Fair Folk Fell Read online

  Fair Folk Fell

  Fair Folk Book 1

  Sarah Peters

  Copyright © 2020 Sarah Peters

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: Tiffany

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Lea - we should never try writing a book together, but I'm glad we started this one

  and

  To Sonia - thank you for reminding me that America has authors too, and that Hawthorne is one of them

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  A Birthday Prologue

  A Perfect Day

  Taking a Walk

  Some Native Wildlife

  Mothman and the Prince

  Operating As Normal

  A Party By Any Other Name

  Mr. Monday

  An Intermission in Reality

  My Ice Pack Meets an Untimely End

  Late Night Horrors

  Honor Most Macabre

  The Curse of the Yellow Hotdog

  Cat Versus Cold

  The Best Made Plans

  Everything’s Going Fine Pt 1

  Everything’s Going Fine Pt 2

  Down by the River

  (Don’t) Let It Go

  Folk Fell and Folk Fair

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  Books By This Author

  A Birthday Prologue

  Before I begin with mundane introductions, I have a question.

  Why did Mom give me a diary for my birthday?

  I stared down at the offending book, which had come cruelly wrapped in an iPad box. A sparkly cover, littered with insipid cartoon fairies and reminiscent of a 1990s flower fever dream, twinkled up at me.

  I had not asked for a diary.

  I’d expected some cash, or maybe a new pair of socks, or the latest Dragon Crusaders game I’d been salivating after, but no.

  With a force of will greater than any I’d ever exerted before, I made myself look up at Mom. “Wow,” I managed to croak. “How cool.”

  Behind mom, Ellie and Erica cackled, clutching each other as if the strength of their glee couldn’t hold them up.

  Freaking twins.

  “Is this revenge?” I wondered, my eyes returning to the offending article. Its cover squished, like a wet loaf of bread. “Revenge for not being born a boy?”

  “Catherine,” Mom sighed. I knew that sigh. It was a sigh I’d heard for the last seventeen years, full of parental despair. “I thought it’d be nice for you to write down some of your stories.”

  “I don’t have any stories,” I replied automatically. I opened the diary. It was wide-ruled, like something you’d give a first grader who was still learning how to write. In fact, I was relatively certain that the last time I’d owned a diary, I hadn’t known the full alphabet.

  “You certainly tell me enough of them any time you get in trouble,” Mom grumbled. She stood up and pecked a kiss on the top of my head. “Happy birthday, love.”

  Introductions now.

  When I was born, my parents wanted a son, but I am nothing if not on-brand. I started my life as a disappointment to my parents, which is how I have conducted myself for all years henceforth.

  The name’s Catherine Eloise Wadell, and today was my 17th birthday.

  I guess the real question isn’t why Mom got me a diary. It’s why is seventeen so lame? I mean sure, I can legally watch R-rated movies, but that’s about it. Still can’t vote (although I’m going to put Morgan Freeman down on all my future ballots), I can’t buy things off TV, and I still can’t go to ChuckeCheese’s without a parent. (not that I have any desire to go to ChuckECheese’s, but it’s the principle of the thing).

  I thought maybe I’d feel different this morning, but just to spite me Mama Nature sucker-punched me and I trudged to school with cramps and a general feeling of despair. This, I can normally ignore, but in First Period Kacey Alvarado insulted me in French, and since I totally suck at French I couldn’t say anything but “Non, merci beaucoup.” Knowing me, I probably said it wrong. In hindsight, this explains why everyone laughed at me.

  Becca tried to make me feel better by giving me a bunch of homemade cookies, which I ended up eating during Second Period (Euro Lit) even though I promised I’d share them at lunch. I couldn’t help it. Ms. Clemmings was indirectly making me feel bad about myself, and Jake Wildern lobbed half an eraser at my head, and I really hate Lit almost as much as I hate French.

  After class, Becca cornered me and demanded to know how the heck I’d managed to eat fifteen cookies by myself, as if that’s not something totally normal that totally normal people always do.

  Third period was Choir??? Idk I never pay attention during class—I’m only in it for the music credit, and it’s easier than learning how to play an instrument.

  School’s not that exciting. Even on birthdays.

  I mean, sure, I spend most of my life in school, learning or whatever, but the highlight of every day is lunch.

  Lunch is a sacred ceremony, a daily, half-hour spark of joy. It’s just the three of us, and it is perfect. Well, nearly perfect at least and there’s never a dull day. Finn and I are currently discovering how good we are at inserting quotes from 90s chick-flicks into conversations, and Becca always unwinds enough to laugh when we get the extra big goofs.

