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  “What are yours?” I asked Tinkerbell. “Can you shapeshift?”

  “I...well...I...no,” she said, obviously caught off guard by my weirdly-specific question. “I can’t shapeshift.”

  “Can you become invisible?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then what can you do?”

  “I’m a fairy,” she said.

  “What? No!”

  “Yeah,” she nodded, and for a second, she looked pretty happy about it.

  “A fairy, huh? I’ve never met a fairy.”

  “We’re not as common as we like to pretend,” she shrugged. I had a lot of questions about fairies, but I tried to hold myself back as much as possible. Tinkerbell was the first person who had really talked to me since my arrival, and I didn’t want to do anything to make her uncomfortable or to freak her out.

  We kept walking away from the main castle and towards some of the smaller buildings. We passed one that was obviously a greenhouse of sorts. Plants and trees were practically crawling out of the top of the building. Rows of windows revealed flowers and herbs and all sorts of other things. I looked away before I could get too distracted. I was here to make friends and learn to fit in: not go fangirling over some weird plants.

  But I made a mental note to go back later because plants were pretty cool, and I wanted to see what was growing there. I wasn’t sure if any of my classes were going to utilize plants in them, but maybe we’d learn about using different things in potions.

  We walked a little bit more, and I looked over at Tinkerbell. She was very pretty and she seemed a little quiet. Maybe she was a little shy. I wasn’t sure. She smiled as she looked around at the buildings we passed, and I could tell that she was proud of the school. That was awesome. It made me think that maybe Enchanted Academy was going to be a pretty fun place to spend my high school years.

  “So, what are a fairy’s special abilities?” I asked. “You can fly, right?”

  “Well, I have wings,” she said slowly.

  “But you can’t fly?”

  She shook her head, and I realized suddenly that this was a sort of sore spot for Tinkerbell.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “Don’t mind me putting my foot in my mouth. This is all new to me, okay?” I searched for the right words, hoping I was expressing myself correctly. The reality was that I didn’t really know what to say to Tink or how to say it.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  We passed a group of guys who were heading toward the main building. One of them blatantly looked Tink up and down, and she shuddered in response, but kept going. She didn’t pay him anymore attention. She didn’t look back at him or stop or even acknowledge the fact that he was sort-of leering at her.

  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 almost taller than the castle itself. It stretched up over the tops of the trees and into the sky. The reality was that it was probably just a normal-sized building, but I’d spent my entire life in Millbrook. It wasn’t like I’d ever seen anything like this before. I certainly hadn’t seen anything this magical-looking before.

  Vines swept over the sides of the dormitory, giving it an enchanted look. The building itself was designed with a sort of lovely grace in mind, and the front doors had rounded tops and roses that wrapped over the tops.

  “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.” She gestured up and I squinted. The top floors really weren’t so high after all. Ten floors wasn’t so far off the ground. The top floors didn’t appear to have any windows, but from what I could see, the vines continued to cover the entire exterior of the building.

  “Why not?” I asked. It seemed strange to have so much extra space that wasn’t being used. Then again, I knew I had a lot to learn about Enchanted Academy.

  She shrugged and paused a moment. Maybe she didn’t know, either. I mean, the space could have been used for anything: storage, maybe. Or perhaps the floors had been damaged and the school hadn’t repaired them yet. There really wasn’t any way to tell.

  “They’re forbidden.”

  Her answer was simple, succinct, and it seemed as though she thought it was completely obvious and entirely normal.

  Forbidden?

  Tinkerbell walked ahead of me into the building, but I stayed outside for a minute to look around and take in my surroundings.

  What an interesting word choice.

  Forbidden.

  Really?

  This was the type of school that had forbidden places?

  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 incredible. I thought it was bigger than the boys’ dormitory, too, but I couldn’t really 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 anything 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 bustling with people and completely fantastic. Once more, I stopped and just looked around. Tinkerbell laughed, but gave me a minute to take it all in. I was grateful for her patience bec
ause I had a feeling that this was only the beginning of the wonderful and incredible things I was going to see during my time at the school.

  A few butterflies flew past, moving to land on a patch of flowers that was growing up out of the carpet in the corner. That’s right: flowers. I shook my head quickly, trying to clear it, but they were still there when I looked again.

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

  “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. One girl was laying among the flowers and the others were just dancing and talking with one another.

  “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.” She shivered, and I looked over at Snow White. What was so bad about her? Tinkerbell was obviously uncomfortable with her, but I couldn’t quite tell why. I wanted to ask, but Tink shook her head before I could open my mouth. “Come on,” she said, and that sort of settled it. I could ask later, maybe.

  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. The stairs led up to every floor and then continued up. The bedrooms were along the outside of the building, so the main space on each floor 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. Well, or magical. I’m not really sure. Either way, it’s kind of cool.”

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

  “I suppose. As long as nobody falls over the railings, I think the school is happy.”

  She started walking up the stairs and I followed. My room was high. I was on the 8th floor, which was the top, and I wasn’t sure that I was happy about that. 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? After we passed by the third floor, my legs were starting to burn. Okay, so being a non-magical person was going to suck just a little bit. How did everyone else cope with the pain?

  “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 motioning to the door. “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. There were pillows of all shapes, sizes, and colors, and they were spread out across the living room floor. Obviously, they were for sitting, because there was no other furniture in the room.

  “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 and tables. You know: normal human things. The pillow thing was just another strange element of life at Enchanted Academy that I’d have to guess used to, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to or not.

  There was a huge window that took up an entire wall. The window was floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, and it overlooked the nearby forest. It was green as far as the eye could see, and it was lovely. In fact, the window scene looked almost like a painting instead of an actual window.

  “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. Off in the distance, there were mountains, but I was too busy looking at the greenery to see anything else.

  “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, at least from first glance. Also, she was beautiful: like, really beautiful. I suddenly felt entirely self-conscious about myself, which wasn’t really fair.

  “Hi,” I said, choking down my own insecurities. “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.

  “I’m Belle, but most everyone calls me Beauty.”

  Ah, that explained it.

  It was a fitting nickname for a lovely person. Strangely enough, she didn’t seem smug or over-the-top about her appearance. I didn’t get any sort of a mean-girl vibe from her. No, if anything, Beauty just seemed...well, normal. How was that possible?

  “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. Most importantly, she didn’t leave. She stayed put, and I was glad. I didn’t know if Tinkerbell and I were going to be best friends, but we definitely got along, and she was certainly nice. She didn’t have to spend her time showing me around, but she’d gone out of her way to do it, and I totally appreciated that.