Into the Wild

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “You can cancel the reservations if everything works out,” Zel said. Julie could hear the irritation in her mother’s voice. They’d been arguing about this for two days now, ever since Grandma had announced her plans and handed her motel over to the three bears. Julie fetched her lunch, leftover ravioli from the latest dwarf dinner, from the refrigerator.

  “I will be there to make amends,” Gothel said. “They won’t refuse to offer hospitality once they understand I mean them no harm.”

  “It’s been centuries. You can’t just drop in unannounced.” Pausing mid-argument, she gave Julie a kiss. “Have an uneventful day, pumpkin.” With a backward wave, Julie went out the door.

  Outside, Cindy was waiting in her orange Subaru. Julie climbed in, and Cindy sparkled at her with a thousand-watt smile. “You won’t believe the night I had,” Cindy gushed as she threw the car into reverse and peeled out of the driveway.

  Julie clutched her seat belt. Maybe Mom would let her take the bus again soon. Really, it was much better than it had been the first week. There were far fewer reporters pestering people on the street or kids at bus stops. She shouldn’t be so overprotective. Despite all the FBI and reporters and scientists that had appeared that first week, no one knew how intimately Julie and her family were involved in the whole Wild phenomenon. Only Julie and her mother had been at the well, and they weren’t telling.

  Cindy squealed the brakes in front of the school. As Julie got out, Cindy gave a cheery wave and a shout reminding Julie to watch who she kissed. Julie winced.

  Next week, she was definitely taking the bus. She trudged into school and down the hall toward her locker. “Oh, how vintage,” a familiar voice said from across the hall.

  Kristen was smirking at Julie’s backpack. Her bevy of friends giggled. Julie walked past her without a word. Gillian was waiting beside Julie’s locker. “If she only knew what you did,” Gillian whispered. “You saved her.”

  Even Gillian didn’t know all that Julie had done. She didn’t know about the door in the castle. She didn’t know Julie had given up her father. Julie pushed down the familiar ache. She’d made her choice. She’d known the price. “It’s okay,” she said.

  “It’s not okay,” Gillian said. “I don’t know how you can stand it.”

  Julie glanced back across the hall. Honestly? She didn’t care what Kristen thought or said. Not anymore. Or at least not much. Kristen was Kristen. Just like Julie was Julie. Her father wasn’t the only one she’d gotten to know in the Wild. She changed the subject: “Ready for band tryouts?”

  Gillian grinned. “You bet. No one can say I haven’t been practicing.” Her dancing bear insisted on it. Julie thought she’d make first trumpet for sure.

  “Luck,” Julie said. She held out her pinky, and Gillian shook it with her pinky.

  “Luck to you on the Wallace quiz,” Gillian said.

  “Piece of cake,” Julie said. “Boots’s girlfriend and I have been studying.”

  Gillian picked up her trumpet case as Julie switched her homework books with her books for first period. Gently, Julie pressed the palm of her hand against the illustrations of Rapunzel’s prince on the inside of her locker door. “Wish me luck, Dad,” she whispered.

  And she and Gillian went to class.

  Epilogue

  Across town, in the children’s section of the Northboro Public Library, Linda the librarian hummed to herself as she shelved brand-new volumes of fairy tales: The Swan Soldiers, Puss-in-Boots and the Wild Bicycles, The Girl and the Griffin, Goldilocks and the Beanstalk, The Mysterious Princess from Unknown Lands, The Wishing Well Motel . . . All total, she had twenty-four new books.

  Exactly what she’d wished for.

  In the darkness, the heart of the fairy tale waited . . .