What Goes Up

by Wen Jane Baragrey

  “You did this?” I whispered.

  Mom wrapped her arms around me. “You were worried about the satellite, so I thought I’d remind you how beautiful the universe is.”

  When the lights came on, I saw she had stuck toy glow-in-the-dark stars over my posters and new wallpaper. The moon was just a white paper lampshade with a solar garden light inside, and the cotton wool clouds hung on strands of thread from the ceiling. I didn’t care. Once you believed in magic, it didn’t matter if you saw the strings.

  I got into my pj’s at top speed and jumped into bed. Mom switched off the light, and my own personal universe glowed back to life and swayed in the darkness around me.

  “It’s like I’m the satellite,” I said.

  “No. You’re the star.” Mom gave me a smooch on the forehead and waved good night.

  “Wait, Mom,” I said, plucking up all my nerve. I had to try.

  She turned back from the door and smiled. “Hmm?”

  “Do you think my dad might be wondering if we’re okay? You know, with the satellite coming and all?”

  Her smile didn’t move. At all. It froze there on her face and didn’t match her eyes anymore. “They said it will land in the ocean. We’ll be safe.”

  “But my dad might be worried, though?”

  “Sweet dreams,” she whispered, and backed out of the room.

  I watched the moon wobble slowly among the fading stars while I waited for its power to run out. I tried to relax, but whenever I drifted off, one of the glowing stars turned into a satellite-shaped missile, sped across the room, and tore the paper moon to shreds.

  Mrs. Gilbert’s English class was first thing in the morning. Because she also taught drama, her reading assignments were often plays. This time it was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was about—oh, joy—fairies.

  “It’s my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays,” she said. Since everyone in Calliope knew everything about everyone else in Calliope, Mrs. Gilbert smiled right at me. “I think you’ll love this one, Robyn.”

  Every face in the room turned to me, some sniggering.

  Mrs. Gilbert passed the books around, and we opened them to the first page.

  If Shakespeare had spoken English, it was a kind of English I had never heard before. I threw my hand up into the air and wriggled my fingers around. Mrs. Gilbert beamed, as if any question I had would be the best question ever.

  “Yes, Robyn?”

  “I think you accidentally gave me a foreign version,” I said.

  The smile on Mrs. Gilbert’s face wobbled as she peered at me over her glasses. “It is English. Maybe it’s different from the way we speak today, but it’s still English.”

  The class giggled again, which was not fair, since I bet none of them understood it either.

  I stared down at words like “methinks” and “betwixt” until my eyes ached. After two entire minutes of squinting, I skipped over the words I didn’t understand. The reading went a lot faster but made no more sense.

  Until something caught my eye.

  A name.

  Robin Goodfellow. One of the lead characters had both my names, and he—yes, he—was a fairy.

  For years I had coped with having Tinkerbell for a middle name because I had thought the rest of my name was normal. But, no, Mom had fooled me and gotten away with it for almost twelve whole years.

  Seconds later, everyone else must have made it to the same place in the book as I had, because the giggles and whispers started up again.

  Dameon Swenson, who never missed a chance to poke fun, pointed at me and cried, “Puck! Hockey puck!” like it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

  Everyone else laughed like it was. If the satellite squished me, people would be too busy laughing at my name to care about the tragedy of it all.

  My cheeks grew hotter by the second, but I knew I had gotten off lightly. Any mother willing to name her kid after a fairy could have done a lot worse. Tinkerbell could have been my first name.

  My best friend, Nickel, turned around in his seat. “Your mother named you aft—”

  My Focus Pocus Doom Glare froze his mouth shut.

  Turning each page with a slap, I scowled at the words. Stupid play. Stupid fairies.

  Looking apologetic, Nickel reached back and slipped me a note. I tucked it inside the book to wait until something distracted Mrs. Gilbert. Of all the teachers in the whole school, she was the one I did not want to catch me passing notes. She read them to the class before posting them in the school newspaper.

