My Fair Godmother (2 page)

Jane didn’t go to sleep for a long time. She went into Savannah’s room and with shaking hands took the stack of teen magazines from her sister’s closet. She retreated to her bedroom, sat on the edge of her bed, and studied every single one of them.

The next day Jane made an appointment with the op-tometrist for contacts. She also went shopping with Savannah, who was thrilled her sister wanted to update her appearance. Savannah helped her with the zeal of someone administering life support.

As they flipped through the racks at Forever 21, Savannah put together outfits and handed them to Jane. If Jane balked because something was too bright or too flashy, Savannah quickly brought her around again with a gentle reminder. “Clothes say a lot about a person.

Right now yours say you’re on the fast track to becoming an eccentric cat lady.” Then she would shove the outfit at Jane and say, “Now go try this on and show everyone how beautiful you really are.” Jane didn’t feel guilty about accepting Savannah’s help. She wasn’t trying to steal Hunter. She was trying to punish him. She wanted Hunter to notice her so she could ignore him.

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After Jane had spent enough money on outfits and ac-cessories to ensure that she would need a scholarship to go to college, she had her mother, who’d worked as a beautician for years, cut, highlight, and shape her hair until it was the mirror image of Savannah’s.

Savannah, who was almost as good a stylist as their mother, made the finishing touches and applied the hairspray. “Now we look like twins again.” They had often been told this growing up, back before their styles had detoured.

On Monday, Jane drove her own car to school. By the time calculus rolled around she was in good spirits. She had received a lot of approving gazes from the guys.

Flirting would be a problem for her, she knew. But she’d seen Savannah do it enough times. You looked into the guy’s eyes, smiled, and complimented him. She could handle the first two tasks on this list. She just needed to come up with some generic compliments that would work on a variety of guys.

“You’re so smart.”

“You’re so funny.”

“You have really great biceps.” She’d have a boyfriend in no time.

Hunter walked into calculus, did a double take, and strode over to her. “Savannah, what are you—” He stopped as though pulled back by a leash. “Jane?” 23/431

“New haircut,” she told him. “Don’t feel bad. People have been doing it all day.”

“Oh,” he said, and continued to stare at her.

“Don’t you like it?” she asked.

“It’s exactly like Savannah’s.”

“Right,” she said.
You’re so smart
.

He broke his gaze away from her for a moment, seeming to come out of a trance.

“I’d better say yes or I’ll have both you and Savannah mad at me, won’t I?”

“Right,” she said and laughed along with him.
You’re
so funny.

He went back to staring and didn’t say anything else.

Oddly, the silence didn’t make her feel awkward. She owned this silence, not the other way around.

“You’re wearing makeup,” he said.

“I was ready for a change.”
You have really great biceps
, she thought,
and I will never let you put your
arms around me.

They didn’t eat lunch together that day. She said she didn’t feel like doing homework. While he ate with guys from the track team, she talked to football players in the hot-lunch line. She laughed and flirted, her inexperience making her too obvious and nearly drunk with desperation, but she didn’t care. This was not something she 24/431

had to do well, just something she had to do.

Fairy’s side note: Guys can smell desperation. It trig-gers an instinct in them to run far and fast so they
aren’t around when a woman starts peeling apart her
heart. They know she’ll ask for help in putting it back
together the right way—intact and beating correctly—and they dread the thought of puzzling over
layers that they can’t understand, let alone rebuild.

They’d rather just not get blood on their hands.

But sharks are different. They smell the blood of desperation and circle in. They whisper into a girl’s ear,

“I’ll make it better. I’ll make you forget all about your
pain.”

Sharks do this by eating your heart, but they never
mention this beforehand. That is the thing about
sharks.

The sharks at the school began to take notice of Jane.

Over the next few days one after another slid up to her, stopped by her locker to talk, measured her with hungry gazes. “What’s your phone number, Jane?” “Who are you hanging out with this weekend?” “My friend is throwing a party. It’s going to be a lot of fun.” All of them swishing about her, humming, “Come swim with me in the deep water.”

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Jane didn’t know enough about guys to recognize a shark when she saw one. But Hunter did. He grew more upset every time he saw her wading farther away from the shore, every time he saw her smiling as the fins circled around.

Finally Hunter and Jane had lunch together again.

