“I was four. My dad didn’t believe in dancing, not like my mom. She said the way to a girl’s heart was through music, so she taught me. Mostly so she had someone to dance with, but I knew dancing took her mind off him.”
“What was wrong with your dad?” I stroked his back, hoping the small touch calmed him. It seemed to. His cheek rested on the top of my head and I took a deep breath, relishing in his pine scent.
“He was an angry drunk. Yelled a lot. Mostly at me, sometimes at her. My mom said she loved me, but sometimes, when she looked at me, I knew all she saw was the spawn of her husband, the reason why none of her dreams came true.”
I lifted my head off his chest and stared into his honey wheat eyes. “That can’t be true.”
“She was never happy. Ever. No matter how hard I tried. At some point she figured life wasn’t worth living, that I wasn’t worth staying for.”
Tears built in my eyes, but I willed them away, promising not to cry over his words. If I did, he might stop and I didn’t want him to. This was a side of him I never saw, a side of him that warmed my heart in a way that made me want to curl beside him and never leave.
“With her gone, all I had was a father who hated me because I had no desire to be a criminal.”
My eyes dropped to his chest, imagining the scar beneath the shirt. I wanted to touch it. “Is that how you got…”
He nodded, breathing in a gulp of air. “He hated me. Before I came here, he went off to prison for murder, promising me I’d be beside him one day. Because, despite the pureness of my mother, that’s what wolves are. Murderers. He’s right. In every story, the wolf is bad, evil, a killer. It’s inevitable.”
“You are a lot of things. Yes, you are a little annoying and kind of teetering on the line of stalker.” A slight smile broke his frown. “But you are not a killer. I don’t think you’re capable of taking a life. At least not willingly.”
“But what if I did?” he asked, his brows knitted together. “Sometimes I get so angry, I can feel it, this monster building inside, beating at my flesh, aching to kill.”
“Don’t let it win.” I stopped and took his hand in mine. “You’re stronger.”
He sucked in a breath, his eyes flared with heat and wonderment. Ninety percent of the time, I wanted to hit Wolf over the head with a frying pan, but not now. He drove me nuts, but after the life he had maybe he was entitled to a little craziness.
“Stories are meant to be rewritten. You can rewrite yours. I know it.”
And in that moment, I vowed to change his history. To alter the life he thought was already planned for him. After the hand he was dealt, Wolf deserved happiness. But I kept that plan to myself, unwilling to show him that I found a weakness in his stoic facade.
He released the air he’d been holding. “You’re kind of insane, you know that right?”
“So I’ve been told.” I laughed.
Our eyes locked once more, gold flickered through his irises like a shooting star. I swallowed hard. The pale light in the studio darkened his face, making his cheekbones more prominent than before.
I took his hand in mine. “Let’s dance. I have a lot to learn and no time to practice.”
“Yeah, you do.” He twirled me under his arm and back to him.
I giggled and rested my hand in his. “You know something? You and I, we make kind of a good team. We could fight crime.”
Wolf laughed again, deep and straight from his stomach. “I don’t know. You’re a bit of a wild card.”
I stopped, my jaw dropped. “I’m a wild card? Please. You’re the one who likes to instigate people and—”
“There you go again, flying off the handle when you already know the truth.” He grabbed my hand and yanked me back into him. My chest slammed against his rock hard stomach, sweeping the air from my lungs, rendering me speechless.
“What truth?”
His head tipped down, meeting my eyes with his fiery stare. With one swift motion, he pushed me out, then twirled me in, my back pressed firm to his chest. My toes curled, unable to resist the smile burning my cheeks.
“I’d go anywhere you are.”
Making it through my classes was enough of a struggle without my mind drifting back to Wolf. What was it like, I wondered, to have a craptastic father and a mother who killed herself? My mom didn’t want me, but at least she was still out there, and Dad loved me. Thinking about Wolf’s situation made my stomach hurt but I couldn’t stop. He was under my skin but not in the way he was under it before.
