Why I Let My Hair Grow Out Read online

  Strange.

  I must be very close, I thought. Very close to being able to slip back to Long-ago. But how?

  “Did you mean what you said last night, Mor? About tonight?”

  Poor me, with no clue what I’d said. And poor Colin, sounding so hopeful. Luckily I had a pretty good BS reflex (thanks Mom, thanks Dad).

  “I usually do,” I said, carefully neutral.

  “Fine. Fine.” He seemed quite satisfied. “We’ll have a marvelous time, then.”

  Plans had been forged and promises made, and I had no idea what they were. Under different circumstances I’d be tingly at the prospect of having something going on with Colin tonight, even if I didn’t know exactly what it was. But right now Erin was all I could think about. I needed to concentrate.

  “Would you mind,” I said, “if I took a nap?”

  He smiled. “Not if I get to watch you sleep.”

  I closed my eyes.

  What’s lost in the earth must be found. . . .

  How was I supposed to get back to Long-ago to find Erin?

  How had it happened before? I whacked my head on a rock. I drank till I passed out. There was definitely a pattern here. All I had to do was get myself totally fekked up somehow and the doorway to Long-ago swung open.

  Some vacation this was turning out to be. The thought of more drinking made my stomach lurch. But if that’s what it took, that’s what I’d do.

  Because Erin needed me, and she was real. Fergus, too, and Cúchulainn and Samhain and all the rest. They were as real as I was, and just because I couldn’t see them at the moment and they lived in the past didn’t mean squat. They were real, the way my family and friends in Connecticut were real, even though they were across the ocean and five hours in the past, from a Greenwich Mean Time perspective.

  The way those long-ago versions of me and Tammy in that old photo were real, even though I couldn’t remember it.

  The way Jack Faraday was real, and always would be, even though he was dead.

  Even the way Colin’s dreams of what he might be someday were real, even though no one could see those dreams but him.

  Poor Fergus. He must be crazed. I hoped he and Cúchulainn weren’t randomly galloping through the countryside lopping off heads and limbs just because they were pissed off. That kind of display was unlikely to make much of an impression on the faery folk. That much I understood by now.

  I had to get back.

  Think, Morgan, I told myself. You are an inner-get-ick American high-school girl, and if you don’t know how to get yourself fekked up you have just not been paying attention.

  I thought of the most reckless kids I knew and made my list. Beer, always an option, though at the moment a highly unappetizing one. Dropping E was another party favorite, but it scared me (I was no druggie), plus, duh, I didn’t have any. Sleep deprivation? Possible but very difficult. I had a really hard time staying awake when I was tired, as had been proven by many failed attempts to cram for tests or write lengthy papers the night before they were due.

  What else? There’d been a cheerleader in my freshman class who stopped eating for a couple of months until she got delirious and was shipped off to eating disorder rehab, but I didn’t have that kind of time. And Raph used to talk about a “runner’s high” that kicked in when he was training. Usually you had to be running at a good clip for forty minutes or so before you felt it.

  Me, run for forty minutes? Yeah, right. I’d hardly exercised at all since my field hockey days. I’d be lucky to run to the corner.

  As we drove, the rainbow followed us the way the moon follows you when you walk at night. I knew what it was telling me.

  It was up to me—Morganne, Morgan, all of me. It was my job to find Erin. And if I didn’t, no one would.

  . . . but the earth must be turned Without tilling. . . .

  As we drove I napped, I dozed, I chanted in my head using my mom’s old meditation mantra. I held my breath until I felt dizzy. Anything to alter my brain waves. But nothing happened.

  When that got old I entertained myself by making up personal ads for King Conor.

  I’LL TREAT YOU LIKE A QUEEN. . . .

  Party-loving monarch seeks special fire-and-gold someone for breaking curses and sharing good times. Equally comfortable in crown and scepter, tuxedo or jeans.

  When I dozed I dreamed, but they were actual dreamlike dreams: snatches of home, school, stuff from when I was a little kid, my favorite bits from Scary Movie 4, all random and jumbled the way dreams are supposed to be. No sign of a portal to other times and places. At the moment I was traveling nowhere except to where Colin was driving me.

