***A modern, gender-swapped retelling of the classic fairy tale.***
Keefe Beatty is beautiful, but odd. With only his senior year to get through before he can finally escape his tiny conservative town, he decides to keep his head down and not expect...
Villeneuve's freak heat wave vanished during the night and so, that next morning, Keefe stepped out of his house to the tune of a wonderfully normal 69 degrees. He celebrated by wearing his orange and white-striped extra-long stocking cap, for it was one of his favorites.
He made his way to school about a block ahead of the WaTSAs, whistling to himself (the WaTSAs refused to walk with him if Andie was going to be involved, and they knew she would be.) As he trudged up Beaumont Hill, he saw no Andie waiting outside the fence. Instead, there was a big white thing. He squinted, leaning forward as he walked, trying to figure out what it was. It was not a discernable shape, just . . . a big white thing.
When he made it to Whistlebeck's, there was still no sign of Andie, just the thing – which he now could see was a big white bed sheet. Two of Whistlebeck's Greek nude statues, standing tall on pillars, had been pushed up to the fence and were leaning over it like they were trying to see down the hill. From their elegant hands two corners of the sheet had been tied, stringing it between them like a giant curtain.
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He noticed the sides of the curtain were wrapped around something, a something that was being hidden between the sheet and the white picket fence. Given that the sheet wasn't that far from the fence, it was a very thin thing, but that was about all he could decipher without pulling the sheet back and taking a peek.
"Andie?" He looked around the statues for a little yellowed piece of paper and its familiar fairy tale-ish script. He found none. Was he allowed to peek? Was it time yet? Was it even for him?
"Andie?" he called again, looking toward the house to see if he could catch her spying through a window.
The WaTSAs had caught up to him – though they were on the other side of the street – and he could hear Enid's grumbling, "God, what are they doing now?" Chris and Lewis mumbled back and the WaTSAs moved on, though Keefe took no further notice of them.
It wasn't until the other three were gone that Andie finally popped up, beaming at him from behind yet another statue on Whistlebeck's lawn. She hopped forward – her plastic star-topped and tinsel-accented wand in hand – with a big satisfied grin on her face.
Keefe looked at her wand and then back at her. "Am I at the mercy of my fairy godmother?"
"You are," she said.
"You're the mean one, though. You make me dress in drag. I prefer my syrup-y godmother."
"She's taking a break." Andie smirked. "And I don't have any leotards on me this time, don't worry."
He grinned. "You want to tell me why your statues feel the need to hide something on your sidewalk?"
"Because it helps build suspense, my lady." Her grin grew, brightening her scarred face.
Her hood was down. She had parted what was left of her hair far on the right and pulled what she could over onto her left side. It was long enough to cover her baldness relatively well and didn't look that weird.
