Cinderella Stays Late Read online

  A hush settled over the Hall as the School Board began making an announcement: “Attention, students! Everyone in sixth-period Balls class, please report to the Grimm Gym. You’ll have gym class with Coach Candlestick this afternoon instead.”

  What a relief! thought Cinda. She wouldn’t have to dance until tomorrow! Or maybe never, if she could talk Coach Candlestick into switching her out of Balls so she could take Gym instead.

  “Cinda, right?” a boy asked, falling into step with her as they headed for the gym.

  Cinda glanced at him and nodded. He wore a small crown, and he looked familiar. “And you’re Prince …” her voice dwindled away as she remembered who he was. Was his name really Foulsmell or was that just an unkind nickname the Steps had thought up?

  “Foulsmell,” he finished easily.

  “So that’s really your official last name?” she asked. She discreetly sniffed the air a little, making sure he couldn’t tell she was doing it. She was relieved to discover that he didn’t actually smell foul.

  The prince nodded. “My great-great-grandfather earned it when he wandered into a den of skunks. And the name stunk, uh, stuck.”

  “That seems kind of …” Cinda had been going to say “mean,” but then she stopped. She didn’t want to insult his family name.

  “Hey, it’s all right. Could have been worse. No, wait, there’s probably not a worse name, is there?” He grinned, seeming unconcerned about it. Or maybe he was simply covering up his hurt feelings like she sometimes did when the Steps teased her.

  She sent him a friendly smile. “Oh, we could probably think of some. How about Prince Nosepicker? Or maybe Prince Pigfoot?”

  “Ha!” said the prince, laughing with her. After that, he suggested a few hilarious nicknames, too. He was nice, she thought. A little goofy, but sweet.

  “You can drop the prince part anytime you want, though,” he told her. “There are so many princes here at the Academy that we usually go by our last names to lessen confusion. Which means you can just call me Foulsmell.”

  “Okay,” she said as they arrived in the gym.

  Coach Candlestick was a muscley guy who wore a whistle around his neck and held a clipboard. “Suit up if you want to play masketball this period,” he told them all. When a door suddenly slammed behind him, he whipped around, looking like he expected trouble. Seeing nothing amiss, he turned back to them.

  “We’ve also got candle jumping, putt-putt golf, quoits, tennis, and swordplay. Take your pick.” Just then, someone across the gym sneezed, causing the coach to jerk in alarm.

  Was he always this jumpy? Cinda wondered.

  Realizing it had only been a sneeze, the coach smiled at them and punched an energetic fist in the air. “All right! Now let’s get moving!”

  There were two boxes on the bleachers. One was full of black masks and one was full of white ones. Cinda picked out a white one.

  “I’m doing masketball,” she told Foulsmell. “You?”

  He laughed. “No way. I stink at sports! I’m going to play quoits. All you have to do is stand there and throw an iron ring at a stick. Simple.” He sent her a little wave as he moved off. “Later!”

  With a grin and a wave to him, she headed for the girls’ dressing room, where she put on a white gym suit. Then she put on her mask and joined the other players out on the masketball court.

  Everyone wore masks when they played masketball in her village, too, to indicate which team they were on. But those masks were homemade ones, cut from rough cloth. These were made of silk and satin!

  And these masks must have been magical because as soon as everyone put theirs on, you couldn’t recognize them anymore. Although the team members still looked like themselves, you couldn’t remember who they were or if they were good players or bad ones. Which made it hard to know what their moves would be or how they’d react to your moves.

  On the very first toss, the ball came to Cinda. She dribbled it down the court toward the goal. But, hey, wait a minute. Did that goal just move? She slowed in surprise. While her guard was down, another player stole the ball.

  To her dismay, the game was going to be very different from back in the village. Besides not being able to tell who anyone was, the goals ran around trying to get away from the players. It was an added level of difficulty for sure. But she was up to the challenge.

  The other team’s top player bested her often, blocking her shots. Her sense of competition made her try harder, however, and finally she bested him! They went back and forth, each the stars of their teams.

