The Glitter Trap Read online

  “Wake up! We’ve got work to do!” she says. “And get me some coffee!”

  I moan and roll over. “I’m too sleepy.”

  “Get me some coffee!” she repeats. When I keep ignoring her, she sticks her head in my ear and starts humming the 1812 Overture as loud as she can. That’s the one that goes DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! and then has a couple of cymbal crashes. But instead of cymbal crashes, Katarina snorts really loud.

  You try sleeping through the 1812 Overture when it’s being performed in your ear by a cranky fairy who wants coffee.

  Saturday morning, 6:00 a.m.:

  “Go get some rags so we can practice making dresses,” Katarina says, sipping from the toothpaste cap full of coffee I got her.

  “We don’t have any rags. How about paper towels?”

  “Fairy godmothers can make dresses out of anything.”

  I get a roll of towels and Katarina gives me the spell: “Out of litter make a dress that glitters!”

  “Does it have to? Glitter got us into this mess,” I say.

  “Yes!”

  “Why?”

  “A good dress glitters. Read your fairy tales.”

  I think my first try at paper-towel-into-dress actually looks okay. Sure, it doesn’t glitter much. Well, not at all. But it has armholes and a neck hole and everything. Katarina’s only comment is to blow her nose in it very loudly. She is so rude!

  The bed gets stacked with rejected dresses: the sleeves are too long, the hems are too short, the sashes don’t sash. And, worst of all, the glitter doesn’t glitter.

  I tell Katarina we should just conjure up a credit card and go to the mall, but she points at the paper towels and tells me to keep practicing. So I try it fifty-two more times; the room gets so crammed with ugly paper-towel dresses we can hardly move.

  Finally, Katarina throws a tantrum. “You’re setting fashion back five hundred years! I made better dresses in the Dark Ages! And in the Dark Ages we didn’t have paper towels! We didn’t even have rags! We used dirt! And the dresses made from dirt were lovely!” She’s so mad she starts jumping up and down on the bed, which is not a good thing to do when you’re three inches tall and there’s a tower of paper towel dresses rising above you.

  “Watch out!” I say.

  Too late. The dresses fall on top of her, and she disappears from view.

  Gone, but not silent. She shrieks, “You’re hopeless! Do you hear me? HOPELESS!”

  Saturday afternoon, 12:15 p.m.:

  But I’m not so hopeless that we don’t go on to the next lesson, which involves hours in the basement trying to turn vegetables into vehicles.

  I try. I really do. But the closest I get is turning a green pepper into a skateboard with little legs instead of wheels.

  The skateboard scampers all over the basement like a clumsy puppy, and I laugh out loud when it tosses Katarina into the air as if she’s the best dog toy ever.

  “Go away!” she says. “Bad skateboard! Bad!”

  Instead, the skateboard scoops her up onto its back and scampers in circles while Katarina hangs on by her fingernails. “Put me down!”

  I finally catch the skateboard and pull Katarina off. When Julius was being a bad kitten, I used to cuddle him and sing him to sleep. The skateboard is almost a puppy, so I cuddle it and sing, “Go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, little skateboard.…”

  Katarina shakes her head. “Oh, please!”

  Ten minutes and a hundred choruses of “go to sleep” later, the skateboard snoozes in my lap, its little legs curled up contentedly.

  I see that Katarina’s gone to sleep, too, so I gently shake her. She wakes up with a start: “I wasn’t sleeping,” she says. “I was resting my eyes! On to the next lesson!”

  Saturday afternoon, 4:30 p.m.:

  When we’re back in my room, squeezed in between stacks of paper-towel dresses, Katarina tells me to find a rat to turn into a footman.

  “What’s a footman?” I ask.

  “I’m constantly amazed at the ignorance of this modern age. It’s like IQ points drop every century.”

  I can’t help being snarky. “Maybe I’ll know what a footman is when I get to be five hundred years old.”

  Katarina lights up with pleasure and stares at herself in the mirror: “You really think I only look five hundred?” To be honest, she looks exhausted; even her wings seem tired. But I’m not going to tell her that.

