To Cindy Beth Minnich—teacher, Nerdy Book Club goddess, and friend—for helping me to find the key to this story . . . finally!
Meanwhile Snow White held court,
rolling her china-blue doll eyes open and shut
and sometimes referring to her mirror
as women do.
—“SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS” BY ANNE SEXTON (1928–1974)
Chapter One
I AM NOW OFFICIALLY A loser.
Thirty seconds ago, my best friend Katie announced that Quinn Fairchild asked her to the Fall Festive. Last week Dave Theis asked my other best friend, Nicole. Which leaves me as the only one of my friends without a date.
What makes it worse is that I’m the sole heir of two of the most famous people in fairy tale history. You may have heard of them: Snow White and Prince Charming.
The Charming name comes with some serious baggage. Especially when you’re an eighth grader at the Manhattan World Themes Middle School, there’s a dance in two weeks’ time, and you don’t have a date.
You, the one whose mom was so beautiful that her stepmother went on a killing spree just so she could reclaim the title of Fairest in the Land as judged by some crazy talking mirror. You, the one whose prince of a father literally rode in on a white horse to start their happily ever after.
Yep, that’s me. Rosamunde White Charming. My friends call me Rosie.
But now isn’t the time to indulge in self-pity. Now is the time to be happy for Katie, because she does have a date, namely Quinn Fairchild, whom she has been crushing on forever.
“That’s the best news!” I tell Katie. Which it is, for her. Personally, I’m not a big fan of Quinn Fairchild. He’s a little (okay, a lot) too full of himself. But if going to the Fall Festive with him makes Katie happy, what kind of friend would I be if I weren’t happy for her?
“I know!” Katie sighs. Her face takes on the same dreamy glow Mom’s does when she tells The Tale of how she and Dad met. “I’ve been waiting for this day since I saw him the first day of sixth grade. And now it’s finally happened.”
“I just hope he’s worth the wait,” I say.
Katie’s dreamy glow disappears.
“Sheesh, Rosie. Just because you were born without the romance gene, it doesn’t mean you have to rain on Katie’s parade,” Nicole says.
“I didn’t mean to,” I protest.
“Well, you did,” Katie snaps. “A big, gray, damp cloud of precipitation, right in the middle of my happy marching band.”
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“It’s okay,” Katie says. She gives me a concerned, pitying look. “Are you stressed out about finding a date?”
She’s half-right, so I might as well take the lifeline she’s thrown me.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“I know! You should go with Quinn’s friend Hunter,” Katie exclaims. “It would be fun to double date. Plus, he’s cute and you’d look great in pictures together.”
Hunter Farthington is the star striker on the soccer team. The problem is that I sit behind him in social studies, and let’s just say that while I can’t argue with the cute part, he’s not the sharpest tool in the Manhattan World Themes Middle School shed. He thinks people from Denmark are called “Great Danes.”
“Who cares?” Katie says when I tell her this and explain that, no, he was serious, not joking, and actually argued with the teacher about it because he was so convinced he was right. “It’s a dance, not a debate, Rosie.”
“But we won’t be dancing all the time. I’ve got nothing to say to him. All he ever talks about is soccer and what famous people he’s seen on the street and harassed till they took a selfie with him.”
“Just pretend,” Katie says. “Ask him what he thinks about last night’s game. That way, it doesn’t matter whether it’s football or basketball, hockey or baseball season. There’s always some kind of game going on somewhere.”
“Why do I have to pretend to be interested in something he likes just to get a date?” I ask. “Shouldn’t he pretend to be interested in me, too? Is being fake the way to get a guy to like me?”
“You’re totally overthinking this, Rosie,” Katie says. “It’s a problem you have. Think of it this way: He’s a boy, he’s cute, and he can dance. Make it happen.”
Like that’s so easy.
“I think you might be better off with Damien Wolfe,” Nicole argues. “He’s more your type. You’d make such a cute couple.”