“Um, Norah, what is that?” Kate pointed to the mouse in front of me. The one that should’ve turned into a pony with the potion, but instead it looked like a mutant mouse with a long snout and a hairy tail.
“A new breed of vermin?”
Kate groaned and whipped together a potion to turn the beast back into a normal mouse. “Are you going to tell me why you can’t get anything right today, or do I have to beat it out of you?”
Using the ladle, she poured liquid over the mutant mouse. Smoke billowed around it and cleared, revealing a very scared, shaking mouse. “How are you so good at this?” I scooped the mouse up and set it in the box.
Kate stirred the mini black caldron on our lab table. “If you follow the recipe, it isn’t that difficult.”
I flopped down in the seat. “Well, my recipe must be defective.”
“Magic feeds on emotion. Where’s your head at?”
Besides on the desk? I was two seconds from getting the biggest headache ever. My head was everywhere—but at that very second, my head was nowhere but him.
“Did you know Wolf can dance?” I asked. “Better than any guy here.”
Kate froze and faced me. “Seriously?”
I nodded. “Oh yeah. He’s amazing. But that’s not what’s bothering me. It’s this whole fate thing. Everyone caves into what the stories say, like they can’t live their life any other way.”
“That’s the tragedy of fairy tales. The whole world puts them on a pedestal. People want their lives to be magical, like a story, but what people don’t understand is that happiness is sacrificed. There is so much more to the story than what is written. In Cinderella you think she’s so unfortunate with her mean sisters and mom. You think she deserves a happy ending with a prince, but the twenty-page journey is all you see. You learn little about who she is. What if Cinderella’s just a good actress who has everyone fooled, when really, she sucks. She more than sucks.”
Kate’s hands clamped onto the stirrer, her attention no longer on me but on her own thoughts. “Cinderella’s nothing more than a thief who steals things that don’t belong to her. She takes happiness from others to ensure her own ending is secured. She’s selfish. But does the world see that? No. They see a poor, defenseless doormat who deserves a life of riches and happiness because she’s endured so much sadness. When really—”
I grabbed Kate’s hand, “Um, Kate?” Her gaze snapped to me, releasing the trance that had taken over her mind. “You okay? You’re rambling.”
“Sorry.” She dropped the stirrer on the table and smoothed the edge of her pale yellow shirt out. “Back to you. So, do you like Wolf now?”
Wow, talk about bluntness. “No. Yes.”
It was all so complicated. Saying no meant ignoring the part of me that did feel something, besides nausea, for Wolf. Despite how much he irritated me, there was something pulling me to him. “I don’t know how I feel anymore.”
“I’m in no place to give advice considering we don’t know each other that well, but relish what you have with him, whether it’s friendship or more,” she said. “Sometimes love only comes around once. When you miss it, it’s gone forever.”
“Are we talking about me or you?”
She shrugged and smiled. “A little bit of both? Either way, talking to Wolf will help you understand your feelings.”
“The last thing I want to do is tell him I may or may not be crushing on him.” Imagine the ego boost! He’d make fun of me f
or sure. All feelings aside, I wanted to be there for him. If I told him I liked him, it might make things weird or complicated. The chance of losing whatever we had wasn’t worth it.
“Then don’t. Just talk or insult each other. You do that best.”
Funny, but true.
Her words turned over in my mind. I had so much to think about and nothing I wanted to think about at the same time. Kate was right, I should talk to him. Just talk, nothing else. It didn’t have to be deep conversations. I’d ask him to help me with my dancing again.
But something else struck me. Something I hadn’t thought of before.
“Kate, how is it possible that people here are in high school if their stories were written so long ago? Shouldn’t they be long dead by now?” Sure, they are republished, tweaked, but if they are reborn every time that happened then there would be multiple Cinderella’s, and Big Bad Wolves running around.
“Every time a character dies, a new one is reborn. It’s that person’s job to fulfill the fairytale correctly. If they fail then their dreams may not come true. Well, at least the ending might not be the same.”
