Fairy, Texas

by Margo Bond Collins

  * * * *

  The morning went by pretty normally at first. I had geometry first period, which made me want to bang my head against a wall—no way would I be awake enough for math first thing in the morning. But then I had English, and in between the two, I found my locker on the second floor and stashed my books in it.

  Several times that morning I flashed back to the memory of the shadow-wings I’d seen on Roger Bartlef’s back. Or rather, that I thought I’d seen. Because they couldn’t possibly be real. Right?

  Still, I was anxious to get to lunch so Andrew could finish telling me what he’d started to in homeroom.

  He had saved a seat for me again, and his eyes brightened when he saw me come in and look around for him.

  Actually, his eyes really lit up. And he got that look in them. I glanced around the cafeteria nervously. No. No, no, no. I so did not need the complication of a crush right now. No. But when I looked back at Andrew, The Look was still there.

  Curses.

  I sighed and headed to his table. At least there were other people there, too. They were all looking at me expectantly—though thankfully, only Andrew had The Look. I recognized one of the girls from my English class, a pretty redhead with green eyes. Allison? Amy? Something like that. I was going to have to try to find out her name without being obvious. Again, just to be totally clear, I hated being the new kid at school. There were two other girls at the table, and another guy. I didn’t recognize any of them from my morning classes.

  “Hey, Laney!” Andrew said when I sat down. “Everybody, this is Laney.” His voice took on a sort of self-important quality, like he was proud that he’d met me first. Or maybe like I was somehow connected to him. Oh, no.

  Don’t get me wrong. Andrew was cute enough. Tall, with dark brown eyes, high cheekbones, looked like he probably played soccer or ran track or something—not a football player, but athletic. And he was kind enough to include the new girl, so I was assuming he was nice and all. But still. It was my first day. I was in Fairy-freakin’-Texas. I didn’t know anyone. And I wasn’t planning on getting too attached to anyone, either. Mom had flaked on me once, dragging me out of my life and dropping me here. I wasn’t going to count on staying.

  Andrew was still talking. “This is Ally”—the girl from English class—“Sarah, Natalie, and Scott.”

  “Hi, y’all,” I said.

  “Oh. My. God. Say that again,” Natalie said.

  “Um. Hi?”

  “Oh. You have the cutest Southern accent in the whole world!”

  This from a girl who used three syllables to say “world”? I managed to keep my opinion to myself, and just smiled as I sat down in the empty seat between Sarah and Andrew.

  “Anybody seen Cody today?” Andrew asked, glancing around.

  “Yeah,” said Scott, “I think he had shop last period.” He scanned the lunch room, then shrugged and bit into an apple. “He’ll show,” he said around a full mouth.

  “So how do you like Fairy so far?” Sarah asked me quietly.

  “Oh, Sarah Ann, you know she hasn’t had time to decide that yet,” Natalie broke in. “And besides, she must hate it, ’cause she’s from Atlanta, you know, and Fairy doesn’t have nearly half the cool stuff that Atlanta does. I mean, maybe if she’d moved to Fort Worth or Dallas it would’ve been okay, but Fairy just sucks. You know it does.” She stopped to take a breath.

  “Just ignore Natalie,” Andrew said. “We all do.”

  Natalie peeled a piece of crust off the sandwich in front of her and threw it across the table at Andrew. “You do not,” she said. “You just wish you could. But I am way too cool to ignore. So there.”

  “So,” Sarah said again, just as quietly, “how do you like Fairy so far?”

  “Hard to believe these two are best friends, isn’t it?” Scott said, leaning around Natalie and pointing between her and Sarah. And, thankfully, saving me again from having to answer the question of how I felt about their town.

  “I know!” Natalie said. “Everybody thinks it’s so weird, but I don’t think it’s weird at all. I mean, we’ve been best friends since kindergarten, and everyone’s always saying we’re so different, but really we’re not.”

  “Except for the talking part,” Scott said, but he smiled at Natalie when he said it. She reached over and thumped his shoulder, but then squeezed his hand under the table.

