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“I don’t know what to do!” I rake in a breath, plunge my fingers into my curly hair, and wrestle with the rudimentary bun I locked the mass into this morning after I pulled off my silk night cap and undid all the flexi rods. The untamed poofs fall around my face in red chaos once I battle the scrunchie free. “Am I used to the systems failing me? Yes. Do I have a little girl who believes her father can steal souls? ALSO YES.” I drag my hair away from my face and stuff it back into the hair tie.
“How do we know he can’t?” Zahra offers, helpfully.
I glare at her. “I normally appreciate your sense of humor, Zahr, but right now? About this?”
She slurps, chews, swallows. “I’m just saying. It all matches up if you believe every single thing Meda’s told us.”
“Faeries aren’t real. There is no faerie world. There are no seelie or unseelie fae. It’s normal for little girls to have wild imaginations, and it’s normal for brains to rewrite unspeakable things in a way that makes it easier to handle. The very notion that so many of her stories include monsters and nightmares that she credits herself with creating is concerning.”
Zahra’s gaze drifts. “I ’spose.”
I sag. “You can’t tell me you seriously believe her stories are real.”
“I’ve spent my whole life being told I’m a liar, Kass. I like to believe kids, even when they sound insane. Because I know how that feels. I know what it’s like when you start to believe you are insane because no one believes you.” She tosses the long, dark part of her half-shaved hair back and looks at the sky. “Child Protection Services can’t find her address. What if it’s behind a glamour?”
This has to be one of her classic deadpan jokes. With me, Zahra’s delivery is almost always monotone, inappropriate, and stuck in a Twilight Zone of is she or isn’t she actually joking?
“You’re kidding,” I state, just as dryly.
“M’not,” she slurs around the straw. “Listen, as the honorary kid from a bad home between us, I’m not concerned about the same textbook red flags. Meda’s happy, and healthy, and fed, and clean, and I believe her. If you’re worried, check out her address yourself. Coordinate a home visit. Consider a possibility that everything you believe…might be wrong.”
I stare. A breeze teases her pitch-dark hair, causing it to float angelically against one round cheek and deep violet makeup.
As her sharp green eyes focus, it hits me. “Zahra.”
Her nose crinkles. “Ew. Full name. Must be in trouble. Don’t bother with reprimand. I’ll see myself to the corner.” She turns on her boot heel, but I catch her arm, freezing her in place.
The sound of a large tapioca pearl popping up her straw fills my ears.
“Please…please no jokes,” I say.
“How dare you. I never joke. About anything. Ever.”
“Do you think the voices you hear…are fae?”
Stillness wraps around us for too many long moments. Finally, she looks back at me. “Kass. That little girl hears the same words I do and has had entire conversations with invisible creatures that make sense. I don’t think the voices I hear are fae. I know it.” She shrugs my hand off her arm and turns, walking backward across the vacant playground toward the school building. “Take from that what you will. As for me and mine—” She smiles. “—I believe the kid.”
Chapter 2
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ding dong.
I pace in front of my bed, which is the only floor space available in the small back bedroom of my parents’ house. The walls are still the faded blue they were when this was my nursery. Every time my parents asked if I wanted to repaint them, I said no.
I didn’t care that they were pale blue because they thought I was going to be boy.
I didn’t like change.
I still don’t like change.
Even though I know it’s inevitable. Even though I know it’s life. At some point, you move out to a college dorm, attain the right to become an educator, move back home, and face life as an adult. Certain change is unavoidable. Becoming an adult was unavoidable. That didn’t mean I had to get rid of my childhood stuffed animals, the desk perpetually full of my sewing projects, or the closet without a door because the track broke when I was thirteen.
Some things are uncontrollable.
And I know that.
I know that intimately because it feels like I have spent my life chasing after the things I can control only to discover that the extent of my control ends with blue walls, stuffed animals, and sewing projects.
