The Beauty Read online

  I frowned as I turned back to glare at the guy.

  “Who was that?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she shook her head. “He’s no one special.”

  But I didn’t believe that for a second.

  I didn’t want to push or to upset her anymore, but that guy had made her sad, and I wanted to know why. Tinkerbell obviously didn’t like being looked at that way, but this dude hadn’t seemed to care. In fact, I’d dare to say that he was something of a jerk, or at least, something of a bully. Was that the kind of stuff I was going to have to deal with at Enchantment Academy? I didn’t want to. I wanted things here to be perfect and special. I wanted things here to be sweet.

  Powers or not, I wasn’t about to let someone me mean to my new friend.

  After all, she was the only one I had.

  Chapter 2

  As it turned out, the dormitory I’d be living in was really big. In fact, I thought it might be taller than the castle itself.

  “How many floors does this thing have?” I asked, gasping at the tall building.

  “Uh, ten,” she said. “But we can’t use the top two floors.”

  “Why not?”

  She shrugged. “They’re forbidden.”

  Tinkerbell walked ahead of me into the building, but I stayed outside for a minute to look around and take in my surroundings. Forbidden? Really? I mean, I didn’t consider myself to be that perfect of a student. I certainly wasn’t the type of kid who was going to walk away from something forbidden.

  If anything, that word just made me all the more curious, and why shouldn’t it? Maybe there was something special up there: something magical. Yeah, I bet there totally was. Enchantment Academy had all the workings of a magic school full of adventure and excitement, but it seemed like some people – namely the teachers – were really uptight.

  I didn’t get it.

  I mean, if I was a magical being, or I had special powers, I’d be all over that.

  I’d be spending all of my free time working up spells and using potions and yeah, even creating my own enchantments. Wasn’t that what magic was all about? I looked up at the large building. I’d never seen anything quite so big. I thought it was bigger than the boys’ dormitory, too, but I couldn’t quite tell. There were many buildings on the Enchantment Academy campus, and I planned to spend as much time as possible exploring all of them.

  I didn’t have anywhere to be, after all. Once I was out of my classes each day, it wasn’t like I was going to be hurrying home. I didn’t have anyone waiting for me at home. I didn’t have anyone. Period.

  Nope.

  This was it for me now, and I needed to get used to life at Enchantment Academy as quickly as possible. The sooner I got used to life on campus, the sooner I’d be able to start fitting in, and that’s what this was all about. I had three years to get comfortable. I had three years to spend here. I could use that time to be awkward and shy like I’d always been, or I could learn how to...

  Well, I wasn’t sure.

  But I could learn something.

  Maybe I’d learn to be cool.

  Maybe I’d end up being clever.

  Who knew?

  “Coming?” Tink poked her head back out through the main door, and I nodded, scurrying over.

  “Sorry. I got distracted.”

  “Yeah, it’s a pretty building,” Tink said. “When I first started, I kind of just wanted to stand and stare at it all day, you know?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because after about five minutes, that gets boring as hell,” she laughed. “Come on.”

  The main lobby of the dormitory was fantastic. Once more, I stopped and just looked around. Tinkerbell laughed, but gave me a minute to take it all in.

  “It really is like a fairy tale,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she shrugged. “I guess.”

  “No, really.”

  The first floor had everything a girl could possibly have. There were wall-to-wall bookshelves. One corner had an espresso machine and a milkshake machine and a huge plate full of cookies. There was a little old woman standing over there who looked like she must be someone’s grandmother, and I got the impression that her job was just to make sure everyone stayed fed.

  Even if that diet consisted of cookies and milkshakes.

  And hey, I wasn’t one to complain.

  There were students hanging out in just about every corner of the main floor. I saw a group of girls with fairy wings who were fluttering them brightly as they laughed and giggled.

  “Those are the faes,” Tinkerbell told me. “Like me.”

  “Are you friends?” I asked. They seemed a little different than Tink did. They seemed more bubbling and social. Tinkerbell seemed a little bit like she stayed to herself. Maybe she was a little bit shy. Maybe she was something of an outcast. It didn’t matter to me because she was obviously really sweet. I mean, no one had made her show me around the campus today. She was doing that all on her own.

  “Not so much.”

  I didn’t want to push her, but I got the feeling that I was going to have a lot of questions about Enchanted Academy in the days to come. That was fine. There would be plenty of time for questions, right? There would be lots of time for finding out exactly what there was to expect.

  Another group of girls was sprawled out across colorful pillows. It almost looked like the sort of thing a grade school classroom would have. It looked like they were in some sort of reading corner. There were dozens of pillows and even a few blankets. They were all talking around one girl who had dark, jet-black hair and bright red lips.

  “That’s Snow,” Tink said. “Stay away from her. Come on.”

