How to Ditch Your Fairy (6 page)

Days walking: 62

Demerits: 8

Conversations with Steffi: 7

Doos clothing acquired: 0

Game suspensions: 1

O
n Tuesday at first recess, Sandra and Rochele dragged me out onto the lawn overlooking the outdoor pool. Twelve swimmers were doing laps.

“Sit down,” Sandra said. She and Rochele remained standing.

Sandra handed a protein bar to Rochele, tossed one to me, then unwrapped her own and started munching.

“Why?” I peeled back the gold and green foil and took a bite.

Chalky texture, unidentifiably disgusting flavor that was labeled
mangosteen
. “Yum. My favorite.” Why couldn’t someone invent a protein bar that wasn’t foul?

“This is an intervention,” Sandra said, sounding like a vastly grumpy coach. For a microsecond I could imagine her as just that: Coach Petaculo the Ruthless. I bet Sandra would even use a whistle. I hate whistles. “So you have to sit.”

I sat down, but only because I was knackered and it was easier than standing. “A what?”

“We don’t want you to get any more demerits. We love this school. You love this school. We don’t want to graduate without you. We’ve already talked to her and she says yes. She’s sure her parents wil help,” Rochele said, looking at me triumphantly. “At least, she’s sure her mom wil. Her dad can be a bit weird. Anyway, it’s al settled.”

“What is? Who is?” I wondered if Rochele and Sandra had gone insane. I finished off the protein bar and wiped my hands on the grass. A ladybug landed on my finger, tasted doxy protein bar crumbs, and flew away.

“You’re going over to Fiorenze’s tonight,” Sandra said, “and her parents are going to teach you how to lose the parking fairy and get a new one.”

“No, I’m not.” Over my fairy- fragged body! Even if the world had ended and Stupid- Name’s house was the only remaining shelter, I
still
wouldn’t step foot in it. Even if ravening, rabid, rapid wolves were chasing me.

“It’s the only way,” Rochele said firmly. “You’ve been walking everywhere for more than two months and you stil haven’t got a new fairy.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. I’m close. I can feel my fairy getting lighter.”

Sandra sucked her teeth. “No one can feel their fairy.”

“But if you go to Fiorenze’s,” Rochele said, “you’l be able to see your fairy’s aura, whether it’s lighter or not. They’l teach you how to get rid of it. They know everything there is to know about fairies!”

“I can’t. I have to do public service at the cemetery.”

“Which one?” Sandra asked.

“Hilside.”

“Maybe you’l get to tend to Our Diviya or Our Lakeisha,”

Sandra said, roling her eyes as if she were joking, forgetting that me and Ro had seen the shrine to Our Diviya and Our Lakeisha that is her bedroom.

“Maybe.”

“Wel, tomorrow night then,” Rochele said.

I shook my head. “Public service. I have to do public service every day after school until al my demerits are gone.”

“C’mon, Charlie. Fiorenze’s parents’l solve your problem. You won’t accrue any more demerits, you won’t have to do public service. Everything wil be the way it should be, except that you’l have a brand-spanking-new fairy,” Rochele said. Then her eyes got wide. “Maybe even a clothes-shopping fairy—”

Sandra snorted. “You have the only known clothesshopping fairy in the universe.”

“I can’t do it until Sunday,” I said. “I’ve got public service every day til then.”

“Fine,” Rochele said. “I’l organize it for Sunday then.”

“But, Ro, that’s my one day off. I was going to—”

“Visit Fiorenze’s parents. Promise?”

I made a halfhearted movement of my head that could have been interpreted as a nod as soon as a shake.

Rochele tsked. “Do you promise?”

“Mmpfyeh,” I said, widening my eyes to their maximum earnestness.

“Say it again with your hands on your lap where we can see them,” Rochele said.

I uncrossed my fingers and put my hands in my lap. “I promise,” I said heavily. “Ours’ honor.” I tried to think of something horrendous enough to be sufficient punishment for Rochele and Sandra forcing me to spend my one day off at Stupid Fiorenze’s. It caled for something spectacular.

Days walking: 62

Demerits: 8

Conversations with Steffi: 7

Doos clothing acquired: 0

Game suspensions: 1

W
hile I love this school more than anything, there are aspects of it that are less than doos. Like Statistics, my least favorite class.

