Of Giants and Ice (Ever Afters, The) (16 page)

“One of Jenny’s friends,” said Lena.

“And Adelaide,” said Chase.

“Do you think it counts as a Failed Tale?” Kyle asked in a hushed voice, and everyone fell quiet again. I’m pretty sure we were all imagining “Evan Garrison” carved on the Wall.

“No. They never ran across any of the trials,” said Puss, jumping up onto our table. “Rumpel says that they should have survived at least two. Evan’s Tale is still ongoing.”

“But the last White Snake Tales always concluded in six weeks tops,” Lena said hesitantly. “I mean, Rumpel told me—”

“This one is different. I’ve just seen the current Book myself.” The cat’s accent sounded even more clipped than usual. “New lines have appeared: ‘Evan came to the sinking realization that this Tale would take much longer than anyone expected. He was years away from his
happily ever after
.’” She looked me up and down with her piercing green gaze.

“What?” Uncomfortable, I checked my clothes, thinking maybe I was a bloody mess, but the only spot I saw was a grass stain on my knee.

“It seems the Tales are changing.” Puss turned and licked her white shoulder, as the bell sounded to dismiss us. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Kelly’s mother wants her.” The cat leaped into Kelly’s open arms.

Without a word, Kelly ran all the way across the courtyard, past a group of girls, and straight into Ellie’s arms. When she buried her face in her mother’s stomach, her shoulders shook a little, and I felt terrible that I hadn’t noticed she was upset. She knew so much more than I did. Sometimes I forgot she was younger than the rest of us.

Then Ellie murmured something and smoothed her daughter’s hair. Suddenly, I wished my mother was around too. I wished that I had already told Mom the truth about EAS.

Lena turned my way, looking about fifty times more cheerful than me. “Ready?” Over her shoulder, she carried a weathered canvas duffel, the straps a little frayed.

I had completely forgotten about the sleepover. I grinned at her, relieved. More than anything, I didn’t want to face a whole weekend worrying over Failed Tales by myself. If Lena wasn’t coming home with me, I probably would have cracked and told Mom and Amy the truth—whether it was
actually
a good time or not.

“So,” Lena said, waiting while I shrugged on my backpack. “Is there anything I should know about your family?”

One of Mom’s movie posters came to mind, but Lena probably knew about that already. I led the way to the ruby door. “Um, yeah, actually. They don’t know about EAS. I mean, about the magic side of it.”

“Really?” Lena’s eyes widened behind her glasses. “I was thinking bad temper, or a weird mole someplace, but that’s definitely good to know.”

•  •  •

Lena had a talent for grown-ups. She was probably the best person to bring to my house for a sleepover when my family was worried about my friends.

Amy was charmed. Lena even shook her hand and said, “Nice to meet you, Ms. Stevens.” In the privacy of the backseat, I gave Lena a thumbs-up. Amy loved it when people called her Ms. Stevens. She took it as a sign of respect. She doesn’t get a lot of that from work.

Mom was even easier to please than Amy. She
wanted
to like Lena, and she wanted Lena to like her. So, from the moment we walked in the door, Mom was her most friendly.

“We’re home!” I called from the doorway.

“In the kitchen!” Mom called back.

“Uh-oh,” I said. Amy and I exchanged a worried glance.

My mother
loved
to cook. She mentioned it in all of her interviews. Publishers had approached her to see if she would consider doing a cookbook. She was really flattered. It only encouraged her. But since she worked so much, she never got a lot of practice. On a good day, Mom’s meals were edible. On a bad day, I hid most of it in a paper napkin.

Lena would eat anything, I was pretty sure, but I didn’t want to have to apologize profusely later for Mom’s Chicken Florentine or Provimi Veal disasters.

“Be brave,” Amy told me. “If it’s awful, I’ll accidentally-on-purpose spill soda on it and order us pizza.”

Sometimes, I didn’t know how we ever managed without Amy.

“What’s wrong? Is there something else I should know?” Lena said, as we dumped our bags at the bottom of the staircase and headed into the kitchen.

“Yeah—Mom can’t cook,” I whispered back. “Don’t tell her fans, though.”

“Her fans?” Lena repeated, frowning.

Mom stood in front of the oven. Seeing us, she waved both hands at Lena, two hands that happened to be covered in oven mitts—one shaped like a pig and the other shaped like a cow. Her hair fizzed out in wayward tufts. She was definitely at her least intimidating.

