Snow White Lucks Out

by Joan Holub

  Snow’s amulet came through for her, and she made it to her Grimm History of Barbarians and Dastardlies class without her stepmom coming into the hall. Hooray!

  Oops! Her luck quickly ran out. Just as she went into the classroom, Snow tripped and stumbled forward over the threshold. She plowed right into Mr. Hump-Dumpty!

  Thwump! They both went tumbling to the floor. The oval-shaped egg-teacher dropped the snazzy walking stick he always carried. And something else, too. She only caught a glimpse of it as it went skittering across the room, but it had looked kind of like a wooden ruler — about a foot long and straight.

  “Oh, dear, what a scramble!” wailed the teacher, who was rolling around on his back. His legs, which ended in long, pointy shoes, kicked in the air as he tried to regain his balance.

  Unhurt, Snow leaped up and grabbed hold of one of the teacher’s arms to try to pull him up. However, he was so roundish and heavy that she couldn’t quite get him onto his feet. “I’m so sorry! I forgot that one of my shoelaces is broken,” she explained in a rush. “That’s why I …”

  Before anyone else in the class could come to their aid, a boy she’d never seen before appeared beside her. A very cute boy. He wore a crown, which meant he must be a prince.

  “Got it,” he told her and took hold of Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s other arm. Between the two of them and some other students who gathered around, they finally managed to stand the teacher upright. Then the prince retrieved the teacher’s walking stick and held it out to him.

  “Thanks for the eggstra help, Prince,” Mr. Hump-Dumpty said to the boy.

  “No problem,” said the prince. His blue eyes flashed in Snow’s direction for a second, and then he went to take a seat.

  There were lots of princes and princesses at the Academy. Snow herself was a princess since her dad had been a king, her mom a queen. Royalty didn’t impress her. But this boy’s kindness and his cuteness kind of did!

  She looked around for the wooden ruler thing she’d seen go flying and finally found it under Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s desk. Now she saw that it wasn’t a ruler after all. Though long and straight, it was also round. And it had holes along its length. Once she fished it out and handed it to him, she realized that the holes were finger holes. It was some kind of wooden flute.

  “Where did this come from?” he asked, eyeing it curiously as he took it.

  “Um. Your jacket?” she replied, pointing. Duh, didn’t he recognize his own stuff? “I’m really sorry I tripped you, Mr. Hump-Dumpty. It’s just that I broke one of my shoelaces, as I was saying. I’ve got replacement laces, though. So I’ll switch out the old ones right away.”

  “Eggsellent. Eggsactly the kind of safety-preparedness I would eggspect from you, Snow,” he said. Absentmindedly, he tossed the flute onto his desk.

  Despite his easy acceptance of her apology, the incident must have rattled him. For as Snow went to sit down at a double desk in the middle of the classroom, he launched into a lecture full of warnings about accidents waiting to happen and precautions one should take to avoid them. Snow sat down and pulled out the blue shoelaces her stepmom had given her just that morning.

  “Is he always such a worrywart?” asked the boy who’d helped her stand the egg-teacher back on his feet. The other side of her double desk had been empty since the new school year had started, but as luck would have it, the new prince had taken it!

  Snow nodded, setting the laces on top of her desk for now. “Yeah. He’s more chicken than egg sometimes.” The prince grinned at that, and she went on, pleased he’d gotten her little joke. “So you must be n —” Before she could voice her question, her roommate, Jill, whose twin brother Jack also attended the Academy, caught her eye from one row over. Jill pointed at the prince and wiggled her eyebrows, giving her a thumbs-up.

  Snow blushed. She obviously hadn’t been the only one to notice how cute this new boy was. Golden hair. Sparkly blue eyes. Straight nose. And dimples, too, she noted when he smiled at her. “You must be new, right?” she asked him in a low voice so Mr. Hump-Dumpty wouldn’t notice them talking.

  “Yeah. Name’s Prince,” the boy said, keeping his voice low, too. “Principal R introduced me to everyone in the Great Hall this morning, didn’t you hear?”

