Author's Preface
Dear Diary… if the fairies really do answer me, they should have to show themselves. Also they should say hi first. Basic manners. — Normal Aspen
I write with my green pen. Green is for desires, and the fairies only seem to care when I use the right colors. Red sits three inches parallel to the side of my desk. Just right. Two minutes ago, I used it to write: The last me-shaped gap came without dejavu. They are happening more often.
Yesterday, I was messing with Jamie's hair. I didn't walk to his room or anything though, I was just there. He was watching Spongebob and I was patting his hair in the way I always do. I can do that, since I'm his sister, but the fairies shouldn't be privy to that. Before, they only ever seemed to mess with me when I was in the treehouse.
They followed me home, and I need answers.
I came to the treehouse today, although I probably would've done that anyway. I usually leave my blue pen parallel to the top of my desk, sitting with red, but it's in my hair right now. I noticed that three minutes ago, and I don't know if that happened three minutes ago. But regardless, awareness has weight.
The pen falls out of my hair and rolls over the wood ridges of the treehouse floor. Perfect. The pen follows the triangles I've drawn in marker all over the floor. It comes to the first triangle, the largest one, that sits right behind my wooden chair. It is close enough that someone could mistake this for coincidence. But the pen rolls from that to the next triangle, the one far to the left. That triangle is much smaller, yet the pen comes for it regardless.
This proves it. Triangles call for fairy attention.
I stand up too fast and get woozy. My hand straightens the notebook stack on my desk before the rest of me gets permission. The chair legs kiss the floor instead of screeching, which is a miracle I will appreciate later.
The pen rolls past the folded beige blankets and the crate, along the path I set the triangles. Which is strange, why are the fairies so stupid? Or, I guess, why are they acting like laws? Put triangle here, thing goes there. Was it really always so easy—
The pen curves away from the sandals I set toward the trapdoor. I drew many triangles around them, so why? It goes for the one gap in this whole treehouse that I have scrubbed, taped, measured, covered, uncovered, renamed, and not fixed. They watched me set this up and played me.
The pen zips to the edge of the crack and wobbles.
“Why me?” I ask.
It drops through.
“Bitch.”
I crouch over the gap. Cool air threads up between the boards and touches the wet part under my lower lip. Far below, the ground waits green-brown and root-black. I pause for a moment.
Blue is the color for answers. They took my blue pen and they knew that I would try to bait them. Did they set the gap up weeks ago just to do this..? No, chill. Regardless, they have answers that I need. I hope.
I push my chair in first and line the journal’s bottom edge with the crate seam. I click the red cap twice. I look around for green and can't find it. My stomach does the small, stupid drop it does before Mother opens my door without knocking. Green is in my hair. It's been less than three minutes since the last gap.
Again, I didn't notice. Again, it's the hair. Whether it's me patting Jamie's head or them putting the pen in the spot I love to have it, right where my hair holds it softly at the top of my ear. Why act so loving? No, that's not it. I don't care why they're doing it. It's just disgusting either way. You intimate fairy fucks.
The trapdoor sticks where the wood has swollen around it. I lift it with both hands and set it beside the sandals. I put the sandals on and look below, where the trunk hugs the ladder in places a trunk should not. The whole thing is mostly an argument between planks and bark, but the nails all sit at the same depth.
I try to picture it: hammer, nails, boards, me dragging plywood up a tree like the kind of person who believes in careful steps. There's nothing. Not one fake memory volunteers. No hammer-sound. No splinter. No weather. No bruise shaped like effort. My first memory of this treehouse was on my last birthday. I remember it because I sat inside of it with only one notification in my phone, and that was from Jamie. What he sent was stupid, thank you Jamie.
My foot reaches for the rung that is not there. Seven, my body expects. Six, says the ladder. No matter how much time passes, my foot pauses in air and gets mad enough to shake. But in the end, the treehouse is here. That is a fact I've written in red, because those facts sit still afterward.
I arrive at the forest floor, and the air adjusts like it has a better word for my weight than I do. It smells like mud. Something blue sticks to my palm when I let go from the tree at the wrong place. It's spit-slick and cold, stringing between bark and skin for half a second before breaking. Blue sap isn't among the fairy patterns I know of.
Wet leaves give under my sandals, and roots knuckle through the ground. I kick through leaves under the treehouse until blue winks under a dead leaf. The leaf is gray, and so are all the leaves around it. So is the dirt. A perfect gray thumbprint sits around the pen, but it's not ash. There's no burning smell. I think that's worse. What is gray supposed to mean?
