My Very UnFairy Tale Life

by Anna Staniszewski

  “Were those friends of yours?” asked Aunt Evie.

  “No,” I said. “Don’t worry. They won’t bother us anymore.” Then I sank down at the kitchen table and put my head in my arms.

  “Are you all right, kitten?” said Aunt Evie.

  I shook my head, tears trickling onto my sleeves. Everything in my life had been a lie: my parents, my friends, Dr. Bradley. I had thought being an adventurer would be fun and exciting. Instead, it had taken everything I cared about away from me. And now I’d never get any of it back.

  “There, there,” said Aunt Evie, sitting down beside me and scratching the top of my head. “How about a nice saucer of warm milk?”

  Part 2

  Chapter 12

  Monday morning felt like the first day of school all over again. For once, I was going to arrive as a regular, normal girl. The last time I’d been so excited to get on the school bus had been in kindergarten on Halloween. Unfortunately, that had turned out to be a day of disappointment.

  It was one of the few memories I had of my mother, even though I couldn’t quite remember her face. She’d sewn me an Indiana Jones costume, complete with a whip made out of yarn. My mother had even pinned a plastic cobra to my sleeve so I could glance over at it and mutter, “I hate snakes!” To top it all off, I had secretly collected spiders for days and put them into a small jar.

  When I’d arrived at school, I had swashbuckled my way into my classroom, released the spiders onto the floor, and started saving my classmates from certain doom. The day had ended in the principal’s office, and I hadn’t been a fan of Halloween, or school, ever since. A few months later, my parents had disappeared, and I’d had no one to make costumes for me anymore.

  But today would be different, I told myself. It wouldn’t end in disappointment.

  Before I left the house, I took a few practice swings with my mini-golf club to help calm my nerves. My injured arm was finally back to normal, and my favorite pink ball sailed into the cup like it couldn’t wait to go in. That had to be a lucky sign, I decided as I slipped the ball into my pocket. Today would be the first day of the rest of my amazingly average life.

  When I got on the bus, no one said a word to me, which wasn’t unusual. But they also stared at me like I was some kind of sea monster. I sat in a seat by myself and tried to ignore the strange looks. When I got to homeroom, the staring continued. I wasn’t sure what was wrong. Did I have a tarantula on my head? Or had I gotten so good at being invisible over the past three years that everyone was surprised to see me?

  When the teacher came in, she scanned the room, humming under her breath. But when her eyes stopped on me, her face changed. She looked down at the list in her hand and studied it carefully.

  “Are you new, dear?” the teacher asked finally.

  I stared back at her, not sure what to say.

  She raised her eyebrows and walked over to my desk. “Dear?” she asked again. “Are you new?”

  I swallowed. “I’m Jenny.” The other kids gave me curious looks, as if I really was the new girl. What was going on?

  “Is today your first day?” the teacher tried again. Clearly, she was flagging the new girl as a dummy.

  “I guess so,” I said finally.

  “You’ll have to go to the office. I don’t have you on my list.”

  “Oh…okay.” I stood up, feeling like my head weighed twice as much as usual.

  “Trish?” said the teacher. “Can you show our new student the way to the office?”

  Trish nodded and hopped up from her desk. I wanted to yell that I knew the way to the office, that I knew every part of the school! But I clamped my mouth shut and let Trish lead me out into the hallway. I didn’t know what was happening. Had Anthony and Dr. Bradley done something to everyone at my school?

  “Where did you move from?” Trish asked as we walked along. Her voice seemed higher than I remembered it, like she’d swallowed a squeaky toy. I had to take a deep breath before I could answer. It still hurt that my once best friend had no idea who I was.

  “California,” I said.

  “Cool!” Trish squealed. “Do you know any famous actors?”

  “Um, no.”

  Trish’s face fell. “Oh. Well, this place is really boring. You’ll be begging your parents to take you back to your old school by the end of the week.”

  I swallowed hard. My parents. If no one remembered who I was, I’d have to explain that I didn’t have a normal family like they all did. But how was I supposed to tell people that my parents had disappeared in some magical kingdom and that my aunt was better at talking to animals than to humans?

  Finally, we came to the main office. I went up to the secretary, hoping that this had all been some big misunderstanding and that the entire school hadn’t forgotten me.

  “Can I help you?” the secretary asked.

  “Hi. I guess I’m new.”

  She gave me a blank look for a moment. Then her eyes lit up. “Are you Jenny?”

  “Yes!”

  “Your grandfather said you would be coming in today.” She searched through a pile of papers on her desk.

  “My grandfather?”

  “Yes, he came in earlier this morning and said you would be joining us.”

  “He did?” Of course the secretary had to mean Dr. Bradley.

  “He left a note for you.” She handed me a small, cream envelope. “And I have your old school records here somewhere…”

  I took a deep breath and opened the envelope. The letter was written in fancy ancient-looking script, the kind that you’d find on a scroll.

  Dear Jenny,

  I must apologize once again for using magic on those close to you. Over the years Anthony and I were forced to use a Distraction Powder on your teachers and classmates to make your absences less noticeable. The powder is generally harmless, but when the dosage is suddenly stopped, it often causes a lapse in memory. I am sorry to say it may prove to be permanent. However, I hope you look upon this as a chance to begin anew at your school, to create the magic-free life you desire.

