How to Ditch Your Fairy

Praise for

HOW TO DITCH

YOUR Fairy

“
How to Ditch Your Fairy
is a stay-up-al-night read, ful of clever twists, mature humor, and thoroughly believable characters… .

Fast-paced and captivating, the storyline here never misses a beat.”

—CurledUpKids.com

“Set in a futuristic fantasy city, this book puts a fun spin on fairy tales: fairies exist, but you may wish they did not… . This vividly imagined story wil charm readers.” —
Publishers Weekly

“Charlie is totaly likable, smart, and sarcastic, a perfectly self-involved, insecure teen… . This ‘doos’ (briliant) fantasy wil not be ditched.” —
SLJ

“This comic coming-of-age novel wil entertain teen readers.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Larbalestier’s inhabitation of Charlie’s voice is crisp, funny, and wholy believable… . [The] wel-drawn protagonist wil easily carry teens captivated by the hysterical first page through to the finish.”

—
VOYA

“Thoroughly entertaining, totaly enchanting, wickedly funny.”

—Libba Bray, author of
A Great and Terrible Beauty

“Welcome to your new obsession! Not only wil you believe in fairies after reading this book, you wil know what kind you have.”

—Maureen Johnson, author of
13 Little Blue Envelopes
Books by Justine Larbalestier

How to Ditch Your Fairy

Liar

HOW TO DITCH

YOUR Fairy

JUSTINE LARBALESTIER

Copyright (c) 2008 by Justine Larbalestier First published by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books in 2008

Paperback edition published in 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Published by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children’s Books 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Larbalestier, Justine.

How to ditch your fairy / by Justine Larbalestier.—1st U.S. ed.

p. cm.

Summary: In a world in which everyone has a personal fairy who tends to one aspect of daily life, fourteen-year-old Charlie decides she does not want hers—a parking fairy—and embarks on a series of misadventures designed to rid herself of the invisible sprite and replace it with a better one, like her friend Rochelle’s shopping fairy.

eISBN: 978-1-59990-582-2

[1. Fairies—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction.]

I. Title.

PZ7.L32073Ho 2008 [Fic]—dc22 2008002408

Typeset by Westchester Book Composition

Printed in the U.S.A. by Quebecor World Fairfield 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

All papers used by Bloomsbury U.S.A. are natural, recyclable products made from wood grown in well-managed forests. The manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

For Stephen Gamble and Ron Serdiuk,

my two favorite fairies

Table of Contents

NOTE TO READERS

CHAPTER 1 : Kiler Top

CHAPTER 2 : Rochele

CHAPTER 3 : Parking Fairy

CHAPTER 4 : New Avalon the Brave

CHAPTER 5 : True Love. Grr!

CHAPTER 6 : Danders Anders

CHAPTER 7 : More Demerits

CHAPTER 8 : Best Dad Ever

CHAPTER 9 : An Intervention

CHAPTER 10 : Statistical Torpor

CHAPTER 11 : Public Service

CHAPTER 12 : Worst Sister Ever

CHAPTER 13 : Steffi

CHAPTER 14 : Doctor Tahn

CHAPTER 15 : Rochele’s Lucky Day

CHAPTER 16 : Attack of Danders Anders

CHAPTER 17 : Tamsin Burnham- Stone

CHAPTER 18 : Two Fairies

CHAPTER 19 : A Surprise

CHAPTER 20 : A Revelation

CHAPTER 21 : Ruins

CHAPTER 22 : Al Over

CHAPTER 23 : Hope

CHAPTER 24 : Metal Box

CHAPTER 25 : The Ultimate Fairy Book

CHAPTER 26 : Bleaching, Starving, and Flensing CHAPTER 27 ; Swap

CHAPTER 28 : Waverly Burnham- Stone

CHAPTER 29 : A Different Fairy

CHAPTER 30 : Best Fairy Ever

CHAPTER 31 : Impossibilities

CHAPTER 32 : Possibilities

CHAPTER 33 : Less Than Doos

CHAPTER 34 : Love and Hatred

CHAPTER 35 : Crossing the Field

CHAPTER 36 : Luge Hal

CHAPTER 37 : Cold and Ice

CHAPTER 38 : Trying to Nearly Die

CHAPTER 39 : Fairy Free

CHAPTER 40 : Gambling

CHAPTER 41 : Friends Again

CHAPTER 42 : Monkey Knife Fight

CHAPTER 43 : Reckoning

CHAPTER 44 : Fairy Attracting

CHAPTER 45 : True Best Fairy Ever

DEMERITS AND SUSPENSIONS

LIST OF KNOWN FAIRIES

GLOSSARY

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROMISE

BEFORE

HISTORY OF ME

NOTE TO READERS

How to Ditch Your Fairy
isn’t set in Australia or the United States of America but in an imaginary country, perhaps a little in the future, that might be an amalgam of the two. Like both those countries, it has an East Coast and a West Coast and there are islands too. But no one eats apple pie or Vegemite sandwiches and they play cricket as wel as basebal.

Days walking: 60

Demerits: 4

Conversations with Steffi: 5

M
y spoffs looked funny in the top, which is odd because my spoffs are tiny. I puled the top up and tried to push them back where they belonged. Didn’t work. Somehow the top was pushing my right spoff under my armpit and my left toward my neck.

I wasn’t entirely used to having spoffs. I’m only four-teen and the lumps on my chest only started happening six months ago and, like I said, they’re tiny. Mom says having any at al at my age is lucky.

Except that al my friends have them. Anyway, up til now they’d shown no indication of straying far from my chest.

“Your fairy hates me,” I said to my best friend, Rochele.

