"Amy, you need to clean up these dishes," Amy's mother called to her daughter.

Amy made a face that clearly indicated that she was not interested. Under normal circumstances she wouldn't have gotten away with it, but her mother wasn't in the living room with her two children and Sabrina Grimm, who had come over to do homework after school (the phrase "do homework" here meaning watch a movie and eat junk food). "Just a minute," she called back to her mother. The dishes would still be there in a few hours. They might even keep until the next day.

This was clearly a regular occurrence. "Now, Amy." There would be no tolerating a mess left behind in the kitchen.

"Ok, coming," the girl said, not moving an inch. "I'll clean it up later," she said quietly to Sabrina and Bryan, her twin brother.

"Amy, get off the couch and clean up your mess."

She decided that she probably should go and clean up before her mother decided to throw the food away or something. "I'll be back in a minute," she said as she walked into the kitchen.

"Oh, good," her mother said, "and after you're done with that you can sweep up in here, get your laundry out of the dryer, and feed your poor starving dog. And there had better not be any clothes on the floor when you're done."

"But Mom, I have a friend over," Amy protested.

"You should have thought about that earlier."

Sabrina couldn't help but laugh a little at her friend's situation. It was good to be around normal people.

"I think most of the dishes in there are probably mine," Bryan cheerfully told Sabrina.

"How'd you manage that?" Sabrina responded with a laugh.

"Since I just got here, my room is still clean, so my mom doesn't notice when I make a mess anywhere else. Pretty good, I think," he said with false bravado.

"Well sure, until Amy kills you," Sabrina added.

"She probably doesn't even—" He was cut off by a shriek from the kitchen

"These aren't even mine!"

Sabrina noticed that his whole face lit up when he laughed.

"Sorry, sis," he called. "So, what do you do for fun here?"

Sabrina raised an eyebrow. "Fun? Well, there's the polluted river, which is super fun, oh! And there's a traffic light that gets pretty unpredictable at times…"

"I see the place hasn't changed much. But seriously, what do you do? They didn't close down the mall, did they?"

She almost considered telling him the truth. It's not always fun, but my family solves mysteries involving fairy-tale characters. Almost. "No, they didn't, of course there's only so much you can do there until you have the place memorized, but I hang out there sometimes." And I read. A lot. Because doing background checks on the citizens is part of my job description. "What do you like to do?" She turned question back to him. Sometimes she hated not being able to talk about herself to people.

"Oh, stuff, but I like doing other stuff too every once in a while," he replied. He saw the unimpressed look she was giving him. "What? That's about as much as you told me."

She was surprised. Usually people were only too happy to go on and on about themselves, and they would hardly notice if they knew nothing about her. And she liked it that way. Maybe it was because she didn't trust people; they always betrayed her. Maybe it was because she would only be able to tell the truth about who she was to someone she intended to marry—family rules. "Ok, I spend a lot of time reading fairy-tales." Better to chase him away with a speck of truth than deal with this too-interested boy. What if she wound up having to dust him?

"There, was that so hard?"

Yes.

"So, what kind of fairy-tales? Like the Brothers Grimm ones?" he continued.

A little more truth couldn't hurt. "Yeah, I'm actually related to them."

"Nice," he commented. "Wait a second, Sabrina Grimm? I know you!"

"No…?" That was kind of strange.

"Yeah, we were in third grade together when I first moved!"

She vaguely remembered a new kid just before her parents disappeared. What had the teacher's name been? Brooks? Bricks?

"Mrs. Brinks' class, remember?"

Ah, that was it. "Oh yeah." she didn't remember very much from school that year, but she thought it best to agree anyway.

"Yeah, and then something happened with your parents or something, I don't know…"

How had that happened? He knew a lot more about her than she did about him. "Yeah." There was no way she was going to talk about her parents with him though. "Do you have your class schedule for school yet?" That was a safe topic.

"Let me go get it."

He came back a minute later with a brightly-colored piece of paper the school was so fond of using for all documents. She looked over what classes he had and noticed that they were in the advanced English class together as well as history. She told him this and he seemed slightly surprised.

"You're not taking calc?" he asked.

"No, I'm in algebra II with Amy, remember?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot. You were really good at math in elementary school."

She hadn't been. It had taken hours and hours of studying to pull of the A she had been so proud of. But how would he remember it if she had been? "Um, no I wasn't really."

"Yes you were," he argued. "I remember because I was mad that someone got a higher test score than I did. And then the teacher announced that you had gotten 100%, and I was like, oh, it's the pretty blonde girl."

"That was one time," she said. She was going to try to pretend that he hadn't referred to her as pretty.

He shrugged. "Well, I had a 95 and you had a 100. I think I decided that you were some type of genius or something because you beat me."

"You probably still did better overall," she argued back.

"Maybe," he conceded, "but I just remember you beating me on that stupid test."

"How do you even beat someone on a test?" she wondered aloud. She had never really thought of grades in school in that way, nor had she met anyone that had said something like that.

"Well, if you get the best grade, it means you win." He said it as though it should have been obvious.

That was probably the most ridiculous thing she had heard for a long time, and she told him so. Tests in school didn't even really mean anything.

"It's still winning. Maybe I'm just too competitive."

Being competitive was something Sabrina understood perfectly. "No, I get really competitive in things, just not school usually."

He looked at her in disbelief. "Not competitive in school?" he asked in mock horror.

She grinned. "Nope."

"So you've never done a project or written an essay or whatever and just known that yours was going to be the best one in there?"

Maybe she had. That usually happened in her English class.

He gave her a knowing look. "Yeah, I see you thinking. What class is it?"

"English," she told him.

He looked impressed. "That's my toughest class. There's always some person who just pulls the best answers out of thin air. I mean, I'm good, but that's the main class where people sometimes beat me."

"Well, I guess we'll see how good you are, won't we?" she challenged.

He then questioned her about what the winner would get. She thought for a moment, but nothing good came to mind. "Bragging rights," she answered.

"High stakes right there." He pulled a face. "We'll have to come up with something better later," he added as Amy came back after completing the chores their mother had assigned.

A/N: This felt like a really long chapter to write to me even though I know it's not that long. Also, thank you to those of you who reviewed and/or added my story to one of your lists.