This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Published by Kindle Press, Seattle, 2017
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Contents
Part 1
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Part 2
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
Part 3
19
20
21
22
Happily After
Part 1
Some Girls Never Grow Up
1
I glanced at the clock over my teacher’s head and yawned. After two hundred years, school hadn’t become any more exciting.
Of the twenty-two kids in my English class, fifteen of them hated me. I’d counted last Thursday. I was the first to finish my test, and I didn’t have anything else to do. Mrs. Davenport had given me her famous death glare for looking around the room during testing, but she knew I’d never cheat off those idiots. I guess it’s not fair to call them idiots. I only knew so much because I had taken eleventh grade language arts many times before and would take it many times after. There was only so much you could learn about the symbolism used in The Scarlet Letter or the moral philosophy of The Grapes of Wrath.
We had begun a book called Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast, which made me feel uncomfortable every time we read it. I wondered how much of this version of Beauty’s story was actually true. I bet her name wasn’t even Beauty. My own story had been twisted and tangled throughout the years, and I found it quite frustrating. How could people who weren’t even there write a story about my life? That was the very reason I hated fairy tales. My real life was much more tragic, much more terrifying, than the watered-down stories they told. The true life of Neva Albano would have most definitely been a best seller.
As Mrs. Davenport delved into a lecture of how we were to look for differences and similarities between the retelling and the original, my mind wandered to the seven kids who didn’t hate me yet.
Aubrey Hayes was one of them. Aubrey was my only true school friend. I say “school friend” because outside of school I preferred to keep to myself. My life was nowhere near normal, and the less people knew about me, the better. While Mrs. Davenport droned on and on, Aubrey twirled her long auburn hair around her pen. I tried to make eye contact with her, because she was always good for a funny face or an exaggerated eye roll, but her green eyes remained focused on something above Mrs. Davenport’s head.
Noelle Crawford, the most popular girl in our class, was also one of the seven. She didn’t hate me, because she was too occupied by her always-present crowd of admirers to know I existed. Noelle sat in the back beside Aubrey. She listened intently to Mrs. Davenport as she ran her fingers through her lustrous black hair. Noelle and I had the same features—ebony hair and ivory skin, except her hair fell past her shoulders, and I kept mine cut short, just to the bottom of my chin. We could easily pass for sisters, although no one would ever call me pretty out loud. I didn’t take that to heart. I knew I wasn’t ugly. After all, my beauty was the reason my life sucked. My classmates would never admit I was beautiful, because to them, I was just some random weirdo who kept to herself. At Rock Canyon High, there was no such thing as a pretty loser. Beauty is overrated anyway. It’s never caused me anything but problems.
No one had a problem raving about Noelle’s beauty, though. Good looks were a requirement of her clique, which included Mia Rosen and Hadley Fowler, who sat to the left of me. They hated me the most. Noelle, Mia, and Hadley would sit together if it weren’t for Mrs. Davenport’s set-in-stone seating chart. Mia and Hadley had thrown a fit on the first day of school when Noelle had been assigned a seat far away from them, but Mrs. Davenport wouldn’t bow to their demands. She ran a tighter ship than most teachers, but I liked her, mainly because she didn’t take any crap. Over the years, I’d found that poor student behavior and lack of respect had greatly increased. It seemed like yesterday that a kid would get paddled just for chewing gum, and we sat still with our desks in neat rows, not daring to make a sound unless spoken to.
Noelle didn’t seem to mind the seating arrangement and took her assigned seat graciously. Honestly, I think she was happy to have a break from Mia and Hadley. Those two stuck to her as if their lives depended on it. Hadley had pitched another fit when she realized she was sitting next to me, whom she referred to as a “pasty-white-socially-inept-weirdo-freak.” According to her, whatever social disease I had was contagious.
Hadley and Mia were a part of what Aubrey called the Blonde Brigade. Aside from the raven-haired Noelle, their clique was made up of blondes. The group traveled in a herd and wreaked havoc throughout the school. Hadley and Mia mostly kept their blonde tresses in long perfect ponytails. The main difference between them was their height, since Hadley easily towered over Mia. The two of them were awful, but they were far from my biggest problem.
Mrs. Davenport cleared her throat, calling for my attention. I spun around in my seat, trying to focus, but it was hard for me. Long ago, I’d been cursed to repeat my sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school over and over again by a wicked queen who was jealous of my looks. I’d grown tired of the repetition more than a century and a half ago.
At first, it wasn’t so bad. Every time my life reset was a chance to do things differently and start fresh. Yes, over the years, things changed slowly here and there, but for the most part school was school—mean girls, worshipped jocks, average kids who blended into the background, outcasts, school dances, bad cafeteria food, and too much homework. I’d watched schools transform from one-room schoolhouses to huge modern buildings with technology we never could have fathomed. In my first life, over two hundred years ago, I didn’t go to school. Private tutors lived in the palace for the sole purpose of educating me.
