Finding one of my possible cousins was great, but what I really needed was to find my father. I had to get to the point. “Do you think my dad could be one of your family?” I asked.
Michael shrugged. Even though I could be a relative of his—even a long-lost sister, for all he knew—he ignored me and turned back to Nickel. “What happened next?”
I waved my hands at them to make sure I hadn’t turned invisible.
Nickel lifted his butt onto the counter between two sinks. “Where were we up to?”
“The middle of the battle. That dude threw the grenade and then realized he’d forgotten to pull the pin,” Michael said.
“Hounds of Armageddon? You’re talking about a movie?” Sometimes I wondered what the point of boys even was.
Michael yawned at me. “What? You’re still here?”
My jaw hit my chest. I could barely even see through all my blinking. “I’m most probably your relative, you know. I mean, that’s a big deal. I mean…I mean…I—”
Michael pulled a sneery face at me. “I have three older sisters, and like a dozen cousins, and they’re nothing but pains in the butt. You’d just be another one.”
Fists clenched at my sides, I stamped out. I tried to slam the door, but it had one of those automatic closer things, so it wouldn’t slam. I grabbed it and pulled it hard, but it stubbornly eased itself shut.
“Argh!” I stomped off and thumped my fist into the hallway wall instead. A shock of pain shot up my arm. I hugged my hand and bit my lip hard.
Eyes watering, I counted thirty seconds. No matter how hard I stared at it, the door of the boys’ bathroom didn’t open, and Nickel didn’t come out to apologize. Our future marriage and our entire friendship were in serious danger.
The thing about fighting with my best friend/eventual husband was that it made it hard to tiptoe back to my seat with dignity. I was stuck in the stupid theater, and my accomplice had changed teams.
When I found my seat in the dark, I slumped down into it. While half watching the play, I counted all the ways I knew to embarrass Nickel. There sure were a lot of them. We’d been friends practically an eternity. But the trouble with thinking about that was remembering all the fun things we had done together. Like the time Nickel bought us lime-berry shakes from Hannah’s Shakin’ Shack when they were about to close for the day. Hannah gave us extra ice cream, syrup, and sprinkles in our shakes, for free.
And then there was all the time we’d spent inventing Focus Pocus and Doom Glares and planning to outsmart Swenson and every other enemy we went up against. Together. His spy skills and my fast-talking. It was only good because we did it together. Apart, we were just a sneak and a chatterbox.
My nose got all prickly and my eyes stung. Having a new family was not at all like I had imagined.
Nickel came back eventually and slipped into his seat beside me. I hadn’t counted the minutes he’d been gone. It didn’t matter. I was ten past ticked already.
“Sorry,” he whispered in my ear.
I shoved my hands into my armpits, because (a) it made me look almost as angry as I felt, and (b) it kept me from poking him.
Nickel stared at the play like it interested him, until the curtain closed.
“Phew, it’s over,” someone said in the back seats.
“I beg your pardon?” Mrs. Gilbert said. “And actually, it’s only intermission. It will start again in ten minutes.” She stood up as the lights came on one at a time. “Now is the time for a bathroom break, if you need it.” She stared straight at Nickel and me. “Or need it again. Otherwise, stay put. And don’t even think about going outside.”
Sagging, I covered my face with my hands. Would the day ever end?
Nickel poked at my arm. “You’re mad at me, right?”
I lifted my nose high enough for me to see all the carved bits and domes in the ceiling.
“I’m going to go right ahead and take that as a yes,” he said.
Since I couldn’t get my nose any higher, I turned my head a little bit to the left, away from Nickel. I gave myself enough room to keep turning if he kept on talking.
“That kid was a jerk. A total certifiable lame-o.”
Turn.
“I didn’t like him either. Even if he did like Hounds of Armageddon.”
Turn. Although my neck ached from the stretch.
“He’s totally bored with the whole albinism-slash-family thing.”
