Once Upon a Changeling Read online

  “Where are you supposed to be?” demanded a voice, snapping me out of my thoughts. I stopped short and looked around me. It was Mrs. Greer, one of the teachers in the Math department. She was as old as molasses and never in a good mood. But I was impervious to her flashing eyes and pursed lips. I had a hall pass, which I waved at her.

  “The bathroom,” I said. “I’m heading to the bathroom.”

  “Let me see that,” said Mrs. Greer, snatching my hall pass out of my hand. She read it, and I could see from her face that she was visibly disappointed. She’d wanted to get me, would’ve actually derived pleasure from punishing me.

  I think that the last of my innocence was shattered at that precise moment. No one was above reproach. Even teachers, who were supposed to be fair and have students’ best interests at heart, were actually just horrible people. Mrs. Greer would take pleasure in my pain. She was a sadist. Cindi had cheated on me every chance she could get. My friends hadn’t really been my friends. My parents didn’t love me unconditionally. Marcos had been keeping serious secrets. The world was fucked. I couldn’t trust anyone. Everybody was out to get me.

  I’m glad I had this epiphany right at that moment, because if I hadn’t, what happened next would really have bothered me in an intense way. But as it was, I guess I was expecting it.

  “You’re the boy that got that nice Cindi Smith in trouble, aren’t you?” asked Mrs. Greer, as she ripped my hall pass into little tiny pieces.

  I chuckled sardonically. “Actually, Mrs. Greer, Cindi was a slut. I never even slept with her. She got herself in trouble.”

  “You’ve got a mouth on you,” she said. “It’s just as well. Boys like you are always up to no good. Lunch detention. Today. I’ll see to it. What’s your lunch shift?”

  I thought about lying, but then I realized it wouldn’t matter. She was going to get me. Life was going to get me.

  Marcos didn’t show up at school that day. I had lunch detention, so I didn’t get to talk to Puck either, but I met up with her after school. I had to work that night, and afterwards, I had to go to the Garden of Marie to get the golden pear that would glow near the keyhole in the garden, so that I could use the key I’d gotten from the tree to get into the Hill. Puck said that if I got Marcos to tell me who the real father was, then we could just send him off for the pear. But I didn’t think it would work that way. Besides, if I had all the pieces—the key, the pear, the pixie dust—maybe it would be easier to convince the guy to do it.

  The pear, incidentally, was located in Selby Gardens. The Fey called it the Garden of Marie mostly because they liked to be obscure, in my opinion. Marie Selby had lived in Sarasota and had had a huge garden full of a variety of rare plants. When she died, she’d wanted to share her private collection with the public, and thus, Selby Gardens was born. It was a huge public garden that I could stroll through for the price of twelve dollars. It wasn’t exactly cheap, but it was better than trying to break in. I was going to swing by after work, and I would have exactly fifteen minutes to get into Selby, get the pear, and get out. I was hoping it would all work out. If it didn’t, I’d just have to try again the next day. We were running out of time before the Equinox, but as soon as we had everything we needed, we could try to get the baby back. The sooner the better, as far as I was concerned.

  Work went by without much incident. I left as soon as I could, jumped in my car, and sped to Selby Gardens. Once there, I ran inside to the front desk where I shoved twelve dollars in the old woman attendant’s hand.

  “We’re closing soon, you know,” she told me.

  “I do know,” I said. “That’s why I’m in a rush.”

  “Well, okay,” she said, “but you’ve only got twenty minutes or so.”

  “That will have to be enough,” I said. I started into the greenhouse, which was the entrance to the gardens. I stopped. “Do you know where the pear tree is?”

  She shook her head. “We don’t have any pear trees.”

  Great. Now how was I going to find this?

  I needn’t have worried. The key knew exactly what I was after and began to vibrate as I got closer and closer to the pear tree. It actually wasn’t a pear tree, but a large tree fern. It just happened to have a golden pear growing on it.