  I startled awake to the sound of a teeny, tiny heavy metal band playing its heart out through a kazoo. It was Colin’s cell phone.

  “Nice ring, eh?” he said, as he grabbed the phone from his shirt pocket. “I’m a big fan of the death metal—Colin here! Yes. Right. Ah, that’s a pity. Where are you now, then?” He looked at his watch. “Right, not to worry, we’ll do our best. Take a few deep breaths, dear. It’ll calm you down. Cheers.”

  “Fek it,” he said, flipping his phone shut. “Pardon the language, Mor. We have to go fetch Miss Pippin.”

  “Why? Did she get hurt? Did she break a nail?” I yawned and stretched. “Did her implants deflate?”

  Colin sighed. “I’m afraid it’s worse than that.”

  “let me impress upon you. it is a borrowed earring. It is from Harry Winston.” For a woman who was little more than skin and bones and silicone, Carrie Pippin sure could produce a lot of sound. She covered her face with her manicured hands in an impressive gesture of despair. “Do you know who Harry Winston is?”

  “Haven’t met him, sorry,” said Colin, staring at the ground. “It’s round, you said? Like a hoop?”

  Colin and Stuart and I were scanning the road searching for a single, obscenely expensive hoop earring whose twin was on Carrie Pippin’s left ear. She was much too hysterical to join the search and kept touching the remaining earring as if it might vaporize at any moment.

  “We’re never gonna find it, babe,” Stuart said, helpfully. “We’ve been riding the bikes for an hour. You could have lost it anywhere in the last ten miles.”

  Carrie’s already strident voice climbed higher and higher as she spoke. “Would you stop being so negative! I’m sure I would have noticed earlier if it were gone. For God’s sake, it’s a Harry Winston! You notice when something like that falls off!”

  “Whoa, I think I see it!” hollered Colin. He squatted and dug around in the dirt. “Whoops! Bottle cap. Sorry, false alarm.”

  “Maybe it’s turned into faery gold,” Stuart said. “Some old coot was telling me about that this morning when I was trying to buy the paper. Do you know how difficult it is to find a copy of Variety in this country? The Hollywood Reporter? I would’ve settled for the LA Times!”

  “What’s faery gold?” I asked. Colin rolled his eyes.

  “It’s when you see gold on the ground but every time you try to pick it up it turns to dust . . . just like show business, ha ha!”

  At that Carrie started crying, and Stuart stopped his half-hearted searching to go comfort her. I could hear her blubbering on and on.

  “. . . they were nice enough to lend it for my honeymoon and this happens. . . . Now what am I going to do for the Emmys? . . . Maybe we can call someone at Bulgari—oh my God, if Bulgari finds out about this I’ll be blacklisted. . . .”

  What an idiot, I thought. Here I was, looking for some stupid earring when I was supposed to be searching for Erin. And my head still hurt, and despite all the talk about the rainy Irish weather the sun’s glare was making my eyes water, and bending over to search the ground was not doing wonders for my hangover either.

  I spotted another bottle cap in the dirt. I’d never been much of a do-gooder, especially when it came to picking up other people’s trash, but the roads here were so spotless it made even a tiny bit of litter seem disgusting. I’d pu
t the cap in the garbage; then at least some good would come of this ridiculous search.

  I brushed the dirt away from the metal and was blinded for a second, as sun glinted off the pure gold and directly into my eyes. It was a gleaming gold circle, the size of a bracelet. Without thinking I stuck my hand through it.

  “Do you like it? I’ll give you a good price.”

  “I don’t have any money,” I heard myself say. My voice was slow and warped-sounding, as if I were underwater.

  “Come, dear, you must have some money. I’ll take half of what it’s worth. You were meant to have it. Look how it matches your hair.”

  My hair. Long and flowing, the color of fire and gold.

  the long-ago marketplace Where i’d suddenly found myself was wall-to-wall people, pushing, pointing, haggling, buying. There were heaping baskets everywhere of fruit, vegetables, cheese, eggs, fish and stuff you’d never find at Lucky Lou’s: animal skins, armor, weapons and, in front me, jewelry.

