Snow (A Snow White Remix)

chapter five

"You're going to Ariel's party," Felicity told Nora in the kitchen after school.

"I'm not," Nora replied. She hated parties. Hated the loud and crazy crowd. Most of her class thought it was sooo funny to be drunk. Instead of having fun, she usually spent an hour watching the teens make a slobbery mess of themselves before she couldn't take anymore.

"You are," Felicity commanded. "I need you to run interference in case one of us decides it's funny to go on Musetunes and make a fool of ourselves."

Creator only knew how many teens had ruined a music career because they thought drunk postings on their message board were funny.

Just the thought of having to run interference for all of the artists exhausted her. She was only on 3 hours of sleep—she did not have the strength or mental capacity to handle any of this.

She crossed her arms. "I'm not your babysitter."

"Tonight, you are." Her stepsister shoved a spoon of Crunchies cereal into her mouth. A drop of milk dribbled at the edge of her lip. "I hab a collaberation wif Devon dis week."

Shit. That collaboration was this week? Another reason she shouldn't go to this party—she needed to pull a collaboration song out by the end of the week. She didn't have time to party.

Felicity wiped at the edge of her mouth with her pointer finger. "I can't do a collab with him if he's going to ruin his image. That'll ruin my image."

"Confiscate all of their phones," Nora replied in a tone that said, problem solved.

Felicity gave her a blank look. "I dare you to try and confiscate a teenager's phone."

She shrugged. "You can confiscate my phone."

"Yeah, because you have the shittiest phone ever made."

Miffed, Nora's chin rose. "It wasn't shitty five years ago."

Finished with her cereal, her stepsister got up and dropped her ceramic bowl into the sink. Nora winced at the loud clatter. "You're going." Felicity turned and raised an eyebrow. "Or need I remind you why you're doing this."

Nora's shoulders dropped. "No."

"Good. Now go find a dress."

Later that night, Nora sat at her desk in her room and yanked off her glasses. The words on the paper in front of her blurred. She rubbed at the bridge of her nose and sighed. At this rate, she should throw a bunch of words into a hat and randomly pull some. Everything sounded like gibberish anyway.

She took a break and called Tessa.

"Hey, boo, you finally finished selling your soul to science?" Tessa asked as she picked up.

Nora snorted. "It's Instrumentals, actually. Chemistry was last week."

"They're interchangeable to me."

After a deep breath, Nora said, "I need you to save me."

"From Instrumentals?"

She laughed. "No, that I can handle. I need you to go with me to Ariel's party."

"You're serious?" With the amount of surprise in Tessa's voice, you'd have thought Nora wanted to run around dressed as a toad. "You hate parties."

Nora heaved a sigh. "Yeah..."

"You don't sound like you want to go."

How did she answer without lying completely? "I guess I figured we're only in high school once, and I should probably have some experiences."