Hmmm, wait, that implies that it’s on my list of favorites. It’s not. If I had a choice between doing statistics or eating my body weight in empty calories—I’d take the ECs, thank you very much. I’d take amputation. Statistics is the worst thing in the known world. (Other than my parking fairy.)

And it’s worse than it otherwise would be because Rochele and Sandra aren’t in my class. Vastly difficult to get through the worst class in the universe without the moral support of my best friends.

To add to my pain Steffi and Fiorenze are both in my Stats class.

They sat side by side. Steffi passed her a note, which is an infraction, but Ms. Basu (we’re al convinced she has a good- hair fairy since her hair is always shiny and never even slightly messy) didn’t seem to notice, despite every boy in the class staring at them with jealous intensity, and every girl with the same. (Only the boys were wanting to be where Steffi was and the girls were wanting to be Stupid- Name.) Of course my pointing it out would only bring me a demerit. Dobbing is vastly frowned upon.

Besides, I would never do that, no matter how much the parties in question deserved it. I hoped Steffi wouldn’t be at Fiorenze’s on Sunday. Or Fiorenze, for that matter. No way could I stand to be around them al touchy-touchy love-love out of school. School was horrendous enough. It didn’t help that Steffi was looking even more pulchy today than ever, even though his curly black hair was a mess. Or maybe that’s why? Was messy hair pulchy? Or just Steffi’s messy hair?

We were supposed to be reviewing strike rate calculations; I wasn’t understanding it any better than I had the first time we learned it. I don’t play cricket to improve my statistics. How many wickets I take and at what rate—it’s immaterial to me. I don’t care about my average (23.75), or my strike rate (51.61), or my economy rate (6.34), or my number of hat tricks (2). I just adore the feel of the bal between my splayed fingers, the little extra pressure I exert with my knuckles before it leaves my hand and is spinning just how I want it to, looking so innocuous that the batter lets it go only to hear the leather of the bal against the wood of the bails as they’re sent sailing through the air. Sigh. Who cares if I manage that feat every twenty runs or thirty?

Steffi pushed another note to Fiorenze. I was too far away to have any hope of reading it, so I stared out the window, imagining that they were breaking up with each other:
I had no idea it was
possible
, Steffi would write her,
for someone to be as stuck- up
as you are. Furthermore, wearing brown with brown with
brown does not work. If I weren’t already unlinking with you
because of your aforementioned stuckupedness, the brown
thing would kill it for me. Plus you smell funny and aren’t
nearly as smart, witty, and overall doos as Charlie
.

I snuck another peek at the irksome twosome. He was smiling at her in a soft, wet, gooshy way and she was staring down shy and overwhelmed. It seemed unlikely they were merely hiding the pain of a breakup. If only Basu would give them multiple demerits.

I turned back to the window, and watched the B-stream voleybalers practicing spikes. Leaping, skidding, spiking.

Voleybal is not my sport.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m adequate, but I don’t have the something extra you need to get into even D-stream voleybal at NA Sports. I thought I had that certain something for basketbal. It hadn’t occurred to me I wouldn’t even make D-stream basketbal. I thought I’d be in B with Rochele. At Bradman I’d been the star point guard and now I only got to play bal in my own front yard.

“Charlotte Adele Donna Seto Steele?” Basu was looking at me: the expression on her face was not kind. “Can you calculate career and season strike rates for the folowing batter?” The name K. S.

Duleepsinhji appeared on the screen of my tablet with his entire career laid out in numbers. There was his cumulative runs: 995

scored from 19 innings. So 995 divided by 19. “52.37,” I said.

“No, Ms. Steele. That is Mr. Duleepsinhji’s average. I believe I

“No, Ms. Steele. That is Mr. Duleepsinhji’s average. I believe I asked you to calculate strike rates. The number of runs scored for every hundred bals faced.”

I felt my cheeks heat up. Everyone knows the difference between averages and strike rates.

“Perhaps what is going on in class is of more assistance in the calculation of strike rates than what is going on outside the window?”

I looked down.

“Wel, Steele?”

“Yes, Ms. Basu.”

I glanced at the cloying couple. Another note went from Steffi to Fiorenze. I forced myself back to the calculations in front of me.

Failing Statistics was not the extra little something I needed to add to my increasingly disastrous life.

