The Wishing Spell

Chapter 1 starts the main story in the real world, where 11-year-old Alex Bailey listens to her sixth-grade teacher talk about the magical and transformative power of fairy tales. Alex is particularly interested in fairy tales because their characters have felt like the only friends she’s ever really had. As the teacher rattles off questions, Alex is the only one who knows the answers. She explains the moral of Rumpelstiltskin to the class but is interrupted by a loud snore from her twin brother, Conner, who’s asleep at the back of the room. The teacher shouts to wake Conner, and Alex laments that she even has a twin and that “it was moments like these that made her wish she didn’t” (16).

The teacher advises Conner to stay awake unless he knows enough about fairy tales to teach the lesson. Without thinking, Conner says he does, and the teacher asks him how long Sleeping Beauty slept, a question Conner does actually know the answer to—100 years. For homework, the teacher assigns a paper on the real lesson of one of the fairy tales in their textbook.

While the other students get started, the teacher calls Conner to her desk. She’s aware of the family situation at Conner and Alex’s house, but since Alex seems to be doing fine, she thinks Conner should try to be more like her, which makes Conner feel like someone kicked him in the stomach. Alex overhears and can’t help feeling bad for her brother. As she looks through her book, she remembers how she and her parents would visit her grandmother and read fairy tales before her dad died a year ago, and she wishes fairy tales were real because then “somebody could wave a wand and magically make things how they used to be” (23).

After school, Alex and Conner walk home together and debate the lessons of different fairy tales. Alex offers deeper meanings, such as Sleeping Beauty being about trying to prevent the inevitable, while Conner offers more oddball ideas, like Sleeping Beauty is about not irritating one’s neighbors. Though she tries not to laugh, Alex finally lets out a chuckle, which dies quickly when they pass the house her family used to live in. The house has been for sale for a year and now has a “sold” sign, which breaks Alex’s and Conner’s hearts.

After their father’s death, their mom couldn’t afford the house anymore, and the family moved to a rental house twice as far from their school. The memories of the last year are jumbled, but Alex and Conner remember the saddest events vividly, their strongest memory of “not understanding why any of it had to happen” (32). Alex takes her dad’s death particularly hard because he’d been the one person she could rely on when she had a bad day. When she felt like she’d never have any friends because she was smart and got good grades, he would tell her about a curvy tree that didn’t get cut down because the loggers figured it couldn’t be used. Like Alex, the tree was unique, and that story never failed to cheer her up.

The rental house Alex and Conner live in is small and cramped, and neither of them likes it. They retreat into their separate bedrooms—Alex’s resembling a library and Conner’s a cave—where they start homework and nap, respectively. When their mom gets home, they talk about their old house selling and pretend not to be upset about it. Their mom gets a call from the children’s hospital where she works. They need her to work the next day, which she’d planned to take off because it’s Alex and Conner’s birthday. Their mom goes to her room, and Alex and Conner follow, finding her crying while talking to their dad’s picture about how much she’s struggling. The twins join her, and she reminds them what their dad would say if he was there: “[W]e’re living in an ugly chapter of our lives, but books always get better” (41). Alex and Conner hope she’s right.