Rumpelstiltskin

Chapter 1

1

The high pitched alarm rattled Mira’s head just as the sun was coming up. Ugh, Monday. Mira got up and pulled a brush through her tangled red hair.

“Mira!” her mom called from downstairs. “Breakfast!”

“Coming.” Mira groaned. She wasn’t exactly eager to be up at 5:30 in the morning. She flopped down the stairs, and sat down in front of an extraordinarily large stack of pancakes. Her mother was rapidly talking. Obviously the time did not faze her.

“So your birthday is in two weeks!”

“Yup.”

“Wow...I can’t believe you’re going to be 15! It seems like just yesterday that you-” she stopped abruptly.

“That I what?”

“Oh, nothing. What do you think you would like to do for your birthday?”

“Dunno.”

“Still pretty tired, huh? We’ll talk about it later. After school I want you to help me clean the house, okay? There’s a lot we have to get done before your grandparents arrive.”

“Well...I was kind of thinking that I could go to the ice rink after school today and I could--”

“No ice rink. Not by yourself.”

“Why not, Mom? It’s only a block away!”

“Because...because. Go get dressed! The bus comes in five minutes.” Annoyed at her mother’s attempted subject change, Mira dragged herself back upstairs to get dressed. On the bus Mira sat alone by the window right in the middle of the bus. Not too close to the well-known nose-picking bus driver, but not too close to the jerks who sat at the back of the bus. As Mira watched the trees flash by, she started thinking about the creepy cloaked figure in her dream the night before. The figure kept chanting something about going into the woods, but Mira wasn’t really focusing on the words. She couldn’t help wondering if it had to do with the strange hooded man she had seen during her childhood.

The bus was coming to a stop in front of the school. It was time for class, not cloaked figures.

Walking into Mr. Wright’s classroom was never fun. Mira hated math. Not only did she not have any friends, but she also hated the teacher, and sucked at the subject. She was lucky to get a D. The bell rang just as she was sliding into her seat.

“Miss Parker?” Mira heard her name in the shrill, nasally tone that belonged to Mr. Wright. “Please come see me.” Mira reluctantly walked up to the front of the room, and plopped herself in the chair in front of his desk. Mr. Wright was short, fat, and smelled of sour milk. “Now I need to talk to you about your latest test grade.” Meetings like this were common, so Mira was not phased when he slid a paper across the desk with a big red F on it. He began to deliver his usual speech about the importance of academic excellence, so Mira tuned out Mr. Wright’s droning and stared at the equations on the whiteboard behind him. It was nothing special until the numbers and symbols began to morph into a phrase: “INTO THE WOODS.” Mira glanced around the classroom to see if anyone else had noticed, but they were all happily chatting amongst themselves. When she turned back, the words were gone.

“Did you see that?” Mira asked Mr. Wright.

“See what?”

“The words on the whiteboard! They-they were there and then they kind of, like, transformed or something.”

Mr. Wright frowned at Mira. “This is what I’m talking about young lady! You need to stop making up nonsense and pay attention to the situation at hand!” Mira wasn’t sure what Mr. Wright said after that. She just slumped in her chair and tuned him out. This was going to be a long day.