I’m free, Cynthia realized. They’ll never notice me again.
She slid off her seat and walked to the door as the machine guns tittered away at the grinning Courtney. Outside, the air smelled sweet and fresh, and Cynthia ran happily down toward the bridge—and then stopped when she saw a scrawny figure crouching on the flat rock next to the pond.
Madeleine looked up at Cynthia. She pointed at the pond and said, “Come here, and tell me what you see.”
Cynthia didn’t move for a long breath. Two breaths. Why? she thought, angrier than she’d ever been in all the years she’d had to sit alone at that school and pretend not to notice the insults she didn’t deserve, while the lucky ones like Madeleine got all the admiration they didn’t deserve. Why did Madeleine have to see the fairies, too? Why couldn’t Cynthia have one thing, just one, that the rich girl couldn’t?
Maybe I can take it away from her, Cynthia thought, and stalked forward. Her teeth felt cold—she realized she was grinning, a big fake grin just like Ashleigh and Wallace and all the others. “See what?” she said, and her head jiggled as giggles machine-gunned out. As if she had practiced all her life. “Oh! You mean the holograms. It’s a garden fashion. Didn’t you know? So easy, when you know people in the industry. You didn’t think those were real?” Her voice sounded just like Wallace’s, and the lie came out as if she’d practiced it, except her stomach hurt.
Madeleine’s mouth went round.
Cynthia giggled louder, gasping giggles that made her shake all over. “It’s fake! Totally fake! Fake, fake, fake!”
Madeleine’s eyes narrowed like she’d been slapped—like she really felt those invisible needles. Hunching over, she stared down at the pond, her skinny body so still she had to be holding her breath.
Were the fairies gone? Cynthia wondered then if her lie might make them disappear forever—either that or she wouldn’t see them, as a kind of punishment. She ran to the bridge and scanned the water, breathing fast.
The fairies were still there, swimming in their mesmerizing circles. Cynthia’s stomach unclenched slowly as she watched tiny fairy children playing some kind of game under the rose petals still floating over gently rippling surface. Then she looked up, and saw Madeleine watching her. Cynthia stared back. The giggles had dried up, and so had the lies.
She couldn’t think of anything to say, except, “They’re waiting for you at the party.”
One of Madeleine’s bony shoulders rose sharply in a shrug. “No projectors.”
“What?” Cynthia’s brain felt like a rock.
Madeleine’s brown eyes were blank as marbles. “No projectors. You can’t have holograms—or movies, or anything else—without a projector. There isn’t one here.”
Cynthia felt heat rush up into her face, and her armpits prickled.
“You really see them, too,” Madeleine said slowly. “Nobody else does—I made sure of that last time Wallace had me over. Why did you lie about them being real?”
Cynthia looked down at Madeleine’s face. Those waiting brown eyes, her skinny chin, the freckles on her nose, her plain brown hair in the single long ponytail down her back. Madeleine never giggled, never lied. She didn’t have to.
“Because you’re rich,” Cynthia said. “You already have everything in the world. I—I didn’t want you to have this, too.” Her face felt hotter than ever, but her stomach didn’t feel as nasty as it had when she told the lies. “Anyway, Wallace’s grandmother sees them, too.” Cynthia looked around quickly, hoping Mrs. Oslossen hadn’t heard her lying. The bobbing sunhat was down at the other end of the garden. “Her grandfather saw them. Built the house for them.”
Madeleine let her breath out in a long sigh. “One of my governesses saw ghosts,” she said. “I never did. I told my father—a big mistake—and he sent her away. I wanted so much to bring her here.”
Cynthia wasn’t sure how to answer. She just stared at Madeleine, who stared back, her face still blank, her thin arms still wrapped around her bony knees. Cynthia realized the time was past for Madeleine to run shrieking back to the party, to tell the girls about Cynthia’s lie and get them all to laugh—and she realized that Madeleine was talking to her like a normal person, just like she had talked to the maid, and to Wallace and the others.
“I’m sorry I lied,” Cynthia said.
