The Boy Who Was Mistaken for a Fairy King by HL Fullerton

Author:HL Fullerton [Fullerton, HL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Annorlunda Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

On the day of the winter formal, a bed of petunias spontaneously bloomed around the Kings’ mailbox. Mrs. King was surprised. She remembered planting yellow ones, but those that burst forth that chilly morn were white with blotchy red centers, as if someone had bled all over the nice, white flowers.

When it was time to take photos of the kids in their fancy dress (though both Evangeline and Carl had opted for suits: Evangeline’s a royal blue velvet with black satin trim and Carl’s a skinny olive green number that made him appear taller and thinner—which only served to draw the eye up to the crown of stark, white antlers upon his head), Mrs. King shoved a posy of blooded petunias into Evangeline’s hands. A flustered Evangeline held them awkwardly against her side so that in the images she appeared to have sustained a messy gut wound and was applying pressure to it. Carl attempted to angle his rack so that the broken point didn’t show, and the overall impression was of two strangers forced to stand next to each other in front of a crowded bookcase (because the Kings had no fireplace or mantel to pose before) while one of them bled out.

Mrs. King conveniently cropped her son’s exposed skeleton before snapping the photos, as she always did when taking pictures of Carl. This only exacerbated the oddness of the couple’s body language when contrasted with their smiling faces. It made the petunias seem at fault.

The photo-taking went better at the Chase house even with Uncle Ivers and a flurry of aunts happening to drop by—all with cameras of their own. But there weren’t any smelly petunias or Mrs. King reminiscing about crocuses flowering on the day of Carl’s birth. And Carl’s antlers featured prominently in all these shots—especially Uncle Ivers’ (from which his niece was neatly eclipsed). Evangeline had notions of her family members adding a bull’s eye to Carl’s side of the photos and using his heart for target practice, which explained her scowl in several of the Chase-Forrester images. One of her aunts tried to get Evangeline to wear a circlet of ivy, even asked Carl to place it atop her niece’s head, but Evangeline refused to be crowned. Strangely enough, her aunt took the refusal well (after inspecting Carl’s palms post-ivy handling and finding no rash). Carl, being Carl, offered to wear the ivy if it was important, but Evangeline wasn’t having any of it. The ivy looked fresh enough that she worried it might strike up a conversation with Carl, a vine not being so very different from a tree or shrub in her mind, and Evangeline had had it with chatty flora. Good thing it was almost winter and the greenery was sparse.

Evangeline herded Carl into her car—Grandpa’s was back from the shop, but he no longer trusted her with it—and assured everyone they’d have fun and be careful and not do anything they wouldn’t do. Her mother captured Evangeline’s eyeroll in moving pixels and shared it far and wide before Evangeline could delete it.

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