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2

  This year, eleventh grade, was Marnie’s fifth year of boarding school, but she had never become accustomed to the communal meals. It wasn’t the food—if there wasn’t something edible served, you could always have salad, or toast with peanut butter. No, it was all the people. There was always someone looking at her, even after all this time at the school. People never stopped looking, covertly, at Skye’s daughter. Marnie used to wonder what they were hoping to see. That had been one reason why, when she was fourteen, she’d chopped off most of her hair and then bleached the rest white as dandelion fluff. With the careful half-inch of dark at the roots, it screamed fake. Marnie loved it. It gave the gawkers something real to talk about; something that was her choice. On top of that, any time she got really scared, really shy, she’d paint huge circles of black eyeliner around her eyes. If she also put on her favorite neon pink T-shirt—far more noticeable than black—and her entire collection of heavy silver rings and chains, she could face just about anyone.

  Marnie’s first boarding school—her first school, in fact, because before that Skye had taught Marnie at home—had been a bigger, coed institution, with a cafeteria. Marnie had looked ordinary then, except for the shocking resemblance to Skye. In that cafeteria, she had had to walk through the press of tables that were full of other kids, teachers, and the occasional headmaster or dean before she could finally get into line with a tray. She’d felt everyone watching her back while she went through the line. Then, when she’d finally emerged with food, she’d had to turn and survey the sea of faces again, looking for a table at which she could reasonably sit and eat.

  It didn’t help that there were at least a dozen other “celebrity” kids at that first school. Their parents were famous actors or corporate titans or rock stars. Whereas Skye was an ex-gospel singer who’d started her own … well, some said it was practically a religion. Suffice it to say that Skye was not the same kind of celebrity parent that those other kids had.

  Strange, was what the other kids called Marnie. Maybe it was true. Marnie suspected that there was more to strangeness than the dictionary would have you think. As Skye had often said, If you want things to be simple, sweetheart, you should go ahead and end it all right now. Which was not typical advice, Marnie now knew, to give to your daughter when she—for example—complained about long division.

  The feeling of being watched always came back at mealtimes.

  Halsett Academy for Girls, located in semirural Halsett, Massachusetts, near the New Hampshire border, did not have a cafeteria. Instead, there was a rather pretty Victorian dining hall, with floral wallpaper and tables of dark wood at which you had an assigned place. Initially, Marnie had thought this a better system. But you could always leave a cafeteria, while here, during dinner, you had to sit for a full hour, passing platters under the eyes of the staff. Marnie hadn’t decided if it was better or worse now that, because she was an upperclasswoman, her table was free of a permanent, assigned supervisor.

  This evening, Marnie came to dinner at the last possible moment—she’d have skipped the meal if it wouldn’t have stirred up more trouble than she wanted to deal with just now—because she’d been putting the finishing touches on her plan to confound the Elf. Even now, as she slipped into the last available chair at her table, she was still thinking about it. She’d had one idea after another, fountaining, all afternoon. She nodded a vague hello to the table of girls and quickly bowed her head for grace.

  Grace at Halsett Academy was a gentle melody with inoffensive, nondenominational lyrics. (Might as well sing to your big toe, if you’re not going to bother even mentioning God, Skye would have said.) Marnie didn’t join in, but she didn’t mind listening, either. Some of the girls had nice voices. Jenna Lowry had a clear soprano; Tarasyn Pearce a powerful alto, almost a tenor. Tarasyn’s voice had actually shocked Marnie the first time she’d heard it, so similar was it to Skye’s. But here in the dining hall, it was muted somewhat by the other voices, including a couple that could have flattened small hills. Marnie herself, for reasons she’d never bothered to investigate, had never done more than mouth the words. She just didn’t care to sing publicly, she had explained early in the year. She knew they’d probably thought she’d inherited Skye’s voice. Ha.

  The song ended, and the bustle of the meal began. Barb Schulman asked for the butter and Marnie passed it over, for the first time looking up fully and seeing—Mrs. Fisher. Mrs. Fisher, dorm counselor, was sitting two tables away with a group of sophomores. But she was regarding Marnie steadily, frowning slightly. Defiantly, Marnie caught her eye and stared right back.

