My Very UnFairy Tale Life
Read My Very UnFairy Tale Life Online
Authors: Anna Staniszewski
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Anna Staniszewski
Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by JenniferJackman.com
Cover images © Ocean/Corbis; Lobke Peers/Shutterstock.com; Paul Aniszewski/Shutterstock.com; Makarova Viktoria (Vikarus)/Shutterstock.com; kaarsten/Shutterstock.com
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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systemsâexcept in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviewsâwithout permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.
Source of Production: Webcom, Toronto, Canada
Date of Production: September 2011
Run Number: 16090
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
âAlbert Einstein
Chapter 1
You know all those stories that claim fairies cry sparkle tears and elves travel by rainbow? They're lies. All lies. No one tells you the truth until it's too late. And then all you can do is run like crazy while a herd of unicorns tries to kill you.
Of course, I had no idea what I'd done to get the unicorns all riled up. So much for having a magical guide to help me with my adventures. Anthony was about as useful as a bent thumbtack. Still, I needed his magic if I was going to get out of this mission alive.
“Anthony!” I shrieked as I darted down a hill and away from the stampeding unicorns. “Anthony, help me!” Where was that carrot-headed gnome?
The unicorns' glittering horns were right behind me. Another minute and I'd be a marshmallow on a stick.
“All right, Jenny,” I said to myself. “You can do this.” I forced my burning legs to speed up. If I could just get far enough away, I might be able to hide.
I dashed behind a tree and pressed up against the trunk. A second later, the herd tore past at hurricane speed. But I wasn't safe for long. The unicorns screeched to a stop and whipped around to face me. Their golden eyes were tiny slits.
“Look,” I said, gripping the tree trunk for support. “I was just trying to teach you guys how to share. If you want to keep fighting over that rainbow, that's your business.”
The unicorn leader stepped forward. His horn was a full foot taller than all the others, and his head was decorated with tiny, bell-like flowers.
“Can't we all just get along?” I said. Cheesy sayings always popped out of my mouth during adventures, even when I didn't want them to.
“Nay,” said the unicorn.
“What?”
“Nay!”
“Is that like a horse neigh or a âno' nay?”
“Naaay!” the unicorn sputtered.
I fought back a hysterical giggle. Anthony had warned me that unicorns couldn't produce human speech, even though they could understand it. Still, I couldn't get over the fact that these mythical creatures could sound so much likeâ¦well, like regular horses.
“I already tried to explain to you. I'm an adventurer,” I told them. “I was sent here to help you. But clearly you don't want my help. So if you don't mind, I'd really like to get home now. My aunt's probably worried sick about me.” This last part wasn't quite trueâAunt Evie wouldn't notice if I suddenly started walking around on my earsâbut I figured it might help if the unicorns thought there was someone back home who would care if I disappeared.
“Naaaaaay,” the unicorn leader replied. Then he lunged forward and jabbed my elbow with his horn.
“Ow!” I cried as pain shot through my entire arm.
The unicorn came at me again, but I ducked out of the way just in time. Instead of spearing me, the unicorn's horn sliced into the trunk of the tree. He whinnied and kicked, trying to get himself unstuck.
Seeing my chance, I jumped to my feet and sprinted away. From behind me came an angry, horselike bellow. I didn't need to speak unicorn to know what it meant.
I could hear the unicorns galloping after me. I tried to run faster, but my arm was throbbing. Were unicorns' horn tips poisonous?
As the sound of hooves grew louder, I realized I wouldn't last much longer. Besides the pain in my arm, my legs were starting to feel like lead. Any second I would run out of steam.
“Anthony,” I said, panting. “Wherever you are, please help me.”
A split second later, I heard a loud
Pop!
and Anthony the Gnome materialized in front of me. He was grinning from ear to ear and holding a giant ice-cream cone.
“Hey, Jenny-girl. Did you miss me?” he said.
I grabbed Anthony's arm and pulled him along as I ran. “Get us out of here!”
Anthony rolled his eyes like he always did when he thought I was overreacting. But he held up his free hand and snapped his fingers, managing to lick his ice cream and keep running at the same time.
With another
Pop!
I was pulled out of the unicorns' land, tossed around in the void between worlds, and spit back onto my bedroom carpet.
Home.
I rolled over onto my side and moaned in pain. My arm felt like it was melting.
“Looks like I missed all the fun,” said Anthony. “But I found the most amazing dairy standâ”
“Help me!” I croaked.
