Alas, the Linguini Losers are right there when she walks through the school doors. They’re waiting in the hallway near her locker, as has become the daily norm.
There’s nothing special about them. The head girl isn’t even particularly pretty or funny or smart—just aggressive, with a bossy air and a threatening attitude. But she does have seven short, bland, generic kids who dumbly follow what she says.
Troll army, thinks Filomena, just like in the Never After books. Except all the mean girls at her school are named after flowers—Posy, Daisy, Petunia, Carnation—while the mean boys are all named after sports teams—Tex, Angelo, Lake, Buck. They would be intimidating except that the boys are even shorter than the girls. (It’s middle school, after all.)
Filomena makes her way to her locker. As she inches closer, the Rigatoni Ralphs jump in front, blocking her.
“Come on, the bell’s going to ring,” says Filomena meekly, even though she towers over them.
“Too bad,” sneers Posy, her hand across the locker. “I heard you did well on the science test the other day.”
What science test? wonders Filomena, and then she remembers. Oh, the one everyone else failed. Posy and the noodles had posted their horrific grades—52 percent, 65 percent, 48 percent—on their social media accounts, joking and laughing with one another, and so Filomena had done the same, thinking she was innocently joining a meme. Except her score—102 percent (because she got everything right, including the extra-credit question)—was apparently nothing to laugh about.
“You think you’re smarter than us, huh?” Posy demanded.
“Um…” Filomena wants to tell them about the C-minus she got in Algebra One Honors, except it would only make them hate her more. She’s already two math levels ahead of the rest of her grade.
The other kids giggle, taking part in taunting her. One of them snatches at her backpack, pulling it away from her back so that she stumbles a little.
Another grabs at her hair as she tries to regain her footing, knocking her off-balance yet again and yanking her backward.
“Dumb move,” her assailant chimes in, sounding disgusted while gripping her hair hard and pulling.
Filomena flinches, reaching for her hair—which took hours to flatten. It’s another thing her peers take delight in teasing her about, accusing her of being neither here nor there in her heritage and looks.
“If you’re so smart, do you even know if you’re black or white or yellow?” someone else taunts.
This is getting so old. She’s heard all the jeers before.
“Yeah. Your own parents didn’t want you. You think your teachers do?” another kid says to her, a statement that still stings her every time.
Filomena turns red. She tries to fight back the tears threatening to spill. If she’s late for class again, she’ll get a suspension, and she doesn’t want to tell the teachers about the bullying. She just wants it to go away.
If only there was a way to make it stop. The rude and snide remarks. The pushing. The snickering. The teasing. The things that are slowly chipping away at her confidence—little by little, day by day, until one day she’ll just disintegrate into nothing.
But she knows she needs to try to find the strength to fight back. Wallowing, retreating, flinching—that only makes things worse. It feeds them, eggs them on. Backing down just infuriates the bullies more.
She reaches for her locker, but Posy slaps her hand away.
“For a smart kid you’re pretty stupid,” she hisses.
“Yeah, and Filomena’s an ugly name, too,” someone else cackles.
Now all the kids are surrounding her and slapping her. As usual, there are no teachers or administrators around. All the teachers are in their classrooms and the staff are in their offices. No one ever sees anything, which is why the principal says there’s no bullying in the school. It looks playful, but it’s not. The slaps hurt, almost as much as the words. Filomena can’t take it anymore. Not even for a second longer. Her name isn’t ugly! It’s ancient Greek and Arabic. It means “strength” and “courage,” and it also means “friend.” Above all, her mother told her, it means “beloved.” You are loved. We wanted you so much, baby.
Filomena tries to dodge the blows, but they keep landing, even as she twists away from the others, their insults ringing in her ears. Ugly. Stupid. Know-it-all. Show-off. Loser. Unwanted.
She needs to make it stop! If it would only stop! Then she hears a voice in her head: Never After is real. Immediately a spell comes to mind, and she speaks it out loud: “Time and tide await none but me! Stop the clocks until I order thee!”
And just like that, the ruckus stops.
She opens her eyes.
Everyone is frozen.
The kids standing all around her are paralyzed mid-insult, mid-hit, their faces ugly and contorted.
* * *
Never After is real. That’s what the boy said yesterday. The boy who called himself Jack Stalker. And speak of the devil … The voice in her head isn’t just in her head at all.
“Good work!” says Jack, who’s suddenly appeared, almost as if she’s conjured him here. But now he has a friend by his side.
“Alistair?” says Filomena.
“Yes!” says Alistair happily. “She knows who I am!” He turns to look at Jack with a pleased grin on his face, moving his eyebrows to showcase his smugness.
Of course Filomena knows who he is—it’s Alistair from the books, Jack Stalker’s loyal friend. This new boy is dressed in the same dun-colored robes Alistair wears in the Never After series, and he has a treasure chest tattooed on his cheek. But … he’s different from what’s on the page.
“You’re much cuter than I expected,” she tells him. “And you don’t have an odd accent at all! I mean, it’s a little Cockney, right? But that’s all.”
Alistair is a bit miffed. “Well, gee, thanks. I’m from Parsa, but I went to boarding school in Albion. It’s a pleasure to meet you, too.”
“My mom’s from Brighton,” says Filomena, who knows Albion is a kingdom in Never After that closely resembles England. “And you don’t look like a goblin! The writer really took some liberties with your description,” she informs him.
“Goblin?” sputters Alistair. “I’ll have the writer know that I’m a prince!” he declares.
“Are you now?” says Filomena.
“One hundred percent,” says Alistair with a smile, and it’s almost like she can hear the glint shine off his white teeth. “Anyway, you know our names, but we don’t know yours.”
For a moment Filomena hesitates, her inner alarm sounding a stranger danger! warning. But then again, they did just help her get away from her enemies. And what was that saying? The enemy of my enemy is my friend?
“Filomena Jefferson-Cho,” says Filomena, greeting both boys.
“Alistair Bartholomew Barnaby,” says Alistair. “You already know that’s Jack.”
“I do,” says Filomena, because if this is Alistair, then that’s really the famous Jack Stalker standing next to him. And that really was an Ogre’s Wrath she deflected yesterday. Which means …