Pink spots glowed in Madeleine’s flat cheeks. “They’re creeps.” She pointed up at the house. When Cynthia nodded, she said, “They’re just as creepy to each other.” She got up and brushed her skirt off. “I wish I knew whether they don’t see the fairies because they can’t, or because they won’t.”
Cynthia said, “Wallace’s grandmother and her sister wanted to travel around the world and see if there were any more places like this.”
“There have to be,” Madeleine said.
Which meant that Madeleine, the world traveler, hadn’t found any. But maybe she wasn’t allowed to look, Cynthia thought.
“No.” Madeleine stepped up onto the bridge beside Cynthia. “There are. We just have to find them.”
Cynthia heard herself saying to the grandmother, I want there to be lots and lots of them. She wondered if Madeleine, too, had read every book she could find about fairies, and had made up stories about them in her mind. She wondered if she believed in magic, if she looked for it even when she didn’t believe in it—like pretending Christmas lights are colored snowflakes when you take off your glasses.
They stood there side by side and looked down at the graceful sprites in their unending water dance. It was getting hard to see them, for the westering sun was making a mirror of the water’s surface.
Cynthia stared down at the cool dark silhouette of the bridge, and on it two identical girl outlines. Cynthia thought about her mother sitting by the phone, still in her nice dress, the borrowed car still outside, waiting in hopes Cynthia would be invited to someone’s grand house for something besides one of the birthday parties.
“Want to come over to my place?” she said.
Faith
Fay said it like it didn’t matter, as she fell into step beside us, her round shoulders hunched into her old purple coat.
“What?” I yelled.
“What?” Melissa yelled.
Fay shoved her lank blond hair behind her neck and nodded, with still no sign of a smile on her face. “Yup. Probably won’t last long, but it’s fun.”
“How did that happen?” I asked.
“Saw a triple shooting star, so I did this ritual I read about.”
Melissa was silent.
I hurried into speech. “What’s he said?”
Fay shrugged, the worn seams of her coat straining, as she sidled a glance at Missy. “Dog stuff.”
Melissa still said nothing.
We’d just crossed to the school parking lot when the principal’s voice ripped out at us. “Reed!”
Melissa flinched and I jumped, but Fay just hunched tighter, looking kind of like a rock on legs.
“Faith Reed, come here!” Mr. Conley was standing on the steps just outside the gym building, watching the students come to school.
Mr. Conley glared at us until we were right in front of him. “Reed, has your mother seen that memo?”
“Yes, Mr. Conley,” Fay said in the thin, flat voice she always used with adults.
“Well, where is she?” he roared.
“She’s in the hospital, Mr. Conley,” Fay said.
“What?”
“Foot problem, Mr. Conley. Waitresses get it. She’ll be out soon.”
The principal stabbed a finger toward her face. “Your brother,” he said, loudly enough for everyone in the parking lot to hear, “is going to flunk out unless we get some cooperation. One graduate to four flunk-outs is not a good record, even for you Reeds. You just pass that on!”
“Yes, Mr. Conley.”
The principal glared at Melissa, then me; even the furrows in his face looked mean. The kids streamed around us, some with sideways looks.
> “Go to class,” he ordered.
We hurried away.
“Is your mom going to be okay?” I whispered.
Fay gave her head a shake. “Nothing wrong with her. Matt’s problem, not mine.”
We ran up the steps into the relative safety of the corridors. Kids yelled and screamed, lockers slammed, and bodies rushed by.
Melissa said, “I think it’s humiliating that he should single us out like that, for something that isn’t even our fault.”
I knew why the principal had done it—to make Melissa and me feel embarrassed, so we’d stop hanging out with Fay. Teachers had tried it, too, but there were usually sneakily nice and reasonable about it. Mr. Conley didn’t have to be subtle. No one stood up to him, ever. Our parents were still afraid of him, just as they’d been when they were in school.
Our lockers were right in a row. “Library after school?” Fay asked, looking at both of us. “You don’t have ballet, Missy, and I know you don’t have band practice.” This last was to me.
