Something that most people forget is that Snow White is fourteen. She is sweet and innocent and kind. She escapes an evil Queen and keeps a house with eight people in it at fourteen.
She is a freshman in high school. She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life. Her mother died shortly after her birth, and her father remarried. After her father's death, it took ten years for them to discover she was abusing and neglecting her stepdaughter and had murdered her husband. Snow White was taken from the home and her stepmother faces trial.
Snow White pries herself out of bed every day. She eats breakfast with the sunrise and smiles her way through her day. She sings when she walks and is incredibly grateful for all the little things, because she spent too long without them. Everyone in the school knows her name. The teachers talk about the happy young girl with good grades (her counselor sees more tears than all the rest combined) and she charms the students with her incessant kindness.
She tries out for the cheerleading team. She has worked for weeks on the lawn behind her new home to perfect a handstand and a frontflip until she's not afraid to do it on the hard court instead of soft grass. She is the first person on the list posted the next day.
It does not come easily some days. Sometimes she sees a familiar face in the newspaper and tears come to her eyes and she has to stay home from school. Some days she is not good at math or writing or science and she cries over textbooks and admits to her counselor that she does not feel pretty or wanted or loved. She says she is not smart and every day is a struggle. Then she picks up her bag and steps out of the safe confines of the room and smiles and chatters to people as they pass.
Snow walks to school with a song on her lips and volunteers at the animal shelter afterward. She climbs out of bed with the sun and stays after school to perfect her cheer routine. These days she is so late she walks home in the dark.
She does it because if she does not she will stay in bed and cry for days.
She must be strong.
She has no choice.