How to Ditch Your Fairy (21 page)

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

S
aturday 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 fel into bed knackered but happy, planning to sleep until noon, maybe catch up on homework, and best of al hang out with Steffi.

Instead Mom woke me just after nine. “Someone here to see

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, al 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?

Wel, 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 al.

She puled 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 al?

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 stil wasn’t making eye contact.”My fault. I bulied 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 recal that you must never tel 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 al that.

“Because I wanted to get rid of my fairy and you wouldn’t help me.” Fiorenze didn’t sound sad; she was simply teling 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 eyebals that way.

I couldn’t believe Fiorenze was talking to her mother like that.

My parents had always treated me and Nettles like adults—wel, not exactly—but not like we were little kids. They would let us say our bit, but eventualy 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 wil 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 al 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 briliant,” Fio said. “Waverly has five books and none of them are anywhere near yours.”

“You read them al?” Tamsin asked.

“Wel, I tried,” Fiorenze said, “but they were kind of boring.

Your book isn’t boring at al. It’s useful.”

Had Fiorenze read the same book I did? The introduction had been vastly boring! Al 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 al 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 al 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 al 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 wil be so popular everyone wil 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 kil 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 folow. 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.

“Wel?”

“Maybe I don’t,” I said. “But I’d like one. I’d hate to have gone through al that walking everywhere, getting al 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 kil me not to have one.”

Fiorenze grinned. “That’s the spirit!”