To Catch Prince Charming

Brody had always been big on concentration, and if someone threw him off or attempted to, he got this look like he was about to have a coronary. That was why I didn’t dare ask him to help me zip up the back of my dress when he was reading at the table. The problem with having a family on the map that had colleagues who loved to throw parties which weren’t considering low-key was that every time my parents were invited, my brother and I were forced to come along with them. While most people my age were ringing the New Year in by watching the ball drop, hanging out with their friends or drinking themselves into oblivion, I was stuck feigning interest at a family’s work party in the glitz and glam of the best lawyers and doctors in town, along with everyone else that made more than an average share of money per year.

Half of them didn’t even enjoy what they did. There was a difference between loving your job and only using it for the purpose of reaping the benefits. As for Brody and myself, however, we suffered from them. I turned to my mom for help with the remaining section of unzipped material that I hadn’t been able to reach and she yanked it up quite violently before pacing around and making sure that everyone was ready. I had been to a few of the parties before but only one other New Year’s party. Everyone sat around and ate while chatting about work and comparing salaries to see who made more—making sure they used extra long words to seem more intelligent and for doctors, that was a guaranteed easily solvable problem because they dealt with long-worded things all day—and then they just walked around, sipping from their shiny champagne glasses held by recently manicured and expert fingers, pinkies lifted to show sophistication.

If Brody and I were lucky, we would get to talk to maybe three people in our age category in all five hours of the night but it was mostly a place for adults. My mother and father just brought us around for show because Brody was studying to become an investment specialist and had already received an internship in Toronto at an upscale business office, whereas I was top in my class for math and English, and spent my weekends at the hospital working in pediatrics. After my cousin had been diagnosed with cancer and I convinced the school counsel to run a fundraiser for her chemotherapy, I really wanted to help others and my parents certainly loved to brag about it. The fact was, not many people they worked with had children and the ones that did were only fifteen year olds that weren’t sure what was going on in their classes, or older kids that still didn’t know what they wanted to do with their future yet so since Brody and I both had a fairly good idea where we were headed, it apparently made us stand out compared to others. That was one of the things I hated most about these kinds of get-togethers; it was strictly about competition. The only thing I liked was that I got to spend time with my brother and get out of the house for the night when I didn’t have plans.

But the thing I liked the most was Daniel Laurie. I had met him when I was thirteen and he was sixteen but at that time, I was just Brody’s silly little sister with a school girl-sized crush on him. The two of them had been friends since they were ten but I had never met him before until one of my father’s Christmas parties three years ago. Now I was the sixteen year old, and he had matured more than nicely. Since he was Brody’s best friend and they both went to University together, it immediately made him off-limits. That was really the reason I got together with Dalton Tanner, and also why I sent him off to Karlee Hawthorn. Not only did she need to get over her best friend Trey, but I needed to get over Daniel. However, since I had spent three years basically in love with the guy, I figured it was about time I made some sort of a move and let him know I was interested. Since Daniel’s father was just as feisty and demanding as mine was and they both worked at the same office, he was forced to come to every social party thrown and I always got to talk with him for a bit. Brody was the only problem.

“Roxanne Porter, if you spend even a minute longer with your hair, I swear I’m going to cut it off,” my mother yelled from downstairs once I had gotten back into my room to grab a necklace and pin my black hair off my face. I rolled my eyes and wiped off some red lipstick that had smudged on my bottom lip when I had dropped the tube. I tugged at my dress one last time and grabbed a pair of heels, heading downstairs to meet her at the door. My father came behind me, tightening his tie and smoothing out his tux. My brother closed his book and stepped out of the kitchen, equally dark hair slicked back with gel, clean-shaven and dressed to go.

“How late are we staying?” he asked. “I don’t want to make it a late night. I have to pack tomorrow.”

“We’ll stay until your father and I decide it’s time to go,” my mother replied, pulling on her coat. “Are you ready or what? If you’re not, we aren’t taking you.”

Brody put his arms out. “Don’t I look ready?” He grabbed his shoes and pulled them on, while I slipped my heels on and grabbed a jacket from the closet. After we had finished getting ready, we stepped into the cold winter night and hustled over to the car, piling in immediately to avoid the snow pelting down onto our heads and the wind whistling and chilling us to the bone.

My biggest pet peeve about my parents was their uncontrollable need to make everything the best. They had hired a gardener a few years back and he certainly had his work cut out for him; my mom had planted pretty much every colour of rose to ever grow on the face of the earth, and then multiple other kinds of flowers just to compliment the size of the house. The yard in the back was a whole other story. We used to have a maid as well and that just furthered the name I had received over the years—spoiled brat—but after my father’s affair with her, we handled the cleaning by ourselves. I knew my mother never really got over that even though it was almost nine years ago but I didn’t blame her. That might have contributed to her constant anger nowadays.

