My Fair Godmother
Page 1
My Fair Godmother
Janette Rallison
Walker & Company
New York
To everyone who still believes in the magic of reading
A special thanks to Emily Easton, my editor,
for helping me to make this a better book
Table of Contents
For Master Sagewick Goldengill
How I Used Magic to Grant Wishes, Make Mortals Happy, and Rescue them from their Dreary Lives
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
For Master Sagewick Goldengill
Dear Professor Goldengill,
Thank you for allowing me to raise my semester grade through this extra-credit project. First off, let me say that I was a little worried about the whole thing. When I went into the Fairy Godmother Affairs office to get my assignment, the lady behind the desk wouldn’t even tell me which of the sisters, Jane or Savannah, was supposed to get the wishes. She gave me a condescending look and told me that as a fairy godmother my first task was to figure that out. Then she handed me this huge report to read and said, “I do hope this mission is more successful than your last.”
Personally, I think the main problem I had with my last assignment was the leprechaun assistant FGA gave me. I mean, I know we have a lot of free time during these projects, but halfway through the job he wandered off to play poker with card sprites and I never saw him again. So I told the lady that I wanted to work with, you know, some really hot elf guy or at least a unicorn, but she flipped through her papers and said, “You’ve been assigned Clover T. Bloomsbottle.”
Which is the same leprechaun I had last time.
I asked the lady, in a very calm manner—despite what she might tell you—“What in the world is FGA thinking?”
She told me, “FGA is aware of Mr. Bloomsbottle’s shortcomings on the last mission. That’s why he’s been relegated to twenty-first-century America until he can prove he’s willing to use his magic in accordance with the Unified Magical Alliance guidelines. FGA believes in giving everyone a chance to redeem themselves.”
So let me say right now that this would have gone a lot smoother had I been given an assistant who actually assisted with something.
Here is the sixteen-page report I put together about the troubled teenage souls involved, so you can see how I used my magic to solve their problems, thus proving I have mastered the magic necessary to pass apprentice level and pursue my education at Godmother University. Where, I might add, I will totally apply myself.
I’ve also added side notes to this report in order to show you how much I’ve already learned about human culture.
Sincerely,
Chrysanthemum Everstar
HOW I USED MAGIC TO GRANT WISHES,
MAKE MORTALS HAPPY, AND RESCUE THEM FROM
THEIR DREARY LIVES
by Chrysanthemum Everstar
Subject One: Jane Delano, eighteen years old
Place: Herndon, Virginia, early twenty-first century
Boys weren’t a problem for Jane. They only paid attention to her while asking for help with homework. She always knew the answers. See, no problem at all.
It wasn’t because she wasn’t pretty enough. She was. She had long dark hair the color of milk chocolate, hair that she usually wore pulled back into a ponytail because it took her two minutes to do and didn’t fall into her face while she looked down at her schoolwork. Her eyes were warm and large, even behind the glasses she always wore. It was, unfortunately, her air of extreme competence that scared boys away. In fact, she didn’t seem to be a teenage girl at all. She was somebody’s mother, just waiting to happen.
Fairy’s side note: Many perfumes promise to lure men to women. None of them smell of motherhood. None of them proclaim the wearer to be tidy, thrifty, and sensible. At least not in high school. Those traits become attractive much later on, when guys finally realize they’re not living somebody else’s life.
So there was Jane, walking out of the school building with a backpack, which was heavier than it needed to be, because it couldn’t hurt to read over her Shakespeare assignment one more time. As happens with most life-changing events, she was not thinking about anything important at all. If she had thought of Hunter Delmont that day, those wishes, those half-formed sighs of longing had faded as soon as calculus ended. He had picked up his books and tucked them under his arm without a glance in her direction.
Not that she’d expected otherwise. Her seat was at the back of the class. He sat in the front. He had no reason to turn around. Which was why it was so odd when she looked up and saw him leaning against her family’s Taurus in the school parking lot.
She stopped midstride, looking like a Jane statue someone had created on the edge of the sidewalk. Not really such a farfetched idea, actually. The way the teachers loved her, they could have erected a statue in her honor. They would entitle it The Student the Rest of You Should Have Been.
Jane forced herself to take another step. She analyzed the situation. He was either resting against her car because . . . she couldn’t fill in the blank. He must want to talk to her. Her. HER.
It didn’t matter that she already knew it would be about homework. What mattered was he knew she existed. This was clearly a gift from the universe. A whiff of magic and hope that had suddenly blown in.
As she walked to the car her steps gained bounce. He was one of the smartest guys in the class. He didn’t need help with homework. He wanted to talk to her.
She smiled as she approached him; a greeting started to form on her lips, waiting for a kick of courage to spring it into action.