  Had Ms. Slaight talked to Mrs. Fisher? Even if she left out Marnie’s gospel-inspired insult—and for some reason Marnie figured she would—she could have displayed Marnie’s artistic chemistry test. More trouble … when all Marnie wanted, really, was to be left alone. Was that too much to ask?

  Marnie broke eye contact with Mrs. Fisher. If only she could quit school altogether. But how would she live? She didn’t get Skye’s money for years, and Max had made it abundantly clear that she was to stay in school. Could she get a job? But doing what? Trouncing elves?

  Still aware of Mrs. Fisher’s gaze, Marnie pretended to be as interested as the rest of the table in what Dorothea Polley was saying about college. One of the things Marnie liked to do was to imagine that the speech coming out of the other girls’ mouths was enclosed in big cartoon balloons. When anyone got too bombastic, Marnie would pull out an invisible hatpin—a long silver one with a pearl on the end, she’d decided—deftly skewer the balloon, then watch the imaginary letters flutter to the floor in glorious disarray. Pop! Pop! Pop! It was Sesame Street run amok, and made dinner considerably more enjoyable.

  “What I want,” Dorothea was now saying intensely, “what I think I need, is a really, really good drama department. And lots of opportunities to actually act. I mean, a college that doesn’t just offer a drama major—lots of places do that—but somewhere that does a lot of productions. A range of productions. Everything from Shakespeare to … to …” Dorothea’s arm swept the air. “… to, oh, you know, someone very modern like …” The arm again; Marnie groped in the seam of her jeans for her hatpin. “… like … like …”

  “Like Chekhov?” Jenna Lowry supplied.

  Almost against her will, Marnie turned her head to glance at Jenna’s expressionless face. Jenna, who was pretty, athletic, popular, and famous throughout Halsett for being gifted at literature … but who was not usually openly vicious.

  Dorothea was bestowing a warm smile on Jenna. “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly the kind of contemporary writer I mean.”

  “I thought so,” murmured Jenna. Marnie watched her exchange a fast look with Tarasyn, with Barb. Dorothea, predictably, missed the byplay completely.

  And suddenly Marnie was filled with a nameless rage. So what if Dorothea didn’t know Chekhov from someone Jenna “Lit/Crit” Lowry might condescend to call “modern”? So what if Dorothea was uninformed, or even an idiot? She didn’t deserve to be mocked in public.

  “Wait a minute,” Marnie said, interrupting the conversation Jenna had just started about some new movie. Everyone turned, in surprise, toward her; Marnie rarely spoke at meals. “I thought Chekhov was a nineteenth-century playwright,” she said aggressively to Jenna. “Russian, right? The Cherry Orchard? Uncle Vanya?”

  A second passed.

  Then Jenna said, blandly: “Ah, Marnie, you’re thinking of Anton Chekhov. Dorothea and I were discussing Jessica Chekhov. Jessica’s work is very, uh, avant-garde.”

  “Yes, that’s right!” put in Dorothea emphatically. But she spoke a little too quickly, and you could see the alarmed white around her eyes.

  Marnie ignored her. She gave Jenna a long stare. Jenna, also carefully not looking at Dorothea, lifted her chin and gave Marnie a very cool, challenging look right back.

  Marnie felt her left hand clench in her lap. She had forgotten entirely about her imaginary hatpin. “I’ve never h
eard of this Jessica Chekhov. What plays has she written, Jenna? Enlighten my ignorance.”

  Jenna’s chin had gone farther up. “Dorothea? Fill Marnie in.”

  “No,” Marnie began. “Jenna, you’re the one who—”

  But Dorothea had opened her mouth. “Uh, everyone knows about Jessica Chekhov … Her first play was … was on Broadway … Leonardo DiCaprio was in it …” She stuttered on, saying one ridiculous thing after another and, throughout, staring at Marnie—not at Jenna—with helpless, increasing hatred.

  Everyone sat frozen at the table. Not one person moved to stop Dorothea’s babble as it increased in speed and volume and silliness—

  Finally Marnie couldn’t stand it. “Shut up, Dorothea,” she said sharply. It worked like a slap. Dorothea drew a deep breath, looking as if any minute she would burst into a storm of tears. And in the piercing moment of complete silence that followed, all the other girls looked at Marnie as if she had done something awful.