They had a test on Friday and Jane was not so reckless as to abandon her grades in the pursuit of revenge. They studied as they ate, then went to the library to study some more. As they walked there, a sharp-toothed jock sauntered up beside her. “You never got back to me about the party on Friday. Are you going?” She smiled at him. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“What’s to decide? I can pick you up if you need a ride.”

Another smile and a toss of her hair. “I’ll let you know.”

He swam off, and Hunter’s glare followed him.

“You’re not really going to go anywhere with that guy, are you?”

“Maybe,” she said.

They walked into the library, but instead of sitting down at a table he took her arm and pulled her behind the history section. “What’s gotten into you? Why are you doing this?”

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“Doing what?” she asked, but she knew. She just wanted him to say it.

He held out one hand, waving it in front of her. “The way you’re acting. The way you’re suddenly carrying on with complete jerks.” More hand waving, as though he were trying to erase something in the air. “You’ve stopped being you.”

She tilted her head at him in accusation. “Why shouldn’t I change? You never liked the old me.” His head snapped slightly backward. “I did too.”

“No, you didn’t.” She swept her hand in front of her, presenting herself. “You like this. This is why you’re dating Savannah and not me.” There, she’d said it, and she hadn’t even meant to.

He looked at her without speaking, realization satur-ating his expression.

She turned to go. She did not want to be there when he found the words to speak.

But he never did. Speak, that is. He reached out, took her arm, and moved in front of her to block the way. She stopped and looked at the belt loops on his jeans, waiting for him to say something. Still, he didn’t.

She watched his chest move up and down with each breath. Some sort of emotion made the breaths come faster, but she was afraid to find out which emotion that was. She stared at the bookshelves around her, at the 27/431

books lined up in perfect, tidy rows. Her life had been like that once— perfect, tidy.

“Jane,” he said.

She looked up to decipher his gaze, but didn’t see much of it. He bent down and kissed her.

Somewhere in her mind a row of books went flying.

Pages flapped by like birds in flight. She kissed him back and felt them flutter away in a reckless scramble.
Don’t
think
, she told herself and then,
don’t let him go
.

But of course both happened eventually. He stepped away from her and ran his fingers through his hair, watching her breathlessly.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” she told him.

“No—we should have done that a long time ago.” He leaned down then and kissed her again.

In Jane’s defense, it took her a while to process what he’d said. It was hard to think while he kissed her. Finally she gave up trying to sort it out and pushed him away. “What do you mean? Do you think I want to betray my sister?” She took a step away from him. “What kind of person do you think I am?” He looked at her as though just realizing it himself. “I think you’re the perfect person for me.” Jane shook her head. At last she remembered Savannah— but you can’t blame her. You haven’t thought of Savannah in pages. Savannah was, at that moment, 28/431

ignoring her English assignment in favor of a prom dress catalog. She was wondering if Hunter could set up Jane with one of his friends. That way they could double date.

But back to Jane and Hunter. The taste of his kiss had turned to bitterness on Jane’s lips. “You already chose Savannah.”

“And that was a mistake.”

They looked at each other silently, each one weighing the past against the future. “I’ll break up with her,” he said.

“Not yet,” she said. “We have to think of a way to do it gently.”

Jane thought over this particularly difficult equation for the next week. The ride to school in the morning became an exercise in awkwardness. Lunch was better and worse. After they ate, they walked the rows of the library. Biographies and poetry. General fiction and mysteries. At some point Hunter would take her hand and say, “There is no way to do it gently. We just need to tell her.”

Jane would lean into him, stand close enough to hear his heartbeat, and want nothing more than to keep her arms around him. But she always said, “Not yet.” Hunter grew more silent and distant toward Savannah during their car rides. Occasionally he sent heavy, 29/431

questioning looks in Jane’s direction. He never took Savannah’s hand or put his arm around her.

Savannah should have known then, but she didn’t. Sometimes love not only lifts you to the ceiling, it also keeps your eyes there.

One day as the three walked across the parking lot, Savannah told Hunter that he’d become gloomy and really, he should stop worrying about finals—hadn’t he already been accepted to George Mason? She took hold of his hand and gave him a knowing look. “Seriously.

We’re going to have to refresh your fun skills.” She gestured toward her sister. “Even Jane is loosening up—look at her.”

He did.

“She’s going to be a total hunk magnet when she goes to college. She’ll probably have so much fun that—I don’t know— she’ll let a grade or two slip to an A minus.”

He kept looking at Jane. She blushed.

Savannah nudged Hunter because his hand had gone limp in hers. “Let’s go do something fun tonight.”

