Fair Peril Read Online Free PDF

to be with other kids and also a solace for not being at home with two actual parents—stepparents didn’t count—two real parents who still loved each other. Emily knew a couple of kids who had that kind of parents, the kind who got married once and stayed together. Those kids were lucky. She hated them.
    Mom probably cares more about her new pet than she does about me.
    Mom obviously didn’t want to be bothered. Mom hadn’t even gotten upset about custody or tried to keep her. Sure, go ahead, no problem, let the kid live with her father where she had to get out of the house every evening or else see her father getting all puffy-panty-kissy-face with whatsername, the new wife, walking-talking blonde joke, only ten years older than Emily, maybe twelve years, or else had some really good plastic surgery—and Emily was supposed to call her “stepmother”? No way. No way could this woman ever be any kind of mother to her.
    â€œI’m a blonde,” Emily said to the stuffed bunny, “but at least I’m a real blonde. She did it to herself. The baby goo-goo eyes. The giggle. The whole routine.”
    The woman was so much like her, so much like she might be in ten years if she wasn’t careful, that it scared her.
    â€œMy father’s a twit.”
    The ache in her chest made her feel like feeding her face. But she resisted the urge to go looking for food. She didn’t want to get like that, like her mother.
    â€œLet’s check one more time,” Emily said to the bunny, which was fading from a realistic brown to a mellow yellow from sunlight. She drove around the lot again. No, none of her friends were there. It was too early.
    â€œDammit.” Emily expressed herself via the gas pedal and varoomed out of there.
    Her father was with his bimbo. Her mother was gabbing with a talking frog.
    Emily stopped thinking about her sucky parents, specifically her mother, and started thinking about the talking frog. Awesome, the shivery feeling he had given her—she was feeling it again just thinking about him. What was he? Something exciting, important, forbidden. She knew by the tingle in her spine. She knew by the way her mother had shoved her away from him and the way her mother had—lied to her, let’s face it, telling her, “Nothing,” like when she was little and asking about what double beds were for.
    Emily headed toward the library.
    â€œTalking frogs,” she said to the guy at the children’s desk, a weird old guy if she’d ever met one, but he knew every book in the library. “Isn’t there some sort of story about talking frogs?”
    â€œAbsolutely.” He found a three-inch-thick volume and placed it in her hands. “They knew what was important. They put it up front. Have a look at the very first tale.”
    The library had an outdoor courtyard with a fountain. Emily took the fat book there, sat on a bench in the sunshine, put her feet up on the stonework rim, and opened The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm.
    In olden times, when wishing still helped, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which had seen so many things, was always filled with amazement each time it cast its rays upon her face.…
    Emily read on.
    â€œWhat a babe! Hey, beautiful!” Someone tapped on the glass doors. Intent on what she was reading, Emily scowled at the interruption, looked up, then smiled. It was some of her friends, a few boys, several girls. She had forgotten; they had term papers due tomorrow. Naturally they were at the library.
    â€œWhatcha doing, Emily?” They came out to the sunny courtyard.
    â€œNothing.” She turned back to the story of the frog who was crying, Princess, princess, youngest daughter, open up and let me in.
    Her friends surrounded her. They sat on the bench with her, they sat at her feet, they leaned over her