by Diana Wagman
I couldn’t believe I had done that.
I wanted to try again. I ran to the slobber on top of Walker, put my hands around its throat and demanded it leave too. “Go away!” It crumbled into junk.
Walker lay on his back staring up at me. “Your eyes just turned this wicked shade of green. You got bigger.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You did,” he assured me, wheezing and struggling to get up.
Oberon barked. More slobbers were coming down the street. I had to lead them away from Walker and Mr. Bob and Oberon. “Hey!” I shouted to the slobbers. “Here I am! Over here!”
Walker cried out, but the slobbers turned away from him and Mr. Bob and galumphed after me. They were fast. They were catching up. Walker ran after them. I heard him yell, “Transplant! Think of home. Transplant!”
He was crazy. I couldn’t do that. Not by myself. I was too scared. But the bus was stopped blocks behind me at a red light. The slobbers were getting closer. I looked for a blank wall and saw the side of a Chinese market with a painted picture of a smiling child holding a bowl of ramen. He looked a lot like Green and he seemed to beckon me. He wasn’t moving exactly, but his eyes were telling me “this way.”
I hesitated.
“Do it!” Walker shouted.
A hipster couple in skinny jeans, flannel shirts, and matching fedoras, were walking into Chinatown under the beautiful dragon arches.
“Now!” I heard Walker’s desperation.
I ran right across the hipsters’ path, the slobbers on my trail, as fast as I could toward the painting. “You can do it,” the kid in the painting seemed to be saying. “Right here.” The hipsters stopped to stare. I was sorry to upset them but I shut my eyes and ran as fast as I could and smack into the wall. And through it. And into the thick, warm sand again. The third time really is the charm—I knew to keep my mouth shut and my arms still and just go with it.
Something was dead. I smelled the sweet, pungent odor of decomposing flesh. I gagged and tasted regurgitated tofu. I rolled over, opened my eyes and stared right into the half-eaten eyeballs of the dead cat in my side yard.
I squealed and sat up, scrambling away from it. I was home, but I had landed in the worst possible spot. That cat was swollen with maggots. I wondered why Dad hadn’t buried it or thrown it away or something. It was right under his favorite birdhouse. I looked up at my bedroom window. The screen was lying on the porch roof. I really had climbed out that window, but I didn’t think I could climb back in.
Or maybe I could. I was a princess after all. I stood. I bent my knees and jumped up and to my complete surprise, easily grabbed the tree branch. Just a few hours earlier it had seemed so high. Like a gymnast I swung myself up to standing on the branch and with perfect balance walked to the end and gracefully leapt to the roof. I was stronger. I was more agile and as I looked down I realized being high up didn’t bother me at all. I climbed in my window and peeled off my blood soaked clothes as quickly as I could. I found my jeans and a clean black T-shirt in my drawer. Halfway through getting dressed, I realized I’d forgotten to turn on my light. I could see perfectly well in the dark. Maybe my troll side was finally surfacing. Strength, agility, able to see in the dark. I wondered if I would be more troll than fairy, if anything else about me would change, how I would end up, but I pushed the thoughts away. I had to go. I had a plan. I would sneak out again and take the car to where I was sure Luisa was hiding. She was obviously part of this. Maybe Walker could have told me who or what Luisa was, but it didn’t matter. She was a friend. She’d been in school with me for the past four years. She wasn’t like Walker or Trevor—she didn’t like me just because I was about to be a queen. She was really, truly a friend. And if she were my friend, then the slobbers and the crows would be after her too.
“Exactly,” the voice in my head said. “Now you’re getting it.”
I was finally making my conscience happy. I put my hair—it felt longer and thicker—into a quick ponytail. So much to think about and so much I didn’t know. I have to admit it was not an unusual feeling for me. Too often I learned only what I needed to learn—like for a test—but no more than the required information, so the peripheral edges were always fuzzy. I could recite the facts, but I had no context. For example, I knew WW I had begun in Austria with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and I knew he was in line for the throne of both Austria and Hungary. I didn’t know who killed him and why. Which suddenly sounded very familiar: I was heir to two kingdoms and somebody was after me but I didn’t know who or why. I only knew I didn’t want to end up dead like the Archduke and I didn’t want to start World War III.
