Jill is reading in the common room, when she does something that startles Eustace.
Disclaimer: I don't own this. Oh, and Eustace and Jill are about 13.
They were sitting in the common room, Jill had a copy of grim fairy tales-sorry, Grimm's Fairy Tales-open on her lap, and Eustace was not watching her read.
Well, all right, he was, but only because David Copperfield was boring him to tears, and Peterson, with his Valentine-related panic, was even worse. It had nothing to do with Pole; she was simply an... an... an abstract object on which to fix his attention whilst his mind wandered. He could almost feel her swatting him with an exercise book at having unintentionally referred to her as an object. At least he wasn't thinking about her; well, of course, now he was thinking about her, which was all very irritating, and Edmund's voice in his head wasn't helping at all, so he wrangled his mind back onto Dickens.
Dickens hadn't written anything quite as interesting as the way Jill's curls were slipping out of their knot towards her eyes, though, and-wait, no! David Copperfield was busy doing something of no import. Well, not actually doing. Just thinking. Like Eustace himself.
Oh hang it, nobody was paying attention. He snuck a glance at Jill, to see that she had looked up from her book to engage in animated discussion with Tate. Bother. Jill was always more absorbing when she was animated, because her eyes lit up just so, and-
He went back to David Copperfield with an audible harrumph. Peterson was briefly shocked from his panic, but when he looked up and saw that Pole was being absorbing on the 'girls'' side of the common room, he understood, and went back to panicking about the approaching day with a clear conscience.
Eustace really did read four sentences together then, and even made a note about Introspection; he would never really be able to read it later, because he had to look up to write, and he saw that the firelight was making Pole's cheeks pink, and when he realised that, his hand had to write all by itself, without much help from his brain.
David Copperfield. That was what was important here. Pole had already read it. She had even enjoyed it, which was no mean feat, and she'd spent the previous three evenings trying to cut her essay down to the pragmatic maximum word count. Eustace had only written his title, and he'd scribbled over that so many times that it wasn't legible.
Hang about. A shadow had fallen over his book, and he glanced up to see Pole standing over him, her grim fairies still ensconced in her left hand. Why was she there? It was the unofficial 'boys'' side. The girls were all curled up in the easy chairs, by the fire, and the boys chivalrously took the windows, with November ice-air breathing down their necks. Pole didn't give an adequate explanation, either; instead, and without giving him any fair warning, she bent and pecked him defiantly on the cheek.
Eustace might have dropped David Copperfield then, but if he did, he never knew, because Peterson bent and picked it up quietly, his eyes quietly laughing along with Tate's.
Jill stood back up, and called across the room to Tate. "You were wrong, and the Grimms lied," she announced, and if she sounded a little breathless, who was there to notice? "Still a frog."
Oh. Eustace was, despite his best intentions, a little disappointed. "Not a frog," he said with a cheerful grin. "Respectobiggle."
And if Peterson, Tate, and the rest of the world thought he'd gone mad, he briefly didn't care, because Pole laughed, after all.
This story was partially inspired by a great song called "Princes and Frogs" by Superchic[k; namely, the line "just because you haven't found your prince yet/ doesn't mean you're still not a princess". Which has nothing to do with this story, I know, but should be mandatory listening for all teenage girls, and, if I believed in mantras, would be mine, along with Courage, also by Superchic[k, Average Girl, by BarlowGirl, and Fat-Bottomed Girls by Queen. Eh, enough rambling. http// www. youtube .com /watch ?v c1wv9EpHec