“Then what’s the point of the school?” I asked. “And what happens if their story doesn’t pan out as it should?”
“The school is made to groom us for the future.” Kate sighed. “As for the whole story thing, I’m not sure what would happen. No one’s ever defied their fate, and if they did, I’m sure the council would correct it immediately.”
So whenever a character died, a new one was born, thus continuing the cycle. Sometimes they weren’t reborn right away, especially if they died before their soul mate. It made me wonder about new stories, where the characters come from, how they were born. And what did that make me?
There wasn’t too much time to think about it once the teacher assigned us a new spell to work on. More magic. More potions. More crap that didn’t matter. Yet I was horribly intrigued with it all. How you could work magic without written spells, but solely on desires. He had us try to turn mice into pumpkins with our minds. Kate did it no problem. Me? Not so much.
The professor then gave me a feather. All I had to do was float it in the air. The feather wobbled and lifted, but not more than a couple centimeters. Nothing to brag about, but it was something.
The bell rang and people swarmed the front of the classroom, hurrying to exit. The moment I stepped out of the classroom, Danielle called my name.
“Norah Hart!”
Her heels were like needles in my eardrums. So not what I need right now. I refused to stop or acknowledge Danielle. I shouldered through people at a speed I’d only experienced once in my life. Maybe twice, but who’s counting.
The crowd in front of me stopped moving, leaving no space for me to shimmy through. Damn, so close yet so far at the same time.
“Did you not hear me say your name?” Danielle asked.
“Nope. What’s up?”
Her nose squished and a few seconds later, her confidence returned and she placed one hand on her cinched waist. Did she use something to make it so tiny? “You ditched us at lunch, again. Need I remind you that you are a P.I.T?”
“English, please.”
“Princess in Training.” She flipped her hair back and took a breath. “You will eat lunch with us and partake in our after school activities. Who you hang out with defines who you are. I can’t sway the royals to like you if you’re out gallivanting with criminals.”
“You’re serious?” No-freakin-way. “I don’t know how things work around here, but I don’t respond well to people telling me what to do. In fact, I—”
“There you are!” Finn said, a wide grin plastered on his face. “Hey, Danielle.” He nodded toward her then back to me. “You ready?”
“Where do you think you two are going?” she snapped as if someone told her that coral was the new blue and she’d have to trade all her clothes in.
“Sword fighting,” Finn said. “She sucks. I offered to help.”
I bit back the insult. Besides today’s epic fail, Finn knew I rocked. Still, I wondered what we were doing. Had I made plans with him? Danielle, still skeptical, eyed us both.
“I’m charming like that,” Finn said.
Danielle narrowed her eyes. “Aren’t you failing that class?”
“Wait, there’s a class to teach you how to be charming?” I asked. “You have got to be kidding me.” These people were screwy.
“Of course there is!” Danielle gasped. “No guy is naturally perfect. Hence the class.”
“Wow!” I leaned forward, my hands holding my stomach as I laughed. “This made my day so much better.”
“Shut it.” Finn knocked my shoulder, but I couldn’t stop laughing. My side ached. I tried to catch my breath. Poor Finn, his ears were beet red.
“Sorry.” I breathed. “I’m done. I promise.” I bit my lip and held back the laughter I’d revisit later that night, hopefully with Kate. I felt kind of bad for Finn. Poor chap failed his charming classes. Focus, Norah. “Well, we’d better go. See ya around, D!”
Finn wasted no time falling in step with me as we hurried away from Danielle and her evil stare. He directed me down a long corridor, then another and another. We twisted and turned up staircases and already I was beyond lost. We walked for ten minutes in silence. I think we backtracked, but whatever. I couldn’t complain, anything was better than Danielle.
“Quick thinking back there, captain,” I said, kind of out of breath from walking so fast. Man, he moved like a marathon runner.
“That bruise helped my case,” he said, motioning to the black and purple bruise on my knee from when I’d taken a wicked fall during combat class a couple days ago.
