by Emma Savant
“It’s so stupid!” Kyle said. The people at the table next to our window nook turned to frown at him, and he lowered his voice and said, “This is typical Elle. One minute, she’s the smartest, most sensible person you’ve ever met. The next, bam. She’s run full steam ahead with one of her stupid ideas and we’re stuck at a furry convention wearing Ent costumes because she thought it would be funny and we’re about to get literally bitten by a six-foot-four wolf.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Traumatic memory?”
“Some of her ideas are awesome, don’t get me wrong. No one gets great ideas like Elle. But she gets bad ideas too, and she goes after all of them with exactly the same enthusiasm.”
“All enthusiasm, no discretion,” I said.
It matched what I’d seen of Elle so far. Kyle knew her perfectly. The part that amazed me was that he still hadn’t realized how much he liked her.
I was relieved to see Cortney appear behind the counter for her shift. I’d stolen the necklace from the locker room while she was in gym, and while she still looked tired, her face didn’t have the gaunt, haunted look it had before. Mallory had been harder to help; I’d slid an anonymous note in her locker advising her to claim she’d had a bad reaction to medication. I hoped she’d followed my advice. It would have been better to just wipe everyone’s memories, but even Imogen couldn’t have managed that.
Suddenly, Tyler stood up, vaulting himself off the couch and halfway across the room in a second. Brittney unfolded her arms long enough to sit up straight, then slumped back into the couch as she realized he was headed to the counter where Elle was pulling off her apron.
Tyler leaned over the counter and kissed her.
Watching them kiss grossed me out in a way I couldn’t explain. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with them individually. They were good-looking people, and the kiss was nothing more than an affectionate peck. But their lips together were wrong. It was like oil and water, or two clashing colors that should never be put side-by-side. Kyle snorted, not even bothering to hide that he felt exactly the same way—though, I thought, probably for different reasons.
I tugged on my ear and turned up the volume on their conversation. “You look amazing,” Tyler said. He’d started using a voice with her in the last few days that sounded like he was talking to a baby. The most disturbing part was that Elle didn’t seem to mind. She bit her bottom lip and smiled like he was Prince Charming. Which, I realized with a cringing feeling in my gut, he technically was.
“Thanks, babe,” she said. Her calling anyone babe was also depressing.
There was nothing about this situation that wasn’t depressing, I decided. Brittney agreed. She stared at Tyler and Elle like she wanted to dump her coffee right over their heads.
Tyler tapped Elle on the nose. “You deserve a break. Can I make you something?”
“No,” Cortney said, cutting sharply in on their conversation. “Health and safety regulations. Only employees can be behind the counter.” She seemed on edge. Hunger could do that to a person, and she’d had about a month’s worth in the last few days.
Elle rolled her eyes. “Oh, relax,” she said. I remembered a similar conversation playing out with Mallory the first time I’d seen her, but with the roles reversed.
“I’ll make you an Italian soda,” Tyler said. “I’m a quarter Italian, did you know that?” He said it like he expected a gold star or participation trophy. Elle looked like she was about to give him one.
“No way!” she said. “I totally should have guessed. You have that sexy ‘Italian stallion’ thing going on.” She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively at him. Kyle stiffened across the table from me. Jealous, tangled emotions fizzled off him in a way that made me thankful I’d never been in love.
Tyler poured club soda and hazelnut syrup and cream together onto ice in a clear plastic cup. He loudly explained each step to Elle like he was on a cooking show. The few people at the tables nearest the counter raised their eyebrows and watched from the corners of their eyes, but they seemed content to mostly ignore him. Kyle fumed.
“What a douche,” I muttered, mostly for his benefit.
“Did you know that’s the only offensive term related to a woman’s body that Elle approves of?” Kyle said. “She says using female terms as slurs is degrading to everyone, since it implies that female bodies are inferior. She also has a problem with calling girls ‘whores’ and ‘sluts’ because it victimizes and shames women who take ownership over their sexuality. But she says ‘douche’ is okay. Douches are bad for women’s health, so calling someone who’s bad for women a douche is accurate. And Tyler is a douche.”
