Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales Read Free Page A

there’d probably never be,well…the boyfriend. So cranking up the volume one more notch was always a good solution, she found.
    As the auditions progressed, as usual, Briar kept to herself. She tucked herself away in a shadowed seat near the back of the dusty auditorium and glanced toward the rear double doors for the eighty-sixth time.
Where was Dax, anyway?
Her best friend was supposed to meet her by three o’clock, yet an hour into the audition process, still no Dax. Now Briar was solo and sharing floor space with Buck-toothed Braces Girl from science class, that skinny Grizzly Chicken Girl from math, and the really, really short boy who either had no name or nobody ever bothered to use it.
    She caught the nearby sight of a couple of goobers rehearsing a love scene. It might have been pretty good had one’s headgear not tangled with the other’s hopelessly frizzy hair. She followed them with an obvious slow-eyed glower as they shimmied out the back doors.
    A Juliet who was shaped like a baked potato was in the middle of her onstage fretting when a stagehand signaled to Briar that she was up soon. She felt a knot form in the hollow of her throat and she started to wonder if she could go through with it.
    And where was her reason for auditioning in the first place? She hadn’t seen him yet. All right, yes, it was a
he
, Briar begrudgingly acknowledged.
Fine
. But where was he? He was probably hanging out there among the Lucky Ones.
    He had to be there, or her whole bloody scheme was wasted. She was sure that she overheard him one day telling another Lucky Boy that he was going to try out for the play. Even if it was a joke and even if he planned on turning the play into a running gag for his buddies, Briar saw this as an opportunity. As strange as it seemed, she felt that sharing the stage together with him might just level the playing field and offer her a shot to get to— well, she hadn’t actually thought it through beyond trying outfor the same play.
    She arranged her long limp black bangs so that they hung in front of her eyes. It was easier to spy on the group of them without looking conspicuous, she thought. As if sitting there looking like a reject from
American Horror Story
wasn’t conspicuous.
    Unexpectedly Grizzly Chicken girl moon-walked up to Briar, probably for the first time ever, and naïvely, innocently, complemented her on her super cool mortician’s outfit. “Your little spooky outfits are such a hoot!” she said sunnily.
    Briar hadn’t anticipated sinking to a new low this afternoon, yet here it was. How glorious.
    â€œThanks, butt-munch,” Briar replied. “Your braces are pretty cool too.”
    Grizzly’s face caved. “That’s the color of my teeth,” she mumbled, holding a hand over her mouth. She faded back into the crowd.
    Briar threw over her shoulder, “Well, lay off the tetracycline, then.”
    She bit her black lip and felt her stomach twist with guilt, but only for a moment. Then, feebly attempting to soften the blow she said, “Cuz your skin already looks great—” But it was too late. “Aw crap,” she said and slunk lower in her squeaky theater seat.
    Just the week before, a couple of Lucky Boys had slapped Grizzly’s books out of her hands and tripped her. As Briar stared at the scene from the locker across the hall, she felt a strange heat rising from her stomach. She had never felt that before. She used to think that some of these kids, like Grizzly, kind-of brought on their own persecution. Well, whatever. Even if that wasn’t exactly true, she had to protect herself, which meant staying out of little self-esteem crumblers like the one that was unfolding.
    But that day, while watching Grizzly dab at her skinned knee and dissolve into silent tears, something in Briar snapped as thetwo Lucky Boys slapped high-fives at their prank. Her vision distorted, blurred really. It felt