The bell for the end of class sounded. I risked a glance back and saw Danders Anders heading toward us.
“Pox! Not Danders again!”
Fiorenze sprinted toward the fire exit, with me right behind her.
CHAPTER 36
Luge Hall
Demerits: 4
Game suspensions: 2
Public service hours: 35
Boys who like me: all of them
Girls who hate me: almost all of them
Fiorenze slipped in the back entrance. I followed, closing the door behind us. It was like walking into a giant brightly lit freezer. The cold cut straight through my uniform. We might as well have been naked and barefoot.
”Brrr,” Fiorenze said. “Where do we hide?”
The hall was vast. I half expected icicles to be dangling from the ceiling, which was at least thirty meters up. Three winding icy tracks took up almost all of the space. The largest one started at the ceiling line. It wound around and around the hall; two smaller tracks were nestled inside it. The outsides were made of concrete, the insides were gleaming white ice. Along the wall to our right was what looked like a storage room.
“Behind the tracks.” I pulled her toward the bottom of it. “Danders won’t see us if we duck behind here.”
“He will if he comes in the front way.”
And because Fiorenze was set on jinxing us, the front door immediately began to open. We had just enough time to scramble up and dive behind the other way as the bell for lunch sounded.
I hoped it was louder than the sound of us landing hard on the floor. Fio’s face changed color. I imagined mine was doing the same. My shins were going to be covered in bruises.
“Fiorenze!” Danders called out.
We scrunched closer together. I couldn’t see him. I hoped that meant he couldn’t see us.
“Fiorenze!”
It was even colder crouched on the ground. I wondered if that was because heat rises. Did that mean cold congregates on the ground?
“Fiorenze,” Danders called out again in his booming voice. I wondered if he’d ever thought about training as an opera singer. My nose tingled. A sneeze- is- on- the- way tingle, not a touched- by- Steffi tingle. I pressed my finger under it, praying the sneeze would go away. My nose was even colder than my hands.
“Fiorenze!” he called louder this time, making us both startle.
“Your fairy is so much worse than I thought it would be,” Fiorenze whispered right in my ear. “Danders is a nightmare.”
I put my fingers over my lips and Fiorenze nodded. But I couldn’t help being pleased that someone finally understood about the parking fairy.
I heard the front door opening or closing.
Fiorenze and I looked at each other.
“Want Fiorenze,” Danders said in a more conversational voice.
“She’s not here,” I heard Rochelle say. “She doesn’t do winter sports.”
“Saw her.”
“You saw her in here? That’s odd,” I heard Steffi say. “She’s allergic to snow.”
I wondered if it was possible to be allergic to snow.
“Outside,” Danders said.
“You saw her outside?” Rochelle asked. “Or you want us to go outside?”
“Saw. You her friend?”
“Oh no!” Rochelle said. “I can’t stand Fiorenze.”
“Me neither,” Steffi said. “She’s most undoos.”
It was probably the first time I’d ever heard him say “doos.” Fiorenze nudged me and made a face. I told her with my mind that they didn’t mean it, that we all liked her now. As I thought it, I realized it was true. I hadn’t resented being with Fiorenze for ages now.
“Why you here?” Danders demanded.
“We do winter sports,” Rochelle said.
“Luge and skiing,” Steffi corroborated.
“We are very fine skiers,” she added, which I thought was a bit much.
“Where Charlie?”
“Don’t know,” Rochelle said. “She doesn’t do winter sports either.”
The front door opened. We peeked out cautiously. Rochelle was at the door, making sure Danders was truly gone.
We slipped out from behind the track just as Steffi called my name.
“Hey!” he said, grinning. He slid his arm around my waist and kissed me. My heart soared, but the thought that it was just the boy-attracting fairy in action made it sink at the same time, which made me burp.
“Hello to you too.” Steffi laughed. “Even with a red nose you look great.”
