A/N So I probably shouldn't have started another story with all the other ones I fail to update as often as I should, but... Well, I blame my muses. Feel free to blame me. Anyway, I'm a fan of the show Once Upon A Time, so I decided to plop an OC with a sarcastic nature right in there. I hope you guys enjoy this new story and, of course, reviews are always welcome.
Tessa was sitting at the kitchen table, drawing a portrait of a border collie with a pencil. Her ear-buds were in, blasting music from her MP.3. Someone grabbed her shoulder. She whirled around, pulling out her ear-buds.
"Jeez, mom, what?" She asked. Regina threw her purse down on the table next to Tessa's sketchbook.
"Where's Henry? He was supposed to meet me for dinner." Tessa frowned and looked around.
"I don't know." Regina turned and hurried upstairs to search for him. Tessa got up and poked her head into the kitchen. After searching the entire bottom floor of the house, she met Regina at the bottom of the stairs.
"He's not here." They said in unison. Regina pulled her cell-phone out from her jacket pocket.
"I'll call Sheriff Graham." She mumbled, quickly dialing. Tessa grabbed her military style jacket and slipped into it.
"I'll go around town, see if anyone's seen him." She grabbed the two leashes from the coat rack by the door before whistling. Instantly, two dogs came galloping downstairs. The bigger dog was a Carpathian Shepherd Dog and the other was a small Border Collie puppy. Tessa swiftly attached the leashes to their collars before the three of them hurried outside. Once on the sidewalk, Tessa picked up her pace to a jog to keep up with Romania, the Carpathian Shepherd Dog.
"Let's go to Granny's, boys."
When Tessa got to the glass door leading into Granny's Diner, she stopped and kneeled down next to Romania.
"Okay, stay here, boy." He obediently flopped down onto the sidewalk. She dropped his leash and then picked up Sebastian, the puppy that she didn't trust nearly as much. She pushed the door open and the bell above it rang merrily to announce her presence.
"Hey!" Ruby excitedly greeted her, hurrying over as fast as her five inch heels would allow.
"Hey, Rue!" Ruby and Tessa gave each other a hug before Tessa spoke again.
"Tell me you've seen Henry." She pleaded. Ruby raised an eyebrow.
"I'd be lying. Why?" She asked, reaching over to pet Sebastian.
"He's missing."
"Lovely." Ruby's voice was laced with sweet sarcasm. Tessa nodded. She had about the same appreciation for Henry's antics.
"Well, I'm going to go. See you tomorrow." Tessa left the diner. She picked up Romania's leash and put Sebastian back on the ground before they hurried down the sidewalk again.
As Tessa reached the walkway leading back up to her house, she saw a yellow car stopping on the curb. Henry climbed out of the passenger side. Tessa hurried over to him.
"Where have you been?" She demanded as a blonde woman stepped out of the driver's side.
"I found my real mom!" He told her, pointing at the woman.
"Uh… I'm Emma." She introduced herself, sticking out a hand. She stared at Tessa, taking in the fact that she had a dog the size of a small horse standing beside her.
"Tessa, Henry's sister." She shook Emma's hand as Henry kneeled down to pet Sebastian and Romania. They walked up the walkway.
"Please don't take me back there!" Henry pleaded with Emma.
"I have to! I'm sure your parents are worried sick about you." Emma told her.
"I don't have parents. Just my mom. And she's evil." Henry shot back. Tessa looked over at him.
"Evil. Seriously, Henry?" She demanded. The front door swung open and Regina and Sheriff Graham hurried out.
"Henry? Oh! Henry!" Regina ran over to hug him.
"Are you okay? Where have you been? What happened?" She asked worriedly.
"I found my real mom!" Henry repeated before running into the house.
"You're Henry's birth mother?"
"Hi." Emma said awkwardly.
"Oookay… I'll be inside." Tessa hurried into the house after Henry. She got Romania and Sebastian off their leashes and went up to her bedroom. Her bedroom door was only marked differently than the rest of the doors on the second floor hallway by a large poster of a horse pinned on it. She pushed the door open and Romania and Sebastian got inside before Tessa. She walked in after them, kicking the door shut again behind her. The bedroom wasn't a small room, but it was jam packed with everything she owned. Against the wall by the door were the two large dog beds and then a scratching post for her cat before you reached the door to her closet. Chess, her cat, was lying on Tessa's double bed. On either side of the bed were nightstands. One had all the drawers and shelves taken out to store a mini fridge well within reach of the bed for all her midnight snacks while the other had a lamp on top and stored drawing supplies and that one junk drawer that every room has down below. The rest of the walls were covered in bookcases with a small desk tucked under her window. Tessa stripped off her jacket and threw it onto the end table at the foot of her bed, which had turned into where she threw anything she was too lazy to put away properly.
"Hey, Chess." She greeted the cat as the dogs jumped onto her bed as well, completely ignoring their own beds. Tessa heard her mom talking to Emma downstairs. Out of curiosity, she went back downstairs. She paused at the bottom of the steps.
"When I adopted him, he was only three weeks old. Records were sealed. I was told the birth mother didn't want any contact."
