Page 45 of Fairy Godmothers Aren't Cheap

I needed a distraction. Like a date with James.

I laughed in the silence of my room. Right. Talk about getting wrapped up in a fantasy world. Although, that was one I’d happily enter.

Maybe I could get lost in a good book. I rolled off the bed and went to the living room and settled onto the couch with one of my recently saved hardcover history books. Within minutes I was absorbed, my mind a few millennia away.

Samantha came home, plopped down on the chair beside me, kicking her new black boots up onto the coffee table.

“Aren’t they pretty?” She angled her feet one way, then the other.

“Better take them off or Gabby’ll shoot you.” I turned a page, admiring the glossy photos. Gabby, when she wasn’t mooning over her best friend Lamonte, scolded us for living like pigs. I swear the handheld vacuum spent more time being carted around by her than sitting in its charger.

Realizing I could do something nice for Gabs, I went to the kitchen and gave the coffee table a wipe, clearing off the dust and crumbs while mentally saying Estelle’s payback chant.

“Gabby is wearing off on you,” Samantha said as I sat down again.

“Just trying to be a good roommate,” I said, grabbing my book again.

She reached over and flipped up the cover of my book before dropping it again. “Ew. Bor-ring.”

“Hey.” I hugged the book to my chest, whispering, “It can hear you.”

“What’s your deal? You were messing up all over the place today.”

I let my head fall back against the cushions. “I’m stressed.”

“About what?”

“That fairy godmother thing.”

“The fake invoice? Ignore it.” She began unlacing her tall boots. “I found a new restaurant. It sucks. But its bar is hopping. We should go on Friday.”

I nodded to acknowledge her, but didn’t ask for details like I normally would. Instead, I hugged my book, my mind back to spinning about how I was going to pay off my debt.

She pointed to the Grecian pottery book still snuggled in my arms. “Don’t you already know everything there is to know about old crap made from clay?”

“Hey, we all have something quirky about us. You have an unhealthy shoe obsession, for example.”

“It’s a womanly right.”

“Yeah, well. At least my quirk isn’t…” I tried to pull up a positive quality about my thirst for knowledge and failed “putting anyone in danger.”

She snorted, brows raised. “Unless you talk about the book.” She threw out a few pottery terms, gave a fake yawn and sagged into the chair, making little choking sounds while flailing like she was in the throes of death.

“Ha. Ha.”

She sat up again. “You need to get out more.”

“Yeah, I wish. No! Not really!Notwishing that.”

Samantha gave me a concerned look.

“So, hey.” I leaned forward, realizing this would be a great time to pick her brain about the financial aspects of my karmic park plan. “Say I was going to start a charitable project. What do I need to do?”

She gave me a one-shoulder shrug. “Write some bylaws, create a board. Get signatures. Apply to become a charitable society with the provincial government. Get approved. Hold meetings and fundraisers, etcetera, etcetera.”

That felt like a lot of sitting around and paper pushing.

“What if I just wanted to clean up that lot down the street where the kid got hurt last night?”

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