Days walking: 62

Demerits: 8

Conversations with Steffi: 7

Doos clothing acquired: 0

Game suspensions: 1

H
ilside cemetery is the biggest and oldest in the city. Al the most famous Ours are buried there. It’s surrounded by huge stone wals and al the entrances have wrought iron gates. It also has 360-degree views. On a clear day you can see the mountains to the west and al the way to the ocean in the east.

When I walked through the main entrance, I saw a light-skinned woman with canary yelow hair scrunched back tight in a bun, holding an official- looking tablet. I walked over to her. She looked me up and down, noting my NA Sports uniform, then turned to her tablet.

“Charlotte Adele Donna Seto Steele?”

“Yes.” It occurred to me that until I started New Avalon Sports High I’d barely known what my ful name was. Even when my parents were mad at me they caled me plain old Charlie.

“You’re almost late. We expect those doing service to get here at least ten minutes early.”

I started to apologize but she cut me off. “You wil be punctual and you wil attend every public service session you have agreed to do.” She looked down at her excessively bright tablet. “Which is every evening except Sundays.” She looked at me again. “You must be an exceedingly naughty girl.”

“No, I—”

The look she shot me was poisonous. “For every hour’s work you do, one demerit wil be erased from your record.”

A whole hour’s work erased
one
demerit. How fair was that?! I wisely did not share this thought.

“This is your quadrant.” She handed me a map. “Get rid of al garbage, weeds, and detritus. You are to make your quadrant beautiful. Your assigned partner hasn’t arrived yet. So you wil have to work even harder.”

She indicated a pile of gloves, one of yelow fluoro vests, another of burlap sacks, and the last of gardening forks. “Take one of each of those and four sacks. One is for glass and plastic recyclables, one for paper and cardboard, one for compostable materials, and one for nonrecyclables.”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.” I tried on some gloves for size. None fit. I took the least ludicrously large ones. Two more people wandered in. Adults. The yelow-haired lady started barking the same instructions at them.

I picked up a sack. It was bigger than me. I stuffed one of the vests and a fork into it and then grabbed three more sacks.

“Put the vest on now!” the woman yeled. I turned around. She was staring right at me. “Do not take it off ! Not until your work is finished! Go!”

“Sorry,” I muttered, but she had turned back to her new offenders. I fished out its yelow splendiferousness and slipped it on, then stumbled away.

My quadrant was outlined in red. I looked around for a street sign. Diviya Street. My quadrant was bordered by Diviya, Eastern, Hilside, and Nelson. With my usual luck I’d been given a section that was about as far as you could be from the main gates. I headed off at a jog, passing the huge jacaranda, eucalyptus, and flame trees that surrounded Our Diviya’s grave. She had wanted to be surrounded by the sound of birds. I wondered if she’d considered the possibility of bird droppings.

Two public service workers wearing the same briliant yelow vests as me were on their knees scrubbing the marble monolith erected in her honor. I didn’t recognize them, not from Sports. I hoped they were Our Diviya fans.

I didn’t recognize any of the other workers in yelow vests. Most looked older than high school students. One of them resembled Our Little Jo, then I remembered that she’d been caught driving drunk.

Maybe it
was
Our Little Jo. I looked away: vastly undoos to be caught staring at an Our.

As soon as I got to my quadrant, I started ripping up the weeds surrounding the nearest grave and hurling them into a sack. The stone was tilted and ilegible. Most of the headstones around me were no better, their engravings worn down by wind and rain.

I visualized al the demerits peeling away as I dropped weeds into one sack, broken glass into another, and sodden paper cups into the third. Any minute, any day, any week now, my fairy was going to be gone.

The work wasn’t that hard. There wasn’t much rubbish and last night’s rain made the weeds less stubborn than they might have been. I kept my back dead straight, bending from the waist, holding my abdominal muscles tight, and got into an easy, soothing rhythm.

After a while I wasn’t thinking about anything except weeds in first sack, plastic in second, soggy cardboard in third, nonrecyclables in fourth. No thoughts of basketbal, or Stupid-Name, or my doxhead fairy. Except for the occasional used condom (touching one—even through thick gardening gloves—is erky!) interrupting my zenlike calm, it was delicious.

My partner showed up fifteen minutes late.

She went straight to the other end of the quadrant and started working without saying helo or even nodding.