“But I might,” I said. “Mrs. Lopez threatened us with extra practice if we can’t get that jazz thing right. Of course, maybe a miracle will happen and we will,” I said.
“I can’t,” Melissa said quickly. “Madame has invited me to observe the senior technique class. I can learn a lot that way.”
“Oh.” Fay hunched a little further into her coat. “Okay.”
We walked in silence toward homeroom, Melissa and I to Mr. Kent, A-L, and Fay on down the hall to Mrs. Nashimura, R-Z.
As soon as Fay was gone, I said to Melissa, “You can watch the seniors do ballet any day, can’t you?”
Melissa rounded on me. “She lied to us.” Her blue eyes were fierce, her pretty mouth tight. The only reason the three of us hadn’t been made fun of long ago was that Melissa was the prettiest girl in the school, and probably the most talented. She gave a quick look around to make sure we weren’t overheard, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “I don’t care if she lies to Conley or even to teachers. But not to us.”
“You mean about the dog?” I’d almost forgotten it, after that scene with Mr. Conley. When Missy gave a short nod, I said, “She’s just doing some kind of story-game. Like being an alien, or the Middle Earth Radio thing.”
Two years before, Fay had had this idea that an alien had traded bodies with her. She’d said it to everyone, and we’d gone along with it. Missy seemed to enjoy it as much as I did, the same as when Fay had announced the summer before that she had found a radio station that tuned in to Middle Earth. For a while she brought us news, every day, about the doings of the Fourth Age Gondorians and Hobbits and Riders of Rohan.
“She knows it’s not real,” I said. “It’s just acting—like she did just now with Conley.”
I knew as soon as I said it that this had been a mistake, because Melissa’s mouth just got tighter. Before I could start on the difference between games and realities, Melissa opened the door. “Then maybe it’s time to stop,” she said over her shoulder, and she went into the classroom, her head queen-high, her skirt swirling around her long, ballet-trained legs.
A group of boys watched her, and one of them said something I couldn’t hear, but she ignored them as she slammed her books onto her desk.
I was still blocking the doorway, so I went in. Of course no one noticed me—something I was glad of, for I needed to think. It was the first time Melissa had ever said anything outright that meant the friendship might break up. Lately she’d been getting busier and busier with her ballet, while last year we met at the library practically every day. Before that, we’d met at the park and played out our versions of stories we read or saw. But now it was changing; the two most important people in my life were pulling away, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I felt sick inside, much worse than Conley had tried to make me feel—and then I’d only felt bad for Fay.
At lunch we sat together, as always. But instead of story talk, Melissa went on brightly about tests and teachers, and even the weather. I did my best to keep that stupid conversation going. Instead of talking, Fay was quiet. In fact, it was hard to look at her, sitting there so short and square in the ugly neon-purple coat all of her sisters had worn—after they, too, got it as a hand-me-down.
I ate as fast as I could and tried to get things back to normal as I held out my lunch bag to Melissa. “I’m full,” I said. It was my turn to have leftovers. “Anyone want that extra ham sandwich?”
But then Melissa put her bag down on the bench and got up. “I promised Miss Dobson I’d come and watch the tryouts. I better go talk to her. See you guys later.”
She walked away. I leaned over and picked up her lunch bag because I knew Fay wouldn’t. In all our years together, Missy and I had never seen Fay bring a lunch, but she never asked to share, and she wouldn’t scrounge. Plenty of people scrounged, football players especially. But not Fay. Though she would take leftovers rather than let them go to waste.
So I pretended to see if Melissa had left anything in the bag that I’d like, and I said, “This Brigadoon thing is really important to her. Dance scholarships and things.”
Fay stared stonily at the ham sandwich in my hand, so I shoved it into my coat pocket. When she did speak, it took me by surprise. “She doesn’t believe in magic anymore.”