Wait. The gray makes a triangle.
But this is upside down. If I'm right, then they want to hide something—they want to hide the pen. I'm not crazy. It must be a sign. There's something they don't want me to know. I snatch the pen. I should've thought it through, but it sits in my grip with crushed leaves. The tip is wet in a color that isn't blue enough to file anywhere. How will they retaliate—
Something knocks. Inside the trees.
My shoulders go for my ears. My hand keeps holding the pen because my hand has not been briefed. The knock is not close. Not far either. A small wooden tap, hollow in the middle, like one knuckle against the inside of a tree. Above me, the treehouse answers with a tiny creak.
“Why mess with me if you want to hide now?” I ask before I can think of more formal words.
There is no answer. I inch backward toward the ladder and I make myself look up chin-first, like that counts as bravery. The branches knot above me, black-green and still. Roots that forgot which way down was.
There is a glimmer of aqua between the branches and the blue sky. I look for the leaf it came from and find out that there is no leaf. The drop fattens in empty air, before falling straight down. Not leaf to leaf or branch to ground. Sky to pen. It lands on the tip of the pen with a soft, wet click. Aqua is not the color of an answer. My hand forgets the rest of my arm and I run for the ladder.
I climb badly. Knees, elbows, one sandal almost gone. I grab wood where I should grab rung. My knee finds a step before my foot does. The ladder counts six and my body hates every number. Inside, I slam the trapdoor shut and grab the marker on the crate.
I draw an upside-down triangle on the floor around me. Unless... is this also bait? No, think. The pen is in my hand and its blue tip is wet. The fairies have never knocked before. The Pine-Sol waits beside the crate like a weapon with a trigger. I've cleaned away many messes with it.
After all, Pine-Sol is what Mother used when something had to stop being evidence. Counters, plates, doorknobs, me. Me, if I had touched wrong. Me, if I had been outside too long. Me, if I had made a room remember my preferences.
I guess that's another thing she shares with them.
I spray the pen four times. Three would be a pattern. Five would mean I meant it. Four is just cleaning. Please let this be cleaning. Lemon-pine mist beads over the plastic, but the aqua refuses to dilute. It does not bead. It does not run. It lets the cleaner sit on top of it like a bad excuse. A gray smear dusts the inside of my wrist. Please no. I throw the pen before I decide to.
It hits the far corner, bounces off the blanket stack, and lands tip-up.
I spray the air between us and stay in the triangle. I spray the crate because the crate saw. I spray under my nails because gray has spread to me and I don't know what it does yet. The room smells more like Mother now. Tears well in my eyes. Come the fuck on. Think.
Aqua and gray. Two new variables, I can work with this. I shouldn't have picked up the pen, they wanted it concealed. Okay, just hide it again. No, obviously no.
I throw the crate upside down over the pen. New job: prison. The crate has handled blankets, shoes, old notebooks, bottled water, one dead charger, and three days of pretending I did not need to go home. It can handle one haunted pen. Maybe I should draw another triangle—aqua leaks through one of the handle holes and makes one perfect triangle on the ceiling.
I think the fairies are done with hiding. The room has learned a new color.
★
The crate stays over the pen. I drag the blanket stack away by one corner, using two fingers. I don't let my feet leave where I have marked. The aqua one on the ceiling slides across it as the blankets move. I make a triangle with my fingers. “Why have you shown yourselves in this color?”
It simply grows brighter, so bright that it strains my eyes.
“If you don't listen then I will use the spirals.”
It pauses. I knew it. A triangle pointing up to the sky wants to be seen. A spiral points nowhere. I grab my marker and draw the first spiral around the upside-down triangle around me, careful not to let my wrist touch the floor. The line comes out shaky. The second spiral goes inside the first. With both completed, the aqua begins to dim and that makes the black ink shine wet.
I sit back on my heels and breathe through my nose. Spirals are the only shape that have affected me. The only shape that prove I'm not crazy, or hallucinating. The last time I used spirals, I fainted and woke up... when did I wake up? Wasn't it just a few days ago? No, spirals cause headaches, nausea, incoherence, and other things. Why did I use the spirals then? Spirals are walls without corners. Corners cheat. Corners are m—
My nose starts to bleed.
“Okay,” I tell the crate. “Terms. Otherwise, it's mutual destruction.”
The crate says nothing, because it is furniture and sane. The aqua triangle pulses once. My phone buzzes against the folded blanket by my hip. I do not scream in any legally useful way. My phone only lets in two things: the time and Jamie. It is 5:40 PM.