  “Oh, sorry, I missed breakfast.” She idly wound a shoelace around one finger, then looked at him again. “You know, we’ve got a lot of princes at the Academy, so most just go by their last names.”

  The boy grinned. “Okay. Then you can call me Prince.”

  She cocked her head, more than a little confused. At the front of the room, Mr. Hump-Dumpty’s dire warnings and suggestions for how to avoid fearsome things like paper cuts, stubbed toes, and skinned knees petered out. He turned toward the whiteboard at the front of the room and began to write a reading assignment.

  “Prince is my last name,” the boy explained quickly. “It’s my first, too. A little weird, I know.”

  “So your name’s Prince Prince?”

  When he nodded, she said, “I’m Snow.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he told her. When her brows went up in question, he nodded toward Prince Foulsmell, who also had History this period. “I asked Foulsmell who you were when you came into class,” he informed her.

  Huh? Why would he do that? she wondered.

  By now, Mr. Hump-Dumpty had stopped writing. Turning toward the class again, he tapped the tip of his walking stick on the board, where he had written in big block letters:

  BEWARE OF TRICKSTER FAIRIES

  “Please open your handbooks to chapter four,” he said crisply.

  Prince leafed through the blank vellum pages of his book. “Um,” he said to Snow. “Speaking of trickster fairies, I think one of them must have got hold of my book and erased all the words inside it.”

  Snow shook her head. He must not have needed his handbook during his earlier classes, or he would have learned how it worked already. “Your book’s contents change depending on the class. Here, watch me,” she whispered. She pressed a finger to the oval in the very center of her handbook’s cover where the scrolly, entwined GA — for Grimm Academy — was printed. At the same time, she said, “Grimm History of Barbarians and Dastardlies.”

  Prince copied her. “So that’s how it works,” he exclaimed when he opened his book and saw that it was now filled with words.

  Both of them quickly found the beginning of the fourth chapter, which was titled, “A Brief Guide to Grimmlandia Fairies.” What followed were descriptions of various fairies such as pixies, dwarves, flower fairies, elves, and other wee folk.

  Some types were categorized as helpful, like the hard-working dwarves who were talented at metal-working, mining, and crafts. Others were classified as harmful, like tricky leprechauns, who often pretended to lead people to treasure while instead getting them lost. Helpful, harmful, villainous, or heroic — all fairy folk and characters from fairy tales and nursery rhymes had been given a home here within the walls of Grimmlandia. The two Grimm brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm, who’d actually written many of the tales, had seen to that.

  As everyone read the chapter silently, they touched various words in their handbooks. With the press of a finger, bubbles rose with animated figures or information inside them. Snow pressed on an illustration of a cute cottage, causing a group of seven dwarves, each about five inches tall, to pop up in a bubble. Seven was her lucky number!

  Quickly, the bubble burst and the dwarves became three-dimensional. Hopping out of her handbook, they began scurrying around in different directions and tidying up her desk. When they finished that task, she meant to press on the cottage illustration again to put them back inside their bubble. But before she could do it, four of them grabbed the new blue shoelaces she’d set on her desk. After jumping to the floor, they began swapping out her old laces for the new ones.

  “Thanks,” she told them, having momentarily forgotten about doing the task herself.

  As the dwarves worked on her laces, Mr. Hump-Dumpty sta
rted a discussion, asking students to argue for or against the helpful or harmful labels. Snow’s hand shot up. In her opinion, these dwarves were certainly helpful! Class flew by after that. Suddenly, the Hickory Dickory Dock clock was bonging the half hour to end third period, its deep voice emerging from a grate high on the wall at the front of the room.

  “Class dismissed!” Mr. Hump-Dumpty called out.

  Snow looked down to see her shoes neatly laced and the dwarves gone. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to thank them. She quickly stashed her handbook in her sparkly blue school bag and went to the door. There, she poked her head out into the hall and checked both ways. No sign of her stepmom. She stepped one newly laced, blue-slippered foot out into the hall, hoping to escape while the coast was clear. She didn’t need any more critiques of her clothing today, thank you very much.

  As it turned out, she wound up walking right beside Prince on the way toward the Great Hall. “Are you walking me to lunch?” he asked her curiously, after they’d gone a half dozen steps.