  It was the most popular column. It had the juiciest gossip and the best comeback material all in the same place. The worst part was that the newspaper went home to the parents. If your note got confiscated, you had better hope you’d written about how hard you planned to study.

  My chance to read Nickel’s message came near the end of class, when Mrs. Gilbert stepped outside to talk to another teacher. I flipped open the scrap of paper inside the book to keep any busybodies like Dameon from seeing it and turning me in.

  Nickel’s handwriting made almost as much sense as Shakespeare’s English. After some squinting at one word that could have been either “tonight” or “toothless,” I decided the note said this:

  Leaving school after this class—doctor’s visit. Wanna come to the movies in Densdale tonight? Mom’s driving. I’m paying.

  Nickel always paid. He had a little sister called Penny and an older brother called Dime. The names must have worked, because they were the richest family in Calliope, which Mom always said was like a magic trick on a cop’s salary.

  Money was not my problem, though. Densdale was.

  In Calliope, we were supposed to pretend Densdale didn’t exist. Calliope started out as a separate town, but the city of Densdale grew all around until Calliope became just another suburb. Except the locals refused to believe that and kept right on as if the city was something that happened to other, less stubborn people. True Calliopeans bought what they needed in Calliope or drove over an hour to the next city to get it, rather than shop in Densdale.

  The story goes that Mrs. Cuthbert’s other neighbor, Mrs. Humphries, had her baby in the back of her husband’s van rather than stop at Densdale General Hospital. That’s some serious town loyalty right there.

  When Mom was a kid, two girls from Calliope went missing while selling Girl Scout cookies in Densdale. Local legend said the girls had been kidnapped by an old woman with a Thin Mint obsession who ate them when she’d finished the cookies. It didn’t sound true to me, because I once drank a glass of juice after eating a Thin Mint, and it tasted truly heinous. No way you could eat girls after those cookies.

  True or not, convincing Mom to let me go to the movies in Densdale would take skill, or possibly a miracle. Thanks to Robin Goodfellow/Puck the fairy, I had ammunition.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was a little-known fact that fairies were the most stubborn creatures in the whole fantastical universe, and my mom was their queen. Luckily, I had almost twelve years’ practice in dealing with her.

  The house had no toddlers in it when I got home, but they’d been there. A red balloon bobbed on the front porch, and a teeny glitter dust bunny swept past in the breeze. I let myself in and headed straight to the Fairy Wonderland.

  If Mom had built her fairy room in anyone else’s house, I might have thought it was pretty cool. Fairy lights sparkled through paper twigs and gauzy leaves on cardboard trees. The carpet was made from the fake-grass stuff people who couldn’t be bothered to mow their lawns used. Between the trees were toadstools and giant flowers and rabbits and a shocked-looking baby deer, all made from papier-mâché.

  Mom sat right in the middle, cross-legged, on the rock-and-vine party table. She wore her town-pride Calliopean Cool T-shirt under her wings, but that wasn’t going
to put me off.

  “You’re home early.” She gave me her very brightest smile, holding out her arms for a hug.

  No such luck, Mother, I thought, and stuck out my chin. “Mrs. Gilbert gave us a new reading assignment today. It’s an old play. I can hardly understand the words.”

  Mom waved her wand in front of her. “Abracadabra, I gift you with extra-super reading skills with which you might ace your assignment, Bob.”

  I hated it when she called me Bob. My mom was even worse at nicknames than real names.

  “Thanks so much,” I said.

  Even though my mother had a superpowered lie detector built into her brain, it somehow never warned her about sarcasm. She clapped her hands and hopped off the table with a little bounce. “What’s the play about?”

  “Fairies.” No matter how much I narrowed my eyes, she didn’t notice.

  In fact, she looked kind of like she might explode into a cloud of gauze and glitter. She did a twirl on her tiptoes, clutching her wand. To some people, it might have looked like overkill, but those people didn’t know my mom. If she didn’t let out her excitement in little bursts, she might go supernova one day.

