In the kitchen, Mom, Dad, and Madison are squeezing homemade pasta out of the pasta machine. They all smile when they see me. Dad says, “Hi, Lacey! I hope you’re in a linguine mood!”
“It’s linguinepalooza!” Madison tries to say, but she ends up mushing it into lingipooz.
I know what she means and tell her, “Yum!”
I go into my room to change clothes. When I put Julius down on the bed, he stretches out and is instantly sound asleep.
Then I hear a little voice: “Sorry I vanished like that.”
Katarina flies in the window, her butterfly wings catching the sunlight. She says, “I wanted to come back and say good-bye. In a couple hundred years, you might make a decent fairy godmother.”
I guess that’s the highest praise I’ll ever get from Katarina. I say, “Thanks. But I’ll leave the fairy-godmothering to you.”
“Smart girl!”
“Will I ever see you again?”
“You never know. Gotta go! Duty calls!”
“’Bye, Katarina!”
“Good-bye, Lacey.”
She turns away from me and floats into the air with a few beats of her wings, so pretty in the sunlight she takes my breath away.
And then…
WHOOSH! Julius leaps into the air to eat her again.
ZAP! Katarina blasts him with her wand, and he turns into an orange toad, too small to eat even a fairy. The Julius-toad meows at me plaintively.
I pick him up. “You kind of had that coming, Julius. And it’s just till midnight.”
Katarina smiles at me. Is that really a tear in her eye? She says, “If you tell a living soul I said this, I’ll deny it. But you did good, Lacey.”
And with a flutter of wings, she’s gone.
On Monday morning, Sunny and I walk to school together. Along the way, we stop at Paige’s house, but she’s already left.
Sunny’s shoulders slump. “She said she was going to wait for us.”
I have a sinking feeling, too. What if Paige doesn’t want to be seen with us anymore? Cheerleaders don’t mix with normal kids. It’s sad, but it’s just the way middle school works.
As Sunny and I push our way down the crowded school hallway, Sunny sees Paige first. She points. “There she is!”
Paige has her back to us, and is taping a giant poster to the wall.
“Hey, Paige! Paige!” Sunny calls.
Paige doesn’t turn around. It’s worse than I thought—she’s not even talking to us.
I pull Sunny in the other direction. We don’t need this kind of humiliation.
Then Paige shouts, “Lacey! Wait!”
I look back. Paige, a big smile on her face, steps away from the poster and points.
OMG!
In the glitteriest glitter I’ve ever seen, the poster says, CONGRATULATIONS, LACEY! OUR NEW ZOO INTERN!
I read it three times. Zoo intern? Zoo intern? Zoo intern!
Paige runs up to us, and we all jump up and down, screaming. I shout, “I’m the new zoo intern! I’m the new zoo intern!” I’m louder than Madison. I’m louder than Ann Estey. I’m LOUD.
After a lot more jumping and screaming, I ask Paige, “How did you know I got the internship?”
“Principal Nazarino texted me first thing this morning and asked me to make a poster. How do you like it?”
Hiding my smile, I pretend to squint at it. Then I say, “Needs more glitter.”
Lacey Unger-Ware’s first book has many godmothers and godfathers. These include Joseph Veltre, Bayard Maybank, Devra Lieb, and Bob Hohman; Michael Schenkman and Cuffe B. Owens; Tom Brauner, Melonia Musser-Brauner, and Dash Musser-Brauner; Laurie Mattson, Tom Mattson, Lauren Mattson, Matt Mattson, Josh Capps, Maelena Mattson, Michelle Hardy, Breezie Daniel, and Daniel Wake; and Lisa Holmes, John Biondo, Gerardo Paron, and Becky Bristow.
We also want to thank our wonderful editor, Catherine Onder—who waves her wand and makes us write better—as well as Hayley Wagreich and everyone else at Disney-Hyperion.
And special thanks to our first and most constant reader, Laura Hopper.
The Glitter Trap Page 14