Standing Up For Grace Read online

  The principal’s eyes brighten for just a moment. It’s almost a twinkle. Imperia has the distinct impression that she’s both amusing and impressing the principal, but the principal can’t say anything because she’s afraid of Skylar’s family.

  Which makes Imperia even angrier.

  “For the record,” Imperia says as she stands up, “I really don’t care if you expel me. I thought school would be wonderful here, but it’s not. It’s all about who you are, not about what you can learn. So expel me. I’d rather be home-schooled anyway. And it would certainly be better for Grace.”

  “Hmm.” Principal Daley says, picking up that paper and putting the glasses back on her nose. “Would it be better for Grace? After all, if you get expelled, she won’t have a protector here.”

  Imperia straightens. “She’ll leave with me.”

  “Ah, but your sister is getting marvelous grades and behaves beautifully, even when faced with difficult circumstances.”

  Principal Daley’s twinkle suddenly reveals itself as something evil. She isn’t admiring Imperia. Principal Daley knows she has Imperia beaten.

  “If you get expelled, your sister will remain,” Principal Daley says.

  Imperia opens her mouth to say, Daddy will take her out of school, and Daddy probably will, but Imperia doesn’t know that for sure, and besides, why continue to argue with Principal Daley? The woman is the king here, and kings always win when they fight on their home turf.

  Even if Imperia and Grace leave, especially if they leave, Principal Daley will still think she won.

  “Am I excused?” Imperia asks.

  “You’re not excused, child, but you may leave,” Principal Daley says.

  Imperia stares at her for a moment, but Principal Daley studies the paper in front of her as if Imperia doesn’t exist. Which makes Imperia even angrier, just like it’s supposed to.

  Finally, she turns, leaves, and concentrates very, very hard on not slamming that carved door shut. She doesn’t want Principal Daley to know just how mad she really is.

  Imperia doesn’t want Principal Daley to know that she’s won.

  THREE

  At least Grace is better. Imperia finds her in the crowded cafeteria, which is more like a restaurant, with potted plants and more damn wood, as if this stupid school was in some snowy mountainous region instead of one of the hottest places Imperia has ever seen.

  The cafeteria smells like hamburgers and pizza, but it has a huge salad bar and a low-fat menu that rivals some of the area’s most exclusive restaurants. A lot of kids are supposed to eat only from the low-fat menu, and there are employees here who actually enforce parental food decrees.

  Imperia is glad she isn’t under a parental food decree, but she does think the food in the place could improve. There is no mutton, for example, nor is there any stewed pigeon, both favorites of hers. The game meats are frowned upon—she isn’t supposed to admit that she’s eaten wild boar, apparently—but bland chicken breast is okay.

  She thought the food would be better here in the Greater World too, but she was wrong about that as well.

  Fortunately she and Grace share a lunch period so Imperia’s been able to defend Grace. Most of the trouble happens at lunch, although this morning’s trouble happened before class even started. Then Imperia spent two hours in the principal’s office which, even she has to admit, hadn’t gone as well as she would have liked.

  After leaving the principal’s office, Imperia hurried to the cafeteria only to find Grace sitting calmly at one of the back tables, having a toasted ham-and-cheese sandwich, something she’s fallen in love with. Imperia hasn’t found anything to love yet on the menu, but she hasn’t really looked, as busy as she’s been defending Grace.

  This lunch period, though, Grace is happily munching away, a closed book beside her. The closed book is odd too (Grace usually reads in crowds) but even odder is that Grace is grinning—at a gaggle of girls who are sitting with her.

  Imperia doesn’t recognize any of them.

  Her stomach clenches and she wonders what these girls have planned for Grace. Especially since Grace is looking particularly relaxed, and when Grace looks relaxed, she also looks pretty. Normally, everyone agrees that Imperia is the family beauty, much as she resents it since her so-called beauty comes from Mom. (In fact, Imperia looks exactly like Mom did at the same age, minus the ashes and the dirt, of course.)

