Me, My Elf & I by Heather Swain Read Free Book Online Page A

it’s for real, isn’t it?”
    “They’re called tunics and I didn’t wear mine because I wanted to look normal.”
    “You think that looks normal?” Mercedes points to my decidedly dorky pleated skirt and sweater vest.
    I shrug helplessly.
    “Let’s look in her closet.” Ari opens the double doors next to my bed. I plop to the floor and munch on almonds as they rummage through my clothes.
    “Why’d Timber walk you out of school yesterday?” Mercedes asks as she scoots hanger after hanger of my new erdler clothes across my closet bar.
    “I don’t know,” I say. “He just stopped by to properly introduce himself.”
    Ari narrows his eyes. “Yeah, right. Suddenly he’s the BAPAHS Welcome Wagon.”
    “What’s BAPAHS?” I ask.
    Mercedes gives me the look of exasperation and amusement that I’m growing accustomed to. “That’s where you go to school, Boo. Brooklyn Academy of Performing Arts High School.”
    “So what’s a welcome wagon?”
    “Never mind,” says Ari. “I’m just saying, Timber isn’t known for being Mr. Friendly.”
    “Unless he wants to hit dem skins,” Mercedes says. Then before I have to ask, she turns to me and says, “That doesn’t mean playing the drums, Zephyr. It means, you know, getting with you.”
    “You mean like boyfriend and girlfriend?” I ask as a blush creeps up my neck into my cheeks. Will he be at the movie and coffee shop with me someday?
    “Bella is his girlfriend,” Mercedes says. “But that doesn’t stop him from messing around.”
    Before I can ask for a more detailed explanation, Ari lets out a shriek from the very back of my closet. I’m afraid he’s come face-to-face with one of Bramble’s blind mice or three-legged squirrels, but he emerges with an armload of my Alverland clothes. “Jackpot!” he yells, and tosses tunics, leggings, and boots onto my bed. “Look at this, Mercy!” He holds up my favorite robin’s-egg-blue tunic with indigo and brown embroidery around the neckline and sleeves.
    “Dang!” Mercedes says, fingering the soft linen. “That’s fine, girl. Where’d you get this?”
    “My grandmother made it,” I tell them.
    “Put it on! Put it on!” Ari says.
    “Fashion show,” Mercedes sings and shoves the tunic at me.
    I hold it in my hands and shake my head. I know how erdlers act when they see us in our Alverland clothes. Anytime we leave our village in the woods to go into Ironweed for supplies, we get stared at, yelled at, called names. “Oh, I get it,” I say coldly, understanding for the first time what Mercedes has been trying to teach me. This is where I have to hold my own and protect myself. “You’re trying to convince me to wear something stupid so you guys can laugh your heads off when I show up at school looking like a freak.” I crumple the tunic in my hands and toss it to the floor. I’d truly convinced myself that Ari and Mercedes might be my friends, but obviously, like everything else I’ve thought I understood here, I’m wrong.
    “Zeph!” Ari says. “We’re totally serious. This is amazing. I bet you look like a freakin’ goddess in this thing.”
    Mercedes says, “My aunt Nina would kill for this.”
    “Nobody has anything like it,” Ari adds.
    “Exactly,” I say.
    They both nod. “That’s just it,” Ari tells me. “This is the kind of thing everyone at our school would die for. To have their very own style. We all try to be so original, but look at us, we’re just copying somebody else in the end. But this! This is hot.”
    “No it’s not, really,” I tell them. “It’s very lightweight. My grandmother wove it out of linen from the flax we grow.”
    They both shake their heads and chuckle. “Timber would be slobbering all over you if you showed up dressed like this,” Mercedes says.
    I shiver at the mention of Timber. “Really?” Maybe they aren’t trying to trick me.
    “Really,” Ari says resolutely.
    A little bell rings and I look around the room, confused. Did