Slowly, Bridgette opened her eyes. A giant pain pounded in her head. Gradually, she grew aware that she was resting her face on her forearm, hunched over in an awkward position. The length of sleeve beneath her mouth was damp from hours of dripping saliva.

Sitting up, she felt a knob of pain in her shoulders. She reached back her right arm to rub her back. And her eyes fell onto her hand. Her own hand, with the short and stubby fingers. No doubt if she lifted it higher she could feel her coarse hair, tangled like barbed wire and her pear shaped figure.

Thank Goodness she thought. I’m home. Finally home. I’m me again.

She was in the study, before the computer. The screen dimmed from inactivity, but one twitch of the mouse would bring it to life. She checked the clock on the desk. Four in the morning! She realized. Didn’t I log on in the afternoon? Did my family worry about me?

Maybe they did. Or maybe they figured she was hiding in her room. Either way, she was done.

Climbing to her feet, she wobbled towards the hallway. She couldn’t believe how off-balance she felt. She felt worse than the time she and her friends sat through a triple feature at the movies. She sat so long, she could barely walk afterwards. This was worse, but at least she was only a few feet from her own bed.

The house was dark. She tiptoed to her bedroom and pushed open the door. Relief flooded her as everything lay in its place, waiting for her. She changed into her favorite pair of soft pajamas, gratefully anticipating the bed.

That was when her cell phone buzzed.

The sound was off, but the little phone flashed its light and vibrated on her dresser. Picking up, she turned it over to see a face to face call from an unidentified caller.

Slowly she sat on her bed and flipped open the phone. “Hello?” she said.

“Hello? Hello. Lady Bridgette? Is that you?” The features of Chancellor Sniggums appeared on the miniature screen.

Bridgette scooted back, afraid of being taken back. “What do you want?” she hissed.

Sniggums looked carefully through the screen. “Is that what you look like in your own world? Oh my! Not to be rude, but I can’t imagine why you didn’t want to stay in Shard.”

“It’s none of your business if I do or don’t,” she said curtly. “What do you want?”

“I just wanted to see if this worked,” he said. “You left us in a bit of a stalemate, you know? We don’t know if we’re to be ruled by the Scarlet Tempest or Prince Alain. We had two Earthlings, and they both went poof at once! Maybe you’d like to pick a winner?”

Making a fist, Bridgette cuffed herself on the forehead. “I don’t care!” she said, as loud as she dared. The last thing she needed was to wake the household.

The cat sighed. “We’ll wait, if you don’t want to decide now. Come back any time you miss us. You can pick a winner, and enjoy the perks. Just not too long, or we’ll have to restart the game.”

She dimly heard a voice in the background that sounded like the Scarlet Tempest. “I want to be a heroine next time!” she said. “And I mean heroine, not a pretty face! I want to be a swashbuckler, and do swordfights like those girls did!”

“I’d like to start as king,” said Alain’s voice. “Maybe be corrupted as a tyrant over time. I keep winning a throne, but I never get to sit on it!”

“I don’t care if I rule,” said Maxwell’s voice. “But just let me be royalty. I think I did the farmer bit well enough.”

“Is that Bridgette?” asked a voice that sounded like Bickle Wa. “Let me talk to her, I know I can explain-“

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sniggums turned his head towards one of the voices. “Be quiet!” he ordered. Looking back at her, he said: “So as you can see, everyone misses you. Care to come back?”

“No,” Bridgette said firmly.

Sniggums smiled. “I’ll take that as: ‘Not just yet.’ Fair enough, my dear. I’ll give you a gift, however. Something I was able to find from your friend’s Crystal Ball.”

“Help me bury Michael Darling” said Bridgette. But Sniggums sent her something else: Rose’s cell number.

“Just a gift,” said Sniggums. “Enjoy your time home, but don’t stay too long. We will miss you.” He smiled, his feline teeth looking ready to tear through the body of a rat.

Bridgette hung up.

She turned off her phone, crawled under the covers, and fell deep asleep.

* * *

“And what makes you think I won’t go back?” Rose said to her.

