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wrote poems that she never showed anyone, and at night she told stories to herself while she was waiting to fall asleep. Sometimes they were simple stories about having a nice boyfriend and going to dances. Other times her stories were more dramatic. Over the summer she had spent weeks working out a story where she saved a little girl who had been kidnapped by a wicked stepmother. In her story, there’d been a trail of clues she’d followed to where the little girl was hidden, and after she’d rescued the girl, she’d been invited to the White House to meet the president.
    And some nights Marylin liked to imagine magical things as she drifted off to sleep. Kings and queens and dragons, good witches andbad witches, fairies and monsters. Paging through Rhetta’s book, she saw pictures that could have been in the stories in her head, and a sudden constellation of ideas burst over her. What if the young fairy at the beginning of Rhetta’s book got lost in the woods and the evil queen fairy, who ruled over all the others, refused to let them search for her because the evil queen fairy knew that the lost fairy was destined to take her throne upon being found? Marylin’s fingertips tingled, and she grabbed her pen, ready to write.
    But she made the mistake of looking at Rhetta. The spell was broken. She couldn’t write a book with this strange girl and her jet-black hair and sparkly black and silver fingernails. How would she explain it to everyone? The very idea of writing a book with Rhetta Mayes didn’t fit in with the ideas Marylin had about seventh grade and being a middle-school cheerleader and becoming best friends with Ruby Santiago, who, nice as she was, would definitely think Rhetta was weird and someone Marylin shouldn’t be friends with.
    “I wish I had time,” Marylin said in her best middle-school cheerleader voice, handing the book back to Rhetta. “But with cheerleading and homework and everything, it’s like I’ve got every minute of my day prescheduled.”
    Rhetta took the book and put it back in her black satchel, her eyes boring into Marylin the whole time. “I don’t think ‘prescheduled’ is a word,” she said icily. “Or if it is, it shouldn’t be.”
    She turned her desk to face the front again. Marylin leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder. “We have to do a report, remember? I haven’t told you any interesting facts about me yet, and I need at least one more interesting fact about you.”
    Rhetta didn’t say a word. She didn’t even bother turning around.
    Marylin sighed. She opened her notebook and began to write. Rhetta Mayes is new to our school. She wishes she had a twin who liked art as much as she did. She is a good artist and one day hopes to write books called graphic novels. She has interesting fingernail polish.
    Then Marylin closed her notebook and put it back in her back pouch. She looked out the window at the woods that stood at the far edge of the soccer field. There, for just a second, she thought she saw a twinkling of light. Then it was gone.
    Excitement tingled at the tips of Marylin’s fingers again. The words of a story were gathering in her imagination. All she had to do was write them down. If she closed her eyes, she could see that lost fairy flying, hovering at the edge of the woods, looking for signs that would help her find her way back home. All Marylin had to do was grab her notebook out of her back pouch. All she had to do was write.
    Marylin shook her head as though she were trying to shoo the very idea of fairies out of it. She had cheerleading practice and homework and chores to do. She didn’t have time for writing stories.
    “Come on, Marylin, I’ll walk you to your locker.”
    Mazie stood beside her desk. The clock’ssecond hand ticked forward and the bell rang. Marylin stood up, picked up her back pouch, and followed Mazie out the door and into the hallway, where the lights flickered and burned, but did not sparkle, not even for a