Grace in the Mirror (Fairy Tale Found Book 1)

by Kristy Tate

  “What? Heather, no.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “It’ll be easier.”

  “Than what?”

  “Staying at home alone with the grandunit.”

  Frustration zipped through Grace and clenched the muscles around her neck. “You should go back to the art institute.”

  “I can’t afford it.”

  “Grandpa Hank can.”

  Heather gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.

  Grace leaned closer and lowered her voice, even though she knew her grandparents were miles away. “Do you think Mom entered into some sort of bargain with them?” she asked, thinking of her advanced English class in general and Faust and his pact with the devil in particular. Who would she rather strike a bargain with—Satan or her grandfather? It would be a hard decision.

  “Maybe, but probably not.” Heather picked at the edge of her T-shirt. “She promised we’d leave as soon as Dad’s rotation is over.”

  “Do you think that’s going to happen?” Grace’s thoughts skipped ahead to her own graduation. Maybe if she worked really hard, she could get a scholarship and go to any school she wanted.

  Heather didn’t answer but used her foot to nudge Toby. “Pick your favorite three, and let’s go,” she told him. “Did you want to get anything?” she asked Grace.

  The frustration clenching her neck swept through Grace, tightening her spine and tingling in her fingertips. Heather didn’t deserve this. She should be hanging out at the art institute and sketching grape clusters, not babysitting her little brother and catering to her tight-fisted grandparents.

  “You okay?” Heather asked, bumping Grace with her shoulder.

  Heather was nice. Too nice. Too easily taken advantage of. Grace wished she could siphon off a smidge of her anger and give it to her sister. It would do us both good, Grace thought. Guilt quickly set in. Heather was perfect just as she was. And Grace? She wanted to pick up the heaviest book she could find and use it on someone’s head.

  The two guys she’d seen chasing Toby emerged from behind a bookshelf. The blond met her eye. Grace sent him her best death-stare.

  His lips crooked into a half-smile, making her hate him even more.

  “I’ll meet you at the car, okay?” Grace pushed away from the table, stood and wiped her hands on her jeans.

  “Where you going?” Toby asked, his arms full of comic books. He clutched at them, but they slid around in his grasp.

  “I want to see something,” Grace said, reaching over to help him sort out the comics. When she straightened and looked around, the guys were gone.

  While Heather and Toby went to stand in line at the circulation desk, Grace hurried to the fiction section, determined to confront the bullies who had made Toby hyperventilate and drop his ice cream.

  They weren’t there. She moved through the aisles, looking for them. Taking a deep breath, she strode outside. The summer heat hit her like a punch to the gut, and she squinted against the sun’s glare.

  A man the height and width of a wine vat planted himself in front of her and folded his stubby arms across his barrel chest. “What’d you do with it, Blanche?” Bushy eyebrows lowered over squinty eyes, and his lips, barely visible through his woolly beard, were screwed into a frown.

  “Pardon?”

  Dressed in brown shorts, work boots, and a red plaid flannel shirt, he didn’t look like he belonged in the clown or acrobatic crew of the visiting circus, but he didn’t look like he belonged in Santa Magdalena, either.

  But then neither did she.

  Doubt flickered in his eyes, but suspicion won out. He grabbed her wrist with a small, callused hand. His grip held her like a vice. “You gotta give it back!” Despite his small frame, he had a low, gravelly voice.

  Grace shook him off. If it weren’t for the little kids on bikes, the moms pushing strollers, and an elderly man leading a terrier sharing the sidewalk with them, she might have considered wrestling this man and tossing him into the bushes. But wrestling wasn’t on her very long to-do list. Besides, there was probably a city ordinance against it. In a place that closely regulated the health of lawns, the height of trees, and the lengths of dogs’ leashes, she was pretty sure street wresting was a big no-no.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Grace said, folding her arms and tucking her hands out of the man’s reach.

  He stepped closer, lining up his steel-toed boots with hers. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but it ain’t gonna work!” He pointed a stubby finger at her belly. “We’re onto you!”