  Marnie tightened her hand on the imaginary hatpin until she could almost feel its bite. What she already knew was made even clearer. You were better off hanging out in cyberspace, chasing elves. Fewer people got hurt that way.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Marnie pulled the headphones off slowly, at the point at which Skye’s solo harmonized with the strong soft background vocals of the chorus, before blending so perfectly into the other voices that you could no longer distinguish her individual one. Marnie had asked her mother once if she was still singing at that point, or had stopped entirely, but Skye hadn’t remembered. It was all so long ago, she’d said. As far as Marnie could recall, Skye had never listened to her own vocal recordings. Of all Skye’s CDs, this one was Marnie’s favorite.

  Or rather, had been.

  She stared at the headphones in her hands. She listened to Skye’s CDs all the time, and yet, more and more of late, the music—Skye herself—seemed to slip away even as Marnie listened. It became a strong, disembodied voice that had nothing to do with Marnie, that left her alone instead of surrounding her with warmth as it used to do. The thought panicked her. Someday she might not even be able to listen anymore …

  She closed her eyes for a second. It was just that she was tired. She was tired all the time now. She longed to sleep but knew she couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Not so early. She ought to do some chemistry homework. Or any homework, really. The only class she was on top of was precalculus, which didn’t count since by some quirk she had never had to work at math.

  The problem was, she really didn’t want to work. If only Max would magically understand how stupid it all was, this school stuff. How pointless. Marnie knew she was right about this. If she could only leave, she would be all right … it was this place, not her. Those other girls—she didn’t understand them, she never would. A tough school was Max’s idea, since Marnie had herself insisted on boarding school. “Let’s try something academically challenging,” he had said, after Marnie demanded to leave the celebrity school. “You know you could be up for it if you tried.” The girls’ school idea had been Mrs. Shapiro’s contribution, but Max had liked it, and identified Halsett within days. Marnie wondered how he’d talked them into taking her, with her—even then—erratic academic record.

  Students tended to work intensely at Halsett. There was huge pressure to excel, to take advanced courses, to apply to prestigious colleges. Competition was fierce. Everybody knew everybody else’s class rank. Girls cried when they got grades below A, or when their PSAT and SAT results were less than spectacular. Some girls took drugs to be able to stay up late, work harder, harder still. A few drank to relieve the tension. Last semester, one senior had had a nervous breakdown putting together her college applications—there’d even been whispers she’d tried to slit her wrists. And right now, with college letters due to arrive in only a couple of weeks, the entire senior class looked feverish not only with fear and hope, but with a whole range of twitchier emotions as they eyed each other, added up vital statistics, and wondered: How many would Harvard take? Stanford? Yale? It was like living in a vat of boiling water.

  Marnie blamed the staff, yes, and society, okay, but the other girls all appeared to be brainwashed puppets! Cannibalistic puppets from a horror movie, at that. Take Jenna Lowry, with her sly remarks about Chekhov. Everything else aside, it was just so, so Halsett. It made you sick. More specifically, Jenna made Marnie sick. The perfect Halsett girl. Marnie felt her dinnertime rage return, and was glad. It filled that empty place where Skye no longer was.

  Right after dinner, Jenna had come up next to Marnie as all the girls walked back to the dorms. Marnie had stopped dead in the road and confronted her. “What?”

  Jenna spat back, “You made me do it.”

  “Oh, please. Tell that one to your mommy.” Despite the dim campus ground lighting, Marnie saw Jenna’s lips tighten.

  “You—you …”

  “Me, me,” mimicked Marnie.

  “Exactly,” said Jenna viciously.

  Marnie felt a clutch at her stomach. “That’s an amazing criticism coming from you. At least I don’t prop up my ego by putting other people down publicly.”

  “Dorothea would never have known if you hadn’t pushed me!”

  “What power I have over you. I’m flattered.”

  “You—you—”

  “Didn’t we do that part of the conversation already?”

  Jenna had stomped off, and Marnie had watched her go with some satisfaction. But it had faded fast. And now, remembering, it didn’t make her feel as justified as she had thought it would.

  Oh, God. Marnie opened her eyes again and stared at Skye’s CD. It used to be that Marnie could simply concentrate and she’d know just what Skye might have said about any situation. Sometimes she still could. Sometimes.

  Not now.

  After a minute she fitted the CD carefully back into its case. Then, without thinking at all, she turned on her computer and sat down. And in a few minutes …

  Greetings, Sorceress, said the Elf. I thought I’d see you here tonight.

