Fairest of Them All Read online

  Like I’d actually be insane enough to drink another glass of that awful slime.

  After about ten minutes, my stomach’s still roiling and making very strange noises, but at least I’m not gagging anymore.

  “So . . . what’s the verdict?” Mrs. White Charming asks. “Do we have a cure?”

  “Come on, Aria. Say something,” Mom orders.

  I open my mouth but close it again because I’m afraid. What if I drank that horrible concoction for nothing?

  “Aria, honey, please,” Mom says, gentler this time. “We need to know if this worked.”

  I need to know too.

  So I open my mouth and say exactly that I’m thinking: “That made Mrs. White Charming’s wood-betony-and-kelp smoothie taste like a chocolate Frappuccino with extra caramel sauce.” I smile at Mrs. White Charming. “No offense.”

  “No offense taken,” Mrs. W. C. says, smiling and high-fiving Mrs. Solano.

  Mom hugs me so hard she almost squeezes the words out of me. “I’m so glad we could cure you, Aria!” she says. “I was scared that you’d be under that awful curse forever.”

  “You think you’re glad,” I say. “That Shakespeak was getting really old.”

  “More like old-fashioned,” Sophie quips.

  “I still don’t understand why anyone would hate me enough to put a curse on me,” I say.

  “Hate doesn’t need a logical reason,” Mom says. “It festers and grows until it becomes completely illogical.”

  “Love is a much better thing to spread,” Mrs. White Charming says.

  That all sounds great in theory.

  But I still face two big problems: Namely, I need to figure out who did this to me, and more important, how to win Teen Couture.

  Chapter Twelve

  EVEN THOUGH I’M CURED, IT’S still a battle to get my parents to let me continue to compete on Teen Couture—especially since we still don’t know who planted the needle on set. Dad wants to accompany me to Saturday’s taping dressed in chain mail and sporting his newly sharpened battle sword, but Mom and I manage to convince him that this (a) isn’t the most subtle approach, (b) might get him arrested, and (c) might possibly get him locked up in a psych ward.

  I beg Mom and Dad to let me go by myself, but that’s a nonstarter.

  “Don’t you understand, Aria?” Mom said. “You could have been killed!”

  She has a point. Hahahaha. Get it?

  I think that’s what’s known as gallows humor.

  And that’s how I end up in a taxi on the way to the studio with my grandparents, who are the compromise chaperones. I barely slept last night, worrying about all the un-PC things they might say on camera, which are bound to get me kicked off the show. I try to give them some helpful hints on the ride over:

  “Remember, Grandma and Grandpa, this show is called Teen Couture, not Lifestyles of the Rich and Royal, okay?” I warn them. “So please don’t make loud comments about how uncouth and common things are or anything like that. I don’t want the other contestants coming after me with scissors and glue guns because you’ve made some let-them-wear-polyester comment.”

  Grandma Althea turns to Grandpa Thibault. “From what I understand, Tibby, we are to sit without moving or speaking.”

  “Like the guards at Buckingham Palace,” Grandpa Thibault says. “Always seemed a bit over the top to me, but tradition is tradition.”

  “You can speak,” I say. “As long as you don’t say the wrong things.”

  “Perhaps you should give us a list of what we can and can’t say,” Grandma says. “I get confused about what’s in and what’s out these days.”

  Sometimes I feel like my grandparents aren’t just from Once Upon a Time—they’re from another planet. I mean, my grandmother is convinced to this day that she found out she was going to have Mom from a talking frog while she was taking a swim in a river near the palace. Pretty out there, am I right?

  “Can I ask you a question?” I say.

  “This is a democracy, not a monarchy, more’s the pity,” Grandpa Thibault says. “Fire away.”

  “It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot—especially since all this happened to me,” I say.

  “Go on,” Grandma says. “I’m all agog.”

  “You destroyed all the spindles in the kingdom to protect Mom from the curse that Floriana Foxglove cast on her at that party,” I remind them. “Even though that destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of women in the kingdom.”

  “Well . . . yes,” Grandpa Thibault harrumphs. “What would you have done, Aria? She was our only child. We’d been trying for a child for years.”

