The Forgotten Fairytales

by Angela Parkhurst

  His jaw tightened, the muscle jumping with each swallow. The hand that was once firm on my back, fell and clenched at his side. Crimson streaked his irises, erasing the flickering gold fun that once filled them.

  “No. He did not.”

  Whoa. Something totally flipped in him, washing away the playful banter between us.

  Desiree cleared her throat. “Anyway. I came to the conclusion; Finn has it bad for you. The night of the party he secretly pined for you and ever since, those sad, sad puppy dog eyes follow you wherever you go. Add that to the hot, steamy across the room gazes and lingering touches and you have the perfect trifecta.”

  “This conversation needs to do a one-eighty like now,” I said.

  “And she doesn’t deny it,” Desiree said.

  The way I felt about Finn was the same way I felt about pandas. Cute and fun to look at, maybe even play with, but not something you could ever have. Plus, he believed himself to be a prince from a storybook. There’s no way I could be with anyone who couldn’t tell the difference between fiction and reality. Even more ridiculous was Desiree thinking anything could ever happen between us. He was a part of Danielle’s group and I wasn’t. I never would be.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Finn doesn’t think about—”

  I froze, because at that very moment, Finn entered the cafeteria with James. They always seemed to be together when he wasn’t with Danielle. Last night barreled into my mind. We’d sat beside the fire in the common room. It was after one in the morning and Danielle and James were arguing again. Well, she was arguing, he was standing there emotionless. Again. Every time I went to the bathroom I had to ignore the nagging in my head to look in the little blue bottle.

  The crackling embers had warmed the room while Finn and I sat on adjacent sofas. First we listened to music, one song came on that he said reminded him of his mother. I didn’t know the name, but I loved the bass line.

  “Do you get to see her a lot?” I asked.

  “Only on visitation days, if she even comes.”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  His attention settled on the tiny flames, the embers brightening then darkening again as they struggled to survive. “I’m her biggest disappointment.” The frown tugging at the corner of his lips made a lump build at the bottom of my throat. He took a swig from the flask.

  Using the arm of the couch he sat up and kicked the blanket off his legs. “To her, not dedicating myself to Pearl is the greatest mistake I could ever make. She wants to bring the kingdoms together. Pearl is the key to that. It isn’t about love, it’s a business deal.”

  “I didn’t see that in our curriculum.”

  He chuckled softly, still turning the reality over in his head. What I saw before me wasn’t a failure. What I saw was someone lost, struggling to find a purpose of his own. Weren’t we all like mindless wanderers searching for something bigger, something better than what people thought we’d find?

  What was the purpose of life if the story was written for us and all we had to do was follow the footsteps paved? We’d all be robots. Who wanted a life without excitement? Some of the best times in my life were the unplanned. Kind of like getting lost on your way somewhere. At first you think it’s the worst. You yell and bicker but then somewhere along the way something magical happens, and the journey becomes better than the destination.

  “I think your mom is wrong.” I stretched out across the sofa till I made it to the other side, where the arm of his couch touched mine. “You’re doing fine. We’re all fine. Mistakes are speed bumps to finding your way.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “My dad,” I said. “He swears he made it up, but I’m pretty sure he read it someplace and claimed it for himself. He does that all the time.”

  “Steal people’s words?”

  I nudged his arm. “No. He tells ridiculous stories and I believe them because he’s my dad so for some reason I think he’d never lie to me.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  “Um, well, I used to get mad when he’d go hunting, so I made him promise he’d never kill a doe. I’m pretty sure he did. Oh, and in the middle of Florida there are these skinny trees and he convinced me they were paper tree farms. Totally weren’t. I Googled it, but I believed him.”

  Finn laughed and closed his eyes only to open them slowly. “Thanks.” His hand lingered on top of mine. Words came slowly as I swallowed my dry throat.

  “Anytime.”

  Nothing super amazing happened; we talked and shared more stories for another hour before I snuck back to my room. Still, in those few hours together I felt normal. He wasn’t drunk and weird.