Hi, Hunter. What can I do for you? Actually, let me answer that question. In fact, let me send you a résumé.
Only she didn’t say it. Courage is a fickle creature. Just as you need it, it often makes excuses and rushes out of the room.
He looked at her and stood straighter, his expression friendly but unreadable. Jane tried to read it. She tried to read her entire future in that gaze. What did the arch of his dark eyebrows signify?
“Are you Savannah’s sister?”
“Yes.” Her footsteps faltered, but not enough to be noticed, at least not by a guy who’d never glanced at the back of the calculus classroom.
“Jane?” he asked, as though it might have been Jenny or Jamie.
She said, “Yes.” But her mind said, “What does Savannah have to do with anything?”
His attention shifted to something behind her and he smiled, a sudden dab of sunshine reflecting in his expression. She turned and saw her sister striding toward the car.
Vision is also a fickle creature. You can see an object a hundred times, a thousand times, and it remains unchanged. Then in one swift second you realize it has been changing all along and your eyes hid it from you.
Savannah wasn’t just the little sister who left her clothes strewn on the bathroom floor, who always needed help with her geometry homework, and who misplaced the car keys with such regularity that she ought to have them stapled to her purse. Until then Jane had never realized—
Savannah had become beautiful.
Subject Two: Savannah Delano, sixteen years old
Even though Savannah was only a sophomore, she was an inch taller than Jane. Her chocolate brown hair—the identical color of Jane’s but with lustrous highlights that their mother painstakingly applied once a month—swung around her shoulders. Not only had Savannah long ago switched to contacts, but the eyeliner and smoky eye shadow she wore gave her a glamorous air. Her walk was fluid, filled with confidence, and her clothes looked like they’d been torn from a fashion magazine.
Fairy’s side note: For mortals, it is almost as tempting to hate beautiful girls as it is to love them, and Savannah had felt her share of both emotions from her peers. But she had only experienced love from her sister until that moment. Often, it only takes a moment to change everything.
Savannah glanced at Jane, then smiled at Hunter.
“I see you found my car.”
“It’s just the hot rod you promised.”
She threw Jane a longer gaze. “And you’ve met my sister.”
“We were just getting around to that.” Hunter turned his attention back to Jane. “I’m Hunter. Savannah and I are . . .” He shrugged. “You know . . .”
Savannah laughed, a tinkling sound of happiness, and nudged into him.
Neither one of them noticed Jane for a moment, which was for the best, as Jane looked like parts of her had been ripped up and flung into the wind.
While Hunter smiled at Savannah, little pieces of Jane fluttered down to the parking lot. She was able to put on a disinterested stare by the time they turned to her again.
“We stopped by to tell you that I’ll be riding home with Hunter,” Savannah said. “He’s got a rebuilt T-Bird. How cool is that?”
“Cool,” Jane said.
Hunter took hold of Savannah’s hand casually and nodded in Jane’s direction. “It was nice to meet you.”
As they turned and left, Jane realized, with another rip to her heart, that he hadn’t recognized her. He didn’t even know she sat in the back of his calculus class.
She waded through the litter of her old self and climbed into the battered Taurus.
Fairy’s side note: An amateur might think that Jane had need of a fairy godmother at this point. I wouldn’t make such a mistake, though. Jane is the type that, even had she believed in fairies, wouldn’t have asked for our help. Jane was too self-reliant for that.
For the next few days all of Savannah’s happiness came in hues and shades of Hunter. Love kept her drifting around the ceiling, too far up even to notice the usual high school popularity drama that envelops most teenage girls. We will not dwell on her now. Happy people are rarely interesting.
Jane buried herself in her schoolwork, silently mourning with differentials and integrals. Sometimes when the mood struck her, she would lash out with Shakespeare or grow haughty with Spanish verbs. Occasionally she tortured herself by asking Savannah questions about Hunter.
“Where did the two of you meet?”
“He’s on the track team,” Savannah said. “At first I was sort of intimidated by him because he’s a senior and he’s so—you know—to-die-for gorgeous, but I went up and flirted with him and it turns out he’s really down-to-earth. Very smart. He reminds me of you sometimes.”
Savannah went up and flirted with him. That was it? That was all it took to get Hunter’s attention?
Why hadn’t Jane joined track? Her father had suggested it, after all. Since he was a lieutenant colonel in the marines, he jogged four miles a day. He said jogging could become a family affair. Jane, however, had insisted that it was irrational to run on a track. You didn’t actually go anywhere, so what was the point of getting there the fastest? That was the problem with being smart. Sometimes you overlooked the obvious points— like the opportunity to flirt with jocks.
Not that Jane really knew how to flirt anyway.