  Sincerest apologies,

  Dr. Bartholomew Bradley

  I realized suddenly how blind I’d been. I’d thought a side effect of magic was that normal people just naturally forgot the strange things they’d seen. But Dr. Bradley and Anthony had been altering everyone’s minds all along. I’d been so wrapped up in my adventures that I hadn’t noticed all the things the doctor and Anthony had been doing behind my back.

  “Your grandfather is such a sweet old man,” the secretary was saying. “It’s a shame he has to go into a nursing home, but I guess we all have our time. Ah, here they are!” The secretary dug out a few pieces of paper. She studied them intently, copying down some information onto a form. When I looked at my “old school records,” I was amazed to find that the pieces of paper were absolutely blank. Apparently, there was no end to Dr. Bradley’s magic.

  “Here’s your class schedule,” said the secretary finally. I looked at the yellow piece of paper and smirked. My schedule was no different than it had been the week before. “Good luck,” she added with a warm smile.

  “Thanks.”

  As I turned to go, Trish fell in step beside me. Walking down the hall with her almost made me feel like I had my old life back. Too bad Trish had no idea that we’d both had chicken pox in second grade or that we’d once colored our hair with permanent marker, or all the other things that had been erased from her memory. If those things only existed in my head, then maybe we really were total strangers.

  “Do you want to come over after school today and watch TV?” Trish asked after a minute. “You can meet my friend Melissa.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Sure!” Maybe things weren’t so bad after all. This was my chance to get my old friends back and maybe even
make some new ones. I could finally catch up on all I’d missed the past few years.

  “Then you can tell us all about California!” Trish squeaked.

  My smile disappeared. Was I really going to have to spend the rest of my life lying about who I was?

  Chapter 13

  “Jenny, do you want to come over and watch TV with us this weekend?” asked Trish.

  I zipped up my bulging backpack and heaved it over my shoulder. I’d only been back at school a few days, and already I was swamped with homework. I fell in step between Trish and Melissa as we headed to the buses.

  “Again?” I tried to keep the disappointment out of my voice. I didn’t dislike watching TV, but that was all Melissa and Trish ever wanted to do. They didn’t even chat or joke around while they watched. They stared at the screen with their mouths open, like they were trying to drink in every image they saw. Sometimes I would get so bored that I’d count how many times they blinked while they were watching. It was a disturbingly low number.

  “Don’t you want to hang out with us?” said Melissa, her face falling. Her eyes, though, were as empty as ever. I couldn’t remember them being that way before, but now they always seemed blank. Was that yet another side effect of Dr. Bradley’s magic?

  “Of course I want to hang out with you guys!” I said. What was wrong with me? I had wanted my old friends back, and now I had them. Why couldn’t I be happy with that?

  But the problem was that I couldn’t help remembering how much more fun my friends used to be. When we’d been younger, the three of us had acted out our favorite fairy tales and written funny poems about each another. Trish had dragged us to the library to sniff all the musty old books, and Melissa had made us listen to the songs she’d learned in her voice lessons. I’d been the one to plan little challenges for us, like seeing who could make her family members say “cantaloupe” the most times in one day. (I never won those sorts of challenges since I just had Aunt Evie, but they were still fun to invent.)

  I knew we were too old to do some of those things now, but did that mean we had to watch silly TV shows in absolute silence for hours on end? Even when we weren’t watching TV, all Trish and Melissa wanted to talk about were actors and actresses I’d never heard of. It was like they didn’t care about their own lives, only about the fictional ones they saw on TV.

  “Melissa, do you sing?” I not-so-subtly asked as we walked by the main office. The secretary gave me a wave, but I pretended not to see her. I didn’t need her asking me about my “grandfather” again.

  Melissa shrugged. “I used to, but it started taking up too much of my time.”

  “Yeah,” Trish squeaked. “She was never around to hang out.”

  “So what did you do when you were by yourself?” I asked Trish.

  She thought for a moment. “I read a lot,” she said. I almost smiled until she added, “But it was making me miss my shows, so I stopped.”

  I sighed. What had happened to my friends? Unless they’d been abducted by aliens, I just couldn’t believe they were the same girls. Maybe memory dust was more harmful than Dr. Bradley had let on.

  “Hey, I know!” said Trish. “We can come watch TV at your house this weekend, Jenny. We still haven’t seen where you live.”

  “And don’t say no,” said Melissa. “We don’t care if you’re not done unpacking yet.”

  What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t exactly invite my “new” friends over to my house since I didn’t actually have the parents I kept talking about. I knew I should have just told Trish and Melissa the truth from the beginning, but for a while, at least, it had been nice to pretend I was just like them.

  “I think my dad’s planning on painting the living room,” I said finally, hating myself for yet another lie. “He wouldn’t want us in the way.”

  Melissa shrugged. “Okay, then we’ll go to my house.”

