A Fairy Out of Her Tale - Dear Diary - 45. Scene 45

17th January 1995

Dear Babysitting Diary,

I spent too much time with Unn today. She is one of those people that makes you question everything and everyone in a not-nice away. And I didn’t even necessarily want to be with her!

But you remember when she said she could hear my fertilising of the toilet-land? Well, that ability goes two ways. As soon as I came into my room I heard the real, horrible extent of Unn’s food poisoning. I technically knew what was going on (or, more precisely, why it was going on), but I still thought someone was dying next door. It was that bad.

And what did I do? Instead of being responsible and grown-up enough to call for help, I marched into Unn’s room by myself (she has a giant swimming pool for a bed, but you’ll have to wait a bit more to hear me ogle over all the strange things I saw in there). I held her blue, wavy hair out of the day while she emptied all the 3/4 tub of ice cream over the sink and coughed and gagged and wheezed. And I stood there even though she didn’t say a word to me the whole time.

‘Vile. Just vile,’ were her first words to me.

‘But you still think it’s worth it?’

‘I’m ready to do it again.’

‘I don’t think you should.’

‘And I don’t think you should come in uninvited, but we roll with the hand we’ve been given.’ She sent me a sharp look, made worse by the random pink blobs around her lips.

‘I’m sorry I worried enough to come here save your hair from regurgitated ice cream. I guess next time I should just let it get soaked?’ I gave her the same look back. Don’t get me wrong, Dear Diary, I'm usually a nice person and I like to be nice to those who deserve it. But by that point I was already tired of getting only sarcastic replies to genuine questions. Who does she think she is to be rude to someone she barely knows? Are all merpeople like that?

Anyway, she just gave me that “I-will-pretend-I-didn’t-hear-your-answer-and-move-on-to-save-my-reputation” kind of look. ‘Do you want to talk about Lydia?’

I wanted to talk about her obvious need for a doctor, but if she wanted to pretend that the blue-ish tinge to her otherwise brown skin was not fast turning into the main colour of her face, then who was I to spoil her plans? ‘I want to tell her I’m sorry and that it was a misunderstanding. It won’t happen again.’

‘Ok. You’ll no longer poop in her presence. Got it.’

‘Please say it the way I told you. I thought you were trying to help us get back together?’

Unn stared at me in silence. I thought it was another attempt at sarcasm and evasion at first, but her eyes suddenly bulged and her face turned bluer than artificial candy. The next thing I know, my shirt is smeared in smelly slime and Unn’s upper body is lying unconscious over my shoulders.

This time, I called Lóránt. As in, screamed my lungs off until someone heard what was happening. Unfortunately, Kris was the first one to come. I thought he was going to be his usual rude self, but he seemed to catch on to the seriousness of the situation and kept surprisingly civil. He nodded at me and ran out of the room, only to be back with our guardian angel a minute later.

Unn is now sleeping in her swimming pool. I don’t know what Lóránt did to her, but he’s put some special merpeople-proof lock on the freezer. I think Unn will be fine, but nobody seemed willing to tell me much more.

On the bright side, I saw Lydia again in the commotion. She almost smiled at me before she realised what she was about to do and scowled instead.

Progress, I guess???