“I’m weird.”
“No kidding. I guess it’s like a dog chasing a car.”
“What breed do you see me as?”
“The question you have to ask yourself,” she said as she continued to ignore me, “is, once you catch the car, what do you do with it?”
“Good point. And it’d probably be enough to stop me, except I’ve been cursed with an insatiable curiosity.”
“Which killed the cat.”
I laughed. “You have to make up your mind. Am I a dog or a cat in this analogy of yours?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Don’t obsess.”
“Exactly.”
“So can you get out tomorrow night?”
“What’s happening tomorrow night?”
“Curb crawling in the Beaches.”
Maxine had told us about the area a few weeks back, and it turned out to be prime real estate for what Jared and I did. Big houses, old money, and lots of turnaround on furniture and other neat stuff. Last week we’d scored a small oak desk that we sold for seventy-five dollars to one of the antique shops in the Market. I saw it in their window for twice the price the next day, but I didn’t care. It’s not like it cost us anything.
“I don’t know ...” Maxine said.
She’d yet to come out with us. I don’t know if it was that she didn’t trust the old junker of Mom’s that we used on our rounds, or if she was too afraid her mom would find out. Probably both.
“That’s okay,” I told her, not wanting to put her on the spot. “Just so long as you’ll help us bring the stuff to the stores later.”
That, she didn’t mind doing. I gave her a cut out of my half of the profits, which every week she tried to give back to me, but eventually accepted. I mean, how could she resist money that didn’t need to be accounted for to her mother? And I had to make sure she had some cash for when we made the rounds of thrift stores.
Oh, I’m a wicked little thing, but it was doing wonders for her self-esteem, having stuff she picked out on her own. She kept most of it at my place, but some went into her locker at school. She didn’t go for anything drastic—once she’d changed in the girls’ washroom in the morning, you’d see her in jeans more often than not. And they looked good on her, too.
“So tell me,” she said. “Did you really know a guy named Little Bob back at your old school?”
I laughed. “Oh, sure. Little Bob MacElwee. As opposed to his brother, Big Bob. And then there was his sister, Bertie—short for Roberta.”
“That’s just weird. Why would their parents name them all pretty much the same?”
“Beats me.”
“Considering their surname, I’m surprised Little Bob didn’t up being called Wee Bob.”
“They couldn’t. That’s his dad’s name.”
“Now I know you’re having me on.”
“I swear it’s true.”
“If you say so.” She paused a moment, then asked, “And he told stories about ghosts?”
“He had stories about every damn thing you could imagine living back in those hills. Ghosts were the smallest part of it. According to him there were talking frogs, girls that could change into crows, rains of snails and tadpoles, headless turkeys, a black panther that you were supposed to treat as royalty, fairies made of roots and vines ... you name it.”
“Were any of them true?”
I had to laugh. “What do you think?”
“Of course, it’s just ... it’d be cool.”
“I suppose. But come on. Think about it for a moment.”
“We’ve both seen a ghost,” she said. “You more often than me.”
That stopped me—but only for a moment.
“Well, all I can say, Maxine, is that just because one weird thing turns out to be true, doesn’t mean every weird thing is.”
“But it’d be cool.”
“So would winning the lottery,” I said, “and what are the chances of that ever happening?”
“You don’t even buy tickets.”
“But even if I did ...”
And on we went.
When I was a kid, I couldn’t wait to get into high school. I just knew that somehow, all the humiliation and embarrassments I’d suffered in the lower grades would be a thing of the past. I didn’t have any false hopes of suddenly becoming cool, but I did believe I’d finally make some friends and that my tormentors from the first eight years of my scholastic life would move on to other pursuits and forget about me. And if nothing else, Redding High was so much bigger than South Foxville Elementary. Surely, I’d just get lost in the crowds.
Wrong on all accounts.
Not even the other nerds would have anything to do with me. Apparently, I carried my stigma of loser so prominently that no one dared to be seen with me for fear of dropping even lower on the social totem pole. As for me, well, I was already at the bottom. Even the teachers weren’t above making fun of me, especially Mr. Crawford in gym and weird Mr. Vanderspank in biology. Is it my fault that dissecting frogs makes me throw up?
But the teachers just used verbal barbs to mock me. My fellow students added physical abuse to their vocal harassment.
I was tripped. My books were always being knocked from my hands. My glasses were stepped on. I got my head dunked in the toilet. I got creamed during dodgeball. I got wedgies. You name it and it happened to me, with a constant chorus of “Hey, Ding-a-ling!”—the oh-so-clever elementary school play on my surname, Dumbrell—following me through the school halls.
The hours I had to spend at school, as well as the long blocks I had to navigate to get there and go home, were a time of perpetual tension for me as I walked with hunched shoulders, forever anticipating the next disaster to befall me. My nerves were getting on my nerves, as it says in some old song.
I know. Could I be more of a poster boy for losers? And is it any wonder I started seeing things?
