THE FAE WERE just atown legend until the day they took Mom.
“Movie starts in twenty minutes!” I hollered from the front door of our little house, pulling on my puffy red winter coat. “Hurry up!”
My younger sister, Marissa, appeared first. Her eyeliner was thick, as always, despite the fact that we’d be sitting in the dark for the next few hours. “It’d better be good,” she grumbled. Our town’s sole movie theater only played one movie at a time, so we didn’t have a lot of options.
Hot on her heels, our youngest sister, Olive, nearly bumped into the doorframe coming from the kitchen because she couldn’t be bothered to look up from her phone. “The website says it’s a rom-com!” she chirped, dancing an excited jig on the way to the door.
“No. They forgot to update the page again. That was last week’s movie.” I sighed as I pulled on my gloves, since we had to walk to the other side of town. Thankfully, it wasn’t far. Selmo only had 783 residents total.
Both Olive and Rissa groaned, because that meant we’d probably get an action movie, or worse, a thriller. But none of us stopped putting on layers, because what else did we have to do?
“Mom! You coming?” I yelled when she still hadn’t shown. Usually on Saturdays when Dad got called into work, going to the movies was our tradition. We typically went to the town’s one and only gas station beforehand, bought snacks to sneak in, and then wandered the three blocks of stores on Main Street after.
“I’ve got a last-minute meeting, girls,” Mom called, poking her head out from the kitchen, without her usual smile. “Go on without me.”
Slightly odd that she was working on a Saturday, especially a few days before Christmas.
That should’ve been my first clue.
But as we headed out the door, Rissa and Olive distracted me with bickering over which kind of candy to get.
“Seriously, if it doesn’t have chocolate, it’s not worth eating,” I reminded them, stepping around a slushy pile of melting snow on the path as we cut through the park in the center of town. “And it’s my turn to buy, so I have final say.”
“Heads up!” a male voice hollered right before a snowball smacked me in the face.
It knocked me sideways.
My phone flew out of my hands as I slipped on a patch of ice, arms flailing like a cartoon character.
I hit the paved path hard.
My butt took the brunt of the fall, but my wrist also slammed into the black pavement,hard enough to bruise.
I hissed in pain.
“Brynn!” Olive grabbed my elbow to help me up.
Rissa turned to glare at the older boys fooling around on the playground. Despite being only a junior, she could be fairly intimidating. “You did that on purpose!”
They definitely had. But I didn’t want to pick a fight. I preferred not to be noticed at all, really.
Ethan, a fellow senior at Mackenzie High with floppy brown hair and an irritatingly attractive face, jumped off the merry-go-round, where he and his friends had been spinning wildly, trying to unseat one another. I’d had a crush on him freshman year, but three years later and lots of time in his company had cured me.
As he approached, he held his hands up at Rissa’s accusation, stopping by the playground swings. “Sorry!” he called to me, jumping up to stand on one of them, swaying back and forth, but his unrepentant grin said he definitely wasn’t. “My bad.”
His friends followed, taking over the remaining swings or leaning against the swingset poles. They cracked more jokes that I could only half hear through the pounding in my ears.
Giggles came from the top of the playground behind them. I glanced up to find a group of senior girls from my class witnessing my humiliation as well. They’d camped out at the top of the jungle gym tower with blankets and nail polish. They snickered loud enough for me to hear. That was probably intentional.
I didn’t really fit in at Mackenzie High. Or anywhere.
Half the senior class seemed to be hanging out at the park despite the cold. I couldn’t blame them. There was nothing to do in this town. But now every single one of them would gossip to their friends. Everyone at school would think it was hilarious.
“Can you see the steam rising off me?” Rissa growled. I couldn’t tell if she was asking me or them. “That’s how pissed I am!”
“I thought she was one of the fae, coming to steal us away,” Ethan told us, pressing a dramatic hand to his chest and pointing at me. The other seniors cracked up all over again.
“Uh-huh,” I muttered, dusting the snow off my knees and bum, leaving wet patches behind on my jeans.