I jerked and twisted my head around until it stung. Unless I turned into an owl, I’d gone as far as I could without dislocating something.
“Aw, c’mon, listen to me. We talked about the movie, and other stuff came out. I found out loads.”
Hoping it wouldn’t look too much like forgiveness, I turned my head back toward him, just a little. My neck ached, but I refused to rub it. That would be a sign of weakness—and poor posture.
On the right track now, Nickel kept going. “I’ll prove it. Look over the edge of the balcony.”
He took my hand, but I snatched it back. “Too soon,” I said.
We stood and leaned over to watch the people taking their seats below after their bathroom break. I didn’t need Nickel to tell me what to look for. Right below us sat a small group of moms and their kids—all with ghostly-pale springy hair like Michael and I had. There were not as many of them as there had been at Towne Park, but there were plenty enough to not be a coincidence. They were laughing and play wrestling and fist-bumping, having a great time and making a lot of noise.
“My family?” I asked.
My family!
Nickel was officially forgiven.
By some miracle, he’d managed to find an entire theater packed with people related to me. Maybe including some brothers and sisters. It didn’t even matter that we had failed in our escape plan, although I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to use my Focus Pocus ninja rolls.
I thumped Nickel’s arm and pointed at the group in the seats below us. “Wow. Look.”
“Ow. I am looking. I showed you, remember,” he said.
“Ha!” said Joe Minciello, one of Swenson’s friends. “You should get down there. It’s like a convention or something. You might even fit in somewhere for a change.”
It was much better than a convention—it was a mini family gathering. My family. They were people like me, and no one had ever been like me.
Thanks to the noise Minciello made, Mrs. Gilbert noticed us leaning over the balcony. She rushed down the steps, grabbed Nickel and me by our arms, and pulled us back into our seats. “Get away from there! You’ll fall and your parents will sue me.”
“Sorry.” Nickel slumped into his seat with a sheepish look on his face.
Mrs. Gilbert patted us both on top of our heads. She pointed a warning finger at Minciello and Swenson. “Stay in your seats. All of you.”
When she had gone, Nickel swiped his hand across his brow. “Phew.”
“That was fun,” I said. Which it wasn’t.
“You know what this means, right?” Nickel asked.
“Sure, I do,” I said. My new family was downstairs waiting for me; that was what.
Michael had been a disappointment. He had rubbed some of the fairy dust off the excitement of finding them, but I couldn’t let one bad Michael ruin the entire family. Besides, what mattered was finding my father, and my chance was slipping away.
“I wish I’d read the play properly,” I whispered in Nickel’s ear.
“Why?”
“Because I’d know when it was ending, so we could be ready to get downstairs fast.”
“I’ll tell you when it’s about to end.”
“You read the book?” I asked. Usually I did the reading and gave him a rundown on it.
Even in the dark, I could see his cheeks turn pink. “Yeah. I,
uh, kind of liked it.”
Sometimes it was like I did not know Nickel at all.
The noisy group downstairs, my O’Malley family, made it hard to hear the play. I closed my eyes and thought about what I might do when I met my father.
I wouldn’t show him my list straight off. That might scare him away, and the satellite was the urgent thing. We could start by getting ice cream. That was the sort of thing a father and daughter did. Once we got to know each other, he could come and see Mom and—
Nickel shoved my shoulder. “This is the last scene,” he whispered.
A little buzz started up in my stomach. “Okay. Soon as the curtain drops, we make a run for the stairs.”
Nickel nodded. “What about Mrs. Gilbert?”
“If we run fast enough, she won’t have time to stop us. We have to talk to them before they get a chance to leave.”
The spotlights on the stage dimmed for a second, and I jumped up. Nickel dragged me back down again. “Not yet.”
A few minutes passed, but it felt way longer than that. One of the actors said something that must have been funny, and everyone laughed and clapped. I jumped to my feet. Nickel stopped me again.
