Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Girls in the Glass Coffin

Though the day had been terrible, Iris did not dread going to Camp Awesome. It wasn’t that she was happy about it either; she just felt nothing. She had spent all of her feelings for the day.

Anyway, she didn’t want to go home. She couldn’t bear to see Lark. And Lark probably didn’t want to see her.

Iris took her seat, avoiding Hannah’s eyes, and everyone else’s for good measure. Abigail was standing in front, resting her hand on a big stack of picture books from the library.

“Well,” she said, “we talked about superheroes and superpowers the other day. Today I want to talk about fairy tales! I got a bunch of fairy tales and folktales from these very library shelves!”

In her head, Iris let her head fall on the table with a loud thwap.

Amma perked up. “Do you have any from Somalia?” she asked, motioning to the pile of books.

“Um,” Abigail said. “No.”

“That’s okay,” Amma said cheerfully. “I’m used to it.”

Abigail went on to chirp about how the Grimm brothers get all the credit for the fairy tales we know today but they didn’t actually write them; they just went around and collected the stories.

Amma whispered, “Nobody thinks the Grimm brothers had anything to do with Somalian folktales.”

Abigail did not hear. “I’m going to hand out books in a second, but first I want you guys to think about what fairy-tale character you identify with the most, and when you’re ready, we’ll go around the room, okay? Who wants to start?”

“What do you mean?”

It was Iris who had spoken, and she seemed just as surprised by it as anyone else.

“Iris!” Abigail looked like it was Iris’s first word ever and she was delighted to be the one there to witness it. “What fairy-tale character do you identify with?”

She shook her head.

“Identify with! Feel is the most like you? Like maybe you really feel like you’re a lot like Cinderella or Rapunzel or . . .”

Iris glanced around the room. All the girls were looking at her.

It was not exactly what she wanted to ask. She wanted to ask Abigail, what happens if you stomp and no one pays any attention? What do you do then? But she couldn’t ask that, at least not without dissolving. So instead she said:

“But . . . that doesn’t make any sense.”

“How so?”

“How are we supposed to identify with fairy tales? Our lives aren’t like fairy tales. Fairy tales have witches and curses and stuff.”

Abigail grinned, as if Iris had said something delightful—though Iris was pretty sure she had not. “Well, that’s where the imagination part comes in. Think about the biggest problem in your life right now. Go ahead. You don’t have to tell me; just think in your head: What’s your biggest problem at this very moment?”

You, Iris thought.

It wasn’t true, but it felt good to think it.

“Now, take that problem and tell it in the language of magic!” She said that like it was a real thing, like that was a language one could speak. Oh yes, I take French and Chinese and also I can ask how to get to the bathroom and the library in Magic.

“I mean it,” Abigail exclaimed. “Maybe the problem is a curse, like Sleeping Beauty had. Or a monster!”

An ogre. Lark would understand, but Iris just shook her head helplessly. All her monsters were Lark’s. She could feel the other girls looking at her, and part of her brain was whispering, Shut up and act normal! But the rest of her just didn’t care anymore. She wasn’t normal. It was time to stop pretending.

Abigail tried again. “What do you like about fairy tales?”

Her cheeks flushed. “I . . . I don’t like fairy tales.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . because girls in fairy tales are boring. Because stuff just happens to them. They don’t do anything.”

Abigail frowned. “I think—”

“You know, she’s right,” Morgan said. “They really don’t. It’s all bad things happening to them.”

“Yeah,” Preeti chimed in. “And they always get saved by men. What’s up with that?”

Abigail blinked rapidly. “Well, Cinderella did something. She went to the ball.”

“Her fairy godmother just showed up!” Morgan said. “Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo! Cinderella didn’t do anything.”

“Cinderella,” agreed Preeti, “is not awesome.”

Amma added, “If you’d brought Somalian folktales, I could show you some where the girls aren’t boring.”

Iris looked around. The other girls were all nodding thoughtfully, as if they agreed with her, as if Iris had finally said something interesting.