I opened the closet to get my hoodie and caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. What was going on? My jeans were like capris, my T-shirt showed an inch of stomach. I stopped and looked, really looked. I was a lot taller and slimmer and my hair was thick with loose curls I had never had before. It was just after midnight. In twenty-four hours—less!—I would be eighteen. I was changing, I could feel it all over—not an itch, but a tightening as if I’d been swimming in the ocean and the salt water was drying on my skin.
There was no sound from downstairs. My dad was probably in his birdhouse room. I could skip climbing out the window. I carried my Converse and tiptoed down the stairs. The living room, the whole house, was dark. I switched on the lamp by the couch and practically peed in my pants. My dad sat there.
“Dad?”
His eyes were open, but he wasn’t looking at anything.
“Dad!”
His eyes shifted up toward me vaguely and went back to staring at nothing.
“Are you all right?” I turned on another light. He was thinner. Much thinner. Thinner by 100 pounds than he had been that morning when I left for school. Thinner than when I got home from school. But he looked terrible. He sagged all over as if he was a balloon that had collapsed, as if he’d had all the air sucked out of him. His face was a deathly shade of gray and his blue eyes were like dark holes in his head.
“What happened?” I knew it was Madame Gold. “What did she do to you?”
I shook him. He barely responded. I hugged him. He didn’t hug me back. I ran to the kitchen, retrieved the cookies from their hiding place and brought him the entire bag. He was uninterested. Then a single tear rolled out of his left eye and down his cheek. He looked up at me again and I saw that he was trying, trying hard to tell me something. She’d given him a stroke or a brain aneurism or something.
“Dad. Say something,” I got right in his face. “I’m calling Mom.”
I took out my phone and called her cellphone. Straight to voice mail. I texted her, “Dad Emergency.”
“I’m calling an ambulance.” Dad didn’t look like a fairy prince, he looked like a zombie and I was not ready to add zombies to the crazy day I’d already had. I thought of calling Walker until I remembered how dismissive he was of my parents and their choice to get married. I dialed 9-1-1.
“I need an ambulance,” I said into the phone. “My father’s had a stroke or something.” I gave the dispatcher my address. I explained my father’s condition. Her voice was calm and normal as she said the ambulance was on its way.
I sat down beside him and held his hand. My phone chimed, a text had come in. “Must be Mom,” I said to him. “Don’t worry.”
But when I looked at my screen it was from Luisa.
“L.A. River, under the Los Feliz Bridge.”
And immediately she sent another text. “Plz. I need you.”
She was exactly where I thought she would be: the LA River. Her favorite place. Now I had to help her and for some dumb reason I was sure I could. I texted, “Coming.”
She texted right back, “Hurry.”
I knelt down in front of my dad. “I have to go. Luisa is in trouble.”
Dad groaned.
“The ambulance is on its way,” I told him. “I’ll leave the front door open.” I ran around the living room turning o
n every light.
“I have to go.”
As frozen as he was, he seemed agitated; I could see him panting, his chest moving up and down.
“It’s okay. I know about the trolls and the fairies and you and mom. I know who I am.”
His eyes widened and then he slumped and sagged even more than he already was. His head fell forward.
“Don’t worry, Dad. I’m strong. A lot stronger than I used to be. And I’m quick and I know how to transplant. I’ll be fine.”
I could tell he didn’t want me to go but I had to. As I drove away, I heard sirens getting closer. The doctors would take care of him. I sent another text to my mom, illegal as it was to text and drive, telling her Dad was at the hospital.
I got a chill down my spine as I zipped through my quiet neighborhood so I hit the door lock button. I kept my eyes peeled for slobbers or crows. Nothing was what it seemed and bad things were happening and I couldn’t help but wonder how Madame Gold fit in. She wasn’t a troll and she wasn’t a fairy. What was she?
