Table of Contents
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
Next Book
Chapter One
Cassie didn’t mean to steal Bianca’s glasses.
It happened at a sleepover party at Jasmine’s house. Cassie didn’t know Jasmine well, but she’d invited all the girls in their class, and Cassie’s mother had insisted she go, because “It’s important to make friends.”
Cassie had friends. They were just all the way across town, in a different elementary school. Her best friend, Daisy, used to live next door. Now she was a fifteen-minute drive away.
Still, Cassie thought, waiting impatiently for her turn in the bathroom, so she could brush her teeth, it could be worse.
She could have moved to a different town, after all. Her parents had just wanted to move to a bigger house because of the new baby.
The bathroom door opened, and a girl with pasty skin and wet hair stepped out, now wearing teddy bear pajamas. She had been showering for half an hour, even though she didn’t live here and could have showered at home before coming. Cassie thought her name was Bianca.
“Your turn,” Bianca said, scratching her ear uncomfortably as she passed.
Cassie made a face as she ducked into the bathroom. The whole room was filled with steam, and her glasses had fogged up. Annoyed, she took them off, set them on the counter, and felt around for a towel. Her hands reached one, so she pulled it off the rack and grabbed her glasses to clean the lenses.
As she put them on her face, she noticed that they felt odd. She was about to pull them off to check them. Then she yelped and screamed.
There, sitting on the bathroom faucet, was a fairy.
A bright red fairy, red all over, with crimson clothes and layered pink hair and wings that resembled strawberries. The outfit looked like someone had taken a zillion ruffles and tried to fit them all onto one person.
“H-hello?” Cassie asked hesitantly.
The fairy’s wings flapped, and she stared at Cassie as if she was expecting something.
Am I just imagining this? Cassie thought wildly. Does Jasmine have fairy statues in her bathroom?
The fairy lifted up into the air and floated right in front of Cassie’s eyes.
Cassie scrambled backwards. The fairy kept on coming. Then it whooshed right through her head and towards the wall behind her. Cassie turned to see a bright red door much too big for a fairy appear. Without opening it or touching it, the fairy disappeared right through it.
Cassie’s mouth opened. All she could let out was a tiny squeak.
“Are you okay in there?” a teenage girl asked, poking her head in. Apparently Cassie had forgotten to lock the bathroom door.
“I — I’m fine,” Cassie stammered.
What was she supposed to say? I think I just saw a fairy? No one would believe her. She wouldn’t have believed it if anyone else told her.
Well, except for Daisy. Maybe Daisy.
“Okay, well, hurry it up,” the teenage girl said. “My little sis and her friends aren’t the only ones who need the bathroom.”
“I will,” Cassie said, grabbing her toothbrush.
Apparently satisfied, the teenage girl pulled her head back out and shut the door. Cassie looked around to find the toothpaste.
Her glasses were on the counter.
Cassie stared at them for a moment. Then she felt the glasses on her face. Then she looked at the glasses on the counter. Slowly, she reached out and picked them up. There was the scratch on the side from when she had tripped over her brother’s toy and landed splat on the floor. These were hers, all right.
Cassie pulled the other glasses off her face and put her own on. She looked at the ones she’d been wearing a moment ago. They were black and plastic, like the ones she normally wore. Almost identical, except that they looked brand new, no scratches or anything.
Whose glasses are these? Cassie wondered.
They had to be the same prescription as her glasses, which was pretty amazing. She was super farsighted. She couldn’t see the whiteboard at all unless she sat all the way in the back of the classroom. And the other kids with glasses in her class sat in the front row.
Jasmine’s older sister, Cassie thought. Has to be.
She opened the bathroom door and held out the mystery glasses. “These are yours,” she said, offering them to the teenage girl.
The teenager stared at her like she was crazy.
“Um, or your parents’?” Cassie asked.
“Nuh uh.”
“Well, someone left them in there.”
“Probably that Bianca girl,” Jasmine’s sister said. “She was in there forever.”
Bianca sits in the back row, Cassie thought. Maybe she wears contacts normally.
“I guess I’ll take them to her,” she said.
“Have fun,” the teenage girl said, disappearing into the bathroom.
Cassie turned to leave, but then she remembered what she’d seen. Her heart started racing. “Do you have fairies in this house?” she shouted, banging on the bathroom door.
“Are you out of your mind?” the teenage girl shouted back.
“Is that a no?” Cassie called.
“Yes, it’s a no, you loon!”
Cassie chewed on her lower lip. Then why did I see them?
She held up Bianca’s glasses, wondering how anyone as farsighted as she was could have accidentally left them behind. And then she saw something zip past them.
Cassie yelped and dropped the glasses. They fell to the carpet with a slight clatter.
Cassie’s heart hammered like crazy. Slowly, she picked up the glasses. She held them up in front of her face, and looked through them.
There were fairies everywhere. All colors of the rainbow. All kinds of clothes and varieties of wings. All down the hallway.
They let you see fairies, Cassie thought numbly. Bianca’s glasses let you see fairies.
