Cinderella Stays Late by Joan Holub

Author:Joan Holub
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2014-02-09T16:00:00+00:00

Cinda woke the next morning to the sound of voices. She rubbed her eyes, yawned, and stared up at the ceiling. Her shared alcove was open to the top of the tower. Through her bed’s gossamer canopy, she could see the shimmering pearly white of the inside of the ceiling, which rose to a point high in the center above the common room.

The voices came again. They were speaking in harmony. Loud harmony. It was those School Board knights. They were making an announcement that was somehow being channeled through the whole school. She listened as they repeated it a second time.

“Will Jack and Jill please bring a pail of water to the front office? There’s a small fire. Nothing to be concerned about. Carry on, students.”

“Fire?” Cinda echoed to herself. She frowned and sniffed the air, a little worried. Accidental fires were common in her village, where most homes were made of wood and mudstraw.

But Grimm Academy was built of stone. Fires seemed unlikely. There was some wood, she supposed, remembering the dining tables and the shelf the five helmet-heads of the School Board sat upon. And she did smell smoke. Alarmed, she sat up.

Just then, the Hickory Dickory Dock clock rang out the rhyme time. It was seven o’clock.

On the last stroke of seven, the turquoise-haired girl from her Grimm History class walked into the bedroom. Cinda hadn’t heard her come in last night but knew it must’ve been late.

Yet she was already up, earlier than Cinda, and she must have showered, since she was dripping wet. The girl was dressed in a turquoise robe that had the GA letters embroidered on its breast like a logo. She smiled at Cinda.

“Hi. I’m Mermily,” she said in that bubbly voice Cinda remembered from class. She started towel-drying her hair, which reached to her waist. “You’re Cinderella, from my History class.”

“Mm-hmm, but call me Cinda.”

As Mermily nodded, Cinda pushed up on one elbow, looking down at the girl from her high bed. Her long, tangled yellow hair fell forward into her face. “So there’s a fire somewhere?”

“Sounds like it,” said Mermily. “Smells like it, too.”

Cinda flipped her hair back over one shoulder. “Aren’t you worried?” she asked. “Shouldn’t we, like, leave or something? I mean, if the castle might burn down?” She scooted to the foot of her bed, toward the ladder.

“It’s no big deal. Principal Rumsy dabbles in alchemy, you know. And Ms. Jabberwocky breathes fire to heat things when she helps him with his experiments. Sometimes things go a little awry.”

If Mermily expected that information to somehow calm Cinda’s worries about the school burning down, it didn’t! Mermily didn’t seem upset, though. She began digging around in her armoire for something to wear. She pulled out one of the dresses Cinda had seen in there last night.

Cinda glanced at the other bed in the alcove. It was already made up again, its coverlet neat and tidy. “Wow! You must get up early. I usually do, too. But I was tired last night.

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