  Now, as Finn stopped and smiled my way, I wondered if Desiree was right. He said something to James then walked toward us. I turned to Huey, Dewey, and Louie and glared. “Say a word to him and I’ll kill you. Especially you.” I said to Wolf.

  “Don’t tease me.” He grinned. “You know I like it rough.”

  I elbowed him in the ribs, though his laughter confirmed he felt no pain at all.

  “Hey,” Finn said to me, acknowledging the odd faces at the table. “You still want to go to the library and study after class?”

  I bit on my bottom lip. “Sounds great.”

  Wolf put his arm around my lower waist, the material of my crochet top bunched between his long fingers. Finn’s attention dropped to the hand, which was way close to my butt. I shimmied to the side hoping it would fall, but it didn’t. Of course it didn’t. Wolf loved to annoy me. I should join W.W.A and tell all those stupid girls he wasn’t worth their time. Not that I believed there was such thing, but still, how many girls fell for him? I never saw him stalking anyone but me. Come to think of it, I never saw him talking or flirting with other girls.

  “I’ll meet you after class, second floor?” Finn shifted from one side to the other like he was ready to run off.

  “See you then.”

  Once Finn turned away, I used all the strength I could muster and jabbed my elbow back into Wolf’s ribs. This time he flinched. Point for Norah.

  “What the hell, Wolf!” I cried. “Why would you—”

  “It was a test,” Desiree said. “And you passed or failed, depending how you look at it. Finn is totes jealous of Wolf.” She turned to Kate. “Did you see the heat in his eyes? Green-eyed monster for sure. Don’t you agree, Kate?”

  Kate paused, slight fear darkened her features, but she swallowed hard and nodded.

  “I hate you all,” I said. “You most of all.” I glared at Wolf.

  “Love and hate, baby,” Wolf said. “Love and hate.”

  They were supposed to be my friends, yet they talked about Finn and me as if we were freakin’ fairy tale celebrities they had to report to the tabloids. Wait, I wondered if they had tabloids for fairy tale characters. Oh the stories they’d tell if they did.

  Peter Pan Sneaks in Kids’ Rooms at Night. Lock Your Doors!

  Sleeping Beauty Endorses Serta Mattresses

  The bell rang and everyone dispersed from the cafeteria. I told Kate I’d meet her in class and hurried after Wolf with a score to settle. The boy looked like he walked slower than molasses, but catching up to him was harder than I thought. Must have been those long legs.

  “Wolf, wait.” He turned around, one hand hitched in his worn jeans. When I finally reached his side, he eyed me with curiosity and grinned. A grin I wanted to smack off. “Why are you harassing me? If you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to help people.”

  “And?”

  “And you’re irritating me. All I want is to break down the barrier that says people like Kate, Desiree, and I can’t be friends. To show them people have more things in common than they know, and if they only gave others a chance, they’d see that.”

  His eyes were calm, level, no colors brighter than others. “What if I want that too?”

  “Do you?” I asked. “Or is this another game?”

  “I do.”

  “Why?”<
br />
  “Because.” Dark waves fell along the side of his face and he stared at me as if he were pleading for me to see more of him. For me to see the truth. “Maybe I want to be the kind of guy a girl like you believes in.”

  I sucked in a deep breath and stared at him for too long, feeling the weight of his words. The sincerity. There was no trace of a smile. No trace of amusement or laughter. Only a firm jaw and eyes like melting honey.

  For the first time in my life, I was failing. Dad would’ve freaked if he knew. But it’s not like I failed Calculus or Ancient Roman History. I failed dance. Dance! Who would’ve thought? Well, I guess it wasn’t out of left field. Dad never let me take classes and while I could move on the dance floor to Katy Perry and Jay Z, waltzing was a different story.

  Professor Peach’s grin shined brighter than the chandelier hanging in the ballroom as she delivered the news. “If you aren’t prepared for the dance at the ball, you’ll fail. If you fail, you retake the class next year. And I can promise you, Miss Hart, your dance partner will be more abysmal than the unfortunate young prince you have now.”

