Once Upon a Changeling Read online

  Puck stood up behind me. “What did she leave in the bathroom?”

  I turned on her, angrily biting out the words. I wasn’t mad at Puck. I was angry with Cindi. She could apologize until the end of the world, but being sorry would never be enough. “She tried to kill it, you know. She didn’t kill it, but she tried to. She left it in the trashcan in the bathroom, and it wasn’t dead, and Irene heard it moving around. She didn’t hear it cry, because it never cries.

  “Fuck. Listen to me, I’m calling him an ‘it.’ The kid. He’s a boy.”

  Puck put a hand over her mouth. “She had a baby?”

  “Cindi went to the bathroom, delivered a baby, cut the umbilical cord with fingernail scissors she had in her purse, tried to suffocate it, then stuffed it in the trashcan. And then she came back out and danced with me. Like nothing was wrong. Like she hadn’t just … .” I sat back down on the weight-lifting bench. I was a little worked up.

  “She tried to kill your baby?”

  I laughed. “No. It wasn’t my baby. That’s what everyone thinks, though. They think I put her up to it. But she was sleeping with someone else behind my back.”

  “Do you think that’s why she did it? Because it wasn’t yours?”

  “She was nuts,” I said. “Cindi said it wasn’t a baby. She said it was like a changeling or something. She must have gone to the faerie convention in town one too many times. I can still hear her. ‘It wasn’t a real baby. They took the real baby. I saw them. I was just trying to get it back. You have to kill the changeling or they don’t bring the real baby back.’”

  “Wow,” Puck said. “So what happened to the baby?”

  “My parents fought for custody and won. He lives with me now.”

  “Why, if it’s not yours?”

  “I … didn’t tell them that it wasn’t mine. I’ve never told anybody that.” Why had I told her?

  “Are you lying?” she asked. “Are you just saying that?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Maybe you’re trying to flirt with me,” she said.

  I smiled tightly. “Yeah. This story gets me all the chicks.”

  She shrugged off my sarcasm. “How do you know, anyway?” she asked. “How could you know for sure the baby wasn’t yours?”

  “Because,” I said, “I’m a virgin.”

  “Dude,” said Marcos, “those punk chicks are fugly.” Marcos was a work-study kid who was only on campus for the last half of the day. We had auto class together every day, or Automotive Technology, as it was formally called. He was the only person in the school who talked to me, even though usually the auto guys only talked to each other. Marcos was a good guy, though. I didn’t know why he was nice to me, but since he was basically my only shot at something like a friend these days, I didn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

  “She’s not,” I said. “She’s pretty. Really.”

  We were in the auto shop at school. This class was going the way most Auto classes did. Marcos did all the work, and I watched. At the beginning of the year, I’d tried to help, but inevitably I just kept messing everything up. Finally Marcos told me, “Man, just let it go. I got it.” After that, I just watched him. I was trying to absorb learning through osmosis.

  “So,” said Marcos. “You gonna ask her out?” He was using the wrench to tighten the bolts on a tire. The Automotive Technology classroom was divided into two parts. One contained the classroom, with desks and a chalkboard. Marcos and I were in the shop area, where the actual cars were. We were working on a ‘92 Jetta that was parked on one side of the shop. Well, Marcos was working. I was watching.

  “No way,” I said. “I’m not into her or anything.”

  “Funny thing, ‘cause you keep talking about her.”

  Did I? “Well, it was weird. First she lifts my weights like they don’t weigh anything, and the next thing I know I’m spilling my life story to her. I told her stuff that I’ve never told anybody before.”

  “Like?”

  “If I tell you, then I’ll have told somebody else.”

  “Don’t trust me?”

  “You know about last year, with Cindi at the prom. Right?” Marcos and I never talked about that shit, but of course, he knew. I never saw a reason to bring it up before.

  Marcos stopped what he was doing, looking clearly uncomfortable. “Yeah. I know. Hey, you know, I always liked Cindi. She was a real nice girl.”

