9 Fairy Godmothers Do Not Need Help. Except Maybe Just This One Time.
Two hours later, I’m staring down the guy with a shaggy hipster beard and black eyeliner who works at Comics ’n Costumes. And I’m thinking, I probably should have seen this coming.
He gestures noncommittally at the cleared-out shelves and mumbles, “Sorry. The last week has been like a bantha stampede. I could get something here for you by…” He taps a few keys on his computer. “Friday.”
“Thanks anyway,” I growl. Even though this isn’t his fault, I barely hold back my inner tigress as I jam my sunglasses back on my face. He hopes I have a nice day.
I take my frustration out on my gas pedal. When I get home, I text every girl on the Poms and cheer squads, Sean, and several jocks the same message: Any chance you have an extra costume for sci-fi day? It’s humiliating to ask for help. And, as it turns out, pointless. No one can help me. I’m not surprised. I mean, who keeps spare sci-fi costumes lying around?
Your friendly neighborhood Stalker Trekkie. That’s who.
I refuse to stoop that low.
Instead I follow the scent of Vietnamese takeout to the kitchen. Mom and I have a “working dinner.” (That means she responds to texts and emails the whole time we’re eating and dismisses me with “Sorry, hon. Lots of fires to put out tonight.”) Then, before bed, I wrestle down my homework.
Sci-Fi Day haunts me in my dreams. My phone’s chirp interrupts dream Vindhya wailing, “My wish is dead. Everything’s ruined. You failed me.”
The phone chirps again, and I automatically reach for it. The screen says 6:08 a.m. and displays a text from Noah: Are you wearing a tooth fairy costume for cultural heritage day?
I throw my phone across the room with a primal roar. It lands in a pile of dirty laundry. But it doesn’t stay there long.
By six forty-five I’m getting texts from Vindhya. She tries on a dozen kurtas trying to decide what to wear. Then she moves on to sending pictures of her hair because she can’t get it to look exactly like Tuan did.
To avoid a complete meltdown, I offer to meet her in the locker room before school for a strategy session. So even though I want to crawl back under the covers and sleep for the rest of the day, and even though my head is pounding, I pull myself together in time to get to school twenty minutes early.
Vindhya is alone in the locker room when I get there, following a makeup tutorial video with a shaking hand. She’s lighting it up in a gorgeous orange kurta and pink leggings. When she sees me, she sets her phone and makeup brush aside. “Charity, I don’t know if I can do this. I think I’m going to throw up.”
“You did ‘this’ yesterday. Nothing has changed.” I take a seat on the bench across from her. I don’t get it—she stuck the landing yesterday, and she can’t know that Sci-Fi Day is an impending disaster. So why the freak-out?
“Everything has changed! Everyone is judging me now. Everyone is comparing me to Jameela and Shannon and What’s Her Name. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t—”
“Hey. You’re fine.” I take her hand. She looks like she’s going to cry.
I nudge some confidence her way.
She says, “Did you just wink at me?” But she immediately sits a little straighter.
“What? Oh. It’s allergies.” I pretend to sniff. “You’ve got this.”
“Yeah. I can do this.”
“Just remember: squeeze your pencil, do not touch your face, and do whatever Sean says.”
“It’s weird. I can code like a boss and play a symphony, but this being-in-the-spotlight thing—” She picks up her makeup brush and evens out her blush. “This is way more pressure than I thought it would be.”
She starts to sag. The magical confidence boost is wearing off fast. I nudge her again, smacking my hands against my legs to drum out the pins and needles. “You’re doing great. How do you feel?”
“Kind of—” She raises her eyebrows like the answer is unexpected. “Better, actually.”
“Then let’s go.”
Walking out of the bathroom is an event. All the people I usually say hi to notice that I’m with someone new. And I take the opportunity to nudge lots of pro-Vindhya feelings their way, even though all my limbs are numb from the effort.
Vindhya sees their smiles and curious looks and smiles back in a forced way.
Ah well, it’s the best we can do for now. At least her hands are at her sides.
After second hour, Sean posts a selfie with Vindhya.
I check my phone while I’m standing in the lunch line and smile to myself. The Sean-Vindhya selfie has twenty-eight likes. Not too shabby.
My smile drops when an all-too-familiar voice behind me says, “Let me guess, your cultural heritage is ‘white trash’?”
I glance down at myself. I’m wearing the same outfit as all the Poms today—cutoffs so short that the pockets hang out the bottom and an American-flag tank top.
The lunch line inches forward.
“All-American girl, actually.” I turn around, ready for a fight, and give him a once-over. “And I see you went with ‘alien species’?”
He looks affronted. I tally one point in my column. He smooths a hand over his T-shirt, which says I’M GIVING HER ALL SHE’S GOT, CAPTAIN. “You have no idea how much Star Trek has influenced our culture. Cell phones were based on the communicators. The first NASA orbiter was named after the USS Enterprise. Public interest in the space program was—”
I feign nodding off, complete with snoring, then jerk awake. I know I’m being rude, but he brings it out in me, you know? The line moves forward. I grab an orange juice. “Sorry. That’s fascinating. No. Really.”
Surya and Gwen show up then, saving me from having to hear more Star Trek trivia. Surya is in the middle of saying, “… Wolverine. It’s going to be awesome!”
