“So,” Vivi says. “We’re here because you both could use some cheering up. So cheer up.”
I look over at Taryn and take a deep breath, ready to apologize. I don’t know if that’s what Vivi had in mind, but it’s what I’ve known I had to do since I got out of bed. “I’m sorry,” I blurt out.
“You’re probably mad,” Taryn says at the same time.
“At you?” I am astonished.
Taryn droops. “I swore to Cardan that I wouldn’t help you, even though I came with you that day to help.”
I shake my head vehemently. “Really, Taryn, you’re the one who should be angry that I got you tossed into the water in the first place. Getting yourself out of there was the smart thing to do. I would never be mad about that.”
“Oh,” she says. “Okay.”
“Taryn told me about the prank you played on the prince,” Vivisays. I see myself reflected in her sunglasses, doubled, quadrupled with Taryn beside me. “Pretty good, but now you’re going to have to do something much worse. I’ve got ideas.”
“No!” Taryn says with vehemence. “Jude doesn’t need to doanything. She was just upset about Madoc and the tournament. If she goes back to ignoring them, they’ll go back to ignoring her, too. Maybe not at first, but eventually.”
I bite my lip because I don’t think that’s true.
“Forget Madoc. Knighthood would have been boring anyway,” Vivi says, effectively dismissing the thing I’ve been working toward for years. I sigh. It’s annoying, but also reassuring that she doesn’t think it’s that big a deal, when the loss has felt overwhelming to me.
“So what do you want to do?” I ask Vivi to avoid any more of this discussion. “Are we seeing a movie? Do you want to try on lipsticks? Don’t forget you promised me coffee.”
“I want you to meet my girlfriend,” Vivienne says, and I remember the pink-haired girl in the strip of photos. “She asked me to move in with her.”
“Here?” I ask, as though there could be any other place.
“The mall?” Vivi laughs at our expressions. “We’re going to meet her here today but probably find a different place tolive. Heather doesn’t know Faerie exists, so don’t mention it, okay?”
When Taryn and I were ten, Vivi learned how to make ragwort horses. We ran away from Madoc’s house a few days later. At a gas station, Vivi enchanted a random woman to take us home with her.
I still remember the woman’s blank face as she drove. I wanted to make her smile, but no matter what funny faces I pulled, her expression didn’t change. We spent the night in her house, sick after having ice cream for dinner. I cried myself to sleep, clinging to a weeping Taryn.
After that, Vivi found us a motel room with a stove, and we learned how to cook macaroni and cheese from the package. We made coffee in the coffeepot because we remembered how our old house had smelled like it. We watched television and swam in the pool with other kids staying in the motel.
I hated it.
We lived that way for two weeks before Taryn and I begged Vivi to take us home, to take us back to Faerie. We missed our beds, we missed the food we were used to, we missed magic.
I think it broke Vivi’s heart to return, but she did it. And she stayed. Whatever else I can say about Vivi, when it really mattered, she stuck by us.
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that she didn’t plan to stay forever.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Taryn demands.
“Iamtelling you. I just did,” Vivi says, leading us past stores with looping images of video games, past gleaming displays of bikinis and flowing maxi dresses, past cheese-injected pretzels and stores with counters full of gleaming, heart-shaped diamonds promising true love. Strollers stream past, groups of teenage boys in jerseys, elderly couples holding hands.
“You should have said something sooner,” says Taryn, hands on her hips.
“Here’s my plan to cheer you up,” Vivi says. “We all move to the human world. Move in with Heather. Jude doesn’t have to worry about knighthood, and Taryn doesn’t have to throw herself away on some silly faerie boy.”
“Does Heather know about this plan?” Taryn asks skeptically.
Vivi shakes her head, smiling.
“Sure,” I say, trying to make a joke of it. “Except that I have no marketable skills other than swinging around a sword and making up riddles, neither of which probably pay all that well.”
“The mortal world is where we grew up,” Vivi insists, climbing onto a bench and walking the length of it, acting as though it were a stage. She pushes her sunglasses up onto her head. “You’d get used to it again.”