“He’s gone,” Rochelle announced, closing the door. “Hey, Charlie, Fio. Glad you made it. Guess what?” she said, turning to me, opening her eyes so wide I worried they might fall out. “They just announced basketball tryouts! For next week.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
I screamed and we hugged each other.
Steffi gave me another kiss. “That’s so great. You are on that team!”
“Yay!” Fiorenze said. “But shouldn’t we get started? Time and all that.”
“How?” Rochelle asked. “It’s not like either of you knows how to ride a luge. Pox, it’s cold in here!” She shivered and hugged herself.
We admitted our ignorance and acknowledged that, yes, it was cold. Fiorenze’s nose was red and running. I imagined mine was too. How long before they turned blue and fell off? I wished I had Sienna Bray’s never- getting- cold fairy.
“How hard can it be?” Steffi asked. “You jump in a boat thing and someone else pushes it. I bet you’ll be really good at it, Charlie.”
“Don’t we have to wear those tight suits?” I asked.
“That’s only for going super- fast,” Rochelle said. “You just have to almost die.”
We looked up at the top of the longest track. It gleamed white. So bright it made my eyes water. It started high and went on for ages. I followed the track all the way from the top to the bottom, saw the white disappear on the turns, replaced by the concrete gray outsides.
“Well,” Rochelle said, “falling all the way down—that could almost kill you for sure.”
Fiorenze and I looked at each other.
“Let’s get started,” I said, walking over to the room I hoped was full of luges.“There’s only twenty minutes left of lunch.” I tried the door handle. “Pox,” I said. The door was locked. “Anyone know how to pick a lock?”
“Yup,” Steffi said.
We all looked at him.
“I’d love to pick a lock for you,” he said, kissing my cheek. He fished a smallish leather pouch out of his bag and opened it up to reveal several long, thin metal things. He looked at the lock and then at the metal needle things and pulled out the largest one. I moved aside and he started poking at the lock with it.
“You just happen to have that thing in your bag?” I asked.
“Lock pick. Yup,” Steffi said, not looking up. “Never know when you’re going to need one.”
None of us said anything but I could almost hear Rochelle and Fiorenze thinking. It did not seem the doos-est thing in the world for someone with a never- gettingin- trouble fairy to have such a skill. Not that I wasn’t grateful on this occasion.
“Bingo,” Steffi announced, standing up and giving me a hug. He opened the door to reveal a vast treasure trove of lugey- type apparatuses. Three of the walls were covered floor to ceiling with different kinds of sleds. Some looked like long, skinny racing cars with blades instead of wheels. Most of them weren’t nearly so fancy, they were just a small base, with teeny rails on the side. I tried to imagine sitting on something that precarious while sliding down that huge long track. My fairy would leave me in seconds.
“Hey, aren’t these the suits?” Rochelle said, pointing to racks of what looked like human skins on hangers. That is if human skins were bright golds, pinks, blues, oranges, greens, and reds, and were kind of shiny with lightning flashes and butterfly designs on them. Rochelle went through until she found two to fit
me and Fiorenze. The one for me was half the size of the one for Fiorenze.
“Hey! I’m not that little.”
No one said anything, which was vastly annoying.
“And here are gloves and booties.”
I took them from her. The gloves were vicious- looking, with little spikes all over the fingertips.
“So which one of these should we use?” Fiorenze asked, surveying the racks of sleds hanging from the walls. “I think I’d be happier in one of the ones that looks like a car,” Fiorenze said.
“I agree,” I said. “Wow, those blades look sharp.”
Fiorenze nodded. “I’m having visions of us losing fingers rather than fairies.”
“Once more with the jinxing, Fio!”
“Sorry,” she said.
It hadn’t occurred to me that luges would run on blades. I’d thought they’d be smooth on the bottom like a canoe. But sharp worked. This was supposed to be dangerous. But I didn’t want it to be losing-fingers dangerous, just losing fairies. “Our ignorance is helpful, right? Better chance of dying.”
