UnEnchanted (2 page)

“
You really should have
been on time,” Mr. West commented. His balding head glistened from
the heat of the already too-warm bus.

“
I’m sorry,” Mina answered
quietly. “We had a power outage.”

Mr. West looked over her permission form and
then nodded for her to take a seat. Walking toward the back of the
bus was like being in a bad slow-motion dream. She had no choice
but to be the recipient of twenty-some odd stares.

Ducking her head and sliding into the seat
next to Nan, Mina poked her in the side in revenge. “That’s for
making me run for so long.”

Nan grinned, showing perfect white teeth.
Today she was wore an “I <3 Jacob Black” shirt, skinny jeans,
and black flats. Nan was the exact opposite of Mina in every way,
which was why they probably got along so well. She got a kick out
of Mina’s lack of knowledge in all things social and popular.

“
Well, maybe if you got a
cell phone, you could have texted me you were running late,” Nan
quipped, pulling out her latest iPhone, fingers flying over the
touchpad.

“
What are you doing? Are
you chirping?”

Nan rolled her eyes and laughed. “Really,
Mina, it’s called tweeting.”

“
Okay. Are you
tweeting?”

“
Of course.” Nan
smirked.

Mina’s stomach sank. “About what?” She had a
feeling she already knew the answer. She’d seen something in Nan's
hand when she had previously opened the window and leaned out.

“
Oh, nothing much. I’m
just tweeting the picture of you running like a madman after the
bus to all of my followers.”

"Followers" made it sound like some sort of
cult.

“
Nan, how many followers
do you have?” She hoped the number hadn’t gone up.

“
Well, after yesterday’s
rant about the garbage they pass off as lunch, I’m up to about
three hundred.” She clicked "Update," and immediately chiming could
be heard from multiple phones on the bus. Snickers and heads turned
Mina’s way, and she heard whispers of “
loser”
and “
nerd.”

“
Nan! How could you?” Mina
said, scrambling over Nan so she could be by the windows and out of
direct line of sight to most of the riders. She pulled her backpack
up over her head and hid behind the bag.

“
Mina, you need to learn
to laugh at yourself. I’m trying to get you noticed. Hardly anybody
knows who you are.”

“
I can’t imagine anyone
wanting to be the center of
that
kind of attention. I certainly
wouldn’t.”

Nan raised one eyebrow in disbelief.
“Nonsense. Everyone wants to get at least some attention. Well,
except for you. Really, Mina, it doesn’t even matter whether it’s
good or bad, true or untrue—everyone wants to be popular, to be
part of some gossip.”

Nan was the friendliest and most outgoing
girl in the school. Everyone seemed to like Nan, not because she
was popular or smart, but because she was fun and real.

“
Not me.” Mina shrugged
nonchalantly.

“
So I guess in that case
you wouldn’t care about the current eligibility status of a certain
boy?” Nan knew that her best friend had had a secret crush on Brody
Carmichael ever since her family moved here.

“
Brody and Savannah broke
up?” Mina sat up straight in disbelief, knocking her backpack to
the floor.

“
Ah-ha! See, you are
interested.”

“
No, I’m not,” she
said.

“
Yes, you are,” Nan
taunted. She was right; Mina did want to know.

“
Okay, fine… Did they?”
Mina felt a flower of hope start to bloom and then shrivel up dead
at Nan’s next statement.

“
No, but see! Wouldn’t you
want to know if they did?”

“
I hate you, Nan Taylor!”
Mina shot out. “You’re a dream-killer, you know that right? Dream
KILLER.”

“
Gee, Grimy, keep it
down,” a male voice shot out from behind their seat.

Her face flushed red. Mina hated her last
name, an easy target for name-calling: Grime too easily translated
to Slime, Brine, Grimy. She couldn’t wait until she got married and
could legally change her name…if she could ever overcome her
awkwardness and talk to a boy.