“We’ll go out tonight,” he said. “It’s time we did.” Then his eyes found Jane’s again. Right or wrong, the equation was written.

Jane nodded. Watching the way her sister possess-ively took hold of Hunter’s hand had momentarily 30/431

blocked out thoughts of loyalty.

Fairy’s conclusion: In ten years Jane wouldn’t have let
things unfold that way, but eighteen years old is too
young to understand that things that are easily done
are often much harder to undo. Sometimes impossible.

And when you invite a grudge that big and vicious to
come and sit between you and your sister, well, let’s
just say it will be keeping you company for a long, long
time. I’ve seen grudges half as small scare off trolls and
goblins. Large grudges make dragons shiver. But there
it was, grumbling with hunger and stretching its claws
between the two of them.

All those years of sisterhood were about to be chewed
to pieces.

This is why mortals need magic.

Of course, they don’t realize it. Never has a fairy godmother been called upon to vanquish a grudge. Instead
they settle for jewels, kingdoms, handsome princes,
that sort of thing. It was this reason, by the way, and
not laziness, disinterest, or time spent at too many Pixie dances—as some of my magic professors asserted—

that I concentrated my studies on jewels, kingdoms,
and handsome princes. In fact, as you have seen from
my final reports, I spent more than the required time
studying handsome princes. This was due to the
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extreme importance mortals put on royalty, and not, as
Headmistress Berrypond suggested, that I am an in-curable flirt.

I hope you will see from the Wishes Granted budget
report that I used my magic to the best ends and took
on this project following fairy godmother protocol ensuring that the subjects, Savannah Delano and her sister, Jane, lived happily ever after.

From

the

Honorable

Master

Sagewick

Goldengill

Dear Mistress Berrypond,

I am in receipt of Chrysanthemum Everstar’s
report, yet it seems quite a bit has been left un-said about her time as a magical godmother for
the mortal Savannah Delano. Can you please
have the Memoir Elves elaborate so that the
academy and I can more accurately assess her
project?

Yours,

From the Department of Fairy Advancement
To the Honorable Sagewick Goldengill
Dear Professor,

As you requested, we sent Memoir Elves to the
mortal Savannah Delano’s home. Madame Bellwings, Memoir Elf Coordinator, was not at all
pleased with this request, because elves who
write the memoirs of teenage girls have the unfortunate habit of returning to the magical
realm with atrocious grammar. They can’t seem
to shake the phrases “whatever” and “no way,”
and they insert the word “like” into so many
sentences that other elves start slapping them.

They also pick up the bad habit of writing things
in text message form (e.g., R U going 2 the
mall?) and for no apparent reason occasionally
call out the name Edward Cullen.

Currently the Memoir Elves who delved into
Savannah’s mind while she slept are in detox.

They are doing well in their recovery process, although one still occasionally stands in front of
the mirror and asks, “Do you think I look fat in
this?”

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Savannah is none the wiser and the elves were
able to compile a thorough report. You should
be able to find out exactly what part Chrysanthemum Everstar played in granting wishes and
whether she did indeed follow all fairy/mortal
protocol.

The memoir report follows as told to the elves
by the subject Savannah Delano.

Chapter 1

Here’s my definition of a bad day: your boyfriend of four months—who, until twelve seconds ago, you thought was the most perfect guy to set foot on earth—breaks up with you.

My definition of a truly horrible day: the aforemen-tioned boy dumps you for none other than your sister.

The definition of my life: he does all of this right after you inform him that you blew your last dollar buying your dream prom dress. He asks if you can get a refund.

It turns out he’ll be taking your sister.

• • •

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Jane and I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“Really?” How do you not mean to ask your girlfriend’s older sister to prom? Do the words just trickle out by themselves? Was someone else in charge of your lips when this happened? I didn’t say any of this, 36/431

because there wasn’t a point. What he meant was: I didn’t mean to like her better than you.

I wanted to ask him why he did—like Jane better than me, that is—but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to ask the question. The answer would hurt more than not knowing.

Almost as if he’d read my mind he added, “It’s just that Jane and I have more in common. We’re both more

. . .” He moved his hand in a rolling motion as though trying to catch the right word somewhere over the tabletop.

During the pause, I thought of my own adjectives.

Smart? Talented? Good-looking? No, it probably wasn’t looks. Jane and I look too much alike for that. She’s pretty, true, but I always get noticed first. Jane always has been content to be known as the quiet, studious one.

