The Beauty Read online

  “What made you decide to take the class?”

  “My mother made me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “What’s your mom like?”

  “Like any normal mom, I guess.”

  “Friendly? Bakes a lot of cookies?”

  “Actually, yeah,” Wolf shrugged. “She’s pretty cool.”

  What was that like? I couldn’t help but feel just the tiniest, smallest bit of jealousy at that. It seemed like a fairytale story. To be able to come home after a long day at school and just hang out and eat cookies with your family?

  That sounded more magical to me than the fire balls I’d seen my savior making earlier that day. That was the kind of magic I wanted. I had promised myself that if I ever had a family of my own – and that was a big if – that I’d make it special for my kids.

  I’d make sure to give them something wonderful they could remember for always.

  If I had a family, I’d always have cookies baking or pies on the table and I’d have lots and lots and lots of delicious food that anyone could just help themselves to. My kids would never be hungry, and they’d never be alone.

  I noticed Wolf looking at me.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she shook her head. “You just kind of spaced out there for a little bit. Everything okay?”

  “What? Yeah, totally,” I waved her off. “Everything is just fine.”

  “Okay, because you’re creeping me out a little bit.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So? What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What’s your mom like?”

  Ah, yes, the inevitable “What’s your mother like?”

  This was a question I’d grown to dread because it was something everyone always seemed to ask me. What was my mother like? Well, to be honest, I didn’t really know. I’d been orphaned as a kid. I’d been cast aside by the world. My mother and father had both died when I was really small and then I’d gone to live with an aunt for a few years. When she died, I’d gone into the foster care system and the rest was history.

  My foster parents were very normal and very polite and very happy when I was accepted to boarding school and left without a backwards glance.

  But was I ready to tell Wolf all of that?

  She was my suitemate. She wasn’t my therapist. She wasn’t even really my friend. I kind of hoped that we’d get there one day, but as of today? She knew nothing about me.

  And I kind of wanted to keep it that way.

  I had two choices.

  I could be honest, or I could lie.

  I could tell her the truth and face the consequences, or I could lie, and things could continue on.

  If I was truthful, then I knew what would happen. It was the same thing that always happened. She would look at me and pretend to understand, but her eyes would be clouded with pity. That always happened. People looked at me, a normal girl, and they thought, “Man, I feel sorry for her.”

  And I didn’t want sorry.

  I didn’t want to feel that pressure to be a certain amount of sadness.

  I mean, I missed my parents. Who wouldn’t? But I didn’t like the fact that if I tried to tell anyone where I had come from – where I had really come from – that their reaction would be to feel remorseful.

  No, I didn’t want Wolf’s pity.

  Lying won out easily.

  “She’s not much of a cook,” I said with a little smile. I wondered what my real mom had been like. Maybe she had been a cook. Maybe she’d been an incredible cook. There was a chance, really, that she’d been fantastic. Maybe she’d loved hanging out around the kitchen counter, munching on snacks, and making delicious treats.

  I didn’t know.

  And I’d never know.

  Wolf just shrugged.

  “Well,” she said happily. “That’s okay. Not everyone has to like the same stuff, right?”

  “Right.”

  I watched her for a few more minutes as she silently worked on her project. After awhile, Stacy and Belle came back to the room. Stacy looked tired, and after a brief greeting, went straight to bed for the night. Belle just shrugged and sat down with us.

  “Long day, huh?” I asked.

  “Yeah, Stacy isn’t the biggest fan of our class load this year,” Belle said.

  “Is the second year harder than the first?” I asked. As far as I knew, we were all sophomores. We were in some of the same classes, but some of my schedule was definitely freshman-level stuff. I’d probably have to take summer classes or double up on classes at some point if I wanted to graduate on time.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe,” Belle said. “Last year was really fun and everything felt new.”

  “This year it’s all just kind of running together,” Wolf agreed. She reached for some peanuts and sprinkled them into the cauldron.

  “Peanuts?”

  “Hey, the recipe calls for them.”

  “What kind of recipe is that?” Belle leaned over and sniffed at the cauldron. I couldn’t tell if she thought it smelled good or bad. She was a very polite person, from what I had gathered, and she kept her face really neutral.

  Wolf just shrugged.

  “It’s whatever the teacher wants it to be.”

  “Who do you have?”

  “Codsworth,” Wolf said.

  “Ew,” Belle said.

  It caught me off-guard because as far as I could remember, it was the only negative thing that had ever come out of her mouth.

  “Ew?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why ew?”

  “Codsworth is just really intense,” Wolf explained.

  “Yeah, he’s not really mean,” Belle said. “But his classes can be really stressful.”

  “He loves magic,” Wolf said.

  “And he wants other people to love it, too.”

  “The result,” Wolf stirred her cauldron a little bit faster. “Is that his classes are an emotional roller-coaster.”

