Glimmers of Glass

by Emma Savant

  “What are you doing?” she asked. Her eyes were bright.

  She needed a distraction right now. I felt so sorry for her it made my stomach clench. At the same time, I wished there was someone else around here so that particular weight could leave my shoulders.

  For a brief, crazy second, I thought about telling her about my meeting with Amani. Maybe it would take her mind off of dad, or even give her a second to be proud of one of her kids instead of just constantly disappointed in her husband and full of regret that she’d chosen to get married and have kids at all. She’d never said that, of course, but I was a faerie. I knew things people didn’t want to say, even when I didn’t want to know. Maybe if I told her about Amani, my parents would stop fighting long enough to realize there were bigger things going on in the world than their stupid marriage—things that involved me.

  Instead, I held up my textbook. “Plant cell structure,” I said. “It’s boring.”

  It was boring, compared to the news that the Faerie Queen had asked me to be her heir. And it was boring compared to the giant fight that would erupt if my dad ever heard I’d turned Amani down and hadn’t heard from her since. That would give him something to scream about.

  But Mom shook her head. “Not to you,” she said. “Don’t you know everything about that already?” She glanced up toward my window boxes, which were heavy with green leaves stretching to the rainy light.

  “Not everything,” I said. “I’m good at keeping them alive but I’m still learning how they work.”

  “More power to you,” she said. “I’m glad you have something you’re passionate about.” She looked at me closely, her eyes narrowing in concentration. “Don’t lose that, okay?” she said. “Don’t lose the things that get you interested just because other people don’t approve of them. It’s not worth it.”

  I had a feeling we weren’t talking about me. Even so, it was a message that was nice to hear coming from my mom.

  But I couldn’t take it at face value. “Better watch out,” I said. “I might not end up in Austria studying how to wear faerie wings properly or whatever they do over there.”

  Usually, snarky sideways comments like this were enough to earn a reprimand or at least a disapproving look from either one of my parents. But Mom didn’t care right now. She shrugged and said, like she wasn’t entirely talking to me, “Maybe that’s not where you need to be.”

  My face contorted with surprise. Since when had one of my parents not responded to the threat of skipping Dad’s university with at least a knee-jerk second of panic?

  “You need to do what’s right for you, Olivia,” Mom said. She was back to looking at me like I was a problem to solve. “Not anyone else. Your dad doesn’t know everything.”

  This, I knew. But I’d never heard it come out of her mouth before, at least not seriously. I took a deep breath, then, half-convinced I’d regret it, blurted, “I’m not going to Austria. I’m studying biology in Oregon. Humdrum science.”

  Her eyebrows shot back up, but I wasn’t fooled. She already knew.

  She glanced behind her, then, apparently not seeing Dad about to jump out from the shadows, held my gaze. “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  She nodded once. “Okay.”

  I couldn’t help staring at her. I’d hinted at this a million times before, but I’d never come right out and said it. I was convinced that if I did, I’d have the Sixth Great Faerie War on my hands. But Mom was looking at me almost like she was… proud.

  “Don’t tell your dad,” she added, before leaving me to sift through the daze of what had just happened. “Not yet. One crisis at a time.”

  As soon as the door had closed behind her, my phone buzzed again.

  Imogen: Don’t ignore me. Is Daniel at the festival downtown? We’re going. Your texts are giving me weird vibes and you need to get out of the house asap. I will be at your door in literally ten. Also, look sexy. Lucas is coming.

  Chapter 26

  It was too cold outside for a festival like this to make sense, but this was Portland, and no one was going to skip out on fun because of the weather. The sky brooded heavy silver over the riverfront and misty drops landed like cold pinpricks on my skin. I pulled the hood of my jacket up, glanced around to see if anyone Humdrum was looking, then flicked my hand open toward my chest. Warmth bloomed, starting at my heart and quickly flooding the rest of my body as the enchanted blood circulated.

