Girl Who Never Was Read online

  “Uh, no,” says Kelsey, staring at me like I’ve lost my mind. She changes the subject, like she doesn’t want to go any deeper down that rabbit hole. “You should bring a sweatshirt. It’ll be cold at the football game.”

  “Good thinking.” I turn to my closet, which is a total mess because I am a complete and utter pack rat. I am always grabbing things and saving things for reasons that I can’t explain. I stand on tiptoe to rummage through the shelf at the top on which my sweatshirts are stacked, trying to find one that I haven’t worn a million times already this fall. I pause on a maroon one emblazoned with Boston across the front, like tourists would buy outside Park Street station. Where did I get that from? I wonder and tug at the one underneath it, a gray one from a downtown store. Weird, I think as I straighten. I should give it away…

  I stop, halfway out my bedroom door, and look back toward the closet.

  “Selkie?” asks Kelsey curiously, turning back to me.

  I glance at her. She is halfway down the hallway, lit by the streetlight through the lavender panes of glass in the Palladian window above our front door.

  I look back toward the closet. I am deep in thought. I can see the sleeve of the Boston sweatshirt, dangling off the shelf. Remember how important this sweatshirt is, someone says to me, someone I can’t place, at some time I can’t remember—but someone said that to me. Who was it? Who could it possibly have been? Who would tell me that a simple Boston sweatshirt was important?

  I shake it off and turn back to Kelsey. “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing.” I shut off my light, and I follow her down the front staircase. The grandfather clock chimes one as we pass it.

  ***

  The football game is a success. We win, and Mike throws a couple of touchdowns, and afterward we go out for ice cream, and Mike is sweet and cute and holds my hand and makes me laugh, and I am the envy of every girl at school, and I should be flushed and happy.

  But all I can think of is the Boston sweatshirt. It’s been haunting me. I cannot place where I got it. I feel like someone gave it to me, but I can’t remember who. And I feel like the most important thing I will ever know in my life is the knowledge of who gave me this sweatshirt. It’s driving me crazy that I can’t remember.

  As soon as I get home, I pull the sweatshirt off the shelf, and I stare at it for a long time. It looks like a normal sweatshirt. Why would it be important in any way? The thought that it might be important, tugging at the edge of my consciousness, feels like something that came from a dream. I try to remember if I’ve had a dream about this sweatshirt, but nothing rings a bell. I can think of nothing but that this is important—so important.

  I pull the sweatshirt over my head—

  It all rushes back to me, like someone has ducked my head in cold water, and I am gasping as it crashes over me—everything, my murderous mother, my ogre aunts, Will Blaxton of the Salem Which Museum, the sound of the chiming bells of the Seelie Court, and Ben. How could I have forgotten?

  I get to my feet. The sweatshirt is warm around me, like the first hug I have had in a very long time. I go downstairs, and my aunts are sitting in the conservatory. They are knitting. They have been knitting a pair of socks for as long as I have been alive. They are each in charge of one sock, and by now the socks are so large they could fit the biggest giant to ever live. I wonder now how many centuries they have been knitting these socks. The yarn of them is a bright pink snowdrift around the twin dark spires of my aunts.

  They are knitting automatically, their eyes darting about the room for the sight of the hated gnomes, and I march in and I say, “I remember everything.”

  “Everything what?” Aunt Virtue asks blandly.

  “That you are ogres. That my mother is a faerie.”

  Aunt True laughs and says, “A likely story.”

  The two of them knit away.

  “Where is Ben?” I ask.

  They look at me. “Who?” they ask. I don’t believe their act, not for a second. As unbelievable as it seems, I know somehow that my real life is this faerie tale I’ve been told. This strange, Ben-less world, where I’m dating Mike Summerton, must be an enchantment.

  “Ben,” I say. “Benedict. Benedict Le Fay. Where is he? What happened to him?”

  My aunts look at me for a long moment then turn back to their socks.

