It was the stupid birthday party that set me off. Everybody in kindergarten was going except me and Marshy Talbot, who threw up every time she ate ice cream and insisted on eating it anyway. They were going to Janine's on the school bus Friday, and all the parents had to write notes saying that was okay. Except mine and Marshy's.
Marshy cried, but I didn't. Did. Not. When Inez Whatsername asked me right out loud if I was goingâshe knew I wasn't invitedâI said I had something important to do.
“Oh yeah? What?”
Everybody kept doing their puzzles of the fifty states, but they all were listening. I didn't decide to say it, I heard the lie coming out of my mouth: “It's Fidius's birthday too. He is my priority.”
“What does that mean, prioriddy?” Inez knew perfectly well that I couldn't define half the words I used. I couldn't define this one either, and I turned red.
“If something is a priority, that means it's important,” the teacher's aide said, being nice.
“Fidius has wings,” I said. “And he's teeny and he cleans up my Cheerios.”
“So he's a
f-a-a-a-i-i-iry
,” Inez said, and everybody hooted like a streetful of car alarms.
“A Small Person with Wings,” I said.
“Fat Mellie has a fairy friend!” That was Inez again, chanting. “Fat Mellie, Fat Mellie has a fairy, fairy, fairy!”
“Fairy Fat,” Janine screamed.
“Fairy Fat, Fairy Fat,” they all chanted. It took a full five minutes for the teacher's aide to calm them down.
“Hey, hey, hey,” she said. “We all have imaginary friends.”
“He's real,” I said. “He vanishes dirt and turns squash into candy corn.”
“That must be why you're so fat,” Janine said. “Too much candy corn.”
“I'm not fat. I will grow into my grandeur.” My mom told me that when I started school and found out my family was officially overweight. I was an alien from Round World stranded on The Skinny Planet.
I couldn't define “grandeur,” but it sounded all right to me.
“What's grandeur?” Inez screamed. I returned to my puzzle and pretended I was deaf. Inez was inconsequential, which means she didn't matter.
At recess, Mina Cardoza and three other girls cornered me by the swings, but they didn't poke me in the belly like usual. “Do you really have a fairy at your house?” Mina asked.
“A Small Person with Wings,” I said.
“What does he look like?” another girl asked.
I told them about Fidius's raggedy clothes and beautiful wings and the LEGOs and I don't remember what else. They sat with me at snack and story time, voted for me to put the sun-and-clouds sticker up on the weather report board. As we tidied up the classroom before the bus they grumbled at Janine because I wasn't coming to her party.
“She can come if she wants,” Janine said, but I couldn't because I didn't have a note for the bus driver. When Marshy and I got off the bus at the Shady Acres Day Care stop, all the girls hugged me good-bye except Janine and Inez. Marshy was bawling, and nobody hugged her.
“Bring your fairy on Monday, okay?” Mina whispered. “You're my best friend.”
I spent the whole time at day care trying to figure out what had just happened to me. Up to that year Mom and Dad had shared one teaching job, so I spent all my time with one or the other of them or with Fidius. When I got old enough for kindergarten, my parents each took a full-time job in the industrial arts department of Alton H. Blackington High School and cast me into the world.
I'd never had anything interesting to tell the other kids before. When it was my turn for show-and-tell, I brought in my mom's palm sander and found out that I had no idea what it did.
During nap time at the day care center that afternoon, it dawned on me that not everyone had fairies living with them. I imagined the whole class and the teachers spell-bound at show-and-tell, while Fidius groomed his wings and vanished the craft aprons. I imagined my next birthday party, to which I would invite everyone except Janine and Inez. Mina would sit next to me because she was my best friend.
“Did you have a good day at school?” my mom asked driving home.
“Yeah,” I said, with more feeling than she was used to.
“Really? That's great. What happened?”
There was no simple way to explain. “Nothing.”
“But what was so good about it?”
“We had cupcakes for snack.”