  I picked the pear. I left the garden. It was too easy, really. I felt as if I should have had to scale a fence or something, at least. I would miss that twelve dollars, though. I sure as heck would. Most expensive ten minutes of my entire life.

  After I left for school to go to work, Puck saw Marcos. She told me about it later. She went to her car, but it didn’t start. She thought it might be the battery, and she got ready to call me, but knew I was on my way to work, and decided to call her mother instead. Lucky for her, Marcos just happened to be in the parking lot, and he saw her struggling with her car. He came over and checked it out.

  She asked him where he’d been today at school, and Marcos told her he’d been at in school suspension. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it, so Puck didn’t push it.

  It was her battery all right. Always prepared, Marcos had jumper cables in the back of his car, so he gave Puck a jump. Wouldn’t you know it? Her battery was too far gone to be jumped. There just wasn’t enough juice in it to start her car. So, Marcos offered Puck a ride home. Which she would have been happy to take, but she thought she should call her mom and let her know about the car first. So Puck called home. Her mother said that she should go ahead and get the car towed to a service station.

  Marcos said that was silly. It was just the battery. It was an easy fix. Even I could have handled this one. I learned something in auto. All they needed was to buy the new battery, and he could put it in for Puck. He’d do it free, he said.

  Puck thought this was a great idea, but her mother disagreed. She didn’t approve of Puck’s closeness to humans, and thought that accepting this kindness would only encourage Puck in her pursuit of these kinds of relationships. Puck tried to reason with her mother, but Puck says that her mother is too old to be reasoned with. So, she hung up her phone and told Marcos she’d have to wait until the tow truck got there, and she’d understand if he couldn’t hang around to give her a ride home.

  Marcos said he’d wait with her until the tow truck arrived.

  For some reason, it took a very a long time for the tow truck to get there. It normally wouldn’t have bothered Puck, because she liked the idea of hanging out and talking with her friends, and Marcos was her friend. However, today, for starters, it was kind of chilly outside. It never gets really cold in Sarasota, but it does get to the point where it’s not tank top weather. Puck was dressed for ninety-five degree weather and it was in the low seventies. She wasn’t cold, exactly, but she was uncomfortable. To top it off, she felt a little awkward around Marcos, considering the fact that she and I had been talking about him behind his back, and had pretty much concluded he was a traitor. She thought about approaching him on the subject herself, but decided that it was better that I did it whenever I was ready.

  So she and Marcos stood, sat, and squatted in various parts of the parking lot. They had awkward bits of conversation, about the weather, about classes, about the food in the cafeteria even. But they didn’t talk about the baby or the mission or about me. The subjects were taboo, and they both seemed to know it.

  Marcos noticed Puck was cold. He gave her his jacket to wear. She was grateful. They tried to continue talking.

  Finally, Puck couldn’t stand it anymore. She said, “You know, you never told Russ whatever it was you wanted to tell him on Friday.”

  Marcos looked startled. He said that he hadn’t. It was true. But he would. He just hadn’t had a chance to talk to me alone since then.

  The tow truck showed up at that point. After Puck arrived at home, she realized that she was still wearing Marcos’ jacket. She’d have to give it back to him at school the next day. But when she took it off, a piece of paper fluttered out of the pocket. Puck picked it up and unfolded i
t. It was a letter.

  Puck was waiting for me when I got out of Selby Gardens. She said it was important and that she couldn’t wait to see me, so she’d taken a cab here, since her car was out of commission. I didn’t know yet that her car was out of commission, and she kept trying to get me to read some letter, so eventually, I just made her sit down and tell me what happened. She related to me the events of her afternoon, including the busted up car and Marcos’ jacket, finally leading up to the point in which she found the letter.

  “So what does the letter say?” I asked her.

  “You should just read it,” she said.

  I took it from her. It was starting to get dark and we were sitting on a bench that overlooked the bay right outside of Selby. I couldn’t read the letter in the scant light, so we went back to my car, and I turned on the interior light. I couldn’t imagine what Marcos could have in a letter that could be so important, but I had a feeling that it had something to do with his knowing who the baby’s real father was.