Anthony's grin faded when he saw the blood gushing onto my sleeve. He balanced his ice-cream cone on my desk. Then he reached into the leather pouch around his waist and pulled out a glass jar filled with green goo.
“This should help,” he said cheerfully. He opened the jar and slapped some of the goo onto my arm before I could object.
“Ouch!” I said as my arm started to burn. “Ew!” I added as I caught a whiff of rotting seaweed. But a second later the burning stopped and my arm felt a whole lot better.
“You're welcome,” said Anthony. He started wrapping a bandage above my elbow, humming a little tune under his breath.
“I'm supposed to thank you? I almost died!”
Anthony let out a deep laugh that made his round belly jiggle. “Always the drama queen. As if those unicorns would actually hurt you.”
“They
did
hurt me. Where do you think all that blood came from?”
“Oh,” said Anthony, waving his hand. “That's just how they are. It's nothing to worry about.”
“That's what you said about the baby dragons last week before they tried to turn my head into a flaming volleyball.”
Anthony laughed again and tugged on his orange beard. “They were just playing. No harm done. You can barely see your scar.”
I groaned and lay back on my bed. My entire body ached. I couldn't remember the last time I'd gotten a good night's rest. All I wanted was to curl up in bed with a book about an everyday kid with everyday problems and let it soothe me to sleep.
“No time to loaf around, Jenny-girl,” Anthony sang. “I just got word from the Committee that there's another adventure you need to go on today.”
I nearly choked. “Another one? Anthony, that's the fifth one this week!”
“Everyone keeps requesting to be saved by you, Jenny-girl. You've got quite the reputation.”
I wasn't sure what I'd done to earn that reputation. I didn't even really
like
being an adventurer. But somehow I'd gotten stuck doing it practically nonstop for the past three years. If I ever figured out how to go back in time, I'd tell my nine-year-old self to run the other way when a gnome showed up in her room promising a life of magic and adventure.
“There has to be someone else the Committee can send,” I said. “What about all the other adventurers out there?” I hadn't actually met any of the others, but Anthony was always reminding me that they'd kill to be sent on as many missions as I was.
“You're the one they want,” said Anthony.
I groaned again and tried to sit up, but my body weighed a ton and my arm was still throbbing. “I can't. I'm too tired.”
“Have some candy!” Anthony pulled a bag of enormous gummy worms out of his pocket. “These will wake you right up.”
“I'm too tired to even chew. I need to get some sleep. If the Committee members can't understand that, then I can go explain it to them myself.”
Anthony rolled his eyes. “You know you can't do that. The Committee stays hidden for its own safety.”
I rolled my eyes right back. Maybe the Committee stayed in hiding because its members knew otherwise they'd have angry adventurers coming to find them all the time. Just because the mysterious Committee protected the magical worlds didn't mean it could totally take over my life. I mean, hadn't they ever heard of child labor laws?
“I'm serious,” I said, jamming a pillow over my head. “I need to sleep.”
“The Committee's not going to like this,” Anthony's muffled voice answered. For a minute, everything was quiet. I could picture him standing there with his arms crossed, impatiently tapping his foot.
Finally, I heard him sigh and walk over to my desk. I imagined him scooping up his ice-cream cone and giving it a big lick.
“And they say you're the best,” Anthony muttered. Then there was a loud
Pop!
and he was gone.
I pulled the pillow off my head and stared at the empty space where Anthony had been. A small puddle of melted ice cream oozed across my math homework.
I tried not to let what Anthony had said bother me, but it was no use. Everyone expected me to be a superhero, but even superheroes had to sleep sometimes, didn't they? Besides, I wasn't really a hero. I just helped out magical creatures once in a while. No capes or masks involved. And in the end, I was still just a regular girl, wasn't I?
Chapter 2
The next morning, I hurried to get ready for school, knowing it was only a matter of time before Anthony popped in and dragged me away on another adventure. Until then, I could pretend to be going about a normal day like anyone else.
When I was dressed, I took my favorite bracelet out of my jewelry box and put it around my wrist. The bracelet had once been my mother's, and I liked to think it was lucky. Its purple gems sparkled back at me like they were smiling. I didn't usually wear the bracelet because I was afraid of losing it, but given how crazy my adventures had been recently, I wanted all the luck I could get.