Chapter Two
Of course she went downstairs, intending to give the glasses to Bianca. But two things stopped her.
First, Bianca was talking to Janelly, and she couldn’t very well just interrupt. That would be rude.
And second . . . well, second, when she glanced through the glasses, she caught a glimpse of two pudgy baby fairies fluttering their wings as they attempted to hover above the table, and they were just so cute that Cassie had to get a better look at them.
It’s just for five minutes, she thought, spinning around and switching glasses, her heart pounding. She wasn’t sure if she felt more guilty or excited to have an excuse to hang on to them for a little longer.
The little pudgy baby fairies were so adorable. While their red-and-white-winged mothers hovered nearby, chattering, one of the babies started sucking on his fingers, then moved to his toes. Then he seized upon his transparent purple wings and started folding them in half.
The other baby reached out and stole a hat that looked like a gigantic raspberry from a fairy woman who was flying by. She stopped and waved her arms as if scolding him, though Cassie couldn’t hear a word she was saying.
Cassie giggled.
“What’s funny?” Bianca asked, sitting down next to her.
Cassie snatched the glasses off her face. “N-n-nothing!” she gasped.
“You know, you can keep your glasses on,” Bianca said.
Cassie swallowed. “Right. My glasses. Right. Um . . . what if they weren’t my glasses?”
Bianca gave her a confused look. “Who else’s glasses would they be?”
Cassie opened her mouth to say “yours,” but all that came out was a tiny squeak.
“Hey, Bianca, this is you!” one of the girls called from across the room, holding up one of the Barbies Jasmine had gotten in her birthday presents. “Scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch! Oh, teacher, I’m so itchy! I have to go to the nurse’s office!”
“Cut it out!” Bianca shouted, jumping off the couch and storming over. She snatched the doll away. “I have a skin condition, okay?”
“You didn’t last year,” the girl informed her.
Bianca’s face turned red. “I know I didn’t. It’s not my fault I do now.”
“Georgina, don’t make fun of your classmates,” Jasmine’s mother said, coming into the room. “It’s not nice.”
“Thank you,” Bianca huffed.
“But it’s so annoying!” Georgina complained. “She’s always scratching, scratching, scratching, all the time!”
“If you think it annoys you, how do you think I feel?” Bianca shot back.
Cassie turned away from the argument and snuck the glasses back on her nose. They still felt weird, the bridge just a tiny bit narrower than she was used to, and the temples slightly too tight on the top of her ears. But that was okay.
She sat down on the couch, where Bianca had been.
For a moment, she saw a field of fairies fluttering around the room. She watched two children playing tug-of-war with a dandelion stem that exploded in white puffs.
Cassie giggled and peeked over the edge of her glasses. Were there actually dandelion seeds all over the room?
Nope. Nothing out of the ordinary. She tapped the glasses back up her nose and hoped for more cute fairy babies.
But then something odd happened. The crowd of dozens of fairies started to fade, growing fuzzier and fuzzier. Alarmed, Cassie gripped the couch’s armrest. Did I break it?
Something else started to fade in instead. Cassie’s mouth gaped open. It was a fairy of all one color again, just like the red one. Only this one was blue, a man with sky-colored skin and watery clothes and hair that looked like a tangle of blueberries.
“H-hello?” Cassie whispered, despite herself. She couldn’t see anything else in the room, not even the other girls or the furniture. Only the fairy.
The blue-colored fairy stared at her, unblinking.
Cassie’s heart pounded in her throat. The other fairies hadn’t looked at her, or seemed to notice that she was there.
I did something wrong, and he knows all about it, she thought fearfully. Maybe he knows I stole Bianca’s glasses. Maybe he knows I have no business wearing these.
She snatched the glasses off, wanting to cry. But when she put them on again, her hands shaking, he was gone. There was only the usual crowd of fairies.
A teenage fairy boy offer a handful of flowers to a teenage fairy girl. She stuck her nose in the air and flapped off, her avocado-colored wings flapping slowly. His watermelon-shaped wings buzzed quickly, and he shoved the flowers in his mouth and ate them.
One of the white flowers tumbled from his mouth, and a little girl with red speckled wings caught it. She floated over to hand it to her mother, who tucked it into her hair, which was already white and fluffy. The flower was hard to see.
The blue fairy didn’t reappear, and soon all the girls settled down in sleeping bags. Jasmine found a flashlight that she used to light up her face, and the girls started telling ghost stories.
Cassie normally hated ghost stories, but now, she didn’t notice or pay much attention. All she cared about were the strange eyeglasses, and the fairies they let her see.
In the dim light, all the fairies flickered like shadows, their colors turning into black, white, and grey. Cassie watched them bob and weave until her eyes felt heavy.
She fell asleep with Bianca’s eyeglasses still on her nose.
Chapter Three
When she woke up, Bianca was already gone.
“I’m sorry, but Bianca had an attack of itchiness,” Jasmine’s mother said. “Her mother had to come and get her early.”
“Oh,” Cassie said. She wasn’t sure if she should feel sorry for Bianca, or glad that she couldn’t possibly return the glasses. “I hope she feels better soon.”