  I bit back the nasty retort sitting on the edge of my lips. “What do you suggest?”

  Pink lipstick stained her crooked front teeth. “Practice. I’ll grant you permission to use the rehearsal studio after classes.”

  “Fine.” My molars ground together.

  And practice is exactly what I did.

  The record played over and over again, the music more a blur than an actual melody. For the first time in my life, I hated the sound of basses and voices colliding with drums. The rhythm betrayed me. My body betrayed me. And my feet? Well, I wasn’t even going to touch on how much they sucked.

  I stared at myself through the mirrors of the rehearsal room. We changed for class much like you would for gym. Instead of baggy boy shorts and stinky white shirts that always managed to get stains under the armpits, we had pink tights and solid black leotards. Leotards. As if I wasn’t already humiliated enough.

  Kate said my attitude was the reason I was failing dance, but really, who could concentrate when your dance partner was a pubescent boy with traveling fingers and hormonal acne? Not that there was anything wrong with a few pimples, but hell, that didn’t give him the right to let his hand slip to my ass. To top off the suckage, he wasn’t strong enough to support my body weight.

  The leotard flattened my chest, and the gauzy bubble gum pink skirt I had on sat low on my hips and barely covered my butt. For a school so stressed on appearance, they sure didn’t mind their students looking like a cross between Ballet Barbie and a Thirty-Fourth Street Prostitute.

  I took my position in the middle on the room, huffing as the music began again. One... two…three. I closed my eyes and imagined the routine in front of me. The mass of people moving in unison and I moved right along. The dance had been danced at every ball for over one hundred years. A dance I was doomed to destroy.

  I pretended Creepy Hand Boy was guiding me, though he sucked at that too, around the dance floor. Something hit my heel and I tripped, falling backward right on my butt. Great. Fantastic. Now I’d have a nasty bruise. This school had turned me into a failing girl who bruised like a peach.

  Pushing the hair from my face, I stood up and found the culprit was the pair of heels I ditched a half an hour ago. The tips of my toes ached from being jammed in character shoes for hours, and I wasn’t any better than when I started.

  “For a princess, you suck at this.” Wolf’s taunting voice increased my irritation. He stood in the doorway of the practice studio. The thin material of the gray cotton shirt clung to the biceps bulging beyond the sleeves. Worn, burgundy suspenders fell along his waist. He never wore them up, always hanging down, as if he were too lazy to put them on right.

  I scowled. “Don’t you have a house to destroy? I hear the pigs are rebuilding after the last disaster.”

  Uncrossing his arms, he pushed off the door with his heavy combat boot and stepped toward me. A smirk tugged at the corner of his full lips. “That’s a lot of sass for a girl as uncoordinated as you.”

  My fists clenched and unclenched at my side, insults beating on the tip of my tongue. If this were a sword match, I’d have no problem slaughtering him.

  Wolf walked around in a slow circle, examining me as if I were on display. “And here I thought all princesses were born with grace and poise.”

  “Like you could do any better. You’re a ‘wolf’.”

  Wolf barked a laugh. “Air quotes, really? I thought we were beyond the pettiness, princess.” He strutted to the record player, dropping the needle on the black record.

  The music filled the holes between us, and in one quick motion, he seized my hand, and jerked me to him. My heart beat frantically as he dragged one of my hands to his shoulder, rested one of his hands on my hip, and laced his fingers in mine. An instant later, we were moving, my feet keeping time with his as if it were an act of God alone.

  My jaw dropped, words took longer than usual to process. “How are you doing this?”

  “Shh. No questions.”

  Wolf was so smooth, so effortless. Each movement was sharp and precise, like he’d done this his entire life. At the first dip, my foot wasn’t prepared and I began to I slip backward, but with Wolf’s arms around me I was saved from cracking my head on the floor.

  Wolf didn’t let me flounder. Instead, we went again, and again. He cursed under his breath every time I stepped on his foot or fell, but he never wavered, never acted as if I were hopeless. No matter how hopeless I felt.