After the next round of applause, I hesitated, not wanting to make a total goose of myself three times in a row. Nickel jumped up and dragged me with him as the curtain fell for real. I guess all the upping and downing had alerted Mrs. Gilbert, because when we got to the stairs, she was already there.
“Where are you two going?”
Nickel stepped forward. “It’s Robyn,” he said, thrusting a finger in my direction. “She’s got the squirts. The runs. Bad. Terminal, maybe.” That boy had a mind as quick as a toddler with a sugar rush.
One of Mrs. Gilbert’s eyebrows lifted. “That doesn’t take two of you, now, does it?”
Nickel looked at me. He had on his taking-one-for-the-team face. “I’ll wait.”
He saluted me, and I took off running.
At the bottom of the stairs, I realized that the few-second delay had cost me. My path was blocked by a solid wall of people, all pushing to be the next through the door. My family must have sprinted out of the theater, because most of them were already outside, including Michael. He had one of the others’ heads under his arm and was rubbing his fist in the poor kid’s hair. Michael had gotten the bad genes. No doubt about it.
I dove for a gap between two old ladies, but it got me no closer to the door. Elbows jabbed me and bodies jostled me until I was right back where I had started.
A hand shot out of nowhere and grabbed my arm. A woman had me trapped—a woman with a wild-eyed look and hair that had more trouble staying in its ponytail than mine did. My mouth did that opening-and-shutting thing fish mouths do when a cat flicks them out of their bowl.
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady? We said to wait inside. Is that so difficult to understand? Almost getting us all kicked out of the matinee wasn’t enough for you lot?”
“I—but—I didn’t—I’m…” My plan hadn’t allowed for being caught by a raving-mad mother. I needed to improvise a way out of this, and for once my Focus Pocus quick thinking wasn’t helping at all. “M-my name is Robyn Goodfellow, and—”
“Oh, I bet it is,” the woman said. “Nasty, mischievous fairy, are you?”
Mom had called me that a time or two. But this time, aside from a bit of lying about deadly diarrhea, I wasn’t being nasty, and I was mostly failing at being mischievous. “No. I’m Robyn Goodfellow for absolute real. I—”
Her grip on my arm tightened. A lot. I considered hollering for the fancy door guy to come and rescue me. Or Nickel.
“When we say ‘stay inside,’ we mean ‘stay inside.’ Now, you freeze right—”
Another one of the mothers interrupted her, pointing at my face. “Take a good look, Nora. Ignoring the hair and the eyes, does this face look familiar?”
Nora peered at me, eyes getting narrower by the second. “Um…”
I cleared my throat. “My name is for real Robyn Goodfellow. I’m not a fairy, although my mom is, kind of. I came here with my teacher, but I think my dad is one of your family, and you had a picnic in Calliope that one time. I have to find my father. It’s life or death.”
The words came out in a terrible rush, but I had more than the two mothers listening by the time I finished. I had another four. I looked from one mother’s face to the next, hoping for some sympathy. They all looked confused, and one or two of them looked worried.
“Please.” I glanced up at the top of the stairs, where Mrs. Gilbert was shouting orders at everyone. “I don’t have much time. Can any of you help me?”
Outside, the kid Michael had in a headlock let out a bellow as his glasses hit the pavement. One of the mothers elbowed her way past while the others looked at me with curious eyes.
The one helpful mother pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, scribbled on it with a chewed-on pencil, and passed it to me. “We have to go. Come to our next get-together. Maybe we can help you figure this out.”
Clutching the slip of paper, I watched her disappear into the crowd to join my possible family.
I didn’t notice Mrs. Gilbert and the others making their way down the stairs. Suddenly, they were right there with me.
“Is your tummy okay?” Mrs. Gilbert asked.
I nodded and slipped my hand with the note in it into my pocket. “Yeah. Better now.”
Swenson passed by, chuckling to himself. When he reached the doors, he did a squeaky imitation of Mrs. Gilbert’s voice and shoved Minciello’s arm. “Aww, Minci, you got a runny tum-tum too?”