  The jewelry seller was a sharp-featured woman, slender and dark, Italian-looking, really, and roughly middle-aged (though it was hard to tell with these Long-ago people, who spent most of their days outdoors with no access to sunscreen and teeth whiteners and plastic surgeons). The woman had bracelets up and down her arms, dozens of necklaces draped around her neck and rings on every finger.

  “That’s a lot of bling,” I heard myself say.

  “I make it all myself,” she boasted, grabbing my hand and lifting my wrist up until the bracelet caught the sunlight. “See? Pure gold! Melted in the furnace that was my father’s. Show me another woman skilled as I am in forging metal into such beauty as you see here!”

  “Morganne!”

  Fergus was here. I saw him bobbing up and down in the throngs of people, waving and calling to me. I wanted to go to him but I didn’t seem to be able to move. I could only watch as he pushed his way through the crowd to where I was. People pushed back but he didn’t draw his sword once. I knew this took real restraint on his part.

  “Ah, never mind about the money!” said the woman, following my gaze. “Your husband will pay. How could he refuse when he sees how it flatters your beauty?”

  “Morganne! Are you truly here? Or just a vision?”

  Fergus’s voice sounded oddly warped, like my own. I had the feeling I was only half-present in Long-ago, but the jewelry maker was still hanging on to my arm and that felt real enough.

  No time even for hello. “Has Erin come back?” I demanded to know.

  His face fell. “No.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Almost two weeks,” he said, confused. “But you know that—you were there at the swamp—right before you disappeared again—”

  “Of course I know it’s not the original Spago! I meant the one in Beverly Hills. . . .”

  Carrie’s voice was buzzing in my ear like a fly, coming from somewhere not too far away. I felt myself slipping back. “Fergus, listen,” I said. “I can’t stay long. But this woman—”

  He waved dismissively. “She’s just a conniving merchant; don’t pay her any mind,” he said.

  “No, look.” I grabbed his hand and made him touch the bracelet on my arm. “Fire and gold. That’s how this was made. She forged it out of fire and gold. It’s her.”

  He stared at the leering, blinged-out jewelry maker. She grinned and there was a glint of gold on one of her teeth.

  “Her?” he said, horrified. “She’s the one who has to marry the king?”

  “Equally comfortable in scepter or jeans,” I babbled. “But she has to be willing, so don’t say anything to freak her out, okay?” My vision swirled, and I knew I wasn’t making sense. “Sorry, I gotta go, Fergus” I said. “But don’t worry. I’ll be back. I’ll find her. I’ll find—”

  “Morgan!” screeched Carrie, who was clutching my arm hard enough to make little white fingerprints on my skin.

  I held my wrist out so she could slide the earring off.

  “I found it,” I said, dumbly.

  “Oh my God! Oh my God! I love you! You saved my ass! If you ever come to LA I am so taking you to Spago for lunch, you fabulous, brilliant person you!”

  But I hadn’t found what I was looking for. Not yet.

  fifteen

  plucking carrie’s earring Out Of the dirt, golden-needle-in-Irish-haystack style, only added to my growing legend among my tour mates. At dinner Sophie Billingsley asked me if I was magic. I just smiled and helped cut her steak. Her mother was not at the table; apparently Mrs. Billingsley was having some kind of digestive upset and was in her room, with her husband taking care of her.

  I’d volunteered to mind Sophie and Derek at dinner. Why not? They both acted much more pleasant when their parents weren’t around.

  “Did you know,” Sophie confided, as I squeezed more ketchup onto her plate, “that I can see faeries?”

  “Really,” I said. Tammy said stuff like this all the time. I guess I should have paid more attention. “Where do you see them?”

  “Everywhere!” she said. “Well, in flower gardens, mostly. And where mushrooms grow. But soon I’ll be too old,” she added, sadly. “Like Derek.”

  “Too old for what?”

  “To see them. That’s what they tell me, anyway.”

  “Well, I’m not too old to see them,” I said. “So you won’t ever be either.”

