“Tonight I was cruel.” He looked away thoughtfully before continuing. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“So why did you?” I asked sharply.
Licking his lips, he shifted and exhaled deeply. He had intentionally been mean to me. It wasn’t some accident because he was cocky or unaware of how he treated people. Everything he did felt meticulous and purposeful. Even though he claimed he didn’t want to hurt me, the simple act of him having hurt me proved that that he wanted to. But he hesitated on telling me the reasons.
“I don’t want to lie to you, and I promise you that I haven’t,” Finn answered carefully. “So… I’m not going to tell you right now. It doesn’t seem appropriate.”
“I don’t care if it seems appropriate or not!” I snapped, then remembered that Matt and Maggie were sleeping down the hall and hastily lowered my voice. “I think I have a right to know what’s going on.”
“I came here to tell you,” Finn assured me. “To explain everything.
This isn’t the way we normally do things, so I had to make a phone call before I came to see you. I was trying to figure things out. That’s why it’s so late. I’m sorry.”
“Call who? Figure out what?” Then it dawned on me, and a pit started growing in my stomach. “Oh. This is about that crap you were talking about earlier. The psychokinesis or whatever?”
“It’s more than that.” He rubbed the back of his head and stared at the floor. “You’re not going to believe me. You’re going to think I’m insane. But I have never lied to you, and I’m never going to. Do you believe that at least?”
“I think so,” I replied tentatively.
“That’s a start,” Finn allowed. He took a deep breath, and I nervously pulled at a strand of my hair and watched him. Almost sheepishly, he said, “You’re a changeling.” He looked expectantly at me, waiting for some kind of dramatic reaction.
“I don’t even know what that is,” I shrugged. “Isn’t it like a movie with Angelina Jolie or something?” I shook my head. “I don’t know what it means.”
“You don’t know what it is?” Finn smirked. “Of course you don’t know what it is. It would make it all too easy if you had even the slightest inclining about what is going on.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” I agreed sarcastically.
“A changeling is a child that has been secretly exchanged for another,” Finn explained slowly.
The wind felt like it had been knocked out of me. The room got this weird, foggy quality to it. My mind flashed onto my mother, and the things she had screamed at me. There had always been this feeling inside me of not belonging, but I had always blamed that on some latent residue from my mother. But now, suddenly, Finn was confirming all the suspicions I had been harboring. It sounded almost too good to be true.
“But how…” Dazedly, I shook my head and realized one important fact. “How would you know that? How could you possibly know that? Even if it were true?”
“Well…” Finn watched me as I struggled to let everything sink in and decided to continue. “You’re Trylle. It’s what we do.”
“Trylle? Is that like your last name or something?” I asked skeptically.
“No,” Finn shook his head. “Trylle is the name of our ‘tribe,’ if you will.” He rubbed the side of his temple. “This is so hard to explain. We are a, um, band of trolls.”
“You’re telling me that I’m a troll?” I raised my eyebrow, and finally decided that he must be insane. Nothing about me resembled a pink-haired doll with a jewel in its stomach, or a creepy, little monster that lived under a bridge.
Admittedly, I was short, but I was actually rather pretty, and Finn was at least six feet tall.
“You’re thinking of trolls as they way they’ve been misrepresented, obviously,” Finn hurried to explain. “That’s why we prefer Trylle. You don’t get any of that silly ‘Billy Goats Gruff’ imagery. But now I have you staring at me like I have totally lost mind.”
“You have lost your mind,” I nodded. I was trembling, out of shock and fear, and I didn’t know what to think. I should’ve thrown him out of my room, but then again, I never should’ve let him in in the first place.
“Okay. Think about it, Wendy.” Finn moved on to trying to reason with me, as if his idea had real merits. “You’ve never really fit in anywhere. You have a quick temper. You’re very intelligent. You are the pickiest eater in the world. You hate shoes. Your hair, while lovely, is hard to control. You have dark brown eyes, dark brown hair.”
