Read Online Fairy Tale by Cyn Balog - Free Book Online Page A

watch his shows. Every Sunday, he reads Soap Opera Digest and inevitably will give me the latest update on his "retirement countdown," when he will finally be home to watch them all. What a glorious (for him) and altogether mortifying (for me) day it will be when my dad can sit at home in his boxers all day, watching the soaps. I am certain the garbage in the house would never get taken out if he knew that TiVo exists.
    "Daddy," I complain, twisting a blade of glass between my fingers, "Ms. Simpson is probably going to call you about me missing bio. And Cam's a fairy. What do I do?"
    I hear the screen door open and close. "It's on! It's on!" he shouts from inside.
    I groan and close my eyes. "I'll be in, in a minute."
    I hear the swish of grass as someone collapses next to me like a wounded cow. My suspicions are confirmed when I lift my head an inch from the ground and see the scuffed Keds, toes pointing to the sky in a V. Not exactly someone I want to talk to right now, but, for some reason, I can't move.
    "What is the purpose of reclining here?" he asks me gently.
    "Because I can't breathe. I think I'm going to die." I sit up, pull my knees to my chest, and look down at my ruined cashmere sweater, spattered with sticky pink stains. "Are you a fairy, too? Is that why you appeared out of nowhere?"
    He shakes his head. "I am the Brownes' son."
    "You mean, you're Cam's brother?"
    "No." He looks at the sky as if searching for the right words. "Fairies like to play tricks on humans. They're jealous. They like to steal human babies. On the night I was born, the hospital must have left a window open, because the fairies took me and left Cam."
    "Why? Why would they leave him?"
    "Cam was a changeling. A sickly fairy. He was supposed to die of illness before he reached adulthood."
    "But he's not sick. Well, not anymore. He used to have bad asthma when he was younger, but he's fine now."
    "They do not understand why he recuperated. And they need him, as there has been a terrible tragedy. So they've come to take him back."
    "Tragedy?"
    "Yes, Cameron's older brother, Azizl, has been killed, and now his father has no true heir."
    "So they want to trade you for an heir?"
    He nods.
    I exhale deeply. "Well, why are they- still here, then? Why didn't they just take him and get the hell out, like they- did the day he was born?"
    "There is a portal between the two worlds," Pip explains. "Fairies-or anyone, for that matter-may always pass into this world. But the portal to the fairy world is open only at midnight on Day of Birth and Day of Becoming."
    "Day of who?"
    "Becoming. Their sixteenth birthday."
    Blades of wet, green grass prick at my legs, but I can't feel a thing because I'm numb. "So you're the Brownes' consolation prize for losing Cam? That's-inhuman." I pause, realizing that, duh, it's probably inhuman because they're not human. "I mean, it must feel horrible."
    "It did come as a shock to Mr, and Mrs. Browne."
    "Well, obviously. But I'm talking about you. It must feel horrible for you."
    "I do miss the beauty of the fairy world, and this place is very different and ugly, to me," he concedes. "But they don't want me there anymore. They want Cameron."
    "That's a terrible thing to do. To steal you from your parents, then throw you away? Aren't you pissed?"
    His eyes narrow, "Pissed?"
    "Angry. Upset. They threw Cam away when they thought he was no good, and now they're throwing you away," I collapse back onto the grass and stare up at the clouds again, when I realize I'm more rattled by it than he is. "Don't you care?"
    He shrugs. "I wasn't upset when they cast me out because I never really felt like I belonged there. I guess I was hoping that I would fit in better here. But...
    From the pathetic look on his face, I know what he is going to say, and I know that he's right. "But you don't fit in here, either."
    He nods. "Everybody looks at me just like they did there. I thought it would be different here because I'm one of your kind. But