  It was nice to be out and about without Elle tagging along. It seemed like every time I’d gotten out of the house lately, she’d been there with me. Although maybe that was just because every time I got out of the house lately, it was to head to Pumpkin Spice to keep an eye on her. Being around Elle had started to give me with the same vague panic I felt as a kid whenever I tried to take my Aunt Sophie’s Great Dane for a walk before she’d up and moved to Thailand. It always got excited about something, pulled the leash out of my hand, and took off, leaving me chasing after and hoping it wouldn’t cause a catastrophe before I got it under control.

  Imogen stepped onto a bench looking out over the water and scanned the damp lawn sloping up toward the road. The lawn was littered with white tents set up as performance spaces and food vendors. I had a feeling she was doing this as much to be noticed as to find whomever we were meeting—she was all decked out in a stylish trench coat over skin-tight jeans, and she wore a pair of boots I knew she’d spent way too much on. Her textured floral-print scarf curled around her throat like a pink-and-yellow cloud, and giant gold flower earrings swung from her ears in a way that almost brightened the dreary air around her. After a moment, she waved across the field to someone and hopped down. Two figures walked toward us, their bodies obscured in dusky blue shade and lit by orange from the street lights that lined the waterfront walkway.

  The taller figure pushed his hood back as he reached us, revealing Lucas’ familiar curly mop of hair.

  “I forgot how great Portland’s weather is,” he said dryly, glancing up at the sky. I suddenly had to dig in my purse for lip balm. Something about the way his hair blew across his forehead in the breeze as he smiled down at me it hard to look at him. I was too worried a glance would turn into a gaze, and the gaze would turn into a stare, and then I’d never be able to stop looking.

  Imogen was right. He was cute. And I was his awkward middle-school friend. You need to get out more, I said sternly to my heart, which had just started pounding like I’d been running.

  The hooded girl standing next to him was, no doubt, his girlfriend. She had her hand in his and had a sharp eye on Imogen, sizing up the competition.

  “If we waited for the sun we wouldn’t leave our houses until July,” Imogen said. “I’m glad you came out!”

  He shrugged and smiled at me, though he was talking to her. “It’s good to see people outside of school,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve left the house for a week.”

  “Except to come to my boring parents’ house,” said the girl next to him, leaning in and gazing up with big green eyes. “Which was so sweet, let me tell you again.” She bestowed a smile on Imogen, who was sizing her up right back. “Lucas is the best,” the girl gushed. “My mom is one of those ‘ladies who lunch’ kind of people, which is oh-my-God tedious, and she’s been running these exhausting fundraisers all week. She’s had a different dinner party every day and Lucas came to all of them and sweet-talked old ladies until they practically forked over their checkbooks. He’s so perfect.”

  “Apparently,” Imogen said, managing to make the word sound like a compliment.

  I attempted a friendly look at the girl. She glanced at me, smiled politely, and then looked away toward the water. I wasn’t pretty or dramatic enough to even show up on her radar.

  “I’m Aubrey, by the way,” the girl said. She pushed back her hood a little. She was so attractive my stomach flipped over. Her delicate face had the tidy nose and strong cheekbones of a supermodel. Her complexion was even creamier than Imoge
n’s, and her whole face was surrounded by a soft cloud of floaty, curling auburn hair that reminded me of bombshell actresses from the seventies. I glanced down. Even hidden beneath a black zippered women’s hoodie, she clearly had a nice figure.

  I didn’t need to remind myself anymore that Lucas had a girlfriend, I thought. One look at this Aubrey person was enough to make me realize he’d been hopelessly out of my league in the first place.

  Moments like this were reminders from the universe that I should never leave my house or bother liking anyone. The day had started out bad with Elle yammering on in the hallways about how her stepsisters “practically never showered” and had gotten worse when she showed up to lunch with a new set of earrings that gave off such a powerful attraction charm that I got a headache from trying not to gaze at her in admiration. The day had crashed and burned when I’d gotten home to find my parents screaming at each other.