“What does the color of my eyes have to do with anything?” I retorted, focusing on the things that I felt like I could disagree with. In fact, none of the things he said were all that conclusive.
“Earth tones. Our eyes and hair are always earth tones,” Finn answered. “And often times, our skin has almost a greenish hue to it.”
“I’m not green!” I looked at my skin anyway, just to be sure, but it didn’t look green.
“It’s very faint, when people do have it,” Finn said. “But no, you don’t.
Not really. Sometimes it gets more predominant after you’ve been living around other Trylle for awhile.”
“I am not a troll,” I insisted fiercely. “That doesn’t even make any sense. It doesn’t… So I’m angry and different. Most teenagers feel that way. It doesn’t mean anything.” I combed through my hair, as if to prove it wasn’t that wild. My fingers got caught in it, proving his point rather than mine, and I sighed. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I’m not just guessing here, Wendy,” Finn informed with a wry smile.
“I know who are you. I know you are Trylle. That’s why I came looking for you.”
“You’re looking for me?” My jaw dropped. “That’s why you stare at me all the time in school. That’s how you knew where I lived and how you found my bedroom window. You’re stalking me!”
“I’m not stalking,” Finn looked at me defensively. “I’m tracking you.
I’m a tracker. It’s my job. I find the changelings and bring them back.”
Of all the major things that were wrong with this situation, the thing that bothered me the most is when he said it was his job. There hadn’t ever been any attraction between us. He had just been doing his job, and that meant following me. He was stalking me, and I was only upset about it because he was doing it because he had to, not because he wanted to. I really wanted to throw up.
“I know this is a lot to take in,” Finn admitted. “I’m sorry. We usually wait until you’re older and are starting to have signs on your own. But if you’re already using persuasion, then I think you need to head back to the compound.
You’re developing early.”
“I’m what?” I just stared up at him.
“Developing. The psychokinesis,” Finn said like it should be obvious.
“Trylle have varying degrees of abilities. Yours are clearly more advanced.”
“They have abilities?” I swallowed, thinking of the dazed look on Patrick’s face. “Do you have abilities?” Something new occurred to me, twisting my insides. “Can you read my mind?”
“No, I can’t read minds,” Finn replied.
“Are you lying?” I pressed uneasily.
“I won’t lie to you,” Finn promised.
If he hadn’t been so attractive standing in front of me in my bedroom, it would’ve been easier to ignore him in the first place. If I hadn’t felt this ludicrous connection with him, I would’ve thrown him out right away. As it was, it was hard to look into his eyes and not believe him. But after everything he had been saying, there was only one conclusion I could come to.
“Then you must be insane,” I swallowed hard.
“Wendy,” Finn sounded exasperated. “You know I’m not lying.”
“I do,” I nodded. “You believe everything you’re saying, which means you’re insane. And after what I went through with my mom, I’m not ready to let another crazy person into my life. So you have to go.”
; “Wendy!” He was in complete disbelief.
“Did you really expect any other reaction from me?” I stood up, keeping my arms crossed firmly in front of me, and I tried to look as confident as I possibly could. “Did you think you could treat me like shit at a dance, then sneak into my room in the middle of the night and tell me that I am a troll with magical powers, and I’d just be like, yeah, that sounds right? And what did you even hope to accomplish with this? What were you trying to get me to do?”
“You’re supposed come with me back to the compound,” Finn said, defeated.
“And you thought I would just follow you right out?” I smirked to hide the fact that I was really tempted to do that. Even if he was insane.
“They usually do,” Finn replied in a way that completely unnerved me.
Really, that answer is what completely lost me. I might have been willing to follow his delusions because I liked him a lot more than I should, but when he made it sound like there had been lots of other girls willing to do the same thing before me, it was kind of a turn off. Crazy, I could deal with. Slutty, not so much.
“You need to go,” I told him firmly.