I’d never thought about it that way before, but somehow hearing Kyle rattle it off made him weirdly… attractive. “You should use that explanation to pick up girls,” I said. “I’m only half kidding.”
“I probably should,” he said. “You think being a male feminist is enough to get me a date?”
“And you just called yourself a male feminist,” I said. “If it wouldn’t be totally professionally inappropriate, I would ask you out right now.”
This got a small smile out of him, if only on one corner of his mouth. “Thanks,” he said. “But—no offense? Faeries scare me.”
Our empathetic gifts made us, as Imogen sometimes put it, “all melodramatic emotions channel, all the time.” I liked to think I wasn’t as bad as most faeries, since my empathetic gifts were nothing to write home about, but I wasn’t about to press that point with someone as in love with Elle as Kyle was.
Tyler and Elle walked back to the couch, Elle holding the drink he’d made her like it was made out of gold. She waved at me from across the room, mouthing a cheery Hi! She’d completely forgotten how angry she had been the last time we spoke.
“I’m sorry you have to watch this,” I told Kyle.
What could she possibly see in Tyler? I reached toward her, but all I could sense was affection mingled with ten kinds of mixed signals from all the mismatched charms. I wished I could get a word of sense out of her that didn’t involve her blowing me off or getting mad at my interference.
I couldn’t believe some people actually chose this job for a living.
“It’s not him that pisses me off,” Kyle said. “It’s watching her and seeing what she’s turned into. I heard about what happened with her stepsisters.” His face darkened. “I know they’re not her favorite people, but Mal and Cortney didn’t deserve that. And the Elle I know would never have done that. She doesn’t get along with them, but my Elle has dignity.”
I liked the way he said my Elle. It wasn’t possessive or even romantic. It was exactly the way I talked about Imogen sometimes when I felt protective of her. I loved that Elle had a friend who felt that way about her. It also made the way she’d abandoned him even worse.
Tyler was lecturing his group about trickle-down economics and his membership in some pretentious-sounding organization for teenagers who planned on being millionaire businesspeople someday. Elle listened intently, probably thinking this information was somehow going to help her use Pumpkin Spice to take over the world. She was the only one listening. Tyler’s three other friends all had their phones out, and Brittney alternated between gazing longingly at Tyler and sending death glares toward Elle.
“Maybe we’ll get your Elle back if we can get those stupid charms off her,” I said. I’d tried to magic them away more than once in the last few days, but she was on her guard and grabbed her necklace every time the clasp came loose, put extra fasteners onto the backs of her earrings when she felt them sliding out, and had started checking herself for every single piece every time she had a spare second. It was driving me crazy. The temptation to knock her out and steal the lot was growing, but she’d know that was me, and there was nothing to stop her from going back and getting more.
Maybe my dad had a point about the important of raising Glimmering kids within the culture. It was too difficult to try to acclimate them later. I didn’t
know who to blame. Her mom, for agreeing to hide her world? Her dad, for keeping her in the dark and then dragging her into a fairy tale without her consent? The Oracle, for allowing the case to go through?
Or me, for going along with the case, telling her about our world, introducing her to the hidden side of the Saturday Market, and then failing to clean up this mess?
Kyle sighed just as Elle yelped from across the room. “What’s on the bottom of my cup?” she shrieked.
“Just keep drinking, babe,” Tyler said, his voice way too casual.
She proceeded to down the last of the soda in one long loud draw from her straw. She shook the cup, rattling ice around, and peered through the clear lid to the very bottom. “Will you…” she read aloud, then shouted, “Oh my God! Will you go to prom with me! Aw, baby!” Her voice climbed up to the pitch people usually reserved for puppies. “You’re so sweet, babe!” And then she vaulted across the half-inch between them and started kissing him, again making my stomach do the thing it did whenever I’d eaten things that didn’t digest well together. Brittney stood up, her face red, and ran out of the building.
