The Blue Girl (11 page)

“Anyway, trust me. It’s an awful feeling. It’s like you don’t have any control over your life and anybody can come along and just do whatever the hell they want to you, any time they want.”

“Okay, that I can understand.”

“Well,” he said, “whatever lives in the darkness leaves you feeling like that, only a hundred times worse.”

“But what do they
do
?”

“I don’t know for sure. Tommery says they eat souls.”

“Anybody’s?”

“No, just those that are ghosts. And sometimes those of people  ...”

“Who talk to ghosts,” I finished for him when his voice trailed off.

He shook his head. “No. I was going to say, those of people who walk at the edges of how the world’s supposed to be. You know, people who don’t take what they see around them at face value. Tommery says they carry a kind of shine that attracts the darkness.”

“Well, that lets me off the hook,” I said, “because the only impossible thing I can see is you.”

He got kind of an annoyed look. “Why are you so insistent on the world being just the way you’ve decided it is?”

I shrugged. “Because it’s never shown me to be any different?”

Before he could reply, I pushed on the bar and stepped out into the July heat. I half expected him to follow me, but when I turned around, there was no one there.

*    *    *

But that wasn’t the strangest thing to happen to me over the summer.

Because Maxine was away for a whole month, and I knew I wouldn’t be seeing her mother, I took the opportunity to dye my hair a nice dark blue. I used to love playing with hair dyes, back in Tyson. Some weeks I had a different color for each day, like my underwear. I got a new tat as well: a blue-black crow in flight on the nape of my neck that I could hide with a shirt collar if I had to. But I was wearing a tank top and a pair of low-rise cutoffs when I ran into Ms. Tattrie the next day.

So not only could you see my new tat, you could also see the one on my shoulder, the one on my thigh, the ones on each ankle, and half of the knotwork design at the small of my back. I had all my earrings in—six to an ear—my eyebrow piercing, and a little bell hanging from the one in my navel. In other words, I was definitely not her daughter s straight little study partner.

“Imogene,” she said as pleasantly as always. “I’ve missed seeing you since Maxine s been away.”

The first thing I thought is, that’s some strong medication she must be on.

“Umm,” was all I could manage, my brain whirling as I tried to come up with some explanation for my looking the way I did. It wasn’t close enough for Halloween and—

“I was hoping you might call,” she went on, “but I understand how it can be. It’s not like you didn’t work hard enough all year to deserve some downtime that doesn’t include the stodgy old parents of your friends.”

“You’re not that old,” I said.

Whoops. Maybe I should have lied, and said she wasn’t stodgy either.

“Do you have time to go for a coffee or a cup of tea?” she asked.

Everything about this chance meeting had caught me so off-guard that I found myself agreeing, and let her lead me into a nearby cafe. She got herself chai tea and a plain black coffee for me, smiling the whole time. It wasn’t until we were finally sitting at a window table that I took a deep breath.

“I just want to say,” I began, “that if you’re going to be mad at anybody, be mad at me, because this is all my doing. Maxine’s just as good a kid as you want her to be.”

“Why should I be mad?”

“Well ... c’mon.”

She shook her head. “Did you really think I didn’t know?”

“You  ...  but  ...”

Okay, it’s not often I’m left speechless, but this was too much.

“As soon as I saw that you and Maxine were becoming friends,” she said, “I called the school’s guidance counselor, and she put me in touch with the counselor at your old school. I’ll admit that what I learned didn’t exactly thrill me.”

“They can tell you personal stuff like that?”

“When you’re determined, and you know the right people, anything is possible.”

Well, duh. What was I thinking? Like old Mr. Ford back at Willingham wouldn’t jump at the chance to dis me.

“But  ...  I know the stuff they would’ve told you,” I said. “Why would you still let Maxine hang with me?”

“My therapist suggested that I give it a few weeks before making any decisions.”

“Your therapist.”

She nodded. “I know I have issues, particularly when it comes to Maxine. I want the best for my daughter, but I also know that I have to give her some freedom or all I’ll do is push her even further away from me. But ... it’s just very hard for me.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“And then an interesting thing happened,” Ms. Tattrie said. “This hellion that I’d been told I shouldn’t let my daughter associate with turned out to be a rather charming young lady She didn’t skip school. She didn’t run with a bad crowd. Her marks were very good on her final exams. When I spoke again to Ms. Kluge at the end of the school year, she told me that while your sense of fashion was certainly eccentric, none of the behavioral problems on your permanent record appeared to have carried over from your old school to the new one.”

I still didn’t have anything to say, so I just shrugged.

“So it appears,” she went on, “that, in some ways, Maxine has been as much of an influence upon you as you’ve been on her.”

“She’s never done anything wrong,” I said, ready to defend Maxine where I couldn’t—or at least wouldn’t— defend myself.

“I know. Your influence has been positive, as well. Before you came into our lives, Maxine barely spoke to me. She went to school; she did homework. She read her books. She watched TV. And that was all she did.”

“And now?” I had to ask.

“Now she’s more outgoing. We have actual conversations rather than my having to pull monosyllabic responses from her. She ... she glows.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah, she does, doesn’t she.”

“And that, I know, is your doing.”

I started to shake my head, but Ms. Tattrie would have nothing of it.

“I’m not saying you’ve transformed her,” she told me. “You’ve simply allowed her to be more herself. She was a very unhappy girl before you came along, but she wasn’t always that way.”

I was good and didn’t say anything about how maybe Maxine’s unhappiness could have, in a large part, come from how Ms. Tattrie had been treating her.

We fell silent for a moment, and she looked me over.

“So this is the real you,” she finally said. I could have said the same to her.

