Sometimes, when she was in a hurry, Mom stopped at the grocery store on her way home from work. She couldn’t help it if she was still wearing a wedding gown or a tutu. I thought I might explain that to Sage’s mother later, when the other woman was gone. But then Mrs. Green said, “Well, look at how she dresses her daughter—all those homemade clothes. I don’t think that child owns a pair of jeans.”
Before anyone knew I’d arrived, I grabbed my jacket and slipped back outside. I was wearing a soft, blue velvet skirt Mom had sewn and a shirt she’d decorated with blue jay feathers. In the wrapped box I was carrying, there was another shirt just like it that Mom had made for Sage. I went down the road and ditched the gift behind someone else’s hedge. Then I waited behind a bush until Mom came back for me.
Though I never told her why, I stopped wearing all of the pretty skirts and tops Mom had made for me. I had two pairs of jeans and I wore one of them every day. But it didn’t change anything. None of the girls in my class ever invited me over anyway—until maybe now.
I breathed deeply until I felt calm enough to call.
“Hi,” I said as casually as if Sage and I phoned each other all the time. “How’s your puppy?”
“She’s chewing Ellie’s sneaker lace right now.”
I laughed as I pictured it. “She sounds like fun. I wish I had a puppy.”
“Yah, Angel is super-cute,” Sage agreed. “She’s even got a pedigree.”
“What’s that?”
“Papers that show she’s a pure golden retriever and tell who her parents were. Her mother was a grand champion.”
Big whoop, I thought. But I only said, “I like her name.”
“Thanks.” Sage seemed to hesitate a moment. “Could I ask you something, Pixie?”
I pretended to think about it. “Um, sure.” If Mom agreed to drive me, I could be at her door in five minutes!
Sage giggled. “It’s kind of personal.”
“That’s okay,” I said, but a funny flicking started up in my throat.
“Is Graham your boyfriend?” Sage was the only person in school who called Gray by his full name. He was in kindergarten when he’d decided he was only going to answer to the name Gray, because some of the kids had been calling him Graham Cracker.
“No. Of course he’s not!”
“Well, you two are always together at lunch and on the bus, so I thought . . . you know. Don’t you think he’s cute?” In the background I could hear Sage’s friends laughing.
“Gray’s just my neighbor.”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!” The call was beginning to feel like a mean prank.
“Sorry, I was just wondering. But I believe you.”
Gee, thanks, I thought. But I didn’t say anything and neither did she. It was pretty uncomfortable. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. “I have to go now,” I told her.
“Yah, me, too. It’s time to walk the puppy.”
I was about to hang up when I heard her say, “Maybe you can come over and see Angel sometime.”
“Sure. When?”
“Um, I’ll call you.”
I had the feeling I’d just taken some sort of friendship test and flunked. After I hung up, I looked at myself in the mirror over the fireplace. Maybe cinnamon was nice sprinkled on applesauce, but as a hair color it was boring. Not red or brown, but a color that always looked faded. Sage had hair like black silk. Popular-girl hair. And unlike my unruly cinnamon curls, hers hung perfectly straight down her back.
“Hey, let’s go!”
It was Gray. Mom must have let him in. Quickly I kneeled down and retied a sneaker lace so he wouldn’t see me blushing. “Coming in a sec,” I mumbled.
The truth was, I’d forgotten about him when I thought Sage was going to ask me over, even though he was my best friend. And my only friend.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ye Olde Egg
Without discussing it, Gray and I took the path through the woods to the pond. We could have walked it with our eyes closed, but we didn’t want to miss anything. Usually the air was noisy with tweets, quacks, and the flapping of wings, though sometimes you could catch the splashing of turtles and fish. But today it was hard to hear anything over the noise of the spring peepers, which were little bitty frogs the size of gummy bears.
“First one to spot one gets this,” I said, pulling a bloodred cardinal feather out of my sweatshirt pocket. Those peepers were the most frustrating things! The males called to the females constantly with high, shrill whistles, until you tried to find them. Then they got as silent as bumps on a log—which in a way, they were.
