Fairest of All (Whatever After #1)
Read Fairest of All (Whatever After #1) Online
Authors: Sarah Mlynowski
o
nce upon a time my life was normal.
Then the mirror in our basement ate us.
Do you think I’m joking? Do you think I’m making this up? You do, don’t you?
You’re thinking, Um, Abby, mirrors don’t usually go ahead and slurp people up. Mirrors just hang on the wall and reflect stuff.
Well, you’re wrong. So very WRONG.
Everything I’m going to tell you is the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I’m not making anything up. And I’m not a liar, or a crazy person who thinks she’s telling the truth but secretly isn’t. I am, in fact, a very logical person. Fair, too. I have to be, since I’m going to be a judge when I grow up. Well, first I’m going to be a lawyer, and then I’m going to be a judge, because you have to be a lawyer first. That’s the rule.
But yeah. I am an extremely logical, extremely practical, and extremely
un
-crazy ten-year-old girl whose life went completely berserk after her parents forced her to move to Smithville.
Still don’t believe me? You will when you hear all the facts. You will when you hear the whole story.
Let me start at the beginning.
t
he moment the recess bell rings, the kids in my new fifth-grade class decide they want to play tag. We
eenie meenie miney
, and somehow I’m it. Me, the new kid. Great.
Not.
I cover my eyes to give the other kids a ten-second head start (okay, five), then run toward the fence. Straightaway, I spot Penny, who is very tall. Well, taller than me. Although most people are taller than me. She’s also wearing a bright orange sweatshirt that’s hard to miss. I don’t know all the kids’ names, but Penny’s is easy to remember because she always wears super-high ponytails and I just think, Penny’s pony, Penny’s pony, Penny’s pony.
I dash over and tap her on the elbow. “You’re it, Penny’s pony! I mean, Penny.”
She looks at me strangely. “Um, no. I’m frozen.”
Huh? It’s not that cold. Plus, her orange sweater looks really warm.
“What?” I ask.
Penny wrinkles her forehead. “You tagged me. I’m frozen.”
“Noooooo,” I say slowly. “I was it. I tagged
you
, so now
you’re
it. Now you have to tag someone else to make them be it. That’s why the game is called it.” I blink. “I mean, tag.”
“The it person has to tag
everyone
,” Penny says. Her tone suggests she knows way more about tag than I do, and my cheeks heat up. Because she doesn’t. “When you’re tagged, you freeze, and the very last person tagged is the next it. It’s called
freeze
tag. Got it?”
The LAST person to get tagged gets to be it? If you’re the last person tagged, that means you’re the best player. If you’re the best player, you should get to do a happy dance while everyone throws confetti on you. You should not have to be the new it, because being it is not a reward.
My heart sinks. If I have to be it until every last fifth grader is tagged or frozen, this is going to be a very, very, VERY long game.
Here’s the thing. I am trying to have a fresh start and be flexible about my new school. But how can I when the people here do EVERYTHING wrong?
Please allow me to present my case.
- Everyone in Smithville calls Coke, Pepsi, and Orange Crush
soda
. Ridiculous, right?
Pop
is a much better name.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Coke
pops
on your tongue. It doesn’t
soda
on your tongue.- The people here do not know how to make a peanut butter and banana sandwich. The right way is to slice the banana up and then press the slices one by one into the peanut butter, preferably in neat and orderly rows. But the kids in my new school mash the bananas, mix a spoonful of peanut butter into the mashed bananas, and then spread the whole gloppy mess on their bread. Why oh why would they do that?
- And now, instead of tag, they want to play “Ooo, Let’s All Be Frozen Statues While Abby Runs Around and Around and Around.”
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury:
I do not want to call pop
soda
.
I do not want to eat gloppy banana mush.
I do not want to be it.
“I’m pretty sure the way I play is the right way,” I say, my throat tightening. I’m right. I am.
“No,” she states. “I’m frozen. And you’d better get going, or it’ll just get harder.”
Tears burn the backs of my eyes. I don’t want things to get harder. I want things to be the way they used to be. Normal!
“No thanks,” I say in a careful voice that’s meant not to let my tears out but might sound a little squished. Or prissy. Or spoiled-brat-y, possibly.
“You’re quitting?” Penny asks. Her eyebrows fly up. “Just because you didn’t get your way?”
“No! I’m just … tired.” I’m not even lying. I
am
tired. I’m tired of everything being different. Why can’t things be like they used to be?
I go to Mrs. Goldman, the teacher on playground duty. I ask her if I can go to the library.
“You mean the media room, hon?” she asks.
I shrink even smaller. They don’t even call a library a library here?
But the second I step into the
media room
, the world gets a little better. I take a deep breath.
Ahhhh.
Maybe in Smithville a room filled with books is called a media room, but it smells just like the library in my old, normal school. Musty. Dusty. Papery.
The books on the shelves of the school library — media room,
argh
— are books I recognize. They’re books I’ve gobbled up many times before. Many,
many
times before.
