The Princess Sisters (The Princess Sisters Series)

by Stacy Lynn Carroll

  Once Belle had all ten of her little piggies brightly decorated, she stretched her legs out with her toes pointing toward the ceiling so they could dry. Someone knocked on the front door downstairs and Belle let out an exasperated sigh. She glanced down at her still wet toes, but her mom was gone for the evening so she knew she didn’t have a choice. Belle then swung her legs over the edge of the bed and made her way to the door. She walked on her heels alone, to prevent her perfect polishing job from being ruined by stray carpet fibers. Her descent down the stairs was slow, but she finally made it to the front door. Dave stood on her porch, looking good as ever with his new haircut.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” Belle asked.

  “Just thought I’d stop by and see if you wanted to hang out.”

  “Sure!” she said, opening the door further so Dave could step inside. “My mom finally lifted the grounding today, so you have perfect timing!”

  “Awesome!” Dave said. “So...you aren’t mad at me?”

  “You? Why would I be mad at you?”

  Dave shuffled his feet.

  “Because of Cinderella?” Belle asked. “No, I blame her for that one. I mean, she basically seduced you, right?”

  Dave looked at her surprised, but then slowly nodded.

  “I was just getting my stuff together for school tomorrow. You want to come upstairs for a minute?”

  “Sure,” Dave said, quietly.

  “What’s going on?” Belle asked when they’d reached her room.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “You just seem so quiet,” she said.

  “Yeah, sorry. We had a killer practice tonight so I’m a little tired.”

  Dave glanced around Belle’s room as she finished getting a few things together.

  “What are you looking for?” Belle asked.

  “What? Nothing,” Dave answered quickly. “So you ready for school to start?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

  Belle looked at him quizzically, and then brushed off his strange behavior. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said. “There, I’m all done,” she added, tossing one last thing in her bag. “We can go downstairs now, if you like.”

  “Okay,” Dave said.

  They turned on a movie, but ended up talking about school during the whole thing. Once they left Belle’s room, Dave seemed to be much more like his normal self again. Mary came downstairs around 10:00 p.m. to remind them it was a school night.

  “That’s her subtle way of saying it’s time for you to leave,” Belle said, once her mom had left the room.

  Dave nodded. “I can take a hint.” He put his hands in his pockets as he stood to go and then froze. “My cell phone is gone,” he said.

  “Did you have it when you came over here?” Belle asked.

  “Yeah, I must have dropped it somewhere.”

  “Check the couch cushions,” Belle said, getting to her feet.

  The two of them worked their hands along the back side and ends of the cushions several times with no success.

  “Why don’t you call my phone and I’ll walk around and see if I can hear it?” Dave suggested.

  “Good idea,” Belle said. She punched in Dave’s number and hit send. They waited for her phone to start ringing before Dave slowly made his way upstairs. Belle called his phone three times before Dave came back down to the basement. He held up his phone, so Belle snapped her own phone shut. “Where’d you find it?” she asked.

  “In your room,” he said. “I must have dropped it somehow while we were up there.”

  “Weird,” she said.

  “I know. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dave said, and he turned around to go back up the stairs he had just come down.

  When Belle got up to her room, she glanced over her school things one more time to make sure everything was ready to go. Something was missing. Where’s my bracelet?

  Mary peeked her head in the door. “Lights out in five minutes,” she said.

  Oh well, I guess I’ll have to look tomorrow.

  ***

  Monday, August 23rd

  Cinderella felt her body shaking, but her eyes remained shut. Is it an earthquake? Then somewhere, far away, she heard a voice calling her name.

  “Cinderella!”

  The voice got closer and louder.

  “CINDERELLA!”

  Cinderella snapped awake and quickly realized her mom had been shaking her and calling her name.

  “You’re going to be late! Get up!” Dana said.

  Cinderella rolled out of bed and proceeded to get ready for school with lead feet. She groggily gathered her things before heading downstairs to the front door.

  “Hold up,” Dana said. “I’m driving you girls today.”

  “Great,” Cinderella said in a flat voice, but Dana didn’t seem to notice. She simply grabbed her purse and ushered her daughter out the door. Cinderella had expected to take the bus to school that morning. This would have made it easier to ignore her cousins. But now she would be trapped in a confined space with all four of them. She desperately wanted to make up with them. The last couple weeks had royally sucked! But she wasn’t quite ready to be thrown together with the lot of them either.

  Dana pulled her car out of the parking stall and stopped in front of their row of townhouses. She tapped the horn twice and waited. Three front doors, all in a row, opened and the other girls trudged toward the car. No one looked especially enthusiastic about the prospect of returning to school. The drive was quiet, as none of the girls were speaking to each other.

  “Don’t look so excited,” Dana said, glancing in her rearview mirror. “What’s going on with you girls?” she asked when her sarcasm was met with silence.

  “Just tired Mom,” Cinderella answered without looking at the others.