Gray crouched down to examine the nearest tree stump. I just watched. Sage had asked if I thought he was cute, but I’d known him so long, I wasn’t sure. He had curly black hair and blue-gray eyes. He also had the worst-smelling sneakers in existence (which he called his “ultimate secret weapons”). And he liked burping way too much.
“Found one!” he exclaimed, pointing to what looked like a raisin with two eyes and four legs.
“Okay, here,” I sighed, handing him my feather.
He twirled it around in his fingers for a moment. “Can I ask you something?”
It was beginning to feel like Ask Pixie Day, but I nodded anyway.
“Why did you get so mad on the bus when I asked you about running for poet laureate?”
“Because I don’t want to be the girl who lives at Winged Butt and writes weird poems. I just want to be like everyone else. Normal.”
“Then you should quit being so sensitive.” He cracked a lopsided grin. “Anyway, you’re not normal.”
“Ha-ha.” I breathed in deeply, taking in the sharp scent of new leaves and damp earth. I wanted so badly to tell him he was right. If he knew about the Goose Ladies and the fortune I’d been told, maybe he’d understand.
“You know that Renaissance Faire I went to last weekend?” I began. “Well, there was this weird woman dressed like Mother Goose who was telling fortunes. When I refused to let her tell mine, I think she put a curse on me.”
Gray plucked a leaf off a shrub. “A grumpy spell?”
“I’m serious! She called me a Mother Goose Girl.”
“Ha! Maybe she really is psychic. I bet you told her off with a rhyme.”
“Yeah, sort of.” My interest in sharing anything real about the Goose Ladies was already fading. I didn’t like being laughed at. Besides, breaking my promise to Mom was making me feel guilty.
“Shh, Pix, listen!” Gray jerked his chin toward the tall grasses at the edge of the pond. “I think there’s something hiding down by the water.”
My stomach leaped like I’d swallowed a frog. Then I heard it, too—a rustling sound.
“Wait!” I grabbed the back of his T-shirt.
“What?”
Cheeks burning, I shrugged and dropped it. I was furious at myself for letting the Goose Ladies thing get to me. “Nothing. Go,” I muttered. “I’ll follow you.”
Suddenly I saw a flash of red fur and a white-tipped tail in the grass. It was a fox! I stopped, but Gray kept creeping closer until the mud under his sneakers made a sucking sound. Instantly the fox popped up and saw us. I guess it was as startled as I’d been, because it jumped into the pond and began swimming away. When it reached the other side, it disappeared into the brush.
Neither of us said a word until it was gone. Then Gray let out a whoop. “I’ve never seen a fox swim before. That was awesome!”
“I know. Me, either.” I searched the grass where the fox had been to see if there might be a clump of soft, red fur left behind. Instead, there was an egg.
“Gray, look!”
“I bet Mr. Fox was planning on having an omelet,” he said.
“Or Mrs. Fox was bringing it to her kits.”
I leaned down and touched the shell. “It’s still warm. The fox probably stole it from a duck’s nest right around here someplace. Let’s see if we can find it and put it back.”
I lifted the egg carefully and weighed it in my hand. It was bigger than my palm and felt surprisingly heavy.
We walked all the way around the pond without finding a nest hidden among the shrubs or tall grass.
“We’d better bring it to your dad. He’ll know what to do.” Lately Gray had been acting as if my dad were a fixer-upper celebrity like the guy on Extremely Extremely Extreme Home Makeovers.
“What’s he going to do, sit on it?” I loved my father, but sometimes I wished he did something that required him to wear clothes like Mr. Westerly instead of the embarrassing farmer overalls he wore every day. Gray’s father, Rob, was an editor of novels and poetry books. He was nice and fun, but last year he and Gray’s mom, Amanda, whom I liked, too, had gotten a divorce. After his mom moved away, Gray’s grandma had moved in with him and his dad.
“C’mon, hurry!” Gray said, heading toward the barn where my dad had his workshop.
I waited until he got a little farther away before I lifted the egg up to my lips and whispered the rhyme that had just nested in my brain.
