There are certain signs that your town is totally messed up:
1. Snow that lasts forever.
2. Evil pixies torturing and/or maiming people.
3. You are a regular nightly segment on cable news networks.
4. FBI agents patrol the streets.
5. Half the school population has to stay home because
their parents are too freaked to let them out of the house.
Issie, Devyn, Cassidy, and I have discussed this all day, hunkered down in the Maine Grind, our town’s one coffee shop. While we were there, Cassidy figured out the old anagram A BAA EBBED FLY TIGHT VIGOR TROLLS, which we found in one of my dad’s old Lovecraft books. It means, GET TO VALHALLA BY BIFORST BRIDGE. The BiForst Bridge is mentioned on a lot of the Web sites Devyn found. It’s a rainbow bridge, which we thought had to be too hokey to be real, but I guess not.
“So we have to find a rainbow we can step on?” Issie asked, only half kidding. “Do we have to find a leprechaun too?”
As the sun sets, we head out to patrol, minus Cassidy, who has a French test tomorrow. Pixies are stronger at night. Their senses and powers heighten, and they usually use the cover of darkness to attack. Ever since Frank came to town and my father ran away, they’ve been attacking a lot, to gain strength and control. They themselves are out of control.
We park the car in the back lot of a big-box store. Issie turns around and says, “You’re looking for him, aren’t you?”
I unbuckle my seat belt and lean forward. “Nick?”
“No, not Nick. The pixie king who killed him. Frank.” She shudders saying his name.
“I am.”
But we do not find him or any bad pixies tonight, and when we finally get home, Betty acts like some specially trained government interrogator. Issie sends me a text saying she is grounded because of all the violence and abductions. She has to go home right after school every day now. Her mother flipped, I guess.
That is sooo horrible, I text.
*SOB*, she responds. She is carrying round a pizza cutter 4 protection she’s so freaked. She wants me to carry a steak knife.
At least Betty doesn’t try to ground me. I basically spend the night finishing my ridiculously awful homework and worrying about what would happen if Astley was gone, since I don’t really feel like I’m destined to be some ruling pixie queen. Eventually I give up and write Urgent Action letters about the abuse of priests in Myanmar. Then I surf the Net looking for clues about Astley’s mom or Valhalla, pretty much anything. I fail again and again.
There’s a picture of Nick and me taped to my mirror. We got it at a picture-taking machine at the movie place in Bangor. We’re both sticking out our tongues. He’s pretending to lick me. It’s all I can do to not get all drama queen and kiss it and murmur that I’m trying to get him back, that I refuse to give up.
I don’t see Astley until Monday, when he shows up at the door of my Spanish class and nods at me. Even through the glass, I can tell that he’s pale and almost sweating. He’s holding a piece of gauze to his head. My heart bumps around in my chest, worried and scared all at once.
Paul hits my chair and whispers, “Do you know him?”
“Yeah,” I whisper back.
“It looks like he’s been in a fight.”
I raise my hand for the Spanish teacher. “May I go to the restroom, please?”
She raises one dark eyebrow. “ ¿En español ?”
You’d think with all the craziness around here that teachers would give us a little slack, but no. It’s like they think by being hardasses they are helping us somehow. In freaking Spanish. Grrr. If pixies were attacking, would she expect me to yell “Run!” in Spanish?
“ ¿Puedo utilizar el baño, por favor? ” I ask.
She nods yes, and I scoot my chair back and fly out the door.
“Whew. She must have to go. Maybe she’s pregnant,” Brittney says like she’s a character in some mean-girl movie.
“ ¿En español? ”
I shut the door gently behind me before I can hear Brittney’s response. If she can say that in Spanish, she has way more brain cells than I do.
“In Norwegian that would be ‘ Hun må dra. Kanskje er hun gravid.’ ” Astley attempts to smile.
I can’t help teasing him. “Which? Asking to go to the bathroom or dissing me because I’m pregnant.”
“You are with child?” His eyes open wide, all mock terrified.
“No! Shut up. You know I’m not.” I punch him in the arm and then lead him into the stairwell, shutting the door behind us. “Okay. Seriously, Astley, what happened to you? Why is your head bleeding?”
The long light tube hanging slightly from the drop ceiling begins to flicker. It makes a tiny hissing noise that human ears wouldn’t be able to hear. The light will fizzle out completely soon if the janitor doesn’t fix it.
“Sometimes,” Astley says, his voice a sad, tired stretch into the air, “I get a little tired of being Mr. Perfect, you know?”
A vein in his temple pulses so hard I can see it. He leans against the wall.
“And that’s what made your head bleed?” I lift the gauze away from his face to check out the wound. He doesn’t pay any attention. Doesn’t even flinch.
He continues talking. “Do you know how hard it is to be king? To always have to try to be good, to be perfect? Do you have any idea how hard it is to help you go after your stupid idiot of a were, all the time thinking you should just be satisfied with me, because that is how it is supposed to-”
“Astley, I- ‘Stupid idiot’ is not-”
He raises a hand up to silence me and I press my lips hard together, because what can I say, really? What can I say that won’t hurt him more than he already hurts? I may not have anything to do with the cut on his head, but he hurts inside because of me. He’s even being mean about Nick because of me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“Do not say that.” His voice cracks and his eyes flash with embarrassment. His arms cross in front of his chest and he looks down at the floor-Astley never looks down-and scuffs a shoe across the linoleum. The light fizzles again. The hum of it breaking gets a couple decibels louder.
I grab his face in my hands. Stubble grazes my palms. “But I am so sorry. I am sorry you hurt and that you think you have to be perfect, and I’m sorry I freaked out at the cemetery… I’ll try harder.”
I close my eyes.
“I know you will.” He makes a muffled noise and I open my eyes again. His eyes burn blue, cold like a winter sky when it isn’t snowing. They seem endless. “I have no doubts about you, Zara.”
Swallowing hard, I steady myself and recover. “Are you going to tell me what happened to your forehead?”
“I had a fight.”
“With who?”
“Amelie.”
“Amelie! That’s ridiculous. She would never fight with you.”
“She would and she did.”
Stepping back from him, I ask, “Why?”
He grasps my wrist. The radiator pops to life. The bell is going to ring soon.
“I want you to come with me,” he says, abruptly changing the topic.
“Where? I have to go back to Spanish before the bell rings.” I think I have maybe three minutes left.
“Iceland.”
“Iceland?” My voice squeaks. I try to maintain my composure. “You want to go to Iceland? In the winter? In the middle of all this pixie craziness? We can’t do that. We have to keep people safe. We can’t just up and leave and go to freaking Iceland.”
He sighs. “You sound like Amelie. Only she never says the word ‘freaking.’ ”
His voice is so heartbroken that my anger and shock sort of dissipate. His fingers still hold my wrist, surrounding it with his.