The Los Feliz Bridge wasn’t far. Luisa had said the LA River was where she went to get away. That was the flash of insight I’d had. That’s how I’d known that’s where she was—even before I got her text. I was different and it wasn’t only my appearance. Yes, my hair was thicker and my eyes looked enormous. I hadn’t moved the seat up in my dad’s car because I didn’t need to. But I was different inside too. I knew things and I trusted what I knew. That was what was really different—I trusted myself. I knew I could help Luisa and I knew Walker was wrong about trolls and fairies intermingling. I was the living proof that it could work out just fine.
And I was starving. Had I really eaten plates of tofu, spinach, noodles plus two egg rolls? It had barely been an hour and I was ravenous. It wasn’t just because of the old saying about Chinese food; it had to be because I was growing so fast. Had to be. I hoped I wasn’t going to be the second obese fairy.
I didn’t take the freeway because I wanted to stay around normal people. At least I thought they were normal. I stopped at a red light and looked over in the car next to me. The driver was hunched over the wheel. He had an enormous hooked nose and ridiculously long fingers. And he was a lime green color. Across the street, a girl was laughing high and musically as she came out of a restaurant. She was stunning, black with silver hair and graceful, tall and thin. Her friends came out after her and they all looked like the loveliest Disney kind of fairies: shiny, slim, and fluttery for lack of a better word wearing skin tight clothing and gauzy scarves. They were only missing their wings. The homeless guy on the corner looked like he was talking and gesturing to himself, but that night I could see little creatures buzzing and dive-bombing around his head. There was a woman with an earpiece who seemed to be talking on her cell phone but she was really talking to an elf sitting on her shoulder. I no longer thought I was losing my mind. For the first time I was seeing the world as it really was.
My phone pinged. I hoped it was my mother. And it was. “Go home,” she texted. “I’ll meet you there. I’m on my way.”
It was tempting. Maybe I could go home and she would tell me what to do or come with me or recommend I call the police. But I didn’t really want her to do any of those things. I wanted to help Luisa all by myself. I wanted to test my new self. Stronger, taller, smarter, and more confident. For once I wanted to be special, more than average or ordinary. For once I wanted to be extraordinary.
“Yes,” the voice said. “Ignore your mother.”
I turned my phone to silent. The really stupid thing is, I was only thinking about myself, about what I might be able to do. I never thought about what kind of trouble Luisa could be in. Slobbers and crows had definitely tried to hurt me, but I didn’t think about something dangerous or deadly being with her. It wasn’t very smart to just go running to the L.A. River, a big cement trough that was home to gangs and taggers and people hiding from the world. I could have called the cops to meet me there. I could have asked Walker, or at least Oberon, to come with me. But that is all stuff I’m thinking now. Then I wasn’t thinking about anything but getting there and saving the day.
I parked in the parking lot of a restaurant right near the Los Feliz Bridge. It was as close as I could get in the car. I walked toward the chain link fence and the gate leading down to the bike path. A family came out of the restaurant and walked to their car. The Dad was carrying a sleepy little boy who raised his head and pointed at me.
“Look,” he said. “A fairy.”
I was stunned. What did he see? I was in my jeans and hoodie. Before his parents turned around, I darted through the gate and disappeared into the dark.
12.
I walked down the gravel path leading under the bridge. Streetlights from the road above made the discarded soda cans and shards of broken glass glitter almost like Christmas lights. Or fireflies. But not. There were long grasses and scraggly bushes throwing spooky shadows along one side. On the other there was a steep cement retaining wall and a sheer drop to the river. Some gang had tagged the wall with graffiti, but I couldn’t decipher the elaborate script. I called Luisa’s name as softly as I could.
“Luisa?”
I was glad that crows were diurnal and usually slept at night. Slobbers I wasn’t so sure about. Gang members and psycho murderers were out at all times. I listened and held my breath as I walked. I stayed on my toes, ready to run. It was darker under the bridge but it didn’t take long for my new troll eyes to adjust. I turned in a circle. It seemed a very odd place for Luisa to be hanging out for a few days. It was eerie, almost claustrophobic with the sharp drop to the river on one side and the bushes encroaching on the other. I felt both totally alone and as if I was being carefully observed. Plus the water in the river was smelly and there was no place to sit. Luisa might have found this spot relaxing, but I did not.
