“They don’t,” Nico says, taking the lead right out of the gate.
I sink back in my chair, not wanting to catch his periphery. His jaw is working, and his eyes flit up to our teacher briefly before coming back to his hands, his knuckles bent with his hard grip around the front of his desk.
“Beyond the obvious, Nico…what do you mean?” Mr. Huffman asks.
Nico breathes in deeply through his nose, pushing his mouth into a hard line.
“Grimm’s stories aren’t really fairy tales. They’re more like…folk tales. They’re allegories, reflections of how terrible things were for the common and poor at the time. You can draw more comparisons to the front page of the Daily Press than you can to the typical fairy tales. I mean, like today, the news has this story about two bodies found sixty miles away from the nearest highway, buried in shallow graves by drug lords who weren’t paid what they were owed. That…” Nico pauses to laugh out once, a punctuated sound that matches the way his head lifts and his shoulders raise. “Stories like that are Grimm stories. Fairy tales, though—those are like the way people want to think the world works.”
“It’s true,” Mr. Huffman adds. “If you look at the evolution of the stories, each edition becomes more mystical, religious undertones are added and good always wins in the end.”
“Good never wins in a Grimm tale,” Nico says. “They just…they just are what they are. Life happens, and people make choices, and then life goes on.”
I hold my breath because he tilts his head enough that his eyes find mine and his hair slides forward. The disappointment in his expression levels me, and I’m reminded that all I could say was “I’m sorry.”
“But we want the prince and the princess, and maybe wanting something better is enough,” I say, not realizing I’ve interjected myself until my first words leave my mouth. I lean forward and hold Nico’s gaze, but I feel the rest of the classroom’s eyes on me. I turn slightly to see Izzy’s face, and she smiles faintly, knowing enough of the hole I’ve dug for myself to understand that this is me, trying to claw my way out of it.
“You can be a toad in love with a beautiful girl all you want, but in the end, you’re still a toad. That’s how everyone is going to see you, and you know what? That’s how the beautiful girl sees you, too—when other people are looking,” Nico says.
My lips part to protest, but another student interjects, moving the topic to class systems and comparing fairy tales to Plato’s Republic, which is probably what Mr. Huffman really wants to hear from us today. I let him talk, but I keep my eyes on Nico’s. He looks at me for nearly a minute, and his sad expression hurts my chest. It hurts to watch him think, to know every word he just said was about me—about us. I see him, but I see everyone else’s prejudices, too.
When the bell rings, Nico grabs his bag and board in a swift movement, slipping through the door the second it opens. I fumble with my things, perhaps not really wanting to catch him just yet. All this time, and I still haven’t worked out the right things to say.
“Your dad…not real hip on you going out with Nico?” Izzy asks, hooking her arm through one of my bags and carrying it for me.
“We really haven’t discussed it,” I say.
“Even after you and I talked? You said your dad walked in and saw you guys almost kissing. That’s not so bad,” she says, and I twist my head and mash my lips. “Yeah, well…maybe it’s bad. But more like awkward bad.”
“My dad didn’t say a single word to me at dinner. He actually talked to my brother, which—I’ll admit—it was nice to see them talking, but then we drove home, and he went right into his room, and he acted like I was invisible Sunday.”
Izzy nods in understanding, and we push through the main doors toward the locker rooms and parking lot. My friend slides my bag back to my arm, then squeezes her fingers around my wrist.
“I’m about to quote my mother, and I don’t like that I’m doing this,” she says, and I laugh lightly through my nose.
“Okay,” I say.
“Sometimes, Reagan, you just need to rip off the damn Band-Aid,” she says. “And it always hurts more when you do it slow.”
“That’s…I’m pretty sure your mother didn’t come up with that,” I say, squinting one eye and smiling on one side of my mouth.
“Yeah, I know. She repeats a lot of things like that. But still…she says it, and it’s a good saying. Kinda applies here,” she says, jiggling my hand in her hold.
I nod in agreement.
“Yeah, it does. Rip it, huh?” I say.
“Give it a good rip! Like, pull out the hair and shit,” my friend says, and I wince at the color she adds to the visual. “Girl, your arms are hairy. That Band-Aid’s gonna leave a mark.”