The quiet, studious one who had now stolen my boyfriend.

“Organized,” Hunter said.

“Organized?” I repeated. “You’re dumping me because I’m disorganized?”

“I guess ‘responsible’ is a better word,” he said.

“So I’m disorganized and irresponsible?” He leaned toward me but his eyes distanced themselves. “Don’t take it the wrong way. You have lots of great qualities: you’re fun and you’re pretty, you’re just .

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. .”—more hand rolling, as though this somehow un-wound his tongue—“always late for everything.” I stared back at him, stunned. This was how guys chose girlfriends—based on their punctuality?

“I’m not late for everything,” I said, even though I hadn’t been ready when he came to pick me up that night. But I’d had a good reason. One of Mom’s hair clients had needed an updo for a fancy night out and Mom hadn’t finished with her perm appointment, so I’d stepped in to help out.

I nearly pointed this out, but then stopped myself. It hadn’t been tonight’s ten-minute wait that had decided my fate with Hunter. He’d only scheduled this date to break up with me. I should have sensed it by the way he’d hardly looked at me while he ate his dinner.

“Jane and I both want to go to college,” he went on.

“You don’t even want to go to high school.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I have never said I didn’t want to go to high school. I enjoy high school.

Well, at least the socializing part. Geometry I could do without. Ditto for world history. And really, why should I care what the symbolism in
The Grapes of Wrath
stands for? Do employers ask those kinds of questions during job interviews?

He shrugged. “You don’t take your grades seriously.”

“I took us seriously,” I said.

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That made him flinch. “I’m sorry,” he said.

I pushed my chair away from the table. “Take me home.”

We drove back to my house in silence. Inside my head a whole orchestra of thoughts played out, competed with each other, blared so loudly I could hardly think.

He drove looking straight ahead and I caught a glimpse of his profile. I hated myself for still thinking his wavy black hair had the perfect amount of gloss to it, that he looked more like a knight preparing for battle than a high school senior. A girl shouldn’t have thoughts like that about the guy who just dumped her.

My throat felt tight and I willed myself not to cry. I wanted to point out all of Jane’s faults to him. She was the most unspontaneous person in existence. She had no imagination, no creativity. When we were bored as kids, could she come up with a decent game using a box of macaroni, a tube of toothpaste, and the kitchen table?

I think not.

I didn’t say anything though. I had enough pride not to beg him to reconsider. I just sat and listened to the orchestra in my mind playing loud and clear: your sister is better than you. Finally he pulled up in front of our house. Without a word I opened the car door, stepped outside, and slammed it shut.

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I didn’t walk across the lawn to our house; I walked down the sidewalk. I was not going inside. I didn’t want to talk to Jane right now, or hear the same type of apologies I’d just heard from Hunter.

Instead of driving off, Hunter pulled up alongside me and rolled down the car window. “Where are you going?”

“I don’t see why that concerns you.”

“If you don’t go inside, it will look like I never brought you home. Your family will wonder where you are.” What he meant was, Jane would worry where I was.

Heaven forbid she experience any guilt over this. “Well, you know me,” I told him. “I’m the irresponsible one.” He kept following me. The car inched along beside me going about two miles an hour. “Come on, Savannah, don’t be this way.”

I wasn’t supposed to have a reaction to this? I was just supposed to smile and wish them luck or something? I didn’t answer. I looked straight ahead and kept walking.

I had meant to go over to my best friend Emily’s house but I couldn’t go there with this one-car parade following me. When I came to the corner of our street I walked straight instead of turning right.

Hunter leaned toward me, a mild reprimand in his voice. “It’s dark and you didn’t even look for cars before you crossed.”

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“I didn’t have to. If a car was coming they’d have hit you first.”

He let out a sigh. “Get back in the car.” I kept walking.

“I mean it, Savannah. I’m not going to let you run off and upset everyone at your house because they don’t know where you are.”

Which just goes to show you how arrogant he was. He just assumed I’d planned on turning the night into a big production where I disappeared and Jane got to worry that I’d run away from home or something. Well, okay, maybe that did sound like a good idea, but still, it was arrogant of him to assume that sort of thing about me. I didn’t look at him. My purse thumped against my side in an angry rhythm.

“Savannah, get in the car.”

The park came into view. I picked up my pace.

“You’re being melodramatic about this.” Well, he could just add that to the list of my other faults he no longer had to put up with.