  “Forget about him,” says Aunt Virtue. “Forget about all of it. You’re not supposed to remember. Not yet, not now.”

  “But Ben told me to remember, I think. To remember this sweatshirt…What am I wearing?” I ask.

  “Jeans,” says Aunt Virtue.

  “No, for a top.”

  My aunts peer at me.

  “A green sweater,” says Aunt True.

  “No, no, it’s very clearly a yellow sweater,” says Aunt Virtue.

  They exchange a confused look.

  I am relieved. If Ben’s enchantment is still working, then I am safe. And that means Ben must be safe too, somewhere, because it would be his energy keeping the enchantment going.

  “Where’s Ben?” I ask again.

  “Don’t you understand?” demands Aunt True. “This is a different enchantment. An alternate enchanted Boston for you, one where you never even met Benedict.”

  “And it’s not nearly as good as the first one was,” says Aunt Virtue with a sigh. “Look how quickly you figured it out.”

  If I’ve figured it out, can my mother find me? If I’ve figured it out, are Ben’s powers dissolving?

  “What do you hear from the Otherworld?” I demand.

  “We don’t have contact with the Otherworld, Selkie,” says Aunt True. “We’re hiding you, darling. We need to keep as low profile as possible. We haven’t even discussed anything with the Sewing Circle. We don’t want anyone to know.”

  “Ben’s disappeared,” I say. “Ben was always here, and then I forgot about him.”

  “It’s a different enchantment,” Aunt True reiterates. “It’s an enchantment where you never knew him.”

  “But I do know him.”

  “Because it isn’t a very good enchantment,” says Aunt Virtue.

  “It was the best he could do,” I realize, piecing together those last moments before I woke up in my bed and forgot that Ben had ever existed. “It was the best he could do in the time that he had: send me back here, erect another enchantment, but a messy one. He didn’t have time to make it as good as the other one. Which means it’s only a matter of time before my mother finds me.”

  “Let her come,” says Aunt True, suddenly fierce. “We have our own ways. Ways faeries don’t know. Let the faeries try to take an ogre out of Boston. See how the inhabitants of this land will rise up against them.”

  “And we’d like to have a chat with your mother,” adds Aunt Virtue. “Can you imagine, killing your own precious child?”

  “We will keep you safe, dear,” Aunt Virtue promises me. “Forget about Benedict Le Fay. It is so like a faerie to not keep his promises. We will keep you safe. You are an ogre. Your faerie blood means nothing. We will find a way to keep you safe.”

  “Somehow,” says Aunt True.

  But they sound worried, frightened.

  CHAPTER 13

  I am too keyed up to sleep. I sit in my sweatshirt, stick my hands in the pocket, and find the bedraggled pages from the Salem Which Museum.

  There is also a shard of glass in my sweatshirt pocket, wrapped in a tissue, and I remember breaking the glass and saving a shard, in a reality that never existed, a past I never had. I still have no idea what I’m going to do with this shard of glass, but, let’s face it, I have no idea what’s going on with most of my life.

  I sit up all night on my bed, in my enchanted sweatshirt, thinking about my terrified aunts, about all the supernatural creatures in Boston, banding together to keep faeries out. And what am I? a small voice whispers insi
de of me. Would Boston accept me as the ogre my aunts say that I am? Or am I really a faerie princess? I find myself listening for chiming bells. The only bells I hear are the bells in the church at Park Street, and finally, it is morning.

  I go down and eat breakfast as usual. My aunts say, “You cannot go to school. It isn’t safe outside the house.”

  I stare. “So I’m just going to…stay inside for the rest of my life.”

  “Until the war is over,” Aunt True says, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

  There is a knock on the door—Kelsey, to walk to school with me.

  “You cannot go,” Aunt Virtue says firmly.

  I scowl and go and answer the door.

  “Hey,” says Kelsey.

  “I’m not going to school today.”

  “What? Why not?”

  The answer to that question is incredibly complex. It involves prophecies and fake lives and who even knows if Kelsey is real? She could just be a figment of my imagination.

