Whatever After 1: Fairest of All Prologue and Chapter 1

S a r a h M ly n o w S k i
Scholastic Press/new york
P.S. Read ( Forever!)

Copyright 2012 by Sarah Mlynowski All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Press, an imprint of Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. scholastic, scholastic press, and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, write to Scholastic Inc., Attention: Permissions Department, 557 Broadway, New York, NY 10012. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mlynowski, Sarah. Fairest of all / Sarah Mlynowski. 1st ed. p. cm. (Whatever after) Summary: After moving to a new house, ten-year-old Abby and her younger brother Jonah discover an antique mirror that transports them into the Snow White fairy tale. ISBN 978-0-545-40330-6 [1. Fairy tales Fiction. 2. Characters in literature Fiction. 3. Magic Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.M7135Fai 2012 [Fic] dc23 2011036242 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 13 14 15 16 17/0 Printed in the U.S.A. 23 First edition, May 2012
For Jessica Braun,
* Prologue *
This Is Not a Joke
O
stuff.
nce upon a time my life was normal. Then the mirror in our basement ate us.
Do you think Im joking? Do you think Im making this up? Youre thinking, Um, Abby, mirrors dont usually go ahead
You do, dont you? and slurp people up. Mirrors just hang on the wall and reflect Well, youre wrong. So very WRONG. Everything Im going to tell you is the whole truth and noth-
ing but the truth. Im not making anything up. And Im not a liar,
or a crazy person who thinks shes telling the truth but secretly isnt. I am, in fact, a very logical person. Fair, too. I have to be, since Im going to be a judge when I grow up. Well, first Im going to be a lawyer, and then Im going to be a judge, because you have to be a lawyer first. Thats 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 dont believe me? You will when you hear all the facts. You will when you hear the whole story. Let me start at the beginning.
* Chapter one *
The Beginning
he moment the recess bell rings, the kids in my new fifthgrade class decide they want to play tag. We eenie meenie
miney, and somehow Im 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. Shes also wearing a bright orange sweatshirt thats hard to miss. I dont know all the kids names, but Pennys is easy to remember because she always wears
super-high ponytails and I just think, Pennys pony, Pennys pony, Pennys pony. I dash over and tap her on the elbow. Youre it, Pennys pony! I mean, Penny. She looks at me strangely. Um, no. Im frozen. Huh? Its not that cold. Plus, her orange sweater looks really warm. What? I ask. Penny wrinkles her forehead. You tagged me. Im frozen. Noooooo, I say slowly. I was it. I tagged you, so now youre it. Now you have to tag someone else to make them be it. Thats 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 doesnt. When youre tagged, you freeze, and the very last person tagged is the next it. Its called freeze tag. Got it? The LAST person to get tagged gets to be it? If youre the last person tagged, that means youre the best player. If youre 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. Heres 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. 1. 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 doesnt soda on your tongue. 2. 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? 3. And now, instead of tag, they want to play Ooo, Lets 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. Im pretty sure the way I play is the right way, I say, my throat tightening. Im right. I am. No, she states. Im frozen. And youd better get going, or itll just get harder. Tears burn the backs of my eyes. I dont 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 thats meant not to let my tears out but might sound a little squished. Or prissy. Or spoiled-brat-y, possibly. Youre quitting? Penny asks. Her eyebrows fly up. Just because you didnt get your way?
No! Im just . . . tired. Im not even lying. I am tired. Im tired of every thing being different. Why cant 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 dont 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. Theyre books Ive 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. Shes 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.

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S a r a h M ly n o w S k i

Scholastic Press/new york

P.S. Read ( Forever!)

For Jessica Braun,

This Is Not a Joke

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