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My Fairy Tale (Working Title)

Normal teen, Daniella, or Dani, loves fairy tales with a passion. She has a storybook with all her favorite stories: Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, and Little Red Riding Hood.

Dani loves the idea of being saved and falling in love, but of course that'll never happen.

Then, one day, she's sucked into the pages of her book and suddenly she's running around with her favorite fairy tale characters. She becomes almost like a fairy godmother, helping make sure the story goes the way it's supposed to.

What Dani doesn't expect is to be pulled into the book and she finds herself in the midst of her own fairy tale: Beauty and the Beast.

<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>•<•>

It was a warm, sunny day and I was walking out to my car to go to school. I tossed my bag in the passenger seat, not caring that I would have to move it when I picked up my best friend, Jenna. I squinted through the sunlight and drove the two blocks to Jenna's house.

Jenna was waiting outside, staring up at the sky. I quickly reached over and tossed my bag in the backseat a second before Jenna dropped down in the seat. She added her bag to the back.

"Hey," she said. "You ready for the weekend?"

I nodded, and pulled the car away from the curb. "So ready."

"Got plans?" Jenna probed, leaning over the center console.

I chuckled, lightly. "No. No plans. I'll probably do what I always do." I meant that I would read from my old storybook that I got when I was a child. Five stories that I'd grown up reading, at least once a week.

Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty.

I might have been able to recite them from memory by now, but I still loved them.

"Let me ask you this," Jenna started, pushing stray brown hairs off her forehead. "When you have kids, are you gonna force those stories on them?"

I laughed again, getting closer to the school. "I don't know about forcing them on them. But if they happen to like the stories I read them, then that's totally fine with me."

Jenna snorted and was silent until Dani pulled into the parking lot several minutes later. "Do you even want kids?" she asked, suddenly. She reached behind the seat until she found one of the straps on her backpack. She tugged it onto her lap, without looking at it.

"That's mine," I said, pointing. "And yeah, I think so."

Jenna pushed my backpack at me, and retrieved her own. "Right. Because you need someone to force your stories on," she told me, with a wink before she got out.

I rolled my eyes and followed her into the school.

"Okay, Dani," Jenna said, "real question."

"What is it?" I asked with a dramatic sigh.

"Are you going to the dance next week?"

I was walking to my locker. Jenna's short legs tried to keep up with me. At my locker, I grabbed my history textbook and stuffed my English book in.

I looked at Jenna. "I don't know. It's not like I have anyone to go with." I shut my locker, just as the bell to go to first period rang.

"Oh, come on. People go alone all the time." She walked across the hall to her locker and I followed, almost bumping into somebody running by.

"You're not going alone," I pointed out.

Jenna waved her hand, the other one digging around in her locker. I peeked inside. Crumpled papers littered it and I think I saw half of a glazed donut.