“I’m not leaving and I’ve got a full tank of gas.” Of course he did. Organized people always kept their tanks full.

I made it to the park and finally turned to him. “If you want to follow me, fine. Have fun driving through the swing sets.” I left the sidewalk and walked across the 41/431

grass. The park sat in the middle of our neighborhood, surrounded by houses, and more than a few streets ran up to it.

I didn’t have to look back to know what Hunter would do. He would sit in his car and watch me walk across the park until I headed toward a street. Then he’d drive around and head me off on that street.

I strolled toward the first street opening on the right.

Before I got out of sight I turned to check and see if his car had left. As soon as it had, I doubled back, walking the same way I’d come. Except that instead of walking home, I turned on Emily’s street. Really, Hunter was almost pathetically easy to lose. Which just goes to show you that college bound doesn’t necessarily mean street smart.

I stayed at Emily’s for the next three hours. Not really long enough to worry my parents. My curfew on week-days is 10:00 PM. If Jane knew I wasn’t with Hunter anymore and worried about me—fine. If she thought I was out with her new boyfriend until past 10:00—even better. I sat with Emily on her bedroom floor, cried, and ate Oreos. The whole time Emily told me what a great catch I was and how I didn’t need Hunter. What kind of jerk hits on his girlfriend’s sister? What kind of sister steals boyfriends from family members? They deserved each other.

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I nodded at everything she said but couldn’t agree with any of it. It felt like the people who knew me best didn’t care about me. In my mind, Hunter’s list of my faults kept growing. All of my popularity was a sham. I didn’t really have anything going for me. I was disorganized, irresponsible, and didn’t take my classes seriously.

Which probably showed a lack of ambition, talent, and dependability. Obviously there was something permanently wrong with me, something too huge to fix.

And on top of all that I had a cream silk and chiffon prom dress hanging in my closet that cost me three hundred and fifteen dollars. I didn’t want to return it to the dress shop. How humiliating would that be?

Emily must have sensed that her pep talk wasn’t working— probably because I kept making Oreo skyscrapers and shoving them in my mouth. She finally took the package away from me. “Savannah, someone else will ask you to prom. Someone better, someone who appreciates you, and then you’ll see Hunter was wrong.” I nodded. I still didn’t believe her.

When I walked into my house at 10:15, my parents and Jane sat in the family room talking in harsh, sub-dued voices. I knew they were talking about me because they stopped as soon as I walked in. Three faces turned toward mine. My parents’ expressions were concerned.

Jane’s showed a mixture of worry and defiance. She 43/431

didn’t speak. I knew she was waiting for my accusations; I could already see her lips poised in defense.

“You owe me three hundred and fifteen dollars for a prom dress,” I told her, then walked upstairs to my room.

• • •

While I ate, Mom tried to talk to me about the whole situation. She’d also tried last night, but I’d told her I was tired and just wanted to go to bed. Jane came into my room last night too and gave me her side of the story, which was pretty much like Hunter’s side of the story, except that her eyes didn’t look away from me as she told it. When I didn’t comment she added, as though it should explain everything, “Hunter and I will both be going to George Mason in the fall. You didn’t think that 44/431

a freshman in college was going to keep dating a junior in high school, did you?”

Yes. But I didn’t say that. I just added “immature” to my mental list and said, “Would you mind turning off the light on your way out? I’ve got to get up early in the morning.”

She sighed and left.

So Mom gave me a concerned-parent pep talk as I ate my oatmeal about how she was disappointed in Jane’s choices, but if it hadn’t been Jane, it would have been someone else. Dating had its ups and downs. After all, at this point in my life I wasn’t looking for a future husband. I should be dating for fun, to learn about relationships, to see what kind of qualities I liked in a guy. I would go through many more boyfriends before I found the right one.

Which, I can tell you, is not what you want to say to your daughter when you are trying to cheer her up. I wanted to say, “Really? You mean I get to feel like the bottom of my stomach has been manually ripped out with each relationship I go through? I can hardly wait to get back to the dating market.” But of course I didn’t say that because none of this was my mother’s fault, unless you count the fact that she gave birth to Jane.

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Besides, I’d finished crying about it when I’d finished my last Oreo skyscraper. As Dad would say, I’d taken my losses, now I needed to regroup, rethink, and plan the next offensive. Which in this case involved getting someone even cooler to ask me to prom in order to show Hunter and Jane that I didn’t need or care about them.