Fable (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale 3)

“And I was confused and hurt. I’d lost my boyfriend…again.”

“Get over the human. It’s obvious that you two aren’t meant to be together.”

“Well, maybe we could have a chance if the Fae stopped interfering with my life.”

“We just saved him the trouble of dumping you after he realized how close he came to being saddled with you and your emotional baggage,” Jared fumed.

“I don’t have emotional baggage,” Mina whispered, choking on the pain his words caused.

“Yes, you do. You’ve got enough emotional baggage that you could open up your own airline.” He began to tick the items off his fingers. “Let’s see: abandonment issues, low self-esteem, jealousy issues…and you’re obsessive.”

Mina was stunned and shocked at his assessment of her. Whether he was right or wrong, it didn’t matter. What mattered was the fact that he was talking down to her.

“I don’t have to take this from you. Maybe I was right all along to not talk to you. It’s obvious you have no compassion or understanding of a human’s feelings. Which are completely normal for a teenager who was unjustly saddled with a curse that’s destroyed her whole family. I’m sorry if I have the emotional stability of a teeter-totter right now, but that’s better than you, who has the emotional maturity of a rock.”

She squeezed her carton of chocolate milk so hard that a chocolate fountain spewed out the top to run down her hand onto her jeans. Mina’s eyes opened wide in shock, and she dropped the carton on Jared’s lap. He jumped up faster than lightning and began to dance.

Mina looked at Jared’s shocked face and her messy lap, and began to laugh and couldn’t stop. She laughed so hard she snorted, and then laughed some more because of it. Jared looked at her strangely and started to chuckle as well. He knelt down with napkins and dabbed at her jeans in the most awkward way. Mina swatted his hands away and grabbed the napkins from him. It wouldn’t matter; she would once again have an embarrassing chocolate milk incident to write in her notebook of Unaccomplishments and Epic Disasters—if she still had it. Maybe she needed to start a new one.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, not looking her in the eyes.

“I’m the one who spilled milk on you. I’m the one who should be sorry.” She still couldn’t catch her breath.

Jared had sobered up pretty quick. “No, you know what I mean. I didn’t really mean any of those things.”

“Then why would you say them?”

“You were burying yourself so deep in your misery that you were becoming numb to your surroundings, which leaves you vulnerable to an attack. I was trying to break you out of it, and was aiming to make you feel a different emotion. I figured anger would have been the easiest one to get you to feel, but I completely disregarded joy. I forgot how easy it is to make you humans laugh.” He stood back up; a large chocolate stain ran down his pants. His face kept shifting from utter disgust at the milk on his clothes to remorse for hurting her.

She couldn’t help it—she started laughing again. Even though his reasoning behind being rude to her was terrible, the laughter did help her the rest of the day. She was even able to raise her hand in class and answer two questions. She didn’t believe it, but Jared’s attempt at caring by pretending not to…worked.

Sara even noticed a slight change in her when she picked her up from school.

“Did you have a good day, honey?” she asked while frowning at the brown stain on Mina’s pants.

“No, it was awful. The worst first day of school ever,” Mina answered with a huge grin on her face.

Chapter 8

Nan was rightfully suspended from school for a week. Which left Mina completely defenseless against Ever’s constant French-fry thieving. The pixie had a serious thing for French fries. But it also put her right between Brody and Jared.

Lunch period was painful and awkward. Whenever Brody tried to ask Mina a question, Jared would interject and turn the subject back to Nan. Ever, frustrated by Jared’s lack of attention, turned to tossing food in the air and catching it in her mouth. It wasn’t until Ever almost choked on one of the French fries that the boys calmed down their feud and turned to helping the girl not choke to death.

For once in her life, Mina was thankful for the pixie’s interference. Now, if she could only interfere and find a way for Mina to get out of her Tuesday/Thursday P.E. class.

Mina was terrified of gym class, and tried hard to stay out of the way of the more athletic students. She also hated gym because she was forced to change into stupid gym shorts, and she always thought her legs were too skinny, like a chicken or duck. The other girls wore their gym clothes like they walked straight off the runway. Mina’s gym clothes, no matter how she folded them, always looked like they came out of a hamper. She was hoping today was a running day instead of something like baseball or basketball. She actually liked running the mile on the school’s track. There was less chance of her injuring herself or others.

But today was not going her way at all. It wasn’t a track and field day. It was worse. They were playing flag football. It used to terrify her to have the football and have the more aggressive boys shoot right toward her, intent on ripping her flags off.

A few times last year she was bowled over in the process, and once she even ripped off her own flag and threw it on the ground in front of T.J. when he was about to tackle her. This made her a very unpopular teammate. So her goal for this year was to stay out of the way.

Mina was late because somehow her shoelaces were in incredible knots. She threw her shoes over her shoulder and ran out to the field in her socks. Once there, she plopped on the ground behind the girls and desperately tried to untangle the knots in the laces to get her shoes on. The team captains were chosen, but she didn’t even notice.

Briefly she stopped and tried to get a head count to see if there would be too many players and she could sit out. Or better yet, next time she should try to get a doctor’s note that read, “Mina Grime is unable to participate in any sports due to the hazard to other students’ health.” The teams began their draft; Mina knew her name wouldn’t be called anytime soon, so she continued attacking her laces. She was wrong.

“Mina!”