Maybe they’d even manage to protect me from the Water Polo Association.
As soon as I got home I went straight up to Nettles’s room. She was lying on her bed wearing the Monkey Knife Fight T-shirt, with her headphones on. I knocked on the door. She didn’t stir. I signaled for her to take them off. She didn’t.
I stood at the foot of her bed, spinning my lucky cricket ball back and forth from hand to hand. She hates that.
“What?” she asked at last.
“I skipped public service,” I announced.
“What?” she asked louder.
“Turn the music down!”
She did, but kept the headphones on.
“I skipped public service. I’m coming to your concert.”
“Really?” she asked.
“Really,” I said.
“You’re going to come see Monkey Knife Fight?”
“Yes.”
“Will you put proper clothes on?” she asked, taking off her headphones. “Not your uniform, or training sweats, but actual proper clothes? Will you leave your cricket ball at home?”
“Yes,” I said, catching the ball with my left hand and holding it behind my back. “I’ll wear Whatever you want me to wear.”
“Really?” Nettles’s eyes lit up.
I realized I might have been rash. “Unless it’s shiny, or purple, or has a unicorn on it, or is in some other way injured.”
“As if.” Nettles jumped up and walked into my room, throwing open the wardrobe doors. I followed at the pace of someone with mild concussion.
“You’re wearing this,” she announced when I caught up with her. She was holding up the emerald green dress that Rochelle had bought for me at the fashion fair. It would be my first chance to wear it.
“With these,” she said. She pointed out the black knee-high boots Rochelle had bullied me into buying last winter. I’d only worn them once.
“Okay,” I said. As I looked up from the boots a flash went off. I blinked.“Nettles—”
“And you have to not complain about how many photos I take,” she said, taking several more. “And let me do your hair.”
“Sure,” I said. “Whatever you want. Take photos! Steal my soul! Make me leave my lucky cricket ball at home! And, yes, you can do my hair.” I said the last bit like it was a concession, but I was pleased. Nettles is gifted with hair.
“So how come you can make it tonight?” Nettles asked.
“I can’t. Didn’t you listen? I’m skipping public service to be there. I’m doing it for you.”
“Well, don’t expect me to kiss you or anything.”
“Erk.”
“What’s that I hear?” Mom said, sticking her head into my bedroom. “You’re coming tonight? Lovely! Now I can take the car!”
“I don’t have a parking fairy anymore, Mom. I got rid of it.”
“Yes, dear.” Clearly she didn’t believe me.
“Really, Mom. It’s gone.”
“But you got in the car with that sweet boy Andrew Rogers.”
“Mom, he’s not—”
“Just because he’s a bit slow does not mean he’s not sweet. He buried Nettles’s dog for her.”
“Mom,” Nettles interjected. “That’s because he accidentally—”
“Now hush, Nettles. Neither of you look even close to being ready. I want you both in the car in half an hour.”
“Mom, we can’t take the car. My parking fairy is truly gone.”
“Darling, I know you want it to be gone. But everyone knows that the only effective way of getting rid of a fairy is to not do the things it wants you to do, and you’ve been providing it with parking spots.”
“Mom, there are other ways.”
“Half an hour,” she said. “Charlie, I know you were in some trouble today. I could be asking you all about it. But I’m not. Now can you and your sister please get ready?”
“Yes, Mom,” we chorused.
Mom circled the New Avalon Stadium six times looking for a parking spot.
I didn’t say a word.
“Why don’t you just pay for the valet parking, love,” Dad said.
“It’s fifty dollars! That’s an outrage. I’ve never paid for valet parking.”
“I told you,” Dad said. “This fairy business is nonsense.
Charlie does not have a parking fairy now, because she’s never had a parking fairy.”
Nettles rolled her eyes. “Mom! We’re going to be late. Please can you valet park? Please! I’ve been looking forward to this concert since the beginning of time!”
Or two weeks. I guess when you’re twelve that seems like forever. Actually even at fourteen a couple of weeks can seem vastly long. Like the last two for instance.
