Chapter 60

We file out and head toward the stage. Angela takes a seat in the audience and doesn’t even glance in the Council’s direction. She’s here for us.

The other 150 Manic Pixies shout out support. They wave homemade banners brimming with positive mantras.

We face the Council, waiting for the green light.

Bridget nods. “Proceed.”

Chloe, Mandy, and George mount the stage with clumsy cartwheels as Sky and I lift Nebraska, and she performs an elegant back handspring from our upraised palms. I raise Sky and her guitar into position and spring up to join my friends and frenemy.

We’re not your concept

We’re not here to be your toy

We have rich inner lives

All these girls and this one boy . . .

Thanks to our last-minute revisions, we’re no longer defending our right to continue existing as one-dimensional bundles of quirk. We’re asserting our capacity to be multifaceted, deeper versions of ourselves. Maybe we’ll never be as complicated as Developeds, but we don’t have to be as flat as microfilm either.

Mandy uses her baby-doll cuteness to her advantage. She skitters to the front of the stage and sings a cappella in a breathy voice. Chloe interprets Mandy’s words with dramatic body movements and silver streamers.

Once I thought I had to give it all

and accept nothing in return

but gratitude for a job well done

Now I follow my own star

And if he wants to come along

He has to bring at least half the fun

Angela claps from the front row with a huge smile on her face, which emboldens Sky to come out head-banging with her guitar. She doesn’t sing, but she speaks joyfully via the music. It strips away my worries and encourages me to live my best life, no matter what. I do a running leap and slide forward on the stage on my knees. It’s a move that looks cool, but it probably also rips off the top layer of skin. It’s worth it for the cheers that erupt behind me.

We clear the way for George, who gives an abridged encore performance of her tap dance that broke us out of jail. As she taps her shoes against the stage (spank HEEL shuffle HEEL step), she composes a slam poem on the fly.

Confined. Far too long.

Defined. By your expectations.

Refined. By your exhortations.

Now I’m free.

I’m not the girl in the box I used to be.

You can love me or you can ignore me.

Doesn’t matter, I’m still me.

She ends with a shiggy bop, and a curtsy. The rest of us attempt our own shiggy bops, with varying degrees of executional success.

Next each of the girls spins me in turn until I’m dizzy enough to believe Zelda is bounding toward me, even though that can’t possibly be true because she’s light-years gone by now. Unreachable.

There’s a popping sound, followed by a burst of yellow smoke and falling gold glitter. I close my eyes and let it cleanse my soul. When I open my eyes, the smoke has cleared and Zelda winks at me, resplendent in a silver bodysuit with the letters ZE painted across the chest.

She leans over and whispers into my ear, “I finally found my element.”

I feel like I’m having the happy kind of heart attack. The kind that alerts you in blaring, bleating throbs that you’re still alive and life is freaking amazing.

I kiss her for courage and begin to belt out our final verse. The other girls sing in harmony, and we link arms across the stage.

Our manic energy lights up the world

When our pixie charm unfurls

Don’t let us become a forgotten dream

Cuz we jazz up reality

But of course, Nebraska can’t leave it at that, so after we take our triumphant joint bow, she adds her own coda.

Sing along and you will see

Every day’s a plus with  . . . 

We all expect her final word to be “me”, and she drags out the “with” extra long, raising the suspense. But when it finally comes, her last word is . . .

us!

It may be the sweetest word I’ve ever heard.

The Council rewards us with a standing ovation, and once all our celebrating winds down, Bridget approaches Nebraska and shakes her hand. Her fussiness has melted away and she actually kicks up her feet in something resembling a jig. If that doesn’t make you believe in Manic Pixie magic, nothing will.

“Congratulations,” Bridget trills. “In a unanimous, spontaneous decision, we have decided to let your Trope continue. May you spread joy wherever you go.”

A blur of hugs and happy tears follows. The Council begins distributing balloons, and the multitude of Manic Pixies comes to blow them up with abandon. Where there are balloons, there is also popping, and because I’m well aware from her character trait sheet that balloon popping is Zelda’s Achilles’ heel, I whisk her away to the green room. There will be time enough later to party with my fellow Pixies.