  Then she says, in a much happier tone, “A footman is a personal servant. He opens doors, carries luggage, stands behind you at dinner, and polishes the silver. They’re very handy. Now, find a rat!”

  “We don’t have any rats.” I glance down at the windowsill. “How about an ant?”

  Katarina sighs. “It’s better than nothing. Say, ‘On count of three, a footman you will be.’”

  So I try it over and over and over again for what seems like forever. The ant is really small; besides, hitting a moving target is hard.

  Finally, the spell hits the ant perfectly on his little head. There’s a flash of light, and a tiny man no bigger than Katarina appears. He’s dressed in a blue satin suit and wears a white wig.

  “Look, Katarina! I did it! I did it!”

  When there’s no answer, I turn to find Katarina sound asleep on my pillow, snoring even louder than usual.

  And just then Mom calls from the kitchen, “Lacey! Dinner’s on the table!”

  As soon as the little footman hears “dinner,” he springs to attention and says, in a tiny, helium-high voice, “Milady! I shall serve you!” I grab him as he runs for the door.

  “You have to stay here,” I say.

  “Must serve you! Must serve you! Must serve you!” He scrambles out of my hand, reaches the door, and tries to squeeze under it. Geez. Mom doesn’t notice everything, but she’s sure to see a three-inch-tall footman in satin. (Plus, Julius will probably eat him.) I have to think fast. “Footman! Stop!”

  “Must serve you! Must serve you!”

  “You can serve me by…polishing the silver! It’s an urgent life-or-death silver-polishing crisis!”

  He turns, intrigued. “Must polish silver! Must polish silver! Must polish silver.”

  If you only had an ant-sized brain, you wouldn’t be very smart, either.

  I pick him up and put him back down on the dresser, where Katarina tossed all my jewelry. His eyes open wide at the sight of my fake silver chains and bracelets. “Oooh,” he says, like he just walked into the vault at Tiffany’s. He sits right down, pulls a tiny rag out of his pocket, and starts to polish. This is going to take him all night. Good.

  I try to shake Katarina awake, but she snores some more and rolls over. I’m worried about her. What if she’s catching a cold? Think how cranky she’ll be then!

  Hoping all she needs is a good night’s sleep, I gently put her into the jewelry box and close the lid. “Good night, Katarina.”

  Next to the jewelry box, the footman keeps polishing.

  Saturday evening, 8:00 p.m.:

  I babysit Madison while Mom and Dad are at the restaurant. She wanted to watch the Sleeping Beauty cartoon for the one-billionth time. I figured I could learn something useful, so I let her.

  Usually, Julius sits on my lap whenever we watch a movie, kneading my shirt with his paws and purring. But tonight he just glares at me from the doorway. I know that animals hate me, but Julius isn’t just an animal—he’s family. And seeing him like this makes me so sad I want to cry.

  I try to stop thinking about it and concentrate on the movie. On the TV, the part where the fairies turn the gown from pink to blue and back again comes on, and Madison laughs like she always does.

  “That’s a lot harder than it looks,” I say.

  Saturday evening, 11:59 p.m.:

  I sit in my bedroom so tired I can barely keep my eyes open, but I really want to see the dresses change back at midnight—not to mention the footman. He’s still polishing the “silver,” and my jewelry h
as never looked better. But even if I did want to fall asleep, there’s no room on the dress-covered bed.

  Katarina snores in the jewelry box as I watch the seconds tick away on my clock. 11:59:57. 11:59:58. 11:59:59.

  12:00.

  A faint breath of wind blows past me, and the sixty-seven dresses in the room are replaced by sixty-seven paper towels that flutter down to the floor like leaves. It’s too bad Julius refuses to come into my room. He would have really liked chasing them.

  The newly restored ant climbs along a silver necklace, looking confused. I pick the necklace up and move him to the windowsill. If ants dream, he’s going to think he’s been having a weird one.

  As I crawl into bed, I look at the clock and realize we’ve got exactly a week to go. A week minus three minutes, to be exact. I better get some sleep. As hard as today was, I know Katarina’s going to have ten times more for me to do tomorrow.

  I’m still asleep when Mom comes into my room the next morning. “Wake up, lazybones. It’s late!”

