UnEnchanted (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale 1)

“You’re a girl.”

“Fine then, Girl Scouts honor.” Nan held up three fingers.

“Don’t think it counts if you’ve never actually been a girl scout.” Mina countered, making sure there were no loop holes in her friend’s credibility.

Mina looked over Nan’s shoulder toward her brother and mother’s room and decided that they needed to find a more private spot. Tapping Nan’s shoulder, she motioned down the hall and into her room. When the door was securely shut, Nan jumped across Mina’s hastily made bed. Mina perched on the end more daintily.

“Nan, I’m cursed.”

“Yeah, I know. We all are.” Nan kicked her legs back and forth and grabbed a magazine from Mina’s nightstand. “It’s called being a teenager. You, more so, because you live in the Stone Age.”

“No, my last name isn’t even Grime, it’s Grimm. What I am telling you is, I am personally cursed, or fated, to follow the same path as Grimms before me.” Mina already felt better now that she’d gotten it in the open. She had been thinking for the last few days on how to break the news to her best friend.

Nan just stared at Mina, blinking her eyes in thought. “Yeah, right. I’m supposed to go to Yale and become a lawyer like my father and his father before him, but do you see me treading down that path? No way Jose. I’m hitchhiking to Julliard instead.” Nan flipped a couple more pages and then oohed over a cute skirt.

Mina snatched the magazine from Nan and sat on it so her friend couldn’t grab it back. “I’m serious, Nan. I’m in over my head and I need your help.”

Nan sat up and gave Mina her full attention. “You’re really serious?”

Mina ran her hands over her head, “Dead serious.”

“Like, this isn’t some trick to try and punk me or anything, right?”

“No. I wish it were, I really do, but it’s not.”

“Okay, I’m listening. Start from the beginning.” Nan crossed her legs Indian style and waited patiently through Mina’s whole tale. She barely fidgeted, never once interrupted and even didn’t immediately grab her phone to tweet the update. “Whoa,” was all she said when Mina was done.

“You can say that again,” Mina mumbled unhappily.

“Whoa,” Nan repeated, and ducked as Mina threw a pillow at her. “So you were actually attacked outside the library? That must have been awesome.”

“Nan!” Mina chided. “NO! I could have been killed.”

“But you weren’t; Brody saved you. So if Brody saved your life and all, then why is he in such a fit?”

“I’m not sure, but I probably have something to do with it. He wanted me to go to the police, but if I did, and my mother found out, that would be the end of us. She would have shipped us out to Canada, before you can say … Canucks.”

“So you two fought,” Nan stated.

“Yes, we argued, and I demanded he drop me off. And with a huge bruise on the side of my cheek, I couldn’t very well go to school.” Mina paced her small bedroom and kept passing her bedroom mirror to look at the bruise.

“So in other words, he hasn’t called you, spoken to you, or seen you since the attack.” Nan ticked off the words on her hands. “That definitely explains why he has been out of sorts. MINA, CALL HIM! Let him know that you are still alive.”

“Nan, I can’t.” And Mina truly felt that she couldn’t. She had burned her bridges and burned them badly.

“Nonsense, all you do is pick up the phone and say, 'Brody, I’m not dead.'” Nan grabbed her phone and held it up to Mina’s ear. “Here, you can use my phone.”

Mina glared at Nan in response.

“Fine.” Nan put her phone away. “Since it seems you have a lot to do, maybe we should get cracking and find this Grimoire or whatever and prepare you to break the curse.” The way Nan said it, made it sound as if Mina was going on a camping trip and needed to find supplies, instead of possibly meeting her doom. “But before we do anything else today, we need to eat!”

“You just ate,” Mina said.

Nan made a gagging face. “That is not what I would call eating. That’s biting the bullet to win a bet. I’m starved, let’s grab food first. You owe me.”

After a cheap lunch at one of the Mexican stalls nearby, the girls walked the rows of small shops in the various districts.