  “You probably should have been preparing for school to start, instead of sleeping in so late every morning,” she said. Luckily the Outlander pulled in front of the school at that moment so they didn’t have to respond.

  “Have a good day!” Dana called as the five cousins quickly got out of the car and made their way towards the large brick building.

  “Hey Snow, wait up!” Cinderella called after the bouncing red hair that was quickly moving away.

  Snow White paused just long enough for Cinderella to catch up to her.

  “I’m really sorry about everything!” she started. “What can I do to make it up to you?”

  “Hey, you’re a Princess right? Can I have your autograph?” A boy with slick blonde hair had approached Cinderella with the question. Then he and his group of friends walked away, laughing.

  “What was that about?” asked Snow White.

  “No idea,” Cinderella shrugged.

  Just then Ariel, Aurora, and Belle appeared in front of them.

  “Remember how we were worried about people knowing who we were?” Aurora asked.

  “Well, that’s not going to be a problem anymore,” Belle said.

  She stepped aside, revealing a long row of dark blue lockers. Attached to each locker was a yellow piece of paper made to look like a scroll. It read:

  Hear ye, Hear ye, students of Layton High

  Some Princess Posers are trying to get by

  They think they are royalty because of their name

  But they’re nothing but frauds trying to steal some fame

  Cinderella is so afraid of losing a shoe

  She wears man boots; does she have other man parts too?

  And Belle who is supposed to be into books

  Barely can read, so she hides behind her looks

  Aurora is no beauty with bags under her eyes

  She can’t sleep at all, she’s so afraid of guys

  Ariel won’t even go near any water

  What kind of a wuss is this King Trighton’s daughter?

  And last but not least is our fat Snow White

  Who won’t eat an apple, not even a bite

  So before you get ready to s
tand and applaud

  Look closer behind these whores’ little fraud

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “Well, at least it’s creative,” Mary said. She sat beside Rachel and Dana on the couch in her front room, holding up the bright yellow flier.

  “Thanks Mom,” Belle said, crossing her arms over her chest and giving her mother a dirty look.

  “It’s true. Insults have come a long way since we were in high school,” Rachel added.

  “Who would have done this?” Elizabeth asked. She sat on the couch across from her sisters, her arm around Snow White’s quivering shoulders.

  “It doesn’t matter who; I just want to know why!” Aurora said. “It was our first day! Who could we possibly have made enemies with already?!” She paced around the room as she spoke, unable to stay in one place for long.

  “Do you know how bad today sucked?” Ariel asked quietly, without looking up. “Today was a terrible, horrible, awful day! Every class I went to people said ‘there’s one of those princess whores’ and every time I walked by a drinking fountain, someone threw water at me.”

  “They threw water at you?” Rachel asked, jumping up from her seat.

  “Yeah, and then they’d say something stupid like: ‘Look out princess, don’t want to get hurt by the scary water’.”

  “Well, I think we need to call your principal,” Dana said, her fists clenched as she too rose from the couch.

  “That will just make it worse,” Cinderella said, blocking her mom from reaching for her cell phone.

  “Yeah, what are they gonna do?” Aurora asked. “Punish the whole school?”

  “Well we have to do something!” Dana exclaimed, crashing back onto the couch beside her sisters.

  “Who do you think is behind all this?” Elizabeth asked again.

  “I’ll tell you exactly wh-who,” Snow White sniffled. “Dave! We never should have trusted him! He just played us!”

  “Why would Dave…?” Aurora started.

  “Think about it!” Snow White yelled. “Who else knows that information about all of us?”

  “It’s not Dave’s fault!” Belle blurted out. “If you all had given us normal names instead of these stupid princess names, they wouldn’t have had anything to make fun of!” Belle threw her mother one last threatening look and ran up the stairs, slamming her bedroom door.

  The Princess sisters all stared at the floor, unable to make eye contact with their mothers. Dana, Rachel, Mary, and Elizabeth exchanged gloomy looks with one another. Then, as if a bell went off signaling the end of a fight, they all stood up and silently guided their daughters home.

  ***

  “I’m sorry!” Cinderella said.

  The five Princess sisters were gathered in Cinderella’s room later that night. She had asked her cousins to all come over after the day’s fiasco.

  “I’m sorry too,” Belle said. “I should never have kept it hidden from you guys that Dave kissed me that very first night. Then maybe he wouldn’t have been able to manipulate you as well.”

  “I thought you didn’t blame Dave?” Aurora asked.

  “I didn’t,” Belle said. “At least I didn’t want to. That is until I called Dave and asked him about kissing both me and Cindy. He came up with some excuse, and then he got off the phone with me real quick.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ariel said, putting her hand on Belle’s shoulder.

  Belle shrugged it off. “Oh well,” she said.

  “I’m confused,” Snow White said. “So he kissed…all of you?” The other four girls nodded. “I thought it was just Cindy, Aurora, and Ariel.”