  Grace looked over his shoulder to see a flock of men just like him barreling her way. Panic fluttered in her chest. She knew she could wrestle one of them, but she didn’t want to take on a mob. Besides, she didn’t have time to rumble with angry little men.

  Grace glanced back at the circus tent, wishing these guys would return to wherever they had come from. But the ache in her heart told her what she really wanted was to return to where she came from. When Heather and Toby approached, Grace gave the men a withering look and climbed into the Jeep.

  “We’re watching you!” the ringleader of the little men yelled at her as he and his troop walked away.

  #

  Ashton bumped Brock with his shoulder, bringing him back to earth and the library. “World History, remember?”

  Three days until school started and Brock hadn’t finished the summer assignments for his AP class, but he kept his focus on the girl in the parking lot. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t say why. Small, dark, and elfin, she should be wearing a pair of wings instead of boots, ripped jeans, and a shredded T-shirt.

  Ashton followed Brock’s gaze out the window. “You have a girlfriend. Besides, it looks like her shirt got run over by a lawnmower.”

  “I know.”

  “She’s not your type.”

  True. Alicia was tall, blonde, and hungry. This girl was the total opposite. “It’s not what you think. She’s familiar. Like we’ve met or something.” Her face niggled in the back of Brock’s head. Her arresting blue eyes reminded him of someone, from somewhere.

  Ashton rolled his own boring brown eyes and shoved a book in Brock’s hands. “Focus! Harvard!”

  “Harvard’s your dream, not mine.”

  Ashton shook his dark head. “It’s my dad’s dream.”

  And that girl is mine, Brock thought.

  #

  “What do you think?” Grace’s mom asked, standing back to admire her handiwork. Playbills for Shakespearean productions and Mark Twain memes shared wall space with the whiteboard. A large bookshelf and an overstuffed chair complete with an ottoman filled a corner. Jeanie affectionately called this “the reading nook.” She’d had a similar corner at Salmon Dale High that her students—with perhaps even more affection—called the “hookup nook,” for obvious reasons of which Jeanie was blissfully unaware.

  With her thick brown hair tied back in a ponytail and the smattering of freckles on her nose, Grace’s mom would have looked more like one of her students than a teacher if it wasn’t for the worried pinch between her eyebrows. Jeanie had her hands on her jeans-clad hips and a sad smile on her face. “It’s nice, huh?”

  Grace had to admit, her mom was right. It looked a lot nicer than the English classroom at Salmon Dale High, but Grace worried if anyone would use the same adjective to describe the students at Saint Mags. The Salmon Dale High parking lot had been filled with beater VW vans, pickup trucks held together with Bondo, and Frankenstein-type vehicles salvaged and created from the scrapheap. The Santa Magdalena High School lot would be wildly different; the bright and shiny cars would make her bike look shabby. And the common adjectives to describe the student body would probably be rich, spoiled, and entitled. Maybe nice would be on the list, but Grace doubted it.

  Grace unpacked the last box of books, lining them up on the top shelf. “I’m going to go to the shop.”

  “Are you sure you want to spend one of your last days of vacat
ion working?” Jeanie asked.

  “What would I do instead?” Grace asked, using the back of her hand to wipe sweat off her forehead.

  Jeanie stared at her with sad eyes. “I’m sorry. I know you’d rather be with Kelly and Jenna than here, but you’ll make new friends. Soon you’ll have twice as many as before.”

  “Mom, stop. It’s not like you can swap out people.”

  Jeanie pursed her lips, stepped closer, and tucked a lose strand of hair behind Grace’s ear. “You’re so beautiful, smart, and funny, you’ll make new friends.” She held up her hand to stop Grace’s protest. “I know that new friends can’t replace your old ones, but at least you have Heather, me, and Tobs.”

  Grace noticed her mom didn’t include her grandparents on the short list. “I want to go home,” Grace said, leaning into Jeanie and inhaling her warm vanilla scent.

  Jeanie patted Grace’s back. “We will.”

  “Eighteen months is a really long time.”

  “But we’re already thirty days in. It’s only seventeen months now. That’s only a little longer than a year.”

  “Stupid military,” Grace muttered.