Damien’s in my math class. He always sits in the back row, his dark hair brushing over the collar of his leather jacket as he bends forward over his notebook, scribbling intently with black pen. He draws. Really well, in fact. Damien definitely seems interesting. There’s just one slight problem. I’ve barely spoken three words to him in my life. He’s super quiet and I’ve never been assigned to work with him on a project. So . . . yeah. About three words. Maybe five. Plus a few passing head nods in the hall. His hair moves nicely when he nods his head—I’ll give him that.
Still . . .
“How do you know he’s my type?” I ask Nicole.
“He . . . just is,” she says. That’s a big help.
“Ask him to the dance. You won’t regret it,” Nicole declares.
Considering I’ve never been on an actual date, or even had a real crush, I don’t get how she can know “my type.” I haven’t even figured it out yet.
“Now that we’ve solved Rosie’s date problem, can we get back to the matter at hand?” Katie says.
“Which is . . . ?” I inquire.
“Dress shopping,” she announces. “On Saturday. I need your expert opinions.”
Fashion isn’t my area of expertise, but hanging out with my friends is.
“Works for me,” I say.
“Sounds like a plan,” Nicole agrees.
“I’ll make a list of stores,” Katie says.
Knowing Katie, this shopping trip is going to be planned with the detail and precision of a major military campaign. Note to self: Wear comfortable shoes and bring snacks.
While I listen to my friends discussing dresses and dates, I’m conscious that time is ticking by, and I have neither.
That’s when I decide I’m desperate enough to do something that I promised myself I would never do, because all previous attempts have ended so badly:
I’m going to ask my mother for advice.
Chapter Two
WHEN I GET HOME FROM school, Mom is in her home office, working on a new piece for her website, CharmingLifestyles.com.
Here’s one of the typical posts on the site: You too can meet your Prince Charming: 12 Easy Steps to Make It Happen! I didn’t read it, but I could write that article in my sleep:
1) Charming men love charming ladies. Mind your manners!
2) Get your beauty rest! The sleepy dwarf look won’t cut it.
3) Moisturize, moisturize, moisturize, and minimize! The secret to dewy, flawless “skin like snow” is a night cream that won’t quit.
4) Don’t be bashful! Men like confident women.
5) Smile and radiate positivity! Princes don’t go for grumpy gals.
6) Take CynCorp brand vitamins—available right here on CharmingLifestyles.com—to keep your body healthy. Sneezing is not sexy!
7) Read the Charming Lifestyles News section to stay au courant. The last thing you want is to sound dopey on a date!
8) An apple a day keeps the doc away and helps with maintaining a figure to die for!
9) Keep your hair shiny, lustrous, and tangle free with The Magic Comb™—buy one today and get a free StaySvelte™ bodyshaper with purchase!
10) Be happy—laughter is contagious!
11) Pucker up for True Love’s Kiss with our spec
ial Lips as Red as Blood™ moisturizing lip stain. Your prince will be smitten for life!
12) Live happily ever after—and CharmingLifestyles.com will help you find out how!
Of course, Mom would never post the real way she and Dad hooked up:
1) Make your stepmother mad. Like, seriously angry.
2) Convince the guy who is supposed to kill you and bring her your heart to let you go and to kill a deer instead. (“What? You made him kill Bambi?” I asked when I was younger, before launching into a tantrum about my mother’s cruelty to animals.)
3) Run away.
4) Break into somebody’s house.
5) Get your OCD on and clean the filthy place. Even though it’s not your house and you don’t even know who lives there.
6) Agree to be unpaid domestic help for a bunch of “height disadvantaged” men in return for food and lodging.
7) Despite the obvious Stranger Danger, buy a hair comb from a rando because you are obsessed with how you look, even though the only people who see you are the aforementioned bunch of short dudes.
8) Almost die. Saved by clumsy, height disadvantaged man knocking comb out of your hair.
9) Refuse to learn from your mistakes. Buy apple from another stranger.