She frowned, and gave me the lecture about food not being recreation, even though we both knew when we got home we'd sit down with Dad and eat one chocolate chip cookie apiece. We'd break off pieces and pretend each one was a whole cookie.
“I know all about food not being recreation, Mom.”
She snorted. “You're not supposed to achieve that tone of voice for another seven or eight years.” She's always complaining about how rude teenagers are. But even at five I knew Mom liked a girl to stand up for herself. I hoped she never saw the way I was at school.
I couldn't wait to tell Fidius that Mina was my best friend, and that he was coming to school with me Monday.
The walls of my room were a jungle. Fidius waved his hand and the palm trees swayed in a breeze. I lifted my face to feel the breeze on it, but there wasn't one. It was all pretend.
“Look quick,” Fidius said. “I can't keep this going for long.”
I wandered around admiring my private jungle. Pretty soon it all faded into my dad's plain cheery yellow paint. I didn't care, because now I could tell Fidius about my day. I didn't tell about not being invited to Janine's partyâI didn't want him to look down on me, since he'd told me he was so popular at home. I made it sound like everybody was talking about their pets and I happened to mention him.
I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to compare him to a pet.
He was curled up on my pillow. Before I finished talking he unfurled his wings with an angry
fwap!
and flitted around like a wasp, banging off of things. His wings were brown as mud, mud, mud.
“I didn't mean a
pet
pet.” I ducked as he buzzed past my head. “I didn't mean to say anything about you at all. It just came out.”
Zip! Zoom!
“But you have to come to school with me Monday, so I can show themâ”
He hovered in front of my nose, wings beating. “I am not your servant. I am your secret.”
“Why? Why are you my secret?”
He put his hand on the end of my nose, kept it there until it froze me so much it burned. He made a swoopy gesture with the other hand, stared into my right eye.
A memory burst into my head, but it wasn't mine. I was trapped in a jar, no room even to unfurl my wings. A boy's nose and eyes appeared, huge. A girl said, “What is it? Give it to me a sec.” Hands fought for the jar, and I crashed from side to side. I pounded my fists against the glass.
The memory faded. “I'm sorry,” I said.
“You take me for granted. You think everyone has a Small Person with Wings making magic for them. And now you betray me, as the large always betray the small.”
“I don't take you for granted.” But I kind of did, and we both knew it. I felt I'd broken something that couldn't be repaired, and I was scared of what might happen next. It never occurred to me that he might leave. I couldn't remember a life without him.
He slept on my pillow that night, wings all calm and colorful, and the next day he was gone, leaving the little china guy in his place.
I stayed in my room almost the whole weekend, waiting for Fidius to come back. My insides felt like sawdust. I couldn't believe he'd leave for good because I did one stupid thing. Sunday night I almost smashed the little china guy to wipe the smirk off his rosebud lips, but then I couldn't because he was a present from Fidius.
Mom and Dad came in not looking at each other, always a sign of trouble. They sat on my bed and waited for me to talk.
“He's gone,” I said. “And it's because of something I did. He made a frostbite handprint on my nose. And he left me this china thing.”
“Don't break it,” Mom said. She reads minds. “You'll be glad to have it later.”
“It always seems like it's your fault when they go,” Dad said. “But it isn't. Fidius left in his own good time.”
“This happened to you before?”
“It always happens. Life goes on and gets better.”
“You'll have to eat squash on your own, that's all,” Mom said.
“Or you could cook something that wasn't yucky,” I said.
She smiled. “There's always that possibility.”
On Monday morning I woke up with a knot in my stomach and tears behind my eyelids. I'd never cared before, but I'd been popular for half a day on Friday and I was hooked. In desperation, I took the china guy to school.
Normally everybody would have spent Monday talking about Janine's birthday party. But it turned out that the kids had spent Janine's entire party talking about my fairy, wondering what would happen Monday. They expected me to come in with some little creature on my shoulder.
I would have given anything to have had Fidius on my shoulder. I felt like throwing up.