  The hour zipped by and suddenly a bonging sound alerted them that class was over. Everyone whipped off their masks. Cinda pushed hers upward so it held her hair back like a hair band.

  “You!” she said in surprise.

  “You!” said Prince Awesome at the same time. So he was the player she’d been trying to beat!

  Uh-oh, Cinda thought. Would he be mad at her now and decide not to dance with her stepsisters? Some guys didn’t like being bested by a girl.

  But Awesome didn’t seem to mind. “Good game,” he told her, giving her a high five.

  “You, too,” she told him. “You’ve got skills!”

  “So are you staying after to play pickup, too?” he asked.

  Cinda shook her head. “Turns out I can’t this time. I forgot I’d already promised to meet some girls in the library.”

  “Oh,” he said. He looked like he was going to say something else, but then another guy called to him and threw the ball his way to start the pickup game. Awesome caught it. Nodding to her, he said, “Well, see you.”

  “Okay,” she told him. As she made for the changing room, she noticed the coach nearby.

  “To the left! Watch the flame!” he was yelling to a girl leaping over a large, blazing candle. He was apparently helping some students practice candlestick jumping for an upcoming competition.

  The Steps had said Ms. Jabberwocky wouldn’t let them switch classes. Still, it was worth a shot to try asking. She didn’t care about jumping candlesticks. But if the coach agreed to switch her, she would definitely jump for joy! Cinda went over to him.

  “Coach?” she asked.

  He jumped a foot high, his eyes bugging out at the interruption. Seeing it was only her behind him, however, he quickly calmed again. “Yes? What is it?”

  “I was wondering … could I switch classes sixth period? My elective is Balls, but I’d rather have Gym,” she explained. “See, I play masketball and —”

  “No switching except under very special circumstances,” he interrupted, his eyes on the competitors. “Ms. Jabberwocky doesn’t like it. And since she supplies the flame for the candlestick competitions, I don’t want to get on her bad side.”

  Before Cinda could argue or ask what qualified as special circumstances, he went back to shouting advice to the kids jumping candlesticks. “Higher! That’s the way! Keep it up and we’re a shoo-in for the Grimmess Book of World Records in candle jumping!”

  Well, at least she’d tried. Unfortunately, it looked like she was doomed to dance.

  In the dressing room, Cinda ducked into the shower. She washed off the sweat from the game and the dust from the trip to school that morning, and then finger-combed her hair. Although she only had her same dress and petticoat to put back on, she looked far more presentable now. By the time she was done getting ready, it was rather late. She dashed off.

  “Do you know where the library is?” Cinda asked some boys she saw, once she was out in the hall again. Ms. Jabberwocky had assumed the Steps would show her the ropes today. Ha!

  “Wherever it wants to be,” one of the boys told her mysteriously.

  “Huh? What do you mean?” replied Cinda.

  “Find the doorknob, find the library,” said his friend. “All the regular doorknobs have the Grimm Academy GA logo on them. Look for the one that doesn’t, and that’s the one you use to enter the library.”

  “Can’t you just tell me where it is?” she
called after them.

  The first boy shook his head. “It moves around. Could be anywhere. But I think I heard someone say it’s on the girls’ side today.”

  “Seems like a lot of trouble to get into a library,” she said, heading for Pink Castle.

  “It’s worth it. You’ll see!” he called back.

  Cinda spent the next half hour searching frantically for a doorknob that didn’t have the intertwined GA letters on it. She started on the first floor and had almost finished searching among the classrooms in the girls’ castle, when she finally found the knob on the third floor.

  “There you are!” she said in relief. She grasped the brass doorknob.

  Honk!

  She snatched her hand back and looked around. Was someone playing a joke on her? She didn’t see anyone. She reached for the knob again. It snapped at her!

  “Wait just a doorknobbing minute!” said a snooty voice. “Before you go grabbing someone without permission, why don’t you ask if they want you to answer a riddle first?”

  Cinda looked at the doorknob more closely. There was a face on it now. A goose face, with a beak. And it was talking!

  “Um, I’m in kind of a hurry,” she told it. “But, okay. Do you want me to answer a riddle?”

