Her mom laid her hand on Julie’s arm. “Julie. Honey, talk to me. What’s wrong?” Julie dunked a plate into the sink, and soapy water splashed out. Zel took a step backward as water sprayed on her. “You’re going to break that plate if you’re not careful,” she said mildly.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Julie said. Mom had been in the Wild. She belonged with Grandma and Boots and Cindy and the dwarves . . . Julie was the only one who didn’t fit in anywhere.
“Try me,” her mom said.
For an instant, Julie was tempted. Could she have the conversation she always wanted to have? If she explained, would her mother understand? Could she know what it was like to not fit in? Could she understand what it was like to not know who she was or where she belonged? Or even where she came from? Julie knew nothing of her father. She knew nothing of how her mother and her fairy-tale friends had escaped the Wild. How was Julie even here? How had the force of the Wild Wood, a power that had dominated the entire Middle Ages, been reduced to a tangle of vines under her bed?
Behind them, Gothel hung up the phone. “Julie, be a dear and fetch my purse, would you? I left it under my chair.”
Zel’s voice sharpened. “What’s wrong?” she asked Gothel.
Gothel’s eyes flickered toward Julie.
“Julie,” her mother said, “please go get your grandmother’s purse.”
“Is it the well?” Julie asked.
“No,” both her mother and grandmother said in unison.
Julie swallowed a lump in her throat. “It’s because I wasn’t in the Wild. That’s why you won’t tell me. Isn’t it? You know what? I don’t care.” She threw the sponge in the sink. “I don’t care that I don’t belong. I don’t want to be a part of your little club.”
“Julie, it’s not because—” Zel began.
“I wish Grandma would let me make a wish in the well,” Julie said. “I’d wish you weren’t my mother.”
Zel’s face drained white. Gothel sucked in a breath. For a long second, the kitchen echoed silence. Her mother opened her mouth and then shut it. She looked like she’d been slapped.
Julie turned and ran from her mother’s expression—out of the kitchen, through the dining room, up the stairs. She locked her bedroom door behind her and threw herself on the bed.
The Wild left her alone as she cried herself to sleep.
Chapter Five
The Wild
Julie took a few Oreos and poured herself a glass of milk. She was doomed to a long you-hurt-my-feelings talk. She was just lucky that Mom worked at the salon on Saturdays or she’d already be at the table feeling like a horrible slug for the horrible thing she’d said to her mother.
She really, really shouldn’t have said it.
Julie grabbed the whole bag of Oreos and the container of milk and carried them into the living room. She switched on the TV. She had six hours until Mom came home.
Cartoon, cartoon, commercial, rerun, talk show . . . She flipped through the channels, wishing she could flip through parts of her life like this. She imagined she was turning her mom off, Grandma off, Kristen off, Cindy off, the dwarves off . . . Cartoon, rerun, rerun, Torso Track infomercial . . . Breaking news, she read on CNN. Live from Northboro, Massachusetts. Hey, that’s here!
She’d seen those Halloween decorations: the cardboard pumpkin over the Marlboro poster, the corn husk witch on the Pennzoil . . . It was the Shell gas station near Grandma’s motel—or she thought it was. It didn’t used to have trees between the pumps. Premium unleaded was now next to an oak tree instead of a window squeegee dispenser. Vines were twisted around the pump nozzles. Moss covered the credit card displays.
Julie leaned closer to the TV. Was that moss spreading?
“ . . . Even more alarming,” a reporter was saying, “the rate of growth appears to be increasing.” The TV focused on the pavement. Green (oddly vibrant for October) advanced across the blacktop like an army of worms. Tendrils snaked forward, and the asphalt cracked. Thicker vines shot into the cracks, widening the splits. The street crumbled.
Oh, no. Julie looked down at her flip-flops. She began to feel sick as a horrible suspicion solidified in her mind. No, it wasn’t possible. Her door was locked. “Boots,” Julie called. “Boots!”
Green seeped down a drainage hole, raced around a manhole cover, and climbed a streetlamp. The TV camera chased the vines as they braided themselves around the pole.
It was super-powered fertilizer. Yes, it had to be some escaped science experiment. Or a weird government thing, a biological weapon—but if it were a weapon, wouldn’t it kill things, not make them grow?