"You were told right." Emma returned.
"And the father?"
"There was one."
"Do I need to be worried about him?"
"Nope. Doesn't even know."
"Do I need to be worried about you, Miss Swan?"
"Absolutely not." Sheriff Graham came downstairs, ruffling Tessa's hair as he passed her. He went into the dining room.
"Madam Mayor, you can relax. Other than being a tired little boy, Henry's fine."
"Thank you, Sheriff." Sheriff Graham walked out the front door, shutting it behind him.
"I'm sorry he dragged you out of your life. I really don't know what's gotten into him." Regina went on.
"Kid's having a rough time. Happens."
"You have to understand, ever since I became mayor, balancing things have been tricky. You have a job, I assume?"
"I keep busy. Yeah."
"Imagine having another one on top of that. That's being a single mom. Tessa's nineteen now, but that doesn't mean I'm still not taking care of her. Am I strict? I suppose. But I do it for their own good. I want Henry and Tessa to excel in their lives. I don't think that makes me evil, do you?"
"I'm sure he's just saying that because of the fairytale thing."
"What fairytale thing?"
"Oh you know, his book. How he thinks everyone is a cartoon character. Like his shrink is Jiminy Cricket." Tessa got up from the bottom step and hurried upstairs again. She went to Henry's room, knocked once and then opened the door. Henry was sitting up in bed, looking oddly proud of himself. That proud smile faded as he saw her.
"What's this book that Emma's talking about?" Tessa asked, leaning against the doorframe.
"I have a book of stories that I read. Kids do that, you know." He told her, narrowing his eyes at her. Tessa narrowed her own right back at him.
"Right… Cause you're totally normal." She said sarcastically. He said nothing. She rolled her eyes.
"Fine. Don't tell me." She turned and started to walk back to her own bedroom, but then stopped and looked back at him.
"Oh, and, f.y.i, you suck." She told him.
"What did I do?" He asked.
"You ran off! I walked around the entire town looking for your sorry butt and now mom's upset because she thinks you hate her!" With that said, Tessa again turned to leave but was stopped by Henry's voice.
"You're in the book too!"
"Excuse me?" She asked, raising an eyebrow and turning back around.
"In the story book, you're there."
"Interesting…" She gave him a weird look and finally left.
The next day, Tessa woke up to the sounds of Sheriff Graham, Regina and Emma talking in the next room, Henry's room. Tessa quickly put together the snippets of conversation she heard and realized that Henry had run off again. She groaned as she rolled herself out of bed. Doing her morning skip, weave and trip over one of them anyway routine to get past her animals and into her closet, she grabbed some clothes and made her way back to her bed. After she was dressed in a pair of dark jeans, a pair of black high tops and a black tank top with a white crop top with 'KEEP CALM AND LOVE ANIMALS' handwritten on the front over it.
"Mom, I'm going out!" She called as she hurried down the stairs towards the front door.
"If you see Henry, call me!" Regina yelled back.
"Gotcha." She replied. She hurried out the front door and out onto the sidewalk. She started jogging.
Tessa reached the old wooden playground castle that Henry was sitting in and slowed her pace.
"Hey, baby brother." She greeted him. She climbed up and sat down beside him, dangling her legs over the side.
"Is there a reason you've decided to run off every day now or is this just a psychotic break?" She asked. He didn't answer.
"So you said I was in the magic book, huh?" She changed the subject. He nodded once.
"Who am I? In the book, I mean." She pressed.
"Shouldn't you be at school?" He asked her, narrowing her eyes at her.
"Nineteen now. School is so last year." She told him, grinning widely. He rolled her eyes. She reached over and smacked him lightly upside the head.
"Who am I in the book?" She asked again. He was silent for a minute.
"You're the Evil Queen's daughter." He finally told her. She laughed.
"Am I the Evil Princess?" She asked.
"No! You're Snow White's stepsister."
"So I'm the ugly stepsister? Ouch, hurtful, dude." She told him, frowning.
"You don't believe." He mumbled, looking down at his hands.
"Don't believe what? I believe in animal rights, I believe that you are one crazy kid, I believe that-." She started.
"You don't believe in the book! You don't believe that Regina cursed all the fairytale creatures!" He told her.
"Because that kind of stuff just doesn't happen in real life, Henry!" She told him. A yellow car pulled up in front of them and Emma hopped out, holding up Henry's book.
"You left this in my car!" She called. Tessa jumped to the ground as Emma walked over to them.
"That's my queue to go. Have fun with Mr. Crazy." She told Emma before jogging off again.
That night, Tessa was just about to get into bed when something out the window caught her eye. She slowly went over to her window, brushing Chess aside so she could lean on her desk to look out. The giant clock on the tower had moved to 8:16.
A/N Okay, that was a pretty boring chapter, but I promise that they will get better.
On a different note, I'll be hinting at what character she will date. There were three hints in this chapter as to who that character is. Feel free to review and guess who it is. There will be more hints in later chapters as well. And, no, I haven't cheated and made one up. That character will be one from the original show.
I hope you guys liked that chapter and that you'll stick around for more. Until then, thanks for reading!