Ella
It’s Monday— my day to get the fuck out of Dodge. Or Denver. Same difference.
I storm into my house— make that my old house— and my stepmother and stepsisters come running out to see me.
“Young lady what have you been up to?” my stepmother asks although I’m pretty sure she has a good idea.
Just to rub it in I look at Sheila and say, “I think you mean to ask me more like what or who have I been underneath, don’t you?”
“Oh shut up, you bitch,” Sheila says. “I stole your boyfriend.”
“Well, I stole your price,” I tell her.
She comes up to me as if she’s going to hit me but she’s hobbling because her feet hurt from trying on the shoes. I want to laugh but I kind of feel sorry for both of them.
And I also remember my promise to my dad. The pumpkin necklace he gave me is back around my neck in a nicer chain that Gregory took me shopping for earlier, before we met with my dad’s lawyer.
Speaking of which, I place a document into my stepmother’s hands.
“Here you go,” I tell her.
“What is it?” she says.
“I bought you out of the business. I know you don’t really want to have to run it anyway. So I’ll be taking care of it from Ambrosia,” I tell her.
“Where the fuck is Ambrosia?” Gloria asks, like the idiot she always is.
“It’s on the Baltic Sea,” I tell her, “and I’m going to have sex on the Baltic Beach.”
“Since when did you become such a slut?” Sheila asks me. “You’ve always been such a prude.”
“Look who’s talking,” I shoot back. “Oh, and the answer to your question is that meeting Prince charming can certainly transform a girl.”
I’m proud of my saucy retort, even though the real answer is that I was never a prude in my mind, in my fantasies. My dirty, filthy romance books that Paul loved to hate on are full of tons of sex. My favorite part is the steamy bonus story at the very end, which is icing on top of all the other yummy layers of the very delicious cake.
Now, I still have all those same thoughts but I also have someone to act them out with in real life. My Prince Charming and I get to have our own happy ever after at the end of our book, and our own steamy bonus story after that.
“What’s going to happen to me now?” my stepmother asks, her lips trembling. Apparently, her fate isn’t going to be as good as mine is. She’ll probably be in a book about evil characters from famous fairy tales, or something. “Am I just going to be destitute?”
“Oh please,” I tell her. “There’s plenty of money there to live off for a while until you have to get a real job.
“Why, I have no idea what I’ll do,” she says, running her hand through her hair. “It’s not like Ted has money…”
Uh huh. I knew it. She does have a boyfriend already. Oh well, it’s not my business; I’m leaving.
And I can’t help but take pity on her. I realize she married my dad for money and she’s a complete bitch to me but I just don’t have it within me to return the nastiness. I’m completely happy for the very first time in my life since both my mother and father were alive.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, as I go upstairs to pack my bags. “I’m sure there are some spreadsheets you can fill out and some invoices you can send. And all of that. You can have my former job doing office work in the dungeon.”
She frowns but actually looks like she’s considering it. I suppose she’s so mean because she’s angry and scared, and doesn’t know what to do with herself. But none of those things are my problem. I’m finally learning to take control of my own life.
I quickly throw a few things into a suitcase, enough to get me to Ambrosia where Gregory says my every need will be taken care of. I don’t want to take much from my old life. I have everything I need except three people I’m going to see right now, and who can always come visit me anytime they want, in my new faraway kingdom.
* * *
A few hours later Aunt Ashley, Sharon, Nikki and Gregory and I are getting really dirty. By that I mean that our hands are covered in food grease and we’re up to our elbows in shucked corn.
“It’s really nice of you to let me see what you do on Saturdays,” Gregory tells me and I can’t help but laugh at the fact that he remembered the day that I’m usually here even though it’s Monday today, and Paul couldn’t remember after nearly a year of us being together.
“Yeah well I appreciate you helping me carry out my mother’s purpose and now helping me honor my father’s memory as well,” I say.
“There’s nothing I like better than cooking,” Nikki interjects and I laugh because I know she’s being facetious. She hates to cook. But she loves me and does what I want. “But seriously I’m really glad I got to see you before you were whisked away to some far away land in your new life as a princess,” she says.
“Me too,” Nikki says, and comes over to kiss me on my cheek.
Aunt Ashley comes up to me and gives me a hug, our aprons bumping into each other in the process.
“I’m really gonna miss you, kiddo,” she says. “But I’m so proud of you.”
“This is all thanks to my fairy godmother,” I tell her. “And you know you can come visit me anytime.”
Soon it’s time for the residents to be served so we stand in line to feed them dinner.
“We’re sure going to miss you,” say so many of the different staff, residence and co-volunteers. “We’ll make sure to send you more stories of your mother as we think of them,” they say.
I can’t believe I’m really leaving.
But once we’re done volunteering, and my Prince intertwines his dirty fingers with mine to lead me to where our chariot— or his servant driving a limo— awaits outside to take us to our new life, I’m beginning to think that ours is really a fairy tale story and that it really does have a happy ever after.