  Becca usually gets to our corner near the windows first (she brings her lunch and her Third Period teacher always lets them out on time), and sure enough she was first there today, holding a cupcake in both hands and giving me a disapproving stare when I tripped over some freshman’s backpack.

  Still, she passed me the cupcake after I threw myself against the window, and Finn launched himself at me the second he came into sight, hollering “HAPPY BIRTHDAY” loud enough to scare all the nearby frosh.

  Finn was autumn personified. He had coppery brown hair that glinted gold in the sunlight and large light brown eyes that he called “puce” but I called “amber.” He owned a massive collection of band t-shirts, but they were always bands that no one had heard of in the past thirty years. His musical history was encyclopedic, but he didn’t know anything after the year 2000. He had a wide mouth with a large, toothy smile, and he was always grinning about something. Finn appreciated Good Jokes and he had a loud, honking laugh that made everyone around him laugh too.

  Becca, beside him, was pale and dark haired. She always wore her black hair straight down her back (after the one time Finn and I spotted her in a ponytail and shrieked about it, she refused to ever do it again). She was comfortably plump and wore an eclectic assortment of clothes from thrift stores. She said she did it for fashion and the environment, but I knew her family didn’t have a ton of extra money. Everyone thought Becca had to be a genius, because she carried herself with a physical dignity worthy of 1930s movie star, but in truth she was good at bullshitting her way through most classes, and was at best, average at school.

  We were in a weird social circle occupied only by the three of us, and while we each had friends outside our circle, we didn’t really fit anywhere within the school’s hierarchy. We weren’t popular, we weren’t sporty, we weren’t studious or slackers, or art kids or band
kids, or geeky or druggies. We existed in our own precious bubble and honestly that was just the way I liked it.

  “Man, I love you guys,” I declared, cutting my cupcake into thirds.

  “You’re alright,” Finn teased, accepting his cupcake piece with great ceremony.

  After school, my two very best friends each grabbed one of my arms and escorted me home in the drizzle (walking because Finn’s car was in the shop).

  At home, the twins presented me with a homemade cake that looked like crap but tasted of sugary sweet yumness, and everyone assailed me with gifts.

  Reflecting on it, Mom probs gave me the crappy diary so I wouldn’t talk so much which is actually… pretty ingenious, now that I think about it. Huh.

  I considered this after Becca and Finn left and I trudged up to my mobile-put-me-where-there-is-space room, which I currently shared with Meg. Mars Mission followed me with a dogged determination (see what I did there?) her big gooey eyes hopeful for treats, and if no treats, the promise of belly rubs. I chatted to Mars as I dutifully rubbed her belly, telling my Good Girl about my day, about the crappy diary, and my plans for infiltrating Principal Montoya’s office to change Jake Wildern’s records to say he hadn’t received any of his required immunizations.

  “That’ll get him,” I assured Mars, who licked my hand obligingly.

  After finishing my essay on Alexandre Dumas for Euro Lit, I spotted the diary on the desk and spent twenty minutes writing my name in unnecessarily intricate lettering on the first page.

  Once my masterpiece was complete, I threw the diary on the far side of Meg’s bed, to remain forgotten for all of time.

  Or so I thought.

  A Perfect Day

  This isn’t a story about a diary. This is a story about fairies. A real, proper, all dressed up for a debutante ball fairy story.

  Before the fairies though, there was me, making a classy mess of my life. This is my way, just roll with it.

  The Tuesday after I turned seventeen, I scrambled out of the hose with my shirt on backwards and my shoes untied, and I ran through puddles and mud the two blocks to school. I skidded into French half a second after the bell rang, rosy cheeked and wide eyed, ready to kick the day’s butt.

  That is not what happened. The day kicked my butt like, ten times. It was like I was Gaston futilely trying to kill the beast, and the day was the enchanted castle in the middle of a slippery thunderstorm. THAT much of an ass-whooping!

  During our oral translations, I managed to screw it up and instead of asking for directions to the nearest hospital I somehow ended up asking for a good place to eat chicken. I honestly have no idea how that happened, but everyone laughed and Madame Banks gave me a look which I knew meant, “Catherine Wadell, you’re getting a C-.”

  Despite this early setback, I tried to redeem the day. In Euro Lit I proudly presented my essay to Ms. Clemmings, and she told me that if I gave her a cheeky smile one more time, she’d give me detention for the rest of my life.

