Excerpt from "Wicked Normal"

chapter two - The Trouble With Fairy

So Monday morning brought about the return of the big yellow bus. "Ready for another week of camp?" Mom asked.

"It wasn't really so terrible last week after Slimey got what was coming to her," I smiled.

"Persephone! You know how I feel about that sort of talk," Mom said sternly.

"But isn't it weird that I thought about the lifeguard chair breaking and Sandy flying into the pool and having to be dragged out and the other counselors giving her mouth to mouth and -"

"Did you see her being okay in the end?" Mom interrupted.

"Of course, Mom, just like you tell me... always end thoughts happily, just in case," I grinned.

"Believe me, you don't want to mess with Karma," she warned.

"I know, Mom, cuz Karma's a –"

"Don't say it."

I giggled. Mom frequently panicked that I was going to blurt out words that warranted a bar of soap as a consequence, but such talk really wasn't my style. With my breadth of vocabulary I certainly needn't ever resort to the short little words that ignoramuses use to express themselves in an inappropriate fashion.

"Mom, I was gonna say, 'Karma's always coming back at you threefold.'"

"Thattagirl," she smiled and ruffled my hair. "Now go have a great day at camp!"

Monday was a sunny day and Traci and Gilly greeted Glittering Trillium excitedly with mention of a special two day project. It started with a hike into the forest. We got to a clearing and sat in a circle to listen as Gilly told us about the forest fairies, explaining that our project would be making fairy houses that they could stay in. Apparently, legend has it that the forest fairies leave a payment or reward for the night's lodging.

Fairies? Seriously? I'm nine. Every nine year old knows that fairies, as in lots of little fairies flying around, are a preposterously untrue concept. Maybe people see fireflies and make up stories or something, but other than the Tooth Fairy and the few oversized "fairies" you might run into at theme parks, fairies do not exist.

But, the idea of decorating a tree stump to be an in-the-wild dollhouse created solely by me, sounded like a truly fun way to pass a couple of hours. Obviously the "fairy's payment" would be some sort of treat from the counselors, so bring it on! I'm in!

I got completely lost in my own little interior decorating world, completely decking out the natural, humble abode. I had bits of bark as a couch and a fern as carpeting and the master bedroom had a black-eyed Susan as a bed with Queen Anne's lace as the comforter. I was still adding details and furnishings long after my cabin was playing duck, duck, goose in the clearing. When Traci announced we had five minutes before we would be heading back to camp for lunch, I put the finishing touches on the staircase to the fairy house balcony and completed it all just in time.

On our walk back to camp, our counselors told us that we'd check on our fairy houses the next day after lunch. So on Tuesday we all gobbled our food quickly in anticipation of hiking back and checking to see what the "fairies" had left us. But that was when Traci and Gilly pulled the mean trick of making us do our chores before the hike back, and Glittering Trillium's chore that day was latrine duty! I may not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I do know that I don't want to clean bathrooms or latrines. Blech! Gross! However, with the incentive of returning to the fairy houses and seeing what rewards awaited us, we sped right through cleaning that latrine!

We hiked back through the woods and reached the clearing, scattering to our individual creations. Shouts of joy filled the air as each camper found her candy payment. When I walked to my fairy house to collect my reward, I was completely shocked that there was no candy. There was no payment at all!