How to Ditch Your Fairy (16 page)

Demerits: 0

Conversations with Steffi: billions

Game suspensions: 2

Public service hours: 28

Boys who like me: all of them

Girls who hate me: Heather, Alicia, Tracy, and all their friends

L
ife with a boy- attracting fairy was a vast improvement. After two days my demerits were down to zero and the game suspension (fencing) I served on Saturday meant that I’d caught up on al my homework. By Sunday night I’d even managed to study ahead of time and review a week’s worth of tennis and cricket training videos as wel as two days of fencing.

I hadn’t seen much of Steffi, though. He was great at school—al kisses and compliments—but I didn’t see him outside it. Not that there was much time for that, what with al my demerit erasing, not to mention catching up with homework. He was probably as busy as me.

It was true that—except for Rochele, Sandra, and Fiorenze—the rest of the girls were barely talking to me, but I figured they’d get over it eventualy. Fiorenze had gone out of her way to stop the rumor that I’d stolen her fairy. Plus we were hanging out together, which seemed to be proof enough for some people, though not Heather or any of her minions.

There was stil no rule protecting me like the one Fiorenze had had but maybe on Monday. Mr. Kurimoto and Coach Van Dyck were pleading my case. Kurimoto had believed me right away (how could he not with both Irwin Daniels and Freedom Hazal in his class?) and Van Dyck had finaly come around. Stil, even if the rule didn’t come in, I was better at managing the boys than Fiorenze had been. As long as I avoided Daniels and Hazal, I’d be fine.

Monday—my first demerit- free day—was going to rule. The whole week would be fabulous. I could feel it.

It wasn’t. By lunch I’d earned a demerit for fending off Irwin Daniels and another one for yeling at Freedom Hazal. I’d hung out with Steffi on my breaks, but it was hard with al those other boys around, and, wel, I had to admit that he wasn’t quite the Steffi he’d been before. Like, the first thing he told me when we al sat down at lunch was how beautiful and soft my skin was, how gorgeous the color.

Sandra coughed. A mocking cough. She’d been doing that a lot since the swap.

“Have you done something new with your hair? It’s so shiny,”

Steffi said. My hair was not shiny. He’d never said anything like that to me before the fairy. Now it was pretty much al he said.

“Go away!” Fiorenze hissed at the rugger boy who tried to sit down between her and me. The five of us—me, Steffi, Fiorenze, Rochele, and Sandra—were squeezed around a two- person round table. Easier to keep anyone from joining us.

“You need to lose the fairy,” Sandra said, glaring at me. “You may love it, but we hate it.”

No one said anything. Not even Steffi. Them not being happy for me made my own new- fairy happiness smaler. They almost made me wish I’d gotten some other kind of fairy. One they’d approve of.

By Wednesday things were much worse. Even though I was getting rid of most of the demerits I earned during the day at public service, it kept cutting into homework time.

Then Irwin Daniels tried to drag me into a broom closet. Two rugger boys rescued me, ripping the sleeve of my jacket in the process. Then they got into a fight over who was going to escort me to my class, while Heather Sandol and her minions hissed abuse.

Apparently hissing didn’t count as talking to me.

I ran. The entire D-, C-, and most of B-stream rugby ran after me.

Rochele found me cowering in one of the stals of the tennis changing rooms. She banged on the door. “Charlie? Charlie? I know you’re in there!”

“Yes,” I said. “I am in here.” I’d put the lid down and was sitting on it, hugging my bag tight, and wishing for the first time that I had listened to Fiorenze.

“What are you doing?” Rochele asked. “Why weren’t you in Bio? Where were you at first recess?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what, Charlie? Come out of there.” She banged on the door again. “Stop being ridiculous!”

Maybe I was being ridiculous, but I couldn’t go out there again.

“Charlie?”

“They tore my jacket off ! My shirt is torn too!”

“Class just started. There’s no one out there.”

But it was a lot better in here—despite the smal space, the chewing gum stuck to the wals making the graffiti hard to read, and the smel—than it was out there.

“And there’s no one in here but me, Charlie. No Heather or any of her Heather- ettes for you to hide from.”

“I’m not scared of Heather Sandol!” I wasn’t
scared
of her, it was just less than doos being around her and her Heather- ettes, which seemed to be every girl in school.

“Of course not. You’ve just set up camp in there for your health.”

“I’m sick.”

“Are not.”

“How do you know I’m not?” I asked.

I heard her sigh. A vastly impatient sigh. “You’l have to come out sometime, Charlie. Why not now?”

I shifted my legs only to discover that my left had gone to sleep. I grunted. “Okay, I’m coming out.” I stood up, slipped my bag over my shoulder, and opened the door. “But you’re not alowed to say
I
told you so
.”

Rochele patted my shoulder. “So you’ve realized that having a boy fairy is not the most fabulous thing in the whole world?”

I nodded. “It was a malodorous mistake. Why didn’t I believe Fiorenze?! She
told
me. I just didn’t think every boy being in love with me would be a problem. And it wasn’t at first.” I’d thought I could handle it, that Fiorenze’s problem wasn’t the fairy but her not being able to cope with it. Yet I wasn’t any better at it than she was.