  She had to think about that for a minute. “That’s fine, then,” she finally said, serenely. “Will you play with me later? After dinner?”

  I looked across the table at Colin. He was listening kindly to Lucia, who’d gotten much more talkative today. “That would be great, Sophie. But I promised Colin I was doing something with him after dinner.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “But I promised, and a promise is a promise.”

  “It won’t be as fun as the faeries,” she said, stuffing a last bite into her mouth. Then she ran outside to join Derek and Johannes. Johannes had offered to give the kids horsy rides on his back. I could hear him whinnying and neighing. Quite convincing, really.

  as it turned Out, What i’d promised Colin Was to go skinny-dipping at the beach after dark. He parked the van in the near-empty lot, and I breathed in the familiar salt tang of the sea.

  Growing up in Connecticut not far from the coast meant I’d had plenty of beach time in my life. Family beach trips with Mom and Dad and Tammy, gang-of-girlfriend beach trips with Sarah and our old crowd, nighttime make-out beach excursions with Raph and his entourage. Raph was a big one for the beach and for making out, but he never went anywhere without his posse. They’d leave empty beer bottles on the sand and have peeing contests in the water: Who could pee furthest, longest, highest. Classy, right?

  I’d gone with them, of course, even though I always ended up sitting there shivering and embarrassed. When Raph’s buddies had girlfriends, the girlfriends would come too, but Raph always had a girlfriend. Before me it was this girl named Stephanie. She was a junior like Raph so I didn’t really know her, I just knew who she was.

  “Too bossy.” That’s what Raph had told me about Stephanie. “Too stubborn.”

  By now—mid-July—the Connecticut beaches would be packed, the water would be warm. Colin and I were on this side of the Atlantic, Raph was on the other. Maybe it was because I had a lot on my mind, but at the moment I didn’t really care who Raph was with. That surprised me, a little.

  “people think Of surfing and they think Of hawaii,” Colin said, as we walked along the sand. He had a blanket and two towels tossed over one shoulder, and he was talking in his high-energy tour-guide voice. “But Ireland has some of the finest beaches you’ll find anywhere. Just had the national wind-surfing championships right here in Elly Bay. Rained the whole fekkin’ time of course. Which is why,” and he looked at me to make sure I was being sufficiently entertained by his monologue, “people think of Hawaii.”

  The beach was beautiful, moonlit and nearly
empty. And I would have been entertained, charmed, swooning with happiness even, if I wasn’t brooding on how to get back to Long-ago and find Erin.

  I wished I could tell Colin why I wasn’t bubbling over with delight and flirtiness. A cruel irony is what Sarah would have called it: me, an adorable and interested guy (with an accent no less), on an after-hours beach date that should have been a perfect summer-romance moment. And I was distracted, faking my way through as best I could because my mind was a million miles away.

  Scratch that. My mind was right here. Just a few thousand years off schedule.

  Should I tell Colin what was going on? He deserved to know why I was being so distant, and I was dying to confide in anyone who could help me figure out what kind of alternate universe I’d been head-whacked into. But Colin was a passionate nonbeliever in things magical and mystical. Would my time-warped tale spoil whatever attraction he was starting to feel for me and convince him to take me back to the hospital, the psych ward this time?

  Probably. But like a moth dive-bombing into a neon sign that read MOTHS DIE HERE, I couldn’t seem to stop myself from finding out.

  “Colin,” I said, as he smoothed the sand with his bare feet to make a spot for us. “There’s been something I’ve been wanting to tell you, but I haven’t, because I don’t know how you’re going to react.”

  “Let me guess,” he said, as he shook out the blanket he’d swiped from the inn. I caught the far corners in midair. “You’ve got a boyfriend at home, and you both agreed what happens in Ireland stays in Ireland, but you thought I should know on the chance I was dumb enough to think you actually fancied me—that sort of thing?”

  I was shocked. “Of course not!” I said. We both sank to our knees in the sand while holding on to the edges of the blanket, which floated down slowly, like a tired parachute. “That’s gross. Is that what you thought I was going to say?”