  And now I was in the middle of discovering that the only guy who ever even gave me the time of day probably considered our friendship a charity case, because there was no other reason someone like Lucas, who had a girlfriend like Aubrey, would talk to a distracted, socially awkward, frizzy-haired, stressed-out, glasses-wearing faerie like me.

  Some days just weren’t worth getting out of bed for.

  I shot Imogen a glance to see if maybe she was interested enough in the new arrivals that I could sneak home early, but she had her phone open and was scrolling through a list of events. “Drum Circle at Dusk sounds kind of cool,” she said. “I’m not normally into the drum circle thing but apparently they light their drumsticks on fire.”

  “I heard Fourscore Nevermore is playing,” Aubrey said. “That’s the only reason I came.”

  “Who are they?” I said.

  “Are they the bluegrass group on here?” Imogen said, still scrolling through the schedule.

  Aubrey raised her eyebrow just slightly as though she was too polite to say what plebeians we were. “They’re a steampunk symphonic metal group,” she said. I wasn’t sure I understood half the words in that sentence, but nodded like I knew what was going on. “They’re kind of obscure,” she added, trying to kindly dismiss our ignorance.

  “Aubrey’s really into the local music scene,” Lucas said. “I swear, she knows everyone who plays in the city.”

  She hit his arm gently. “Like that’s even possible,” she said. She shrugged one shoulder. “I just like to know what’s going on. It’s nice to know about great groups before they get all big and inaccessible.” She rolled her eyes, as though getting “big” was the worst thing that could possibly happen to a group. I’d always sort of assumed being famous and popular was the point, but apparently I’d missed a memo somewhere along the line. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “Your brother is performing here tonight, isn’t he?” Lucas said, turning his deep blue eyes on me again.

  When I was a little kid at Faerie Camp, there was one counselor whose only job was to teach coping skills to young faeries who were overwhelmed by all the emotions and magic around them. I’d never had that problem, my empathetic skills being uninspiring at best, but I’d overheard the counselor telling a panicky water sprite to pay attention to where her breathing landed in her lungs and to force it deeper, because she’d find serenity in the center of the deepest part of the breath. I discovered over the years that “breathing in serenity” worked great when my dad was yelling at me or when I had to mingle with people at my parents’ fundraising dinners. I hoped it would also work for staying calm when an attractive guy was looking at me and waiting for an answer.

  “I think so,” I said. I forced myself to pay attention to my next breath instead of to the sharp line of his jaw. What was wrong with me? “I’m not sure we’ll run into him, though. He’s not super excited about me watching his stuff.”

  Lucas grinned. “I get that,” he said. “When I was a kid, I used to get so nervous whenever anyone would come to my school plays. I’d do anything in front of strangers, but people I knew always scared me. Such a weirdo,” he added, and winked at me.

  Aubrey shot me a razor-edged glare. I blinked at the wave of hostility coming off her, but a second later, my own idiotic emotions had taken over. He winked at me, I thought, then took another deep breath and ordered myself to stop acting like a ninny.

  I was worse than some of Tabitha’s dewy-eyed clients. I knew my parents’ fights always dropped my emotional defenses a little, but I hadn’t realized they could turn a tiny attraction into a full-blown crush. Because that was definitely what this was becoming. Every time I’d smiled at him in the hall or waved across the lunchroom was, I now realized, a tiny symptom of an enormous problem that I’d been—rather skillfully—ignoring.

  I liked him. I liked him as a friend, of course. I always had. But right this second, I liked him as a guy. And that, given the svelte redhead on his arm who was glaring at me like I’d just stolen her last tube of lip gloss, was a big problem.

  Imogen led the way across the lawn to the drum circle. We could see them setting up by the light of blazing Tiki torches. One of the girls who seemed to be in charge was covered in purple tattoos and wore a giant pair of plastic cellophane wings on her back. The guy working with her had dreadlocks to his waist and was shirtless in spite of the cold; when I looked over my glasses, I could see tiny tendrils of flame licking up his bare arms. Imogen read to us from her phone while we walked.

