Author's Note: I am a lover of fairy tales. Not the Disney version where everything works out in the end (though I enjoy those as well), but fairy tales as they were meant to be; dark, earthy explorations of the human heart.

This particular tale was inspired by "Little Red Riding Hood," and the supposition that her story still takes place in the every day. That she doesn't always have a woodsman running to her rescue (indeed, in the original story she and Grandmama were eaten up by the wolf and never seen again), and that she's not always taken in by a wolf who tries to appear like something else. And as her story is now often told by parents cautioning their children against talking to strangers, this all seemed very appropriate.

Please, read and enjoy, and let me know what you think or if I perhaps caused you to think. I love hearing from readers.

My name is Scarlet. I never felt the need to ask why. A name is a name and is as good as any other name, right? Then a year ago I actually sat down with my mother on one of the rare occasions when she actually invites me to spend time with her, and we watched Gone With the Wind. That little experience gifted me with quite a bit of enlightenment. Enough that I don't like my name anymore. There's something about being named after a fictional but beloved daughter that rubs me the wrong way.

It's summer now. That's probably why I'm dwelling on something so depressing. My parents always send me to my grandmother's house during the summer. They say it's so that she can see her only grandchild and so that she won't feel lonely, but I've yet to see that she's ever lonely. Dear Grandmama is so busy with her charity dinners, her fellow rich and merry widows, and maintaining her showy lifestyle that I rarely see her. But rather than admit to me that I'd only be underfoot as they globetrot and spend their nights in a champagne haze and willing insomnia, my parents tell me to be a good girl, and to behave myself, and that if I'm very good they bring me back presents before I go back to school. As for my grandmother, I think she resents my presence.

Grandmama is not so very old, or at least she is wealthy enough to ensure that she always sees what now passes for young in her mirror. Though perhaps if I were six instead of sixteen she wouldn't worry overmuch to be seen in the company of her only child's only child. Of course, that still means that Grandmama has yet to see her sixtieth birthday. Women in our family have children young and hand them off to nannies so that they can enjoy the wealth and position gained by their marriages in peace. So that they can satisfy their aging husbands and be relatively certain of their places in their spouses' wills so that they can live-up their middle years.

So that they can financially support their "protégés."

Grandmama keeps such a man around. He lives in the guest house, though I've never seen him enter that building. In the rare event that I should run into someone other than a maid, if I unexpectedly run into Grandmama over the breakfast table as is bound to happen now and again, he's always there. Whoever "he" is. They've come and gone over the years. I've gotten older and Grandmama has gotten older, but the next protégé is always the same age. Always charming. Always well-built. Always with some claim to the arts. The last was a musician I believe. This one is an actor-slash-poet. On my first day here last summer he was introduced to me as Connor Randall. We spoke that first day, and we spoke on this summer's first day, but beyond those pleasantries we've never said a word to each other. I understand that he's here because of Grandmama's money, and he understands I'm here because I'm not wanted anywhere else.

I don't really trust him. I don't know why. He's as far away from entering my world as I am from flying. I'll never be in a situation where I would even have to ponder if I trust him. But he watches me. I didn't notice until one day when I made the rare request to accompany Grandmama to the country club. If I must be bored, at least let there be life happening around me while I work on my tan. At least I can hang out with other bored children and grandchildren of the local movers and shakers, and be superficially interested in them as they are superficially interested in me. Perhaps a date or two will come out of it, a few hours in the company of someone my own age even if they are only initially interested in me because of my bathing suit and because they don't know if I'll let them turn me into another – or a first – conquest.

I knew someone was looking at me in that manner the day of the Fourth of July picnic. But the boys were busy showing off for the bored girls as they played something resembling water polo; they were too busy rough-housing and flexing their muscles to be staring intently at anyone. And I was uninterested enough to glance around at the surrounding lounge chairs and cabanas to spy who was making my skin prickle.

It was him. Grandmama wasn't in sight and he was chatting up a blond with an overflowing bikini…but his eyes only strayed to her now and then as he watched me. I realized that he'd watched me last summer as well. That's when I decided I didn't trust him, though some secreted away part of me was flattered.

That sense of flattery was enough to warn me to keep my distance. Girls have it hammered into them from a young age to "trust their instincts" in such matters. A result of the living in the world we do. Once the hormones start flowing, or so we're told, no man can be trusted absolutely. Call it what you will; paranoia, or feminist propaganda, or simply erring on the side of caution. We're still taught to watch ourselves and our drinks.

Personally, I just didn't want to tangle with Grandmama if she noticed the direction her "protégé's" glace was straying in.

