“Like I said—”
“I know. You’re not as free with your names as we are. Why’s that?”
“When you know the true name of a thing, it gives you a certain measure of power over it.”
“Do things include people?”
“It includes everything, Adrian Dumbrell.”
“How do you know my name?” I demanded, trying to cover up the nervousness I felt that he did know it.
“It’s in your school record, right beside your picture.”
“You go through the school’s records?”
“Fairies go through everything.”
“But why?”
He shrugged. “We like to know what’s going on. The world’s not much of a story if you don’t know who the characters are.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, so I decided to ignore it.
“So what happens now?” I asked.
He cocked his head, reminding me of a bird—especially with those big eyes of his—that and the fact that he was looking up at me.
“I’m not sure I understand the question,” he said. “What happens to me? You know—now that I know you exist.”
“Oh that.” He shrugged. “You can do whatever you want. Tell your fellow students—”
“Right, like that would go over so well.”
“—or do nothing at all—though I’d hope that you might at least give me a friendly nod the next time we happen to run into each other.”
“Well, sure. That’s if I ever, you know ...”
“Oh, you’ll see me again. Once you encounter one of us like this, you’ll never be blind again. Not unless you work at it.”
With that, he swung back up into the support beams under the stands. I watched him go, scurrying like he was equal parts monkey and squirrel, until he was lost from sight. Then I put my head in my hands and stared at the ground again.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about this. The only thing I knew for sure was that everything had changed.
* * *
So that’s how I got my first friends, like, ever.
There were four or five of the little men living in the school. Tommery was the one I saw the most, or at least the one I talked to the most. The others were just around, like the way that Quinty was forever hanging around the girls’ bathrooms, which just gave me the creeps.
Tommery said I shouldn’t let it bother me, that everybody has their quirks, and the thing that friends do is put up with each others’ quirks. He said they had to have something to amuse themselves with since people didn’t do what they were supposed to anymore, which was basically be respectful to the house spirits of a building—you know, leave them little cakes and saucers of milk, and thank them for their help in keeping the place tidy, though the thanking part you should only do verbally. Leave a gift other than food, and they’re out of the place like a shot; don’t ask me why.
See, that’s what Tommery and Quinty and the others were—a kind of house spirit, like in that story about the elves and the shoemaker, which is weird when you think about it—to have little fairy people for friends—but a lot easier to take than having people laugh at you all the time or stuff your head into a toilet.
And life did improve for me after I met them. I don’t mean that the kids at school started treating me any nicer, or that Mr. Crawford or Mr. Vanderspank stopped ragging on me in class. It just made a difference, having someone I could talk to and hang with—even if they were only a foot high.
And they showed me all kinds of cool things, like hidden places in the school where no one can see you, but you can see them. Or secret passageways—invisible to the human eye, or at least the eye of most humans—that let you move quickly from one place to another. They called both of these things elf bolts.
But what they didn’t tell me—well, they wouldn’t, would they?—was that something happens to house spirits when they’re left on their own too long. It turned out that Tommery and his gang probably really were like the fairies you see in the old storybooks—at least they were once.
I read all about it in some picture book about the fairies in England.
They start out handsome and pretty, but they can get kind of rough looking when they live in the wilds, away from men. Then you can have trouble telling them apart from the roots and leaves. And if they were originally house spirits, but abandoned by the people using the house—and for fairies, Redding High’s like some big house—they get to looking like Tommery does. And they can turn mean.
Not that they were ever mean to me. Like I said, they treated me like a special project, constantly trying to make life a little better for me. So as far as I was concerned, that stuff about them going mean was all just words in some kids’ book.
That is, until the day they thought it would be a lark to teach me how to fly.
* * *
“Come on, you’ll like it,” Oshtin said.
“Yeah, Addy,” Sairs put in. They’d taken to calling me “Addy,” which—since I’d never had a nickname before that wasn’t abusive—pleased me no end. “Or are you scared?”
“No, I’m not scared. It’s just ... I mean, flying ...”
It was one of those rare occasions when all the fairies were with me at the same time. We were in an elf bolt that looked out on the main hall of the school near the principal’s office, drinking herbal tea that Krew had made with water from a kettle that didn’t appear to need a power source, and munching on crackers Quinty had stolen from the cafeteria.
“It would be like Peter Pan,” Tommery said.
“That’s the problem,” I told them. “I just don’t know that I believe enough.”
Tommery laughed. “Don’t talk rubbish. You don’t have to believe for it to work. You just need our magic.”
“But—”
“You never believed in us, but you saw us all the same, didn’t you?”
“I suppose ...”
We settled on a test run, a short flight down the stairs in the main hall. We couldn’t do it when anyone was around, of course, so I had to hide out until the school was empty except for the janitor. We waited until he was asleep on the cot he had stashed away in the basement, then tumbled out of the elf bolt and went up the stairs. I counted the risers as we ascended. Twenty-two.