Since it was still early, I grabbed my mini-golf club and my favorite pink ball from my closet and took a few practice shots. Everyone needs a way to relax, right? The first ball went into the cup without a problem, but then my arm started to ache and my aim went all off. Stupid unicorns. Thanks to Anthony's magical stinky goo, my wound had almost healed, but bending my arm still hurt. I finally gave up on practicing my swing and trudged down the stairs.
“And how are you feeling today?” I heard my aunt ask from the kitchen. I knew the question wasn't aimed at me, but I wished for once it was. “Did you tell your owner you were angry with her?” Aunt Evie added. A chorus of twitters answered.
I peeked into the kitchen. Aunt Evie had a dented clipboard in her hands and a coffee-stained lab coat draped over her shoulders. She was surrounded by a dozen birdcages, each with a parakeet inside.
“Aunt Evie?” I said over the chirps.
“Yes?” My aunt glanced over with her usual look of confusion, like she was trying to figure out if I were some strange new breed of monkey. Aunt Evie was a veterinary psychotherapist, which meant she was good at talking to animals. People, on the other hand, always seemed to puzzle her.
“My arm hurts,” I said.
“Aw,” Aunt Evie cooed as she scratched the top of my head. “Why don't you drink some tea?” Tea was my aunt's cure for everything. For animals, she had any kind of medicine imaginable, but she seemed to think that all people ever needed was a nice, strong cup of Earl Grey.
“What if my head fell off?” I asked. “Would you still tell me to drink tea?”
“Hmm,” Aunt Evie said, giving me a rare smile. “I suppose in that case I would tell you to pour it down your neck hole.”
“Good one,” I said. The only family trait my aunt and I had both inherited was a weird sense of humor. From what little I remembered about my father, he'd had it too.
Aunt Evie looked back down at her clipboard, and the moment was over. She marked something on a form and chewed on her pencil. Then she poked the pencil in between the bars of a cage so that one of the parakeets could chew on it too.
I guessed that was the end of family bonding time. I stifled a sigh and went to fix myself some cereal. Aunt Evie meant well, but she had no clue how to take care of anything that wasn't covered in fur or feathers.
I knew it was pointless, but every once in a while I couldn't help imagining what my life would've been like if my parents hadn't disappeared when I was little. I could almost see it in my mind, like a movie shot through a fuzzy lens. Since my memories of my parents were pretty vague, I imagined they were beautiful and always smiling, kind of like Ken and Barbie, only less creepy and proportioned like real people.
My parents had actually both been dentists, but I liked to imagine them as movie stars. The three of us would be living in a mansion with a huge swimming pool. I would come down the giant, curved staircase and tell my parents that my arm hurt. They would stop whatever they were doing and rush over to me. My mother would order the head chef to whip up some of his finest hot cocoa, and my father would challenge me to a game of thumb war (which I would promptly win, of course). And then we'd all pile into a limo and go mini-golfing.
Pretty much all of my lovey-dovey-family fantasies ended with me and my parents playing mini-golf with the sun setting in the background. That probably would have sounded dumb to anyone else, but I couldn't think of anything more perfect.
“Okay, Aunt Evie, I'm off to school,” I announced when I was done with breakfast.
“Have fun with the other pups,” she called, waving her clipboard.
I hurried out of our squawking kitchen and went down the narrow street toward the bus stop. At the end of the road was Dr. Bradley's weathered old house.
As usual, the doctor was out hobbling around in his front yard, poking at things in the yellow grass with his cane.
“Good morning, Jenny!” he called over the rotting wooden fence. His smile was so wide that I could almost see where his dentures ended. “Look what I found today!” He pointed at something that looked like a chewed-up Frisbee.
“One man's junk is another man's treasure!” I said before I could stop myself. Sometimes the cheesy sayings that came out of my mouth during adventures managed to pop out at other times too. But Dr. Bradley didn't seem to mind my fortune-cookie wisdom. In fact, his smile only grew wider.
“I can't wait to find a spot for this on my wall,” he said, looking at the mangled piece of red plastic. Since the doctor's house looked abandoned, people were always dumping their trash in his yard. Dr. Bradley didn't seem to mind that his property was mistaken for the town dump. In fact, he loved sifting through all the old typewriters and toaster ovens and finding “pieces with character” to decorate his house with.
All right, so the doctor was pretty strange. But he was also one of the nicest people I'd ever met. And he made the best butterscotch pudding on earth.