My shoulders sag with relief, because guess what? No matter how many times you read them, stories always stay the same.
I get my love of books from my nana. She used to read to me all the time. She’s a literature professor at a university in Chicago, the normal place where we used to live.
I feel a pain in my gut when I think about my old house. My faraway friends. My nana. Peanut butter and banana sandwiches made the
right
way.
And then I shake off those heavy feelings and run my finger along the row of books. My finger stops. It rests on a collection called
Fairy Tales
, where good is good, and bad is bad, and logical, practical fifth-grade girls never get stuck being it forever.
My chest loosens. Perfect.
t
hat night I’m dreaming about my old friends. We’re playing tag the
right
way when someone calls my name.
“Abby! Abby! Abby!”
I half open one eye. It’s Jonah, my seven-year-old brother, so I pull my bedspread over my head. Sure, I love the kid, but I’m a growing girl. I need my sleep.
Jonah yanks down the covers, presses his mouth to my ear, and says, “Abby, Abby, Abby, Abby, Abby, ABBY!”
I groan. “Jonah! I’m asleep!”
“Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
Does he have to repeat everything a million times? There’s a fine line between being persistent and being annoying.
“Go back to bed,” I order. I have been told that I can be bossy, but come on. It’s the middle of the night. Plus, it’s my job as an older sister to boss Jonah around. I’m only performing my sisterly duty.
It’s also my job to make sure he eats his vegetables.
At dinner, I caught him hiding his broccoli in his sock. So I told on him. Then I felt guilty and gave him half my chocolate cookie.
“But the mirror is hissing,” he says now.
I squint at him.
What?
I don’t even know what to do with that sentence. “Jonah, mirrors don’t hiss. They don’t make any sounds at all. Unless you break them.” Uh-oh. I sit up like a jack-in-the-box. “Did you break a mirror? That’s bad luck!”
“I don’t think so.” He does this weird twisty thing he sometimes does with his lips. “Well, maybe.”
“Jonah! Which mirror?” I swing my legs over the side of my bed. It better not be my pink hand mirror, the one I once caught him using to examine his toes.
“The big one downstairs.”
“Are you kidding me? The creepy one in the basement?” I realize I’m shrieking, and I lower my voice so I won’t wake my parents. “Why were you in the basement so late at night?” There’s something odd about the mirror in our basement. It seems like it’s watching me wherever I go. Like the eyes in that painting the
Mona Lisa
. But of course that makes no sense. Mirrors can’t watch you. They’re not alive.
He shrugs. “I was exploring.”
I glance at my alarm clock. “It’s eleven fifty-two!” My wrist feels heavy and I realize I forgot to take my watch off before I went to sleep. I press the light. It says 11:52, too.
Jonah shrugs again.
Jonah is always exploring. It’s amazing we’re even related, really; we’re so different. I like reading. He likes adventures. I like cuddling in my bed with a book. He’d rather be rock climbing. Seriously. Mom takes him to rock-climbing classes at the Y on Sundays.
Patiently, I take a breath. I ask, “Did you see green?” because when Jonah was three, Dad got him a clock that changes colors. All night it stays red, and then at seven
A
.
M
. it turns green. Jonah is supposed to stay in bed until the clock turns green.
But Jonah isn’t great at following instructions. Or colors.
“I know how to tell the time,” Jonah says, all huffy.
“Then why did you wake me up?”
“Because I saw purple, too, and I wanted to show you,” he says, then waves at me to follow him. “Come on, come on!”
Huh? He saw purple?
I sigh. Crumbs. I get out of bed, step into my striped slippers, and follow him.
“Wait!” I say, spotting his bare feet. I steer him to his room, which is next to mine. “You need shoes, mister. I don’t want you cutting your foot on a piece of broken mirror glass.”
“But there’s no glass.”
He broke a mirror and there’s no glass? I point to his closet. “Shoes!” It’s my job to protect all of him, even his smelly feet.
Jonah’s room is bright, because of the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to his ceiling and his
red
clock. Not purple. Red. Jonah grabs his sneakers from the floor of his closet and shoves them on. “Are you happy now? Let’s go, let’s go!”
“Shush!” I order. Mom and Dad’s door is closed, but their room is just down the hall. Mom will not be happy if we wake her up. (She already got annoyed at me once today when I told her she was six minutes and forty-five seconds late picking me up at school. I didn’t mean to make her feel bad. But I have a supercool timer on my watch, and if I’m not going to use it to tell her how late she is, then what am I going to use it for?)
We slink down the first flight of stairs. They creak. A lot. Finally, I reach to open the door to the basement.
I freeze. I freeze as if, well, I’ve been tagged. Because the truth is I am possibly not the bravest girl in the world. And it’s late. And we’re going to the basement.
I prefer reading about adventures, not having them.
“What’s wrong?” Jonah asks, sliding in front of me and down the stairs. “Come on, come on, come on!”
I take a big, deep breath, turn on the basement light, and close the door behind me.