Even teen evil queens need love. Right? (Or at least a handsome sword-fighting minion to do their bidding!)
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Bad things happen when Rowen is around and the worst part is, she has no idea why until a massive family secret sends her on a fantastica...
"Some people have metaphorical skeletons in the closet. Mine are real, and therefore harder to keep under wraps."—Rowen Keckilpenny Brown
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First of all, today is Friday, the thirteenth of October, which should totally have been an omen. Other important facts:
1. I had exactly twenty-four minutes before the tardy bell.
2. I had three tardies this semester already; one more meant automatic detention. (Promptness is not my thing.)
3. Detention at my school is after-school yoga in the gym. (California cannot have normal 'write an essay about your failings as a human being' detention. I'd even prefer the Harry Potter writing "I must not tell lies" in his own blood detention to yoga!)
4. If you haven't already guessed, I despise yoga, which is a form of torture created in the fifth century BCE, for the express purpose of causing humans excruciating pain while boring them to death.
5. Finally, Before I could leave for school, I had to retrieve my dad's skeleton from the attic.
Sure, I had all week to retrieve the skeleton, but my free time got filled up with more important things, like scrolling through social media, jealously watching other people my age having actual lives, friends, and most of all, boyfriends, and wondering what that would be like; what it would feel like to be kissed.
I spent an embarrassing number of hours staring into the mirror, examining my wild mass of red hair, reminding myself that no one would ever want to kiss me, anyway. Who would kiss a freak with crazy red hair and vaguely reptilian green eyes? My hair seems to have its own agenda. Like Medusa's snakes, but with less molting. Just don't come too close with a hairpin. It will not be tamed!
Both of my dads are normal-looking, so it's pretty obvious I'm not related to either of them, though whenever I bring up the subject of my adoption, my dads look so hurt, I drop it. But I do wonder about my birth parents, who must've been so weird looking it was a miracle they reproduced.
Plus, yesterday, after the third week of scheduling mishaps by the Coffin Ridge Sanitation Department, I had to hack into the system on the town's website. If the adults couldn't properly clean up their trash, it was up to me.
You can see that all these activities left me with no time for chores, especially the skeleton search.
Sorry to lay all that on you, but let's face it, you're all I have!
So where was I? Oh right, this morning's smoothie incident and how the trip to the attic ruined my life.
Outside the kitchen window, the sun was still a weak watery thing, its dull light filtering through the gnarled branches of the dead oak in our front yard. The barren tree stood vigil over a mish-mosh of tacky Halloween decorations, all painstakingly arranged by Dad. He loved Halloween. I hated it, mostly because it made our house look like a place where crazy ladies hung out and knitted pumpkin-themed sweaters for their cats.