  I pulled out my own lunch and aimed for a casual tone when I asked Andrew, “What was it you were going to tell me in homeroom this morning about Bartlef?”

  “That’s right!” Scott said. “You had to go see Barfs-a-lot this morning.”

  “Gross, Scott!” Natalie said. “Some of us are trying to eat. Don’t say that.”

  “Did you catch a whiff of his breath?” Scott asked, ignoring Natalie’s interruption. “Disgusting.” He shook his head and made a face.

  “Yeah, it was pretty foul,” I said. “But Andrew warned me, so I mostly managed to hold my breath.”

  Sarah shuddered delicately. “I hate it when I have to go see him. He’s so weird.”

  “And don’t forget ugly,” Ally said, pulling a compact out of her backpack and applying lip gloss as she spoke.

  “Weird how?” I asked. “I mean, other than the nasty breath?”

  Sarah shook her head. “It’s hard to explain. I mean, it’s not like he’s ever done anything bad to me, but. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  “Has he done something to other people?” I asked, my own voice dropping almost to a whisper.

  “Well, no one will say anything for sure,” Andrew said. “But there are rumors.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like he gets kids to go to his house on the weekends. . .”

  I leaned in closer to hear him. “Yeah?” I asked breathlessly.

  “And they do all kinds of creepy rituals, like black magic and stuff.” His eyes were round and his voice solemn.

  “Oh,” said Natalie, dismissing him. She leaned back in her chair. “Don’t listen to him. Those rumors have been going around since my parents were kids. Just because he’s a smelly old man doesn’t mean that he’s evil or anything.”

  “There are some kids who like him,” Scott argued. “And they spend an awful lot of time in his office.”

  “Still doesn’t mean they’re off doing scary after-hours stuff with him. I mean, really—do you actually believe that Mason Collier is doing black-magicky things with Bartlef on the weekends? What? You think he goes and plays quarterback at a big football game on Friday night, and then heads over to Bartlef’s for an after-game round of witchy-poo? Please!” Natalie shook her head in disgust.

  Ally laughed. “Yeah, Mason Collier is way too cute to be hanging out with icky-ugly Bartlef.”

  I thought of the phantom wings I’d seen on Bartlef that morning. I might not know who Mason Collier was, but I had no problem seeing Bartlef doing “black-magicky things” on the weekends. Or any other time, for that matter.

  Chapter Two

  “Okay, girls,” Coach Spencer yelled above the chatter around me. “We’re going to get warmed up for this year with a little run around the outer track.”

  She gestured toward a field off to the right of the building. I could see a dirt track wending its way along the edge, disappearing into a copse of stubby trees and scrub brush at the far end.

  “Four laps,” Spencer added.

  A general groan went up, and I was glad that the discussion at lunch had distracted me from eating too much. Late August in Texas is hot.

  “Well?” the coach said. “Get going!”

  We started off at a trot toward the field, many of the girls around me still complaining. For a moment I considered hanging back with the crowd, but Andrew had told me that Spencer coached the girls’ track team, and I wanted to impress her. So I stretched my legs out as I hit the track and settled in to a long stride, my breathing still easy.

  The afternoon sun beat down on my head. I watched the small grove grow
closer, anxious for some shade. By the time I hit the bend in the track that led into the thicket, I was yards ahead of the rest of the runners.

  So when I rounded the curve and tripped over the body, I was all alone.

  It didn’t take long for everyone else to catch up, but it seemed like an eternity as I scrambled back, crab-like. It took a moment for my brain to translate the messages my eyes were sending it—the images coalesced slowly, like one of those magic pictures with the 3D images inside.

  He had been stretched out spread-eagle across the trail, head and feet half-concealed in the brush on either side. Blood pooled around him, sticky and half-dried at the edges. His shirt had been ripped open, and a slash opened him from his throat to his stomach.

  As the other girls rounded the bend, I realized that the high, keening noise in the background was the sound of my own screaming. As soon as I realized it, I stopped, but several of my classmates picked up where I left off.