“Little egglet on your own,
Have your mom and daddy flown?
Don’t worry—you are not alone!
We’ll find you a good safe home.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ye Olde Egg Salad
It was dark as a moonless night in the coat closet where I was crammed with Gray, Sammy, and Dad. The itchy wool sleeve of Mom’s winter coat kept brushing my face as if a ghost were playing a joke. But the boys were too busy watching Dad’s science trick to care if I was freaking out. He’d taped an empty toilet paper roll to a flashlight and was shining the light beam it created onto the egg.
“Take a look at those veins pulsing inside the yolk sac,” said Dad, pointing to some spidery lines. “That means the egg’s been fertilized.”
“Mine!” my brother exclaimed, trying to grab it.
“Not this one, Sammy.” Dad raised the egg out of his reach. “Did you actually see the fox drop this, Pix? Because it’s amazing that it didn’t crack.”
“No, but I found it where the fox was standing before it jumped into the water,” I told him. “Where else could it have come from?”
“How ’bout the grocery store?” Gray joked.
“Ha-ha,” I said without taking my eyes off the egg. It was amazing that you could actually see inside the shell. “What’s that dark spot, Dad?”
“It’s an embryo that hopefully will become a goose.”
I grabbed Mom’s coat for support as my knees began to shake. “A goose? I thought it was a duck egg!”
“It’s too big to be a duck egg, Pix,” Dad replied. “It was probably laid by one of the Canada geese that visit the pond.”
“But couldn’t there be a big, fat duckling inside?” I asked. “I once saw a woman on TV who gave birth to a fourteen-pound baby. His arms and legs looked like they were made out of salamis.”
“I don’t think that happens in the duck world, Pixie. Anyway, since you didn’t find its nest, we’ll probably never know.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if you don’t want to raise a gosling, you should just put the egg back near the pond and let nature take its course.”
It was a good thing it was dark in the closet. I felt myself getting red-faced and tears squeezed out of the corners of my eyes. “But we can’t just let it die, Dad!”
“Oowah-oowah,” Sammy began whimpering. Whenever I sounded upset, he cried.
“It’s okay,” I said, putting my arm around him. “Daddy’s going to save Egg, right, Dad?”
My father sighed really loudly. “We could try to hatch it if that’s what you want. It wouldn’t be hard to construct a simple incubator.”
“I could help you build it,” Gray volunteered.
“That would be great. But even in an incubator, it would need daily attention. Are you willing to take care of the egg, Pixie?”
For a moment I didn’t answer. Unlike a cute golden retriever puppy that other girls could coo over, I was going to get a pet egg. And then a goose. That hairy-moled fortune-teller’s prophecy was coming true.
Gray poked me in the ribs. “Come on, say yes. Since we found it together, I’m sort of its dad.”
“Oh, all right,” I agreed. “Just don’t call me its mother.”
“Here, you can start now.” Dad placed the egg in my hands. Then he opened the closet door. “Keep it warm while Gray and I set up the incubator.”
“But how?”
“Use that big imagination of yours.” Dad marched toward the front door with Gray and Sammy right behind him. “No Samster, you stay here and help Pixie,” he said before my brother could squeeze outside.
“Egg would be a lot safer if Sammy went with you,” I told him.
But Dad only grinned. “Mom ran out for milk. She should be home soon. Take care of both of your charges until then.”
A few minutes later Sammy, Egg, and I were sitting in Mom’s rocking chair. I held Sammy on my lap, he held a pillow on his, and Egg was nestled on top like a cherry in whipped cream.
“Pet Egg a little more softly please, Sammy,” I whispered as we rocked in the chair.
“Please try not to jiggle Egg, Sammy.”
“Don’t hug Egg, Sammy!”
“SAMMY! DON’T KISS EGG AGAIN!”
I pried the egg from his hands as gently as I could. It was still nice and warm, which made me relax a little. I imagined I could even feel the shell vibrating under my touch.
“Sammy, do you want me to tell you a poem about another egg that got jiggled too much?” I asked.
