Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
Epilogue's Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright © 2018 Meghan Rose Allen
This edition copyright © 2018 DCB, an imprint of Cormorant Books Inc.
This is a first edition.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1.800.893.5777.
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation, an agency of the Ontario Ministry of Culture, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit Program.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Allen, Meghan Rose, 1980–, author
Enid Strange / Meghan Rose Allen.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77086-525-9 (softcover). — ISBN 978-1-77086-526-6 (HTML)
I. Title.
PS86O1.l545E45 2018 JC813’.6 C2018-900035-x
C2018-900036-8
United States Library of Congress Control Number: 2017964200
Cover art: Emma Dolan
Interior text design: Tannice Goddard, bookstopress.com
Printed and bound in Canada.
Manufactured by Friesens in Altona, Manitoba, Canada in May 2018.
DCB
An Imprint of Cormorant Books Inc.
260 Spadina Avenue, Suite 502, Toronto, Ontario, M5T 2E4
www.dcbyoungreaders.com
www.cormorantbooks.com
To Anne-Tamara,
who first told me the house was haunted
’ll begin with the kitchen. You need to find a room as much like my kitchen as possible, as I have not managed to see the faeries anywhere else: not in other rooms in my house, not in rooms in Mrs. Delavecchio’s house, not in the public library, not at my school, and not at my mother’s work. If you cannot find a room like my kitchen, coming to my house may be easier since we know my kitchen works for seeing the faeries.
So, try to find a galley kitchen so thin that two people passing through in opposite directions will touch both each other and the cupboards even if they’re walking sideways. A fridge needs to be on one long side of the kitchen (a white fridge, not steel and not 1970s mustard or lime) along with eight cupboards, four above and four below the counter. The cupboards, of course, must also be white with small handles of polished chrome. If a few handles dangle a bit, maybe wobble roundly when you pull on them, excellent; it’ll better scatter the light.
The other long side of the kitchen needs to have cupboards, a sink, and a stove. Again, the cupboards must be white with the same chrome pulls. The stove and the fridge cannot sit directly across from each other; rather, the fridge must face the sink. Above the sink, there needs to be a curtainless window. Make sure your window doesn’t face a dark alley or look out directly onto a brick wall. (In my case, the window looks into Mrs. Delavecchio’s fruit and vegetable plot. She grows cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, grapes, and other such edible plants older Italian ladies grow in their gardens. I often wonder how vital this garden is to seeing the faeries. For example, would a scrubby, empty lot yield the same results? Or a field overgrown with wildflowers? In comparison with those, Mrs. Delavecchio’s garden is as rigid as can be, her rows parallel and perpendicular, plants cut uniformly and tended to fussily. I would have thought that faeries would be unimpressed by the symmetry of Mrs. Delavecchio’s garden, but I have been proven, time and time again, wrong in this regard. Perhaps faeries like plants, no matter their layout.)
As for the short sides of this rectangular kitchen, one must open to a front hall and stairwell, while the other needs a door to the backyard. This door to the backyard can be made of glass panels like mine (more light, it is important!), but any sort of see-through door (frosted glass, patterned glass, stained glass) should work.
Now the floor: tile, obviously. Faeries do not like the feel of carpet on their feet. (Plus, you just can’t keep carpet in a kitchen clean. Imagine yourself tripping while holding spaghetti sauce in a carpeted kitchen — unless, of course, your carpet was a tomato orange red color, in which case please feel free to imagine tripping holding some other staining liquid, like black ink. In my case, my mother pulled up the carpet in the kitchen the day we moved in. She put the roll in the basement so we can put it back down if the landlord, whom I have never met, demands we do so.)
As for the walls: pale colors, like white, cream, or an anemic shade of yellow. This helps to see the shadows better. For shadows you need light, and for light you need sun, since the buzz of an incandescent bulb annoys the faeries, while low-energy fluorescents aren’t strong enough to cast a shadow. (I am still looking to test energy-saving LED light bulbs. I have one such bulb screwed into the reading light in my bedroom. I intend to begin experiments with it at my earliest possible convenience. Please refer to later editions of this book for results. Until then, sunshine ahoy!)
Now, to see the faeries. While you’d think you’d be able to see the faeries in the same way (or at least in a similar way) as seeing your left hand or your reflection in a mirror or a neighborhood cat, this is not the case. Seeing faeries is like seeing the wind or, if you are someone like Mrs. Delavecchio, seeing God or the Devil. (My mother says that even though we don’t believe in God or the Devil, we must be respectful of Mrs. Delavecchio’s beliefs, although I find it presumptuous that my mother has decided what I believe. However, she is adamant on this point, so perhaps she is right. Also, consequences of wind are easier to describe than those of deities’ machinations, so I’ll stick with that.) You see the wind move the leaves or make waves in the puddles on the sidewalk or blow away homework held loosely in your hand. No one says the wind doesn’t exist, hence, if you follow these instructions, you will be unable to say that faeries don’t exist either.
