Ever After High--The Secret Diary of Apple White

by Heather Alexander

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  © 2017 Mattel, Inc. All Rights Reserved. EVER AFTER HIGH and associated trademarks are owned by and used under license from Mattel, Inc.

  Cover design by Véronique Lefèvre Sweet.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  Visit us at lb-kids.com

  everafterhigh.com

  First Edition: May 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Library of Congress Control Number 2016959724

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-46499-4 (hardcover), 978-0-316-46498-7 (ebook)

  E3-20170404-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Diary Entry

  Chapter 1

  Diary Entry

  Chapter 2

  Diary Entry

  Chapter 3

  Diary Entry

  Chapter 4

  Diary Entry

  Chapter 5

  Diary Entry

  Chapter 6

  Diary Entry

  Chapter 7

  Diary Entry

  Chapter 8

  Diary Entry

  A Sneak Peek of The Secret Diary of Raven Queen

  For Goldi, our princess

  Diary Entry

  This morning started like all mornings at Ever After High. The bluebirds on my windowsill chirped my favorite wake-up melody. The sun glinted through the white ruffled curtains, casting a happy glow on my canopy bed. I sat up and called out to my best friend forever after (who just so happens to be my roommate!) to wake her up.

  Raven Queen grumbled, then buried her head under her purple comforter. Raven’s not a morning person like I am, but that’s okay. You and your BFFA don’t have to have every little thing in common!

  I stretched, got out of bed, slipped on my fluffy red robe, and tied the ribbon around my waist. Then I smoothed down my blond curls. They get a little bit poufy when I sleep.

  Some people are surprised that the daughter of Snow White and the daughter of the Evil Queen are roomies. It was all my idea. We’re part of the same fairytale, so I figured, why not get to know each other better by living together? And it was a spelltacular idea because now we’re BFFAs. I like to think that I bring some sunshine to Raven’s life. At least, I try to. A good leader should always make everyone’s day brighter, and I want to be a good leader when I grow up.

  I switched on the light, but don’t worry—it didn’t bother Raven, who was still enjoying a few more minutes of slumber at that point. (Raven can sleep through anything. She once slept through a parade of nine pipers piping down the hall!) I had a lot of work to do before breakfast. I had to put together the most hexcellent outfit for the school dance tonight.

  I’ve worked really hard to make sure tonight’s dance is hextra special. I’m on the School Activities Committee—I try to be on as many committees that bring happiness to the students as I can—and we vote on a theme for every dance, and I’m so hexcited that they liked my theme this time! I’m sure this is going to be the most spelltacular dance ever after!

  Everyone on the committee helped decorate the Grimmnasium yesterday, hexcept for Duchess Swan. She refused because her theme (Feathered Friends) wasn’t chosen. That made me fairy sad, but I understand why she would be upset. Duchess put a lot of work into her theme, too. But still… The school dance is not about one person or about winning and losing. It’s about fun and being together! I wish I could help Duchess see that.

  So, Diary, I bet you’re wondering what my theme is. Drumroll, please…

  My theme is the Enchanted Forest! Fableous, right? I can’t wait to see it all come to life tonight!

  Here’s how we decorated: We lined the Grimmnasium with enormous paper trees with fuzzy felt leaves. Woven bird’s nests filled with chocolate eggs were tucked into the branches. Garlands of tissue-paper flowers and tiny white lights, blinking like fireflies at dusk, crossed the ceiling. Chairs carved from tree stumps and little café tables decorated to look like giant red-and-white mushrooms surrounded the dance floor. The climbing ropes were fashioned into adorable swings. Shiny red apples waited in bins for bobbing contests, and bouquets of caramel apples sat on each table.

  It was late when we finished transforming the Grimmnasium. We shut the door and hung a sign that said: ENCHANTED FOREST—do not enter until party time!

  Now everything is ready, hexcept I don’t know what to wear. I’m royally desperate to find just the right outfit. It has to say “enchanted forest” and have that special WOW factor.

  I found a few options in my closet. Will you help me choose?

  • a red dress with a layered skirt that fans out like the petals of a rose

  • a shiny white skirt embroidered with blue butterflies

  • a dress with cap sleeves in forest-green raw silk

  I’ve already tried on each outfit and twirled around in front of the mirror, but I still can’t decide! They are all so hexcellent. Which should I wear?

  I would ask Raven for her opinion, but she just left with Madeline Hatter for breakfast. You know Maddie, Diary. Her dad is the Mad Hatter from Wonderland. When Maddie entered our room and saw my dresses and skirts flung around, she was fairy hexcited that everything was all topsy-turvy. Being from Wonderland, Maddie loves chaos. She’s also not used to seeing our room looking like that. I’m usually fairy neat… hexcept when I am in the middle of an Epic Fashion Crisis.

  Before Raven left for breakfast, she surveyed the tornado of clothes and offered to help me clean. Isn’t she a great friend? But I couldn’t tidy anything up until I found just the right dress, so I told Maddie and Raven to go without me. I promised I’d be right behind them, but here I am—almost an hour later—and I still have no idea what to wear tonight. Hexcept now my stomach is grumbling. I need to figure out this dress thing fast, or I’ll miss breakfast—and a hungry princess is not a happy princess!