  Marnie’s heart lightened. She leaned over her keyboard.

  Three hours later, Marnie had the Elf backed into a twisty little passage with only one truly viable exit option, an airshaft that was—barely—climbable with artificial aid.

  Or, he could go down another level of tunnels and take his chances with the Rubble-Eater. Who hasn’t eaten for a while, Marnie told the Elf helpfully.

  It hadn’t been difficult, really, getting the Elf into this section of tunnel. The Elf was always willing to take chances. The challenge had been figuring out what six items he was holding—well, five items, actually, because the sixth was the magical spellbook that he’d stolen from Marnie last night. She’d had to make sure that, when the Elf reached this point, all of those five items would be more important, more necessary to his survival, than the spellbook.

  He had to drop something, of course, in order to pick up the grappling hook Marnie had thoughtfully placed at the entrance to the airshaft. The Elf couldn’t make it up the airshaft without the grappling hook. Marnie could, because she was a sorceress and self-levitation was among her documented powers.

  She smiled at her computer screen, where the little animated green figure that represented the Elf was standing perfectly still.

  Drop cloak of invisibility, said the Elf. Get grappling hook.

  Are you sure? Marnie happily typed in the chat window. Have you forgotten where the airshaft leads? The Mountain King doesn’t like elves.

  He doesn’t like sorceresses, either, snapped back the Elf.

  Ah, but we have a treaty tonight.

  The green Elf pulsed on the screen. Then: Drop rubies. Get cloak of invisibility.

  Interesting move, Elf. Marnie almost laughed at the screen. But are you sure you want to do that? In the few seconds that followed, she imagined that, wherever in the real world the Elf was, he was swearing. Out loud.

  I’m not giving up the spellbook
, said the Elf eventually.

  Don’t be such a poor sport, Marnie typed back. What good is it to you? Elves can’t be sorcerers; it’s in the guild rules. You knew it when you decided on your character. Go on, drop the spellbook.

  Another few seconds ticked by. Then:

  NEVER! shouted the Elf.

  Manners, manners, typed Marnie.

  The Elf whipped back: I’ll shout if I want to. By the way, do you happen to have a treaty with the Rubble-Eater, too?

  Marnie stared at her screen. What … ?

  WIELD CLOAK OF INVISIBILITY! yelled the Elf, clearly inspired. PICK UP RUBIES! DROP GRAPPLING HOOK! JUMP DOWN AIRSHAFT!

  The Elf disappeared from Marnie’s screen.

  Marnie burst out laughing. The Elf was never dull; you had to give him that. Down the airshaft. With her spellbook, too. And without the grappling hook.

  It was too funny. The Elf must have thought that the Rubble-Eater wouldn’t see him with the cloak on. But the Rubble-Eater was blind, and functioned by sound and smell. Most likely, the Elf was toast. At least for tonight. Marnie wouldn’t even need to go after him herself.

  She ought to study, or just go to bed, and chase the spellbook tomorrow night. But on the other hand …

  Pick up grappling hook, she typed, and clicked Send.

  On the other hand, she hadn’t visited the Lair of the Rubble-Eater in a very long time.

  Jump down airshaft, she typed.

  “Wait for me, Elf,” she murmured aloud.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Marnie slept peacefully through the next morning’s classes, arising rested and refreshed exactly when she wished to. She had to laugh when she sat up in bed and peered at the alarm clock. Sleep was an excellent thing. She stretched luxuriously. She’d had nearly nine hours of it.

  Plus, she had her spellbook back. Take that, Elf!

  There was absolutely no sense in rushing to make her last few classes. Since her absence would already have been noticed, she might as well get in trouble for the whole day. Embrace the inevitable. Skye had written that somewhere. Marnie took a long, hot shower, and then did two loads of laundry in the dorm basement. How fabulous not to have to fight several other girls for the machines! She idly watched her jeans and socks rotate in the dryer and wondered if, after all, she should devote some time during spring break to catching up. It made sense. If she could get through the next two months, there’d only be one year of high school left. She didn’t have to be part of the Halsett madness; she could easily find a random noncompetitive college and major in something or other, waste time until she was twenty-one. Then she could do as she liked, whatever that was. Trounce elves around the clock.