Bridgette looked away, at the faces swarming into the deli. She wasn’t sure what she was thinking when she pushed herself and Rose back to the real world. A friend who would know what I went through. It may end up working no better than her hope to impress Karen and Ashley about her romance with Alain, or to show her family how she could summon a glowing light globe.

“There’s nothing there for us,” said Bridgette. “It’s like you’re living in a TV show. You’ll ride a horse in there, and then come back here and fall off the saddle. Boys will find you captivating, and here they’ll ignore you. It’s hard to work on yourself, but you get something that’s real. Real payoff for real effort. Not where all the meaningless glitter is handed to you for free.”

“I like the glitter,” said Rose, bitter. “You know what my parents are like? My mother grounded me. This is the first time she let me out in weeks. My father keeps asking nosy questions to figure out what’s wrong. They still hate each other as much as ever. And the only thing I know is that I don’t want to be here.”

“You’re not glad to be home?”

Rose looked away. “It’s even worse,” she said. “They’re sticking me with a counselor all the time. There’s even a social worker who I have to keep seeing. I’m locked out of the internet. The school computer doesn’t work for games. They even told the library not to let me in. And I found out you can’t get to the Dream Chest with a cell phone.”

“You don’t need to go back there,” said Bridgette.

“As soon as I can log in, I will.”

Bridgette grit her teeth. “Before you go, will you tell me? We- we can go together.”

Rose glared at her. “Why? So you can pull me back out?”

“At some point. Yes.”

“And who will pull you out?”

“Probably you’ll push me out again,” snapped Bridgette. “Sending me to prison was a good way to get me to want to leave.”

“I didn’t know they would go that far,” said Rose. She shrugged. “Even if I did, I would have done it anyway.”

She found herself getting angry. “You don’t care that you’re free from that place?”

“It’s my life.” said Rose. “And you have no right to control my life. Whether I live here with people or there with the Fae is my choice. And you don’t have the right to tell me where to live.”

Bridgette stiffened, stunned by Rose’s prickly speech. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s not talk about it now.”

Rose took a sip from her soda straw. “Good,” she said.

They finished their lunch in silence. Bridgette probed with questions about school, but Rose gave curt, one word answers. When they finished, they headed back into the mall. Rose wasn’t exactly who Bridgette would pick as a friend.

“Is there anyone else you hang out with?” Bridgette asked.

“No,” said Rose.

“You don’t have any friends?”

“No.”

“Just me?”

“Not even you.”

Bridgette sighed as they walked around mostly on instinct. People swam in and out of their vision. A familiar face caught her eyes. “He’s in our class,” Bridgette said. “He helped me find you.”

Rose shrugged. “So?”

“I’m going to say hi,” said Bridgette.

She headed forward to the boy with the dark, curly hair that billowed just above his shoulders. “Hi Nate,” she said.

Nate looked over, seeing her properly for the first time. “Bridgette! How are you?”

“I’m good,” she said. How are you?” Bridgette asked.

“I’m good. Hey, I know you don’t go online. The cow thing’s been dying down, I think the school mob finally found something else to talk about.”

“That’s good to know,” said Bridgette, though at this point she felt over the whole thing. Whatever, let them laugh. I can work on myself if I want. Better than playing make-believe with the soul-sucking Fae.

Nate smiled, a little shy, his cheeks reddening a little bit.

Bridgette looked over her shoulder. Rose stood a little bit away, watching. Maybe three can do what two couldn’t. “We were going to play miniature golf,” Bridgette said to Nate. “Would you like to come with us?”

“I’m not that good,” said Nate.

“You can’t be worse than me,” said Bridgette. “My friend here,” and she pulled in Rose whether she liked it or not, “has just told me she never goes golfing with less than three people.”

The three of them went to the Camelot Golf course. Rose was as bitter as ever, but somehow Nate’s easy going style got through to her. By the end, the two of them shared a few laughs. Bridgette sensed that on some level she was putting together a little group of her own. But instead of handsome Alain, cuddly Bickle Wa and the others, she had an artistic, spacey boy and a desperately unhappy girl. But their adventure would be one of far more value than dethroning the Scarlet Tempest. And even when Bridgette lost the golf game by a mile, she won something of greater value: friends to be with in the weeks and months that followed.