“It’s not that—” I started, but then I stopped. I just couldn’t say anything about lies. If you play around with little girls who lie, you might become a liar, too, Mrs. Kemble had said to me in fourth grade, her crow voice plenty loud enough for Fay to overhear. You’re a nice girl from a nice home, and your parents have good standards….
That line we’d heard a lot, but it had always been meaningless. My house was too small and we all hated it, but we couldn’t afford to move. And people said it to Melissa, whose parents were divorced.
I handed Melissa’s bag to Fay, hoping at least she’d take the apple, but she just set it down. Her face was blank, her neck invisible. She looked at me the way she looked back at adults like Mrs. Kemble and Conley the Creep.
I searched for a way to sidestep the subject of lies, to heal the breach, and then I saw it.
“She’s making her dream into reality,” I said, remembering something Melissa had told me recently. It had sounded something like one of those stupid things teachers tell you, like, “achieving your goals,” but it fit now. “Even when we played those games in the park, you know what her part always was: She had to be the princess, or the shepherd girl, or the witch’s kid who saved the prince, or hypnotized a dragon, or saved the world—by dancing.”
I smiled at the memory of Melissa’s scrawny form dancing among the trees. When she danced she wasn’t scrawny, she was light and graceful. That day her long brown hair was crowned with a garland of leaves that the three of us had put together, making her look like something out of Greek mythology and not a real human being. Grownups used to stop dead on the path, watching her.
“Dance is magic for her,” I finished. “And all her energy is going into making it real.”
“Magic,” Fay said in her flattest voice, “already is real. Gandalf said as much in The Lord of the Rings. But not everyone can see it.”
Could I talk about lies without having to say the word?
“But Gandalf isn’t real,” I said.
“Of course he is. Tolkien believed in Middle Earth,” Fay stated. “You can see it in that poem, ‘Mythopoesis.’” She pronounced it carefully and probably wrong. None of us knew how to say it—the teachers had never heard of the poem. The only poems they seemed to know were ones like “Daffodils.”
The bell rang, startling us both. I was angry with myself for getting sidetracked into arguing about whether Middle Earth was real or not, when what I wanted was for the three of us to go back to being best friends.
But Fay stood there stolidly, looking at me with that round, blank face, Melissa’s lunch bag sitting forgotten on the bench between us. She said, “Missy doesn’t believe me and you don’t, either.”
So that was that. I walked away, and she didn’t call me back.
My next class could have disappeared into a time warp for all I noticed. I sat there staring at my notebook, getting madder by the minute.
I couldn’t believe it. Fay wanted me to prove our friendship by believing in lies. Who was that supposed to impress?
In band that afternoon, we sounded terrible.
“Well,” Mrs. Lopez said, “since some of you can’t seem to find the time to practice at home, we’ll use our scheduled hours after school. Report back at three-oh-five.”
Everyone else groaned, but as I put my flute away, I was relieved. Now I wouldn’t have to see Fay at three. I wouldn’t have to do anything about that promise to go to the library.
But after practice, I got a nasty shock.
Mr. Conley was standing there on the steps, as if he hadn’t moved since eight that morning. Seeing him, the band members kind of froze up in the doorway, like a clump of zombies.
“Come here.” He crooked his finger at me.
The other students swarmed around me like fish in a stream, glad to escape the hook.
“Yes, sir?” My voice quavered. I hated it.
“The United States mail never seems to reach the Reed residence, and they do not possess a telephone. On the chance,” he said with heavy sarcasm, “that Mrs. Reed has miraculously recovered from her foot injury, you may deliver this to her while you are consorting with your friend.”
And he thrust a sealed envelope into my sweaty hands.
He turned away. I gulped some air in past my pounding heart.
I didn’t tell him that I’d never been to Fay’s house—didn’t even know, except kind of generally, where it was. Nor did I ask why I should do his job for him, especially one (I realized as I looked at the address penciled on the envelope) that would take the rest of the afternoon. One didn’t refuse Mr. Conley.
Instead, I went back into the gym and used the public phone to call my mom. “I have to do something for the principal,” I said. “I guess I’ll be home later.”
Whispered Magics Page 12