Once I graduated from high school, my father and I would pack up, move somewhere else, and begin again. At midnight, just as I turned eighteen, I would revert to my fifteen-year-old self. Between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, I grew half a foot, my A-cups developed into C-cups, and I transformed from a beanpole to a young woman with noticeable curves. Then it would all go away, and I’d look like my fifteen-year-old self again. My father had been cursed, too. Like me, he never aged more than three years. I’d lost count of all the places we’d lived.
Mrs. Davenport removed her gold-framed glasses from her nose and placed them on her head. They almost blended in with her short blonde curls. “Ladies and gentlemen, I would like you to read chapter two on your own now and chapter three for homework. There may or may not be a pop quiz tomorrow.”
Translation: There will definitely be a pop quiz tomorrow.
A few kids groaned as we cracked open our books. I had read three sentences when I was distracted by the crinkling of a candy wrapper. Beside me, Hadley unwrapped a Sour Apple Jolly Rancher. My mouth watered. I looked away and tried to concentrate on the book. I read the same
sentence over and over. I glanced over at Hadley again. She whispered something to Mia. She had the candy fully unwrapped and held it between two hot-pink polished fingernails. Just eat it.
I swallowed hard and clasped the edges of my desk. Joshua Riggs, who sat in front of me, turned his head slightly, then went back to reading. I salivated as the processed smell of apple-flavored candy invaded my nostrils. My nose was sensitive to the scent. I could smell an apple in the next room.
Hadley held the candy out, as if tempting me. I took a deep breath, and all self-control left me. I reached over, snatched the candy from her hand, and shoved it into my mouth.
“What the hell?” Hadley squealed. Everyone looked up from their books. The kids in front of us turned around.
“Is there a problem?” Mrs. Davenport asked from her desk.
Hadley glared at me with ice-blue eyes. “Did you see what she just did? She stole my candy!” Mia laughed uncontrollably, but Hadley was not amused. “You are such a freak!”
I didn’t care what she had to say about me. After decades of being hardened by the same insults, the words simply bounced off me. Weirdo. Freak. Loser. At first, I was always the beautiful mysterious girl everyone wanted to know about. Girls wanted to be my friend, but when I wouldn’t share details of my life, they called me weird. Boys asked me out, but I turned them all down. At Rock Canyon, someone—probably Hadley or Mia—told everyone my father was like the mother from the movie Carrie. They said I wasn’t allowed to do anything but stay home and pray. They had no idea the truth was a million times worse than that.
I closed my eyes, savoring the taste of the candy. No, it wasn’t an apple, but it was close enough. A few kids snickered. I understood why, but I couldn’t help what I’d done. I had an insatiable hunger for apples. I was going to pay for it later, but for the moment, I was satisfied.
“Girls, please, back to reading,” Mrs. Davenport ordered, obviously not concerned with Hadley’s candy problem.
“Oh my God,” Mia said between giggles. “Maybe she’s never had a Jolly Rancher before.”
“Ms. Rosen!” Mrs. Davenport yelled sharply. “One more sound and you can do all the laughing you want in detention. Read!”
Mia tried to stifle her laughter as she opened her book. I sensed Hadley glaring at me, but I refused to look at her.
Thankfully the bell rang a few minutes later. Knowing it was in my best interest to leave as quickly as possible, I grabbed my backpack, not even taking the time to put my books inside. Also, it was lunch time and I was starving.
“What was that?” Aubrey asked, looping her arm around mine. I wasn’t sure what to say. My quirks were hard to explain.
“I don’t know.”
“Dude, I know Hadley’s not the nicest person, but pick your battles. You don’t want her coming after you over a piece of candy. I mean, let it be for something that’s worth it, like screwing her boyfriend.”
Shaking my head, I unhooked my arm from hers. The sleeve from her leather jacket was making my arm sweaty. No matter what the weather was like, Aubrey wore her black leather jacket, even on a warm spring day like this one. The jacket, paired with a pleated, plaid skirt, black fishnet leggings, and black boots made me want to sweat just looking at her.
We turned down the hallway leading to the cafeteria. I loathed the cafeteria. To me, it was simply a place to gather all the jerks in the same room for a group feeding.
“I didn’t mean to do it. It just happened.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatevs. Forget about it. I hope they’re serving something good today.”
The thundering noise of the cafeteria could be heard from the end of the hallway. My stomach tightened. Loud places crowded with people always gave me anxiety. Aubrey hopped in the lunch line, while I went to our usual lunch spot: the back table in the corner.
I reached inside my backpack for my brown paper bag and removed a plastic container of applesauce, an apple turnover wrapped in foil, a plastic bag filled with dry apple slices, and a bottle of apple juice.
I was halfway through my applesauce when Aubrey plopped her tray on the table. “Jackpot! It’s tater tot day.”
She had what looked like three servings of tater tots and nothing else. Aubrey had always said the school cafeteria made the best tater tots she’d ever tasted, which I found hard to believe. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a shiny green apple. “Got that for you.” All the school lunches came with a mandatory serving of fruit, but Aubrey never ate hers.