My father was obsessed with cars and aside from the new jaguar sitting in the driveway and the car he was currently driving for show, that wasn’t even on sale at most car dealerships yet—he had it imported—there were two other cars sitting in the garage, each belonging to Brody and I. They liked to bribe us because apparently love was old-fashioned.

When we arrived at the ski resort the party was being hosted at, I climbed out of the car and instantly glued myself to my brother’s side. I didn’t even have to be inside to know that the minute our feet made contact with the slick, shimmering hardwood, we wouldn’t see our parents until the end of the night. I spent my time talking to him about his time at University and sipping a Coke out of a champagne glass, exactly as I had expected. It lasted about an hour, and then familiar faces arrived. There was Kendall Jackson, the self-centered neurotic who refused to use an elevator because he always thought that it would break down as soon as he got inside it; Jessalyn Malkovich, who I had met when I was eight and shared a mutual love of playing with Lego pieces with; and then of course, Daniel. I had met Kendall at a pool party a few years back when I was taking a break from the game of volleyball and he was sitting beside me on a lawn chair, turned fetal because he thought the shallow end wasn’t very shallow and then refused to get inside. After that, I became excessively aware of his surrounding fears. The one thing he wasn’t afraid of though, was a mirror, seeing as he spent about seventy-five percent of his day in front of one.

The minute the three of them got there, we all reconciled about not seeing each other for so long, but Brody and Daniel had seen each other just last weekend so they didn’t need to exchange pleasantries all that much. They just gave each other nods and then went into a conversation about a University football game. The last time I had seen Kendall and Jessalyn was at a Valentine’s Day celebration for my mother’s work and through those ten months, I had managed to convince her to not make me go to other gatherings or if I did go, I didn’t run into either of them. As we got older, we didn’t attend as many parties because we were better at debating and arguing with the people that had forced us to for so long.

Since only five teenagers showed up, we were allowed our own table in the dining hall at the top of the hill, looking over the entire resort. A soft layer of sparkling snow kissed by the moonlight caught my view while we were seated directly by the window. Large pine trees sprouted up all around us, small wooden cabins sat at the bottom of the slope in a semi-circle around the follow-off road, and a small chalet with lights bursting through the curtains was situated right in the center of it all. They had closed off the ski and sledding hills at four on account of New Years parties happening all around the resort at people’s cabins, restaurants, dining halls and even directly on the hills. Tonight was the resort’s least busy night for their main attractions and since lots of people wanted to watch the fireworks at midnight, they opened it even for those that weren’t staying overnight or coming to eat or enjoy any of the physical activity.

“I’m not sure I should eat this,” Kendall said, putting a hand on his stomach and clearing his throat when the waiter had placed a dish in front of him with chicken on it. “What happens if it has E-coli in it? I could die.”

“I’m pretty sure they check for that kind of thing,” Jessalyn said, beginning to cut her meal. Since she was a vegetarian and half of the people in the room hated chicken, we actually got variety when we ordered and weren’t stuck with whatever they chef had decided to make. I never had a problem with it until last year when they placed veal in front of me and my mom practically shoved it down my throat. I could handle eating meat, but killing a baby cow was just cruel. I stuck with salmon and so did my brother but he was a partial vegetarian; he ate fish but nothing that had legs.

After spending another five minutes trying to convince Kendall that they wouldn’t serve infected food to him unless he had a death wish or they just really didn’t like him, he agreed to eat it. I caught Daniel’s eye a lot of times through dinner, but caught myself gaping at him in admiration when desert came and they gave him a cherry. He took it and pulled it off the stem flawlessly using his mouth and even though lots of people did that, he was the only one that really struck me with it and made me gawk. He wasn’t looking at me then because he was talking with Jessalyn, nodding at what she said to him but it didn’t stop me from watching him. Everyone knows someone that, in their eyes, does everything absolutely perfect and mine was Daniel. He didn’t know it, but even something as simple as eating was idealistic.

“So when are you staying until, Daniel?” Kendall asked, rubbing his clammy hands on his thighs.

“Past midnight, that’s for sure,” he replied, folding his arms on the table.

“That’s not proper,” Jessalyn said, nodding to his elbows.

“Give him a break,” Brody said, putting his elbows down just to make fun of her. A smirk made its way onto his face and he cocked a brow, almost testing her. She held up her middle finger just above the table cloth and Daniel laughed.

“What about you?” he asked my brother. “Are you staying late as well?”

“Forced to,” Brody replied. “Roxy and I were ditched the second we stepped inside. We didn’t even get to say goodbye to our parents because they were already in a conversation with my mom’s boss. They won’t give us a time but judging by how much they love to talk—”

“And love the sound of their own voices,” I added, and Brody put a hand on my shoulder, nodding.

“—we’ll probably be here until the early hours of the morning. They’ll make me drive. My dad is already on his second glass of wine and it’s not even seven o’clock yet.”

Daniel looked at me then and winked, causing my heart to leap into my throat.

I may not have wanted to come at first but now that I got to spend the entire night with Daniel, I never wanted to leave.