  “The Folie Follies is one of Portland’s most cherished artistic traditions,” she said, somehow managing to focus on the tiny text on her phone and move confidently forward at the same time. “Our aim is to bring performers of all ages and skill levels together for one spectacular night to explore our art, connect with other creatives, and share our unique gifts with the public. In a world that often verges on the hum-drum and worships the nine-to-five, our cherished ambition is to seduce viewers out of the ordinary routines of their day and make public spaces more magical.”

  She looked up just in time to avoid running into a teenage girl wearing a cat costume. “I’m down for that.”

  I lowered my glasses on the bridge of my nose. The people filtering across the lawn and waterfront weren’t all Glimmers, but the crowd did seem to be made mostly out of us and the kind of Humdrums who probably wouldn’t be too freaked out to know we existed. The girl with wings was a faerie—her wings were fake, of course, but it was always popular to trot out our historical cultural dress whenever fashion let us get away with it—and the guy with dreadlocks was a fire witch.

  Looking around, I saw a magician in a top hat that leaked enchantment whenever he moved, several more faeries darting around, and a couple of witches with black snakes wrapped around their shoulders. The snakes should have been still and frozen in this drizzly weather, but they coiled around and tasted the air like it was a comfortable day in July. A couple of teenagers huddled on the sidewalk lighting small ground fireworks; when I looked over my glasses, I could see salamanders bursting out with the sparkles and climbing up their arms.

  We stood at the edge of the makeshift stage that held the drum circle. I positioned myself where I could discreetly watch Aubrey. She was almost as tall as Lucas but still managed to make herself seem small and helpless. One look over the top of my glasses told me she was as Humdrum as they came, so she wasn’t helping herself with a glamour. She made small talk with Imogen, but kept leaning up to Lucas’ ear to whisper private comments. He smiled down at her every time. A tiny dimple in the left corner of his mouth showed up every time his smile became more than a suggestion. I’d seen it before, of course, but I hadn’t ever really noticed.

  The scattered crowd around us slowly grew and coalesced. This arts festival was bigger than I’d realized, because by the time the drummers started banging out rhythms that echoed up the lawn, at least thirty more people had showed up. More than a few of them were recording the event on their phones.

  Daniel’s group must be doing better than I thought. His art was
weird, sure, but you didn’t perform someplace like this unless you had talent.

  I stood on tiptoe and tried to look past the crowd to the waterfront beyond, where all sorts of booths, tents, and stages were set up. I didn’t know which one was Daniel’s. Some guy’s hair stuck up at lopsided angles and blocked my view. I’d stepped aside to see around him before realizing I recognized both the hair and the face underneath it as Kyle’s.

  I waved a hand at him. When that didn’t catch his attention, I pushed a little jolt of energy toward him. It sizzled against his shoulder and he turned, startled. Then he caught my eye and his whole face expanded into a smile. “Hey!” he called over the loud conversation of the girls next to him. He ducked around them. “What are you doing here?”

  “Same thing as you, probably,” I said.

  “Probably not,” he said. He looked over at Imogen, Lucas, and Aubrey, who was now standing behind him with her hands belted around his waist and her chin propped on his shoulder. “Looks like you’re here with friends.”

  “Lucky me,” I said. I couldn’t keep my voice from being flat. Still, having Kyle here was an upshot. It gave me someone else to talk to besides Imogen, who was jabbering a mile a minute to Lucas and acting like she didn’t notice Aubrey trying to tease his attention back. It must be nice to be that confident in your powers of holding someone’s focus. I had no idea what that would feel like.

  “It’s weird seeing you not working,” Kyle said.

  Apparently I wasn’t the only one to have noticed that I didn’t get out much. I glanced over at Lucas. Maybe if I’d attempted to get out of my comfort zone for two seconds when he’d first moved back to town, I’d be the one nuzzling his ear right now. Had he been dating Aubrey when Imogen had re-introduced us? Why didn’t I know that? Why hadn’t I been paying attention?