Find a sunny day and sit on the floor. There will be a square of light coming in from the window and hitting the tiles just so. It may not be a perfect square, perhaps more of a diamond or even a rhombus, depending on the angle of the sun outside and
how you’ve positioned yourself relative to the sunbeams from the window.
Twist about until the tetra-shape of light falls into your right peripheral vision. Right and not left, as faeries have learned the sinister connotations associated with the left side. Don’t look at the light straight on. I have never found faeries to appear while looking for them. Faeries work through non-anticipation. Since you are not expecting their existence, faeries have a way of being invisible, but even when appearing invisible to us, faeries cast shadows, and that is what you see: the shadows of the faeries in your right periphery in the four-sided patch of sunlight on the tile floor of the skinny room in which you are sitting while not waiting for the faeries to not appear.
he door to Mrs. Estabrooks’s office didn’t shut properly. Always, slowly, the door swung back open along its wide arc, and conversations from inside the office, such as a mother–vice-principal tête-à-tête, could be heard by anyone placed in the hall on the no-gooders’ bench with a math worksheet two grades below her current level to distract her from listening in. The door’s inability to close properly had been caused by a piece of gum sticking that little tongue in the doorknob down so it wouldn’t latch. (Don’t ask me how I knew that so precisely. It wasn’t me who put that gum there.)
“Putting aside that Enid did not follow instructions —” Mrs. Estabrooks paused to emphasize this point “— again, this is a very detailed piece of work. The vocabulary alone.” The sheets ruffled as she flipped through them. “Machinations, perpendicular, connotations. Quite a mature essay for a girl in middle school.”
“Enid is quite a mature girl.”
“Yes.” A brief cough. Mrs. Estabrooks always coughed before accusations, so I knew what was coming. I’d sat on this bench in this hallway often enough to know that. “Her teacher is not fully convinced that this work was entirely of Enid’s own doing.”
“Whose doing is this work?” asked my mother. Mrs. Esta-brooks may have preferred hinting; my mother, however, had no problem with bluntness.
Mrs. Estabrooks’s office chair squeaked. “We’re not saying there was any malicious intent. I want to make that clear. However, some parents struggle with boundaries relating to their child’s success — and sometimes they feel as though they’re helping, when in fact —”
My mother stopped her. “I didn’t write Enid’s paper for her.”
“Of course not, but maybe your husband?” I didn’t need to be inside the vice-principal’s office to know my mother’s reaction to that. Mrs. Estabrooks smartly moved on. “Another adult? Babysitter? Maybe this …” more paper rustled, “Mrs. Delavecchio?”
“Enid has always done her own work, and always superbly. Perhaps what you should be more concerned with are the low expectations you’ve placed on her and the other students in the school in your quest for mediocrity.”
“Now, Mrs. Strange, that’s not fair.” My mother didn’t correct Mrs. Estabrooks for assuming, again, that she was married. “And your opinion of the school is not the purpose of this meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss that the writing style here is beyond what the school believes is Enid’s capability.”
“But you can’t prove that Enid didn’t write this?”
“I was hoping that you might —”
My mother snorted. “You suspect Enid didn’t write the paper, but can’t prove it. You want to punish Enid, but can’t without proof. You’re in quite a quandary.”
“No,” Mrs. Estabrooks said slowly, almost as a question. “But I am in —”
“Have we finished? I would like to get back to work.”
“If Enid did write this,” Mrs. Estabrooks’ tone suggested she still believed otherwise, “she has as much imagination as her namesake, Enid Blyton.”
“Excuse me?”
“Enid Blyton? You must have all her books at home. Noddy and …” Mrs. Estabrooks trailed off, unable to think of any other of Enid Blyton’s characters.
“I chose Enid’s name at random from the hospital copy of What to Name the Baby.”
“But with all her talk of faeries, I assume Enid Blyton must be quite beloved in your house.” Mrs. Estabrooks was trying a we’re on the same side tactic. Too bad my mother, like a circle, had no sides.
The metal feet of my mother’s orange plastic chair scraped across the linoleum floor. “We’re done,” she announced.
“I really don’t think we’re —”
“As I have no interest in discussing mid-twentieth-century British children’s literature, I believe we are. And may I say that I am ecstatic that summer is almost here. I plan on enjoying the next two months free from your wast-ing my time. Come on, Enid.” My mother was in the hall beckoning me to follow her before Mrs. Estabrooks could think of any retort.
“Did you have to be so harsh?” I asked once we had marched outside. “They’ll treat me even worse now.”