  “I loved studying plays at school.” Her eyes always got misty when she rambled on about her theater days in college. For a second, I thought I even saw a tear. “Is it a play I might know?”

  By then we were in the kitchen, and Mom was stacking plates of leftover finger sandwiches in the refrigerator, her wand clattering against pickle jars and milk bottles. I felt a bit guilty for being mad at her when she was all soft and dreamy. Then I remembered Robin Goodfellow and got over it. “Oh, I think you’ve heard of it.”

  She smiled, a plastic-wrap-covered plate in her hands. “Please tell me it’s Peter Pan.”

  “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  Her face froze, and her smile sort of dried up. “Oh. I see,” she said. All the little dots must have connected inside her brain. “I’d rather you didn’t study that play.”

  “It’s too late. I read far enough to know about Puck the fairy, or should I call him Robin Goodfellow?”

  “The name? Oh, that’s what’s bothering you?”

  “Of course. The name. What else could it be? Until today, I thought that part of my name was perfectly ordinary.”

  Her smile looked sort of embarrassed and relieved at the same time. “In my defense, it’s taken you nearly twelve years to realize. If it weren’t for the assignment, you might never have known. I’ll phone Mrs. Gilbert and ask if you can read something else.”

  What did Mom have against A Midsummer Night’s Dream? My name couldn’t be the problem, since she was the one who’d chosen it, and she had seemed to think there was something else. Fairies, maybe? She knew I got fed up with wings and sparkles sometimes. Most of the time.

  “I don’t mind studying it, Mom.”

  “There are other Shakespeare plays that would be much better for you to study.” She peeled back the plastic wrap from a plate of sandwiches and held them out. “Fairy bread?”

  So inappropriate.

  Mom put down the plate and leaned forward to leave a little kiss on the end of my nose, but I didn’t smile, even though it was awful hard not to. If I gave in, I wouldn’t get to go to Densdale with Nickel that night.

  “I have a question. Under the circumstances, I think you should say yes,” I said.

  “You better let me have it, then.” Mom put her hands on her hips, including the hand with her sparkly star wand.

  I fluttered my eyelashes and gave her my most adorable smile. “Nickel and I would like to go to the movies in Densdale tonight. His mom is taking us.”

  “Densdale? What on earth for?”

  “Because Calliope doesn’t have a theater…”

  “No, but there are movies online. I can make popcorn.”

  My smile stayed firmly in place. “It’s not the same. We want to go to a real theater.”

  She screwed up her face as if the city were a bad taste she couldn’t get out of her mouth. “I don’t know. I mean, it’s Densdale.”

  “It’s only a movie, and Nickel’s mom is driving us.” I coughed “Puck” under my breath, to help make my point.

  She smiled, which I hoped was a good sign. “You two aren’t running off to get married?”

  I rolled my eyes. She knew perfectly well that Nickel and I were not even boyfriend and girlfriend. Yet. “No, obviously. But seeing a movie would help me get over the shock of the whole name thing.”

  On the spot, Mom shifted and stared down at the floor. “I guess so, then, against my better judgment. Make sure your homework’s done.”

  It seemed almost too easy.

  I fidgeted in the backseat of Mrs. Bugden’s car, wishing I could tell Nickel all about the O’Malleys and talk about the satellite.

  “Thanks so much for picking me up,” I said. “It’s very nice of you, Mrs. Bugden.”

  Nickel faked a gag in the passenger seat, his freckles bunching up on his nose.

  “What are we going to see?”

  “Hounds of Armageddon. I heard someone talking about it the other day. It sounds a-maz-ing.” He wriggled his butt so he could turn around in his seat to look back at me.

  “An end-of-the-world movie?” I asked. With a satellite on its way?

  His smile twitched a bit. “Sure. I mean, it’s not just about that, though.”

  Best friends were worth more than watching bad movies, so I gave him my best smile. “Sounds…super.”