  I said good-bye to my friends and hopped onto the bus. After I found an empty seat and plopped down, I couldn’t shake the icky feeling in the pit of my stomach. Was having a regular life supposed to be this hard? Or was I just doing it wrong?

  Suddenly something white darted past the bus window. I sat up. Was it a fairy? Or worse, a unicorn?

  Then I saw what it was: a plastic bag. The wind blew and the bag drifted away.

  Great, I was losing it. Maybe I should have made Dr. Bradley sprinkle me with memory dust. Then I could stop looking for things that weren’t there and be happy with the things that were.

  But I was happy, I told myself. This was exactly what I wanted. To be normal.

  The bus rolled along, eventually going past Dr. Bradley’s old house. Or at least what used to be his house. It looked more deserted and run-down than ever with heaps of other people’s garbage piled up in the yard.

  Where was he now? Monitoring someone else on his puddle screen? Feeding some other adventurer batches of homemade butterscotch pudding?

  Not that I cared. I was just fine never seeing that crazy doctor ever again. Not after he’d…But the trouble was that it was getting harder to remember the bad things he’d done when there had been so many good. Yes, Dr. Bradley had taken my friends from me, but now I wasn’t sure if they were as great as I remembered them being. And he’d kept my parents’ true identities a secret, but what little he had been able to tell me didn’t give me enough to be able to find them.

  But the worst part was that Dr. Bradley had really been my friend. For three years I’d told him all about my adventures, and he had listened and smiled and joked with me. Now that he was gone, all I had were memories. Even Anthony, as crazy as he’d made me, had at least shared some of those experiences with me. With no one to talk to about them, it was almost like my adventures had never happened. All I had were the treasure chests in my closet, and those weren’t exactly great at conversation.

  The bus pulled up to my house. When I unlocked the front door, I was almost bowled over by an angry goose trying to escape. I managed to grab it by the tail before it ran out the door.

  As I finally finished wrestling the goose back inside, feathers flying, I heard an unfamiliar voice call out from down the hall. “Jenny?” it said.

  I turned to see an amazingly cute boy standing in my living room. Everything from his hair to his clothes to his lopsided grin was straight out of an ad for suntan lotion. And yet there was something familiar about him.

  “Do I know you?” My backpack slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor.

  The boy laughed. “Jenny, it’s me. Prince Lamb.”

  I blinked. Besides the boy’s grin, there was nothing sheepish about him. His skin, which had once been mayonnaise-colored, now glowed with a flawless tan. His curly mop was carefully slicked and gelled. And his clothes were catalog-perfect.

  “You have a mouth!” I managed to say when I could breathe again.

  Prince Lamb nodded. “The Committee worked some of its magic this morning. I would never fit into your world without a mouth.”

  “But you look so different. What happened to you?”

  Prince Lamb’s grin widened. “Ribba gave me a makeover.”

  Wow. Ribba really was good at the whole stylist thing. Even Prince Lamb’s voice sounded different than it had when I’d heard it in my head. It was stronger and more confident now.

  “But what are you doing here?” I asked. “Aren’t you…mad at me?”

  The prince’s forehead wrinkled. “Why would I be angry with you?”

  “Well.” I felt my cheeks getting hot. “I did kind of let your kingdom down. You know, by not defeating Klarr and all of that.”

  “Ah,” said Prince Lamb. “Well, you don’t need to worry about that, Jenny. I understand your decision.”

  “You do? It didn’t seem that way before.”

  “At first I was angry,” he admitted. “But
then I realized you were right. You did what you could, and it was someone else’s turn to try.”

  “And you guys figured it out, right? You found a way to beat Klarr?”

  The prince hesitated. “Well, no. The sorcerer struck back and has been destroying the kingdom of Speak, bit by bit. But I am sure it is only a matter of time before he’s stopped.”

  “Wait. Your kingdom is under attack, and you came here?”

  “I wanted to stay and fight, but Mother begged the Committee to take me somewhere safe so Klarr couldn’t kidnap me again. It took a few days for the paperwork to go through, but the Committee members finally decided to send me here. They figured I’d be all right in a non-magical world.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing it was partly my fault that his world was no longer safe.

  “I’m sure my mother will find a solution. And who knows, I might decide I like living among humans.”

  “But you’re a prince. You can’t just walk away from that.”

  Prince Lamb shrugged. “You walked away from being an adventurer.”

  “Yeah, but you were born a prince. That means it’s for life.”

  “You were born an adventurer.” Prince Lamb crossed his arms in front of his chest. I noticed his shirt sleeves were perfectly cuffed at his wrists like someone out of a magazine. Somehow that was one of the most annoying things I’d ever seen.

  “Okay, so you want to be a human. Why come to me?”

  “I was hoping you could show me how it’s done.”

  I laughed. “If I find out, I’ll let you know.”

  “Come on, Jenny. We’re friends. Won’t you help me?”

  His pleading eyes pierced into me. Of all the creatures I had met in my travels, Prince Lamb was the first one to seek me out afterward. The others had just said their good-byes and forgotten me like a bad song. But Prince Lamb had wanted to see me again. And he needed my help, not because I was a hero but because I was a regular girl.