No, she didn’t like fairy tales. She’d never liked them. Either the Pied Piper was punishing kids for the grown-ups’ sins, or some girl was stuck in a tower because her parents took some cabbages. What was to like?

“Yeah,” burst out Novalie. “Like any day you could find yourself in a glass coffin with weird dwarves staring at you, or trapped in a castle with this huge wall of thorns.”

“And you’re waiting for some guy to crawl up your hair,” said Preeti. “That’s, like, your only hope.”

“Or kiss you,” said Morgan, shuddering.

“It’s basically a horror movie,” added Gabrielle, with the authority of someone who knew these sorts of things. “Like you’re just going along minding your own business and some witch hates you because you’re pretty or some fairy is all ticked because your parents didn’t invite her to your christening and then suddenly you’ve got witches after you.”

Iris swallowed. This was exactly what it was like. Suddenly she felt like she was in a glass coffin, dwarves pointing and staring and whispering to one another, and she was helpless to do anything. She was trapped in a tower and someone was pulling on her hair and it hurt so badly. She was all alone in a dark castle dreaming of monsters and she tried and tried but she couldn’t wake up, and there was no Lark to crawl into bed with her and tell her it was going to be okay.

All day she had not cried, and now, suddenly, the tears came to her eyes, stinging like poison. She pressed her lips together hard, trying to keep them from spilling out—she did not want to cry here, of all places—and out of the corner of her eyes she saw Hannah looking at her like maybe she wasn’t the worst person in the whole world, like maybe Hannah knew just how she felt, and then the tears fell.

The other girls knew how she felt.

The other girls knew how she felt.

They felt the same way.

They felt the same way.

Edging her chair closer, Hannah slipped Iris a Kleenex. “I have lots,” she said, “you can have as many as you want,” and that did not help Iris’s crying at all. Then a hand on her back—Amma, who had gotten up from her chair just to comfort Iris, and then Emily was on the other side of her squeezing her knee, and Hannah kept giving her Kleenex, one after another.

Then, a large sniff from the front of the class. Abigail, standing, watching the gathering group. “You girls . . . ,” she said, eyes full. “You’re . . . awesome.”

Iris looked up and all of the Awesome girls were looking at her like they would be around her too if only she had any more sides. Preeti was rubbing her own eyes, and Iris wanted to say something, she wanted to tell the girls that she knew how they felt, that she felt the same way, that they could feel the same way together and that was better than feeling it alone. But she had finally gotten her crying under control and if she said that she might never stop.

And then Abigail exclaimed, “Gretel!” far more loudly than strictly was called for, and all the girls exchanged glances.

“Pardon me?” Gabrielle asked.

“In ‘Hansel and Gretel’!” Abigail exclaimed. “Gretel’s not boring. She kills the witch!”

Now, the other girls were looking to Iris to respond. To Iris! As if she was the expert on fairy-tale heroines and the relative boringness of the characters therein, as opposed to the one with the chapped cheeks and red stinging eyes

So she nodded. And wiped her face. And took a big breath.

And the other girls nodded too.

“Yes!” Abigail exclaimed. “Hansel goes in the cage, and the witch tries to get Gretel to turn on the oven so she can cook her! And so Gretel tricks the witch and says she can’t figure out how. And so the witch finally leans into the oven to show her, then Gretel pushes her! A very clever plan. I might even say”—she raised her eyebrows—“an awesome one.”

Everyone settled back in their seats then. Iris looked around the room, regarding her campmates. It felt like her chair had been at the edge of the room this whole time, and now that she’d pulled it into the circle, she could see what they really looked like. Gabrielle shot her a look that clearly said I hope you’re okay and Iris felt herself smile a little at her.

“I like Cinderella,” Emily whispered to Iris.

“That’s okay,” Iris said quickly, sniffing a little. “My sister loves Cinderella.”

“Sometimes you want a fairy godmother, you know?”

“Yeah,” Iris whispered back. “Yeah, I do.”