Once we’d reached the landing, I looked back down. It was higher than I had thought it would be, especially considering I went up and down it a dozen times or more a day. But that was on my own two feet. Right now it seemed way too high, and I got a touch of vertigo.
“So ... what do I do?” I asked.
The fairies clustered around me.
“Nothing,” Tommery said. “Just relax.”
Easy for him to say, I thought, looking down at the end of the stairs that still seemed way too far away at this moment.
But then I felt the strangest sensation. The fairies stood by me, two to a side, with Tommery perched on the banister, directing the operation. The others laid their hands on my legs and then I was ... not flying, but floating. I could feel all the weight of my body disappear, or maybe it was just gravity losing its hold, but up I went, flanked by the fairies on either side of me.
We hovered for a long moment above the landing, then Tommery cried, “Go!” and we swooped down the stairs. Right at the bottom, we came to a stop and slowly sank through the air until my feet were on the ground again.
I had a moment of wobbliness when we touched down. My body had never seemed to weigh so much as it did at that moment.
I looked back up the stairs, and Tommery came sliding down the banister.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said, landing at my feet.
“Are you kidding? It was great. It was totally amazing. When can we do it again?”
“Right now, if you want.”
“Oh, I do,” I told him. “And I want to go higher—like from the roof.”
Tommery smiled. “What happened to your not believing enough?”
“Who cares
about believing? The magic works whether I believe in it or not, right?”
“Just so,” Tommery said.
* * *
I led the way as we trooped up the stairs. We knew where the entrance to the rooftop access was—the fairies knew where everything was in the school, and by this time, so did I.
The moon was up when we stepped out onto the roof. Tommery told me that he and the others came up here all the time to have picnics and spy on the world at large and just generally hang out. I’d never been up here myself, probably because I’d always had this bit of a thing about heights. I couldn’t approach any kind of a high drop-off without a vague whirly feeling starting up in the bottom of my stomach. And then I’d get a pulling sensation from the edge, like I needed to step right off and go tumbling down.
But tonight I wasn’t nervous as we crunched across the gravel to the edge of the roof. I wasn’t nervous looking down the two-story drop to the ground below, either. My usual height fears and earlier anxiety had been replaced with anticipation. I could still remember the way my body had felt as I lifted from the landing earlier, but it was only in my memory now. I wanted to actually experience it again.
“Coasts clear,” Sairs said, leaning over the edge to look around.
“Are you ready?” Tommery asked me.
The other fairies paired up on either side of me again when I nodded. When they laid their hands on my legs, I felt all my weight disappear once more, and we began to rise from the rooftop.
I’d had dreams of flying before and they were much like this: I’d suddenly remember that I didn’t have any weight and I could just lift up from the ground if I wanted to. I’d rise up and up, a foot, another, a yard, two yards. Finally, I’d be above the treetops, and off I’d go, soaring. Free.
I can’t begin to tell you what it’s like to have it happen for real.
We drifted away from the rooftop, and there was only air below us now, with the ground two stories down. I wanted to go higher. I wanted to fly among the stars and touch the moon.
I wanted to do it on my own.
“Well, sure,” Quinty said when I told them as much. “Everybody let go.”
“No!” Tommery cried from where he was floating beside us.
But it was too late. The fairies pulled their hands away, and down I went.
I don’t think I even had time to realize what was happening before I hit the ground.
There was this awful, wet sound. There was a shock of pain like I’d never felt before.
And then everything went black.
* * *
“ ... for a laugh,” I heard Quinty saying as I came swirling back out of the darkness.
“Oh, yes,” Tommery said. “Very humorous.”
“Well, it was kind of funny when he hit the pavement.” That was Krew.
Sairs snickered. “Did you see his face?”
“Oh, very funny,” Tommery said, his voice tight with anger. “And look at him now. Hilarious. And dead.”
I blinked my eyes open to find them all standing around me and forced myself to sit up. I wasn’t dead. I felt perfectly fine.
“I’m okay,” I said.
Tommery turned to look at me. “No, you’re not.”
“No, really.”
“Look at yourself.”
I looked down and saw that my hips disappeared into another pair of hips. I turned to look behind me, and there I was. Lying on the pavement, neck at a weird angle, blood pooling around my body. Except I was here as well, looking down at my dead self.
I couldn’t seem to focus on what I saw. It made no sense.
“But ... but ...”
I couldn’t get any more words out.
A huge wave of sadness went through me. That connection we all take for granted—the way we’re part of our body, the way our body is a part of the world around us— it was gone. I felt alone and lost, and this gibbering panic rose up inside me, swelling until I thought my head would burst.
Then everything went black again.
So I survived that first year at Redding High, no thanks to Ken and Barbie and their cooler-than-thou posse. I stopped trying to avoid them, but I gave them absolutely no reaction when they ragged on me, so they tended to focus on easier targets most of the time. Or at least more reactive ones. We sure didn’t become friends or anything. They still had something to say about each day’s outfit and they tagged Maxine and me as “the homo girls” because we were always together, but I could live with that.