Fury bunched my hands into tight fists. One day karma would catch up with Swenson, and it would be epic.
Mrs. Gilbert herded us all onto the bus.
My fist had gotten a bit gross and sweaty in my pocket, but I didn’t dare pull the paper out, even to show Nickel. What if Mrs. Gilbert saw it and confiscated it, and I couldn’t find out what it said until the next issue of the school paper?
On the bus ride home from the theater, Mrs. Gilbert stood in the aisle right in front of Nickel and me and continued the bottles-on-the-wall countdown at thirty-four. It seemed like I would never get to read my note.
Nickel never had been any good at being patient. “Did you talk to Michael’s family?”
“Yeah. I got a note.”
“That’s something, I guess. What’s the note say?”
“I’m not sure yet.” I told him in a whisper about the worn-out-looking mothers, about Michael being a jerk, and about the mom who had tried to help me.
“Maybe the note has someone’s phone number on it,” he said.
It didn’t feel like a number, there in my pocket. It felt kind of like soggy paper.
Nickel’s eyes got all bright. Sometimes with him you could actually see his imagination kick in. “Maybe it’s your dad’s phone number, with some secret code only his kids get to use when they call.”
I gave him a look. “Secret code? Seriously?”
He shrugged. “You can’t say for sure it isn’t.”
When we got back to school, Mrs. Bugden’s car pulled up first. Nickel cursed and muttered all the way out of the bus about efficient mothers. “Email me,” he said before slamming the car door behind him.
I waved with my free hand and waited for Grandma while Mrs. Gilbert supervised all the kids going home with their moms.
Maybe the day’s party would be over and Mom would pick me up for once instead of Grandma. I kind of missed her after dealing with those other mothers at the theater. Sure, my mother wore fairy wings, but she never snarled or grabbed anyone by the arm, even when toddlers had complete meltdowns. No one ever had a better mother than her.
I thought of Michael and the poor kid he’d had in a headlock. I bet Michael belonged to that cranky mom.<
br />
Soon the street outside school was empty of cars, but there was still no sign of Grandma.
Mrs. Gilbert pointed at her cute little car. “How about I give you a ride home? Your grandma must have been busy.”
“Busy” was a nice way of saying “You’ve been forgotten, or maybe abandoned.”
Mrs. Gilbert held open the passenger door of her little car, and I climbed in. It smelled like her perfume—flowers and coconut. Stacks of paper took up most of the floor space, and I had to rest my feet on the tips of my toes to fit them in. Mrs. Gilbert grabbed a few of the coffee cups from the dashboard and tossed them into the tiny backseat. “I’m saving them to recycle,” she said.
Considering how many were piled in the back, she ought to have gotten an award for environmental heroism. I clicked my safety belt into place and tried to sit as still as I could. Riding in my teacher’s car was even weirder than being in the boys’ bathroom. I kept my hands tucked in my pockets, clutching the note with all the most important answers in the world on it. It itched in my fingers, desperate to be read, but not by my teacher.
When we arrived home, Mrs. Gilbert followed me up the walk. She clapped her hands with excitement while I opened the front door. “I can’t wait to see your fairy party room,” she said. “It’s legendary with the younger girls.”
I spotted the signs straightaway. Glittery fingerprints on the wall. Discarded Superman costume and a pair of abandoned pants inside the front door. It all added up to a party. For some reason small children lost their clothes a lot. It was okay as long as they kept their underwear.
“Is there a party today?” Mrs. Gilbert asked.
“Always is on a Saturday,” I said.
As it turned out, the party had entered what Mom called the “hangover” phase. In the Fairy Wonderland, she sat on a moss-covered log, wings and wand sagging, head in her hands. One small boy in half a Robin Hood costume lay snoring under a toadstool. An even smaller girl dressed as a pirate circled the table, licking frosting off the forest-green plastic plates. “Num num num,” the little one said.
What Goes Up Page 6