had always found it odd how paranoid my mother was about faeries spying on her, because books (granted, most of these were children’s books) told me that faeries were interested in people who were nothing like my mother.

Children’s books: Young girls.

My mother: Most decidedly not a young girl.

Children’s books: Girls with hair in ringlets and colors that hardly seemed like hair colors — auburn or honeysuckle or cinnamon.

My mother: Straight brown hair kept cut in a sharp bob to her chin, bangs covering eyebrows as bushy as caterpillars.

Children’s books: Girls with voices described in terms of piano notes from the upper register or giggling brooks running through meadows.

My mother: A plain and broad voice.

Children’s books: Girls whose bodies were described as ethereal or ephemeral with skin as pale as weak moonlight.

My mother: She wore heavy, stomping hiking boots outside year round. She bit her nails until they were ragged and cracking. Her skin was a Martian red, rubbed raw by the cheap soap at the hospital. She was fleshy and solid and, from certain angles, had a triple chin. “Ethereal” was a willow drooping over a slow-moving pond. “Ephemeral” was a sunflower as the first petal falls in autumn. My mother was more like the stout, browning shrubs outside the hospital the custodial staff were continually bulldozing out, only for them to almost immediately grow back in.

“The shrubs,” I said. “Those indestructible ones from outside the hospital. Those are what we should use to protect our house from faeries.”

My mother looked up from her Reader’s Digest North American Wildlife guide, her untouched plain pizza having grown cold while she flipped through the pages. “A possibility, except they don’t grow above five feet. We’d have to limit our time on the upper floors.”

“We could use thicker curtains upstairs.”

She didn’t answer, having gone back to the book like hav-ing an actual conversation with me would be too difficult.

“You never listen to me about faeries,” I said with as much restraint as I could manage. I would have rather screamed, but figured my mother would find that easier to ignore.

“You don’t listen to me either,” my mother said, eyes still down on her book. “I asked you not to bring any of your faerie projects to school, yet today I find myself sitting in Mrs. Eastman’s —”

“Mrs. Estabrooks,” I corrected.

“Success is hardly dependent on remembering that woman’s name.” She finally looked up again. “You’re supposed to keep your projects here where I can monitor them.”

“What does it matter?” I was spiraling out of control, I knew it, but I couldn’t find a way to stop myself. “You don’t monitor them or me. You have no interest in anything I do unless it makes you miss work, where you’d rather be than here.”

“That isn’t true, although this current snit hardly endears you to me.”

“You’re always leaving me here by myself.”

“I have suggested that while I am work, in case of lone-liness, you go to Mrs. Delavecchio’s house.”

“That’s not the point.” I snatched her nature book from her hands and threw it onto the floor. The spine cracked open to the page my mother had been reading: mollusks. Not even relevant to faerie protection spells. She’d rather read about invertebrates than answer my questions about faeries. “Why are you so resistant to talking to me about faeries?!” I screeched.

“If that’s all you want, Enid,” she said, as calmly as ever, “I can do that. I do have a shift to work tonight, though.”

“Figures.”

“But I have a few minutes before I have to leave. You wrote you’ve seen their shadows as they’ve come right up to the window. Quite gutsy.”

“For them or for me?”

“Both. If you’re so interested in faeries, Enid, why don’t you do some prep work for me, for one of the impermanent methods? It has to be done tonight, and you’d be by yourself.”

I was, possibly for the first time in my life ever, gob-smacked. I’d expected her to try and appease me by parting with only the teeniest piece of faerie lore (like how faeries refuse to eat starfruit, which we couldn’t even buy in the produce section of the very basic, and only, grocery store in town. Besides, I already knew that. Faeries don’t like the shape: too pointy. Dragonfruit, too. And the hard cores of lychees and cherries also annoyed them). But no, not a small piece of faerie lore. She was entrusting me with something magical.

Maybe I wouldn’t have to figure out all about the faeries all alone.

“What do I have to do?” I asked, my heart pattering like the hooves of a racehorse. (A racehorse that’s running a race, not one that’s just standing around eating oats or hay or whatever horses eat.)

My mother passed me a chunky green Hilroy scribbler, the type that would have a blank space at the top of each page for a picture and lines at the bottom for describing the picture drawn in the blank space above. “No,” she said as I gingerly went to turn to the first page. “Wait until I leave before reading the instructions.” She motioned to the notebook. “I don’t want to be late because I am answering all your overeager questions.” A red stain on the front of her scrubs caught her attention. Fresh. Pizza sauce, not blood. “I have to change. Until I leave, you can occupy yourself by doing the dishes before food sticks to them.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” I gave a mock salute, wiggling my hands and smacking both of them into my forehead.

“Sass isn’t becoming.” But my mother was smiling as she walked off, pulling the cotton scrubs over her head. “Did you put away the laundry yet?”

“It’s your week.”

“No,” she called back. “It’s yours. Faerie interests should not distract you from your responsibilities.” Her voice was distant but carried down the stairs and into the dining room. “You should be spending less time on your faerie guide. I know the reason you handed in that chapter is that you spent last night working on it rather than on your school report. I’ve let a few things slide lately, thinking you were … No, never mind.” She came back into the kitchen in a blush set of scrubs that made her look stranger than she was and unflatteringly brought out the redness of her cheeks. “Follow the instructions.” She tapped the cover. “You’ll do fine.”

The impermanent method begins with instructions from a notebook that is completely blank on every page, even held up to the light, even rubbed with lemon juice or ironed to check for secret writing. The only words in the entire book are on the front page, in the spot left for the owner’s name, written in block caps so equal and with kerning so proper that they could have been typed: MARGERY STRANGE.