The Blue Girl (23 page)

I grin at my reflection. My teeth gleam superwhite against the blue of my skin. I turn to look at my knotwork tat, and the red in it’s gone purple.

Whatever.

I get dressed and go back to my room.

“Are you ready?” I ask, stepping over to the window.

“I’ve a quicker way,” Pelly says.

He motions to the closet. As soon as he does, I realize that of course there’s got to be some kind of portal or gate in there, because I never see him or the fairy orchestra when I look in. They’ve got to go somewhere when they’re not here.

“How very
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
of you,” I say.

“Oh, yes. Just call me Aslan.”

“I was thinking more of Puddleglum.”

He fakes a heavy sigh. “Always the sidekick. Except tonight, I lead the way. Coming?”

I follow him into the closet, which is totally familiar territory. I mean, I’m in here all the time, messing with my clothes, rummaging through my storage boxes. Except tonight when we push through my clothes and step over the boxes, there’s another door that’s normally not there. I’m wondering how this works, but he just opens the other door and we’re looking at Maxine’s perfectly organized dresses and skirts. No wonder little kids think there are monsters in their closets. These are obviously such handy routes, I’m guessing the fairy folk use them all the time.

“Can you show me how to do this?” I ask.

Pelly nods. “I can teach you to see the doors. It’ll depend on the strength of your will whether or not they will open for you. And you have to be careful. Always keep your destination firmly in mind. If you don’t, you could end up in some unpleasant place.”

When we cross over, pushing through the clothes, I feel this weird tingle on every inch of my body, here for a flash, then gone. A moment later we’re opening the outer door of the closet and stepping into Maxine’s room. That’s when I realize that this is a big mistake, that we should have warned her, because when Maxine looks up from where she’s reading in bed, she lets out this god-awful shriek.

I don’t blame her. She thinks she’s alone in her room, but then the closet door opens and out comes her best friend in her new blue skin along with the fairy man who made her faint last night. Of course she’d panic.

“Don’t freak,” I say. “It’s really just me.”

But then we all hear her mother’s footsteps running in the hall outside the bedroom.

Pelly and I fade back into the closet and close the door behind us just as the bedroom door opens and Maxine’s mother bursts in.

“Maxine,” she cries. “What happened?”

I can’t see Maxine’s face, but I’m sure it’s gone red.

“I  ...  I  ...” we hear her say. Then she gives a nervous laugh. “God, I feel so stupid. I caught my reflection in the mirror and for some reason I thought there was someone in the room with me.”

Nice save, I think.

Better yet, her mother totally buys it.

There’s some more conversation, with her mom asking her if she’s really okay, and Maxine assuring her she is. Finally, Ms. Tattrie leaves, but Pelly and I stay in the closet. We hear Maxine get up from the bed, then the closet door opens, and we’re both blinking in the bright light that comes in.

“Is  ...  is that really you?” Maxine whispers.

I push the dresses aside again and step into the light. Maxine’s eyes go big as she takes in my new look, but she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t faint, either, when Pelly comes out behind me.

“Yeah, it’s really me,” I tell her, keeping my own voice low. “Sorry about that. I never thought how it’d be for you when we suddenly come waltzing out of your closet.”

“What
happened
to you?”

“Vervain pollen,” Pelly says. “I used too much. Though maybe the smallest amount would have had the same effect. No one told me.”

Maxine looks at him, then back at me, her confusion still plain.

“We had a bit of an incident with the things in the shadows,” I tell her. “This pollen Pelly s talking about drove them off and turned me blue. What do you think?” I did a little pirouette. “I kind of like it.”

“Is it ... permanent?”

I shake my head. “It’ll only last a couple of days.”

“You won’t be able to go
anywhere
.”

“Not even clubbing?”

“Don’t joke.”

“All she does is joke,” Pelly says.

He’s sitting by her desk, staring with fascination at Maxine’s screensaver, which makes it look like you’ve got a fish tank instead of a monitor.

“I can be serious,” I say.

I pull Maxine down on the bed beside me, then run over my day’s research for Pelly s benefit.

“So are you a fairy, too,” I ask him when I’m done, “or something else?”

“Something else, though I don’t know what. I just know that none of those things you mentioned are troublesome to me.”

I sigh. “We’re not looking for troublesome. We’re looking for something to shut them down, period, end of story.”

“Stories never end,” Pelly says.

“I didn’t mean it literally”

“But you
are
being very fierce about it,” Maxine says. She’s been quiet for a while now. I don’t know if it’s because of my blue skin, Pelly s presence, or the fact that all of this is real and it’s finally sinking in that we really aren’t safe anymore.

“We have to be,” I say.

“But we’re just kids.”

Now would be a time I could tell her a little bit more about my life in Tyson, about how being a kid didn’t mean that you couldn’t stand up for yourself. Nobody in Frankie’s gang was much older than we are now. I’d been the baby of the group and even I could hold my own.

But I don’t want to go there.

“You don’t have to worry,” Pelly says. “I’ve already told you, you’re safe for now.”

“Until the pollen magic wears off,” I say. “And what about Maxine and you?”

Pelly glances at Maxine. “I don’t think they’ve paid particular attention to Maxine yet. As for me, there are certain rules of honor that apply. They can’t do anything to me unless I swear fealty to them and then break my oath.”

“So they don’t just automatically eat your soul?”

“I’m like a fairy in that sense—I don’t have a soul.” Maxine nods. “I’ve read about that, how fairies don’t have souls. I always thought it was weird.”

“Of course it’s weird,” I say. “Everybody has a soul.” I turn to Pelly. “And that means you, too.”