“Hi, Lena!” she said. “I’ve heard so much about you! All good things, don’t worry.”

“Hi,” Lena’s voice dropped off to a whisper. She looked startled and embarrassed—like she’d accidentally just swallowed her gum.

She’d just recognized Mom. Lena hadn’t known who Mom was. She hadn’t even suspected. She had come to hang out with me, and only me. Wanting to meet the famous Maggie Wright hadn’t even entered into the equation.

I felt like laughing. I felt
happy
.

Then Lena shot me a look, which clearly said,
Why the hiccups didn’t you tell me?
I couldn’t keep myself from grinning.

“Nice to meet you, Ms. L—” Then Lena stopped herself. Obviously she had just remembered that my parents were divorced.

But Mom rescued her before I could. She shook Lena’s hand wearing the cow oven mitt. “Call me Maggie.”

Lena still looked stunned, like she didn’t know what else to say, so I changed the subject. “Mom, you’re not cooking, are you?”

“No . . . why?” she asked.

I pointed at the oven mitts. “I thought we were having pizza.”

“Oh!” Mom said. “Just brownies. The pizza is on its way.”

Behind Mom’s back, Amy lifted up an empty box of brownie mix, giving me and Lena the A-OK sign.

Lena covered her mouth, trying not to laugh. When Mom turned around suspiciously, Amy strolled forward, dropping her car keys and opening the freezer.

Then the oven timer beeped, which did a really good job of keeping Mom from catching on. “Ooh, brownies. While I dish these up, why don’t you two change into your pj’s and make this a real pajama party?”

It was the best sleepover I ever had. The brownies had baked into a hard, solid sheet in the pan (Mom swore up and down that she had followed the directions exactly), but they still tasted good after Amy crumbled them over ice-cream sundaes. Since we ate them before the pizza came, Mom said, “It’s just the kind of day when you need to eat dessert first.” We hadn’t rented any movies, so we flipped through the channels until we found one of Mom’s old films—something she had made near the beginning of her career, a teen movie that started with a cafeteria foodfight and ended with prom. With the TV’s volume turned on low, Mom entertained us with anecdotes about the filming—here, the director and the lead actor had an hour-long fight over whether the actor’s collar should be flipped up or folded down.

During the intense confrontation scene, the male lead had
apparently farted loudly after declaring his love for Mom’s character. When he looked into the camera with wide earnest eyes and said, “I love you, Carrie. I always have,” she cracked up again, so hard that she dropped a spoonful of ice cream down her front. Which made Lena laugh so hard that Sprite poured out of her nose.

When the teen movie ended,
The Last Shoe Standing
came on.

Amy made a face, her hand poised over the remote. “Do we have to watch this? I hate these movies.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Mom asked. This was one of her favorites.

“It’s just another Cinderella-type, rags-to-riches story. It’s so unrealistic,” Amy said, and I wondered what Ellie might think of that.

Then Lena asked a question that made me choke on my pizza. “What’s your favorite fairy tale?”

Amy patted my back as I coughed and sputtered. “Are you okay?”

I was
not
okay. I was kind of concerned that my friend was going to rat me out.

“Oooh, that’s a good question,” Mom said. “‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon.’ Do you remember it, Rory? I used to read it to you when you were little.”

“No,” I said hoarsely.

“Pizza probably went down the wrong way.” Amy passed me my Sprite. “Drink some of this.”

“It’s about a girl who marries a bear,” Mom told me eagerly. “When she finds out that he’s really a prince in disguise, a troll princess
kidnaps
him, and the girl has to go find the four winds to figure out where he is and rescue him. I’m sure you remember.”

A vague memory stirred. “Wasn’t that one of my picture books?”

Mom nodded excitedly. Lena looked at me with a questioning look. She wanted to know whether or not I wanted her help explaining.

I shook my head just a tiny bit. Not yet.

If Mom found out I spent the afternoon trying to stop a girl from bleeding to death, she would never let me go back on Monday.

“That’s creepy,” Amy said.

“It’s romantic and exciting and an inspiration to young adventurous girls everywhere,” Mom said, offended. (She meant me, by the way. And maybe Lena.)

“She marries a
bear
,” Amy pointed out icily. “I don’t believe in fairy tales.”