  Yeah. I probably shouldn’t have brought any of this up. Marcos was a Cindi fan. He’d probably start telling me just exactly what he thought of me in a few seconds. “The baby isn’t mine,” I blurted suddenly.

  Marcos went back to tightening bolts. “How do you know that?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Cindi and I never, you know, did it.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. “You’re lying.”

  I sighed. “Forget it,” I said. “Let me help you with that.”

  “Dude,” said Marcos, “no need to get crazy.” He faced me, tapping the wrench into his palm thoughtfully. “So why are you taking care of that kid?”

  Why was I? “It’s just easier that way,” I said. “Besides, no one would believe me.”

  “Not now they wouldn’t. But if you’d spoken up in the beginning, they might have.” He looked away from me. “What’s the kid like, anyway?”

  I shrugged. “Good, I guess. Quiet.” My mother was worried. The baby almost never made a sound. We knew he wasn’t deaf, because he reacted to noise, but Mom worried that some kind of brain damage had occurred when Cindi tried to kill him, and that was why he never cried. I just kept hoping it meant he was very sweet-tempered.

  “What are you gonna do?” Marcos asked me.

  “Do?” I said. “Nothing. I’m not going to do anything.”

  “You don’t want to know who the kid’s real father is?”

  “I … ” Did I want to know that? Did I want to be able to picture the guy who’d slept with Cindi? Imagine the two of them in my mind, naked skin on naked skin? “No,” I said. “I don’t really care.”

  Marcos nodded. He seemed satisfied with my answer. “Well, okay, then. I won’t tell anybody, man. Your secret’s safe with me.”

  I was grateful.

  Later that evening, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about what he’d asked me. I was working at the Sub Stop, and it was crowded as all hell, because the annual faerie convention was happening in town and the half of its presenters were staying in the Holiday Inn behind the Sub Stop. I barely had any time to breathe in between making subs for people with wings tied to their backs. I wished that the guy who wrote faerie books had never settled down in Sarasota and started this convention. It made the town more crowded than Siesta Key during Spring Break. And during hurricane season at that. You’d think they’d keep their distance.

  But even with all of that going on, I couldn’t help but wonder if I hadn’t been lying to myself. Maybe I really did want to know who the real father of the kid was. Because there wasn’t any reason for me to raise this kid, was there? Maybe I could still realize my dreams if I didn’t have that responsibility.

  “So I was thinking about what you said,” Puck was saying.

  It was lunchtime, and, for some unknown reason, she’d sat with me. I still thought it was kind of weird I’d opened up to this girl, but I had to admit it was nice to eat lunch with someone.

  “What I said about what?” I asked.

  “Changelings,” she said.

  When I said … ? Oh. “Hey, I never said anything about changelings. That was Cindi.”

  “Right,” said Puck, spearing a piece of lettuce with her fork. Ranch dressing dripped off of it and onto her tray. She really liked ranch dressing, apparently, considering the way she’d drenched her salad in it. She folded the lettuce into her mouth and chewed. I waited. “Cindi was right.”

  “What?” I said. Why would she say that? Cindi was crazy. Totally crazy.

  “You know the faerie convention that’s in
town?”

  “Of course I do. They’re all staying in the hotel behind where I work. I see crazy faerie people all day.”

  “You don’t like faeries?” she asked, taking another bite of her salad.

  “Not really,” I said.

  She looked disappointed.

  “I take it you do,” I said.

  She shrugged. “I went to hear a speaker at the convention last night.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “I went because of you. I remembered what you said and the speaker was going to talk about changelings, so I went. I thought you’d be interested.”

  Wow, she’d gone to see a speech because of me? That was really cool of her. “I really appreciate that,” I said. “I do. That’s awesome of you, but Cindi was nuts. That’s why they locked her up.”

  Puck shrugged. “Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn’t. Why don’t you like faeries?” said Puck.