Gwen gushes, “Wow! How long did that take you?” Surya asked her to homecoming, so she’s fawning. It’s the only thing that could make her tear her eyes from her phone for this long.
He says, “Like two weeks.” He holds out his fist and I bump it with mine. “Hey, Charity!”
“Hey, Surya. Hi, Gwen.”
Gwen says, “Hey. We were just planning our Sci-Fi Day looks. Do you know how few freaking black girls are actually in sci-fi? And most of the time, if they’re there at all, they’re painted green or something. Like, I could count on one hand the black female characters who aren’t Wakandan.”
“Really?” I did not know that and am genuinely disgusted. “That’s total crap.”
“Uhura,” Noah says. We all look at him like, If you’re going to butt in, at least speak English.
“U-hur-a,” he repeats more slowly, which helps not at all. He looks at us like he’s waiting for our brains to come online. Then gives up with a disappointed tsk. “Starfleet officer, fluent in all three Romulan dialects, first interracial kiss on television.” He pauses to gauge our reactions. I stare at him blankly. He gives me stink eye. “She’s one of a hundred reasons why TOS is awesome.”
I don’t know what TOS is, but I don’t want to ask and send him on another geek tangent. Plus, does it matter?
Gwen tilts her head, like she’s not sure what to make of Noah. “That’s… cool.” Then she turns back to me and Surya. “Anyway, we’re doing an X-Men theme. I’m going as Storm. Do you think I can pull off a white wig?”
“Totally.”
“What about you?” she asks.
“Me?”
“Yeah, are you ready for Sci-Fi Day?”
I casually turn back toward the buffet. “Yup. All set.” I hope that didn’t sound as fake as it felt. The truth is, I have zero plan.
“Okay.” Gwen hesitates. “ ’Cuz after your text last night—”
“No. Yeah. I got it squared away.” I grab a soft pretzel.
“Okay.” She shrugs. “So I’ll see you at practice.”
“See ya.”
As Gwen and Surya walk away, Noah scoffs, “Sci-Fi Day. Ridiculous.”
“Right?” I agree. We both reach for the same apple. I jerk my hand away just in time to avoid brushing against his fingers. My heart thumps as if cooties are a real biohazard. I grab a different apple, then finally register the anomaly in our conversation. “Wait. You think Sci-Fi Day is ridiculous?”
“Pfft. Yeah. X-Men? Star Wars? Please.”
“What’s your problem with Star Wars?”
“Only that it’s not sci-fi. It’s a soap opera set in space. For something to be sci-fi, there has to be actual science involved. I mean, come on, a lightsaber defies the laws of physics. And the entire fandom has spent forty years backfilling story lines because George Lucas didn’t know a parsec is a unit of distance, not time.”
I make a face like, You’re redlining the geek-o-meter again, but really I never thought about that before. It’s a tiny bit interesting.
Then my mouth goes dry with the now undeniable knowledge that he’s my last best hope to salvage Sci-Fi Day for Vindhya. Not only is asking for his help humiliating and degrading, but there’s a 99 percent chance that it will alert him to my secret wish-granting activities. The last time he got mad at me for granting wishes, I ended up writhing in a puddle of my own snot and tears.
Okay… there has to be something else I can do. Vindhya could stay home sick tomorrow. We could let Sci-Fi Day flop, and then I could… I could straight-up cheat. I could stuff the ballot boxes. But it’s mobile voting. I could hire a hacker to rig the system.
Ugh. What have I become?
Not this.
We’ve reached the cashier. She scans my ID and waves me on.
Instead of escaping to the table where Sean and Vindhya are waiting for me, I grit my teeth, turn back to Noah, and say, “So… speaking of Sci-Fi Day… Ineedyerelp.”
“What?”
“I need… yerelp.”
A slow, obnoxious smile of understanding spreads across his face. He cups his hand around his ear. “I couldn’t quite hear that. You need my what?”
I wrench the words from my parched throat. “Your. Help.”
Grinning like the Cheshire cat, he pops a tater tot into his mouth and chews pensively. I squirm. Finally he starts walking toward an empty table, forcing me to follow like a pathetic puppy. He says way too loud, “What could the fairy godmother—”
“Sshh!”
“—need my help with?”
“I was hoping maybe I could borrow a costume from you? For tomorrow? Please?”
For a moment he looks like, You’ve got to be kidding me, but then his eyes glint with humor. He’s enjoying my humiliation way too much—not that I can really blame him. He lifts his chin. “I guess I could loan you something.”
I release the breath I’ve been holding. That was easier than I thought it would be. “Okay, I’ll come over after practice.”
“I’ll be at work. I get off at eight.”
I didn’t even know he had a job. Not that it matters, because I couldn’t care less about the details of his existence. Ten to one he works at a comic book store. But I say, “Sounds good. See you then.”
I move to walk away, but he stops me with a “Hey!”
“Huh?”
“What about Holly?”
“What about her?” I ventriloquist whisper, really, really wishing he wouldn’t keep bringing this up at school. But I make an extra effort to overlook the offense, since I need his help with the costume.
“When do we make a move?”
“Just chill. I’m working on it.” By which I mean, I will work on it. Eventually. I just have to get through homecoming first.