Grandmama has huge, well-tended gardens. Actually the gardens came with the house her husband left her, but they're there all the same. Whenever I get tired of the silence of a nearly empty house and of breathing in the same filtered and temperature control air, I escape to them. I take the Swiss camera I got for my fourteenth birthday and I go out and photograph things. Like most of my hobbies I do it because it kills time and because I'm proficient at the technicalities involved, but it's not my passion. I don't know if I have a passion. I've never been left unsupervised long enough to discover anything on my own, and I think discovery is something that inspires passion.

The day our paths crossed in the garden was the day of my seventeenth birthday. It was still the cool of the morning and I'd come out to escape the impersonal birthday presents that'd been left on my desk. My parents sent a card that read "Happy wishes on your Sweet Sixteen…" You'd think their personal assistant would have caught the mistake if nothing else since he'd been the one to actually see to the arrangements of my party. No such luck. Not even Grandmama bothered to make an occasion of the day. Sure, the night before she'd said it was unfortunate that my birthday fell on the day of the yearly stockholder's meeting, and that she wished she'd be home for dinner but she really did need to attend to…

Whatever.

"Little Red. What has you wandering so far from the house so early in the morning?"

It's the first time we've been alone together. Although perhaps together is the wrong word since a good hundred feet still separate us.

"Don't call me that. My name is Letty." I absently snap a picture of a spider web drenched not in dew but in water from sprinklers that had finished their work in this isolated corner of the garden an hour before, and remember the nanny who'd declared that Scarlet was much too flamboyant a name for such a serious little girl. Letty was playful instead of flamboyant – still a bad match if I had ever been as serious and thoughtful at the age of five as I was now – but at least it was youthful.

"Letty? That's a more appropriate name for a young woman?" He strolled after me as I turned in search of anything else that might catch my eye. "Perhaps it's time to revert back to Scarlet."

"Is there a reason you're offering an opinion on my moniker?" Words from the gossip pages regularly slip into my vocabulary.

"Considering my profession I doubt you'll find a better opinion. Actors almost always change their names once they decide to become famous."

There's a trace of an accent in his voice, probably as assumed as his name. "Out for a morning stroll?"

"Out looking for you."

I glance at him suspiciously over my shoulder and find that he's watching me again, and from a distance close enough for me to see that his eyes almost have a yellow tent to them. I shiver and glance away. "Why?"

"Because there's a champagne breakfast laid out in honor of your birthday. I thought it'd be a pity if the guest of honor missed out on it entirely."

How lovely. Grandmama planned a special meal for me…so I could share it with a stranger. Rebellion builds inside my heart. I am so very tired at people assuming that money and the privilege to perform the occasional outrageous deed keeps me from being lonely. A champagne breakfast at seventeen? Wonderful – she'll be so dazzled that she won't notice none of her family is there to share it. Expensive clothing and surroundings? There's nothing better to keep her from noticing that she hasn't picked out any of it herself. Afternoons at the country club and dates at the most expensive restaurants? She'll never know that she has no friends here.

Rebellion breeds recklessness. I turn my back on the initials that someone on the payroll carved into an old oak and walk towards him and the house.

A handsome man for a companion? One that watches her out of deep and mysterious eyes, one that she knows shares an old woman's bed to earn his keep, one that grants a single kindness to see where it'll get him… Well, she's been taught that strange men can't be trusted. She's young, and quiet, and clearly unwanted. She'll know better than to think that he's trying to do anything but curry favor with the woman who controls the purse strings.

He doesn't even bother to hide the way he watches me.

Why did no one assume that once I was seventeen I'd be fair game to anyone with a taste to prey on the lonely, abandoned women of the world. Especially the kind afraid to draw the attention of their Grandmamas and jet-setting parents? The kind that will defy that fear because they want attention of some kind.

The kind that have been taught that being a few years shy of the privilege to imbibe a few glasses of champagne and then giving into the passionate kisses of a man with the yellow-tinged eyes of a wolf can easily be called rape if matters become too complicated.

Later that night when Grandmama has returned home and I'm alone in my room, I have to decide if I'm going to expose the film in my camera or hope that things won't get complicated.

A less thoughtful girl would rid herself of any association to possible shame in the future. A less thoughtful girl wouldn't tuck away the film and resolve to develop it at home, she wouldn't hope that no faces showed in the pictures or suspect that technical proficiency and passion had merged into a costly form of art.

Perhaps if I they are any good, perhaps if I one day decide to become a famous photographer I'll go by the more flamboyant moniker of "Scarlet."

For now I'll continue to insist that people call me Letty…

…and perhaps occasionally "Little Red" until the summer is over and Grandmama finds a new protégé.

+ Connor: Wolf-lover. Randall: Teutonic form of Ralph, Wolf Counselor.