  Jeanie looked around in mock horror. “Hush! They will hear you!”

  Jeanie meant it as a joke, but since Grandpa Hank watched political programs every night and filled their heads with conspiracy theories, Grace found it hard to smile.

  Jeanie must have noticed, because she changed the subject. “So, what’s this Cordelia Brockbank like?”

  “She’s beautiful,” Grace said.

  “Like you?”

  “No, totally opposite. She’s tall, blonde—she reminds me of Glinda the Good Witch.”

  Jeanie’s lips twitched. “So, does she have a crown, wand, and a band of Munchkins?”

  Grace remembered the little people she’d met on the sidewalk. She hadn’t told anyone about them, and quickly decided now was not the time to start.

  “You’ll like her. She’s about your age. Maybe you could be friends.” But Grace knew Jeanie probably wouldn’t take the time to make friends. Between caring for her kids, her parents, and seventy-plus students, Jeanie would be lucky to get eight hours of sleep a night.

  Laughter floated through the window. A group of girls carrying lacrosse sticks trooped past. Most had long swingy ponytails. They looked pretty and carefree. It amazed Grace that she could tell their parents were wealthy even though they weren’t wearing designer clothes. In fact, they weren’t wearing much at all, and yet, still, they looked like they belonged in a magazine.

  In comparison, Grace felt dull, like a blackened penny in a pot of gold.

  Jeanie must have either come to the same conclusion or read her thoughts, because she wrapped an arm around Grace’s shoulders, pulled her against her, and planted a kiss on Grace’s cheek.

  “I grew up here, you know,” she said.

  “How is that even possible? You’re so normal.”

  Jeanie laughed. “Thanks, I guess. My dad—your grandfather—pretty much forced normality down my throat.” She sighed and went to stand behind her desk and shuffle papers around. “I couldn’t wait to move away. And when I met your dad…”

  “And fell for his environmentalist ways.”

  “He was just so different from my father, the capitalist.”

  “Still is.”

  Jeanie looked up with a pensive smile that said she was thinking of better times. “He’s good for me…when he’s here.” But a lie was tucked in there somewhere. Everyone, including their Salmon Dale neighbors, had heard the fighting in the weeks and days before Grace’s dad’s rotation. The cracks in the James’s marriage had begun to show even before Grace’s father had left. Now that he was gone, his absence and silence grew louder and louder.

  “This is his first deployment in almost ten years,” Jeanie said. “I wish we could afford to stay in Salmon Dale.”

  “I know,” Grace told her. “It’s not your fault.” But Grace’s thoughts wandered back to their tiny Craftsman home on Clara Street where the sunflowers and corn stalks grew higher than her head in the garden her parents had carefully nurtured. If only…

  More laughter from outside.

  “You should go,” Jeanie said, looking up from her desk, “and introduce yourself to those girls.”

  Not going to happen. Grace glanced at the clock. “I told Cordelia I’d be there at two.” She kissed her mom goodbye, and went outside to retrieve her bike. She didn’t spot the girls she’d seen earlier.

  The warm midsummer air fell over her like a blanket. She plugged in her earphones and pulled her bike out of the parking lot. It wouldn’t take long to ride from Santa Magdalena High to The Lilac Shop, assuming she went straight there. Assuming her seething anger and frustration didn’t boil over and hurt someone or something.

  Grace pedaled past the lake and the leisure-types without jobs and long to-do lists. Santa Magdalena was full of personal assistants to pick up school supplies, personal shoppers to buy clothes, and gardeners to mow healthy regulation-length lawns.

  She thought she spotted one of the guys who had chased Toby at the intersection. His candy-apple red BMW convertible idled at the corner of Teresa Creek and Santa Magdalena Parkway. Honey-blond hair, square jaw, solid shoulders, he sat behind the wheel, looking as plastic and perfect as the blonde Barbie sitting beside him. Grace stuck out her boot and kicked his car as she rode past.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Hey!” he called out, rising from his seat to peer at Grace over the windshield.

  “Rude!” the girl beside him said.