10) Choke on poisoned apple and die. Get buried in a glass coffin because all the height disadvantaged men will, quote, “miss seeing your beautiful face.” Which is beyond weird, if you ask me, because we learned in science that your body is going to start decomposing. So . . . gross!
11) Wait until some random dude rides or drives by (white horse or sports car preferred), becomes entranced by your beauty, opens the coffin, and kisses you (so wrong, amirite?), thereby dislodging the piece of poison apple and magically waking you, because you’re not actually dead, you’re merely in an extremely deep sleep that makes it look that way. That’s the excuse and you’re both sticking to it.
12) Live happily ever after—and CharmingLifestyles.com WILL HELP YOU FIND OUT HOW! (Not to mention selling you a whole bunch of stuff that you’ll need to do it. . . .)
Thanks to an investment from the international manufacturing conglomerate CynCorp, Mom and Dad have built up a lucrative business empire around the Charming brand and CharmingLifestyles.com. Mom’s got her own range of beauty and antiaging products (Guaranteed to make sure you stay the Fairest in the Land, no matter what the mirror says! according to the infomercial). Dad has a range of sporting goods and luxury accessories. (Steal her heart with The Huntsman bow and arrow! and It’ll be love at first sight when you wear Prince Charming leather boots.) Dad’s in charge of sales and marketing. He doesn’t trust Mom out on the road, because she’s too trusting of strangers.
They argue about that. Constantly.
“That was once, once upon a time!” Mom protests.
“Actually, it was twice,” Dad always reminds her. “And you’d still be lying in that glass sarcophagus surrounded by a bunch of morose dwarves if I hadn’t come along.”
“How do you know?” Mom argues. “I’m sure some other handsome prince would have come along eventually. . . .”
And then Dad gets jealous and it goes on from there, getting more and more heated till eventually they kiss and make up. Barf.
Anyway, after getting a snack, I go into Mom’s office and slump into one of the armchairs opposite her desk.
She looks up briefly.
“Hi, honey. How was school?”
“Educational,” I say. Mom’s used to me giving her noncommittal answers about school, and because she’s involved in her work, she doesn’t press me further.
I almost decide not to ask her. She’s busy. . . . I don’t want to interrupt her.
Besides, Mom’s solutions to my everyday teenage problems can lead to mega-embarrassment. Like when I told her I had cramps, she couldn’t just say, Here’s a hot water bottle and some ibuprofen, like a normal mom. Instead, she dragged me to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, where she not very surreptitiously stole red raspberry leaves, horsetail, and yarrow to make me a decoction. A security guard yelled at her for picking the plants, but Mom smiled at him, gave him the full force of her Fairest in the Land face, pointed to me, and said that it was a matter of urgent necessity because of my cramps. She whispered the word “cramps,” but it didn’t matter, I still wanted to die from embarrassment on the spot.
Still, the dance is getting closer and I’m a dateless Charming. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
“Mom, the Fall Festive dance is in two weeks, and I don’t have a date. Do you have any suggestions?”
I’ve uttered two magic words to get her complete attention: “dance” and “date.” Oh, make that three: “suggestions.” Her whole website is built around suggesting to people how to better live their life the Charming way.
Mom gives me her assessing look. Right this minute if you gave me the choice between taking my chance on my stepgrandma’s talking mirror and my mother’s let’s take a look at Rosie and see what we can do with her stare, I’d take the whacked-out mirror in a heartbeat. And that’s knowing how the story ended.
“Oh, Rosamunde, I’ve been waiting for this day for such a long time,” Mom says, getting all dewy-eyed.
“What day?” I ask warily.
“The day you finally ask me for advice,” she says. “Of course I’m here for you, my dearest daughter. I always am and always will be. And there’s so much we can do!”
Why am I suddenly getting the sneaking suspicion that asking the doyenne of Being the Best You Gets the Best Out of Him might not have been the wisest decision I’ve ever made?
But then Mom gets up from behind her desk and hugs me.
