Into the Wild (25 page)

Even Gillian didn’t know all that Julie had done. She didn’t know about the door in the castle. She didn’t know Julie had given up her father. Julie pushed down the familiar ache. She’d made her choice. She’d known the price. “It’s okay,” she said.

“It’s not okay,” Gillian said. “I don’t know how you can stand it.”

Julie glanced back across the hall. Honestly? She didn’t care what Kristen thought or said. Not anymore. Or at least not much. Kristen was Kristen. Just like Julie was Julie. Her father wasn’t the only one she’d gotten to know in the Wild. She changed the subject: “Ready for band tryouts?”

Gillian grinned. “You bet. No one can say I haven’t been practicing.” Her dancing bear insisted on it. Julie thought she’d make first trumpet for sure.

“Luck,” Julie said. She held out her pinky, and Gillian shook it with her pinky.

“Luck to you on the Wallace quiz,” Gillian said.

“Piece of cake,” Julie said. “Boots’s girlfriend and I have been studying.”

Gillian picked up her trumpet case as Julie switched her homework books with her books for first period. Gently, Julie pressed the palm of her hand against the illustrations of Rapunzel’s prince on the inside of her locker door. “Wish me luck, Dad,” she whispered.

And she and Gillian went to class.

Epilogue

Across town, in the children’s section of the Northboro Public Library, Linda the librarian hummed to herself as she shelved brand-new volumes of fairy tales:
The Swan Soldiers, Puss-in-Boots and the Wild Bicycles, The Girl and the Griffin, Goldilocks and the Beanstalk, The Mysterious Princess from Unknown Lands, The Wishing Well Motel . . .
All total, she had twenty-four new books.

Exactly what she’d wished for.

 
In the darkness, the heart of the fairy tale waited . . .