  I looked at Puck. “Will I know who it is? Who the father is, after I read this?”

  “I think so,” she said. “It’s not conclusive, but … just read it.”

  I didn’t know if I wanted to know, suddenly. I’d kind of grown a little attached to the idea of being the baby’s dad. But only a little. I unfolded the letter, and spread it out against my leg, smoothing out the creases.

  It said:

  Dear M,

  Hey baby, how’s it goin? I was goin to talk to you after third period, but I didn’t see you in the hall. I know it was my idea to keep this a secret, but sometimes, I just don’t want to. You are my dream boy. You complete me. Let’s get together tonight, please? I have something planned with R, but I’ll blow him off. I need to see you.

  Love,

  Cindi

  Wordlessly, I handed the letter back to Puck. I pulled my car door closed and started the car. Puck put her hand on my mine, stopping me from taking the car out of park.

  “Russ?” she said. “What do you think it means?

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. I was too floored, too upset, too angry to speak. Marcos was “M.” I thought back to the way Puck and I had joked about that on the way back from the police station. What an idiot I was. I hadn’t seen it. Why would Marcos have volunteered to babysit for the kid for free? Because it was his kid. Why had he been nice to me? Because he felt guilty that I was bearing his responsibility. How had he gotten into Cindi’s email? She’d probably told him her password. The only question I couldn’t answer was why hadn’t he told me? How could he have let us go on this stupid wild goose chase? Asking questions of everyone in school, when all along, he knew that he was the one. And I’d nearly been killed by that damned nymph. He’d knowingly let me go into dangerous situations without telling me.

  “We don’t know if it was in September of last year,” said Puck.

  I looked at her. “It’s him,” I said, and that was all.

  “I think so too,” she said softly. “What are we going to do?”

  “You’re not doing anything,” I said. “I’m going to go get Marcos and get the baby back.”

  “Russ, that would be stupid,” she said. But I didn’t listen to her.

  I called Marcos and told him to meet me at the school outside the Auto Shop. Puck didn’t like it, but I dropped her off at her house and didn’t waste time listening to her. This was something she couldn’t possibly understand. Marcos was the man responsible for the wreck of my life, and he’d pretended to be my friend. I had to deal with him in a way that Puck wouldn’t approve of. It was a guy thing. Hell, maybe it was a human thing. I didn’t know, but I did know that I’d never felt so angry or hurt or betrayed in my entire life.

  I waited for Marcos for about ten minutes, and then he pulled up in his car. He got out warily and called to me, “What’s this about, Russ?”

  I held out the letter from Cindi.

  He walked to me, “What’s that?” he asked.

  I handed it to him. He looked at it and then back at me. He folded the letter up and stuffed it into his pants pocket. “I knew I shouldn’t keep carrying this around.”

  “Yeah, because I might find out that you’re a backstabbing bastard?” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Russ,” he said.

  “I am too,” I said. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am,” he said.

  I laughed sarcastically. “Yeah. With friends like you … .”

  “Look, I love her,” said Marcos. “She loves me. You and her were just a cover she used. Cindi and me, what we had, it was real.”

  “So real that you stuck me with your kid,” I said.

  “I didn’t know she was pregnant,” said Marcos. “It all happened so fast. I wanted to see him. I wanted … but your family is rich and I thought it would be better for him—”

  “I’m not rich,” I said.

  “Your parents own a home in Sarasota. That’s rich,” he countered. “Does it look like I come from a long line of home owners?”

  “So what? You were just never going to say anything? You were going to ruin my life so the kid’s could be better?”

  “No,” said Marcos. “I was going to tell you. I wanted to tell you. It’s just it was so hard. I couldn’t ever seem to find the right moment.”

  “There is no right moment to tell your best friend you’ve betrayed him,” I said evenly. And then, I punched him.