“Who are they, Enid?”
“Mrs. Estabrooks. My teachers.”
“Bully for them. Or you. Whichever.” She wasn’t actually listening to me, having opened my report to begin read-ing. With her enthralled (or so I hoped), I took hold of her elbow to lead her around café patios and children on their way to the splash pad, to stop her at the crosswalk, and, finally, to walk her up the front steps and onto our porch.
“I’m intrigued, Enid,” she said once inside, aligning her shoes with robotic precision along to the wall. “Even if what you wrote isn’t factual.” She handed me back my report.
“It’s all true.”
“We moved here on a Tuesday, and I didn’t rip up the kitchen carpet until a Sunday, so to write that I did so the day we moved in is inaccurate. And there are some other things.” But she didn’t elaborate as she flipped through a stack of envelopes and ran her fingers along the perforated edge of a stamp. “How often have you been seeing faeries in the kitchen?”
“I don’t see the faeries. I see their shadows through the windowpane.”
“Yes, yes.” My mother put the envelopes down. “I read your story.”
“It isn’t a story. It’s true.”
“We’ve already established that what you have written is fiction. The carpet.”
“One small slip-up on a date and suddenly my whole report is lie. That’s rather pedantic,” I muttered.
“Enid,” my mother began. I knew what that meant. When my mother started a sentence with my name, it meant a detour, sometimes large but often tiny, so tiny you hardly noticed until you’d spent ten minutes talking about another topic entirely. I braced myself. Faeries, I told myself. Don’t let her distract you from the faeries. “You must have noticed how sickly the birches outside are looking.”
“I’m surprised you noticed, with your head buried in my report.”
“Your report wasn’t that engrossing, Enid.”
Sure. Next time I’d let her take a few steps into traffic to see how engrossed she wasn’t.
“Of all the trees we planted last, only the birches remain, and them barely. I’ve heard ash recommended,” my mother continued. “But I don’t know how ash fares in this climate.”
I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl; I needed food to keep my mind from being led astray by my mother’s conversational feints. Already mushy. I spat my mouthful into the sink. “We need food.”
“Fine. We’ll order in for dinner.” This meant either pizza or fried chicken, the only two delivery restaurants in town. I didn’t want pizza or fried chicken. I wanted exotic. Once, on a trip to a big city, we’d gone to an Ethiopian restaurant. That’s what I wanted: Ethiopian food. A big flat injera pancake, reddish lentils, yellowish lentils, carrots and collard greens, chickpea paste, doro wat with the hard-boiled egg inside.
“What do you think about oak?” my mother asked.
“Not for dinner, please.”
“Or maple. During that woman’s pr
attling, I watched the maple trees outside her window. They appeared decent. I’ll have to double-check in my books, but maybe.” She clapped her hands together. “Your choice.”
She meant dinner.
“Fried chicken,” I said sourly.
“Potato salad?”
“Coleslaw. The neon green one,” I rushed to add. “Not the whitish one.”
“Magnificent choice.” She dialed the number and let it ring. While the Chicken Bucket deep fried with ridiculous speed (their chicken was often still raw inside), they rarely answered their phone with the same alacrity.
“So, what else was wrong with my essay?” I asked, pleased that my mother had failed to distract me with tree-based discussions. “It’s hard to remember all the stories you told me when I was little, and now that you won’t talk to me about faeries anymore, I’ve had to fill in the blanks myself.”
“Yes.” My mother held up one finger to my face. “I’d like to order the seventh combo, no chicken, with neon green coleslaw rather than potato salad.”
A long pause.
“You’ve allowed substitutions before … Yes, three days ago, in fact. And you didn’t charge me extra. Is Louis there? … He’s finding Louis,” she said as an aside to me.
“If I wanted to talk to the faeries, would I have to invite them in?”
“You invite vampires in, not faeries. You must have read Dracula, or at least some of its derivatives, by now. So, Louis isn’t there? Louis is always there. Where else could Louis have gone? Actually, never mind. Register my displeasure to Louis when he is located.”
“Enid?” My mother then shouted out as if I weren’t still standing next to her. Noticing I hadn’t moved from when we had been speaking just seconds ago, she dropped the decibels. “We will not be eating fried chicken this evening. What toppings do you want on your pizza?”
“You didn’t leave your name. How will Louis know the displeasure is yours in particular?”
“Toppings, Enid.”
“Plain,” I said. No matter what I said, she would order plain to save money. Just like no matter what I did, I would never be able to get answers about the faeries out of her. I might be able to steer the conversation back to faeries. Then she’d change it again. Then I’d steer it back. Then she’d change it again again. What was the point? If I wanted to learn more about faeries, I was going to have to teach myself.
Enid Strange Page 1