They all stared at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You said ‘dying,’ Charlie.”
“Sorry, I meant nearly dying.”
“Now who’s jinxing?” Fiorenze asked.
CHAPTER 37
Cold and Ice
Demerits: 4
Game suspensions: 2
Public service hours: 35
Boys who like me: all of them
Girls who hate me: almost all of them
The suit felt weird and uncomfortable and itchy. It was the tightest thing I’d ever worn. “This is malodorous,” I declared.
“At least it’s warm,” Fiorenze said.
She was right. It was a lot warmer than our school uniforms. Once I put the gloves on, the feeling started returning to my fingers and toes.
“Warm?” Rochelle said, looking at Steffi.
They grabbed themselves suits and started wriggling into them.
The luge we chose was much lighter than we expected. Getting it to the bottom of the track was easy, getting it any farther, not so much.
“How do we get it up there?” I said.
“There’s a ladder over here,” Steffi called. The three of us walked over and stared up the narrow insubstantial ladder ascending meters and meters above our heads.
“It has blades,” Fiorenze objected. “We can’t carry it up a ladder.”
“Especially not the world’s tallest ladder.”
“It’s making me dizzy,” I said.
We walked back around to the front of the track. It looked like a frozen water slide. The ice coated the whole thing so that you could slide along the sides as well as the bottom.
“Push it up?” Fiorenze asked.
None of us could see what else to do.
Rochelle and Fiorenze being the biggest and strongest got onto the track first. Rochelle immediately fell over and slid off, landing on her knees with a thump. “Slippery,” she said, as if an explanation were necessary.
“The toes of your booties have grippy things,” Fiorenze said, demonstrating by walking farther up the track on tiptoe. “If you walk on the front of your foot you won’t slip.”
Rochelle looked at her dubiously and climbed back onto the ice, tentatively testing it. “She’s right.”
They climbed a bit farther up, leaning forward, and grabbing the sides of the track when slipping seemed imminent.
When they were ready, Steffi and I pushed the sled up the track. It occurred to me that being behind the sled increased the chances of being run over by it and losing fingers.
I looked ahead to where the track began. It was a long, long, long way away with many twists and turns. I pushed harder, teetering on my tiptoes.
Then Fiorenze and Rochelle grabbed hold of the sled and it lightened.
Steffi and I pushed, making sure to be on the front of our feet. Before we’d made it around the third turn, the arches of my feet were screaming and sweat ran down my face.
“Do your feet hurt?” I asked Steffi.
“Yes.”
“Are you sweating into your eyes?”
“Yes. But I comfort myself with the fact that my nose is no longer so cold it’s about to drop off and that I’m here with you.”
None of us spoke after that. It was too much effort. We pushed and pulled the sled centimeter by centimeter up the track. Each step my feet hurt more, my fingers became crampier, and my sweat turned into a tidal wave.
And then at long last we had the sled in position on the dead flat straight at the very top of the track. It was wider here and the sides were less curved.
“Gah,” Fiorenze said, collapsing onto the wooden platform that marked the start.”
“Double gah,” Rochelle said, falling beside her. “My feet!”
“Triple,” said Steffi.
“Times a billion,” I added, flopping down beside them, rubbing my burning arches with my cramped fingers. The others were doing the same thing. None of us had ever walked up a hill on our toes while shifting a sled. “That has to be the most injured sport ever.”
“Agreed.”
“And we haven’t even gotten to the sporty bit.”
“Um,” Steffi said. “What’s that?”
I looked up from my feet. He was pointing at what looked like an elevator. He stood up and hobbled over to press the button.
“No way,” Rochelle said. “If it’s big enough to fit a luge I’m going to scream.”
The doors opened. The elevator was big enough for any number of luges.
Rochelle screamed.
Steffi laughed. Fiorenze and I looked at each other and then at our hands and feet. All that effort and pain and time . . . How had we not noticed an elevator?