  She took my hand and led me to the opposite end of the lobby. There was a narrow staircase that led up, winding around the room. I looked up and saw that the inside of the dormitory was actually totally hollow. The stairs led up to every floor and then continued. The bedrooms were along the outside of the building, so the main space was completely open. It looked like a motel, sort of, and as I looked up, I could see people on the landings of each floor talking and leaning over the railings.

  “I can see to the top floor,” I said.

  “You can see to the 8th floor,” Tink corrected me. “And that’s on purpose. It’s supposed to be artistic.”

  “It kind of cuts down on the usable space,” I pointed out the obvious, but Tinkerbell just shrugged.

  “I suppose.” She started walking up the stairs and I followed. I guessed it was a good thing that my room wasn’t too high up. There were a lot of stairs and from what I had gathered, there wasn’t any sort of elevator. That had to be illegal, right?

  “Do you ever get tired of the stairs?”

  “Sometimes, but you get used to them after awhile.”

  We walked for what felt like an eternity. Finally, we arrived in front of my dorm room.

  “Well,” she said. “This is it.”

  “So it is,” I said.

  “Go ahead.” She gestured toward the enchanted charm I’d been given, and I held it for a minute in my hands. I wasn’t magical. I’d never worked with magic or really been around magic. This entire place should have been a lot weirder than it was, and in some ways, it felt totally surreal. After all, here I was, a stranger in a new place, and I was essentially being thrust into this world that I didn’t belong in and didn’t really understand.

  I held the charm up.

  “Here goes nothing,” I said, because I wasn’t even sure if it was going to work. Part of me thought that it had to, but the rest of me knew that there was no way.

  I held up the charm, swung it in front of the little lock pad, and waited.

  Nothing.

  “Try again,” she said calmly.

  “This isn’t going to work.”

  “Look,” Tinkerbell reached for the charm, shook it, and then blew on it.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Sometimes they get dusty,” she said
simply. “And they don’t work right away. Look.”

  She held it up and sure enough, this time, the door swung open and we stepped inside. Instantly, I was overwhelmed by the scent of apple pie and cinnamon.

  “Damn,” she said. “Somebody likes to cook.”

  We looked around the space. I was in a four-person shared suite with two bedrooms and a bathroom. It was fancier than anyplace I’d ever lived and I didn’t really know what to expect from it. Were my roommates going to be cool? Were they going to be jerks? I had no way of knowing.

  The door opened into a tiny living room which, in another life, might contain a couch or a television set, but here it just contained pillows.

  “What’s with this place and pillows?” I asked. “Are ya’ll opposed to chairs or something?”

  Tink laughed.

  “You’ll get used to it,” she promised me, but I didn’t think that I would. More importantly, I didn’t think that I should have to. I was used to a certain level of comfort at home, and that included chairs and couches.

  There was a huge window that took up and entire wall. The window was floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, and it overlooked the nearby forest.

  “Wow,” I said, stepping over some of the pillows. I walked to the window and looked out. Placing my hands against the panes, I stared at the outside world. It was beautiful. Perfect. It was like something from a fairytale storybook, which I guess was the entire point.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” A voice said from behind us. I turned around to see a tall girl leaning against the wall. She had her hands crossed over her chest and she had a big smile on her face. Her dark brown hair fell in curls and landed just below her shoulders. She had bright eyes, and she seemed nice.

  “Hi,” I said. “Are you one of my roommates?”

  “Well, that depends,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “If you’re the new girl moving in today.”

  “That’s me.”

  “Then yes,” she said. “I am.”

  She crossed the room and held out her hand.

  “I’m Jessica,” I said.

  “Belle.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  “The pleasure’s mine.”

  “You guys are so weird,” a voice from the main doorway said. I looked over to see two different girls standing there. Both of them had blonde hair. One of them had hair that was pinned up in twin buns on the top of her head. The other girl’s hair was long and fell over her shoulders.

  “Uh, sorry,” I said. I wasn’t trying to be weird, but I was also totally lost. Damn, I’d be happy when this was all over and I knew who I was living with and I knew who I was supposed to be friends with, and I knew how this entire thing was supposed to work. As it was, nothing really made much sense and I still kind of felt like I was drowning in a world I didn’t understand.

  I stood there staring at them, and both girls seemed to be looking me up and down.

  “Hey,” Belle said, motioning to me. “This is our new suitemate.”

  “Is that right?” One of the girls said. She walked into the room and circled me like a vulture trying to decide where to land. I didn’t really like how close she was getting to me.

  “Uh, yeah,” I managed to say.

  Tinkerbell just rolled her eyes.

  “Leave her alone,” she said. “She’s new. Just be nice, okay? Don’t prank her. Don’t tease her. Just help her around.”

  The girls laughed and shook their heads.

  “Okay, fairy, run along,” the girl with the twin buns said.

  Tinkerbell just glared at her. I had to give her some credit. For being small and decidedly much more petite than the other girls, she had guts. If nothing else, she was a brave little thing.

  “What’s your name?” The girl with the longer hair asked.

  “Jessica.”