  “Yeah, I know, and then Grandma found out from the talking frog that she would have a daughter before the year was out. I’ve heard the tale more than once.”

  “So then you can understand how we couldn’t bear to lose her,” Grandma says.

  I don’t know what I would have done—it’s not that I blame my grandparents for wanting to save their daughter, and I’m obviously glad Mom’s alive because otherwise I wouldn’t be here. But I still wonder what happened to all the women who relied on their spindles to make a living.

  “Okay, but what about her fifteenth birthday? Floriana Foxglove specifically said that Mom would prick her finger when she turned fifteen, but instead of keeping an eye on her that day, you guys go off and leave her alone at the palace,” I remind them. “I mean seriously, Gramps—what were you thinking?”

  Grandma gives a bitter laugh.

  “That’s exactly what I said when Thibault told me we were going to open the new crossbow factory on the southern border,” Grandma says. “I asked him if he’d forgotten that not only was it Rose’s birthday, it was her fifteenth birthday. I told him we should be with her, to keep her out of trouble. But no . . . he was convinced that not one spindle remained in the land, because he’s the king and who would dare to disobey him?”

  “Um . . . Mom?” I point out.

  “Your grandmother likes to blame me for everything,” Grandpa says. He sounds particularly grumpy. “But that’s what I didn’t count on. I trusted Rose. She was a good kid. She followed the rules. She knew about the curse. Why would she disobey me when she knew it would put her at risk?”

  “Indeed, why would she?” Grandma asks, looking at me pointedly.

  Ouch.

  “I don’t know . . . maybe because she was curious?” I finally find the courage to say. “Because it was something she’d never been allowed to do but she thought it was something she’d really love doing? Maybe she wanted to be creative instead of just being Princess Rose and having all these gold-digging, power-hungry princes showing up, wanting to marry her just so they could inherit the kingdom?”

  When I finish, I wonder whether this is going to cause an earthquake. I’ve never spoken to my grandparents this bluntly before.

  The taxi driver catches my eye in the rearview mirror and gives me an encouraging wink. It’s nice to know someone is on my side in speaking the truth to my aging royal relatives.

  But to my amazement, my grandparents don’t get angry and shout. They start laughing.

  “I told Rose she’d end up with a daughter just like herself!” Grandma gasps in between some seriously unqueenly guffaws.

  All Grandpa seems capable of doing is repeating “apple . . . tree . . . apple . . . tree” over and over again.

  I’m not sure if I should be amused, annoyed, or relieved. I decide I’m a mixture of all three.

  Grandma takes a crisp white linen handkerchief with lace edges out of her handbag and daintily dabs the laugh tears from her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. Grandpa removes a similarly crisp blue one from his pocket and blows his nose. I mean, who even uses those anymore? One good nose blow and then you have to carry around a thing full of snot for some poor underling to wash and iron. That’s assuming you can afford the underling.

  “Aria, I know you think we were ‘helicopter parents,’ ” Grandpa says.

>   “A grotesque term, if you ask me,” Grandma sniffs.

  “I’ll admit, I didn’t handle the spindle thing well. Trying to protect my daughter caused grave hardship for my poorest subjects.”

  At least he admits it. I never thought he would.

  “But the day before Rose turned fifteen, I had an epiphany. I realized that Grandma and I couldn’t keep her sheltered forever. At some point we had to trust her to look after herself.”

  “I thought it was more sensible to wait till the day after she turned fifteen, since Floriana Foxglove said Rose would prick her finger and die on her fifteenth birthday,” Grandma says, with a pointed look at Grandpa, who rolls his eyes. It’s clearly not the first time they’ve had this argument. “Yes, Pinny Primrose mitigated the spell so she didn’t die. But still. Someone had to pull the I’m-the-king-and-we’re-doing-it-my-way card.”

  I look up at the rearview mirror and the taxi driver’s eyes are twinkling. He’s probably wishing for a bowl of popcorn and a soda, because listening to my family’s reality show in the backseat is such great entertainment.

  “Was it worth sleeping for one hundred years?” I ask my grandparents.