But Lena and I exchanged another glance, and a smile grew on our faces. It was a lot more fun to keep secrets from my family when there was someone to help me keep them. Someday, I would totally burst Amy’s bubble.

“I do,” Mom said, “but I think they’re a lot more messy and complicated than people give them credit for.”

“Does that mean we’re watching the movie?” Amy asked, making a face.

“Well, it’s not like there’s anything else on,” Mom said stubbornly.

So we watched the movie. Mom fell asleep halfway through, the pig and cow oven mitts stuffed under her head like a pillow. When the end credits rolled, Amy sent me and Lena to my room and then concentrated on Mom.

“Wake up, Sleeping Beauty,” Amy told Mom softly, shaking her shoulder.

“She works too hard,” I told Lena as we ran up the stairs. “She probably
could
sleep for a hundred years.”

Lena grinned. “If you run down and kiss her, she might be a Character yet.”

“Yeah, right—I don’t think Mom thinks of me as her ideal Prince Charming.”

We laughed, really hard. Amy frowned and made shooing motions. Still giggling, we ran the rest of the way.

“It was nice of you to go back for second helpings on the brownies.” I flopped on the bed and burrowed under the covers. I wasn’t sure I could sleep after all that sugar. “Mom
is
a terrible cook. Someday, we’ll break it to her.”

“I like your family.” Lena sat on her bed—a twin I never used except sometimes to throw my book bag and dirty clothes on.

“Thanks.” With an embarrassed sort of grin, I beat my pillow into a more comfortable shape. “I like them too.”

“I didn’t realize that you were one of
those
Landons, the Hollywood kind,” she said, half-accusing. “You never said.”

“I kind of thought you knew.” I didn’t know what else to say. It would’ve been too awkward to thank her for not making a big deal out of Mom.

Lena tugged the blankets free from under the mattress. “They would be proud of you, you know. If you told them.”

That was why she brought up fairy tales. She wanted to feel it out—warm them up to the idea. Maybe I
could
tell Mom—someday.

“Even Amy,” Lena added with a small smile, “after she got over the shock.”

Lena wanted me to tell them. Her grandmother had been telling Lena, Jenny, and George stories about Madame Benne since they were born. Keeping secrets was probably weird for her.

“I’ll tell them. Eventually. After I have my Tale.” It wouldn’t matter as much then if Mom pulled me from EAS.

“What Tale do you want?” Lena rolled over onto her stomach and hugged her pillow. “You never talk about it.”

“Nothing where I sleep for years, waiting around for some random guy to come and kiss me,” I said, hating my name with a passion. When Lena started laughing, I was surprised and kind of hurt. “What? If I’m going to all the trouble of suffering through Hansel’s class, I want to
use
my sword.” Not to mention all my extra practices.

“It’s not . . . that.” Lena gasped for breath between fits of laughter. “But when . . . we asked Adelaide”—here, Lena laughed twice as hard—“she said, ‘Anything where I get kissed.’ . . . No wonder you two don’t get along,” she added, and I laughed too.

I guess we were too loud, because the door opened. Amy poked her head in. “What is going on in here? Did you two sneak in some laughing gas or something?”

“No,” I said, trying to stop giggling. “We’re just talking.”

Amy looked from me to Lena and smiled, glad that I was having fun. “Well, just don’t wake up your mom. Good night, girls.”

“’Night, Amy!”

“Good night!”

She closed the door, and Lena and I listened to her footsteps on the stairs, waiting until she reached the first floor before we started talking again.

“What Tale do
you
want?” I asked in a whisper. “You never talk about it either.”

“Well,” Lena said slowly, “I do want a Tale. It doesn’t need to be a famous one, though. What I
really
want is to be an inventor like Madame Benne.”

“Really?”
That
was impressive. I didn’t think much about what I wanted to be when I grew up. The only thing I knew for sure was
that I didn’t want to make movies, but Lena was already making magic mirror walkie-talkies. “How long ago was she alive?”

“Here. I’ll show you.” Lena climbed to the end of the bed, where she had left all her stuff, and she dug to the bottom of her backpack and pulled out a book—a fancy one bound with leather.
Madame Benne: Genius Inventor or Fey Traitor?
was gilded on the spine. It was very worn. She flipped to a dog-eared page near the end and passed it to me. “It’s there in the appendix.”