  “Nuh-uh,” she said truthfully. Because they weren’t exactly together or anything. Just accidentally walking side by side. But then it occurred to Snow that if he was with her and they happened to run into her stepmom, her stepmom would act nicer than if Snow were alone. At least a little bit nicer. So she stuck by his side. It was kind of awkward actually, because neither of them said anything for the whole length of the hall. Luckily, they reached the stairs without running into Ms. Wicked.

  Feeling a bit embarrassed by now, Snow dropped back as they took the stairs. However, Prince waited for her at the bottom. Soon they were side by side again, heading for the Great Hall.

  “Are you walking me to lunch now?” she quipped with a grin.

  He flashed her a grin in return. “Maybe.” Then he drew a silver coin from his pocket and began flipping it in the air and catching it as they walked. “I wanted to ask you something. Um, where’s Battle Science class?”

  “Over in Gray Castle somewhere.” Why was he asking her? she wondered. Mostly boys took that class, so it was located in Gray Castle, where the boys’ dorms were. “You should ask Prince Awesome or Prince Foulsmell exactly where. They both have it, I think.”

  “Oh, yeah, good idea,” Prince said. But for some reason, he made no move to catch up with those two boys, who were up ahead. Did that mean he really wanted to walk with her? On purpose? He flipped his coin high, and then caught it neatly as it fell. “Compared to Foulsmell, Prince isn’t such a bad last name, huh?” This time he caught his coin behind his back after he tossed it up. “Because you have to admit Foulsmell is a little …”

  “Foul-smelling?” Snow supplied. “Just his last name, though. Not him,” she added, in case Prince thought she was saying that Foulsmell himself was stinky.

  “Right. He’s cool. Awesome is, too. They’re both in my Sieges, Catapults, and Jousts class second period.” Prince tossed his coin in the air again. But this time it got away from him. After clanging against the stone column they were passing by, it went skittering down the hall back the way they’d come. Snow scooched up against the column to get out of the way of other students while Prince ran after it.

  “Coin! Come!” he called to it. Immediately, it circled around and rolled back to him. He scooped it up in his palm and jogged back to her. “Phew,” he said, looking a little embarrassed as he pocketed the coin. “Sorry to be so dramatic, it’s just that this coin is sort of, well … lucky.”

  Snow smiled, thinking it must be magical, too, since it had come when called. She lifted up her silver chain to show him her amulet. “I have a whole collection of good luck charms,” she confided as they continued walking. “But this is my luckiest. The four-leaf clover inside belonged to my mom.”

  According to a story Snow’s dad had once told her, her mom had been convinced that the clover had brought her good luck. Because shortly after she’d found it she had discovered she was going to have a baby. And that baby had been Snow!

  “What else is in your collection?” Prince asked, appearing genuinely intrigued.

  She named a few things, like her dad’s brass button and her lucky mustard seed. “Last year in Threads, I even embroidered a sign that says: Luck Comes to Those Who Are Prepared. It’s hanging on my armoire,” she told him.

  “Hey! My dad says that all the time,” the prince said in surprise.

  “Really?” asked Snow, pleased. The motto was one she lived by, preparing herself with as many good luck protections and rituals as she possibly could. She loved that her mom had believed in luck, too. But at times she wondered about the nature of luck, considering that her mom had died soon after Snow was born. So many bad things had happened in her family that in her lowest moments, she sometimes wondered if she herself might be an unlucky charm. Still, just as her mom had, she truly believed that good luck charms could ward off bad luck.

  After a minute, things got quiet and Snow realized they’d stopped in the hall and were now just gazing at each other. She started walking again, and the prince did, too.

  “What’s your lucky number? Mine’s two,” said Prince, as they entered the Great Hall. It was enormous and beautiful, with a balcony at either end, rows of windows with diamond-shaped glass panes, and colorful banners lining the walls.

  “Seven,” Snow told him happily. Not even her three BFFs had ever asked her that question. Finally, here was someone who shared her enthusiasm for all things lucky!