Sitting back, she let Nan
talk on about the latest episode of
Glee
and even sang a few bars from
the new hit single she downloaded on her iPhone. Mina didn’t even
own an iPod; the closest thing she had was an old CD player. That
was something else about Nan—she was addicted to
Glee
and every popular
reality show on TV. Mina didn’t understand her best friend’s
infatuation. Mina’s own life was already a reality show; why would
she want to watch someone else’s?

The bus reached Babushka's Bakery, and all
of the wary and bored teenagers filed off and waited in groups.
This was Mina’s chance to scan the crowd and find the tall
blond-haired Brody Carmichael. Sure enough, he was standing next to
Savannah White, who looked every bit a princess with her long
white-blonde hair, porcelain skin, and big blue eyes. Brody seemed
distracted as Savannah latched possessively onto his arm, marking
her territory as only a female high school student could.

Brody was the fantasy of
every girl’s dream. He was a perfectly blended cocktail of
aristocrat and jock. The Carmichaels prided themselves on family
lineage and could follow their ancestors back to when they first
came over on the
Mayflower
. They raised racehorses,
owned a clothing company, and were by far the richest family in the
state. Yet Brody never let it get to his head. He never raised his
voice, never bullied anyone, and seemed completely oblivious to his
social status and effect on girls.

Her daydreaming was interrupted as a plump
man hurried out of the gray brick factory.

“
Welcome, children, we are
so glad to have you here at Babushka’s world-famous bakery. You can
call me B.J.,” the man said, smiling and wiping what looked like
leftover powdered doughnut from his face. “Let me introduce your
tour guide, Claire. She will take you around the factory and answer
any questions you have.”

The tour guide, a striking
blonde woman named Claire, walked out of the factory in a
form-fitting white lab jacket, yellow helmet, and goggles, which
did virtually nothing to impede her leggy, model-like beauty. There
were some obvious whistles and jabs among the boys, and even Brody
stood a few inches taller within her presence. She smiled warmly at
them, red lips framing perfect white teeth, and motioned the class
to follow her into the factory. Her hips sashayed, and her red
heels clicked on the cement sidewalk to a rhythm that only she
could hear
.

The boys followed like puppies, mere inches
behind the tour guide, while the popular girls, including Savannah,
hung back, shooting hateful glares toward Claire. A challenge had
clearly been drawn without one spoken word, and the girls flipped
their hair, powdered their noses, and glossed their lips in
preparation to retaliate. Mina felt a moment of pity for the poor
tour guide; she had personally seen what it was like to be on the
receiving end of jealous girls from Kennedy High.

Mina looked at Nan to see if she noticed,
but Nan was preoccupied with her texting. Taking a deep breath,
Mina grabbed Nan’s sleeve and led her after the group of students
into the factory with Nan texting the whole way.

Claire took them through a fluorescent-lit
hallway lined with photo murals of Babushka's Bakery’s history. She
paused every few feet to explain the history, as Mina grabbed a
chewed-up pencil and notebook out of her broken backpack and
struggled to catch up. “This is our founder, Larry Brimwell. In
1911, he started the bakery out of his two-bedroom home, and later
moved it into a rented building in the international district in
1913.” A grainy black-and-white photo could be seen of a man with a
white apron and hat, rolling small balls of chocolate on a small
kitchen table. Out of focus and barely visible underneath the table
was a small brown-haired boy playing with a wooden car.

The next wall mural depicted a smiling Mr.
Brimwell outside a small vacant building with a “For Rent” sign in
the dirty, paned window. A severe, unsmiling blonde woman stood
next to Mr. Brimwell, one hand holding a small clutch purse. This
was obviously his wife, holding the hand of their little boy. Mina
stopped to stare at the picture of what was supposed to be a happy
family, but the picture seemed odd, almost forced. Mina wondered
what was really going on in Mrs. Brimwell’s mind.

“
It was Mrs. Brimwell who
saw the potential of turning the bakery into a full-scale factory
and invested all of her inheritance in the company against her
father’s wishes. Soon after they purchased this current factory,
Larry died of scarlet fever. His wife and son were left to take on
the family business alone.” Claire stopped speaking, her voice
quavering for only a split second, before she cleared her throat
and dazzled the group with her smile again. “Through hard work and
perseverance, they made it into the baking empire it is
today.”