“I’m not so sure of that,” he says. “What does it feel like?”

“Having a soul?” I look at Maxine, but she only shrugs. “I don’t know,” I tell Pelly. “I don’t have anything to compare it to—you know, what not having a soul would feel like.”

We all fall into a kind of awkward silence. I don’t know about the others, but I’m working on what a soul is and not coming up with a whole lot. I mean, I just always thought of it as me—what I feel like being me. But surely Pelly feels like he’s himself, so that means he’s got a soul, right? But if that’s not your soul, then what is?

It’s weird and not something you really think about, is it?

“So anyway,” I finally say. “That’s what we’ve got so far.” I look at Pelly. “So is there really no way we can get some more of this vervain pollen?”

He shakes his head.

“Okay,” I say. “So I guess we load up on all this other stuff—the oatmeal and salt and everything—and face them down.”

Maxine and Pelly could be twins from the identical looks on their faces.

“No, it’s too dangerous,” Pelly says.

“Ditto,” Maxine adds.

“I’m not hanging around until they come to me,” I tell them.

“Who says we can’t?” Maxine asks. “Until we get an actual plan, I vote to lay low.”

“No offense,” I say, “but that’s the same kind of thinking that lets the Doll People rag on us every day.”

“And we don’t do anything to stop that, do we?”

I shake my head. “But not because we can’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

I wait a beat, then realize this is the time I have to tell her. Not everything, but enough so that she understands.

“The only reason I don’t give as good as we get,” I say, “is because I’m trying to stay out of trouble these days. But it’s not like it’s anything I’m a stranger to.”

“But—”

“Back at my old school  ...  I didn’t just get detentions because of skipping class or mouthing off. I got them for fighting. People only ragged on me once. After that, they were either hurting too bad, or they decided they should try picking on an easier mark.”

“How ... how did you do that?”

I know what she’s thinking. I’m just this skinny little thing who looks like any good gust of wind could blow her over.

“I ran with a rough crowd,” I tell her. “I carried a roll of pennies so that when I hit someone, they really felt it. I know the best ways to take somebody down, even if they’re bigger than me. I had a knife that I wasn’t afraid to use.” I sigh at the shocked look on her face. “I wasn’t a nice kid, Maxine. I wasn’t anybody you’d ever like.”

“Except I
do
like you.”

“Yeah, because I’m trying to be normal.”

For some reason that makes her laugh.

“What?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “You and
normal
don’t really fit in the same sentence.”

“Whatever. You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t. I only know the you you’ve been since we’ve met, and I like her. And I know I’m a better person because of knowing you.”

“Yeah, well, that goes big-time for me when it comes to you.”

“Really?”

“Of course, really.”

For a long moment she just looks at me, like she’s seeing me for the first time. I realize that maybe I should have told her sooner. I just assumed she knew that she’d been as much of an influence on me as I might have been on her.

“That doesn’t change anything,” she says. “This is still too dangerous a situation.”

“It’s not going away.”

“I know, but ... what about Thomas? You said he was going to talk to his grandmother.”

I glance at her bedside clock. “It’s too late to call him now.”

“So can’t we at least wait until you
have
talked to him?” I want to say, What’s with the “we”? because I’m certainly not dragging her into this any more than she already is. When it comes time to confront the soul-eaters, I’m planning to go solo.

But she’s right about waiting to talk to Thomas. All we have is bits and pieces. Maybe they fit together and we just can’t see it, or maybe something Thomas finds out will help us put it all together.

“Okay,” I tell her. “We wait until we’ve talked to Thomas.”

I can see Pelly visibly relax.

“So what are you going to do about your blue skin?” Maxine asks.

I wait for a long moment after Imogene and Pelly step back into my closet and close the door behind them before I get up from the bed and open the door again. My clothes hang there just like they always do, and when I push them aside, there’s no door in the wall behind them. There
is
a new smell, a faint whiff of I’m not sure what, exactly. Something ...
other.
And there’s a feeling in the air that tingles on my skin. Like static, only not so pronounced.

And Imogene and Pelly are definitely gone.

I run my hands along the back wall of the closet, but there’s no secret panel, or at least not that I can find. And even if there was, what would that prove? I know what’s on the other side of that wall. It’s our living room.

I slowly close the door and return to lie down on my bed because I’m starting to feel a little shaky.

Okay, I tell myself. You didn’t do
that
bad. You sat here and talked to Imogene with her skin all blue and her weird little friend and you didn’t feel faint or anything. That’s progress.

Except now my arms and legs are trembling and they won’t stop. My pulse is way too fast. I don’t think I could sit up even if I wanted to.

I try to think of something else, but that only brings me around to what Imogene said about what she was like when she lived in Tyson, carrying a knife and beating people up and everything. I try to imagine her like that, and I can’t. And she was a couple of years younger then, too. So I try to imagine a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old Imogene with her knife and her toughness, and I
really
don’t have any luck with that.

It’s not like I haven’t seen kids like she says she was. We’ve got them in school, the toughs and the gang members, some of them only twelve or thirteen. No one messes with them, not even the jocks like Brent. They live in a world of their own, smoking cigarettes just off the school grounds during lunch, sneering at the idea of school spirit and dances and sports and pretty much anything the rest of us are interested in.

I try to fit Imogene in with their crowd, and it just doesn’t work. Sure, she looks punky tough some days, but she never
acts
it.

I wonder if she misses that old life.

I wonder if she still carries her knife.

I wonder if she would ever hurt me.

That stops me cold, and I feel guilty for even thinking it.