  “Just…not going,” I say and wonder if I should add, Actually, I’m never going to be able to leave the house again.

  Kelsey looks at me with concern. “Are you okay?”

  I am the opposite of okay. My aunts think my mother is actively trying to kill me. I don’t want to think my aunts are lying, but I don’t want to think my mother is trying to kill me. And the only person I could have talked to about this has enchanted himself out of my life history. And apparently, the plan for possibly ever—half-faerie, half-ogre, it’s possible I’m immortal, I don’t even know—is to just keep me locked away.

  Suddenly I am angry. No one ever tells me the truth, it seems. No one ever gives me choices. I am so tired of being ordered around, of being a spectator in my life. It may be reckless, but I decide I am going to Salem and getting answers. If my mother finds me, I have Ben’s enchantment on me—and the way I feel at this moment, just let her try anything with me.

  Ben’s enchantment, I think. Ben has given me choice. My aunts can’t make me stay locked up because I don’t want to stay locked up. I need answers, and I need to find Ben too.

  “I need to go to Salem,” I announce abruptly, decision made.

  “Salem?” Kelsey echoes in confusion.

  “Yeah.”

  “For what?”

  I hesitate. “Do you remember I ducked into that museum while the rest of you hung out in Salem?”

  “What? No. When?”

  “When we went to Salem this year.”

  Kelsey looks at me for a moment, her green eyes quizzical. “We didn’t go to Salem this year.”

  I should have expected that, but I don’t know why it seems like the last straw of frustration. Why is this my life, and who can I blame for it? I want to scream.

  “Of course we didn’t,” I say resignedly.

  “Selkie, are you okay? You’re acting weird. Actually, you’ve been acting weird for a little while now.”

  “If I told you what’s going on with me, you’d never believe it,” I tell her honestly.

  “Of course I’d believe it. Don’t be silly,” she says comfortingly, and she is my best friend, and I so wish she could understand.

  I shake my head. “No, never mind. It’s nothing, really. I just…have to go to Salem.”

  “Then I’ll go with you,” Kelsey decides.

  “No,” I protest. “No, really, I don’t want to—”

  “I’m not letting you go alone. I’d never let you go on an adventure like this alone.” Kelsey puts her hands on her hips. “We’ll have to have some kind of catfight over it, maybe push each other in the fountain or something.”

  The idea is ridiculous. But so is the idea of Kelsey coming along with me.

  “You know I’d beat you in a catfight, right?” continues Kelsey.

  She probably would. “Kelsey…” I begin, but I can’t come up with anything else to say. Finally I settle on, “I’m not sure it’s safe.”

  Kelsey folds her arms and gives me A Look. “Oh,” she says. “Then I am definitely going with you. What kind of friend would I be if I let you go by yourself to do something dangerous? I’d miss out on all the fun!”

  ***

  I’m a little sulky that Kelsey’s won the argument and is tagging along with me, so we don’t really talk until we get to Salem. It’s Kelsey who breaks the silence.

  “So,” she asks. “What are we doing here?”

  “I have to talk to this guy I know here,” I answer. “His name is Will, and he owns a museum.”

  Kelsey doesn’t ask me any more questions. She follows me as I walk the blocks to the street where I went to the Salem Which Museum.

  And it isn’t there.

  I stand on the street, and I stare at where the museum should be—an alley between a souvenir shop on one side and a bank on the other. I am speechless and at a loss as to what to do. Maybe Will doesn’t exist in this enchantment either, like Ben. Or maybe I am a crazy person and all of it—the empty Park Street station, the talking rat, the story about my heritage, Ben himself—was just an elaborate, vivid dream. For all I know, maybe I am in the same institution as my father right at this very minute, still in the throes of this terrible hallucination.