  “Wait. I thought it was just me and Cindy,” Belle said, looking around.

  “Be glad he never got to you, Snow,” Ariel added.

  “He didn’t…?” Aurora asked in response to the guilty look on Snow White’s face.

  Snow White was too embarrassed to tell any of her other cousins what had happened, especially after she found out she wasn’t the first one to get kissed. Cinderella was the only one who knew.

  “When?” asked Belle.

  “Before the fireworks,” Snow White said. “When the two of us went to get food.”

  “I can’t believe he tricked you into kissing him too!” Belle exclaimed.

  “I can’t believe we let a guy mess things up between us,” Ariel said. “We broke the pact!”

  “What pact?” Belle asked.

  “Sisters before misters!” she said, throwing her arms in the air.

  “Well, so what are we going to do?” asked Aurora. “Not even just about Dave. The whole school now knows I can’t sleep and everywhere I went today kids were pretending to snore at me.”

  “They called me fat,” Snow White said quietly.

  “You’re not fat!” Cinderella said.

  “I’m not as skinny as any of you!”

  “That does not make you fat,” Cinderella said.

  “You really aren’t,” Belle added.

  “But that’s how everyone is going to distinguish me from now on. I’m the fat Princess.”

  “At least you weren’t accused of having...I can’t even say it!” Cinderella said, trying to change the focus. “What do they think I am? A hermaphrodite?”

  “Everyone knows about me now too,” Belle said. Even with her secret out and the whole school knowing, she still couldn’t bring herself to say the “D” word out loud.

  “We have to do something to fight back,” Aurora said. “I don’t want to go through the next three years with everyone thinking I’m just a big joke.

  “People will just say we’re denying it and probably believe it more if we make a big deal,” Ariel said.

  “I’m going to find out more,” Belle said. “We can’t do anything until we know the whole truth.”

  “What are you going to do?” Snow White asked.

  “I’m gonna go talk to Dave,” she said, and she got up from her seat on Cinderella’s bed.

  “I thought he wouldn’t talk to you?” Aurora asked.

  “I’m going to his house,” Belle stated. “He can’t avoid me if I’m right in front of his face.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “I want to know why.” Belle stood on Dave’s front porch, her arms crossed. She looked Dave straight in the face and then looked up; trying to force the tears back in with gravity.

  “Can we do this later?” Dave asked in a whisper.

  “Why? So you can come up with a better story?” Belle’s voice grew louder with each word so that ‘story’ was almost shouted.

  “Is everything okay, David?” Dave looked back into his house, towards his mother’s voice.

  “Fine Mom,” he said. He then stepped out onto the porch, closing the front door. “Look,” he said, “I really like you!”

  “Well you sure have a funny way of showing it,” Belle said angrily.

  “I had no idea they were going to twist the things I told them and humiliate you guys the way they did.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Cynthia and her friends,” Dave said matter-of-factly. He looked puzzled. “Didn’t you know that’s who was behind everything?”

  “Cynthia? …You mean Cynthia Brown?” Belle asked.

  “Yeah. Head cheerleader, dating the captain of the football team. She said you guys were making fun of her and she just wanted some payback.”

  “When did we...? The restaurant.” Belle started to question Dave, but then she remembered and could see everything perfectly.

  “She said she just wanted a little bit of information about you guys that she could use to tease you a little bit. She made it sound like you were old friends and it was all harmless. I honestly didn’t realize how far she’d go!” Dave appeared regretful for the things he’d done. But Belle still wasn’t sure she trusted him.

  “And what about kissing us?” she asked. “You just thought you’d get a little action while you were gathering information on us?”

  “You know about all
that?” Dave asked, his eyes widening.

  “I know you wanted all of us to keep it a secret so we wouldn’t find out. But did you really think it would stay a secret forever? You not only used me, you used all my cousins too!”

  “Wait a minute,” Dave said, putting his hands up to signal surrender. “I really like you!”

  “You’ve really got to stop using that one,” Belle said, her eyebrows narrowing and her lips forming a very thin line.

  “I’m not lying!” Dave said.

  “And I should believe you based on what?” Belle asked, getting louder again.

  “When I first kissed you, that night when we went to the redbox…I meant it. It’s just that everything got so screwed up after that.”

  “Enlighten me,” Belle said.

  “I started football practice right after that night. I was talking to Bret Downy, Cynthia’s boyfriend, and some of the other guys on the team. I asked them if anyone knew you guys. They were coming up with initiations for the new guys and before I knew it they told me I had to get all five Princess sisters to kiss me. I had to do it!” Dave said. “It was the only way the guys on the team would accept me.”

  “Then why didn’t you just lie and tell them you’d kissed all of us?”

  “Cynthia was there. She’d stopped by to visit Bret. She said you guys had all gotten some bracelets when you came to the restaurant and if I’d really kissed you, I’d bring back the bracelets for proof.”