“Fine,” Mom said between gritted teeth, pulling up beside the parking valet. She glanced at me in the rearview mirror and Nettles took a photo. Mom ignored her. “No parking fairy, eh?”
“No.”
“This, I want to hear about.”
We didn’t see Danders Anders at the concert that night. Not that I missed him—I imagined I was going to see a lot of him when I testified against him—but I think he would have enjoyed it. Monkey Knife Fight were in fabulous form. They would have destroyed my butterflies within seconds.
CHAPTER 43
Reckoning
Demerits: 10 – 4 = 6
Game suspensions: 3
Public service hours: 39
bobsleds dragged up the ice: 1
bobsleds ridden down the ice: 2
Near deaths: 1
Visits to the principal: 1
Monkey Knife Fight concerts seen: 1
Saturday I had an inter- school tennis tournament. Except that I didn’t on account of my game suspension. I tried not to think what the suspension would do to my rankings.
I spent the day doing public service. Six long hours, which, added to the four hours I’d done Thursday and Friday nights, left me with no demerits. I was free! I fell into bed knackered but happy, planning to sleep until noon, maybe catch up on homework, and best of all hang out with Steffi.
Instead Mom woke me just after nine. “Someone here to see you.”
Steffi! I quickly forgave him for showing up so early on a Sunday morning. I threw on some clothes and dashed down the stairs.
Dr. Tamsin Burnham-Stone, not Steffi, was sitting in the living room chatting with my dad, all companionable and happy happy. Fiorenze sat next to her with her head bowed.
“Look,” Dad said when he noticed me at the bottom of the stairs, “Dr. Burnham—”
“Tamsin,” she said, looking at me with the opposite of a smile. The happy happy was only for Dad.
“Tamsin. Right. Sorry.” He turned back to me. “Tamsin’s offered to take you and Fiorenze to the beach for the day.” Dad’s voice sounded a little strained, like he knew something was up, but not what. “Isn’t that kind of her? I know you have a lot of homework to catch up on, though.”
“Huh,” I said. It was so sweet of Dad to give me an out. “Sure,” I said. I was in trouble. Best to get it over with. I tried not to think about how Sundays were my only day off, about how much I’d been looking forward to spending a whole day with Steffi. “The beach would be astral.”
It wasn’t, of course. Not even slightly. And not just because we didn’t go to the beach.
For the entire drive to the Burnham-Stones’ house Tamsin said nothing. But she said it loudly. The air around me felt tight and difficult to draw into my lungs. Like when you’re running a marathon and close to meltdown—the air thickens.
Us two girls were quiet too. Not just on account of the gluggy air, but because I was in the backseat and she was in the front. I leaned back and closed my eyes. What was the worst thing she could do? Other than make the air too thick to breathe?
Well, let’s see, on account of she’s Dr. Tamsin Burnham-Stone, the person who knows more about fairies than anyone else in the entire world, she could take away my proto- fairy. She could
give us boring fairies: a footpath fairy or a loose-change fairy. Or she could make sure we had no fairy at all.
She pulled into the garage and led us up through the house, the thick air traveling with her. I was starting to get a headache. Fiorenze kept her head down, so I couldn’t even exchange eyebrow raises, or smiles of reassurance, or anything.
She opened the door to the fairy room and gestured to me and Fiorenze to go through. “Notice anything?” she said.
I did: I had no aura. I stared at my reflection. No fairy at all? Where was my proto- fairy?
Fiorenze had no aura either, but she hadn’t had a proto- fairy.
“You frightened it away,” she said. “Just like your parking fairy.”
“I made it go away? But it was a proto- fairy. I thought the nearly dying thing only worked on real fairies!”
“You thought wrong.” Tamsin looked at me. It was the same look Fiorenze gave me when she thought I was being slow. “Did you read the chapter on the dangers of fairy removal? Side effects? Contraindications? Or just the removal of fairies chapter?”
