Chapter One

So Many Stories, So Little Time

Okay, this is the first story Mom and Dad are letting me narrate on my own. No pressure, I got this. You got this, Brooke!

Morning dawned as bright as a leprechaun coin at Ever After High. Students began to wake, princesses yawning sweetly, witches burrowing under pillows, and princes rubbing sandman sand out of their eyes.

But today was not a normal day for these fairy tales. No, sir! It was graduation day! And everyone was very hexcited.

"Get up, get up, get up!" Blondie giggled as she shook Cupid awake, her blonde curls bouncing. "It's graduation day!"

Hunter stretched so wide he nearly hit his roommate Dexter in the face.

"Hey!"

"Sorry."

"You okay?" Dexter picked up his Mirrorphone to check the schedule his sister had made him for the big day. He was always running late.

"Just…excited, I guess," Hunter replied, slipping a small box into his pocket.

"Isn't today just enchanting?" Apple sighed, dreamily looking at the rising sun.

Raven chuckled as she leaned next to her roommate. "You know Apple, for once I totally agree."

The big started with breakfast in the Castleteria. Girls discussed and compared gowns while boys remembered their glory days of Bookball and Track and Field.

Blondie Lockes was too busy to eat though, as she was dashing around to every table, interviewing students for her MirrorCast Show.

"What are your plans for after school, Sparrow?" she asked the famous rocker. Well, more like infamous.

"I'm going to be releasing a new album and going on tour so be sure to book your tickets soon!" Sparrow declared and played a screeching riff on his guitar. At the table next to him a dark fairy waved her hand and his strings snapped. "Hey!"

"Sorry," Faybelle snickered. "Only, no, I'm not sorry."

"Ooh, Faybelle, what are you going to be doing after graduation?" Blondie turned her MirrorPad to the fairy who flipped her pale ponytail.

"I'm going to be traveling the kingdoms doing my dark fairy thing. So all you prince and princesses better watch out."

Blondie turned her MirrorPad camera to herself.

"You heard it first hear, folks. This class of Ever After High is going to be following some rebellious and some royal paths. Nothing is certain but one thing. This class is going to be making Happily Ever After history! This has been Blondie Lockes reporting and remember, if it's too hot or too cold, it's Just Right!"

Rosabella Beauty was cleaning out her locker, throwing half the stuff in a trash can nearby and the other in a box to take home when Daring Charming walked up. Though the two had fallen for each other when they'd been collecting the roses of the seasons, they hadn't started dating till last summer.

Their one year-aversery was coming up and Daring was planning to take her to Wonderland to see talking roses and beasts! Isn't that so charming?

Hocus-focus, Brooke.

Ahem. Daring approached his princess and smiled his dashing grin.

"You sure have a lot of picket signs in there," he laughed.

Rosabella picked one up with a grin. "I know. This is from when I protested the testing of eye shadow on woodland creatures in our freshman year. Good times."

"Wow, you did that?" Daring was always amazed by his girlfriend's sense of justice.

"Yep. So, what's up? You have that look that says you want to talk about something."

"Oh, well, I just wondered if maybe you'd like to join my family and I for our summer cruise. We're going to visit the Seaside Charmings. I think Father still wants Darling to marry a Charming."

"Ooh, I'd love to, but I can't, actually. I'm going to be leaving in a week."

"To where?" Daring's perfect face was sculpted into confusion. "I thought you were staying at home and going to try encourage kingdoms to make beasts legal citizens?"

"I'm still going to do that one day but this year I'm going on a Helping Hands Aid Tour!" Rosabella exclaimed and pulled a golden envelope out of her pocket. She pulled out the letter, showing him as she bounced on her toes. "It's this fabe-lous program that goes to other kingdoms and helps the less fortunate, even trying to change some laws for the smaller groups. It's spell-binding, really!"

"Wow, this sounds perfect for you," Daring agreed as he skimmed the letter. "Wait. It's a year long?"

"Yep! The people running it believe in developing relationships with those you're trying to help so if you want to help again it's easier going back."

Daring looked stunned for a moment. "Well, we'll Mirror chat all the time, so it won't be like you're really gone."

But Rosabella pursered her lips. "Actually, the kingdoms all have really bad Mirror service. But we can write letters!"

"Letters? As in, handwritten things that take a week to get to you and a week to get back to me?"

"Yes, and they're so much better than hext messages! You can keep them and re-read them all the time. My dad still writes Mom letters all the time."

"Letters." Daring looked at her acceptance letter in her hand. "Why didn't you tell me all this sooner?"

"I just got the letter last night. And you were already in your 'Twelve Step Graduation Beauty Prep' and I didn't want to interrupt one of your, uh, facials."

"Right."

Rosabella was beaming and Daring was still staring at the letter. She reached forward, suddenly realizing something may be wrong.

"Daring, are you-?"

"Is that the time?" Daring loudly exclaimed, tearing his eyes away from the letter, grinning confidently. "Why, I need to go. I still have to finish my Graduation Story. So many accomplishments; I don't know how to fit them all in?"

He strode away, swinging his arms confidently and Rosabella stared after him, wondering.

Between you and me, I think he's a bit upset.

"Blech." Raven pulled out containers of moldy potions and tossed them. "How did our lockers get so messy?"

Her BFFA Maddie pulled a baby narwhal out of her locker and tossed it into her hat of many things. "Messes starts and messes end, but what do about the clock to mend?"

"Ridilish alert." Raven tossed a book of beginner spells in with the potions.