“You need to think about this. This is obviously different for you than it is for everyone else, and I understand that. So I’ll give you time to think about it.” He turned and opened the window. “But there is a place that you belong.
There is a place where you have family. So just think about it.”
“Definitely,” I gave him a plastic smile.
He started to lean out the window, and I walked closer to him so I’d be able to shut the window behind him. Then he stopped and turned to look at me. He felt dangerously close to me, his eyes full of something smoldering just below the surface. When he looked at me like that, he took all the air from my lungs, and I wondered if this is how Patrick felt when I persuaded him.
“I almost forgot,” Finn said softly, his face so close to mine I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “You looked really beautiful tonight.” He stayed that way a moment longer, completely captivating me, then abruptly he turned and climbed out the window.
I stood there, barely remembering to breathe, as I watched him grab onto a branch of the tree next to my house and swing down to the ground. A cool breeze fluttered in, so I closed the window. In case he still might be lurking somewhere outside, I pulled my curtains shut tightly. Feeling very dazed, I staggered back to my bed and collapsed on it. I had never felt more bewildered in my entire life.
Naturally, I barely got any sleep. What little I had was filled with dreams of little green trolls coming to take me away. I laid in bed for hours after I woke up, trying to put everything in perspective. Everything felt muddled and confusing. I couldn’t let myself believe that anything Finn had said made sense, but I couldn’t discount how badly I wanted it to be true. I had never felt like I belonged anywhere. Until recently, Matt had been the only person I had ever felt any connection with.
Lying in bed at six-thirty in the morning, I could hear the morning birds chirping loudly outside my window, probably sitting in the same tree that Finn had used to get to my room. Everyone in the house was asleep, and it was completely silent. I thought of my brother, laying in his bed a few doors down, and Maggie across the hall from him. Both of them sleeping contentedly, unaware of anything going on.
Quietly, I got up and crept downstairs. I didn’t want to wake them this early. Matt got up with me every day to make sure that I was awake and drove me to school, so this was his only time to sleep in. Maggie didn’t get up until nine or ten most days, but I had never faulted her for that. Matt had always been a morning person, but Maggie and I couldn’t stand them.
For some reason, I felt desperate to find something to prove we were family. All my life I had been trying to prove the opposite, but as soon as Finn had mentioned that it might be a real possibility, I felt oddly protective. Maggie and Matt had sacrificed everything for me. I had never been that good to either of them, but they had loved me unconditionally, as they proved time and time again. Wasn’t that evidence enough?
I crouched on the floor next to one of the cardboard boxes behind the couch in the living room. Maggie’s pretty cursive had scrawled across it the word “memorabilia.” That was her code word for family stuff. Matt had more of a revulsion for our family than I did, so Maggie used less offensive words to keep him from getting riled up. She never actually unpacked any of the pictures or anything, because the last time she had Matt had smashed all the picture frames. Admittedly, that had been almost ten years ago, but I was betting that his reaction now would have only lessened slightly.
Underneath Matt and Maggie’s diplomas and lots of Matt’s graduation photos, I found several photo albums. Based on the covers, I could tell which ones had been Maggie’s purchases. My mother had only had one with a faded brown non-descript cover. Maggie picked albums covered in flowers and polka dots and happy things. Below the oldest photo album, there was a damaged blue baby book. Carefully, I pulled it out, along with my mom’s photo album.
My baby book had been blue because all the ultrasounds had said I was a boy. Tucked in the back of the book there was even a cracked ultrasound photo where the doctor had circled what they had incorrectly assumed was my penis. Most families would have made some kind of joke about that, but not mine. Mom had just looked at me with disdain and said, “You were supposed to be a boy.”
Most parents start out filling the beginning of the baby book perfectly, but then forget as time goes on. Not mine. Mom had put one or two pictures in, and that was it. Most of the handwriting was either my father’s or Maggie’s.
My foot prints were in there, along with my measurements at birth and a copy of my birth certificate. I touched it delicately, proving that my birth was tangible. I had been born in this family, whether Mom and I liked it or not.