“Just that one.” I looked at the locked metal box that contained The Ultimate Fairy Book. It was just where we’d left it.
“So you did get into my book?”
“Oh,” I said. “Um.” I glanced at Fio. Her chin was up, but she still wasn’t making eye contact.“My fault. I bullied Fio into it.”
“How did you know about my book?” Her tone of voice didn’t sound cross, but then neither did my dad’s when he was mad. Even when he was so furious his face was turning red. The air was thicker. I was pretty sure she was several varieties of angry. “How?”
I opened my mouth.
“I told her,” Fiorenze said. She didn’t sound afraid. She looked directly at her mother, who returned the stare.
I closed my mouth.
“You told her about the book,” her mother said. “The book I expressly told you on more occasions than I care to recall that you must never tell anyone about? That you must never go near? You disobeyed me?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing that I would punish you?” Tamsin’s expression was scary. Her lips had thinned and her eyes looked hard.
“Yes,” Fio said firmly.
“Why?”
And why didn’t Fiorenze seem even a little bit intimidated by her mother? Maybe the thick air had broken her brain. Lack of oxygen and all that.
“Because I wanted to get rid of my fairy and you wouldn’t help me.” Fiorenze didn’t sound sad; she was simply telling the truth.
“I told you how to get rid of it: stay away from boys.”
“I did. It didn’t work.”
“Then you weren’t trying hard enough,” Tamsin said.
“Yes, she was!” I protested. Neither of them looked at me. I don’t think they even heard me. They were staring at each other so intently that I shifted to watching them in the mirrors. It was gentler on my eyeballs that way.
I couldn’t believe Fiorenze was talking to her mother like that. My parents had always treated me and Nettles like adults—well, not exactly—but not like we were little kids. They would let us say our bit, but eventually in an argument the I-am- your- parent boot would come down. Where was Dr. Burnham- Stone’s boot?
“Did you give it enough time?” she asked, not sounding nearly as cranky as she had. Her lips were big again. “You’re always so impatient, Fio. That method can take more than a year.”
Fiorenze impatient? I’d only started to get to know her, but I had not noticed that. The opposite more like. Did Tamsin know anything about her daughter?
“I gave it oodles of time. I didn’t say a word to any boy for more than a year! It didn’t work!”
“Then you should have come to me.”
“I did! You told me to go away. You don’t listen to me.”
“Of course I listen to you, darling. But sometimes I’m busy,” Tamsin said, looking away from her daughter. Fiorenze was going to win this argument, I decided. Her mother had looked away first.
“You’re always busy. I was sick of you being busy so I decided to look in your book and Charlie helped me and now we’ve gotten rid of our fairies and we’re much happier. So I don’t care what you think. I don’t care if you send me to boarding school.” Fio put her hands on her hips. For a second she looked like Nettles in her patented I-defy- you stance. Only Fiorenze wasn’t sticking out her tongue. I had to look away to keep from giggling.
“We will discuss your punishment later. Your lack of remorse shocks me. You have jeopardized my career, exposing research I have been at great pains to keep secret—”
“Why?” I asked, turning from their reflections. Tamsin stared at me with a faintly surprised expression like she’d forgotten I was there.
“Yes, why?” Fiorenze asked. “Why does it have to be a secret?”
“Why?” her mother repeated. “That’s obvious.”
“No, it’s not. Why don’t you want people to know how to get rid of their fairies? Or attract new ones?”
“My research is incomplete. It’s not ready.”
“Tamsin, we saw your book. We read whole chapters,” Fiorenze said. Parts of whole chapters, I amended in my head. “We tested some of your research and it worked exactly as you said. Both swapping and nearly dying. It’s a great book.”
“You didn’t read all of it,” Tamsin said. She was looking down now and her voice had gotten quieter. Almost like she didn’t believe what she was saying. “Other parts are inconclusive. I need more evidence, more time. Fairies have only been with us for such a short amount of time. Only three or four generations.