  But Grace looks like a blond version of Dad, all square-jawed and blue-eyed. Grandmother says Grace will grow into her looks, but that’s not a phrase that anyone likes, especially Grace, who wants to have her looks now.

  It’s hard to be the duckling in a family of swans, particularly a somewhat chubby duckling with a square jaw and a shy manner. Shy chubby ducklings usually get ignored, which Imperia is beginning to think preferable to this relentless bullying that Grace has endured since they’ve come to the Warren Excellence Academy.

  And Imperia is afraid the bullying is going to start again.

  Imperia stalks over to the table, her hands already clenched into fists. The bruises on her right hand ache as she does this, but she tries to ignore it all.

  Grace looks up as Imperia gets closer and smiles as if she’s really, really happy. Now Imperia is very worried, because she knows how this stuff works: Get the victim to go along, thinking that she’s in the group now, and then say or do something so crushing that it destroys the girl’s spirit.

  Imperia wants to say she’s never done anything like that, but of course she can’t. She’s the second in line to the throne, for heaven’s sake. If someone needed crushing—and a few kids did back at the palace—then Imperia found it best to do the crushing herself.

  “Grace,” Imperia says with some caution in her voice. All the other girls at the table look up, and Imperia realizes they’re Grace’s age. The girls who’ve been picking on Grace are older.

  Some of these girls are a bit portly and a few wear somewhat hideous glasses. One girl has a French manicure—or would if she hadn’t chewed off the tips and the cuticles—and another girl has braids that are coming loose.

  “This is my sister Imperia,” Grace says with pride.

  The girls murmur and nod and look away. Imperia recognizes their response. They’re in awe of her.

  That makes Imperia’s brain hurt. No one has been in awe of her here in the Greater World. No one at all.

  She wants to ask, Is everything okay? but she isn’t sure how to do it without embarrassing Grace. So Imperia thinks about another gambit which is How did this happen? but that gambit is as bad as Is everything okay? because if she says it, it’ll sound like Grace doesn’t deserve friends, and of all the people Imperia has ever known, Grace is the one who deserves friends the most.

  But Grace knows her, and Grace gets this smug little smile on her face, like she understands Imperia’s struggle.

  “They all wanted to meet you,” Grace says. “They’ve never seen anybody deck Skylar before.”

  Good, Imperia thinks. Great. I’m a hero to eight-year-olds.

  “Somebody probably should’ve decked her a long time ago,” Imperia says.

  The little girls giggle, then cover their mouths as if laughing at that sentence is forbidden. Maybe it is. Imperia doesn’t get all of the rules in this place yet.

  “Nobody stands up to Skylar,” says one of the little girls. She has glasses so thick that her eyes look like huge on her tiny face. Everything else about her is perfect though, from the knot on her little bowtie to the layered cut of her red hair. “Her Mom is the biggest box office star in the world.”

  Imperia frowns. “Her mom? I don’t know a movie star named Campbell.”

  “Because that’s not her last name, silly,” one of the other little girls says. She’s a thin thing with a chin so pointed that she looks like one of the drawings in those fairy tale books Daddy doesn’t like.

  Imperia doesn’t want to know who this famous mom is because if she knows, she’ll have to hate her,
and she doesn’t want to hate any movie star for any reason except a bad movie. Movies are still too new and precious to her to risk on a personal problem.

  “I don’t care who her mom is,” Imperia says. “People should be judged for who they are, not for who their parents are.”

  All of the little girls stare at her, eyes as huge as the glasses-girl’s. The little girls are quiet, and then Imperia realizes that they aren’t the only ones. Everyone has gotten quiet. There isn’t a single conversation in the room, and almost all of the tables are full.

  Not even the adults are talking. One of the cafeteria monitors—the people who keep track of the parental food decree—crosses her arms and leans back as if she’s expecting a show.

  The hair on the back of Imperia’s neck rises, and she knows without anyone telling her that someone is standing behind her.

  She turns around slowly.

