How I Found the Perfect Dress (21 page)

The site's high-tech language always cracked me up: Their
infrared sensors could detect the heat signature of Rudolph's nose, using a powerful military radar system and multiple satellites in geosynchronous orbit, tens of thousands of miles above the earth
. “These are the same satellites NORAD uses to detect incoming missiles!” it cheerfully proclaimed. Personally I never found the idea of incoming missiles to be particularly Christmasy.

NORAD tracks Colin.
That's what I wanted: a little radar blip showing me Colin's location, mile by mile, on land and sea and air, as he headed far, far away from me once more. I had no idea when we'd see each other again, or if I'd ever be able to break the enchantment that threatened to ruin his life.

And the whole time he'd been in Connecticut, we'd never even kissed.

With me moping around and the parents back in fight mode, poor Tammy was left struggling to put together her Saint Patrick's Day project by herself.

At various points during the day I saw her fussing with the shoebox, but I was too depressed to pay much attention. Paints came out. Bits of tape and torn pieces of tissue paper were everywhere. It was after dinner before she finally approached me for help.

“I am almost done,” she said bravely, although she was clearly on her last nerve. “All I need are some pennies. And a mug.”

Under one arm Tammy was holding the shoebox, which was now painted green, with green tissue paper taped over the top. In the other hand she was holding a can of root beer.

“What is that?” I asked, clueless.

“It's a leprechaun trap. We're supposed to catch one and bring it in to class tomorrow, for Saint Patrick's Day.” She looked up at me, and there was green paint smudged all over her face. “I kept telling my teacher they're controversial and we might not get any, but she didn't listen.”

Great,
I thought miserably.
First my dad imprisons the gnomes in a tiny cell, and now my sister is setting traps for leprechauns
. Forget about the Lawn Police—if there was an ASPCA for mistreatment of pint-sized magical beings, they were going to be pulling up in their squad cars any minute now to drag us all to headquarters.

“The pennies are bait,” Tammy went on. “The root beer too, but I need to put it in a mug because this can is too big for a leprechaun to open. They're very small, you know.” She looked at me with big wise eyes. “I have to hide the trap in the garden. Will you help me?” Her voice quavered. “It's kind of dark outside.”

I took some pennies from my wallet and found a miniature souvenir beer stein my parents had gotten at a wedding. “Here,” I said, showing it to her. “This is the right size for a leprechaun, don't you think?”

Together we hid the box under the bushes outside and laid a trail of pennies to the entrance. With great concentration, Tammy filled the tiny mug with root beer.

“Perfect,” she said when we were done. “I will catch the best leprechaun of anyone in my class.” Then she went inside to watch TV.

I couldn't imagine Jolly Dan being tricked by a painted shoebox. But then I had a crazy idea, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought,
Why not?
Jolly Dan still didn't have a date to the Faery Ball, and I desperately needed another chance to get that enchantment off poor Colin, and—it couldn't hurt to try, anyway.

So, later that night, after Tammy was asleep, I snuck out and added some bait of my own to the trap.

I put some pink nail polish inside, and a picture of Orlando Bloom I downloaded off the Internet. Then I added my favorite pink lip gloss, just for luck.

This was not just a leprechaun trap anymore.

This was a
girl
leprechaun trap.

 

 

feeling kind of stupid, i set mЧ alarm for five a.m. to make sure I got to the trap before Tammy woke up. I figured the odds of there being anyone in there were a zillion to one, but what if I was wrong? I sure didn't want Tammy dragging some poor leprechaun into Miss Wallace's class for show and tell.

As for my own girl-bait additions to the trap—granted, they probably made the odds ten zillion to one. But there was still that one, and that was enough to explain why, Monday morning, in the predawn darkness, I was trudging along the wet grass with a flashlight, even though I was almost completely certain that, when I crouched down low next to the raspberry bush and pushed the green tissue paper aside, the leprechaun trap would be completely uninhabited.

It wasn't.

And when I saw what—I mean, who—was in the trap, a lot of things suddenly started to make perfect sense.

“Taffy Smoothcheek!” I exclaimed. “Are you—are you a leprechaun?”

“No,” she cried, hurriedly wiping the lip gloss off her lips. “No no no! I'm a misfit gnome, that's all!”

I stared at her, and she stared at me. A penny dropped from her tight little fist and rolled into the grass.

“It took more than gnome magic to get out of that ministorage, Taffy,” I said.

“But I'm not,” she whimpered. “I'm an Occasional Exception!”

I looked at her crab-apple, not very gnomelike face. I thought about her grouchy, not very gnomelike temper. “Perhaps,” I said. “But did you ever consider the
possibility
that maybe—just maybe—”

“Of course not,” she said. She looked around like someone might be eavesdropping, and lowered her voice. “But I do have a confession to make. I like shoes.”

“Shoes?”

“Shhhh!” She shushed me wildly. “I don't have the right tools to make them, but I draw the designs. I've done it since I was a child.”

She pulled a tiny sketchbook out of her apron pocket and showed me the pages. Shoes, shoes and more shoes. Some of them were pretty stylish, especially if you liked buckles.

“Doesn't that make it even more likely that you might be a—” I saw her wince, but pressed on. “You know. A lepre—”

“But if I'm a—what you said I might be,” she interrupted, quickly hiding the book from sight, “that means I'm a boy, because there
are
no female—what you said I might be.” Taffy started to tear up. “And I don't wanna be a boy. I don't
feel
like a boy. Boys are doofuses, most of the time!”

“Sometimes they are. But, Taffy,” I said gently, “maybe everyone's wrong. Maybe there
are
female leprechauns. Maybe they're all like you—they don't believe that they exist, because everyone says they don't, so they think they're just misfit gnomes.”