  Speaking of BFFs, she looked around and waved to Rapunzel, Cinda, and Red. They were already seated at their usual place at one of the two long tables that stretched down either side of the Hall. And they’d saved her a spot.

  Up ahead, someone waved to the prince from the lunch line, shouting, “Prince! Over here! I saved you a place in line since it’s your first day and all!” It was Foulsmell.

  “See you later,” Prince said to Snow. “If I’m lucky!” With a laugh, he went to join Foulsmell and some of the other boys farther up the line.

  Mistress Hagscorch looked extra grumpy today as she served up portions of her divine nine-day-old pease porridge pot pie and her pigweed salad.

  Snow hadn’t had much for breakfast, just a couple of oatmeal cookies from the cookie jar in her dorm’s common area, so she was super hungry. She stared at the delicious food and tried not to drool.

  “Hold up your tray, I haven’t got all day!” the crabby cook barked at her.

  Snow gave a little jump. She had been so intent on the food that she hadn’t realized she was next in line. She stared into Hagscorch’s scary eyes, which were as yellow as a cat’s, and said, “The pot pie looks sooo grimmazing today. Could I please have two servings?” Normally, she wouldn’t have dared ask. Almost everyone was at least a bit afraid of Hagscorch, including her.

  But to Snow’s surprise, a huge smile broke out on the cook’s craggy face. “That’s what I like,” she cackled. “A girl with a good appetite. Keep eating like this, and I’ll fatten you up in no time!” A wrinkled old hand shot out and pinched her cheek. Then Hagscorch plopped a plate with a double-serving of pot pie and a huge mound of pigweed salad onto Snow’s silver tray.

  Woo-hoo! It was her lucky day, or lucky lunch, anyway!

  Carrying her heavy tray with its overloaded plate, Snow went to sit with her three BFFs. Now that she studied all the food she had, though, she wondered if her eyes had been bigger than her stomach would turn out to be.

  “Was that the new prince you came in with?” Red Riding Hood asked before Snow could even sit down. As usual, Red was wearing her hooded red cape over a tunic and skirt. The hood was pushed back, revealing her dark curls with glittery red streaks running through them. Beside her on the bench sat a cute nut-brown wicker picnic basket with swirly designs on both ends, double handles, and a hinged lid. Red seldom went anywhere without it.

  Snow nodded. “He was in my History class last period.” As she set her tray on the table, Red quickly scooted over to make room for her on the bench. Her
basket scooted over, too, and snuggled up to Red’s side. It was her magical charm — which was not at all the same thing as a lucky charm — and could fetch things if asked in just the right manner. However, it would only obey Red.

  Cinda had a magical charm, too — a pair of glass slippers — but Snow and Rapunzel had yet to receive their charms. Most students went to the Academy for months or years before their special charms appeared.

  Snow was relieved that Red was not looking at her with eyes full of suspicion, as had happened so often lately. Instead, all three of Snow’s friends were staring in amazement at her heaped plate.

  Rapunzel sent her a teasing smile. “Hungry much?” she joked, making Snow giggle.

  Red spread her arms wide, and gestured toward Snow’s tray. “Behold this magnificent feast!” she exclaimed in a dramatic voice. “Did I not say the king would provide for you? Through my efforts his bounty shall be shared with all, though he does not like it. Yet try as he might he cannot stop me from my thievery of his goods.” As she spoke the word “thievery,” Red snitched a forkful of pigweed from Snow’s plate, and wolfed it down. Then she half-stood and gave her three BFFs a mock bow, grinning at her own silliness, before sitting once again.

  Snow smiled as she dug into the delicious pot pie. Ever since Red had gotten the lead role of Red Robin Hood in the school play a few days ago, she’d begun to spout lines from it whenever the fancy struck her.

  “Bravo,” said Cinda, clapping. Snow, Red, and Cinda all roomed in the same dorm — Pearl Tower. It was one of the three turrets at the top of Pink Castle. Rapunzel, however, roomed in the dungeon. By herself. By choice. She was afraid of heights and rarely climbed to the dorms. Snow could’ve chosen to live with her stepmom in the teachers’ quarters. But, uh, no thanks! It was way more fun rooming with the other girls.