  My hands and knees were coated with blood where I had landed; my skin was tacky with it. I crawled over to the nearest bush and vomited.

  Coach Spencer shoved her way through the girls and stuttered to a stop, her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God,” she said. “It’s Cody Murphy.”

  * * * *

  During my sophomore year in Atlanta, a kid in my class had died in a car wreck. Although I’d had some classes with him, I didn’t even know him all that well—and I certainly hadn’t seen the body—but I had been forced to spend an hour talking to a special grief counselor the school had brought in.

  In Fairy, I got sent to Bartlef’s office.

  Spencer had sent me in to shower and change first, but I was still shaking when I reached Bartlef’s office. I huddled into an uncomfortable chair and waited for him to speak.

  Instead he stared out the window, tapping his index finger on the desk. The air in the office smelled rotten, like Bartlef’s breath had filled up the tiny space with no room left over for normal air. I couldn’t breathe properly—it made my head swim.

  After a long moment, I asked “Are the police going to need to talk to me?”

  He glanced at me. “I assume that Sheriff Lopez will let us know if he wants to interview you.” He tapped the desk one last time and nodded, as if he’d come to some decision. “You should go back to class, Miss Harris,” he said.

  I couldn’t even find the words to respond. I had expected to be questioned, or sent home, or at least talked to kindly—something that acknowledged the potential trauma inherent in tripping over a dead classmate.

  “Well?” Bartlef asked. “Do you need something else?”

  “Um. No. I…Um,” I stammered incoherently, then just shook my head.

  “Very well, then. Please close the door on your way out.”

  I stumbled into the hall and started to shut the heavy wooden door behind me.

  “And Miss Harris?” Bartlef said. “Please don’t speak to anyone about what happened today.”

  The door swung shut. I leaned against the wall and drew in several long, cleansing breaths. The hallway smelled faintly of industrial-strength cleaner, but it was fresh air compared to Bartlef’s office.

  I stared down at my hands, imagining them still coated in sticky blood, and felt my stomach heave again. I shook my head and moved toward the stairs to go to my locker. Nothing about this made any sense at all.

  The rest of the day was as okay as I could have expected, given the circumstances. Natalie, Scott, and Sarah were all in my afternoon history class. The students stared at me silently as I walked in. Sarah indicated an empty seat next to her and I slid into it. The teacher resumed her lecture.

  Sarah leaned over to me. “It was Cody, wasn’t it?” she whispered

  “That’s what Spencer said.”

  She shuddered. “We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “We never do.”

  “Sarah?” the teacher said, looking at her pointedly.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sarah said, bending down to copy homework instructions into her notebook.

  I followed her example, hoping I could get more out of her after class, but as soon as the bell rang she scuttled off without making eye contact.

  Andrew was in first-year Spanish with me. I’d been taking French in Atlanta, but Fairy High didn’t have French as a language option, so I was having to start all over. Like Sarah, Andrew refused to talk about Cody, but his eyes were red-rimmed, and I suspected he’d been crying. He kept his head down on the desk; the teacher didn’t call on him.

  The longer the day went on, the more frustrated I felt. I had found a dead body, and no one would discuss it with me. In fact, no one much seemed to want to talk to me at all. The whole school seemed subdued. The other students stood in small clumps and whispered to one another, but the whispers hushed as I walked by. I felt tears well up in my own eyes. I wondered if anyone would notice if I just went home—then remembered that Kayla was my ride. And anyway, I didn’t really have a home anymore. Just a room with a borrowed desk and a bunch of boxes waiting to be unpacked.

  I missed Atlanta more than ever.

  * * * *

  My last class of the day was listed as Journalism, which I quickly discovered had little in common with the school newspaper I’d been involved with back home. In Fairy, the journalism class produced the yearbook. I saw Kayla in a seat in the back whisper something to the girl next to her. The teacher, Mr. Carlson, glanced up at me as I slid into an empty chair.