“You’d better hurry,” Rochelle said. “Lunch was over ages ago. I don’t want to think about how many demerits I have now.”
“Are you ready to do this?” Fiorenze asked me.
I wasn’t sure I was. I was overheated and tired and my arches burned. But I wouldn’t be standing on them screaming downhill on a sled.“Sure,” I said. “Let’s ditch our fairies.”
We both stood up. It hurt.
“Sounds like a plan,” Steffi said. He wrapped me in a huge hug and kissed me on the lips. Rochelle and Fiorenze looked the other way. “Okay, hop in.”
We hopped. Fiorenze clambered to the front of the sled. I arranged myself behind her. “Not exactly comfy, is it?”
“I don’t think nearly dying is meant to be comfortable,” she said, twisting around so I could hear her.
I looked in front at the edges of the track curving around us, brilliant and white. It was a pity we hadn’t worn sunglasses. Sitting down, I couldn’t see over the sides, I couldn’t see how far we would fall should it all go horrendously wrong. I didn’t need to see it. We would fall far. Breaking legs and arms wasn’t too bad—we’d all done those—but broken necks? Not so doos. We were only supposed to nearly die.
I focused on the white shining track, on the boyattracting fairy being so scared it would run away.
The sled shifted a little. I turned to see Steffi and Rochelle bent with their hands on it.
“Ready,” Steffi called. I wondered if we were supposed to be wearing goggles. Wouldn’t the air rushing by make our eyes water even worse than the cold?
“Ready,” Fiorenze said.
“Ready,” I repeated.
They pushed.
We moved.
A little bit.
They pushed again.
We moved a little bit farther. My nose was starting to feel cold again and my eyes too.
I turned around. “Maybe you need to start pushing from a run up,” I suggested.
“No way,” Rochelle said. “What if I slip and go hurtling down to the bottom? No way am I losing my shopping fairy! It was bad enough pushing the poxy thing up here. I was terrified I was going to slip.”
Steffi shrugged
. “No run up.”
I turned back. We were less than two meters from where it started to slope. They pushed again, and then again, and at last we were heading downward, moving not very fast at all.
We came to a halt at the first turn.
“Oh, come on!” I said. “The ice is slippery! This thing has blades. Why aren’t we zooming along?”
Fio twisted to face me and the sled shifted forward, but then stopped again. “Pox,” she said. “I think we’ll have to get out and push.”
“This is malodorous,” I said. “Plus I am so cold I think death is imminent.”
“I don’t think death by freezing is sudden enough to get rid of fairies.”
“Very droll,” I said. “Why are we not going fast? There is ice. There are blades.”
“Should we try pushing with our hands?” Fiorenze suggested.
I couldn’t see what else we could use.
The sled had come to a rest against a right-hand turn, so we reached out with our left hands, which meant once again I whacked my stupid healed fairy- swapping injury. Poxy thumb! It was mostly healed, but the cold was making it hurt again. We pushed, I winced, the sled moved.
And then stopped again.
“Should have jumped off Merckx. I’m pretty sure it’s the tallest building at school.”
“Isn’t Martin a little taller?” Fiorenze asked.
We pushed the luge the rest of the way around the turn until it started to slide down the straight before coming to a halt at the next turn.
“I think it’s because we’re not leaning with our bodies,” Fiorenze said.
“How do you mean?”
“We’ve got to lean the way we want it to turn. See the next turn after this one? It’s going right, so as we approach we’ve got to lean right. All the way right. You know, like when you’re riding a bicycle.”
Obvious! If she’d explained it better in the first place I would have known what she meant. It was just like boarding. “I got it.”
We used our hands again to push the sled forward, until the blades started shushing across the ice and we were around the corner. We leaned to the right, and took the corner without stopping; we were even picking up speed. Actual air brushed past our faces until we came to a juddering halt at the next turn.
The turn came sooner than expected, we hadn’t shifted in time.
How to Ditch Your Fairy Page 17