As I get old and wise, moving into my seventeenth year, I find it gets easier to ignore stupid people.
* * *
The funny thing is, I got the best marks I’ve ever had on my report card that year. I actually knew the answers in the exams, so it looks like all that studying I did with Maxine actually rubbed off. Because the thing with Maxine is, she really does like school and studying. It’s not just because her mother’s always on her case about it. Maxine likes doing well. So lots of times when we said we were going to be studying, we actually were.
I also attended more classes than I ever did back at Willingham, mostly because the first few times I did skip, Maxine was so disappointed in me, I decided to see if I could stick it out. Jared was totally wondering if I was okay.
“You on tranks or something?” he asked.
“Yeah, as if,” I told him.
I don’t do drugs or alcohol—not for moral reasons, but because I’ve got this serious thing about always being in control of myself.
“So is there something wrong with doing well at school?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “It’s just ... different.”
“The new and improved kid sister.”
“Well, new, anyway,” he said, so I punched him in the shoulder.
* * *
Maxine and I actually went to the big spring dance in April—and no, not as a couple. It took some seriously complicated maneuvering on my part to get her mom to agree, and she never did know that Maxine went with a boy. Finding dates wasn’t a problem. We’d met a couple of boys from Fuller High at a used record store on Williamson in January, Pat Haines and Jeremy Nash. They were both so cute—a little straight, but they scruffed up well. I ended up with Jeremy, and it was the first time in ages that I’d been out with a guy who had fewer piercings and tattoos than me. But he was a good kisser, and that’s what’s important, right?
So anyway, getting dates to take us to the dance was easy. Convincing Maxine’s mother, on the other hand ...
I swear it was like setting up a military campaign to invade a small country to get it to all work out. But it did, and we had a great time, even though we had to do a whole Cinderella thing to get Maxine out of her makeup and fancy dress and back home on time.
* * *
And then there was Ghost.
I caught glimpses of him on and off through the rest of the school year, but couldn’t get close to him, never mind have a conversation. I’d spot him somewhere and before I could even start in his direction, he’d pull his disappearing shtick: stepping through some wall, or just doing this—I have to admit, pretty cool—slow fade from sight.
I had to settle for research. I went through the newspaper files at the Crowsea Public Library, but there wasn’t much. Just a small piece in the City section of The Newford Journal the day after he died and an obit in the death notices. But I got his name, and in the school library I found a small “in memoriam” notice in the 1998 yearbook. It didn’t tell me anything except that he wasn’t very popular, and that was only by inference. See, a couple of other kids had also died that year—one of cancer, one in a car crash— and there was a whole pile of reminiscences about them from their friends and the faculty.
But for Adrian Dumbrell, nothing.
Just that he’d been a student and that he’d died.
I knew there had to be more to it than that, but I couldn’t seem to get any details. It wasn’t like some big secret; just no one knew him at school. Any ki
ds who’d been attending when he was here had already graduated. Everyone had heard the story of Ghost, that he haunted the school, and some of them even knew he was this kid who’d jumped from the roof of the school because everybody was always ragging on him.
I suppose I would have let the whole thing go if he hadn’t kept spying on me. There had to be a reason why he was doing the stalking thing—some kind of unfinished business, though what it would have to do with me, I had no idea. I guessed it was something I was supposed to figure out.
So one Sunday in July, while Maxine was away for the month on a trip with her dad and I was seriously bored, I went back to the school, determined to track him down. It was all locked up—no summer courses here, or at least not today—but I’d learned my lessons well from Frankie Lee and jimmied the lock on one of the back doors. Moments later I was inside, out of the sweltering July heat.
It was so nice and cool in here, and quiet. The only sound was that of my clunky platform sandals echoing on the marble floors. I had the normally crowded halls to myself, which was kind of weird, but kind of neat, too. I hadn’t done anything like this—what Frankie called creeping a joint—in what seemed like forever.
“Okay,” I said. “I know you’re in here somewhere, Adrian. So let’s talk.”
Nothing.
Well, I hadn’t thought it would be easy. He’d already shown that he had this whole avoidance thing going for him. Maybe it came with the territory when you were dead. I mean, ghosts are always hard to pin down in the stories, aren’t they?—never just coming right out and saying what they want. Instead they have to rattle their chains and beat around the bush with riddles and crap.
“C’mon, spooky boy! It’s time for us to get acquainted.” I walked up and down the halls for over an hour before I finally heard a voice behind me.
“You’re going to wake the janitor.”
I turned, and there he was. Adrian Dumbrell, deceased. Also known as Ghost.
He didn’t look like a ghost—not like I had any great familiarity with them other than his stalking me. I just mean he seemed very solid and here. Tall and gawky, Harry Potter glasses, acne scars, and all.