Falling In by Frances O'Roark Dowell

celebrity learns that having people looking at you all the time and trying to touch you and generally wanting to eat you up like a tuna fish sandwich, well, it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be.
    And what of the changeling? You’ve known you were one all your life. You’ve felt it. I’m talking to you, lying there on the bed eating Twizzlers and collecting cavities—and you, over there, reading this while you should be doing your math homework. I know you know that I know you know what I mean. And what you think is this: If only you could go back to your real home, to your real family, everything would fall into place and you would be loved and admired all hours of the day and you’d get to eat as much chocolate as you’d like without feeling sick or having the tiniest pimple pop up on your chin.
    But real life is real life, isn’t it? Which is to say, it’s not perfect, even when things go your way. Of course, most days things don’t go our way, we don’t win the big prize, the cute boy or girl doesn’t smile atus, our teachers don’t suddenly discover our true and hidden genius. We’re used to minor defeats. We expect them. But we also expect that when our dreams finally do come true, it will be like the movies—our whole lives perfect and aglow, forever and ever, amen.
    What do I know about it? you wonder. What makes me such a big expert? Am I speaking from experience?
    As a matter of fact, I am.



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    Isabelle and Grete were quiet for a long time after Hen went to bed. Finally Isabelle said, “Do you want me to go dig the book out of the trash?”
    “No need,” Grete replied. “It’s rewriting itself as we speak. Go stand next to the shelf by the south window and you’ll hear the scribbling. I’ve tried throwing that story away many a time. I even burned it once. And then I’d go to the shelf to pull out what I thought was a book on birds or rose-bushes, but it turned out to be the story again. If I didn’t read it, it filled all the other books on the shelves. So I read it when it appears, and it lets me be for a while.”
    Isabelle peered across the yard. Her eyes came torest on a flowering bush, forsythia maybe, yellow, cheerful buds popping out from its branches, so bright she could see them even in the fading light. She tried to think about a story rewriting itself. Were the words the same every time? Or were there small changes with each new version—the baby wrapped in a pale yellow blanket in one story, and in a lavender one the next time the story was read? Was the baby sometimes a boy, sometimes a girl? Was the baby always Isabelle?
    Grete stood up and leaned slightly over the porch railing, as though to smell the pink roses climbing up the latticework. “I lived outside of Greenan when they took the baby—”
    Isabelle sat forward in her seat. “The fairies, you mean?”
    “I always supposed it was.” Grete looked at Isabelle, her expression somewhere between a grimace and a grin. “Funny thing is, I never believed in fairies. Still don’t know if I do. But how else could the baby have crossed over?”
    “Crossed over where?”
    “The other world. Your world.”
    Isabelle took a deep breath. “Oh, I see. I mean, because it would have had to cross over, right? If it was me, that is. The baby.”
    Looking startled, Grete took a step back. “You? Oh, dear—you think that baby was you?”
    “Well, yes, I mean, that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” Suddenly Isabelle didn’t feel quite so sure. “Because I’m a changeling? On my way back to my true home? Which is this house?”
    “You? A changeling? Child, the notions that fill your head!” Grete sat down heavily on a chair, the laughter rumbling out of her. “You’re no more a changeling than I’m an ostrich.”
    Isabelle stared down at the porch’s broad planks. Her red boots, she noticed, had grown scratched and scuffed after days of wandering through the woods. Her brain felt scratched and scuffed too. Not a