  “I suck!” I yelled, tempted to punch the mirror.

  Wolf came up behind me, his warm breath tickling my neck as he exhaled. “Relax.” He pressed his chest against my back and rested his hands on my hips. His long, firm fingers toyed with the strap of my skirt. “Dancing is about emotion and feeling the music in your veins. I know you can do that. I’ve seen you do that.”

  Looking at us in the mirrors a grin flicked over his face and the night in the woods flooded back. Our bodies coming together so perfectly, I wondered if we were two people or one. I hated to admit that we did look pretty good together. His roughness complemented me.

  When the music began again, he didn’t start the routine, instead, we stood still.

  “Close your eyes.” Nerves twitched, but I obeyed his command and took in slow, small breaths. “Forget the steps. Let the music move you.” His heavy hands dug into my hips, swinging me back and forth to the slow beat. Soon my shoulders shifted up and down, the music like a fire blazing in my bone. The steps don’t matter, I told myself. Feel the music. And I did.

  Wolf spun me out. The tiny skirt flared with the familiar smoothness as he twirled me into him, my back to his chest. His hands traveled down my thigh and back up again, biting into the thin, tight fabric. I shivered, warmth buzzing through me as I reached back and put my arms around his neck.

  Behind me, he tightened and sucked in a breath, soaking in whatever drew him to me like a mosquito to sweet, sweet blood. The tips of his fingers lingered over my ribcage and I shivered against him. No words separated us. No irritation. Nothing but my body against his.

  Wolf drew my hand into his and twirled me so we were face to face, and then, the routine began. Slow and steady, like a beating drum, we moved with the effortlessness I envied in others. The world disappeared as we danced, and for some time, it was just the two of us. The stereotypes slipped away until we were two people, two people who had the possibility to be anybody.

  “I never knew you could dance so well,” I said.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” His hand loosened as he pushed me out and twirled me back to him. The warmth of his breath spread over my skin, teasing me like a light summer breeze.

  Another dip, and this time he didn’t pull us up right away. Our eyes bore into one another’s; secret messages passed through us, messages I didn’t quite understand, but I knew, in that moment, there was something there. Something u
nspoken. Something beautiful.

  “Tell me something.” I kept my voice soft, afraid that the wrong word would send him away. “Anything. Please?”

  “Like?”

  I sucked in a breath when he yanked me back to him harder than he had before. My knee knocked against his but he didn’t flinch. “Tell me why you dance better than any boy at this school. You put the princes to shame.”

  His eyes left mine, staring beyond my shoulder, but he smiled. It was small and almost invisible, but he enjoyed a good stroke of the ego.

  “My mom.”

  “She danced?”

  Wolf nodded. “Before she had me she danced in a company.”

  “Really?” The Big Bad Wolf’s mom was a prima ballerina. Fascinating.

  Our dance slowed, but Wolf didn’t seem to notice. “She was one of the best. She had offers to join a company in London.”

  London, how exciting. I loved London when I went there with Dad and April a year or two ago. We didn’t stay long, a few days and then we were on our way elsewhere.

  “What happened?”

  His throat tensed and I ran my thumb over his hand, willing him not to stop, to keep talking to me. “She met my dad, got pregnant, married. The story goes downhill from there.”

  The hand holding mine dropped and he backed up, his head down. “You seem fine now. I should get back to my dorm.”

  “Please don’t.” I grabbed his elbow and his eyes bolted to mine as if touching him was the worst action ever. “I want to know more.”

  “What?” He sounded so disgusted, his nose crinkled at my words. “Why do you want to know anything about me?”

  “Curiosity, I guess.” Stepping forward, my other hand rested on his arm. “Tell me how you learned to dance.”

  “I told you.” Though his jaw was clamped shut, his voice was soft, full of pain. “My mom.”

  This was not going to be easy. I took a deep breath, staying calm, like a lazy river. I settled back into him and danced slow, hoping the music would keep him relaxed. “When did you start?” I rested my head on his chest. He stiffened, relaxing after a second or two, once he realized I wasn’t about to run off.