didn’t even have an opinion of Curtis. He’d first arrived at Burtonwood when he was eleven, which was late by anyone’s standards, and for the last four years he had pretty much kept to himself. And while some of the guys had talked about how good he was at hand-to-hand combat, and a lot of the girls had made noises about his blond hair, dark chocolate-colored eyes, and broad shoulders, Emma had never really paid any attention to him.
In fact, she probably still wouldn’t have noticed anything about him if he hadn’t walked out of Kessler’s office ten minutes after her own life had been ruined, with a dazed expression on his stupid face, and told everyone that he’d just been given dragons.
Even now the memory had the power to take her breath away, and she clenched her fists in annoyance (before realizing that she still had the stupid crossbow, and if she clenched any harder it would probably snap with the pressure).
“Emma? Are you still there? Tell me you’re not doing something dumb like buying a Curtis Green voodoo doll, because I thought we’d agreed that was a bad idea,” Loni pleaded.
“There’s no voodoo doll,” she said wistfully. She had toyed with the idea, but Loni and Tyler had come together (for once) and talked her out of it. “But you’ve just reminded me why I need to get to work on Plan C.”
“Look,” Loni paused for a moment before continuing to speak, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe fairies are where you belong? I mean, for example, when I was trying to find a top to go with my blue skirt last Sunday, I kept going back to that gorgeous green T-shirt my mom got me for my birthday. Anyway, there was no way I was going to wear them together because of the whole blue-and-green-should-never-be-seen thing, but then I checked my horoscope and it said that Sunday was the perfect day for a Taurus girl to take a chance, and so I did and would you believe that it ended up looking awesome together? You even said so yourself.”
“Okay, so are you comparing my life to an outfit?” Emma double-checked, and she could almost see her friend blushing from the other end of the phone.
“Of course not,” Loni hastily reassured her. “I’m just saying that maybe this is a good match for you, even though it doesn’t seem like it right now.”
“But it’s fairies,” Emma wailed as she slumped down into one of the plastic chairs that were scattered around the food court and leaned forward onto the equally plastic table. “And you’ve seen what everyone’s been like at Burtonwood. They’re all laughing at me.”
“I know and that sucks.” Loni let out an empathetic sigh. “But that’s mainly because everyone knows how much you hate your designation and because you’ve talked nonstop about how you’re going to get Kessler to change his mind. But if you start accepting it, then I’m sure they’ll lose interest and go back to concentrating on Brenda Vance’s ridiculous night goggles that she insists on wearing when she’s on patrol.”
“You really think?” Emma said in a hopeful voice.
“I do,” Loni agreed. “If you take the high road on this one and just concentrate on doing the best job you can with the fairies, I bet things will be back to normal before you know it.”
Emma chewed her lip. The idea of giving up on her dragon dream seemed unbearable. But since it looked like it wasn’t going to happen anyway, maybe Loni had a point. Maybe she should just make the most of what she had.
“Okay, I’ll think about it,” she finally said just as she caught sight of a quick flash of green hoodie by the Hong Kong Wong Chinese food counter. “And there they are.”
“You’ve found them again?” Loni squealed in excitement. “That’s great and most definitely a sign. So, are you going to go and try and kill them?”
Emma got to her feet and started to weave through the tables. “Absolutely. These three particular fairies and their stupid outfits have been taunting me ever since I first started patrolling here. And now they’re even starting to bring their girlfriends in on the mocking. Getting rid of them would make me very happy.”
“See.” Loni sounded like she was grinning. “It’s not going to be so bad after all. Oh, but Emma, don’t forget, you’re at the mall, so you can’t use any lethal weapons.”