  “Hi, Laney,” he said. “Welcome to Fairy. Mr. Bartlef told me you’re a photographer?”

  “Yes, sir,” I replied.

  He smiled. “You ever worked in a darkroom?”

  “No,” I said slowly. “Mostly we used digital cameras.”

  Mr. Carlson laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We use digital cameras here, too. I just think it’s important for my students to know their way around a darkroom. That's the foundation of art-photography, and you never know when it might come in handy.”

  Like maybe never? I thought, but again, I kept the thought to myself. I was getting pretty good at that here.

  “Anyway,” he said, “that’ll come later.” He raised his voice to the rest of the class—there were maybe fifteen or sixteen students in all, and about six of them clustered around Kayla. “Good afternoon, everyone! We’re going to jump right in here. As you all know, the yearbook gets no funding from the school district, so we’re going to spend the first six-week grading period on our annual fundraiser. Everyone will be assigned a partner, and you’ll spend this last class period out selling ads to local businesses. Your grade will be determined by the number of ads you sell.”

  He pointed to a chart on the chalkboard and everyone groaned. “I’ve already arranged for you to be released early every day, so you’ll be spending this hour out in town. Don’t waste it goofing off and hanging out at Sonic trying to be cool. It won’t work, anyway.” He looked pointedly at the guy sitting in front of me and the rest of the class laughed. “And here are your assigned partners.”

  He read off a list in his hand. When he called my name, I discovered I was partnered with Mason Collier—the infamous football-playing, cute, but possibly black-magicky friend-of-Bartlef I’d heard about at lunch. I looked around and saw a guy waving at me from across the room. He was looking at me kind of like he was hungry and maybe I was breakfast. It worried me.

  Still, at least I hadn’t been paired up with Kayla. It could have been much worse.

  “Okay,” Carlson said. “Go ahead and meet with your partners and plan your strategy.”

  Mason and I stood up at the same time and walked toward each other. I was so busy making sure I didn’t trip over any desks that I didn’t see Kayla headed toward me until she was right in front of me. And then she leaned in close to my face and hissed at me. “Don’t get too cozy. He’s way out of your league.”

  I rolled my eyes and moved around her without responding. Three
days. Three days I’d been in Fairy, and already I had an enemy. And I lived in her house. My life kept getting better and better.

  Mason and I met in the middle of the room. Kayla and her friends huddled nearby, watching us.

  “Hey,” Mason said.

  “Hey.” Nice, neutral word, hey. Can mean almost anything. Or nothing.

  “So,” he said, “where do you want to start?”

  He was asking me? Where I wanted to start was away from here, where there weren’t any dead boys to trip over.

  So much for that option.

  “Well,” I said, drawing the word out. “I’m new here. It’s your town. Where do you think we should start?”

  “Hm.” He looked at me appraisingly. “I bet you’d do real well selling ads to the old guys at the auto-body shops.”

  One of the guys standing with Kayla actually hooted out loud. I could feel my face turn red. I counted to ten in my head without breaking eye contact with my new sales partner. When he finally started to shift in his seat just a bit, I leaned back, crossed my arms, and gave him a look that was every bit as assessing as the one he’d given me.

  “Hm,” I said. “Well, you’re not too bad-looking. We might be able to hit up the old ladies at the hair salons. As long as you don’t open your mouth and say anything stupid—and on second thought, just to be safe, I think maybe you shouldn’t talk at all.”

  I heard a snort from the front of the room, but when I glanced over, Mr. Carlson’s head was down over some papers on his desk and he was studiously ignoring us.

  Mason Collier threw his head back and laughed out loud. “You’re all right, Harris,” he said. “Let’s go show these losers how to sell some ads. We taking your car or mine?”

  Round one to me, then. “I don’t actually have a car,” I said.

  “No problem.” He stood up and towered over me. “I can drop you off back at your house when we’re done, if you want.”

  “Fine by me.” I smiled up at him.

  “We’re out of here, Mr. C,” Mason said as we walked past his desk.