  “That’s more like it,” said the gooseknob. “Answer me this! What do you get when you throw a gazillion books into the ocean?”

  Cinda thought a minute. She’d never been to the ocean, but she had gone swimming in the lake by her village. She imagined dropping a huge bunch of books into the lake all at once. It would cause a big wave. Hmm. And what did books have to do with a big wave? Books had bindings, paper, words, letters, printing, and … titles.

  She clapped her hands together. “I know! A title wave! Like a tidal wave.”

  Snick! Without another word, the gooseknob magically turned into a round brass knob. And a huge rectangle drew itself on the wall around the knob. It was several feet taller than Cinda and about four feet wide. A door. It was decorated with low-relief carvings of nursery rhyme characters — she recognized Little Bo Peep and her sheep right away — but she didn’t take time to examine the rest of the carvings.

  Quickly, she turned the knob and …

  … stepped inside the biggest room she’d ever seen in her entire life. It was way bigger than a barn. Bigger than her whole village back home!

  In front of her was a tall desk. There was a bell, a gooseneck lamp, and a woven basket full of goose-feather quill pens.

  Beyond the desk, stretching so far into the distance that Cinda could see no end to them, were row after row of shelves and little rooms filled with who knew what. There were no windows in the library. Instead, chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, each one lit with dozens of candles.

  “Hello?” called Cinda. She picked up the bell and rang it.

  When no one came, she ventured beyond the desk. Flap! Flap! A snow-white goose zoomed by high overhead. Then another swooped in from her left side, and another flew in from her right. They were all going in different directions.

  A net bag dangled from each goose’s bright orange beak. Some of the bags held books. Others held objects of various kinds like, strangely enough, mittens, strings of colored lights, and a teakettle.

  None of the geese paid any attention to Cinda as she walked the aisles between the rows and rows of shelving, pausing often to gaze around her in wonder. Books on every subject filled the shelves, but there was much more here than books.

  There were shelves with shiny glass jars and see-through boxes containing items like watermelon seeds, toadstools, and marbles, for instance. And just about anything else you could imagine.

  As she was passing between two shelves, Cinda saw an open door that led into an entire room of keys. A few aisles over was a room full of locks.

  There was a room full of mirrors, too. And another one full of unicorn statues placed around a babbling brook. There was a room with a sign on the door that read: A ROOM OF IMPOSSIBLE THINGS. This room’s door was shut and had no doorknob, which made it impossible to open.

  Other rooms had signs that read: THE ROOM OF LOST THOUGHTS. THE ROOM OF SCRATCH AND SNIFF. Everything looked so interesting! She wished she could spend all day here investigating. All week!

  If someone really wanted to, they could probably live here. Because some of the rooms were absolutely elegant, set up with chairs, tables, lamps, rugs, and wallpaper. These rooms looked like they’d been lifted out of actual houses — or fabulous castles — and dropped down into the library. There was even a room built upside down with the furniture on the ceiling. And one that was actually a cave that disappeared into blackness.

  How could all this stuff fit into Grimm Academy? Cinda wondered. The library seemed as big or bigger than the Academy itself!

  She watched as one of the geese swooped down and plucked a jar of jelly beans from a shelf nearby, and then carried it away in its net bag. Another goose, this one carrying a hatbox in its bag, zoomed into one of the rooms. When it flew out again, its bag was empty. Were the geese library helpers? Did they file objects and shelve books? It looked that way.

  Just then, a white feather drifted down from the air to land on Cinda’s skirt. She picked it up. It was a goose feather, about ten inches long, like the ones she’d seen in the basket out front, that had been made into pens.

  A dark shadow fell over her and she looked up. Something huge was flying overhead. FLAP! FLAP! FLAP! Another goose. Only this one was as big as a horse, and someone was riding on its back!

  Cinda dove to the floor as the gigantic goose came in for a landing. One of its wings nearly brushed the top of her head before it settled in the aisle.

  “Well, hello. How did you get in here?” asked a voice.