  “No matter what kind of mood you’re in when you show up, you’ll be stressed and tired by the time you leave,” Belle explained.

  “You know Stacy over there?” Wolf jerked her head toward Stacy’s bedroom, where we could already hear snoring.

  “Yeah.”

  “He was her last class of the day,” Wolf explained. “And he’s harder on second year students because, in his words, we should know this stuff already.”

  “That doesn’t really seem fair. How are you supposed to know stuff you’ve never been taught?”

  “Ah, the age-old question, isn’t it?” Wolf asked.

  Then she shook her head, leaned back, and kept stirring using just her finger. I had a feeling that she’d use her mind to control the little stirrer-stick if she could.

  “What are you going to do tonight?” I asked Belle. She hadn’t mentioned homework yet, nor had sheindicated that she had any other plans. It was close to dinner-time, and I planned to head to the cafeteria to grab something to eat in a little while. There was a huge cafeteria in the main castle where we were able to eat three meals a day. That was all included with our tuition; however, for students who wanted sweet treats, there was also a little on-campus shop where we could buy extra things we needed.

  “She has a date,” Wolf said without looking up.

  Belle nodded.

  “A date? Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  “Nope.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Nope.”

  “First time going out?”

  “Yep.”

  Belle smiled at me, and I had the feeling that this was something really special to her. Maybe it was even private. I couldn’t tell. I hadn’t ever really dated anyone, so I really didn’t know how to feel about it.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” Wolf said. “She’s private about her dating life.”

  “You’re one to talk,” Bel
le pointed out.

  “We all have our reasons,” Wolf said. “And nobody’s teasing you. Do you need help getting ready?”

  “I probably should get ready, huh?” She said. “Well, I’m pretty sure I can handle it, but I’ll let you know if I need help.”

  Belle headed into our shared bedroom and I heard her rustling around, presumably looking for the perfect first-date outfit.

  “Where are they going to go?” I asked. We weren’t supposed to leave the campus. In fact, as far as I could tell, no one could leave the campus. At least not without being detected. There were magical wards and boundary lines in place to keep the school hidden from evil powers and villains. When I’d first arrived, I’d been warned that some of the boundary lines had attached alarm systems. I didn’t know anything about them, and I didn’t know how they worked, but I knew that those weren’t things I wanted to mess with.

  “Uh,” Wolf said. She looked up at me and cocked her head. I knew exactly why she was looking at me like that. She was trying to decide if I was trustworthy. That was her, “Can I trust you with my secret?” kind of look.

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly. I hadn’t earned their trust yet. I was new, and I was an outsider, and if they were going to be breaking rules, they probably didn’t want too many people to know.

  “It’s nothing personal.”

  “I get it.”

  I didn’t want to go into the bedroom and bother Belle when she was getting ready, but staying in the living room seemed like it was going to be kind of awkward, so I stood up, stretched, and looked around for a second.

  “I’m going to go grab some dinner,” I said. Then I left the suite quickly before anyone could say anything, and I headed down the hallway. One side of the hall was doors and the other simply had a bannister that overlooked the rest of the building. It wasn’t necessarily a hallway, per say, in the traditional sense of the word, but it felt like one.

  I walked along and trailed my hand on the wrought-iron railing. It really didn’t offer that much protection. If someone were to mess around and slip, they would fall down. Were there magical barriers in place to protect students? I wasn’t sure. I looked around. Then I walked around the floor, checking out the different artwork that hung on the walls.

  Everything looked like it was straight out of a fairytale. Some of the pictures had princesses and knights. Others had fairy godmothers and magical trees and dragons. I loved all of it. Maybe it was because I’d never grown up in a home where there were fairytales or storybooks, but to me, everything about this place felt magical.

  I walked around and noticed a door that didn’t have a number beside it. That meant it wasn’t a dorm room or a suite for one of the students. Hmm. Strange. I walked over and pulled on the door. Nothing happened. I tried again. Still nothing.

  A locked door shouldn’t bother me, but the staircase was on the opposite end of the building, and this door was unmarked. Maybe it was a sort of storage closet.

  Maybe it was a secret entrance to the upper floors.

  Tinkerbell had told me that I couldn’t go any higher than this floor because the top levels were forbidden. I didn’t like the sound of that. Did anyone, really? Nobody wanted to go to a creepy school where certain floors were just totally and completely off-limits.

  My curiosity was flaring up and I wanted, more than anything at that moment, to know what was behind secret door number one.

  I pulled again, but nothing happened. There was a charm pad lock beside the door, which meant there was definitely a way to open it, but I needed the right charm, and something told me that mine wouldn’t work.

  Oh well, I’d try anyway.

  Years in foster care had taught me that no lock was ever really unbreakable.

  All you needed was the right key.

