else rushes by, but I can’t decide what to do. Should I go slowly, maybe stop in the bathroom and check on how I look so that I’ll get to the room after him? Then I can see if he saves me a seat. Or should I go fast so that I’ll get there before him and save him a seat? What if I save him a seat but he doesn’t sit in it? What if he saves me a seat, but I get there too late and someone sits in it and then he thinks that I didn’t want to sit next to him?

  Oh for thunder’s sake I’ve got to get a grip! Where is Mercedes when I need her?

  I pull over to the side of the hallway and lean against the wall to gather myself. Mercedes said to act like nothing happened. How can I possibly act like that? Elves are no good at hiding our emotions. That’s one of the drawbacks of elfin honesty in the erdler world.