  Grace didn’t say anything. She didn’t even look back. She had thought maybe she’d feel better after the car-kicking, but she didn’t. Anger at everyone and everything settled between her shoulder blades like an itch she couldn’t scratch. She started looking for something else deserving of a swift kick. But Santa Magdalena remained perfect. Perfect weather. Perfect landscaping. Perfect people.

  Minutes later, Grace pulled her bike around the back of The Lilac Shop and knocked on the alley entrance door so hard that her knuckles hurt.

  A tall, regal-looking man with chocolate-colored skin and grizzled hair answered. His gaze swept over her.

  “I’m Grace,” she told him, blinking up at him.

  “And I’m Earnest,” he said in a voice that sounded deep and rich like James Earl Jones.

  “Do you work here, too?” Grace asked, struck by the coincidence of two employees having names used to describe virtues.

  He murmured, “Yes,” and held the door open. “Do you want to bring your bike inside?”

  “No one will steal it,” Grace replied as she propped the 1965 Schwinn cruiser up next to a trash bin. It looked like it belonged there.

  Earnest didn’t argue with her.

  The back room of The Lilac Shop was impossibly full of knick-knacks and whatevers. Queen Anne style chairs hung from the ceiling, blown glass vases and curios lined the shelves, and a rack of vintage clothes stood in a corner. Despite the chaos, it was still somehow beautiful.

  Grace followed Earnest to the rack of clothes, where he paused.

  “Cordelia has requested that you wear this.” He pulled out a green taffeta dress.

  Grace didn’t know what to say, so she just stared at him. She’d never had to change her clothes when she worked at the dairy. Except when she got home, of course.

  “Think of it as a uniform,” Earnest said, balancing the hanger on his pointy finger.

  Grace’s gaze went from his face to the dress and back to his face. “Do you have to wear a uniform?”

  A smile played on his lips. “Ah, but there is nothing in the shop that will fit me.”

  Grace held out her hand in protest. “How do you know this will fit me?”

  He didn’t roll his eyes, but he might as well have. “There are matching shoes.” He gestured toward a pair of green silk pumps bedazzled with faux emeralds sitting on a table beside the clothes rack.

  “I’
ll look like a leprechaun.”

  “But an employed leprechaun.”

  True.

  Grace sat down on a settee, tugged off her boots, and slipped one of the green shoes on. It fit perfectly. She held out her foot, inspecting the shoe. It was ridiculous, funky, and fabulous all at the same time. She eyed the dress.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” Grace said, plucking the hanger off Earnest’s finger.

  He pointed at a dressing room. Grace felt more than saw him grin.

  Behind the rose velvet curtain, Grace stepped out of her jeans and tugged her T-shirt over her head. The dress floated around her and skimmed the tops of her knees. She studied her reflection in a large gilded mirror. The green dress made her eyes bluer, her lips redder, and her cheeks pinker. Even her nearly black hair glistened.

  Grace heard whispering, as if someone agreed with her. Glancing around, she searched for the source of the noise. Outside a small window, the wind whistled. She shook away the being-watched feeling, pushed back the curtain, and went to find Earnest.

  In the showroom, he stood behind the sales counter. His gaze met hers, and he held out his hand, revealing a ribbon resting in his palm.

  Deciding it was better than a hairnet, Grace plucked the ribbon out of his palm and returned to the dressing room. The whispering sound continued, but this time she ignored it. With her hair tied up, she looked like she was going to a tea party. But that must have been what Earnest had in mind, because his eyes gleamed with approval when she returned.

  “Your job, quite simply, is to be as decorative as the lovely things we sell,” Earnest told her.

  “I…don’t consider myself to be very decorative,” Grace told him, smoothing down the dress with both hands.

  “This is your job. Do you want it?” Earnest asked.

  “Well…yeah.”

  “Consider yourself a piece of crockery.”

  Crockery? Really?

  “Where’s Cordelia?” Grace asked. There had to be more to this job.

  “She’ll be here momentarily,” Earnest said. “Let me give you the tour.”

  He taught her how to use the cash register, showed her where to find the key for the jewelry case, and walked her through the aisles.