Disaster

My life is over.  No, wait, that would be too good to be true.  The problem is, my life isn't over!  My life will probably never be over, because it's a never-ending spiral of doom from which there is no escape.  My life is a bottomless pit full of troll mucus and toad droppings.  My life--but wait, you don't know what happened, do you?

I suppose it's really all my fault for thinking somebody like Vik Blueangle could have left that Valentine's Day card for me.  In case you didn't guess from the last paragraph, that is simply not how my life works.  If it had been a note informing me that my skirt was tucked into my underpants, or that vice-principal Snodgrass wanted to see me in his office for a fun round of  "Miss Brownwing, what do you intend to do with your life if you can't even pass a simple Fairy Math test?", that would have been believable.

But no, idiot that I am, I ignored twelve-and-a-half fairy years of life experience and allowed myself to hope that, for once, life was about to hand me something that didn't turn out to be a handful of slug slime.

I was up at the crack of dawn ransacking my unbelievably boring and out-of-date wardrobe trying to find an outfit that didn't have "child of a librarian" stamped all over it--WHY are mothers allowed to dress their children in such dismal, humiliating things?!  Finally I discovered that if I rolled one of my skirts up at the waistline, it looked almost fashionably short.  Topped off by a lacy spiderweb sweater I bought at The Toadstool a few weeks ago (and kept hidden ever since) the outfit didn't look that bad.  I was able to cover up the sweater with my coat, but I forgot to roll the skirt back down and Mom had an absolute fit when I came down to breakfast!  She made me go back upstairs and change.  Never mind, I thought, I can just roll the other skirt up later.

At school I borrowed some wing dust from Titania (I'm not supposed to use it until I'm 13, but I figure I'm close enough) and tried to brighten up the green spots on my wings.  It looked so nice I decided to try some on my eyelids, even though the box said "For wings only--not for use on face!"  It went pretty well on one eyelid, but then a flake of it got in my eyes while I was doing the other one, and it stung like crazy!  I had to stick my whole face under the sink to rinse my eyes out while a gang of Noires (you know, the ones who paint their wings black with coal dust and smoke dandylion puff seeds in the bathroom and talk about how depressing life is--they should try MY life if they want to be depressed!) laughed at me.

Outside the bathroom, Titania asked if I was OK, because my eyes were puffy and my face looked a little green.  I realized that wetting the powder on my eyes had made it run down and stain my face a nice light green.  Lovely.

But on to the real show, the clandestine meeting with my secret admirer!  I was really hoping it would turn out to be Vik, because I had seen him by the lockers right before I found the card.  Titania gave my hair a good tease to try to make it a little less flat, I rolled up my skirt, and at five to Noon I bravely walked down the hall to the Fairy Dust Lab, with Titania hiding around the corner cheering me on.

Lo and behold, Vik was right there!  He looked so handsome, leaning against the lab door in his air ball team jacket, that my heart literally stopped for a second!  I had to force myself to keep walking!  Finally, I went right up to him and said, "Um, um, um, Vik!  Hi, Vik!"  Brilliant.  Thank you, brain.

He looked at me, but instead of the look of tender longing I had been imagining all day, he just looked confused.  "Um, hi," he said.  "It's Fenn, right?  Or Finn? "

Finn?  He didn't even know my name?  "Fiona! It's--I'm Fiona," I babbled.  When he didn't look any more enlightened, I whipped out the card.  "You left this!"

"Oh," he said, the light beginning to dawn. "You're her friend aren't you?  Couldn't Titania make it?"

"Titania!?"  The truth hit me like a bucket of ice water.  My locker is right next to Titania's.  In his hurry yesterday, Vik the genius had left his love note on the wrong one.  Of course that beautiful card couldn't have been for me.

Tears burned in my eyes, but I managed to stammer out, "Um, no, she couldn't.  She'll see you tomorrow.  Same time, same place!" I added with a demented laugh.  Then I ran back up the hall.

Back in the bathroom, I cried while Titania tried to comb the tangles out of my hair.  "I'm so, so sorry," she said for about the millionth time.

"It's not your fault," I hiccuped.  "You're beautiful and I'm not.  That's just how it is."

"That's not true!"  She turned me toward the mirror.  "Look at yourself!  You're gorgeous!"  Even on a good day this would have been a stretch, but with my over-teased hair forming a solid rat's nest and my face streaked with greenish tears, it was a flat-out lie.  Nice of her to say so, though.

"You've got pretty eyes, a cute nose, and a perfect figure," she went on, then gave me a closer look.  "Except for when you have your skirt all balled up at your waistline, anyway.  How did that happen?"

"Never mind."  I tugged my skirt back down.  "I'm going home.  Can you tell Mr. Swallowtail I'm sick and can't make it to Fairy Gold Math?"

"Sure."  She really is a good friend.

And so I left school early and went to The Toadstool to shop my troubles away until it was time to go home, but they didn't have any good sales.  Such, as I say, is my life.  Yep.  Troll mucus and toad turds.