  Grandpa gives me a shrewd look. “Was it worth—”

  Grandma coughs loudly and looks meaningfully at the cabdriver.

  “Was it worth going through what you just went through?” Grandpa continues more discreetly.

  He’s got me there—if I had to do it all over again, would I still do everything I could to get on Teen Couture to follow my dream?

  “Yes,” I tell my grandparents. “Because I’ve always wanted to be a fashion designer and I have to try it even if I fail. Or . . . have other weird things happen.”

  Grandpa’s patrician face breaks into a broad smile. “See, Althea? Our girl is a fighter. She might not wear a hauberk and carry a sword, but the blood of warriors runs in her veins.”

  “Cool,” I say. “As long as that blood helps me get through today’s challenge.”

  Grandma Althea acts like a total fangirl when I introduce her to Arthur Dunn. She asks him to sign her reading-glasses case with her lipstick. Luckily, he finds a Sharpie instead.

  I never pegged her for a Chic Cheap Couture fan. Grandpa, meanwhile, is glowering and muttering about his hauberk and sword. I learn more about my family’s weirdness every day.

  “You better get to makeup,” Arthur Dunn tells me, waving me off in that direction. “I promise to look after this delightful young lady for you.”

  Grandma actually giggles, which just makes Grandpa glower even more. The challenge is going to be a cinch after this.

  Or not.

  When I walk into makeup, it’s hard not to be suspicious of all the faces that turn to greet me.

  One of my fellow cast members put that enchanted needle on my table. It had to be one of them, because it happened in the middle of taping. I need to figure out who it is before he or she tries it again and I end up with a worse curse than Shakespeak. Or dead, even.

  “Hey, Aria! How are you feeling?” Pez asks, when I take a seat in the makeup chair next to her.

  She seems friendly and genuine enough. But Pez is the one who told me the needle was on the table. Maybe she’s just asking to see if I’m still under a spell.

  “Fine,” I answer, keeping it to a minimum.

  “We don’t want her passing out again,” Jesse says without turning around.

  He was right there too. I find him confusing, and I don’t think it’s just because he’s a guy whose looks make my heart beat faster. One minute he’s flashing that oh-so-adorbs smile my way and the next he’s giving me an if looks could kill you’d be deader than a doornail glare. Maybe he’s just moody? Or could it be that there’s something more sinister?

  “Is everyone else as nervous as I am?” Iris asks, taking my attention away from Jesse. “I couldn’t even eat breakfast.”

  Iris was on the other side of the room, so she couldn’t have put the needle there. But wait—maybe she gave it to Pez or Jesse and suggested putting it on my table!

  The truth is, anyone could have put the enchanted needle there while I was scrabbling around on the floor looking for the one I lost.

  “I wonder what today’s challenge is going to be,” Manuel says.

  “It better not involve dogs,” Jesse grumbles.

  I can’t suppress a giggle.

  His light-blue eyes meet mine in the mirror. Today they are neither flirty nor killer—they’re unreadable, expressionless.

  “It won’t,” Hugh reassures Jesse. “It’s always something totally different.”

  “Yeah, like what’s the opposite of shelter puppies?” Lazlo asks.

  “Dressing hedge-fund managers?” Mia suggests.

  Eddie and Coco look at each other.

  “Can you imagine that episode?” Eddie asks Coco. “Having the contestants dress the billionaire guys in bespoke suits?”

  “Arthur would love it,” Coco giggles. “We have to tell him.”

  “Give me credit,” Mia demands. “It was my idea.”

  “Relax. No one is stealing your idea,” Eddie tells her.

  “Don’t tell me to relax,” Mia says. “People steal ideas all the time.”

  I wonder if Mia is the culprit. She’s so prickly all the time—like she’s got a permanent chip on her shoulder. But how would she learn the enchantment spell? And I haven’t told anyone who my parents are, so why me?

  I look around the room at the rest of the contestants: Hugh, who seems so gentle and well mannered; Liah, who seems so nice and caring; Lazlo, who’s so interesting and cool; and Manuel, who I can’t imagine doing something like this because it would shame his abuela. But it has to be one of them. And the fact that I don’t know which one makes me feel even more nervous than I was last week about the upcoming challenge. Then Bob Adams comes in to lead us up to the workroom for round two.

