The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell Read Free

student raised her hand.
    “Yes, Miss Bailey?” Mrs. Peters called.
    “He claimed she could spin hay into gold,” Alex said.
    “Very good, Miss Bailey,” Mrs. Peters said. If she had a favorite student—not that she would ever admit to having one—Alex would have been it.
    Alex was always eager to please. She was the definition of a bookworm. It didn’t matter what time of day it was—before school, during school, after school, before bed—she was always reading. She had a thirst for knowledge and, because of it, Alex was usually the first person to answer Mrs. Peters’s questions.
    She tried her best to impress her classmates with every chance she got, putting extra effort into each book report and class presentation she was assigned. However, thisusually annoyed the other students, and Alex was often teased for it.
    She constantly heard other girls making fun of her behind her back. She usually spent lunch alone under a tree somewhere with an open library book. Although she would never tell anyone, Alex was so lonely that sometimes it hurt.
    “Now, can anyone tell me what the compromise was that the maiden made with Rumpelstiltskin?”
    Alex waited a moment before putting her hand up. She didn’t want to seem like a
total
teacher’s pet.
    “Yes, Miss Bailey?”
    “In exchange for turning the hay into gold, the maiden promised to give Rumpelstiltskin her first-born child when she became queen,” Alex explained.
    “That’s a pretty steep deal,” said a boy behind Alex.
    “What’s a creepy old short man want with a baby anyway?” a girl next to him asked.
    “Obviously, he couldn’t adopt with a name like Rumpelstiltskin,” another student added.
    “Did he eat the baby?” someone else asked nervously.
    Alex turned around to face her clueless peers.
    “You’re all missing the point of the story,” Alex said. “Rumpelstiltskin took advantage of the maiden because she was in need. The story is about the price of a bad negotiation. What are we willing to give up long-term in the future for something short-term in the present? Get it?”
    If Mrs. Peters could change her facial expression, shewould have looked very proud. “Nicely put, Miss Bailey,” she said. “I must say, in all my years of teaching, I’ve rarely come across a pupil with as much in-depth knowledge as—”
    A loud snore suddenly came from the back of the classroom. A boy in the back row was slouched over his desk and drooling from the corner of his mouth, very much asleep.
    Alex had a twin brother, and it was moments like these that made her wish she didn’t.
    Mrs. Peters diverted her attention to him like a paper clip to a magnet.
    “Mr. Bailey?” Mrs. Peters asked.
    He continued to snore.
    “Mr. Bailey?” Mrs. Peters asked again, kneeling down closer to him.
    He let out another enormous snore. A few of the students wondered how it was possible for such a loud noise to come out of him.
    “Mr. Bailey!”
Mrs. Peters shouted in his ear.
    As if someone had lit a firework under his seat, Conner Bailey jumped back to life, almost knocking his desk over.
    “Where am I? What happened?” Conner asked in a panicked state of confusion. His eyes darted around the room while his brain tried to remember where he was.
    Like his sister, he also had bright blue eyes and strawberry-blond hair. His face was round and freckled and, at the moment, slightly smushed to one side like a basset hound when it first wakes up from a nap.
    Alex couldn’t have been more embarrassed by her brother. Besides sharing looks and a birth date, she and her brother couldn’t have been more different. Conner may have had a lot of friends, but unlike his sister, he had trouble in school… mostly trouble staying awake.
    “I’m so glad you could rejoin us, Mr. Bailey,” Mrs. Peters said sternly. “Did you have a nice nap?”
    Conner turned bright red.
    “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Peters,” he apologized, trying to be as genuine as possible. “Sometimes when