  I’m surprised to see sun pouring into the room. It’s 10:30! I was expecting Katarina to start pulling my eyelids open at the crack of dawn, but she must have overslept, too. We’ve wasted hours! What about our schedule?

  Mom looks at the paper towels on the floor. “This is where my paper towels went! What have you been doing in here?”

  “Top secret project for the school play. I’m on the stage crew.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes, didn’t I tell you?”

  Mom buys my lie—another one! I know it’s all for a good cause, but I still feel guilty about lying. She says, “Well, if you end up not using them, stack them up and bring them back to the kitchen.”

  As soon as Mom leaves, I hurry over to the dresser and tap on the closed lid of the jewelry box. “Hello? Katarina? Are you awake?”

  There’s no answer from inside. I tap again. “Katarina? It’s ten thirty! Get up!”

  Still no answer. I pull open the jewelry-box lid, expecting to find a cranky little fairy who needs her coffee.

  Instead, I find a cocoon. It’s about the size of Katarina, maybe a little bigger, and it’s absolutely beautiful. The metallic-looking surface shimmers in the light with hazy ripples of blue and green and the faintest pink. Like it’s going to become the world’s most beautiful butterfly.

  But I don’t need the world’s most beautiful butterfly—I need Katarina! We’ve got work to do!

  Tapping very gently on the surface of the cocoon, I say, “Katarina?” When there’s no answer, I put my ear close to it and hear something that’s very faint and far away. At first, I think it’s the sound of the ocean, like when you put a seashell up to your ear. A very soft Roarr! Roarrr! Rooaaarr!

  But it’s not the ocean. It’s Katarina snoring inside.

  I try to figure out what’s going on. The night we met, she said something about cocooning, but why now? Katarina did seem super tired and droopy yesterday. Maybe cocooning is a fairy’s way of healing herself.

  But how long is it going to take?

  I start Googling. Wikipedia says a cocoon stage can last days, weeks, or even years. Thanks for being specific, Wikipedia!

  That was sarcasm.

  Wikipedia also says that most butterflies come out of their cocoons right at sunrise. Maybe I’ll be lucky, and Katarina will be good as new first thing tomorrow morning. We’ll be a day behind schedule, but I think that still leaves us enough time to get Paige her dream and get us out of trouble.

  I sure hope so.

  So, instead of having to spend Sunday doing more wand training, I’ve got the day free. I think about calling Sunny and hanging out with her, but that would mean even more lying. It’s better to let her go on thinking Mom’s got the flu. I’ll make it up to her at school tomorrow.

  I end up sitting on the couch all day watching football with Dad. He’s always desperate for a football buddy in this house full of girls. I’ve spent so many years pretending to be interested that I know a lot about the game—which teams are which, who the players are, and how it’s all about blocking. But today I’m distracted, worrying about Katarina. So I jump a little when Dad shouts, “What a play! Look at that guy dance!”

  Mom sticks her head in the doorway looking hopeful. “Dancing?” She’s disappointed when she sees it’s just football.

  Then Madison comes running in. “We’re dancing?” She raises her arms and spins and spins and spins in front of the TV like a crazy ballerina. “I could do this forever!”

  Mom giggles, and Dad sighs as he misses a touchdown.

  Poor Dad.

  Please, I say to myself.

  Then I add in five more pleases just to be safe.

  It’s first thing Monday morning, and I’m hoping that Katarina is back in the land of the uncocooned. I slowly open the jewelry box.

  Nooooo! The cocoon looks exactly the same as it did when I checked it last night: not a smudge, not a crack.

  What am I going to do? I need help! If only I could tell Sunny about what’s going on. Sure, she’s no good in a crisis, but this is beyond crisis! This is…

  …bad.

  I need my best friend. The second I see Sunny, I’m going to tell her the whole story.

  I find Sunny in the hallway at school. She’s got her head in her locker, hunting for something.

  “Sunny! I need to talk you!”

  She just leans even deeper into her locker. “But I don’t want to talk to you. Ever.”

  She sounds mad—really mad. Madder than I’ve ever heard her. I say, “What’s wrong?”

