Today the wicked girl got the better of me. Ah, weel. At least things are out in the open now.
The afternoon started much as it had yesterday, with young Miss Mess coming into her room and once again dumping her backpack upon the bed. Such disorder! Such disrespect for my efforts!
As the day before, I waited until she was busy at her desk, then climbed down from the closet and scurried across the floor. I scaled the bedspread and went to work, moving silently and keeping alert for any signs that she might be about to turn around.
A few minutes later, I caught a hint of movement. Blessing my keen ears, I scurried under the bed.
Being willing to enter the pit of chaos that waited below should be taken as a measure of my desire not to be seen. Oh, under the bed is a horrid place! The dust, all clumped and nasty! The abandoned toys, broken and crippled! The scatter of little plastic bricks, mismatched socks, crumpled papers, used tissues, broken crayons! ’Tis enough to make a decent brownie swoon.
Anyway, I heard her approaching and scrambled into an empty boot. Peering around the boot’s upper rim, I watched her lift the edge of the bedspread. When she looked in with her great human eye, I was tempted to leap out and give her a good scare, but managed to resist.
“Huh,” she muttered. “I could have sworn there was something down here.”
She dropped the cloth. After a bit I heard her leave the room. At once I scrambled out and went back to work.
I had only been at it a few minutes when footsteps told me she was returning.
Back under the bed I went.
I could hear her moving around my refuge but didn’t guess what she was up to—though if my nose hadn’t been clogged by all that wretched dust, I might have figured it out from the smell. After a few minutes, she went back to her desk.
I waited until all was silent, then crept to the edge of the bed and lifted the spread to look out. She was hunched over her desk, working on a drawing.
I should have been more careful. I should have been more alert. But I was eager to return to my task. So I lowered the edge of the bedspread, then crawled through the clutter and debris to the far side.
As I scooted out, I felt a sticky mess grab my feet.
I was stuck in molasses! The wretched girl had spread a line of the gooey brown stuff all the way around her bed.
What made this strange is that it was the very same trick my sweet Sarah had played on me so many years ago.
At least the girl comes by her sneakiness honestly.
I shrieked with rage.
“Aha!” cried Alex. I heard her chair fall as she jumped out of it and came leaping over to the bed. Next thing I knew, her head was hanging over the edge of the bed and I was looking at her upside-down face.
“What in the world?” she cried. She scrambled across the bed to my side, reached down, and picked me up.
SHE PICKED ME UP! Grabbed me right around the middle and snatched me from the floor.
“Let me down, ya great lumbering slob of a girl!” I bellowed, pounding my fists against her fingers.
She tossed me to the bed and shook her hand as if she had been holding a rat.
Waving my fists and leaping up and down, I cried, “What did you do that for, ya disorderly, messy, negligent, slapdash, untidy, unfastidious, unsanitary creator of disorder?”
Alex blinked at me. But instead of answering my question, she said, “Are you some kind of elf?”
“Elf?” I cried, still leaping up and down. “ELF? Do I look all tall and willowy? I’m a brownie, as any fool can plainly see. A brownie who has been forced against his will to journey—at great trouble, I might add—to this disgusting midden of a room to bring some wee bit of tidiness to your disordered and chaotic life! And what have you done? What have you done? You’ve trapped me wi’ molasses! Wretched girl. What’s the matter wi’ you?”
And after this cry from my heart, she had the nerve to reply, “What’s the matter with you? Sneaking into a person’s room and cleaning it up when you’re not invited is creepy.”
“I was too invited,” I said.
“What a liar you are!” cried she.
“What a Messy Carruthers you are,” I replied. “And you don’t know everything, miss. I was sent here by one of your blood, which counts as an invitation if she is close enough…which she is.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was passed to you by your great-great-great-aunt Sarah McGonagall. She, being upon her deathbed, sent the family brownie—that being me—to her youngest female relative of age to receive me, that being you.”
“Well, you’re clearly in the wrong place. I’m a Carhart, not a McGonagall. And you can’t be the family brownie because brownies don’t exist.”
“Rude! Rude, rude, rude, rude, rude! Sarah warned me about this. ‘She’s a modern girl,’ she said, ‘and may have a touch of the rudeness.’ And she was right. And if you don’t think I exist, then why are you talking to me? It must mean that you’re crazy, eh?”
She blinked and took a step back. “Oh my god! Maybe I really am going crazy. What if Destiny is rubbing off on me? She has an imaginary friend. Can that be catching? No, that doesn’t make any sense. But you can’t be real. You can’t be!”
“I’m real as toast, you great lolloping nonsense of a human!”
She shook her head. “I am going to leave the room. When I come back, you’ll probably be gone. That will be good. But maybe I need to see a shrink. I don’t like that idea, but I don’t like the idea of being crazy, either. I’m going now. When I get back, please be gone.”
And out of the room she goes.
The moment she left, I scurried back to the closet and climbed up to my hiding place. I try to respect the wishes of my human when I can. Even so, sooner or later she is going to have to accept that I am real.