Wood Sprites

“It’s theater. And yes, I watch it with my dad. I think he’s worried about me growing up with so many sisters, like I might be permanently warped by Barbie dolls and Disney princesses.”

“He’s afraid you might be gay.”

“I’m not! But, yes, in a nutshell, he’s worried I’ll get to like pink too much or something under the pressure. .” He trailed off, blushing red. “My oldest sister. When she’s home and she’s alone, she’s really beautiful. But as soon as she knows someone is watching, she does all she can to make herself invisible. I didn’t notice, not for a long time. I don’t know when it went from being shy to something else. I saw the cuts sometimes on her arms, but I didn’t understand what they meant.”

Something quietly awful had happened to Iggy’s oldest sister. The details were carefully hidden away, but it involved an ambulance outside the school late in the afternoon and her entire class going through counseling the following weeks.

“I’m not like that.”

“I know you’re not.” He kicked at the table leg. “You’re smart enough to figure it out. If you make yourself invisible, then people can’t see how beautiful you are.”

“You — you think I’m beautiful?”

His eyes went wide, and he blushed red. He hadn’t meant it. He slid down off the table, suddenly focusing hard on his shoes. She looked away, her throat suddenly seeming small and raw.

He started to flee, but he paused by the door. “I–I think you’re like my sister,” he stammered without turning around to look at her. “All alone, you’re beautiful. And I wish someone had been able to convince my sister of that when she was younger. It’s okay to be shy, but by trying to hide, you might start to hurt yourself without even realizing it.”

15: Crowd Sourcing

Jillian was being Peter Pan when the bell rang, announcing the end of last period. She was standing on one of the art room tables, practicing lines of the first scene with Elle as Wendy. Louise paused at the doorway, wondering if Iggy was right, that Jillian could only stand on the table, bigger than life, because at that moment, she was Peter and not Jillian.

Zahara shook her head at the lines. “I’m just saying, if he showed up in some girl’s bedroom in Queens, she’s not going to be all ‘Boy, why are you crying.’ She’d be either hitting him with pepper spray or calling 911.”

“It’s a fantasy!” Elle cried. “What part of fairies and pixie dust are you missing? It’s not operating in our reality.”

“Obviously, the Darlings just moved from some little town in England to New York City.” Giselle held up one sheets of the backdrop graffiti that would be seen through the nursery window. “One of their parents has been assigned a menial government job at the British Embassy. Probably their father. He’s the government type. Their mother is either a daycare aide or works at a Build-A-Bear or something like that.”

“We’ve already changed the play to the point of breaking!” Elle waved her copy of the script. “It’s a classic. It’s like rewriting Shakespeare.”

“People are rewriting Shakespeare all the time,” Zahara said. “And making them newly arrived from some farm town kills the whole ‘not in Kansas’ angle we’re going for with the sets! Our audience will relate more to Wendy if she’s just a little freaked out about having some mental case show up in her bedroom.”

“Maybe Wendy is a mental case, too.” Mason was looking pointedly at Elle. “Or maybe she’s retarded.”

“Mason!” Miss Hamilton pointed at him and gave him “the look” that she used to control anyone that strayed over the line. As he ducked his head meekly, Miss Hamilton waved Jillian down off the table. “School is over. It’s time for all of us to go home. We will discuss making changes to the script tomorrow.”

“Next week we will also be working on choreographing the fight scenes.” Mr. Howe got a cheer. He cut it short by whistling sharply. “Only people who e-mail back signed permission slips this week will be allowed to participate. If your parents don’t reply to the e-mail, you will be given a non-fighting role. And we will be checking against signatures on file, since the chances that one of your parents will sue the hell out of us is too high.”

Jillian had hopped down off the table and hurried over to Louise. Her eyes were full of questions that she couldn’t ask in front of everyone. Louise nodded to the most obvious one; the print job was started. They wouldn’t find out until tomorrow night if the generator worked, and only if they managed to get it home unseen. Jillian grinned brightly and bounced in place.

Iggy fell into step with them going down the stairs to their lockers. He was still blushing and avoided Louise’s glance by focusing on Jillian. Strangely, Jillian shied slightly away from him, looking away.

“You are going to be able to get permission from your parents, right?” Iggy asked.

Jillian shook herself a little, as if putting back on a mask. She looked up, full of confidence. “Of course I will. Our mom wants us to participate in class projects.”