Across the river in the opposite retaining wall I saw a round portal with the door open. The round portal-like openings appeared intermittently along the river walls—I’d noticed them ages before on a bird watching trip with my dad—but always with the heavy iron door shut. They were circular like some kind of big pipe and I assumed they were conduits for when it rained and the river threatened to overflow. I was about to head back to the car when a light blinked on and quickly off deep inside that open portal. I froze, held my breath. It happened again. A yellow flickering light, not the blue of a flashlight, but more like a flame. A cigarette lighter? I had no way of knowing it if was Luisa or some mass murderer.
The voice in my head spoke. “Luisa needs you.”
Anybody could be through that door. And I wasn’t looking forward to climbing down the cement wall on this side and fording the river and struggling up the other side. Plus I was worried about my dad. I could head right to the hospital and ask my mom what to do. Besides, if Luisa was sending me signals with a lighter then how much trouble could she be in? I could just text her. Tell her to cut it out and come home.
“Trust yourself.” The voice again. I hadn’t asked Walker if this loud, combative inner voice was a fairy thing or a troll thing.
And then, to seal the deal, a text from Luisa. “Help!”
“Okay,” I said out loud. “I’m coming.”
I climbed over the embankment, crouched down onto my butt, and slid down the retaining wall. It was gritty and when I put my hands down to slow my speed, little rocks stuck in my palms. The stink of the water got stronger the closer I got—not unlike Enoki’s odor, ha ha ha—and I could see trash, an old tire, some boards. The good news was I could use those as stepping-stones across the murky water.
I almost lost my balance on the first board. It wobbled and I windmilled my arms to keep upright. I looked down into the water. I saw things that were not fish and not snakes and not normal. Lizard-like, but with flippers and teeth. Perfect, I thought. More weird creatures. No matter what, I could not fall into that water. I took a deep breath and tried to think fairy thoughts, like I was light, lighter than a
ir. Even if I couldn’t fly, I could tread so lightly on these boards they wouldn’t move or sway. I took two quick steps to the old tire. It seemed to work. I hopped to a rock. I jumped to the next and gasped. I’d almost landed on one of those lizardy creatures. Its mouth was open as if waiting for my ankle.
“Watch out,” I thought.
“Me?” it said. “You’re the one skipping all over the place.”
Before I had time to process that I had understood what it said, it slid back into the water. I sprang from rock to old shopping cart to a board across the remaining strip of river to the slope on the other side. I rested for a moment. Cement had never felt so good under my feet, so solid and dry. I looked up. The incline wasn’t as steep as the other side and the open portal was not far above me. I half-crawled up the wall using my hands while trying to be as quiet as possible. As I got closer I could feel the cold, damp air spilling out and I smelled rotten eggs. Sulfur. If I wasn’t walking into a den of psycho rapists, I would probably be asphyxiated by lethal chemicals.
I stepped into the dark. “Luisa?” I peered into the blackness. So much for troll vision, I couldn’t see an inch in front of me. The dark was like a blanket absorbing all sight. Where was the flickering light?
My phone chimed. Automatically I looked down and the light from the screen blinded me. I blinked frantically, rubbed my eyes, stumbled, and someone grabbed my arm. Someone strong. I smelled dirty water and mold. Enoki.
She flicked on her lighter and I saw her grinning.
“I knew it was you by the smell,” I said.
“I knew you’d come to find Luisa.” She laughed. “We both knew it.”
“You and Trevor?”
“Trevor is an idiot. He still thinks we can do this his way. We know better.”
She grabbed my cellphone from my hand and threw it into the river. She yanked me deeper into the tunnel. I resisted, but she was much stronger and her hand on my arm squeezed until it hurt. She flipped off her lighter and it was as if a thick black hood had fallen over my face. I wished Trevor was there, or Walker, or even little Green. Someone who would be on my side.