  I held up my charm to the little metal disk beside the door, but as I suspected, nothing happened. I tried a few times and finally decided to give up before anyone came out and noticed me being weird. I didn’t really want to draw anymore attention to myself. Not on my first day, anyway, so I kept walking around, looking at the artwork, and thinking about the different decorative choices people had implemented. My own room’s door was pretty plain and ordinary. Maybe I’d talk with the other girls about hanging up some pictures or something. We could put our mark on it.

  “Hey, new kid,” someone said. I looked over and saw a familiar face watching me. It was a girl who lived a few doors down from me. She had bright red hair that was long and flowed over her shoulders. Her dark green dress looked a little out of place from what her friends were wearing: normal school uniforms.

  “That’s me,” I said drily, holding up my hand awkwardly. Her friends just watched me. I couldn’t remember her name and I knew she sure didn’t know mine. Her roommates were all very tall and lanky and also had long, flowing hair. Their dresses made them look like they were going to some sort of ball or prom, but from what I had gathered, that was just how they dressed when they weren’t going to class.

  “Want to go get dinner?” She asked with a smile.

  “Really?”

  “Sure,” she shrugged. “Why not?”

  Her friends looked just as nonchalant about the entire thing, but I took a look down at my normal clothing. I was in my school uniform, which looked wildly plain and ordinary compared to their dresses.

  “I should probably change first.”

  “You’re fine,” one of the girls said.

  “Yeah,” another added. “Seriously.”

  “Let’s go,” said the third girl. “I’m starving.”

  With a nod, the redhead looped her arm through mine and we started walking toward the staircase.

  “I’m Ariel,” she said. “Remind me of your name.”

  “Jessica,” I said.

  “So, how was your first day, Jessica?”

  “It was...”

  How could I put it into words? I mean, so many different things had happened. I’d met a lot of different and interesting students. I’d taken lots of different classes. I’d explored the school grounds. I’d met a boy.

  A good-looking boy.

  A kind-of-totally-completely-a-jerk-sort-of-boy.

  “Fine,” I finally said, and Ariel just laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’ll get used to things soon.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “Did you have a hard time getting used to Enchanted Academy when you started?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Well, maybe I did, but I’m a junior now, so I can’t really remember.”

  “What about you all?” I looked over at her roommates.

  One of the girls had dark skin and brown, curly hair. Her face lit up at my question, and she nodded.

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, laughing. “Ariel can say whatever she wants, but life wasn’t exactly easy for me when I first started.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I’m not from around here,” she said.

  “No one is, are they?” I asked. Enchanted Academy was located dead center in the middle of this huge, ancient forest. As far as I could tell, there was nothing around for miles. I’d been driven here by a school driver who transported new scholarship kids. Other students had come by taxi, by scooter, and a few even came in a limousine. Either way, it was about an hour by car to the nearest big city and at least twenty minutes by car to the nearest little town.

  “Not so much,” she said. “But I’m not from a magical place at all.”

  “So, you grew up around normal humans.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Me too.”

  “I know,” the girl nodded.

  “What’s your name?” I asked her.

  “Jade,” she said. “And that’s Britney and Eleanor.”

  “Hello,” the girls said in unison.

  “Hey.”

  “I think what Jade is trying to say,” Ariel said. “Is that she knows what it’s like to be ne
w and you don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “No?”

  “Nah,” said Britney. She pushed her dark brown hair back and smiled at me as we walked down the stairs to the first floor. “I mean, things can be a little overwhelming at first, but I promise that you’ll get used to them.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “There really is a lot to understand. I mean, I kept getting lost for classes today.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I shook my head. “I felt really ridiculous, you know?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Jade said kindly. “Things are always hardest when you first start. By the end of the year, you’re going to be a superstar.”

  “Yeah,” Eleanor added. “You won’t have to worry about a single thing. You’ll be zipping around like it’s nothing.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and I meant it. Somehow, the girls had helped me realize that everything really would be okay. I might be the new kid, but that didn’t mean that I was destined to a life of loneliness or weirdness, right?

  We made it to the first floor, walked across the little lobby, and went to the main castle. When we reached the cafeteria, dinner was in full swing. The tables were packed and the buffet line, which was filled with all sorts of meats and fruits and vegetables, was totally full of people.

  “Guess we got down here a little late,” Ariel laughed. “Back of the line, ladies.”

  We headed over to the end of the line and stood patiently waiting our turn. As we did, I looked around the room. I saw a few familiar faces and people I’d met in different classes. Everyone had to eat, after all. We had an hour and a half for dinner, so it wasn’t like anyone had to rush to get here on time, but I was a little surprised to recognize so many faces at once.

  Maybe this was a good thing.

  Maybe it meant that I really was figuring my way around the school already.

  I’d done it, after all.

  I’d succeeded.

  I’d survived my first day at a new school and nothing terrible awful had happened. After all, a lot more could have gone wrong than actually did. I was looking across the room, seeing who else was there, when I caught someone’s eye.

  Beast was there.

  He was surrounded by friends who were all laughing and talking, but he was looking at me.