“Wel, not every boy. You’re safe from seniors.”

“There’s that.”

“I don’t think any of us realized how bad it was for her,” Rochele said. “She’s had rules protecting her. Which you wil have too any minute now.”

“At least Kurimoto and Van Dyck believe me.”

“Them plus overwhelming evidence,” Rochele said. “I’m sure the rule wil cover you by the end of the week. Why don’t we both get to class now?”

“You’l run interference?”

“Of course. It’s not al bad, Charlie. Now you know Stefan likes you better than Fiorenze—he’s barely talked to her since you two swapped.”

“Wel, yes, but that also means he’s only with
me
because of the boy fairy. Don’t get me wrong. I like being with him, but, wel …” I didn’t want to admit out loud that I’d turned Steffi into a love-zombie just like Heather Sandol said. I didn’t want him liking me because of a fairy. I wanted him to like me because of
me
.

“He’s not been the same, has he?” Rochele said.

“No, he hasn’t.” I wondered if it meant Steffi didn’t like me after al. Or maybe he had, but the fairy
making
him like me had kiled off any real liking for me.

Fiorenze came running into the bathroom. “Charlie! There you are!”

We both turned to her. “What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“Danders Anders.”

I would have been tempted to say
I told you so
, except that her
I
told you so
was vastly bigger than mine. “Oh,” I said instead.

“He grabbed me in the corridor and told me like a hundred times he could give me lots of money if I’d be his parking fairy girl.”

“But he told me he doesn’t have any money.”

“When I said no, he picked me up as if I were a cat! He would have taken me out to his car then and there, but Coach Mbeki intervened. She gave him a demerit. I know he’s going to come searching for me again as soon as he can. Wherever Danders wants to go, he wants to go there right this minute; he won’t take no for an answer.”

“No, he won’t,” I said. “He never does.”

“Hasn’t he heard of taxis?” Rochele asked. “You don’t need a parking spot if you go in a cab.”

“Danders loves his car,” I said. “
Loves
it.”

“What are we going to do?” Fiorenze asked. “I can’t spend al day hiding from him!”

“How did he even know you have the parking fairy now?”

Rochele asked.

“Bluey told him.”

“Bluey talks too much,” I said. First he’d betrayed me and now Fio.

“He thought he was helping you,” Fiorenze said. “Getting Danders off your back.”

“Hmmph,” I said.

“So what are we going to do?”

“Can’t you swap your fairies back?” Rochele asked.

“No!” we both yeled. The thought of my parking fairy returning made me want to scream, tear my hair out, and give up sports for macrame, interpretive dance, and making up injured stories in the front row of some torpid Arts school. Over my dead body.

“Okay, okay,” Rochele said, holding up her hands. “It was just an idea.”

“Bleaching?” Fiorenze asked.

“Where are we going to get bleach at school?” I asked, though I was desperate enough to try it. “Not to mention no bath tubs. Do you even remember what the proportions are meant to be?”

“Nine to one? Ten to one?” Fiorenze shook her head. “I can’t be sure.”

“Nearly dying, then,” I said. “It’s gotta be the near- death thing.”

“I am not jumping off the roof of this building!” Fiorenze exclaimed.

“We could pul out the mats from gymnastics. Land on them.”

“Don’t you think the gymnastics squads wil notice?” Fiorenze pointed out. “Plus they’re not rated for people jumping off the roof.

It’s a long fal.”

“What about jumping from the high board?” I asked.

“Would a fairy believe that would kil us?”

How was I supposed to know what a fairy would think? “We could cal your mother and ask.”

Fiorenze looked at me with a most unkind expression.

“Fio, we have to think of
something
. I’m not going through another second with this poxy fairy. I’m so over injured fairies I can’t even tel you.”

“What are you two talking about?” Rochele asked.

“Nearly dying,” Fiorenze explained.”It gets rid of fairies.”

“Isn’t that a bit drastic? I imagine that in the attempt to
nearly
die some people
actually
die.”

“It’s not that kind of nearly dying,” I said. “You just have to do something the fairy thinks wil kil you. Like jumping off a building.”

“Last I heard,” Rochele said,”that realy can kil you.”

“Not if you land on big padded mats.”

“Hey,” Rochele said. “What about luge?”

“Luge?” I said. “That’s the sled sport, right?” There was a luge stream, like there was a sking stream, an ice hockey stream, etc., but us summer sports streamers didn’t have much to do with the winter sports types.

It doesn’t snow in New Avalon, or anywhere on the East Coast, but we’re New Avaloners, so we have to be the best at everything.

Which is why New Avalon Sports High has a vastly big Luge Hal, as wel as a Sking Hal and an ice rink. That doesn’t stop winter sports being weird and the people who do them weirder. Why would you be into snowboarding when you’ve never seen real snow?

“Don’t you remember?” Rochele asked. “Last year Teddy Rourke snuck into our school on a dare and broke like a bilion bones when he got onto a luge track. He’d never done it before, and he went zooming down faster than light, then flew off the track at the very first turn and—”