“Or unpopular dwarf,” she said, weeping.

“Right,” I agreed, “or, you know, uncool trolls, or whatever.”

“I knew a troll like that once,” Taffy sniffed. “She had
no
friends! It was sad!”

“Exactly,” I said. “I'm just saying, maybe it's time to ignore what you've been told, and admit what you really are.”

Taffy heaved a final sob, chugged the rest of the root beer and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. “Okay,” she said, pulling herself together. “Maybe you're right. Maybe I am a girl leprechaun. It would explain a lot. But to be honest, I'm not sure how to tell.”

On the assumption that the differences between boy and girl leprechauns were more or less the same as those between boy and girl humans, I quickly explained to Taffy how to tell.

“Saint Patrick preserve us!” she exclaimed, as she peeked beneath her apron. “I
am
a girl leprechaun!”

Then she started crying all over again.

“Don't be sad, Taffy.” I offered her a tissue from my pocket. “Being the first official girl leprechaun in recorded history is kind of awesome, if you think about it.”

“I know.” She dabbed her eyes with the tissue. “Now I'm crying because I'm happy. Deep inside, I've always known I wasn't like all the other gnomes.” Then, through her tears, she smiled what could only be described as a crinkly leprechaun smile, and winked at me like a pro. “And finally, I know why!”

To be honest, that made me feel kind of teary myself.

 

 

“not another gnome!” jollЧ dan Cried.

By the time I got home from school Monday afternoon, Taffy Smoothcheek had totally embraced her new identity. She'd spent the day hiding in the yard, making shoe-shaped mud pies (Glendryn and Drenwyn had been put back in the garage, of course). Her eagerness to meet one of her own kind was so extreme I thought she might scare Jolly Dan, so when I took her to see him I asked her to wait outside the door of his shop while I explained the situation.

“She's not another gnome, I promise you.”

“Then what?” he said scornfully. “I'm not interested in a giantess like you!”

“No, she's just your size. She's just your—everything. Jolly Dan,” I said, feeling incredibly nervous all of a sudden, “she's a girl leprechaun.”

“No!” he bellowed. “Impossible! I don't believe you.”

“Don't be so close minded,” I scolded. “You keep telling me how leprechauns are solitary. If that's the case, you'd never get the chance to compare your, uh, differences with each other. How would you even know if some were female and some were male?”

At this he started to stammer and blush. “It's an understandable mistake,” I went on, though I hardly thought that it was. “Haven't you ever met a leprechaun who seemed the slightest bit
different
from you?”

“Wait a minute,” said Jolly Dan, the light dawning. “You don't mean—the
beardless
leprechauns?”

“They're girls, you dumdum!” I threw up my hands and almost smacked the ceiling.

“But I thought girls wore pink dresses and had long hair with ribbons? I thought they giggled and acted silly?”

“Jolly Dan! That is
not
the difference between boys and girls, okay? There's a lot more to it.”

“Like what?”

Sheesh! Was it really my job to explain the facts of life to this entire species? “Like—oh for Pete's sake! Taffy, would you come in here, please?”

I opened the tiny front door, and in walked Taffy. And when Jolly Dan Dabby and Taffy Smoothcheek got their first look at each other, I didn't have to do very much more explaining. Although, to be honest, other than Jolly Dan having a beard and Taffy not, there really wasn't much physical difference between the two of them.

“Don't they have health class in leprechaun schools?” I said under my breath.

“They used to, in the old days,” said Jolly Dan, gazing at Taffy like, well, like he'd never seen a girl before, “because, as I recall, there was some grown-up ‘thing' they didn't want us young ones to do.”

“I remember that too,” said Taffy, her face brightening. “But then they decided that the best way to convince us not to do this ‘thing' was to not tell us what it was. So they stopped having the classes altogether.”

Jolly Dan nodded. “I guess we've gotten a bit confused as a result.”

I'll say,
I thought. But I had other business to finish up.

“Now, Jolly Dan,” I said, laying Colin's sneakers on the workbench. “Do we have a deal?”

He looked at Taffy, and at me, and bowed his head.

“The finest pair of hand-sewn boots I have ever made shall be yours, in time for the Spring Faery Ball.”

“Thank you.” I knew he was showing off for Taffy, but I didn't care. “You rock.”

Taffy took a long, deep sniff, and her eyes grew round. “What's that smell?” she asked.

“It's shoes,” Jolly Dan explained reverently. “They smell like leather. And feet.”

“What a wonderful smell,” Taffy said, awestruck. “It smells like—home.”

t
ammЧ Was not the onlЧ kid in miss Wallace's Class who failed to bring a leprechaun to school. In fact, not a single one of her classmates managed to catch one.

“Bummer,” I said, when I finally got home from the mall and she gave me the rundown. She was pretty disappointed. Part of me wished I could tell her that her trap had worked, but I knew that was a bad idea, so I poured each of us a bedtime bowl of Lucky Charms cereal, just to cheer her up.

“Maybe leprechauns are not controversial
or
missological,” she said somberly, staring at the tiny, artificially-flavored marshmallow bits floating in the milk. “Maybe they're just bogus.”

“Or maybe,” I said, shoving a big spoonful in my mouth, “they're just really, really tricky.”

I gave myself a few minutes to enjoy the sugar rush, and then I got to work. Mike Fitch was incredibly jazzed when I called and said yes, I would love to go to the junior prom with him, and he acted very sweet and
no problemo
about me being such an indecisive wimp about the whole thing. “I'm just glad you came to your senses,” he joked.