  Charm you later!

  Apple White

  Kitty Cheshire lay on her stomach on Lizzie Hearts’s bed and lazily filed her pointy purple nails. She arched her back and yawned, although she’d woken up only a short time ago. Was it too early for a catnap?

  Lizzie stood in front of her mirror, trying to balance her gold crown on her long black-and-red hair that was tied into a heart-shaped bump. The glittery crown slid to the left. Then to the right.

  “You’re taking fur-ever,” purred Kitty.

  “Off with my head!” cried Lizzie in frustration. “I am in need of a new hairstyle.”

  “Or a new accessory,” offered Kitty. “Maybe
a headband or a barrette?”

  “Honest to nonsense,” Lizzie huffed, finally setting the crown in place. “Queens-in-training wear crowns, not barrettes. The crown sends a message.”

  Lizzie was the daughter of the Queen of Hearts. She, Maddie, and Kitty, whose mother was the Cheshire Cat, had come to Ever After High from Wonderland.

  “Message received.” Kitty sat up and stretched. “Where’s Faybelle? We’ll miss breakfast if she doesn’t come soon. I could really use a glass of warm milk.”

  “Here I am!” Faybelle Thorn flung open the door and scanned the small room. “Where’s your roommate?”

  “Duchess already went to breakfast,” said Lizzie. “She was in a fowl mood this morning.”

  “Tell us something new,” quipped Kitty.

  Duchess, daughter of the Swan Queen, was never really in a good mood. Those in the know knew that it was because she hailed from a lesser-known fairytale that didn’t end in a Happily Ever After. However, Lizzie knew today’s particular bad mood stemmed from Apple’s dance theme being chosen instead of Duchess’s. But Lizzie never let Duchess’s moodiness bother her.

  “I did the spell,” Faybelle announced with a sly grin.

  “Did it work?” Lizzie asked.

  “You’re talking to the daughter of the Dark Fairy. Of course it worked.” Faybelle fluttered her iridescent wings for dramatic effect. “I conjured two hundred little white mice and stashed them in a storage room.”

  “Oh, mice,” Kitty said with a mischievous smile.

  Faybelle rolled her eyes. “They’re not for you to play with, Kitty. You know we need them for our prank.”

  The girls had been planning their big prank for weeks, and it was finally time to pull it off. Lizzie, however, was having last-minute jitters.

  “Maybe it’s too much,” Lizzie said, bitting her cherry-glossed lip nervously.

  “It’s only a prank,” said Kitty. “You know Mr. Badwolf will have to give us hextra credit if we pull it off. Just think how much chaos it will cause when we release the mice in the Castleteria! It’s harmless but brilliant—the perfect prank!”

  Lizzie paced back and forth. Her grade in Mr. Badwolf’s General Villainy class definitely needed a boost. If her mother saw it now, heads would roll. She narrowed her eyes at Faybelle and Kitty. “I need the hextra credit, but you two don’t. What’s in it for you?”

  “Hexcitement.” Kitty yawned. “It’s time to spice things up around here.”

  “Do I need a reason to cause trouble?” Faybelle arched her eyebrows. “Don’t worry, Lizzie. We’ll be hextra careful. I’ve been in trouble too many times with Headmaster Grimm this year. This isn’t the sort of thing that’ll get us in trouble. Like Kitty said, it’s a harmless prank, but it will cause just enough chaos that Mr. Badwolf will be impressed.”

  “Fine,” agreed Lizzie. She reasoned that Kitty knew how to stay out of sight, and Faybelle wouldn’t put them at risk if she was already on thin ice with Headmaster Grimm. Besides, what was the worst that could happen with a few little mice?

  Faybelle showed them to the storage closet. They hurried inside and carefully closed the door. Faybelle switched on the fluorescent light, revealing a large space lined with shelves that stored pencils and quills, hextbooks, and parchment scrolls. In the center of the floor sat four big metal cages, each filled with fifty tiny white mice.

  “Oh cards! They’re awfully cute,” cried Lizzie. Their pink noses twitched and their whiskers wiggled. “Why did you conjure so many?”

  “Go, go, go big! Or go, go, go home!” cheered Faybelle.

  “But how are we getting them into the Castleteria? We can’t just march down the hall with cages of mice,” Lizzie pointed out.

  “Obviously not.” Faybelle focused her gaze on the cages. “I have that all figured out as well.” She took a breath and started to cheer:

  Give us a one, two, three!

  Give us a bling, bling, bling!

  We’ve got this in the bag!

  Go team!

  Faybelle was hexcellent at magic, but her spell-casting power was even stronger when she cheerhexed.

  Instantly, three of the cages transformed into large bedazzled purses. One was red, one was teal, and one was purple. They all had mesh bottoms, so the mice could move around without being seen from the outside.

  “The purr-fect accessory,” said Kitty, lifting the glittery purple bag and taking a peek inside. The mice looked fairy content. “What about them?” Kitty pointed to the mice in the one cage still on the closet floor.