“That’s not a reason,” Fiorenze objected. “Why don’t you want to share the book?” She was staring at her mother so intently she reminded me of Coach Van Dyck.
Tamsin looked up quickly and her hand moved. For a second I thought she was going to hit her daughter. “I am not a sloppy scholar,” she said at last.
“Why won’t you share it?” Fiorenze asked again. She took a step closer to her mother.
“It’s complicated,” Tamsin said.
“Your book is brilliant,” Fio said. “Waverly has five books and none of them are anywhere near yours.”
“You read them all?” Tamsin asked.
“Well, I tried,” Fiorenze said, “but they were kind of boring. Your book isn’t boring at all. It’s useful.”
Had Fiorenze read the same book I did? The introduction had been vastly boring! All those endless examples and quotes.
“I can’t publish it!” Tamsin exclaimed, crouching beside the metal box and putting her hand on it protectively, as if we were about to grab it and run off to a publisher, which I for one had no idea how to do. I didn’t even know if there were any publishers in New Avalon. It occurred to me that Dr. Burnham-Stone simply did not want to share her baby.
“Yes, you can,” Fiorenze said. “I bet there are publishers all over the world who would love to publish your book. I mean, if Dad could get his published. And that last one even paid him money.”
“You’d be famous!” I added.
Fiorenze shot me a glance that said that wasn’t the best argument to use.
“Think about all the people you’d be helping,” I said.
“Yes. Wouldn’t it be easier to have it available to everyone?” Fiorenze suggested. “Instead of feeling all choked up from being the only one who knows everything there is to know about fairies?”
Tamsin stood up, staring at her daughter.
“Maybe you’re just afraid of finishing it,” Fiorenze continued. “It’s your life’s work, isn’t it? But you can keep researching and writing after it’s published, you know. It will be so popular everyone will be clamoring for the next volume.”
“How did you know?” Tamsin said. In the mirror her fairy aura was darker. I wondered what that meant.
Fiorenze sucked her teeth. I couldn’t believe she’d just sucked her teeth at her mom! Mine would kill me if I ever
did that. I’d be grounded forever!
“You can both go,” her mother said. “I need to think about this.”
Fiorenze walked toward the door, then turned to beckon me when I didn’t follow. She was probably relieved her mom hadn’t used the word “punishment” again.
“So, um, Tamsin, how do I get a new fairy?” I asked.
“What makes you think you deserve a new fairy?”
Because I’m going to testify against Danders Anders, I almost said out loud.
“Well?”
“Maybe I don’t,” I said. “But I’d like one. I’d hate to have gone through all that walking everywhere, getting all those demerits, almost dying, to wind up with nothing.” Though as I said it I realized I hadn’t ended up with nothing: I had Steffi and a brand-new friend in Fiorenze. “But it wouldn’t kill me not to have one.”
Fiorenze grinned. “That’s the spirit!”
CHAPTER 44
Fairy attracting
Demerits: 0
Game suspensions: 3
Public service hours: 45
bobsleds dragged up the ice: 1
bobsleds ridden down the ice: 2
Near deaths: 1
Visits to the principal: 1
Monkey Knife Fight concerts seen: 1
Friend acquired: Fiorenze Burnham-Stone
Tamsin took me up to the roof. Fiorenze didn’t join us. She didn’t want to be anywhere near someone getting a new fairy—just in case it accidentally wound up on her.
Tamsin made me lie on my back with dozens of red, yellow, green, blue, orange, and purple paper streamers tied around my arms and legs. The colors all clashed.
Then nothing.
She sat down in a comfy deck chair while I lay there. I would have fallen asleep but it wasn’t even slightly comfortable and the sun was making my eyes water. I would have looked at my watch but Tamsin had made me take it off. She said it interfered with fairy energies. I tried to daydream about the tryouts and making it into B-stream basketball, but I kept getting distracted by the gravel under my back, and sore eyes.
After a while I started to suspect that this was Tamsin’s revenge. “Am I allowed to talk?”
How to Ditch Your Fairy Page 20
