Vigilante Green (#OnceUponNow)

Chapter 1

Author's Note: Hey guys! VIGILANTE GREEN is my entry for the #OnceUponANow contest! If you like what you read and would like the book to possibly have the chance to get published, click the VOTE star/button at the top of the page! VOTES  ON THE FIRST CHAPTER are the only ones counted so please vote if you enjoy! Thank you!

As the story goes, Gracie Jones was destined to date royalty.

At least, that's what the five dollar fortune teller on 9th Street said.

Never mind her lifelong love for worn down chucks and torn up band tees.

Never mind her new found hobby of tearing the pages out of fairytales, and shaving the hair off of her sister's old princess Barbies.

According to the cosmos, Gracie was due to be asked to prom by a "green-eyed, golden-haired prince with a wayward smile."

Esmeralda, the fortune teller, spoke with wild-eyed conviction, like she wholeheartedly believed in the future she saw in her plastic crystal ball.

But belief and truth were two different things.

As far as reality was concerned, Gracie wasn't into wayward smiles.

And Gracie definitely wasn't into blondes.

Gracie aspired to date dark-haired boys who wore old concert wrist bands, and blasted punk rock through their headphones.

And that was her rule.

No exceptions.

Except for maybe one boy.

But Gracie kept him a secret.

***

Before she went to bed that night, Gracie unearthed her five dollar fortune and read it until she got lost in its words. Skepticism turned into curiosity, curiosity turned into hope. And hope turned into a silent wish that she whispered to her glow-in-the-dark stars a little after midnight.

In the morning, all the kings and queens of Sherwood High would show up dressed to the nines excited to see who would ask who to prom. As the tradition went, the boys would bust out their best proposals and pick a single girl to be their dance hall date.

Gracie'd spent two years watching from the sidelines. The pretty boys chose the pretty girls, not the punk rock princesses. Not the misfits. Not the Gracie Jones's of Sherwood High.

Nobody noticed Gracie.

Preppy suburbia wasn't a place where girls with piercings were popular.

They were the freaks, the outsiders, the ones who sat alone in lunchrooms filled with people who didn't understand them.

People who never would.

They didn't shine.

They didn't stand out in the ways that mattered.

They weren't all-star athletes, or cheer team captains.

They were the untouchables. The socially irrelevant.

And so the world of high school sweethearts and prom night romance kept on turning without them.

Without her.

But this year would be different.

It'd be different because of a boy.

A green-eyed, golden-haired prince who took off his crown and showed his true colors to Gracie.

A boy who said he liked her rock and roll smile despite the fact that he was royalty.

A boy who asked her to come to her first party ever last week and gave her her first kiss ever, secretly and softly under the stars in someone else's backyard.

A boy who secretly smiled at her in the hallways ever since.

Gracie fell head over heels for the kind of fairytale boy that she swore she wouldn't.

That she swore she couldn't.

'Cause Gracie didn't believe in happy endings.

Until tonight.

And just before she turned off the lights, she flipped over her five dollar fortune and wrote his name on the back.

And, as she slipped into the space between sleep and dance hall dreams, Gracie let herself believe in magic.

If only for a night.

(Continue to Chapter 2)