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“Thanks to you, m’lady,” Glycogen says.

The sugar plum fairy now turns to Lily. “He’s so sassy, isn’t he? Is Every like this with you too?”

“No, he’s just confusing,” the confused Lily-girl answers.

“Most men are, as the saying goes,” Queeny confirms. She runs a jagged nail along the beard before promptly forgetting it, deciding to next box braid her bodyguard’s hair. As her nimble hands twist the sepia-colored hair into perfect little braids, she turns to her guests. “Now, let’s talk some more.”

“Alright,” Lily says, “so you’re the ruler here, aren’t you?”

“Yep. But I’m just the regent. Until the destined fairy queen comes and takes over.”

“And why am I destined for this shit?” Lily asks the mystery she has had since she met Every.

Queeny sighs, her hands still twisting Glycogen’s hair. “You're getting annoying bitch. Anyway, your dad was the fairy king, yeah? Yeah, now he teleported to the human lands one day, met your already-married mother, had an affair, and he had you, a horribly stupid girl that I now have to educate. Then he got into a fight with your mother’s husband at the time and abandoned you and went to a strip club, did a little too much cocaine, and died between the silicone tits of some girl there. Get it?”

Lily stares at her, wide-eyed, her jaw smack on the matcha-flavored KitKat bar-tiled floor in shock. “I can’t believe I have a father. Momma always called me a fatherless pest.”

“Oh, poor Lily,” Queeny gushes, reaching over to embrace her with one hand, the other hand still deftly working on the braids.

“And why are you the ruler?”

“’Cause the people here elected me.”

“And why’d they elect you?”

“’Cause they believe me to be the smartest, most suitable fairy. Perfect for this task.”

Every, once again, rolls his eyes. “And they are gravely mistaken.”

A cast-sugar comb flies from the sugar plum fairy’s hand into his face.



At Queeny’s request, Lily Levina Lenovo and her man spend a couple of days at the palace, doing nothing but eat banquet after banquet and gain pound after pound.

The stock market, college lectures, llama shifts, and gold prices are forgotten completely for a while.

Queeny Darling, who for some reason unknown to man manages to remain supermodel-thin even with all the sweets and weed she consumes, finally obliges Lily’s demand and gifts them clothes. Clothes that are, to much of Lily’s delight, nothing too tweed or professional. Rather, she received a dozen cropped tank tops and cut-off jean shorts and was able to stay the same-old trashy Lily-girl.

How the fairy managed to know her style, she does not know.

Actually, it’s obvious.

How the fairy obtained it, in a town full of fairies in tweed, is an entirely different question.

On the fifth day, while dressing into a black spaghetti-strapped crop tank top and really short black shorts that hardly cover her bubble butt, Lily cheerily hums to the tune of Happy Birthday. With metallic grey platform heels from Pleasers, also a gift to replace her tattered brown sneakers, she is good to go.

Now, as she is picking up a certain piece of clothing she forgot to wear in her epic carelessness, her boyfriend suddenly hollers something to her from outside the bathroom.

Shocked, the pixie girl drops her knickers onto the plastic-Snicker-bar-tiled floor below.

Knickers on snickers.

A perfect recipe for disaster.

“The fuck are you saying?” She hollers back to him.

“I was fucking saying we’re going to visit my papa today,” her man answers back.