  Nickel’s eyebrows shot up, and a grin spread across his face. “We could go to the skate park too if you want.”

  That was one step too far.

  Mrs. Bugden interrupted before I could say anything sarcastic. “Sorry, kids. I’ll be back right after. Dad’s on evening shift tonight, and I’ll need to be home with Penny.”

  “Aww, man,” Nickel said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “What a shame.”

  Hounds of Armageddon was everything I had hoped it wouldn’t be—bombs, death, explosions, and not a single dog anywhere. I deserved a new belt in Focus Pocus for sitting through the whole thing. We had a series of ten belts, and because earning them required a lot of patience, wisdom, and mind over matter, I had only three. To be honest, two of those were because Nickel felt bad for me. He had all of them.

  When the movie was over, we sat on the steps out front and waited for Nickel’s mom. Blood-and-guts movies were not good for my appetite. I tossed my uneaten popcorn to the twilight pigeons that cooed at us from the sidewalk below.

  “Okay, spit it out,” Nickel said, sucking on the dregs of his supersized soda. “I know you’re up to something.”

  Blinking innocently at him, I said, “What gave you that idea?”

  From my angle, the bright mall lighting shone right through his hair, turning it pure orange. We had become friends in kindergarten, when we both got teased for our hair—his too red and mine too white. Back then, I should have been popular because of my fairy mother, but the hair ruined most of that. It turned out Nickel could find a hiding place just about anywhere, and I could fast-talk our way out of any situation. Once we invented Focus Pocus and shared our knowledge, we were unbeatable.

  Nickel rolled his eyes. “Let me see. First, I know you. Second, you agreed to watch Hounds of Armageddon without complaining. Third, you were all, ‘Thank you for picking me up, Mrs. Bugden.’ ” He put on his smarty-pants voice for the last bit.

  If I could have found Dad without him, I would have used the Doom Glare.

  “Actually, this is very serious stuff,” I said.

  Nickel’s face brightened. “Sweet. What’s up?”

  I told him that I had found my probable family on TV.

  “Wow, that’s like some sort of superhero origin story. Like you’re an X-Man or so
mething.”

  That might have been going a bit far. Hounds of Armageddon had clearly gotten to him.

  “If they are my family, then they must know my dad. He might have been right there on the TV for all I know. I need to find him.”

  Nickel grinned. “Need to find him? For what, hockey puck?”

  I shoved his arm. “Don’t call me that! Dads are useful for all kinds of things. He could sign the papers so I can change my name to something else, for one thing. I can’t go to high school with this name. Even worse, if I die from the satellite, I’ll be stuck with a fairy’s name on my gravestone.”

  My hands shook as I thought about the satellite. It sat up there in the sky right then, maybe taking aim. I could train in Focus Pocus techniques every day for the rest of my probably shortened life, and I’d still be too slow to get out of the way.

  Nickel lifted his brows and shrugged. “If you die by satellite, there probably won’t be enough of you left to bury.”

  My eyes popped wide open. “Nickel Bugden!”

  “Okay, okay. Find him, then.”

  I struggled to turn the ticked-off expression on my face into something a bit more pleading. “I bet you could find him. Easy.”

  “Me? Oh no, you don’t. My dad will kill me if he catches me looking up people in the police database again. He’s onto me.”

  “But this time it’s my-own-for-real dad. At least you have a dad to be angry at you.”

  “Emotional blackmail is the lowest form of negotiating.” Nickel rolled his eyes and leaned back on the steps. “The satellite’s as likely to hit my house as yours.”

  “Oh yeah? And how many things have landed on your house? Skydivers? No. Trees?”

  He looked a bit less certain and much less sarcastic. “Good point. If it wanted to land on anyone’s house, it would definitely choose yours.” He gave a pained sigh. “If I get grounded for life, you have to find a way to smuggle me in some candy and soda.”

  “Deal.” I spat on my hand and held it out for him to shake.