I held up my hand. “Eat it. You need it.”
She plopped the apple down in front of me. “You know I hate apples. I’m more of a banana kind of girl,” she said with a wink.
I grabbed the apple and took a generous bite. There was nothing in the world like a fresh, juicy apple.
Aubrey squeezed ketchup over her tater tots. “Speaking of bananas, have you seen Tate today? He got a new haircut and looks especially delicious.”
“No.” I tried my best not to think about Tate, but Aubrey made that almost impossible. Telling her about my crush on him had been a huge mistake. Now every time he was in my vicinity, she urged me to make a move.
“You should talk to him.”
I rolled my eyes. “What for?”
“What do you mean ‘what for’? You’re in love with him, and you’ll never know if he feels the same way unless you talk to him.”
I glanced down the table to make sure no one could hear our conversation. Four boys were playing some weird, complicated board game at the far end as they did every day. “I’m not in love with him. I just said I thought he was cute. I’m not talking to him, so just drop it.”
“All right, all right,” Aubrey said before tossing two tater tots in her mouth.
I didn’t mean to be rude, but she didn’t get it. Aubrey was a boy-eater. She didn’t get along very well with girls, but she knew just what to do and say around boys. At any given time, she was juggling three of them. I told her once how I didn’t agree with that, but she told me, “Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.”
I guess a part of me was jealous. Of course, I wanted to date and have a boyfriend like everyone else, but that just wasn’t in the cards for me. For one, a boyfriend would want to know things about me. Maybe he’d want to come over. That would be impossible, because my father would never allow anyone in our home.
Aside from that, why bother getting attached to anyone, when I would up and disappear around my eighteenth birthday? How do you tell someone you’ll never grow up? How do you explain why they’re getting older, but you’re not? That you’re a princess, not because it’s some pet name you’ve been given, but because your parents were actually a king and queen?
Most importantly, at some point a boyfriend would expect a kiss, which was out of the question. My kisses were poison. Literally. Exhibit A: Max Feldman. Almost fifty years ago, he died from what everyone assumed was an allergic reaction to something he’d eaten, but they were wrong. It had been me, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it.
I had wanted to see if that part of my curse was really true. I shouldn’t have used that poor boy as a guinea pig. He liked me and asked for a kiss. I should have said no, but I had never kissed a boy before, and I wanted to know what it felt like. Besides, maybe the witch had been bluffing. I puckered up, pressed my lips against his, and the next thing I knew his lips had turned blue and he was lying on the ground motionless. Once I had absentmindedly kissed my father on the cheek, and he fell ill for weeks. Since then, I’ve learned to keep my lips to myself.
Lunch period always flew by too fast, mostly because I had PE right after, and I hated that class more than I hated reading fairy tales. It wasn’t that I didn’t like sports. PE was probably the one class I didn’t get tired of repeating, but Hadley and Mia made the period unbearable. They spent the hour making snide remarks and throwing balls at my head.
Aubrey patted me on the back as she walked me to the gym. “It won’t be too bad. Maybe she
forgot about the candy thing already.”
I gave her a half smile even though we both knew she was lying. It was going to be worse than usual, and there was no way Hadley would ever forget the candy incident or let it go unpunished. “See you after school. I’ll be fine,” I said weakly. Then I headed to my impending doom in the locker room.
As soon as I entered, I averted my eyes from the mirrors in front of the sinks and headed straight for the stalls. I never looked in mirrors no matter what. The locker room always made me feel ill. The smell of chlorine from the pool. The somber gray walls that were almost the same color as the rusted lockers. The aging “Let’s Get Physical” and food pyramid posters hanging on the walls. The room almost felt like a dungeon.
Not many girls changed behind closed doors, but I didn’t see the point in giving Hadley and Mia more ammunition. Who knew what they’d do or say if they saw me in my underwear? I changed into the baby blue T-shirt and navy-blue shorts required for class. I kept on the black sneakers I’d been wearing the entire day.
Mia and Hadley were somewhere in the room. Hadley’s cackle was a dead giveaway.
“Maybe her parents don’t let her eat candy,” a girl suggested. “I hear they don’t allow her to do anything normal. That’s why she acts the way she does.”
Obviously, Hadley had told everyone about the candy incident. I swallowed hard as I stuffed my school clothes into my backpack, not caring if they got wrinkled. There was a locker I could have used, but I’d learned the hard way that it was best to keep my clothes on me. Mia and Hadley had gotten their hands on my clothes once, and I didn’t want that to happen again.
“What?” Hadley asked. “Is it against her weird religion to eat candy?”
I cringed. Then I braced myself and left the stall, walking briskly, hoping to go unnoticed. When I was almost to the exit, something hard hit me in the head. A red Jolly Rancher landed by my foot. The random chitchat of the locker room turned to cruel laughter. Noelle shook her head and muttered something to Hadley. I took a deep breath and continued into the gymnasium.
Forever Snow (The Everly Girls Book 1) Page 1