Broken Fairytales
Authors: Monica Alexander
By Monica Alexander
Copyright 2012 by Monica Alexander
ISBN
:
978-1-4764-0237-6
Cover image: Copyright 2012 by Monica Alexander
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or personals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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“
You’re
leaving
?!” Rachel asked
when I called to break the news to her.
“Tell me you’re not serious.”
“
I’m serious
,” I said, flopping down on my bed
. My still damp bathing suit clung uncomfortably to my body, but I
didn’t feel like
get
ting
up
and changing
.
Visions of a house on the beach and a summer spent lying in the sun with my iPod and a stack of books had me wishing the next few weeks would fly by
, and I couldn’t focus on much else
.
“Mom and Dad are whisking us away for eight weeks of fun in the sun and apparently some much needed family bonding time or something. Chase and Keely aren’t exactly excited.”
“
Neither am I
,” Rachel murmured, and I could hear one of the chairs on
her back deck scratch the hard
wood
floor
as she pulled it out and collapsed in a huff.
“Why the need for the sudden familial bonding and whatnot?”
I sighed. “Because Chase and I are graduating in the spring and Keely’s off to college, so this is the last summer we can do something like this as a family. My mom’s feeling sentimental, I guess.”
“When do you
guys
leave?”
“The first of July,” I said, examining my stomach to see how tan I’d gotten in the fou
r hours we’d spent laying out by
Rachel’s pool that afternoon.
After eight weeks at the beach
, I’d be sporting a tan worthy of a suntan lotion ad, and the thought gave me giddy chills.
“Shit. That’s in like two weeks.”
Rachel was
decidedly
not giddy. She was bummed.
In the background I could heard the methodical clicking of something that sounded like a lighter. I knew the sound all too well. My brother had smoked since high school and had a bad habit of clicking his lighter when he was nervous. Rachel’s intake of breath confirmed my suspicions.
“Tell me you’re not smoking,” I said, hearing the condescension in my voice.
Ever since Rachel had gotten back from New York, where she’d spent the spring semester studying at Columbia and interning at a music magazine, she’d
been smoking when we went out at night.
She claimed that everyone she
met in New York smoked, so she’d picked up the habit. She swore she was just a social smoker, but it seemed she was moving beyond that.
“I’m not smoking,” she said, very non-convincingly, although she inhaled deeply and blew out her breath a moment later, so I knew she was lying. “Spare me the lecture, Em. I know smoking is bad for me, blah, blah, b
lah, but whatever, I
just found out my best friend is leaving me for the summer, and I’m not exactly thrilled.”
“Fine,” I said, holding my tongue, but we both knew the jud
gment that was hidden behind that solitary
word. “But for the record, you left me all spring, so you don’t really have much room to talk.
”
“Point taken,” Rachel said
begrudgingly.
“Although, that was for school, not for
laying on the beach
, partying and meeting hot guys.”
I laughed out loud. “Yes, because my goals in life are to
get wasted and hook up
with random guys
,” I said sarcastically. “
You’d think after fifteen years you’d know me, but I guess not.”
“A girl can dream,” Rachel sighed, but I knew she was being facetious.
We’d been best friends since
the
first grade, and she knew better than anyone that I didn’t party, and I hadn’t dated anyone but my boyfriend Ben in five years. My plans for the summer were strictly PG Rated, and Rachel knew it, but she loved to goad me, especially about Ben since she felt we’d been together too long. She hated that we planned to get engaged and move in together after graduation.
She’d been telling me for the past two years that I
needed to experience more in life, including untying myself from the only guy I’d ever really been with. O
nly recently
,
had I started to
wonder if she might
be right
.
I hadn’t said anything to her yet. I needed to be sure about my feelings before I admitted them out loud
, because honestly the idea of ending things with Ben terrified me, and once I put it out there, I couldn’t take it back.
“I wish you could come with us,” I said, knowing it was a fruitless invite.
Had it been possible,
Rachel would have come
with my family to
t
he Outer Banks
where my parents, not thirty minutes earlier, had
sur
prise-
announced we’d be spending the las
t two months of the summer. But
she
had scored an amazing opportunity to work for a local music magazine, and I knew she’d never pass up the chance to do what she loved. Her role at the magazine was small, but she coveted it. She was responsible for watching live music and writing about the bands. She was in heaven, even if she was only earning a menial salary and had to listen to some pretty crappy music a lot of the time. She got into the concerts for free, and sometimes even got me in with her, which was an awesome perk when it was a band I
actually
wanted to see.
“What did Ben say when you told him
you were leaving
?” she asked, catching me off-guard.
“Um, I didn’t exactly call him yet.”
I could almost see Rachel’s eyebrows rise in mix of surprise and skepticism. For years, if I received any earth-shattering news, my firs
t call would have been to Ben.
Why I hadn’t called him first, I wasn’t sure. I told myself I’d spent the day with Rachel, so she’d been on my mind, but in reality, when my parents
had
dropped the
family vacation
bomb
just a few minutes earlier, one of my first thoughts was that leaving for the summer also meant time away from Ben
– and this was a positive thought
. I wanted to kick myself for
feeling that way
, but I couldn’t help
it.
“Ooh, Prince Charming’s going to be pissed when he finds out you’re abandoning him,” she said, and I wished she could see my glare through the phone.
I hated that she called Ben Prince Charming, but at least she never called him that to his face.
She just did it to tease me.
Having been friends since we were kids, Rachel knew
that my childhood
fantasy was to be a princess
, so I could fall
in love
with handsome prince and live
in a grand castle
with a moat and a drawbridge
.
I attribute these
far-fetched
dreams to too many Disney movies and a mother who
fully supported my
desires
by allowing me dress up as a princess not only for Halloween, but also for
many other non-dress-up appropriate occasions. Trust me, I’ve seen the pictures, and as adorable as everyone says I looked, it’s a little odd to see Belle in all her yellow-ball-gowned-glory at a summer picnic when everyone else is in shorts and tank tops. But my mother knew how much I loved being a princess, so she fed into my deep-rooted
wishes
to live in a fairytale world where everything was perfect and birds dressed me in the morning.
She even went so far as to dress my twin brother Chase up as any number of fairytale princes for Halloween until he was old enough to tell her no. The last year he let her do it, we’d been six, and he insisted he get to be Luke Skywalker since he was way cooler than Prince Charming. I was okay with it, because I got to be Princess Leia, complete with cinnamon bun twisted braids on either side of my head. After that, Chase refused
to coordinate costumes with me, so I was on my own.
Eventually, I stopped dressing like I was a Disney character, but the desire to live the life of a fairytale princess never
really
left me. I relished the day I was crowned Prom Queen my senior year of high school, because I got to actually wear a real tiara and a beautiful ground-sweeping pale pink gown. Ben, having been crowned Prom King, stood beside me, wearing a crown of his own, holding a staff and looking like a real prince. I knew in that moment, as we da
nced together
, that I’d found my prince, and one day we would live in a castle – or a moderately sized single family home – together.
I’d made the mistake of telling this to a
n
intoxicated Rachel
that night
, and hence Ben’s nickname was born.