Fiorenze Burnham-Stone.

Why? Just because we went to the same school didn’t mean they had to put us together! And what had she gotten a demerit for?

Holding hands with Steffi? I hoped so.

We worked silently for an hour. But I couldn’t recapture my zenlike weed and rubbish sorting. My mind kept spinning into unpleasant Steffi- and- Fiorenze- keeping- me- from- playing-basketbal- with- their- evil- mind- control- over- my- fairy spirals.

Even though that didn’t make any sense. Why did she want Steffi?

She’d never liked a boy before. Why start now?

Because he was the most pulchritudinous boy I had ever seen.

Funny too. Talking with him was as fun as talking with Rochele. Of course Fiorenze would like him too. Wouldn’t anyone?

“Are you thirsty?” Stupid- Name asked.

I blinked. I hadn’t realized she’d gotten so close. “What?”

“I brought some electrolytes.”

I grunted and accepted the clear bottle she puled out of her backpack. I’d stupidly forgotten to refil my own and had only half a bottle of plain water.

“Keep it,” she said. No doubt she didn’t want the bottle back after I’d infected it.

“Thanks.”

“Gorgeous night,” she said, standing up, stretching, and looking at the browny-yelow-gray sky. “What a view.”

I stood up, rubbed my lower back, sore despite my abdomen-tightening precautions. She was right. I’d been so intent on demerit erasure I hadn’t noticed how far up the hil we were. You could see al the way to our school with its spread-out buildings, ovals, cricket ground, nets, and courts, past the inky river with briliantly lit boats, to the city lights with glowing blimps floating overhead, and the blackness of the ocean beyond. You could even see some stars.

“From up here even the traffic looks gorgeous.”

I grunted again. Why was she teling me? Fiorenze didn’t make conversation. I sucked down half the bottle. I was thirsty. “Thanks,”

I said.

“It was nothing.”

It would probably be rude of me to agree with her.

“So, ah,” I said. “I’m coming over to your place Sunday.”

“Yes.”

Neither of us said anything. I drank more of the electro -lytes, put the bottle down, and picked up my gardening fork.

“Because you want to get rid of your fairy?” she said.

“Yup.” If that was news to her, then not only did she not talk to anyone at school, she didn’t listen either.

“Me too … ,” she muttered.

“You what?” I asked, not sure I’d heard her right. She couldn’t have said what I thought she said.

“Nothing,” Fiorenze said, puling her gloves back on. “I was just wondering how that was going.”

“How what’s going?” I bent down and picked up a shard of glass.

“Getting rid of your fairy.”

“Slowly.” But at least doing this service was making my mission easier. I’d be getting rid of my demerits as fast or faster than I easier. I’d be getting rid of my demerits as fast or faster than I accrued them.

“You should try to get a look at Tamsin’s book,”

Fiorenze said.

“Who’s Tamsin?”

“My mom.”

Figured that her name would be as torpid as her daughter’s. “She has a book about fairies?”

“
The Ultimate Fairy Book
. It has al her research and theories, everything she’s learned.”

“
The Ultimate Fairy Book
?” I repeated, wondering what kind of person would name their own book
Ultimate
. “I thought your dad was the one with al the books.”

“Mmm,” Fiorenze said, “but Tamsin’s the one with the proper book. It has everything there is to know about fairies in it.”

“Is there a copy in the library?” Maybe I could skip going to Stupid-Name’s house.

Fiorenze looked at me as if I were insane. “Tamsin has never shown her book to anyone. She keeps it locked up in a metal box.

She wrote it by hand.”

I goggled. “She what?”

“Too easy to steal otherwise. This way there’s only one copy in the world.”

“But doesn’t she want to publish it?”

“Yes. But not til it’s finished.”

Her mom sounded like a crazy person. “Why would she show it to me then?” I said.

“She won’t. But if she leaves the room for a bit or the box is open, you should look at it.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “You want me to pry into your mom’s secret book?”

“I … No. You’re right. I was just … Never mind. I guess we should get back to work.”

She bent down to the weeding. I did the same, wondering why she was being so talkative. Why had she told me about her mom’s book?

I wished I was anywhere but here. Preferably on a basketbal court, shooting effortless three-pointers, while the basketbal coaches looked on and realized their terrible, terrible mistake.