  Four of Skylar’s friends stand in a half-circle, sleeves rolled up, hair pulled back. These girls are big, with something Daddy calls gym-muscles, because he says people here in the Greater World don’t have weapons practice or know how to ride horses or understand the importance of walking everywhere. Daddy says gym muscles are almost like fake muscles because they don’t deliver the way that real muscles (properly worked out) do.

  Still, Imperia’s heart starts beating really hard, and she knows she’s in for it. She wonders if the grown-ups will step in to stop the impending fight. Probably not, if Skylar’s Mom is rich and superfamous. The grown-ups will probably wait until the fight gets underway, then take some cell phone pictures to sell to the tabloids (or to Skylar’s mom), and then maybe someone will step in.

  Imperia knows all about the tabloids. Principal Daley warned her about them before Imperia even had a day of classes, saying that a kid could get expelled for selling pictures to a tabloid. And since Imperia didn’t (at that moment) know what a tabloid was, she assured the principal that she wouldn’t do anything of the sort.

  At the moment, however, tabloids are the least of her worries. Imperia is outnumbered and probably outclassed. And in no way are Grace’s little friends going to help her.

  So Imperia has to take the offensive.

  She summons the part of her that’s most like her Grandfather, stands as straight as she can, looks down her nose at Skylar’s friends (even though most of them are taller than she is) and says in her most condescending voice, “I see that Skylar couldn’t be bothered with defending herself.”

  “She had to go to the hospital, you freak,” says Mikayla Aberdeen. She’s the tallest girl, and pretty athletic. She wants to play professional basketball, and the gym teacher says she might have a shot if she continues growing.

  She’s also the daughter of some super agent, whatever that is, and thinks she’s super important herself because of it.

  “The hospital?” Imperia says, impressed despite herself.

  She punched Skylar hard—she knows that by how bruised her hand is—but she never thought that punch would do more than hurt Skylar’s pride. “That little tap sent her to the hospital? Really?”

  “You broke her nose,” says Rose Browning. Rose is more hanger-on than important, even though one of her two moms is some kind of bigwig lawyer. Rose is too thin—Imperia has caught her puking up her lunch in the bathroom more than once—and Imperia knows she can take her if she has to.

  “She’s going to have to have plastic surgery,” Georgia LaCrosti says. Georgia is the one to watch. She’s the one with all the gym muscles and she’s Skylar’s right-hand girl.

  “Well, good,” says a voice from behind Imperia. “After all, Barbies should be made of plastic.”

  Imperia’s heart is really pounding now. She turns just enough to see who is behind her. She doesn’t know the girl’s name, although she recognizes her. She’s watched this girl from afar, admiring her courage. Her white shirt is one size too big and she leaves it untucked. She rolls her skirt up so that it’s a mini, and her socks down so that they hug her ankles. She has two jackets for her uniform. She’s ripped the sleeves off one jacket and she wears it as much as she can. Sometimes the teachers make her wear the other jacket—the one with sleeves—but even that she’s managed to customize by ripping the school’s logo off the pocket.

  “Shut up, Janie, this isn’t your fight,” Mikayal says.

  “It isn’t yours either,” this new girl, this Janie, says. “I’ll bet that Skylar told you to do this, told you do something nasty that’ll embarrass the crap out of Empire here, and then put it on YouTube or something.”

  Imperia doesn’t want to correct her over the name, because this Janie seems to be on a roll.

  “You’re just little Skylar suck-ups,” Janie says. “Which is so stupid, since my grandfather can buy and sell her mom if he wants to—wait! He has bought her, like a half dozen times.”

  Janie put her arm through Imperia’s, startling Imperia. She can’t remember the last time anyone who wasn’t family touched her.

  “C’mon, Empire,” Janie says. “Let’s have lunch.”

  And then she leads Imperia toward the burger side of the cafeteria, the area that Skylar’s friends usually ignore.

  “Thanks,” Imperia says. She wants to slide her arm away, but she doesn’t want to seem ungrateful. “You didn’t have to stand up for me, but I’m glad you did.”

  Janie grins at her. Imperia’s surprised to see that her teeth aren’t perfect. They have gaps along the bottom. Her haircut looks hand-done.