I should have been happy. This was the plan. But since when had happy felt so gross?
Chapter 25
Shutting my bedroom door didn’t block out the sound of my parents fighting. It wasn’t the sound that was so bad, though. It was all the emotions rolling through the house in nauseating waves.
It never stopped amazing me how insensitive some faeries could be to the other faeries around them. Didn’t they realize Daniel and I got a healthy dose of secondhand drama every time they started snipping at each other? I’d put on music to drown them out but then turned it off again. It was too much stimulation, so I just sat on my bed and watched the rain speckle my bedroom window.
“I’m sorry this house isn’t good enough for you,” my dad said. A wall of anger slammed through from their bedroom to where I sat on my bed. I’d been exercising my empathic skills lately, and my throbbing head was the payoff. I hadn’t felt their arguments like this in a long time.
My mom’s voice was high-pitched and too fast. “You think this is about the house, Reginald? You think this is about our possessions? I’m so happy to know that’s how you see me.”
“What else am I supposed to think?” he said. “You don’t want me to work late. You don’t want me to take this special assignment for the Council. You don’t want me to do anything to support our family. You want to move to goddamn New York and ‘start over’ in a ‘real home.’”
“Not because of the house, you idiot,” she said. “God, how is that your first conclusion? This assignment feels like trouble. I happen to have a good intuition about this kind of thing, or have you forgotten? Was my divination ability just something nice that made me look like a more attractive wife you could show off at parties, or did you want me to actually use it to help our family?”
My phone buzzed. I ignored it as my dad’s voice rose.
“Someone attacked a bunch of goddamn Humdrum ghost hunters and I’m the one who has to clean that up,” he yelled. “Me! Do you know how much goddamn work it takes to erase those memories and track down all the film of the incident? We still haven’t found the culprit to bring him to the Tribunal. But no, you don’t care about that. You want me to drop everything and move. The Oracle gave me this assignment. The Oracle. You think you’re so special? You think you’re as good as the Oracle?”
“Yes,” Mom snapped. The pronouncement was so audacious I lost my breath for a moment. It sounded like Dad had, too.
A long silence held the house in limbo while we all waited to see what would happen next. Finally, I heard my dad’s voice, and had to strain hard to hear what he said. “God,” he breathed. “God, Marigold. You really have lost touch with reality.”
A tiny sound near my door caught my attention. A second later, the door cracked open. Daniel’s face peeked in, mostly just wide eyes and pale skin that looked as cold as mine felt. “Hey,” he said.
“Come on in,” I said. He ducked inside and closed the door behind him.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Both his hands were wrapped in tight white fists around his palms, clenching rhythmically like a heartbeat. I couldn’t tell whether the tension in the air was from him or me or our parents or just the nasty mixture of all of them. I offered an encouraging smile. “What’s up?” I said.
He shook out one of his hands, which instantly flooded with blood and turned back into the milky color that passed for healthy skin in the Feye family. “I was wondering if you’d do me a favor,” he said. He kept his voice low, but whatever the favor was, it was important to him. He rocked forward on the balls of his feet. “You know my performance group.”
He hadn’t allowed me to say a word about it since the night at the restaurant. I felt almost flattered that he’d brought it up again, in an overeager kind of way that made me feel like my mom probably had the first time I’d acknowledged her in public after I’d turned twelve. “Of course,” I said. “Your show was great.”
“Yeah,” he said flatly. “We’re supposed to perform tonight at a park downtown. There’s an arts festival going on.”
There was always some kind of arts festival going on in Portland, but I nodded like I knew exactly which one he was talking about.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d cover for me if Mom or Dad ask where I am.”