The classroom went silent long before it was supposed to. Everybody was in their assigned seats, and every single person was looking at me, even the teacher and her aide. Their eyes tingled my neck as I rummaged in my backpack.
I pulled out the sad little china guy, made myself turn to face them. I discovered I had nothing to say. I stared at my toes.
“Is he here?” Mina said, nearly breathless. “Is that him in your hand?”
I made myself look up, and the first person I saw was Janine. Our eyes met, and in that instant we both knew everything. She knew I didn't have a fairy on me. I knew she'd never let anyone forget this moment.
“We had a fight,” I whispered.
“Speak up, Mellie,” the teacher said.
I didn't want to speak up. Speaking up was going to suck.
Chapter Two
Pigs in Slush
I SHOWED THEM THE CHINA GUY. I spoke up, but the furnace blower was on, so maybe no one would hear. “Fidius is gone, but he left me this. It looks like him.”
They heard. The world stopped while the class gawked at the stupid china guy.
“That's him?” Janine hooted. “That's your fairy? That's not real. He doesn't even have wings.”
I was not going to cry. Was. Not. “It's not really him. He
was
here, but now heâ”
“I knew it,” Inez said. “I knew she didn't have a fairy. Fairy Fat.”
“I don't get it,” Mina said, her face all scrunched up as if she might cry. “Why did she tell us she had a fairy if she didn't?”
“I did have one,” I said. “I promise, really, I really did.” Mina scowled at me. I could tell she'd lied about being my best friend.
“I have a dinosaur model,” a kid yelled. I think his name was Anthony. “
Six
dinosaur models.”
Everybody blinked at him, then realized what he was saying. “Oooo, Anthony,” Inez screamed, approving. “That means you have six
real dinosaurs.”
“I have a real live miniature elephant and Thor and Merlin,” somebody else yelled. Everybody was standing up and whooping and hollering about what animals and supernatural beings they had living with them at home. Mina and her real friend Whatsis started poking me in the stomach so hard I almost did puke.
The teacher's aide made everybody sit down and zip their lips and keep their hands to themselves. Being rescued by a grown-up was the final humiliation. I returned the china guy to my backpack, wrapped in my recess sweater. I was not crying, although I stood there with my face in my cubby for a long time to make sure.
I promised myself I would never talk about Fidius ever again. But I didn't realize then what an enemy I'd made of Janine when I'd wrecked her birthday party. As long as Janine was around, nobody at Barbee O. Carleton Elementary and Middle School would ever forget about me pretending I had a fairy at home. Which meant I couldn't forget it either.
“How's the fake fairy?” Janine started asking when I got on the bus, every single day. “Has he grown wings yet?”
I tried to explainâ
again
âthat the china guy (a) wasn't Fidius and (b) was a present Fidius left behind. But before I got out a whole sentence, Janine and Inez would start chanting “Fairy Fat” and the whole bus would join them, even Mina.
By the time we started first grade, everybody called me Fairy Fat, or sometimes FF or Effy. Mostly I ignored them, but when somebody confronted me about it I
had
to say Fidius was real. I mean, didn't I? I didn't want to let him down. It felt like our honor was at stake.
This began to annoy people, I guess. I guess when you're round and curly and not blond, you should learn to fade yourself into the background.
One gym day in second grade, I walked out of the girls' locker room to see Inez standing there running the water in the drinking fountain to make it extra cold. “You'll get a cold water headache,” I said.
She grinned, never a good sign. “
I
won't. Go, Benny.” Somebody grabbed me and he and Inez shoved my face into the icy water. It went up my nose and down my frontâI could breathe through my mouth, but I almost forgot how because of the way my nose was freezing, inside and out. They held me there and held me there, and boy, did I get a cold water headache.
They did this every single gym class, three days a week. Mr. MacClaren looked at me funny because I was wet all down my front, but he never said anything and he never saw because the fountain was around the corner from where he stood and blew his whistle.