  Sunny doesn’t say a single word. She just straightens up and looks at me.

  I can’t help it. I gasp out loud.

  She points at her bangs: “And this is after my mom tried to fix them!” Her bangs are short, uneven, and point in funny directions, like exclamation points that got loose and landed on her head. Sunny was worried about the salon butchering her hair, but even butchering would have been better than this.

  After seeing Sunny’s bangs, my problems don’t seem nearly as bad.

  Sunny takes the stocking cap she was searching for out of her locker and says, “This is all your fault.”

  “But, Sunny—”

  “I’m not talking to you till my hair grows back.”

  “I’m so sorry!”

  Sunny pulls the cap down over her head and stomps away.

  I’m a horrible friend.

  In math class, Mrs. Patel stands up front talking about our assignment, but I don’t hear a word she’s saying, because my mind is so full of my problems. My best friend has stopped speaking to me, and I’m a fairy-godmother-in-training without a trainer.…

  What if Katarina doesn’t wake up in time? Even if she does, we missed a whole day of wand training yesterday. And we’ve only got till Saturday!

  Mom always feels better about things when she makes a list, so I open my notebook. After I make sure that nobody is looking over my shoulder, I write, Fairy Godmother To Do, and start listing:

  1) Fix Paige’s singing voice.

  2) Get rid of Ann Estey.

  3) Get Paige the part.

  4) Make sure nothing goes wrong with the play on Saturday night.

  I think I’m done, and then I remember one more thing. I add:

  5)Fix things with Sunny.

  Hmm…I don’t know what Mom’s talking about. Writing out this list doesn’t make me feel better at all. In fact, I feel worse.

  Let’s start with number 1. I may be able to turn Paige’s singing voice blue, but I don’t know how to make it sound good. And number 2, getting rid of Ann Estey: even if I can do it, is that fair? Ann’s a nice girl who finally got her big chance. Now I’m supposed to take it away from her just to give Paige the part? (It was easier in the Cinderella story, because you hated the stepsisters so much. This shows why real life is so much more complicated than fairy tales.) And number 3 depends on number 1. Number 4 depends on number 3. Number 5—which is the mos
t important one of all—probably won’t get solved till Sunny’s hair grows out. How am I supposed to make everything work?

  “Lacey!”

  I jump in my seat and look up to see Mrs. Patel staring at me with her eyebrows raised. All the kids are looking at me, too. This must mean she just asked me a question about the equation she’s written on the board.

  I give the only answer I can: “Mrs. Patel, I just can’t do it.” And unless Katarina wakes up, that’s the truth.

  I know there’s a rehearsal for the play after school, so I stop by the auditorium to check things out. With less than a week to go, there’s a big crazy rush in here today. Kids paint scenery, build walls, aim lights, sew costumes, and yell at each other. Yell a lot. It makes the Hungry Moose seem like the library.

  I see that Ann Estey has just walked onto the stage, so I slip into a seat to watch. I’m hoping that she’ll be bad. If she’s bad, it won’t be such a rotten thing to replace her with Paige. Maybe she’ll sing too loud. Maybe she’ll sing too soft. Maybe she’ll forget the words.

  She doesn’t do any of these. She sings like an angel.

  There’s a hush in the auditorium as people stop yelling and hammering and sewing to listen to her. It’s the prettiest singing I’ve ever heard.

  Perfect note after perfect note comes out of Ann’s throat, and I know she must love to sing more than anything else in the world. I would be the worst person ever if I took this part away from her.

  After Ann finishes the song, everyone applauds and whistles, and she blushes. She’s not only talented, she’s humble! Mr. Griffith looks up from the piano, his eyes open for once. He says, “Thank you, Ann. I didn’t think it was possible, but you made my song sound even better.” No one ever accused Mr. Griffith of being humble.

  He looks offstage. “All right! Dancing mice, front and center! Where are my dancing mice!”

  Paige and three other girls walk to the middle of the stage. They don’t have their costumes yet, but they wear felt mouse ears and have tails made out of rope. Paige looks absolutely miserable. There’s no trace of an invisible spotlight on her today. How could it shine through those ugly ears?