  “Uh … It’s not that I don’t like them, exactly. I just have never really been interested in them. After all, it’s not like they’re real or anything. And what’s so exciting about little people with wings, anyway?”

  “Not all of the Fey are little people with wings, you know,” said Puck.

  I didn’t know, but I nodded. Apparently, the chick liked faeries. I was hurting for friends, so I didn’t really mind. Besides, she was hot. In a weird way.

  “Fey can be all different sizes and shapes and colors,” she said.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “That’s good, actually, because they don’t really like the fact that some humans are obsessed with them and are trying to learn their secrets.”

  “Really?” She was talking about faeries as if they were real. That wasn’t a good sign. I was going to have to consider how badly exactly I was hurting for friends. Maybe I wasn’t hurting this bad. After all, she did look strange. Maybe that was because she really was strange.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I’m boring you out of your skull.”

  “No,” I said. Scaring me was more like it. “You aren’t boring.”

  “I probably sound nuts,” she laughed. “I’m just, you know, repeating what the guy said at the convention last night is all.”

  “You don’t sound nuts,” I said. I guess I was a good liar. She seemed to buy that.

  “So,” she said, “what do you want to talk about?”

  What? Damn it, I had no idea. “Uh … I like your hair,” I floundered.

  “You do?”

  “The cut. It’s really cool.”

  “It’s called a Chelsea,” she told me. “Oh, but I bet you knew that.”

  “No. I didn’t. Why is it called that?”

  “It originated in Chelsea—in London.”

  I nodded. “Cool.” This conversation was so awkward that it was ridiculous. We were both quiet for a while.

  Then Puck burst out with, “Look, I’m just gonna tell you about changelings, okay?”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “Okay. Well, Cindi was right. One of the ways to get the Fey to bring back the original child is to injure the changeling. A lot of times that will make the Fey return the real baby.”

  If she wanted to talk about this, fine. But I really had no idea what she was going on about. “I don’t even know what a changeling is.”

  “A changeling is a Fey that takes the appearance of human child and takes the baby’s place with the mother. Sometimes they’re called killcrops, because if a family raised a changeling instead of the baby, it would often cause their crops to fail.”

  “So it’s like an old wives tale. Some way of explaining why the crops didn’t grow?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why would a faerie—what did you call it—Fey? Why would he want to change places with a human baby?”

  “The Fey take the human babies and sacrifice them to the Magic. It gives them power.”

  “Gross. I thought faeries were supposed to be sweet and cute.”

  “Not from the way the guy at the convention was talking. They’re dangerous. They can be very cruel.”

  I could almost like faeries if they were creepy, I guess. Or, I could almost be interested in them.

  “The other thing he said was that there were other ways to reveal the changeling. One way is to brew beer in acorn. Another way was to boil water in an eggshell.”

  “Weird.”

  “Maybe you should try doing it?”

  I laughed. She really was crazy. “I don’t even know how to brew beer,” I told her. “And the kid’s normal.”

  “Is he?” she asked. “Is he really normal?”

  “Yes,” I said firmly. She was starting to make me kind of angry.

  “He doesn’t cry all the time or not at all?”

  “He’s a quiet kid,” I said. “So what?” What right did she have to spin this stupid theory to me? To talk about faeries and fey and changelings?

  “Maybe Cindi was right,” said Puck.

  Okay, claiming that my insane ex wasn’t actually insane was crossing the line. “Maybe I never should have told you any of this,” I said, standing up.

  “Don’t go, Russ,” said Puck. “I just thought that—”

  “Stop, really,” I said. “This isn’t just a joke, you know. This is my life. So I’d appreciate it if you’d just—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Save it,” I said, and I walked away.

  That evening, I went to see Cindi in the facility she lived in. Her parents had told me never to see her, but I never liked her parents anyway. They were just pissed because my family got custody of the baby. I guess the court figured that the parents of a girl who would want to kill her baby might have done something wrong in raising her. They didn’t want them to have the chance to screw up another kid. Of course, I wasn’t sure that the kid wasn’t really screwed up, anyway.