  Still holding the feather, Cinda sat up. The woman who’d spoken remained perched on the goose she’d been riding. She wore a frilly white cap and spectacles, and she smelled like a combination of peppermints, face powder, and cleverness. Her crisp white apron had a curlicue L embroidered on its front bib. L for Librarian, figured Cinda.

  “I just answered a riddle and walked in the library door,” Cinda explained. “I’m supposed to be meeting some friends here.”

  “Friends? Friends are most often filed under F. Hop on behind me and I’ll take you to the F aisle,” said the lady. “Unless of course —” She hesitated, then asked, “Why were you all meeting here?”

  “To look for gowns,” said Cinda. “Ball gowns, I mean.” The minute she hopped onto the goose’s back behind the woman, it whooshed off the ground again and began circling the library.

  “Tell me, which is it you’re looking for exactly?” the librarian inquired. “Friends or gowns? Gowns are filed under G.”

  “G for Gowns?” asked Cinda.

  “Yes. But also for Going to balls. And for Glittery, Gorgeous, and Glamorous.” She chuckled. “Or in a few unfortunate cases, Ghastly.”

  “So do you think I’ll find my friends in the G or F section?” asked Cinda, a little baffled.

  “Depends on the friend. Some are under B for BFFs,” she was told. “Others under P for Pals. Still others under L for Loyal, O for Old, N for New —”

  “Probably N for New,” said Cinda. “Today is my first day at the Academy.”

  “How exciting!” the librarian exclaimed in a cheery voice. “Welcome, welcome!”

  As they flew over the vast library, Cinda got a goose’s-eye view of it. “I’ve dreamed of visiting this place. But it’s way bigger than I thought it would be,” she said.

  The lady nodded, her attention mostly on her goose driving now. “The Grimmstone Library can make itself either small or big. Whatever it needs to be at a given moment.” They swerved to avoid a chandelier, then headed down a new aisle.

  “It so happens that you’ve come on a really ‘big’ day,” the librarian continued. “Which means there are currently many miles of shelves. We have collections beyond anything you can imagine. The Grimm brothers
acquired them and brought everything here that they believed needed protection. Music, the fountain of youth, irreplaceable documents, fantastical rooms, enchanted artifacts, mysterious memories —”

  “But how does all of it fit inside the Academy?” Cinda asked, still feeling confused.

  “It’s magical. Movable. Timeless. Formless,” said the librarian, as if that explained everything.

  “Cinda! Down here,” called a voice.

  Cinda looked down to see Red waving to her from an aisle below. Red must not think too badly of her if she was this excited to see her. Cinda’s heart lifted and she waved back.

  “That’s one of the friends I was looking for,” she told the librarian, pointing at Red. They set down in a clear space and Red came running over, her bright red cape flowing out behind her.

  The shelves around them in the New Friends aisle were filled with other items that started with the letter N: Nails, Newspapers, Neckties, Necklaces, Nightgowns. There was a big box labeled: NUDGES. Another box labeled: NO! And between two shelves was a door with a sign on it that read: NUMBERS.

  “Hi, Ms. Goose,” said Red.

  “Hello, little gosling,” said the librarian. She gave Red a quick hug.

  So that was the woman’s name, thought Cinda. Made sense. As Cinda hopped off the goose, she dropped the feather she held. It drifted from her fingers to the floor.

  Red picked it up. “Oh, good. You brought a quill pen. This’ll come in handy.”

  “Carry on, girls,” said Ms. Goose. “I trust you’ll remember the library rule:

  To borrow an item, check it out right.

  Treat it with care, and return by midnight.”

  “But the Prince Awesome Ball this Friday ends exactly at midnight,” protested Red. “Do you mean we’ll have to leave early to return our gowns and slippers on time?”

  “Oh, you’re checking out gowns for that ball! Why didn’t you say so?” Ms. Goose adjusted her spectacles, which had slid down to the end of her nose. “The principal has magically extended the deadline for returns to the library until the morning after the Awesome Ball. Eight A.M. sharp. You can put gowns and slippers on hold now and pick them up the morning of the ball.”