“
Who runs it now?”
Pricilla Rose, or Pri for short, had raised her hand but asked the
question before being called on.

“
Mr. Brimwell,” Claire
replied.

“
Why, that would make him
almost a hundred years old,” Pri said, surprised.

“
Silly me,” Claire
chuckled. “Please forgive me, I meant to say his grandson, B.J.
Brimwell, who met you at the front door. He didn’t look quite 100,
did he?” Heads bobbed in understanding, and a few boys even laughed
at the dull joke.

More facts were mentioned, and the tour kept
moving. Mr. West told them they would have a paper due concerning
their tour, and Mina needed an A on this paper, badly. Sometime
during the lecture on the usefulness of different sugars in the
chocolate process, Mr. West had become separated from the tour
group, but only Mina seemed to notice their ward’s absence.

Claire seemed to enjoy the extra attention
from the boys, particularly Brody, and did nothing to discourage
them. The tour went through the stockroom, the drying room, and the
mixing rooms. Every room looked the same, sterile and depressing,
the workers even more so in their drab white coats, shower caps,
and listless, droning movements. The expression on every one of the
workers’ faces was the same: blank.

Mina noticed that many of the students were
becoming bored, and more than a few could be seen trying to stifle
their yawns, so as not to upset their guide. Mina felt her eyes
start to go heavy, as if she hadn’t slept in days.

Slowly the atmosphere of the tour changed.
Mina hardly noticed when the steady stream of facts slowed
significantly and Claire’s voice no longer echoed loudly enough to
reach the back of the room. In fact, Claire had hardly spoken above
a whisper for the last five minutes. The rest of the class became
incidental, as the tour now seemed to only consist of one
VIP—Brody.

Claire would lean in and gently put her hand
on his shoulder to direct him if he was turning the wrong way. She
would whisper a comment that only he seemed to hear. Everything
about the small movements and encounters between the two seemed
odd, out of place. Claire stopped walking to listen to a comment
that Brody made, turned her head coyly to the side, and giggled.
Actually giggled. Now Mina wished that she wasn’t at the back of
the group so she could hear what was said. But someone obviously
did overhear; Savannah moved in for the kill.

Savannah flipped her blonde hair and
physically stepped between Claire and Brody, her nose turned up in
challenge. “Excuse me. Perhaps you could stop paying so much
attention to my boyfriend so we can actually hear you in the back.”
Claire’s eyes turned dark as Brody grabbed her elbow and turned on
her.

“
You have GOT to be
kidding, Savannah. Are you trying to embarrass me?”

“
Are you? When’s the last
time you were so interested in a stupid bread barn?”

“
Oh, come on. Really, you
want to do this now?”

“
Do what now?” she asked
coldly.

Brody’s voice grew louder. Everyone stopped
talking to listen in to what was sure to be the biggest argument of
the semester, and they were going to witness it firsthand.

“
It’s over between us. I’m
sick of you. I’m sick of your jealousy and your childish ways. It’s
time for you to grow up!” Brody looked feverish and tense. Sweat
beaded off his forehead.

Savannah’s eyes glistened with tears, and
her cherry-glossed lip started to tremble. “You don’t mean that.
Yesterday you told me…”

“
Well, that was yesterday
and this is today. Don’t you get it? You’re too much of a baby.”
The words left Brody’s mouth, but they seemed awkward and forced.
Savannah turned and ran back down the hallway toward the bathrooms.
Pri dutifully ran after her.

Claire turned to the group and smiled
brightly. “Well, now that that embarrassing scene is over with,
let’s be on our way, shall we?” Her smile was so blindingly bright
that it was almost painful look at.

Did no one else seem to notice the effect
the bewitching tour guide was having on Brody and the boys?
Apparently not. The girls were so upset by the breakup that they
were no longer paying attention to the tour, instead whispering
among themselves excitedly about sudden availability of the hottest
guy in school. No one ever could hold a grudge against Brody
Carmichael.