The first time it happened I was sure that one of the stoners had slipped some kind of hallucinogenic drug into the can of pop I’d bought to go with my brown bag lunch. I had a spare for my last period that day and was trying to decide if I’d be better off leaving school early, thereby forestalling some new torment on the way home, or going to the school library to get in some research on a history essay that was due early next week. I opted to do the research— yet one more mistake in the endless parade of mistakes that made up my life.
If I hadn’t gone to the library ...
Though in retrospect, if they hadn’t got to me that day, they would have got to me later, seeing how I became a special project of theirs. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I went to the library, and of course Eric Woodrow was there, “studying” with some of his buddies. Woody was one of those pretty boys—“too good-looking for his own good,” my mother would say when she saw a guy like him on TV. He had short, curly blond hair and a charming smile, and was well built—by which I mean he had arms with actual muscles, unlike the twigs attached to my shoulders. The girls all liked him, and he was never without a girlfriend even though—and I know this for a fact—he cheated on each and every one of them. But none of them seemed to care. No one did, no matter what kind of trouble he got into. Woody seemed to be able to do any damn thing he wanted, and people would just smile.
I’d known him since grade school—or rather I’d been trying to avoid him since grade school because, whatever else might be going on in his life, he always had time to rag on me.
I ducked down an aisle between the bookshelves as soon as I saw him—hoping he hadn’t seen me—and then I stopped dead in my tracks. Directly in front of me was one of the many study areas scattered through the library, and sitting at the closest desk was Doreen Smithers. Maybe she wasn’t the most beautiful girl in school, but she came close, and she was certainly the best endowed.
Seeing Doreen was always stop-worthy, but she wasn’t what had brought me to such a sudden halt. No, that was the little brown-skinned man on top of t
he bookshelf in front of her, looking down the front of her blouse. Not that I blamed him. Every guy in school had probably wanted to. But we didn’t do it.
We weren’t one foot high and dressed in rags, either. We didn’t have matted hair, or sharp, pointy features or big, scary dark eyes.
That dark feral gaze chose that moment to turn in my direction, big eyes widening further with ... I don’t know. Surprise, I guess.
I could feel myself going weak, and my books fell from my hands. The thump of them hitting the floor startled Doreen, and she turned to me, then looked up at the little man when she saw me staring at the top of the bookshelf. But she didn’t see anything. I know, because if she had, she’d be like me, completely stunned.
The little man grinned, waved at me, then swung up to the top of the bookshelf and scampered out of sight. Doreen turned back to me.
“What are you staring at?” she asked.
“Yes,” came a sharp voice behind me that I recognized as belonging to Mrs. Edelson, the school librarian. “What are you staring at, Adrian Dumbrell?”
I shot her a guilty look, then got down to fumble with my books.
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “I ... I just felt a little dizzy ...”
“Then perhaps you should go see the school nurse.”
I gave a quick nod. Gathering my books, I stole another glance at the top of the bookshelf, but the creature wasn’t there. I mean, of course, he wouldn’t be there. That kind of thing didn’t exist outside the CGI effects in a movie.
Doreen shook her head and turned back to her books while Mrs. Edelson walked me to the door of the library. We had to go by Woody’s table, and he put out a foot that made me stumble again. This time I kept hold of my books. Just.
“Honestly,” Mrs. Edelson said, not having seen what Woody’d done, “do you practice at being so clumsy?”
“No, ma’am,” I muttered, and escaped out into the hall.
But I didn’t go see the school nurse. Instead I went outside and ducked underneath the bleachers by the football field, where I knew no one would come looking for me. I sat down on a cement footing and set my books beside me. I put my head in my hands.
This was bad, I thought. My life was messed up enough without me starting to imagine things.
That was when it occurred to me that someone had spiked my drink. It was the kind of thing one of them would do to me. Anything for a laugh at the Ding-a-ling’s expense.
“So there you are,” an unfamiliar voice said.
I turned so fast that I almost fell off the footing. I grabbed the support beam to keep my balance.
There was no one there.
Great. Now I was hallucinating disembodied voices as well as weird little creatures.
“Up here,” the voice said.
I looked up, and there was my hallucination from the library, hanging from a crossbeam. When he dropped from his perch I shrank back, but he wasn’t attacking me. He landed in the dirt and grinned up at me from his one-foot height. This close to him, I realized that while he was the same kind of creature I’d imagined in the library, he wasn’t the same one. I suppose a lot of people wouldn’t have seen the difference, but I always do. Like when people say all the Asian kids look the same, I have no idea what they’re talking about because they all look different to me.
Of course that didn’t change the fact that ...
“Yuh ...” I cleared my throat. “You’re not real.”
“Of course not.” He jabbed my knee with a stiff finger. “Entirely imaginary.”
“But ... but ...”
“I know,” he said. “When Quinty told me you’d seen him, I was as surprised to hear it as he was to see you.”
“I wish I didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?”
“See you—any of you.”
“Oh, that’s polite. That’s friendly.”
“No, I meant, I ...”