  I’m not proud of it. It wasn’t smart. Marcos could take me in a fight any day. But I was so angry that I couldn’t think, and so I did it. My fist caught him square on the jaw, and we both stumbled back in shock and pain. I’d never really punched anyone like that before. I was startled by how much it hurt. I felt as though my fist had exploded in pain. We stood like that for a few minutes, eyeing each other, me cradling my fist and Marcos cradling his jaw. Then I lunged for him again, and it was on.

  I punched Marcos twice in the stomach. One-two, with each of my fists.

  Marcos decked me in the face, his fist colliding with my eye.

  I screamed in pain and anger and swung my hand around, hitting his cheekbone.

  His face turned sideways on impact, but he kept coming, leaning into the force of my blow. He used it to power his next move, another punch in my face, bloodying my nose.

  The pain whited me out for a moment. I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel anything except pain. I kicked at Marcos in the shin area, but I only succeeded in getting my legs tangled in his. He tried to move, but he tripped and fell forward. He put his hands out to break his fall, but I kicked him in the stomach. His head collided with the pavement beneath us with a sickening thud.

  Marcos lay motionless in front of me. I wiped my bloody nose on the back of my hand and sucked in my breath. What had I done? He was unconscious. This was no good. I felt a little guilty for a second, but it faded fast. Marcos deserved it. He’d betrayed me. The biggest issue was that now that Marcos was unconscious, how was he going to go to the Hill and get the real baby back?

  I dragged Marcos to my car, shoved him the back seat, and drove to Puck’s house. I’d take Marcos to the Hill myself. I just didn’t know where it was. Puck would tell me. I’d take Marcos. We’d get the baby back.

  I banged on the door of Puck’s house. Puck opened it. She stood in the doorway. She didn’t invite me in. “Russ, what are you doing here?” she demanded. “My mother is going to kill me. I’m not supposed to be talking to you.”

  “I’ll be out of your hair in just a second,” I said. “I just need you to tell me how to get to the Hill where the Korrigan Queen is.”

  “Russ, you’re not going,” she said. “Not now.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “But Marcos—”

  “Is unconscious,” I said.

  Puck’s eyes widened. “Did you make him unconscious?”

  “Bastard deserved it,” I said.

  Puck pushed past me and ran to my car. I fo
llowed. She threw open my back door and climbed into the backseat. She covered her mouth with her hand. “Crap.”

  Right then, I hadn’t actually considered that this might be a bad thing. I was mostly focusing on the fact that my search for the baby’s father was over and that I was going to stop the Korrigan Queen. “Where’s the Hill?”

  “Maybe you killed him,” said Puck.

  “He’s breathing,” I said. “Come on, Puck. Just tell me where it is.”

  “It’s not going to work with him unconscious,” said Puck.

  “Sure it will. Now tell me.”

  “Maybe you should take him to a hospital.” She bit her lip.

  I was exasperated. “Puck, would you stop worrying about Marcos for two seconds? He lied to us, remember? He betrayed us.”

  She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. “Humans are so fragile.” She looked up at me with fear in her eyes. “I don’t want you to go there, Russ.” Then she gasped. “You’re bleeding.” She got out of the car and grabbed my chin.

  I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand and looked at it. She was right. Still bleeding. Gross. “It’s just a nosebleed.”

  “He broke your nose?” Her voice was panicked.

  “It’s only bleeding. It’s not broken.”

  “And after he did that, you still made him all … dead-looking.”

  “He’s not dead. He’s only unconscious.” I wiped at my nose again. “And I didn’t really do it. He tripped and hit his head. Come on, you know that I could never take Marcos in a fight.”

  “Fight,” repeated Puck, looking green.

  “Don’t faeries ever get hurt?” I asked. She was completely overreacting.

  Puck turned back to Marcos. “Marcos,” she whispered. “Wake up.” She looked up at me. “When is he going to wake up?”

  “Why do you care? He’s a total jackass.”

  She bit her lip again. “Not always, though. I mean, he did help us some of the time. And I think he really wants the real baby back.”

  Well, at least she was starting to focus on what was important right now. Getting the baby back. “Where’s the Hill?”