“What are you doing, kiddo?” Maggie asked softly from behind me, and I jumped a little. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay.” I tried to cover up my baby book, feeling as if I had been caught doing something naughty. I turned to look back at her and smiled meekly. Wrapped in her house coat, Maggie yawned and ran a hand through her sleep disheveled hair. “What are you doing up?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Maggie replied with a smile. She sat down on the floor next to me, leaning against the back of the couch. “I heard you get up.” She nodded to the pile of albums on my lap. “You feeling nostalgic?”
“I don’t know really.”
“What are you looking at?” Maggie leaned over so she could peer at the photo album. “Oh, that’s an old one. You were just a baby then.”
I flipped open the book, and it went it chronologically, so the first few pages were of Matt when he was little. There were lots of pictures of Mom, Dad, and Matt, and they all looked ridiculously happy. All three of them had blond hair and blue eyes. They looked like something out of a Hallmark commercial or something.
Maggie looked at it with me, making clucking sounds at my dad. She gently touched his picture once and commented on how handsome he was.
Even though everyone agreed that my father had been a good guy, we rarely talked about him. It was part of our way of not talking about Mom and not talking about what happened. Everything before my sixth birthday didn’t matter, and that just happened to include every memory of Dad.
About ten pages into the book, everything changed. As soon as pictures of me started to appear, my mother began looking surly and sullen. In the very first picture, I was only a few days old. I was wearing an outfit with blue trains all over it, and my mother glaring at me.
“You were such a cute baby!” Maggie laughed. “But I remember that.
You wore boys clothes for the first month because they were so sure you were going to be a boy.”
“That explains a lot,” I mumbled, and Maggie laughed. “Why didn’t they just get me new clothes? They had the money for it.”
“Oh, I
don’t know,” Maggie sighed, looking far away. “It was something your mother wanted.” She shook her head. “She was weird about things.”
“What was my name supposed to be?” I couldn’t remember. When I was younger, people had talked about it, but nobody ever reminisced about my childhood anymore.
“Um… Michael!” Maggie snapped her fingers when she remembered.
“Michael Conrad Everly. But then you were girl, so that ruined that.”
“How did I get Wendy from that?” I wrinkled my nose. “Michelle would make more sense.”
“Well…” Maggie looked up at the ceiling, thinking. “Your mother refused to name you, and your father… I guess he couldn’t think of anything.
So Matt named you.”
“Oh yeah.” I faintly remembered hearing that before. “But why Wendy?”
“He liked the name Wendy,” Maggie shrugged. “He was a big Peter Pan fan, which is ironic because Peter Pan is the story of a boy who never grows up, and Matt was a boy who was always grown up.” I smirked at that. “Maybe that’s why he’s always been so protective of you. He named you. You were his.”
There was a picture of me when I was about two or three, and Matt was holding me in his arms. I was lying on my stomach with my arms and legs outstretched, and he was grinning like a mad man. He used to run me around the house like that, pretending that I was flying, and call me “Wendy Bird,” and I would laugh for hours.
As I got older, it became more and more apparent that I looked nothing like my family. My dark eyes and dark frizzy hair contrasted completely with them. In every picture with me, my mother had these completely exasperated look on her face, as if she had spent the last half hour fighting with me before the picture. But then again, she probably had. I had always been contrary to everything she was. In the pictures of my fifth birthday, I covered all my gifts in cake and stood in my underwear, and my mother stood directly behind me, looking as if she wished she were anywhere else in the whole world.
“You were a strong-willed child,” Maggie admitted, looking at the picture of me naked at my fifth birthday. “You wanted things the way you wanted them. And when you were a baby, you were colicky. But you were always an adorable child, and you were bright and funny.” Maggie gently pushed a strand of hair back from my face. “You were always worthy of love. You did nothing wrong, Wendy. She is the one with the problem, not you.”
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