  I’m going to have to keep my eyes peeled for clues and my hands fisted to protect my fingertips. Well, except for when I’m working, of course. It’ll be hard to win, otherwise.

  “Welcome to episode two of Teen Couture,” Arthur Dunn announces once the cameras start rolling. “Today’s challenge is all about teamwork. You’ll be divided into groups of three for the challenge, and how well you work together will determine if you stay or go.”

  I look around at my competitors. Great. Just when I have to be suspicious of every single person in the competition for my own safety, I have to work with them in order to get through to the next round.

  “The Red Group will consist of Liah, Hugh, and Iris,” Mr. Dunn announces. I hold my breath. “Manuel, Pez, and Lazlo—you’re the Green Group.”

  I exhale, my stomach turning over in dismay.

  “That leaves Jesse, Mia, and Aria in the Blue Group. Okay, everyone, get together with your group and prepare to hear the challenge.”

  Arthur Dunn and the producers of Teen Couture must hate me. Staying in the competition depends on teamwork, and they’ve put me with a guy who flirts with me one minute and acts like he wants to kill me the next, and a girl who’s made it clear she can’t stand me, for reasons I don’t even know. I’m doomed.

  Jesse and I exchange uneasy smiles as we meet at our assigned worktable. Mia doesn’t bother.

  “Just my luck to get stuck with you,” she grumbles.

  I can’t tell if she means me or Jesse or both of us, but it gets us off to a great start, obviously.

  “I wouldn’t have picked you, either,” Jesse says.

  “Guys, you realize that staying in the competition depends on how well we work together as a team, right?” I remind them, speaking clearly for the mic that’s on a boom above our heads.

  That earns me dirty looks from both my teammates as Arthur Dunn claps his hands to get our attention. Great.

  “Teams, your challenge is to dress a fairy-tale character,” he says. “You have four hours to complete the challenge, starting . . . now.”

  Talk
about irony.

  “So who are we going to design for?” Mia asks. “I vote for the Beast.”

  Jesse gives me a sly look. “I’m thinking Sleeping Beauty.”

  Wait. Does that mean he knows she’s my mom? He’s just jumped to number one on my suspect list.

  Mia snorts. “Oh that’ll be fun. All she did was sleep for a hundred years. What are we going to do, design her a freaking nightgown?”

  “I agree,” I say. “The Beast offers more interesting fashion possibilities.”

  Glancing over at Jesse to see how he’s taking being overruled, I see that he’s smiling, but catch a slight narrowing of his eyes. Is he hiding something?

  I feel bad that Mom’s going to see me agree that she’s boring, because it’s not true at all. She grew up to be interesting and successful after she woke up from her century-long nap. In my humble opinion, her story is an example of why naps should be taken at every possible opportunity.

  “Guess you’re outvoted, Prince Not-So-Charming,” Mia tells Jesse.

  “So what’s our concept?” I ask, trying to focus us back on the challenge.

  “Everyone always dresses the Beast all Olde Worlde and what’s the word . . . baroque,” Mia says. “We should change it up. Make him goth or steampunk or something.”

  “I say stay classic,” Jesse says. “If it ain’t ba-roke, don’t fix it.”

  I groan. “Even if it weren’t for the corny joke, I’d agree with Mia. We’ll only win if we think out of the box.”

  “Okay, steampunk,” Jesse says. “At least then it doesn’t have to be all black and boring.”

  He looks pointedly at Mia, who is dressed top to toe in black. She ignores him.

  Between us—well, mainly between Mia and me, while Jesse stands there with his arms crossed like a pillar of hostile salt, complaining and making snarky comments—we sketch out a smoking jacket with a velvet collar, slim black pants, and a silk scarf with a gear theme.

  We race to the fabric area to find what we need. Mia puts Jesse in charge of finding black fabric for the pants to get him back for saying black is boring. She’s scoping out stuff for the scarf, while I look for the jacket material.