“Me, too,” Jasmine’s mother said. “You know, Bianca used to be popular. It’s a shame she’s getting teased so much now.”
Bianca used to be popular? Cassie thought. I thought everyone thought she was weird.
She wondered if being able to see fairies made somebody turn weird. Maybe that was why Bianca was always itching. She hoped not, because she didn’t want to go through that, too.
That is, assuming that these are Bianca’s glasses, Cassie thought.
It was possible they weren’t. She hadn’t seemed to recognize them when Cassie had asked yesterday, after all.
“Um, does anybody have any missing glasses in your family?” Cassie asked nervously.
“Us?” Jasmine’s mother asked. “No, none of us wear glasses.”
“Has anybody else gone home?” Cassie asked.
“Not until we’ve had breakfast,” Jasmine’s mother said. “Do you want to join my husband? He’s making pancakes.”
Cassie wandered into the kitchen, where two other girls were helping. Ashley was stirring batter and cracking eggs. She looked down and made a face.
Georgina was holding a spatula, jumping up and down on the balls of her bare feet. “It’s my turn to flip the flapjacks!” she insisted.
“Did . . . did anybody leave their glasses in the bathroom last night?” Cassie asked nervously.
“I don’t wear glasses,” Georgina said.
“Me either,” Ashley added, trying to fish an eggshell out of the batter with her bare hand.
“Who does wear glasses in our class?” Cassie asked.
“You. Jon. Ethan,” Georgina said. “That’s it.”
“Don’t forget Sunflower,” Ashley said. “She wears glasses for reading.”
“Oh, right,” Georgina said.
“Who’s Sunflower?” Jasmine’s father asked, scooping up a pancake with his spatula and tossing it onto a plate. He scooped up another one from a different pan and added that on top of it. “I don’t remember meeting a girl with that name.”
“She’s not here,” Georgina said. “She never goes to birthday parties.”
So that leaves nobody else in this house who wears glasses. Cassie chewed on her lower lip. “What about Bianca?” she asked.
“Who knows about Bianca,” Georgina said. “She’s gotten really weird since last year.”
“I saw her wear glasses once,” Ashley volunteered, pulling out a goopy eggshell with a triumphant look on her face. “They might have just been sunglasses, though.”
Cassie’s heart raced. She saw Bianca wearing these glasses. I’m sure of it.
She wasn’t sure why Bianca had pretended not to recognize them, or asked for them back. But that could mean that Bianca wanted her to take them. Wanted her to borrow them.
Of course, why would Bianca do that? If I had glasses like this, I wouldn’t let them out of my sight.
Unless . . .
Cassie nodded slowly.
Unless she doesn’t dare tell anybody about the fairies, because they’d think she’s even more weird than they do already. But she wanted to share them with somebody.
Bianca must have left the glasses because she wanted someone to believe her. And who better than the new girl?
Cassie wished that she could talk about all this with Daisy.
Chapter Four
“Mom, can I go see Daisy?” Cassie asked her mother when she got home.
“Oh, Cassie,” her mother said, looking distressed. “I have so many errands to run. I’m sorry, but that just won’t be possible today.”
&n
bsp; “You could just drop me off,” Cassie said.
“I can’t do that without arranging it beforehand,” her mother said, shaking her head. “It would be rude.”
It wasn’t when we lived right next door, Cassie thought. “Well then, can I call her?” she asked.
“Sure,” her mother said. “The phone’s inside.”
Cassie ducked under her mother’s arm and ran to the kitchen, where they kept the charger. She unhooked the phone and pushed Daisy’s name on the contact list.
The phone rang. Daisy’s mom answered. “Hello?”
“Hi, can I talk to Daisy?”
“Oh, hi, Cassie. Sure.”
There was noise on the other end, and then Daisy came on the line. “Cassie!” she squealed. “I haven’t seen you all day!”
“I was at a party and I have something exciting to show you, but Mom won’t let me come over because she thinks it’s rude without permission!” Cassie cried all in one breath.
“Mommmmm!” Daisy shouted. “Can Cassie come over without permission?”
“She can come whenever she wants,” Daisy’s mother’s voice muffled in the background.
“My mom says you can,” Daisy said.
“But my mom won’t drive me,” Cassie complained.
“Mommmmm! Can we pick up Cassie right now?”
“I suppose so,” Daisy’s mom’s voice muffled.
“We can,” Daisy’s voice said smugly.
A thrill shot through Cassie. “Great! I’ve got something to show you!”
“Is it exciting?” Daisy squeaked.
“Very!”
“I can hardly wait!”
Daisy’s mother’s voice scratched in the background. “If you want to go now, hang up the phone and get your coat on.”
“Whoops, be there in ten minutes,” Daisy’s voice said. “See you soon!”
The phone hung up, and Cassie wandered into the living room, where her mom was sorting letters from the mailbox.
“Just for once,” her mother said, “I’d like to get a personal letter. All we ever get are junk mail and bills. And now there’s junk mail for the people who used to live here, too.”
Tabby, Tabby, Burning Bright Page 1