“Well, sort of. It’s hot today, and I’m kind of slumming.”

“I meant more  ...  all the tattoos and piercings. And that hair.”

I shrugged. “I just like to play with how I look. You’ll be happy to know that Maxine doesn’t go for this kind of thing at all.”

“Thankfully,” she said, but she smiled to take the sting out of it.

I knew what she meant. And the funny thing is, when she smiled, she got this whole other look about her—more like Maxine. She got that same glow.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“Nothing. I’m glad we had this chance to talk—to get it all out in the open.”

I guess.

“I don’t suppose you’d be willing to keep this from Maxine?”

I shook my head. “Not and be a friend. But I’ll figure out a way to tell her so that you don’t come out looking bad. I’m good at that kind of thing.”

“Yes, you are, aren’t you?” She finished her tea. “Thank you for that, Imogene. Thank you for everything.”

We stayed a little longer, but then she went off, back into her life, and I was left sitting at the table just trying to figure it all out. I mean, was this weird or what? Maxine’s mother was actually kind of cool.

I was of two minds about the afternoon I’d just spent with Imogene. Happy to have spent it with her, naturally—to have finally had an actual conversation with her without me blathering on like some idiot—but annoyed at how she could be so infuriatingly stubborn about not believing in the fairies. Though, now that I thought of it, maybe talking about the fairies
had
been blathering on like some idiot—at least it could be construed that way from her point of view. And I guess, to be fair, at first I hadn’t exactly believed in fairies either, not even when I had one standing right in front of me.

I sighed, staring out the door, and watched her walk away, across the scraggly lawn fronting the school and onto the sidewalk running along Grasso Street.

Why was it that whatever I did was the act of the village idiot?

“Had your first tiff?”

Turning, I found Tommery perched on the garbage can across the hall. He lounged like a cat, utterly at ease, as though he’d been there for hours, though I knew there’d been no one on the garbage can a moment ago. There was a big grin on his face, the kind that makes me uneasy around the fairies because I never know if it’s them being friendly, or laughing at me. It’s hard to tell with them. Fairies really are impossible to read. They can laugh at a joke, just like you or I would, but they’ll laugh just as heartily when they’re doing something horribly mean.

So I did what I always did around them and tried to ignore the uneasy feeling that I was the brunt of some joke rather than in on it.

“I guess,” I said. “It just bugs me that she won’t believe me about you—that you’re real. It’s so ridiculous. She’s
talking
to a ghost, but she still can’t accept the idea that fairies exist as well.”

“Perhaps I could convince her.”

“I don’t know” I was remembering what Imogene had said when I’d told her about how I’d fallen from the school’s rooftop. “You’re not thinking of teaching her how to fly, are you?”

Tommery got this serious, sad look.

“Of course not, Addy. I’d teach her how to
see.”

That was exactly what was needed. Once she saw the fairies with her own eyes, like I had, how could she
not
accept them?

“How will you do it?” I asked.

“It’s a matter of catching her when her minds not so calm. Humans are more open to the hidden world when they’re in a higher emotional state.” I must have looked a little blank. “When they’re very sad,” he went on to explain, “or very happy. Also, when they’ve been drinking or doing drugs— particularly some of the more potent chemical concoctions.”

I tried to get my head around the idea of fairies talking knowledgeably about drugs—it made me wonder: Were there crack fairies? Heroin hobgoblins?—but Tommery was forever surprising me with the depth of his knowledge concerning the human world.

“When it comes to your girlfriend  ...” Tommery began.

“Girlfriend! I wish.”

“Yes, well, when it comes to her, I’ve never seen a human with such a level emotional state.”

“She seems animated to me.”

Tommery nodded. “But there’s no inner turmoil. No cracks in the calmness that magic can slip into.”

“So what can you do?”

“Keep an eye on her until the opportunity does appear.”

“I don’t know if she’ll like being followed around.”

Tommery smiled. “But she won’t know, will she? She can’t see us.”

Except
I’d
know. And I wasn’t sure I liked the idea. I knew for sure that Imogene wouldn’t, considering her remarks about me stalking her. And where would Tommery draw the line? I imagined him checking her out while she was getting undressed or having a shower. Or worse, what if he assigned the job to horny little Quinty?

“Oh, don’t worry, Addy,” Tommery said, as though he could read my mind. “We’re not going to invade her precious privacy. We have our own lives to live and, trust me, they’re far more appealing than the twenty-four-hour surveillance of any human could be. We’ll simply keep an eye on her, check in on her emotional state from time to time. Perhaps send her a dream or two to get her thinking the right way.”

“What about the stuff that Oshtin was saying?” I asked. “He told me that this sight business is something that comes to you naturally, or it’s a gift that needs to be earned. How does that fit in with what you’re planning to do?”

“Both are true. But the ability for us to be seen by humans is also discretionary.”

That took me a moment to work through.

“So you can just appear to her if you want to?” I asked. Tommery nodded. “But it’s better that she discovers us on her own.”

Which wasn’t an answer at all, except that it spoke to some undercurrent that I always sensed around the fairies, but never understood. It was a mystery they played up, some secret with dark edges that I could never see into.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why don’t you just show yourself to her and save all the skulking around?”

Tommery shrugged. “We could. It’s just not as  ...  interesting.”

“Interesting.”

“Exactly. And trust me, her slowly becoming aware of us over time will leave a much more lasting impression.”

“I just want her to know you’re real. That I wasn’t making it up.”

“She will. But if it’s not done right, she’ll forget, and then you’ll be right back where you started.” He cocked his head, giving me a considering look. “The only problem is, doing it this way takes some time. But you can be patient, can’t you?”