I didn’t know what I meant, really. I didn’t want to be seeing things, but on the other hand it was such an interesting hallucination. This little man was even scruffier than the one I’d first seen hanging above Doreen’s desk in the library. His hair was a mat of dreadlocks, festooned with colored bottle caps and the silvery pulls from pop cans. There were feathers in there, too, and strings of colored beads and little shells. Also what looked like old dried vines.
The raggedy clothes, I realized, had been artfully ripped and then restitched with red and green threads. Not so much old and torn as a fashion statement. The shirt was decorated with beadwork and feathers in a haphazard arrangement. The pants were plain with frayed cuffs. He was shoeless and I half expected to see hairy hobbit feet, but the brown skin on them, while gnarly like some old root, was as hairless as his hands and face.
“Finished yet?” he asked.
“What?”
“Staring at me.”
“No, I mean, yes. I was just ... I don’t know. Trying to figure out what you are, I guess.”
“I’m a fairy.”
“A fairy.”
“Well, that’s the easiest description. The first of you big folks to come here called us manidókwens, but that’s a mouthful, isn’t it?”
This whole thing was a brainful was what it was. It had to be some kind of trick, but I couldn’t begin to figure out how it was being pulled off. And whoever was pulling it on me had forgotten one important thing.
See, I’ve always known what I was.
Let’s run down the list: I was tall and skinny and seriously uncoordinated. My hair was invariably an unruly thatch no matter how much I combed it, even right after a haircut. I had acne and was half blind without the black horn-rims my parents insisted I wear, I guess to go with the geeky clothes they picked out for me, though to be fair, even a tailored suit would hang on me like it would on a scarecrow. No, that’s not fair to scarecrows.
I was the last one to be chosen for any kind of sports activity and the first one to be mocked for the slightest transgression of coolness. I was so far from cool that I was combustible. I was an embarrassment to myself and my family, though not to my friends. But that’s only because I never had any.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough, there was my name. Adrian Dumbrell. Say it with me: Dumbrell. Would you keep a name like that? But my parents and their parents and their parents, ad nauseam, were proud of it.
But I wasn’t stupid.
I was all of the above—I won’t argue with any of it— but I wasn’t stupid.
So I knew that whatever this creature was, he wasn’t a fairy. He wasn’t real in the first place, but even if he was, he wasn’t a fairy.
Fairies were cute and had little wings and fluttered around flowers and stuff like that. They didn’t stare down girls’ blouses. No, only a weird little creature that I’d hallucinate would do something like that.
“You’re still trying to figure out if I’m real or not, aren’t you?” the little man said.
“Well, it’s just ...”
Just what? Where did you even start in a situation like this?
He shook his head. “It’s amazing that people like you can be so big and yet have such little brains.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “You have the whole world figured out and so conveniently distrust your own senses whenever you run across something that doesn’t fit in with your view of how things are supposed to be.”
“Right. Little people like you are just all over the place.”
“We are, actually. There aren’t as many of us as there once were, it’s true, but you can’t go very far in this city without tripping over one or another of us.”
“I’ve never seen anything like you before.”
“We aren’t all as handsome as I am.”
Handsome, right. That was like me telling people I was cool.
“I mean, I’ve never even heard of you before,” I said. “Just in storybooks—you know, the kind you read when you’re a kid—and then the descr
iptions were pretty different from the way you look.”
“We come in all shapes and sizes. You might try looking us up under hob or brownie.”
“What I’m trying to say is, nowhere does it say that you’re real.”
“That’s only because you people don’t pay attention. You simply don’t see us.”
“So how come I can?” I asked, coming back to the Big Question.
He shrugged. “Why am I supposed to have all the answers? Maybe you have the gift of the sight!”
“The sight.”
“The ability to see beyond the narrow confines of the agreed-upon worldview,” he explained. “Few of your kind do anymore.”
Great. So not only was I a complete loser, but now I had some “special” way of seeing the world as well. If this kept up I’d soon be booking into the Zeb for extended psychiatric care.
“You speak well,” I said.
I was just saying something to keep the conversation going, but as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized how condescending that must have sounded. But he didn’t seem to take offense.
“Thank you,” he said. “So do you.”
“Well, I read a lot. Books don’t beat you up.”
“For me it’s a natural gift.”
Like humility, I thought, but this time I kept it to myself.
I sat there for a while, half expecting him to just fade away, but he continued to stand there, big eyes looking up at me, a little smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
Great. Even fairies thought I was worth a laugh.
“I don’t suppose there’s a way I can learn to unsee you?” I asked.
He laid a hand on his chest and let his eyes go all soft and deerlike.
“Now I’m hurt,” he said.
I almost apologized. I’m such a wimp.
“So what’s your name?” I asked instead.
“That’s a rather personal question.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “We’re not as free with our names as you big folk. But you can call me Tommery.”
I thought about that for a moment. If I could call him Tommery, that didn’t necessarily mean it was his name.
“So what’s that?” I asked. “A nickname?”