Troll Or Derby, A Fairy Wicked Tale by Red Tash Read Free Book Online Page A

his own joke.
    “Girls aren’t fags, idiot,” I said. “Dykes, maybe. But not fags.” I turned and climbed the stairs on my skates.
    “Wait, wait,” Yoder said. “I’m sorry. That was shitty of me.” He lit a cigarette and leaned on the Mustang. “I actually think your skates are kind of cool.”
    I stared at him sideways. “Yeah. Sure you do. Later, Yoder.”
    He reached into the driver’s window and lay on the car horn.
    “C’mon! Go for a ride!” he yelled.
    I shook my head and went into the store. Even after all my adventures to date, I’ve never known anything as odd as a small-town teenage boy.
    The cashier glared at me. “Tell your boyfriend to lay off the horn, would ya?” she said. I nodded, grateful that she hadn’t reacted to my skates. Sometimes, I swear to God, you’d think that no one over the age of 40 had had a day of fun in their whole lives.
    Once I’d waited Yoder out, I took off from the drugstore and started skating toward school. I still didn’t know what to do or who to ask for help, but I knew that ideas never came easily to me standing still. I brainstormed my options—confront Dave head on? Stalk him?
    The Mustang pulled up behind me, again. I skated faster, but Yoder’s horsepower won out. He pulled around me and onto the curb, killing the engine and nearly causing me to skate right into the car.
    “I won’t take no for an answer, rollergirl,” he called from inside the dark sports coupe.
    What would happen if I turned and skated away? He wasn’t giving up, whatever his motivation was. Should I scream bloody murder until help came? Would help come?
    My frustration was only getting worse, and for no good reason at all, I got into the car.
    “What the fuck do you want, Yoder?” I slammed the door and turned sideways in the bucket passenger seat, to face him.
    He didn’t make eye contact, but steered the car back onto the road and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m supposed to take you to a party,” he said.
    “You’re supposed to what?”
    “I was told that if you didn’t make it to the party tonight at Graber’s farm…well, let’s put it this way—I don’t have any choice. I’m taking you and that’s that.”

Chapter 6.5
    Hungry Like the Wolf
    Harlow

    Humans are suckers for drama. Trolls aren’t. That’s more of a fairy thing—they’re quite good at it.
    When Coach told me to go and look for Deb, to help her, that wasn’t normal inter-troll behavior. I want to say trolls are more “laid-back” than that, but that doesn’t really work.
    When a human is “laid-back,” they’re easygoing and cool. When a troll is lying on his back, he’s either dead, or playing dead and about to strike you in your soft spot with a mace. They’ve made a sport of it, actually. I don’t recommend it. Take up something the whole family can enjoy instead. Ladies Home Journal always has nice articles about tennis, for example.
    My point is, Coach might have seemed laid-back and unconcerned about what was happening to Deb, but in troll standards he was practically shooing me out the door.
    I didn’t have time to ask who she was, how she fit into my destiny, how he even knew. I could feel deep down inside of me, past layers of cloudy memory, that she needed help and the only thing I could do to save myself from whatever was going down was to help her.
    Who would know more about what was going on? Who could clue me in?
    Zelda. Coach told me to see her, didn’t he?
    She was sort of my aunt, and the ex-wife of the Coach, but we’d kept in touch despite the family difficulties. I’d always been good at reading her face. “Not everyone can see through Zelda’s mask, little Harlow,” she’d once told me. She wasn’t happy when she’d said it, but she also didn’t seem to hold it against me. I couldn’t blame her. In a world where secrets are guarded and everyone’s working an angle, you’ve got to be able to keep your cards close to your chest, especially if