“I guess I suck when I don’t get a hardcore eight hours of sleep.”
Down the hall I spotted April leaving one of her classes. I had exactly an hour and a half before I had to be at the front office for my weekly call with Dad. Had April spoke to him at all? I excused myself from Finn and jogged toward her.
Today, like most days, April was covered head to toe in dark, baggy clothes, only her hands and face exposed. Straggly auburn hair clung to her frail face. Hopefully she’d been eating, not that I knew because our lunch times were different.
“April!” I called out, but she didn’t stop, even as I reached her, she kept moving. The culprit? Headphones. I tapped her on the shoulder and motioned for her to take them out. Angry thrash music blared from the tiny ear buds. “Want to study?” She looked forward, popping one ear bud back in. “I won’t take no for an answer, so you should probably just agree and save yourself an afternoon of me stalking you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
That was enough for me. I smiled and walked by her side to the courtyard. Even if nothing came out of this. Even if we did nothing but look at books and barely said a word to each other, I’d be happy.
Outside, dank gray clouds masked the sky. We sat at a round, concrete table. I fanned out my folders, picking the one from magic class. I knew we both had the same teacher. She didn’t open any of her binders. Instead, she drew on the outside and jiggled her leg to the “beat” of the music.
“Can you believe we’re learning magic? So weird.” Only two weeks ago I didn’t think any of it existed and I still fought with the new reality, but magic? That was in the real world.
“Totally,” April said with ease. “The teacher tried to make me turn mice into a pumpkin today.”
“Me too!” And like that, the conversation moved a little easier.
We stayed on safe topics like classes and music. I even asked her about her drawings, which she showed me without asking twice. If April loved to talk about anything, it was art. So I listened and let her speak, happy to hear her voice with hints of joy. My heart swelled. At least until she lifted her arm and the sleeve of her sweater hiked up. That was when I saw them. New slashes across her skin. The sore, angry skin made my heart ache.
Without thinking I grabbed her arm a
nd yanked the sleeves up to her thin elbows. Three more lines.
“Damnit.” How could she start up again? We made this change for her and yet it still hadn’t helped. Tears swelled in my eyes as I stared at my sick sister. “Why are you doing this to yourself?” Why couldn’t she stop? Was there no happiness in her at all?
Instead of crying it out with me and baring her soul in the middle of the empty courtyard, she yanked her arm back. Anger raged inside her. Those eyes which matched my father’s held nothing but hatred.
“Mind your own business, Norah!” she growled.
“You are my business. When are you going to realize that?” I yelled back. “Everything I do, I do for you. Moving, going to this school, it was all for you. I’d do anything for you and you just throw it in my face the first chance you get!”
She gathered up her books, fists clenched at her side like she was ready to punch me. “I didn’t ask you to do that. I didn’t ask you for anything. In fact, I’d like nothing more than for you to get out of my life forever.”
Get out of her life, seriously? The fact that she even said that showed me how messed up her mind was. “If it wasn’t for me you’d be dead.” Anger barreled through me. “Ever think of that?”
She barked a laugh. “No, I’d be living. You, Norah, you’re like a virus sucking the life out of me. You make me want to kill myself. A life without you would be the answer to all my problems.”
In pure April style, she stormed out of the courtyard, leaving me alone with my tears. My throat tightened, making it hard to swallow. I was officially done with this school. Done pretending like faking it for her sake was the best. Obviously nothing I did would help her. I swiped my hand across the table, knocking papers and books all over the ground. A million curse words spiraled out of my mouth in the form of a whisper.
I dropped onto the cement, my knee hitting too hard, as I tried to collect my folders. My forearms touched the ground and I prayed. For what, I wasn’t sure, but I needed something. Something to tell me I wasn’t a total fuck-up.
A shadow hovered above and for a split second I hoped it was April coming back to apologize, but the warmth crawling across my neck when he touched me told me otherwise.
The Forgotten Fairytales Page 10
