My mother, the changeling. When I came back from the other world, I clung to her like a dryer sheet to the back of a nylon blouse. I examined her top to toe, interpreted the constellations of freckles on her arms, hid in closets and behind doors, just to see if she’d do anything odd or even magic (maybe fairy dust had rubbed off on her when she’d been stolen; you never could tell).
It turned out that for the most part, my mother was just a mom, a stressed-out mom who worried she didn’t know what she was doing, a mother who’d never been mothered herself, or been a daughter for that matter.
But: Once, a few months after I’d come back, I cut my arm on an exposed nail—it was a light cut, a ribbon of red, the blood barely rising from the skin—and my mother put her hand over the wound—
And the cut disappeared.
True story.
“Put your hand over mine,” I told her the first time I took her to the nurse’s office. “And believe. Just believe for five seconds. That’s all it will take.”
It didn’t work. Is it because my mother doesn’t really believe? Or is it because I’m getting too old, too practical, too mature?
Anyway, I was thinking . . .
Maybe you could help me?
The doors are out there. If you could just twist a few out-of-the-way doorknobs, check the custodian’s closet at your school, pay attention to the ground under the soles of your shoes—
If you feel a buzz beneath your toes, let me know.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
Falling In Page 13