  “I’m Stacy. That’s Wolf.”

  “Wolf?”

  “It’s my last name,” the girl with buns waved me off. “My first name is something stupid and boring. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well, nice to meet you. Uh, which room is mine?” I asked. They all pointed to the second door down a little hallway.

  “You’ll be my roommate,” Belle said. “Which is fantastic! It’s been lonely in there and I’m tired of hearing Stacy and Wolf up talking all night.”

  “We don’t talk all night.”

  “You talk most of it,” she said.

  “Well, we have a lot to say,” Wolf shrugged. She didn’t seem the least worried about what Belle thought.

  “Mind if I look?” I asked.

  “Go on ahead,” Belle said. “Your stuff came earlier. I didn’t touch it.”

  “Thanks.”

  I motioned for Tinkerbell to follow me into the little room. We stepped inside and I looked around. I wasn’t sure what I expected, but this wasn’t it. There were no bunkbeds or beds at all. In fact, there were two purple hammocks hanging from the ceiling: one on each side of the room. Two trunks sat on either side of the shared space, along with – I sighed – more pillows.

  “The pillows again,” I rolled my eyes.

  “They’re comfortable,” Wolf said from the doorway.

  “I guess, but I mean, where do you study?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Belle said. She walked to the center of the wall between the two hammocks and pushed a little button I hadn’t noticed. A little table came down, folding itself out of the wall.

  “There you go,” Stacy said. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “I guess not,” I said. It didn’t look like it was going to be the most comfortable place to study, but it would work.

  But still...hammocks?

  I must have looked confused because the girls all started laughing.

  “Don’t worry,” Tink said. “You’ll get used to the bed.”

  “That’s not a bed,” I pointed out. “Besides, how do I get in it?”

  Again, they laughed. I wasn’t embarrassed, but it was so weird. Coming to the school suddenly seemed really, really overwhelming, and I was hit with the urge to just turn and run out of the room. After all, what could really happen to me? Nothing. Nothing could happen if I just totally bailed because it was obvious that I just did not belong here.

  These girls were experts.

  They’d probably grown up in magical families and they’d probably learned everything they needed to know about surviving in Magic World.

  Me?

  I was a newbie.

  An outside.

  And now, I kind of felt like a fraud.

  I looked around the little room once more and I sighed.

  It was going to be a long semester.

  Chapter 3

  My class schedule was the most confusing thing I’d ever seen.

  I stared at the scroll in front of me. Yes, all of my classes were clearly labeled in big, flowing script on a scroll.

  It didn’t feel magical.

  It felt like a nightmare.

  Who wrote in cursive anymore?

  Hadn’t this school heard of computers?

  I sighed as I shook my head and squinted, trying to read where I was supposed to go next. I’d been late to my first two classes and I had a feeling that if I wasn’t careful, my third class was going to be just as terrible.

  Twisted Tales 1 was my third class of the day. From the scrawl on my scroll, I thought it was supposed to be on the first floor of the main castle building, but I couldn’t seem to find room 111 anywhere. I sighed, shaking my head. I gripped the scroll tighter and kept walking.

  Students pushed past me, scurrying to their next classes. I saw a guy standing beside a door. He was tall, dark, and desperately handsome, and I knew there was no way he’d ever look twice at a weird girl like me. Normally, I’d stay away from boys like him. I’d let them do their own thing and have their own fun and I’d just lurk in the shadows with my books and my drawings.

  But I needed to fi
nd my class.

  And everyone else looked busy.

  “Hey, uh, excuse me,” I said, going up to him. The boy had long, dark hair, and he looked up at me sharply, as though he hadn’t expected to be interrupted. He shoved something in his pocket – a wand, maybe – and finally looked at my face.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but can you tell me where Room 111 is?”

  He raised an eyebrow, and yeah, it was a perfectly-shaped one. I was definitely going to be smitten with this one. Oops.

  “I’m new,” I said, as though that explained it all.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re in the wrong building.”

  “I am?” I looked down at the scroll again. All of my other classes so far had been in the main castle, but Enchanted Academy did have a huge campus. It was possible I just didn’t know where I was going.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Just go back out through the doors, take a right, and then go straight. It’s the little pink building.” He smiled. “You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “What was your name?”

  “Just call me Beast,” he chuckled, and then he turned and sauntered off down the hall.

  And yes, he was super, super cute.

  And yes, he was totally and completely out of my league.

  Whatever.

  I headed down the hall, out the side exit, and turned right. I hurried, not wanting to be late for yet another class. If I was late again, there was going to be hell to pay. I could already tell. The problem was that I was already the new kid. I was already strange. I was already out of place. I didn’t really want to be late on top of being awkward and weird.

  That was just...super not cool.

  I hurried down the little path. I wanted to take time to smell the literal flowers that lined it. They were huge. Some of them looked like giant sunflowers, but the other ones were more like oversized daisies. I even saw a couple of roses that were, seriously, no joke, as big as me.