  “Of course, I had to stand up for you,” Janie says. “You punched Skylar. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to do that?”

  Imperia swallows. She knows there’s an ebb and flow here she doesn’t understand. “You seem like the kind of person who does what she wants.”

  “Oh, I wish,” Janie says. “I’m already in it with my grandfather. Imagine if I showed up on YouTube punching out Skylar Kennedy Campbell. God, the press would love that.”

  “Um.” Imperia winces because she knows she’s about to ask a stupid question, but she does anyway. “Am I supposed to know who your grandfather is?”

  She also wants to ask why he can buy and sell people. Imperia thought that was illegal in the Greater World—it certainly is in the Third Kingdom (although not in all the Kingdoms)—but she’s willing to concede she can be wrong about what’s allowed here and what’s not.

  “My grandfather owns the biggest studio in Hollywood,” Janie says. “Or at least, he’s the majority shareholder. He used to run it, but now my dad does, not that it matters.”

  “Why wouldn’t it matter?” Imperia asks.

  “My dad’s on his fifth wife,” Janie says, as if that explains it all.

  “So?”

  “Jeez,” Janie says, “You are new, aren’t you? My mom was wife number three.”

  Imperia is still frowning. She knows she should understand this, but she doesn’t. After all, her parents are the only divorced people she knows personally. And all of her friends in the Kingdom—well, she doesn’t have friends there, but all of the kids her age, the ones she’s allowed to play with, those kids come from intact families, as Grandfather loves to point out.

  “God,” Janie says, clearly recognizing Imperia’s silence for what the confusion that it is. “Wife number three means there are two families after mine. I’m not even sure Dad knows what my name is, not that it matters. He sends checks every month, which keep Mom in clothes and clubs and me and my brother in this hellhole.”

  “And your grandfather?” Imperia asks, not sure if she should.

  “He knows who I am. He makes it his business to know everything about everyone, and he’d kill me if I show up in the press or on YouTube or cussing on my Facebook page. He has minions to keep track of all of that stuff.”

  “Sounds like my grandfather,” Imperia says, only she doesn’t add that her grandfather doesn’t even know what Facebook is.

  “Your grandfather has a studio?” Janie asks.

  “I wish
,” Imperia says, not willing to say much more. “Having a studio sounds cool.”

  Janie grins. “It can be. But mostly, it’s just—you know, like his job. But it impresses the masses.”

  Then she looks over her shoulder at Skylar’s friends who are still clustering as if they can’t believe that Janie took Imperia away from them.

  Imperia’s heart starts to pound again. “You don’t think they’re going to go after my sister again, do you?”

  “Naw,” Janie says. “Your sister is too easy. You’re the challenge. And with that punch, you made sure they’re going to go after you.”

  “Goodie,” Imperia says without enthusiasm. “By the way, my name is actually Imperia.”

  “Imperia Encanto, I know,” Janie says. “But I like Empire better. It’s a statement.”

  “I don’t need to make a statement,” Imperia says.

  “That’s probably true,” Janie says, clapping her on the back and propelling her toward the food. “Your fists were pretty damn eloquent.”

  “My fists are pretty damn sore,” Imperia says.

  “Small price to pay for breaking Skylar Campbell’s nose,” Janie says. “Too bad we didn’t get a video of that. That would’ve been epic.”

  “I prefer to work in secret,” Imperia says.

  Janie laughs. “Well, you failed at that part. But who cares? There’s a new Queen in town. Long live Empire Encanto.”

  A shiver runs through Imperia. Is her royal blood that obvious? Or is Janie just making some kind of joke?

  This time, Imperia doesn’t ask. Instead, she steps up to the counter, orders a cheeseburger, and hopes the conversation goes a whole new way.

  FOUR

  Not only did the conversation go a whole new way, but so did the day. She didn’t have to keep as close an eye on Grace. Skylar’s friends just glared at Imperia for the rest of the day but didn’t approach her, and Janie promised lunch again tomorrow.