I could use an extra fairy or two myself

Sassy danced out of her bedroom this morning. That should have been the first red alert.

“Guess what, Bandit,” she called out from the hall in a sing-song voice.

“Huh?” the boy grunted back at her. The boy is not a morning person, even more so than me and that’s saying something.

I turned down my bathroom music so I could hear and intervene if necessary. Anytime she’s so solicitous of her brother I get concerned.

“I broke two fingernails and put them under my pillow last night. Let’s see if anything happened, shall we?” Her brother joins her in her bedroom, his interest piqued.

I hear a squeal of delight from the girl and a gasp of amazement from the boy. “Oh my God! The Fingernail Fairy left me five dollars!”

Oh crap. I can see where this is going. Left unchecked The Bandit will have twenty bleeding stumps where his finger and toenails used to be.

“Sassy,” I say sternly. “Please stop messing with your brother.”

“What?” Her voice is clear and honest. Her face is completely void of artifice. Wow, she must have been practicing this look in the mirror.

“There is no such thing as the Fingernail Fairy.”

Her eyebrows are all the way to her hair line. “Yeah huh.”

The boy pipes up. “Let me see the five dollars.” He inspects the money front and back, as if the money can be verified so can this bizarre new fairy.

“Sassy,” I say a little bit sterner this time.

“What are you saying, Mom?” she asks. She’s really working this innocence angle.

“I think you stuck five dollars under your pillow and now you’re messing with your brother.”

“Nu-huh.”

“There is no such thing as the Fingernail Fairy, Sassy.” I lay my tube of mascara on the counter and walk across the hall to stand in her doorway. “And even if there was, she wouldn’t leave five dollars. The tooth fairy doesn’t leave five dollars and she takes actual teeth.”

“I don’t know, Mom,” the boy says, transfixed by the portrait of Abraham Lincoln in his hand. “The money seems like proof to me.”

“Bandit, there is no such thing as the Fingernail Fairy. I swear.” I take the money from him and give it back to his sister. “Quit messing with your brother.”

She held firm to her story about this ridiculous fairy. She kept insisting that I couldn’t know for sure that she didn’t exist. Of course, I know for sure she isn’t real. I know the Tooth Fairy very intimately, but I couldn’t very well use that evidence to make my point. God only knows what she’ll come up with next. The Booger Fairy? The Hair Ball Fairy?

Oh, Sweet Perseus, help me.