-aspy. u in the tree?
A second message appears before I can answer.
-i ate hotdog so yummy
My thumb hangs over the keyboard. For a moment, I wonder if he really ate a hotdog, or just chewed pencils and called it lunch. Is that because of the spirals? But he’s probably folded into the chair, one sock half-off, pretending not to hear invisible footsteps in the hallway because I’m not there to hear them first. I should go back home more.
But she will make any room feel like I've been caught in it. The kitchen light will still sound like her. The couch will still know where she sits. Jamie will ask for stupid things because stupid is safer than need. Laptop. Cereal. Do ghosts have butts? Does toothpaste have calories? Or when are you going to start being my sister again.
Aqua pulses through the crate, and my spiral-sapped brain cuts Jamie down to one instruction.
-ye. stay inside.
The dots appear, then vanish, then appear again. I hate every one.
-can i play on laptop?
-ye. cya.
-yaya. come back soon, or ill fart—
I turn the phone facedown like that makes Jamie less findable. The screen has his words on it. Will the fairies come for him next? Oh god, what am I doing? Fairies, seriously? Am I just a weirdo? Why couldn't I just be normal?
Stop. Stop. Stop panicking.
"Term one," I say. My voice comes out tidy. Tidy wears Mother's shoes. "If you don't want me to make more spirals, then I command you to stay in there. Not under it spiritually. In it physically. Loopholes exist. Don't use any loopholes or I'm fucking both of us up."
The second I say that, the aqua light tightens. It pulls itself back from the ceiling and fits exactly inside the crate. My heart thanks it. Idiot heart. You can't just stop when you get an advantage.
"Term two. You do not touch anything of mine. Not the blankets, journal, pens, slippers, my brother, or anything I forgot to say. Especially my brother." The list is bad, but I don't stop. "Don't you dare. I'll kill you."
I clench the black marker until the cap bites a little crescent into my palm. Great. Still here.
“Term three. If you are a fairy, demon, gas leak, hallucination, government test, or God, you have to identify yourself. Plainly. Let me see you.”
There is no reaction.
"Term four." I look at the journal without meaning to. "If I asked for this, you have to prove I knew what I was asking." Not spiral-knew. Red-knew or green-knew.
The glow beats once through the crate. I'm winning. Still, I draw another inverted triangle, smaller this time, around the place my knee almost crossed the line. Can't make any mistakes. Every mark comes out uglier than the last, and a drop of blood plops onto the edge.
"Term five," I whisper, bringing my fingers up to touch the green pen in my hair.
"You will stop taking my memori—"
I pause, and touch my hair again. The green pen falls out of it without a single tangle. What brushes my hand is bone straight, like it's been pressed flat for an event. I check my phone, and it is 5:46.
Oh.
The aqua glow dies entirely. Or maybe it had been dead for minutes now, and I only just noticed. For one second, I almost believe I did something. My knees ache as I inch toward the crate. One hand clenches the marker hard enough to bruise. With the other, I hook two fingers under the crate’s edge and lift only a little.
The pen rolls out immediately. Sideways, over the wet shine of Pine-Sol. It pauses on edge of the spiral for one awful second, as if reading it. As if my terms were just a grammar it already knew. It rolls over without a hitch. I shoot up and run to grab it, but then I notice my clothes. My sleeves end in spirals, but they are not natural. They are all facing the same way.
The pen keeps rolling. It reaches the floorboard gap and drops through like falling is a choice. I stand there, dressed for them. A thin light shines through the gap, faint enough to lie about. Then it pulses, breathing once.
I lose the part where I decide. I am kneeling, careful as if this were my idea. I am not praying. My hands make a triangle instead. A triangle that points to the aqua below. An inverted triangle, and I am not sure it means concealment anymore. Everything smells of Pine-Sol. The journal pages flutter once, though there is no wind. Red ink pales where my name sits at the top of the page. I see it through the aqua.
The knock comes back. A small tap, hollow in the middle, like one knuckle against the inside of my skull. It is bigger than the gap. It comes through anyway. This is not a hand close to hers or almost hers. This has her trimmed red nails, her calloused fingers, but it cannot be hers.
Still, it brushes my face. There is no hi.
The edge of its nail cuts into my cheek with a sharpness that does not match. My blood leaks onto the red nails. I can nearly hear her through it. The almost-soft voice. The one that meant she had already chosen the dress and only needed me to bring the body.
That one is saying: I love you.
A smile creeps onto my lips, but it cannot be mine. Even if I can taste the blood.