"Oops," Maddie giggled. "I mean, messiness is everywhere and no one can stop it."

"That's true."

Just then the only wooden girl at the school walked by.

"Ooh, Cedar! Would you like a mini polka dotted accordion?" Maddie yelled to her. "You're right, Narrator, I did yell. How awfully not nice of me."

It's alright Maddie, Cedar wasn't very startled. She doesn't have eardrums, after all.

Ooh, this is turning into a fairy fail! I'm not supposed to talk to you. And this is my first story and I really don't want to ruin it.

"Then I won't open my ears to you at all," Maddie promised and turned back to Cedar who was looking at her very confused. "Well, Cedar? It plays and great polka!"

"Uh, no thanks," Cedar replied.

"Oh well." And Maddie tossed it into her hat.

"Have you finished your Graduation Story yet, Cedar?" Raven asked and shut her empty locker.

"I think so. It's not very long so I hope everyone doesn't think I'm don't know what I want. But I don't need that many words to say what I want so why should I use more?"

"Hat-tastic point!" Maddie declared, throwing 20 dozen teacups into her hat then placing on her head.

"What about you two?"

"I don't really know what exactly I'm doing next so mine's a bit of a bore," Raven admitted.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure it'll be hex-cellent. Everyone at school loves you," Cedar assured her.

Those four words took Raven back to a very different day. The first day of her Legacy Year. Maddie had said those words when she'd entered the school and everyone had screamed in terror. No one had loved her then.

"Ha, that was just Wonderlandiful. Why, that day I cartwheeled through a wall, jumped up a tower,-"

Maddie.

"Oh, right. Sorry. Not listening, not listening." Maddie started whistling off-key.

"Everything okay, Maddie?" Raven asked.

"Oh yes. I just feel awful because I keep interrupting our new narrator. I'm trying ever so hard not to listen to her, but she was just telling about your first day of our Legacy Year when I said everyone loved you and they ran away screaming. But now Cedar said everyone's loves you so it must be tea-rificly true!"

"That is pretty cool," Raven admitted. "Thanks Cedar."

"Of course. See you girls at graduation!"

Once she was gone Raven leaned against her locker.

"I don't know what I'm going to do next year with you in Wonderland, Maddie."

"Huh?" Maddie stopped pouring her dormouse, Earl Grey, a cup of tea. "What are you talking about, silly?"

"Well with you and your dad going back to Wonderland with all the others I don't know what I'm going to do. You're my best friend."

"Don't get all grumpy grump on our big day." Maddie wagged a finger at her. "Besides, Dad and I aren't going back to Wonderland, silly. We're expanding our tea shop!"

"But…but I thought with the gateway open…," Raven stuttered.

"Dad and I will visit, of course, but Ever After had become a home to me as much as Wonderland has. And I can't just say toodle-loo to you, can I? No siree! So Dad and I are staying right here."

Raven embraced Maddie in a tight hug, blinking back her tears. "I was so worried you were going to leave."

"Well you could've just asked," Maddie laughed.

Raven laughed as she pulled away. "I guess I should have. This summer, though, you and I are going to take a Wonderland vacation, okay? I want to see everything you did while growing up."

"Yay! We'll have so many tea parties!" Maddie squealed as she hooked arms with Raven. Together they skipped down the hallway, happy as two peas in a pod.

At a locker not too far from Raven's, Dexter Charming watched Raven and Maddie skip away. He seemed unable to stop staring, his eyes glazed over, his grin dopey.

"You could always tell her you like her, you know," Darling Charming, his sister, said as she walked up next to him. "Didn't you two go on a date during Legacy Year?"

"Huh, what?" Dexter whirled around. "Oh, hi Darling. Yeah, we, uh, we did. But with all the stuff with rewriting destinies and our studies, she said she was really busy and just wanted to be friends. So, we, we haven't gone on another date."

"Well we're graduating now. So she won't have to worry about her studies anymore. You should ask her to the Final Chapter Bash Briar's throwing."

"Yeah…maybe."

Just then a pink haired lovely walked by, her angel wings flapping lightly with excitement. C.A. Cupid carried a box full of broken heart arrows and doodled parchment.

"I gotta go!" Dexter exclaimed and dashed after her while Darling just shook her head.

Briar was running around the ballroom, streamers in one hand, a staple gun in the other. Her princess friends were tacking up decorations and dressing tables to hold enough food to feed a small village.

"This is gonna be a page ripper thanks to you girls," Briar sighed as she sank onto the stage, tired to her bones. "I think we need about another hour."

"Did you want the songbirds to sit on the perches along the walls or on the streamers above?" Ashlynn asked, her birds, flying behind her.

"On the side, that way they don't have an, er, accident on a guest."

"I think a few black streamers would really tie the room together," Duchess suggested. All the princesses were stunned she'd agreed to help.

"Uh, maybe on the walls by the punch bowls."

Duchess grinned and turned into her swan form, holding a bundle of streamers with her beak.

"Briar," Apple whispered as she approached her BFFA. "I would love, love, love to help you for the last hour but would you mind if I dashed off? I, uh, I haven't exactly finished my Graduation Story."

"Huh, sure, fable-ous," she muttered, waving a hand as her eyes slid shut and she fell asleep on stage, snoring loudly.

Apple smiled perfectly at her friend. Oh, how she'd miss her after graduation. She quickly dashed off, wishing she could stay and help like any good princess. But she had to be perfect tonight as everyone watched. And right now she was no where close to perfect.