  My mom was right. It wasn’t right for a baby never to cry or make any noise at all. The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. According to them, he was perfectly healthy, and I tended to agree with them. At least out loud. But I had to admit that something wasn’t right about him. Maybe I’d always known. Maybe that was why I could never muster much feeling for him. Not because he wasn’t mine. Because he wasn’t human.

  Part of me wanted to believe that. Probably because it didn’t make me sound so callous. If what Cindi had said, if what Puck had said today at lunch, if that was true, then I wasn’t utterly incapable of feeling. I just had an inhuman child that was living in my house, eating my food. A monster of sorts in place of my girlfriend’s baby.

  But that was nuts. And as comforting as it would be to give in to insanity, I knew I had to own up to the fact that I was just too angry with Cindi to ever care about her child, and that was why I’d never felt any sort of emotion for him. Besides, it could be worse. I could hate him. Want to kill him. I didn’t have any negative emotions toward him. He just made me feel empty.

  So, if I knew that was true, why had I come to see Cindi? I hadn’t been to see her in months. At first, I’d come to see her every day. I’d wanted an explanation from her, I think. And maybe I was still half in love with her, despite what she’d done. But she never made any sense. She just raved about getting the real baby back. She begged me to help her. Said that I was her only hope and all kinds of crap. But she never apologized. She didn’t show one tiny shred of regret.

  I’d been there so often months ago that the nurse in Cindi’s department recognized me. “Russ!” she said. “I knew you’d be back, even though Cindi’s parents were trying to keep you away.”

  “I don’t care what her parents think,” I said.

  “Of course you don’t. I think she’s missed you, too. The two of you are so sweet. Young love.” She smiled at me.

  I felt a little guilty as she showed me to Cindi’s room. The nurse thought I still cared about Cindi, and I didn’t. I wondered if I was a really awful person. On the other hand, it was kind of creepy for the
nurse to think I was in love with a crazy girl who’d tried to kill her own child.

  Cindi was in the same room as she’d been a few months ago. She looked the same too. She was in a white nightgown that came to her knees and a pair of powder blue slippers. Her blonde hair had been gathered into a messy ponytail by one of the nurses. Cindi certainly hadn’t done it. She wasn’t capable of much lately. I still thought she looked much different without makeup. She wasn’t the same girl I dated. This fresh-faced, sloppy girl who never got dressed was her younger sister or her inner child. It wasn’t the Cindi I had known.

  “Look who’s here, Cindi,” said the nurse as she showed me into Cindi’s room.

  Cindi looked up. “Russ,” she said.

  She recognized me. Sometimes she didn’t.

  “She’s pretty lucid today,” said the nurse to me. “I think we’re getting the right combination of meds.”

  The meds. Cindi had claimed—at one point a few months ago—that she would be fine if they’d just take her off all the drugs. She said the pills made her head fuzzy. “The pills are making me crazy,” she’d told me. “I’m not crazy. It’s the pills.” She’d begged me to help her, but I hadn’t. She needed the pills. Whether or not she knew it, she did.

  “Hi Cindi,” I said.

  “I’ll leave you two alone,” said the nurse, grinning like the Cheshire Cat. She shut the door, locking me in.

  I sat down on Cindi’s bed.

  “You have the changeling, don’t you?” she asked me.

  I didn’t say anything. I just looked at her. Why was I here again?

  “Don’t tell me it’s not a changeling. I know what it is. It’s not my baby.”

  I wasn’t sure why I’d come, but I knew it had something to do with that conversation I’d had with Puck. I guess I was curious. “Why do you think it’s a changeling?” I asked her.

  “I saw them take him. The Korrigan. They came, and they took my baby. And they left the thing.”

  Korrigan? “They came into the bathroom?”

  She nodded. “Through the walls.”

  Great.

  “They took the baby. Back through the walls,” she continued.

  “The nurse was wrong,” I said. “Your meds are still off.”