My little brother was asking me to cover for him while he sneaked out of the house. The occasion felt momentous, like we were supposed to bond and then come up with a secret handshake or something. I ordered myself to play it cool and said, “Sure. No problem. Where should I say you are?”
Relief flooded his face and swirled into the tension between us like drops of food coloring into water. “Tell them the Yearbook Committee is meeting. That’s true, if they want to check it. I’m just missing the meeting tonight.”
“I didn’t know you were on the Yearbook Committee,” I said.
“Some other freshman dropped out and they needed someone,” he said, sounding no more eager to talk about this than he was about his last performance. Still, he was actually talking to me. That was good.
“I’ve got your back,” I said. “Just don’t get into trouble, okay?” That last bit was nothing more than a habitual older-sister impulse. I couldn’t imagine Daniel actually getting up to any kind of real trouble.
Then again, I hadn’t been able to imagine Daniel as an avant-garde slam poet, either.
“Break a leg,” I said.
He allowed me one tiny smile and a quiet “Thanks” before slipping back out.
The ruckus across the hall had subsided into whispers and hisses. They’d be done soon. I leaned over the edge of the bed and grabbed some textbooks out of my backpack, then spread them across the bed so I’d look busy if one of them happened to look in. I grabbed my phone and clicked the screen on.
Imogen’s photo appeared at the top of the conversation.
Imogen: Guess who got asked to prom? This girl!
She’d added about seventeen different smiling emojis..
I pretended to be surprised, even though of course Imogen had been asked to prom, because despite what my life would suggest, there was still some order to the universe.
Olivia: No way! Who?
She’d been anticipating my reply, because her response was long but almost instant. Jacob Call! It took a second, but then I remembered him as a good-natured guy with sandy hair who sat behind Imogen in English. She’d pointed him out at lunch before, saying he was “One of those guys who looks like he should be a totally adorable farm boy, but he actually lives in town and he’s super into chemistry and SAT prep and I don’t think he’s ever even been to a farm.” She’d nursed a vague sort of crush on him, the same she had with half the guys in our year. He was different than the others, though, because he was one of us. His mom was Humdrum and he’d been raised mostly Humdrum—he was my ki
nd of Glimmer—but he knew who we were.
Imogen: He brought a bunch of balloons to my house & I had to pop them & inside each one was a puzzle piece & when I put the puzzle together the whole thing started sparkling & the pic of the kitten on the front sprang to life & asked if I’d go to prom with him. OMG CUTE. I tried to call but SOMEONE wasn’t answering her phone. You have to come over & see the kitten. It’s just a spell so it’ll probably be gone in a few days, but she’s adorbs. CALL ME. COME OVER. MISS YOU.
I couldn’t handle the thought of being around people right now, even if “people” only meant Imogen. The fight seemed to have faded out, but the emotions still ricocheting around the house made me want nothing but a nap.
Olivia: Aw! I’ll see you tomorrow after work, k? Daniel went to some art performance thing and I’m trying to get some homework done while the house is quiet.
Imogen: Boring. Not gonna lie, I was getting a little jealous of Elle for getting asked by Tyler. I know you don’t like him but at least you’d know you were getting a hot prom night with a guy like that, right? ;)
Olivia: Ew. The only reason Elle will have a good prom is because I’ll be there putting freaking fairy dust in her drink.
Imogen: Creeper. Also: Has Lucas asked you to prom yet? That boy needs to GET A MOVE ON.
Lucas and I had barely spoken since I’d almost plowed him down in the hall. Anyway, I reminded myself—as I seemed to do whenever his name popped up—Lucas had a girlfriend who wasn’t me. I rolled my eyes and tossed the phone away.
By the time my mom came in to check on me, I really was doing homework. Reading was a poor substitute for actually handling plants and looking through microscopes, but my biology textbook still sucked me in sometimes. She knocked on the door. I looked up from a vivid green diagram showing the structure of a plant cell chloroplast as she ducked her head into the room.