“Come with me, sweetheart. There’s something special I want to give you.”
I follow her down the hallway from her office to the dressing room off my parents’ bedroom. Mom’s dressing room is bigger than a lot of people’s studio apartments in Manhattan. Seriously, she could probably rent it out for over $1,500 a month.
Mom doesn’t do well in small spaces—I think it’s something to do with the whole glass coffin thing. Apparently, it took years of therapy and some of Herb the Dwarf’s special antianxiety tonic before she could get into the elevator at our apartment building without having a major anxiety attack. Once, when she was pregnant with me, Dad had to carry her up the stairs. He was saying some less than Charming things by the time he got to our front door, or so I’m told.
Besides Mom’s extensive collection of dresses, shoes, and accessories, the dressing room features a gilt-framed full-length mirror (it doesn’t talk, as far as I know, which is a relief, because that didn’t do Stepgrandma a whole lot of good) and, behind that, a safe.
You’d think coming from our fairy tale background it would open with some magic spell, but instead of “Abracadabra” or “Open sesame,” it requires a boring old combination.
Mom spins the dial and opens it, then rummages around amid all the important papers, passports, family jewels (for reals, we’re talking actual crowns and tiaras and stuff) until she finds a small black velvet pouch.
She closes the safe, returns the mirror to position, and then turns to me, her eyes glistening.
“Rosamunde, I’ve been waiting for the right time to give this to you. And now is that time,” she says, holding out the velvet pouch.
I can’t help noticing that even when she gets all teared up, Mom looks beautiful. Her tears are like Swarovski crystals, setting off the sapphire blue of her eyes. I wonder if she ever does the red-eyed, snot pouring out of the nose thing like Katie, Nicole, and I do when we watch sad movies.
The velvet bag slides into my hand, heavy and warm. I open it and out slides a gold compact, embossed with my mother’s family coat of arms and inlaid with precious stones—diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires.
“Wow!” I exclaim. “It’s . . . beautiful!”
I touch a ruby with my fingertip. It seems to glow with an internal fire, but the stone is
cool.
“Don’t you think it’s a little . . . you know . . . fancy for me?” I ask Mom. “It must be worth lots of money. What happens if I lose it?”
My mother takes my face in her cool, white as snow fingers, nails painted Red as Blood (of course).
“You are a princess of the royal blood, Rosamunde,” she says. Her gaze drops to my less than princessy outfit of jeans, T-shirt, and Converse. “You may try to hide behind your grungy T-shirts and those laceless sneakers, but your lineage will not be forsworn. Blood will out, as they say.”
I have no idea what she means by that, but I’m too distracted by the bling to ask any more questions, so I open the compact, which seems to grow heavier the longer I hold it in my hand.
Everyday Rosie Charming stares back at me. I’ve got my dad’s brown hair and my mom’s blue eyes. The big chin zit, alas, is all mine.
What will it take to make you understand that you could be the Fairest in the Land?
The words are so quiet I’m not sure I actually heard them. I can’t believe Mom would use that line on me, of all people.
“Wait, what?” I ask.
“I didn’t say anything,” Mom tells me. “But I think if you take a good look at yourself, you’ll agree that maybe a little”—she hesitates, trying to find the Charming way to put it—“styling might be in order.”
Fairest in the Land . . . Rosamunde . . . Fairest in the Land . . .
There it is again. I look around Mom’s dressing room but there’s no one here but us.
It’s official. Finding a date for the Fall Festive is making me crazy.
“So, what do you think, Rosie?” Mom asks.
“Think about what?”
“My suggestion. Let’s get you a little help with styling so you can put your best dating self forward,” Mom says. She’s already got her cell phone in hand, ready to start making calls to set the beautifying process in motion.
“Can you define ‘styling’?”
“Nothing much,” she says. “Just the teensiest makeover. I’ll see if Phillipe can fit you in tomorrow afternoon. I’ll tell him it’s an emergency.”
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