Ballad by Maggie Stiefvater

Author:Maggie Stiefvater
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: teen, fiction, fairy queen, fairie, lament
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2009-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

Mom has an inability to be on time. This inability—nay, this essential property of her existence—is so powerful that even her bus wasn’t on time. Couldn’t be on time. So Paul and I sat outside the bus terminal on a bench, the fall sun bright on us but lacking any force.

“I don’t get how you get this to work.” Paul was trying to get a pen to write on his hand. It was one of those where you click the end to make the end come out, and he kept clicking and unclicking it and then shaking it, as if that would make it write better. He was making an army of dots on the back of his hand, but he hadn’t yet managed any letters. “It’s like I’m trying to write the alphabet with a hot dog.”

Cars roared by, but no bus. Without looking away from the road, I held my hand out for the pen. “I will enlighten you. Prepare to be dazzled.”

He gave me the pen and pointed at the back of my hand. “Write ‘manlove’ on there.”

I hovered the pen over my skin. “Why, Paul, I had no idea you felt that way. I mean, I’m universally appealing, but still—”

Paul grinned big enough for me to see it out of the corner of my eye. “Dude, no. We had a, you know, what do you call it. A guest player. A guest oboe instructor. Anyway, she came in this week—and you know what her name was? Amanda Manlove.”

I made an appreciative noise. “No way.”

“Yeah, dude. That’s what I said! I mean, seriously. She had to go through grade school with that name. Her parents must’ve hated her.”

I wrote bonfire on my hand.

Paul made a spit-filled sound in the back of his throat. “Nuh-uh! How did you get it to write? It didn’t make dots on your hand. It really wrote.”

“You’ve got to pull the skin tight, genius,” I said, and demonstrated. I wrote my name, and then drew a circle around it.

He took the pen back from me and stretched his skin tight. He wrote bonfire on his hand too. “Why ‘bonfire’?”

I didn’t know. “I want to put a bonfire scene in Ballad,” I lied.

“We’d have to make fake fire for onstage. That’ll be either hard or corny. Except alcohol fire. Isn’t alcohol fire invisible?” Paul looked at something past me. “Hey, incoming. It’s the girl from your old school.”

I froze and didn’t turn to confirm. “Paul, you’d better not be kidding me. Do you think she’s seen me?”

Paul’s gaze lifted to above my head. “Um, yeah, pretty sure she has.”

“Um, hi,” Dee said, right behind my shoulder. Just her voice made me hear the words again: I was thinking of him when you kissed me.

I shot Paul a dark look that meant thanks for all the advance warning and stood up to face her. I shoved my hands in my pockets without saying anything.

“Hi, Paul,” Dee looked around me at Paul, who was looking a little hunted.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.