How to Disappear Completely: Chapters 35–51

She didn’t need to worry, though. I told Fina about what happened with Edie and Austin. (“She probably has a guilty conscience,” Fina replied. “Who knew Edie had a conscience to begin with?”)

The air is cold and sharp as we cross the meadows, and the dark trees loom up before us.

“Aren’t they beautiful, Emma?” Gram had whispered last year, putting her arm around me and tilting her head against mine. “This is why I love this time of year. It’s when the world finds out how resilient it is. It may be dark and cold, but we band together and we hang lights and sing songs. And before you know it, spring is right around the corner!”

Then Old Joe’s jaw starts to work side to side. “Well, now,” he says sheepishly, “I’m not really the person to be asking about that kind of thing. In fact, I’d, uh, better be getting back to the fields. You tell your folks I say hello. Nice to meet you, Fina.”

“There were all sorts of rumors flying,” Ruth says, tapping her cane against the sidewalk. “Polio. Tuberculosis. A schoolteacher died from meningitis that year, remember, Gloria? She was so young. Pretty thing, too.”

“It was a different time,” Gloria replies. “In those days, illnesses weren’t talked about in the open. They were whispered about behind closed doors. Anyway, it was obvious your gram wanted to put it behind her. It was the kind thing to do not to ask imprudent questions. We were all just thankful she was back again.”

“Magic," said the fairy queen placidly, “is all about how you see things."

Another crack of thunder, and Boomer leaps out of bed and cowers by the door.

“You’re braver than you think.”
“Well, maybe you are, too,” I say. “When are you going to tell Mom? About wanting to take a year off?”
“Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. I think I’ll wait and see if I get into Yale first. If I do and they let me defer a year, she probably won’t be as upset.”

The man kind of resembles Dad, except he wears a smugly satisfied expression that I can’t imagine on Dad’s face.

The woman has an upturned nose and a prim smirk that I can’t quite call a smile because there’s no joy in it.

It’s a little notebook, the pages brittle as fallen leaves. Inside, the lined sheets are covered with drawings instead of writing. Little sketches of fairy couples dancing in the moonlight, gnomes peeking out from hollowed trees, a stone palace with turrets spiraling up from each corner.

I stare at the questions. My chest is cold and clammy now. Mom is saying something about wanting to be prepared for our next appointment, but I’m not really listening. All these questions are about treatments. Ways to get rid of my vitiligo.

When we come to the bend in the road where the church is, we break into a run, sprinting past the orchard and the farm fields until we come to Briar Hollow Lane.
“Looks creepy,” Fina murmurs, staring down the narrow, gravel road with piles of dead leaves strewn across it.

As we get closer, we see the house is surrounded by a foreboding iron fence.

“You stay here, and I’ll open the door,” she says. “I don’t know if the branch can hold both of us.”
So I stand there, biting my lip as she clambers onto the branch and sits down, then begins to scooch across it until she’s reached the other side of the wall.

As you know, sales for the book have been modest the last ten years, and we believe this edition will bring your story to a whole new generation of readers who will treasure it as so many have done before them.

Her gaze lands on the letter. I’ve seen her before, of course, but I’ve never really seen her until now. The sunken cheeks and blue-gray eyes, the wispy eyebrows and silver hair, the shoulders knotted around her ears.

“Why do you have R. M. Wildsmith’s mail?” I ask.
Madeline leans forward just far enough so her face is lit in the orange glow of the fire. “I think you can put it together,” she rasps.

Madeline pulls a quilt from the back of the chair and wraps it around her frail frame.

“She told me she was a fairy princess escaped from the house where she was being kept by an evil pair of goblins. They had locked her away from the world, and only at night, when they were deep asleep, could she be free from their tyranny. Every night, when the moon rose, she rose with it, and through the woods she ran, laughing into the wind...."

“What are you talking about?” I nearly shout. Why can’t she just say what she means?
She glances at me again. “You haven’t yet guessed?” she asks. “You do know that your condition can be hereditary?”

"...I was the only one who still remembered the fairy princess and the world cursed to darkness. I was the only one who still lived in the Dimwood, yearning for the day it would transform into the Goldengrove.”

By now, Skyler's voice is little more than a nervous whisper. She watches as Fina and I exchange a bewildered glance. Ruby sent Skyler to talk to us? But why?

I steal glances at her table during lunch that day while Fina is telling Skyler about her plans to initiate her into the New Kids Brigade, which include an elaborate secret ceremony, apparently.

I feel a pang of sympathy for her. Because I’ve just realized that, no matter how popular Edie seems to be, in this moment she is just as lonely as Madeline Mitchell.

“Since when do you girls do things together?” Mom asks, putting a hand on her hip.
“Honey,” Dad says, looking up from the movie we’d been watching with him on the couch, “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“‘Once upon a time,” I start, “‘there was a humble cottage that sat halfway between a village and a great wood, as if it could not decide to which it belonged.’”

“Peace my child,” said the woman, “for I am no witch. She has been vanquished, thanks to you.”

I can’t remember ever being in front of this many people. My dinner seems to flip in my stomach. Even in the dusky light, I’m sure they can make out my patches.