Besides, how could such a smart guy like Hunter have been captured by mere flirting? Did he not care that Savannah doodled her geometry proofs into abstract art instead of finding out the area of the angles? Did he not know that Savannah’s definition of “taking notes in class” meant passing pieces of paper with messages scrawled on them back and forth with her friends?
Four days after their meeting in the parking lot, Hunter noticed Jane in calculus. He walked into the room and, in an apparent visual aberration, his gaze wandered toward the back. His head jerked slightly in surprise and he walked over to her desk. “Hey, I didn’t know you were in this class.”
Yes, she had realized that already; every day and every moment since he’d first spoken to her. She’d worn that knowledge like clothing. When he’d taken Savannah’s hand in the parking lot he might as well have said to Jane, “Here is your invisibility cloak.”
She smiled back at him like it was a surprise to see him too. “Yeah, I sit in the back.”
“Do you like calculus?” he asked.
“Yes.”
She hadn’t meant to sound offended by the question, but she must have because he laughed uncomfortably and said, “It’s just that for Savannah’s last pop quiz she gave the definition of an isosceles triangle as ‘one that was lonely.’ Scalene was one that suffered from skin disease.”
It gave Jane a wicked sense of satisfaction that he’d noticed that aspect of her sister’s personality, but she tried not to sound too arrogant. “Savannah doesn’t worry about homework. Apparently they don’t care about your GPA when you apply for beauty school.”
“Beauty school, huh? I would have thought she’d already graduated valedictorian from there.”
Jane blinked at him in frustration.
Fairy’s side note: Adults are constantly telling teenagers that it’s what’s on the inside that matters. It’s always painful to find out that adults have lied to you.
Hunter shrugged. “I guess I shouldn’t have assumed you’d be like Savannah where math is concerned.”
Meaning: After all, you aren’t pretty like she is.
Jane let out a small inner gasp, but before she could crumple or rage or decide between these two actions, he added, “We’ll have to get together and study some time.”
She gripped her pencil, but it wasn’t really a grip, it was a hug. “Okay.”
“We’ve got that test coming up next Monday. Do you understand L’Hopital’s rule?”
Now that they were on familiar terrain, a glint appeared in her eye. “Well enough to explain it to you.”
A grin spread across his features. “What did you get on your last test?”
“A ninety-eight,” she said.
His smile grew. “I got a hundred.”
And that’s how their friendship started, over differential calculus and chain rule and winding through limits that approach infinity. Sometimes at lunch—sophomores ate before the seniors—they’d study together. She enjoyed the look of concentration that came over him as his eyes scanned the numbers. She adored his small block print that couldn’t decide whether to slant or stand tall. She liked to watch his lips as he said the word “maxima.”
Fairy’s side note: Love makes even smart people act like idiots. For example, even though Jane knew Hunter was dating another girl— in this case, her sister—she began to believe he had feelings for her.
Her list of rationales:
1. Hunter started picking up Savannah in the morning and inviting Jane to come along. “There’s no point in both of us driving there,” he told her, but what were the chances that he was actually environmentally conscious?
2. Since Savannah was often running late in the morning—coifing your hair to perfection can’t be rushed—he would turn around in his seat and talk to her while they waited in the car. He never seemed to mind that Savannah was late. And what were the chances that he was actually patient?
3. Hunter also looked at her while they spoke, cared about what she said, and smiled at her.
4. But most important, Jane willed him to like her, and that ha
d to have some impact on his feelings.
Fairy’s side note: Even people who don’t believe in magic really do.
And then one day, three months after he first leaned against her Taurus, things changed.
Again she was walking with no thought that anything important was about to happen. This time she walked downstairs in worn gray sweats that doubled as pajamas. She had come in search of a book because she couldn’t sleep. It was Friday night and Hunter and Savannah had gone to see a movie, which bothered her slightly. The movie had ended an hour ago and they still weren’t home, which bothered her more. So she walked into the family room and discovered that she was wrong. They were home. They were on the couch kissing.
She let out a gasp, and then blushed furiously when they both turned and looked at her. She didn’t say anything, just rushed from the room. All the way back up the stairs she chastised herself for being so stupid. Why shouldn’t they be kissing? Had she really thought Hunter didn’t kiss Savannah because he was friends with Jane? She didn’t mean anything to him. He was just a guy, who, it turned out—disappointingly— was also environmentally conscious and patient. He hadn’t been nice to her with any ulterior motives at all.
Jerk.
Savannah’s laughter followed Jane up the stairs. “At least it wasn’t my dad.”
Jane couldn’t hear what Hunter answered. He probably laughed too. He was probably thinking what a pitiful figure Jane made in her cheerless gray sweats. He didn’t want someone who could discuss calculus as easily as she discussed life. He wanted someone who looked like she’d graduated from beauty school.