  Clemmings loved both my older sisters when she taught them, but she’d taken one look at me on the first day of school and decided I was a degenerate of the worst sort. I don’t know if it was because I’d tried bleaching my strawberry-blonde hair over the summer and dying it with strawberry Kool-Aid (I’d just wanted it to be XTRA STRAWBS and it had not succeeded) or because of the small gap between my front teeth, but in her eyes, I was a proper YOUTH. Irredeemable and malevolent.

  “I wasn’t being cheeky!” I protested. I was PROUD. HAPPY. SCARED CRAPLESS.

  “Detention, Catherine Wadell!” she roared.

  “What?! Detention! Why?!”

  And of course, Jake Wildern and all the popular kids were laughing their pretty butts silly, so Ms. Clemmings rounded on them. She is like a stick of dynamite that’s been sitting in the heat, sweating for days, desperate for a wayward spark. Come to think of it, she’s shaped a bit like dynamite. Tall and round and the same width everywhere.

  Ms. Clemmings’ single redeeming quality is that she loathes Jake Wildern just as much as she despises me. “Mr. Wildern, you’re joining Catherine this afternoon!” she announced.

  “But Ms. C, I’ve got football!” Jake protested. Homecoming was soon, and the whole school had started getting crazy eyes about it.

  Ms. Clemmings, however, had been trained in the very best Cold War Era Russian Spy School, and human emotions were now alien to her. She remained unmoved, even when Jake’s friends tried persuading her that they needed him to come to practice, otherwise we’d lose to Greenville.

  The rest of Euro Lit was barely tolerable, but I got through it by scribbling pictures of aliens abducting Ms. Clemmings and using her for cosmetics testing on Jupiter.

  In choir I sang some songs and everyone applauded, though I’m not sure why.

  Lunch! I really do love lunch!

  Finn stretched out next to me and gave me half of his pesto sandwich because he knows how much I love pesto, and Becca told me (after a long and suffering sigh) that she’d help me finish (read as: she would do) my Chemistry homework.

  After lunch is a good class for me, and that is Calculus.

  Ok, ok, so I know it’s weird for a Junior to take a class that’s advanced even for Seniors, but although I look like your typical manic pixie girl, I am actually a freaking math GENIUS. I kick some serious butt in Math. Like, if Math was a penguin, I’d be a leopard seal.

  Um, actually, that’s a super depressing metaphor. Please disregard.

  Uhm. Yeah.

  But no, seriously. Math! I love mathematics! It’s me and a bunch of lame nerdy seniors and they cry about how they’re getting B’s, and I’m just sitting in the middle of the classroom chortling because I have never gotten anything below an A- in that class, and that was just one time, when I was suffering from flu-like symptoms.

  The only other Junior in class is the Hateful and Horrible Jake Wildern, who, as you have no doubt already surmised, is Popular and Good Looking and Full of Himself. He’s the kind of guy who probably knows how to sail and who can pull off salmon colored polo shirts.

  Today, I ignored Jake’s presence and got all the questions right on our pop quiz, and was still feeling good about myself as I walked to American History.

  I am confident that I have learned, and will learn, nothing in that class. 90% sure the teacher is already 90% dead.

  Last in the day is Chemistry, dreaded, dreaded Chemistry.

  Please don’t think I’m a hater of nerds or anything, because I really look up to people who are smart, but my lab partner in Chemistry is this really dorky kid named Anna Flores. She unironically likes Rubix Cubes and doing her homework. She's kinda short and too skinny, and has a haircut that would look appropriate on a hobbit.

  Anna is undoubtedly super smart, and while I pride myself on having at least average intelligence, the worst part of Chemistry isn’t that I’m bad at it. It’s the fact that Anna makes it very obvious every second of class that I suck and she thinks I’m completely worthless as a lab partner.

  Granted, she’s probably not wrong. Good at math I may be, but my analytical brain ends once the numbers go away and the potions start coming in.

  Too bad for Anna, we’re the only two students in the class who don’t have friends, so when lab partners were being selected on Day One, we ended up together.

  And now we’re stuck together.

  “For better or for worse!” I muttered, staring down at our worksheet.

  “What?” Anna glanced up to give me a suspicious glare.

  I waved a flippant hand at her and squinted at our concoction, sitting in an innocuous beaker between us. “Do you think this is explosive?”

  Anna edged the beaker closer to herself.

  Fair enough.

  After the bell rang, I recalled my detention with Ms. Clemmings and groaned all the way from the first floor Chem lab up to the third floor Euro Lit room. Butterfield High made Big News in the metro area when it was announced four years ago that dete
ntions would be served in the classroom of the punishing teacher. We’d get a stupid red slip that required a teacher signature saying we’d fulfilled our punishment, and if we got five red slips in a semester, a student would be up for suspension.