  “Hmmm…” Faybelle fluttered her wings as she thought. “We’ll come back for them. It’ll look suspicious if one of us has two purses. I mean, who does that?”

  “Good point.” Kitty patted her purse. “So we just walk into the Castleteria, open our purses, and let the mice run wild?”

  “Hexactly!” Faybelle bounced with anticipation in her lace-up boots.

  “Wait a spell!” Lizzie cried. “Are we sure the Pied Piper won’t be at breakfast? He can have the mice cleared out in no time, and what fun would that be?”

  Faybelle sighed. “I thought of that, too, of course. But we’re all set. He’s out of town this week for a muse-ic conference. I’m telling you—I’ve thought of everything.”

  “Okay, let’s do this.” Kitty opened the closet door, checked the hallway, and crept out. Lizzie and Faybelle followed.

  They hadn’t gotten far before they heard heavy footsteps approaching.

  “Girls!” Mrs. Trollworth called as she turned the corner.

  “Act natural,” Faybelle whispered. She smiled at Headmaster Grimm’s trusty assistant. “Good morning, Mrs. Trollworth.”

  “Why aren’t you in the Castleteria?” She adjusted her pink, pointy-tipped glasses to peer at each of them. “You’re late for breakfast.”

  “We were just on our way to the Castleteria now,” Kitty replied.

  Mrs. Trollworth narrowed her eyes and stared at the girls suspiciously. Then she sniffed the air. For a moment, they were sure they were caught. But then Mrs. Trollworth cleared her throat and muttered, “I suddenly have the strangest craving for cheddar cheese soup. I wonder if I can find that old recipe my grandmother used to make.… Off you go, then.”

  “Thank you,” Faybelle said quickly. Then she grabbed Lizzie’s and Kitty’s sleeves and hurried them away before Mrs. Trollworth became any more suspicious!

  “Close call,” said Kitty.

  Faybelle pulled open the Castleteria doors and grinned at her friends. “Time for mice mayhem!”

  Diary Entry

  You’ll never guess what I found today, Diary.

  A storage closet full of mice! Lots and lots of mice!

  I admit, Diary, that’s not really what I hexpected to happen when I left my room this morning, but that’s just what did happen!

  Back in my room, I narrowed down my fashion choices to two dresses. I figured I’d just ask Raven later which one she liked better. After all, what are best friends for? Besides, I didn’t want to miss breakfast. A healthy breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially when your day is as busy as mine!

  I was skipping to the Castleteria when I heard the most curious sound.

  Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

  I stopped to listen. Mrs. Trollworth’s gravelly voice came from somewhere down the hall, but it wasn’t her. I followed the noise to a door I’d never noticed before. I knocked. No one answered. I knocked again. The only response was more squeaks, louder this time and sad-sounding.

  Something needed my help!

  I tried the knob, and the door swung open. I flicked on the light, and guess what I found! Oh… right. I told you already. I found mice! The cutest white mice huddled in a cage.

  What were they doing here? I looked around. The closet stored classroom supplies. Why in Ever After would mice be here among the supplies?

  I wiggled my fingers through the bars of the cage, petting the mice on their cute little pink nose
s. Now that I’d found them, I couldn’t just leave them in a dark closet. I spread out my skirt and sat on the linoleum floor.

  The mice looked at me with their little black eyes. They looked like they needed some playtime, so what else could I do? I unlatched the cage, and they happily scampered up my arms and across my ankles. Their tiny toes tickled!

  But after all that playing, they really worked up an appetite! I needed to get them a snack, so I put them back in the cage—just for a few minutes, until I could return! I was sure that the line at the Castleteria would be much too long, so I decided to run to my room to grab one of my emergency snacks. And when I spotted you on my desk, Diary, I just needed to tell you all about my new mousy friends! They are just the cutest little snuggle bugs!

  In fact, I think I’ll take you with me, Diary. I wonder what they’ll be up to when we get back to the storage closet!

  Charm you later!

  Apple White

  Faybelle, Kitty, and Lizzie watched the mice sprint into the Castleteria faster than Jack and Jill tumbled down the hill. For a moment, only a blur of white was visible—and then shrieks filled the air. Lizzie blinked in surprise, never hexpecting the prank to work so quickly.

  A sly grin spread across Kitty’s face. “They found the food,” she whispered.

  The mice leaped from the floor onto the tables. They danced in puddles of fairyberry jam. They jumped into the gooey filling of pixie pies. Their tiny feet left footprints in the frosting on thronecakes. One mouse tried to crawl through a glazed royalberry doughnut, and now waddled about with the pastry wrapped around its belly like an inner tube.

  A group of mice bypassed the tables and made for the kitchen. Two mice seesawed on a big serving ladle. Others surfed across the floor on ogremeal cookies. Hagatha, the lunch lady, cried out as a mouse became tangled in the hairnet covering her gray beehive hairdo.

  However, her cries were no match for Holly O’Hair’s wails. Mice climbed her long braided auburn tresses to nibble the berries that crowned her head.