The Forgotten Fairytales Read Online Free Page B

Terrier and silently cursing the girl in the pigtails and red heels chasing him.
    The doors opened with a soft push, and I hurled myself into the cool afternoon. The sun hid behind a mess of clouds, leaving me no warmer outside than in. Still, out here, I could imagine a place far away.
    I ran my hands through my hair, pulling at the roots. Dad had to get me, like, pronto. The moment I told him about the sack of shit they were brainwashing these kids to believe, he’d come. I knew it.
    In my peripherals I spotted a girl beside a boulder. April. Excitement and relief flooded me and I hurried over to her.
    “You have no idea how happy I am to see you.” I plopped down on the ground, our knees almost touching. “Everyone at this school is flipping crazy.”
    “I’m a sidekick.” She grimaced, her watery eyes refusing to meet mine. “The professor told me that was gracious considering my instability.”
    My jaw dropped, tension building in my neck. “Who said that?” I jerked forward, ready to find whoever judged my sister and give them a piece of my mind. My fists clenched. What kind of an asinine jerk said those things to someone who clearly had issues to begin with?
    “Jeez, Norah, calm down.” April groaned. “It’s our first day. You don’t have to stir up trouble. I want to be invisible.”
    Being invisible was what got us in trouble the last time. Well, her mostly, me by association. April needed to join a club or a group, get involved. That’s how you made friends, by putting yourself out there, not by crawling in a hole and praying no one noticed you. Of course I couldn’t tell her that without pissing her off. In actuality, this was the most April and I had talked without her blowing up at me. So like a good sister, I changed the subject.
    “Where’s your dorm?” A gentle breeze slipped between us, cooling the sweat on the back of my neck and stirring the pieces of hair in front of my face.
    “The back end of the campus, I think. I can’t remember.”
    I sucked in a breath, holding the bite back from my voice. “Can’t remember, or weren’t listening?”
    A small smile tugged at the edge of her thin lips. “Both?”
    April stared into the distance, her deep, honey brown eyes lost in something else. Was I set out for failure or did I have a chance to help her find normalcy again? Though I doubted normal was possible in a school of fairy tale freaks. But we’d be out soon and we could find normal elsewhere. Moscow hopefully.
    “Can you believe the people here think they’re from books?” I asked. “Kind of crazy, huh?”
    April shrugged, hiding her face with her hair. “It’s nice to have something to believe in.”
    The cuff of her sweater slid up her wrists, exposing the almost healed marks. The scars wouldn’t fully leave though; they’d always be there, reminding her of the past. I guess scars on the outside were haunting like that. At least if it were a memory, you could keep it hidden in the back of your mind. But how do you hide something so visible?
    There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t question why April did what she did. Why life seemed so unbearable for her. She rarely complained about moving so much. Then again, when she sat in her room, staring out the window instead of going outside to conquer the neighborhood and make friends like me, I should’ve noticed. A good sister would have noticed. Zombies had more life than her.
    The doctor told me not the blame myself, but sometimes I wondered if I could’ve helped her more. Two years didn’t sound like much age-wise, but in the end, it really was. There was still so much April couldn’t do with me.
    “Wanna compare schedules?” I asked.
    April pushed hers my way without taking mine. I sighed and stared at the paper as if I were trying to light it on fire. We had no classes together, not even lunch, which meant she was skipping. Already.
    “Shouldn’t you be in,” I paused and registered the class name. These