  The harsh November wind tumbles up the street toward us, slamming into us. I huddle instinctively into my sweatshirt, tucking my hands into the pocket—and I close my hand around the shard of tissue-wrapped glass. The museum waves into existence, right where it’s supposed to be, just the way it looked before. Kelsey utters a little squeak next to me, but none of the other people coming and going from the bank and the shop so much as look up.

  “How did you do that?” breathes Kelsey, awe in her voice.

  “I have no idea,” I admit. “That’s pretty much how it goes around me.”

  I step forward confidently and push open the door, and there I am again, in the Salem Which Museum. Will is sitting in the front room this time, reading, but he doesn’t look surprised to see me. He closes his book, sets it aside, and frowns at me.

  “Hello, Iggy,” I say to the iguana wandering around by the front door. And then to Will, “Hi.”

  Will glances at Kelsey, then back to me. “Your aunts are furious and terrified. They’ve raised so much of an alarm, the goblins have completely shut down the subways.”

  “Good thing we didn’t take the subway,” I say.

  “This isn’t funny,” snaps Will.

  “I agree. Where is Ben?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” says Will. And then, “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it matters. He always matters. And he’s made a mess of things. I was kissing Mike Summerton because of him.”

  “What?” says Kelsey.

  “Who is Mike Summerton?” asks Will. “Not a goblin, is he? Goblins can be very seductive.”

  “He’s not a goblin,” I say.

  “Goblins look just like any of us,” says Will. “Just much more attractive.”

  “What are we talking about?” asks Kelsey in bewilderment.

  Will and I ignore her.

  “Where. Is. Ben?” I say.

  “Do you know how rude it is to bring this up in mixed company?” Will sweeps a hand toward Kelsey.

  “Kelsey,” I start.

  “No. No way.” She shakes her head firmly. “I want to know what the hell everyone’s talking about.”

  There is a moment of silence.

  “Where’s Ben?” I ask again.

  Will is silent for a long moment. Then: “He’s a special guest of the Seelie Court, or so I hear. And there isn’t a prophecy without him; he’s part of the prophecy, the one where we win, anyway.”

  I think of what Ben said would happen to him if the Seelies got him. “Is he…” I trail off, not sure what to say.

  “Well, his enchan
tment’s flickering, but it’s holding, so I would imagine he’s weakened but pretty much okay. He hasn’t been named yet.”

  “Why not?”

  Will’s gaze is flat and unamused. “Oh, my dear, that should be obvious.”

  I bristle. “It isn’t to me, so why don’t you tell me?”

  “The Seelie Court needs him to get to you.”

  “But if they named him, wouldn’t the protective enchantment around me dissolve?”

  “But you’re here in Boston—a Boston that’s been reinforced. The goblins are raising armies and the borders are more tightly closed. Can they get at you here? Yes. Of course. Eventually, I’m sure. But would you make it a whole lot easier on them if you went to them? Yes.”

  Well, there’s nothing to be gained by walking into a trap. And yet…

  “Ben’s there because of me, isn’t he? Because he could only save one of us, so he saved me, not himself.”

  “Don’t think of it that way,” says Will.

  “How else should I think of it?”

  “You shouldn’t think of it at all. Ben didn’t want you to.”

  “If I’m going to be the downfall of the Seelie Court, maybe I can bring it about now,” I suggest.

  “You’re not going to be the downfall by yourself. We need the other three fays of the seasons.”

  “There are others?”

  “Of course. Did you think you were all alone in this? None of us is ever as special as we think. You’re just the autumn fay. There are three others, and the prophecy is firm that all four of you must be assembled.”

  “So where are they?”

  “You are the only one we know about. And I’ve no idea how to find the rest. I’ve been reading every book I can think of, but I’m getting nowhere. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Even if we have all four fays, the prophecy requires a Le Fay, and there’s only Ben left of the line, considering his mother hasn’t been seen in centuries now—or a few minutes, depending on the time you’re keeping.”

  I blink. “Did you know his mother?”

  “Of course. Everyone knew his mother. She was the best enchantress in the Otherworld. Where do you think Benedict gets it from?”