He snuggled back against me, which meant yes. I was planning to recite Humpty Dumpty, but this is what came out instead:
“When Humpty D fell off the wall
The king’s men gathered round.
‘How shall we prepare him
Now that he’s cracked his crown?’
“Fry him up in butter
Or scramble him with cheese,
But do not boil and chop him
Into egg salad, please!
“For if Prince Sammy finds it
In his sandwich, he will wail.
He’ll toss the mess against the wall
And send you off to jail!”
Sammy clapped his hands. “Maww!” he demanded. So I repeated my poem over and over until he dozed off in my lap. Then I reached out and gave Egg a tiny flick with my fingernail.
“Did I find you or did you find me, Egg?” I whispered. But, ha-ha, it wasn’t talking.
CHAPTER NINE
Ye Olde Dumb Idea
The next morning, Gray was already waiting for the bus when I arrived at the end of the driveway. “How’s Egg?” he asked.
“Okay. I turned it over and misted it like my dad said. It has to be kept moist the way it would be in a real nest. Usually the mom’s damp feathers do the job.”
We were using an old fish tank for the incubator and shredded newspaper for the nest. Dad had rigged up a high-intensity lamp and a thermometer, so we could keep the temperature inside the tank cozy, but not too hot. And to keep it out of Sammy’s reach, it was on a worktop in the mudroom, which doubled as our laundry room.
“Did your dad say when it would hatch?”
“We read that it takes twenty-eight to thirty days. But we don’t exactly know how long Egg’s been an egg. I’ll call you when I see—” I interrupted myself with a yawn. I had something else on my mind, and it had kept me up all night. Only I wasn’t sure how to say it, so I just blurted it out. “I don’t think we should sit together on the bus.”
“Why not?”
“Because some people think you’re my boyfriend.” I couldn’t look him in his blue-gray eyes when I said it.
“That’s just stupid,” he answered so quickly, I felt a bit insulted. “Who thinks it?”
“Sage—and Maya, Ellie, and Anna, I guess. But don’t say anything to them about it.”
“Why didn’t you jus
t tell them we’re best friends?”
I shrugged. I didn’t mention that I’d told Sage he was just my neighbor. I was really ashamed of lying about it.
Gray scooped up a handful of gravel and began throwing pieces at the school bus stop sign.
“You can sit with Raffi Tucker,” I suggested. “The two of you could have a smelly sneaker smackdown.”
“No thanks. I can find my own friend to sit with.”
“Okay, we’ll be secret friends. It will be fun!” My voice—all phony cheerful—made me blush. Gray didn’t look convinced.
“For how long?” he asked.
“Um, I don’t know.” My stomach was beginning to feel like a squeezed-out sponge.
Suddenly he slung his backpack over his shoulder and crossed back to his side of the road.
“Wait! Where are you going?” I called.
“I don’t think we should stand next to each other. It might look weird.”
I knew he was right, so I stayed put. Even though he was just across the road, I felt lonely.
When the bus arrived, something even worse happened. Gray got on ahead of me and stopped beside Sage Green. “Can I sit with you?” he asked.
“Sure,” she agreed, though she usually saved a seat for Maya.
I couldn’t believe it!
“Sit down, Pixie,” Mac, our bus driver, called.
I slid in next to Lucy Chang. In second grade she and I had been in Brownies together. But I only belonged until it was time to sell cookies, because Mom hadn’t approved. She said the cookies contained ingredients that were “heart attacks in waiting” and that she couldn’t encourage our friends and neighbors to buy a single box. The troop leader said I didn’t have to sell cookies. But I didn’t want to be different from the other girls, so I’d quit.
“I’m saving this seat for Alexa,” said Lucy. “But if you want, you can stay until she gets on.”
Great. My ride was going to be like a game of musical chairs. “Okay,” I agreed. “So what’s up?”
She rolled her eyes under her straight black bangs. “Since second grade? You haven’t spoken to me since then, Pixie.”
The Secret Destiny of Pixie Piper Page 3