“No, she doesn’t,” Rochele said, admiring herself in the dressing room mirror. The little black dress she was trying on looked perfect; her spoffs were where they were supposed to be, not migrating to other parts of her body. The black brought out the gold in her eyes, which was strange seeing as how there’s not any gold in black. Maybe her fairy was leaking dust.

“Your rentals won’t let you wear that,” I told her. Her parents

were strict about Rochele’s clothes being suitably becoming. I puled off the spoff-destroying top. I stared at it. It looked like a top: two sleeves, a sweetheart neckline, straight seams. The material wasn’t even stretchy. How had it attacked me like that?

“It’s not that short.”

I looked at Rochele in the dress. It managed to cover
most
of her thighs, but Rochele is vastly tal, and dresses on her always seem shorter than they realy are. “Yeah, but it’s
that
low. You’l be shopping-grounded again.”

“No, I won’t.” Rochele hoicked up the top of her dress, disappearing al spoffage. “See? I’l wear it like this in front of the rentals and Dad’l think it doesn’t reflect badly on him and won’t say a word. Mom never notices what I’m wearing unless she thinks it’s disgraceful.” She struck a pose in front of the mirror, shoulders back, chest out (Rochele is not spoffs-lacking), and fingers splayed like a fancy dancer. “Anyway, it’s only twenty dolars.”

“What?” I exclaimed, though it wholy figured. You’d think I’d’ve stopped being surprised years ago. “Those dresses are al two hundred dolars.”

Rochele reached around to dig out the tag hanging down her back and awkwardly held it out while turning so that I could see it.

The tag was tattered and heavily crossed out. I peered closer. The top crossed-out amount said

, then

, then

, al the

way down to the very edge of the ticket, where it said in teeny- tiny (dare I say fairy?) writing:
damaged, $20 only
.

I sighed. “Where’s the damage, then?” The silk of the dress shone, exuding an aura of unwrinkled never- been-worn- before-ness. I couldn’t even see a stray piece of thread. The top I’d just removed had several. The tag said $75. It was not reduced.

“Isn’t any.” Rochele was staring at herself in the mirror, not smiling, but looking deeply satisfied.

“Your fairy never lets you down, does she?”

Rochele nodded. “Yes, she does. She didn’t do anything for that top of yours.” She picked it up, turned it over, picked off another thread. “I was so sure this would look fantabulous on you … I like her best when she works for you too. You know I read in
Stars
Weekly
that Our Tui says that fairies work best for virtuous people?

That when she’s been a bit naughty her fairy won’t—”

“Oh! Did she finaly say what kind of fairy she has? It’s a charm fairy, isn’t it?”

Rochele shook her head. “Nope. She didn’t. Anyway, I’m wondering if I’ve done something bad, and that’s why she’s only working for me today.”

“That’s sily. If fairies only worked for good people, then how do you explain Fi-or-en-ze Stupid-Name? Her fairy never takes days off and she’s vastly up herself.”

“You have a point,” Rochele said.

“Also I have four demerits, which indicates badness, right? But I’m certain my fairy’s working as hard as ever.”

“That’s different! You got your demerits trying to
get rid
of your fairy!”

I sucked my teeth at her objections. “Anyway, Ro, you never do anything bad.”

“I didn’t let Joey come to practice.”

“Your brother’s a brat. He’s almost as bad as Nettles.”

“Nettles isn’t a brat. Neither is Joey.”

I alowed as how they weren’t always that bad, which was true.

Just a week earlier Nettles had baked me a lemon cake—my favorite. On the other hand she had “borrowed” one of my tennis rackets, broken al the strings, and stripped al the paint off it to use for one of her art projects. Instead of kiling her, Mom and Dad had praised her creativity and then docked her pocket money to buy me a new racket.

“Are you girls finished in there?” the shop assistant asked, yanking the curtains open before we had a chance to respond. Just as wel we were dressed already.

“Oh,” she said, staring at Rochele, “that looks lovely. Wow! It’s like the dress was made for you.”

Rochele grinned, enjoying the new shop assistant. Suzy, her name tag said, though that most likely wasn’t her real name. The owner of Best Dresses, Leatherbarrow, rarely got around to having new name tags made, so al the girls who worked there just swapped around the five old ones. As there were never more than three girls working at once, even on super-busy days, it worked out. But it meant that everyone was caled Suzy, Ilian, Daisy, Rhani, or Lucinda.

The other girls knew Rochele and her fairy and no longer bothered to compliment her. Too jealous, I reckoned. They were al standard boring pulchritudinous: big eyes, big mouth, little nose, and Rochele wasn’t, but she always looked better than them.

Rochele, as you might have gathered, has a clothes-shopping fairy. Most people find it hard to like her because she has such a doos fairy, but they soon forgive her because a) she’s a sugar, b) sometimes her fairy wil work for her friends (though sadly not often), and c) her family is jawdroppingly atrocious. Rochele deserves her fairy.

Rochele stripped off the dress and put on her own clothes (tartan skirt, white T-shirt, tailored black jacket with matching tartan cuffs and colar, which you’d think would look vile, but on her was far from it). She paid for the dress and we made our way out of Best Dresses, past Fairy World—where a stack of plastic Fairy Catchers were on sale (round hoops with sticky filaments attached that are supposed to catch fairies; I happened to know that they’re useless)—and out of the shopping center.

I slipped my lucky cricket bal out of my pocket, rubbed my thumb over the seam, and started spinning it. “Time for ice cream?”

I asked. “I haven’t touched my fat alowance today.”

“Me neither. Plus Dad’s picking me up there.”

“Fruit-flavored fat it is then.”