“Is that a battle wound I see?” Dr. Bradley asked, coming over to take a look at my bandaged arm. He'd been a doctor in England before he retired, but unlike Aunt Evie, Dr. Bradley seemed to prefer dealing with people. “They smell a little nicer,” he always said.
“It's nothing.”
“Tell me about this latest mission,” Dr. Bradley said, his eyes twinkling behind his round glasses.
When my adventures had first started, Anthony had warned me not to tell anyone about them, not even my friends. I'd been really careful about following the rules, but somehow Dr. Bradley had managed to get the truth out of me, and I'd been sharing my adventures with him ever since. I didn't really think that counted as breaking the rules since Dr. Bradley clearly thought I was just “using my imagination.” He didn't seem to notice that I was way too old for that kind of thing.
“I tried to break up a unicorn fight yesterday,” I said.
Dr. Bradley raised his bushy eyebrows. “I always thought of unicorns as peaceful creatures.”
So had I. But I was never going to make that mistake again. “Apparently they go crazy for rainbows,” I said. “A giant one appeared in their field, and they were all fighting over it.”
“So what did the brave Jenny the Adventurer do?” Dr. Bradley asked, clearly expecting to hear about my heroic triumph.
“Well, they wouldn't listen to me. I tried to tell them that they needed to learn how to share. You know, all that âCaring is sharing!' stuff. But I think unicorns' heads are filled with glitter because they turned on me.”
“Turned on you?” The doctor's gray eyes widened.
“They started chasing me and stabbing at me with their horns,” I said, shivering at the memory. “I probably would have died if Anthony hadn't finally gotten me out of there.”
“Ah yes, Anthony the Gnome. How is your colorful guide?”
Annoying. Candy-obsessed. Useless. “Same as usual,” I said aloud. “Sometimes I wonder if I'd be better off going on adventures by myself.”
“Well, you are very independent,” said Dr. Bradley. “But what will happen to Anthony if he's no longer your guide?”
“I'm sure there's a circus somewhere that would take him.”
Dr. Bradley let out a deep, purring laugh. “I'm afraid their supply of cotton candy wouldn't stand a chance.”
“It would be gone in minutes.” I chuckled as I imagined Anthony eating his way out of a vat of cotton candy. Then my arm started throbbing again and the image disappeared. “I've been thinking that maybe I'm not meant to be doing all this adventuring stuff.”
“Really?” said the doctor. “But why?”
“It's just not fun anymore.” The moment I said it, I realized it was true. When Anthony had first popped into my life three years earlier, he'd told me I was lucky to be chosen so young, and that the Committee believed I would be a natural. He'd also promised that adventuring would be the most fun I'd ever had. At first he'd been right, but now⦓I never have time for school. Or friends. A math test sounds more exciting than going to save another magical world.”
Dr. Bradley took off his glasses and blew on them until they were foggy. Then he stuck them back on his nose. “I suppose there is a bit of adventure in having a normal life,” he said. “But I seem to remember a time when you enjoyed being a hero.”
“For a while, I did.” After all, I'd gotten to travel to tons of exotic, magical worlds and save the day. Most of the time, I just had to say one of the cheesy things that popped into my head, like “Waste not, want not!” and the magical creatures would think I was wise and great and do whatever I told them.
In fairy tales, elves and fairies all seemed powerful and clever, but I'd found that wasn't true at all. Most of the magical creatures I'd met had a hard time doing the most basic things on their own. They weren't powerless or dumb; they'd just always had people like me to help them. They'd never had to do anything on their own.
“Do you really think you could leave adventuring for good?” Dr. Bradley asked. His glasses were finally unfogged again, so I could see his worried eyes.
“I don't know,” I said. “It doesn't really seem worth it anymore.”
At the end of my adventures I was usually rewarded with jewels or servants or anything else I wanted, which had also been exciting at first. But there was nowhere left to keep those kinds of presents in Aunt Evie's tiny house. My closet was already stuffed full of treasure chests. The treasure would come in handy when I was older, but who would accept gold coins from a twelve-year-old without asking too many questions? Besides, having fancy gifts wasn't fun unless you could share them with other people. One thing I never got out of my adventures was friends. The creatures I helped went back to their normal lives in their own worlds, and I went back to my abnormal life in mine.
“Well, I have to go to school,” I said.
“Stop by anytime!” said Dr. Bradley. “I just made a batch of butterscotch pudding. And I never grow tired of hearing your amazing stories.”
I pretended not to notice the concerned look on the doctor's face as I walked away.