Page 2 of My Best Friend Prince Charming

“He’s my mom’s brother, and he’s driving through on his way to the beach. He wanted to see my performance in Cinderella since it’s on the way. He’ll be back next week for my mom’s birthday. If you accept this role, you would basically become rich and famous overnight.”

My head began to spin. I couldn’t begin to imagine that I’d be able to land a role like that. “Why would he want me?”

“You’re a lot better than you realize. And you fit the vision he’s had for a while, I guess,” Camille said with a shrug.

Then Shannon came up to me with her long, dark-blonde hair tucked behind her ears. She had on a t-shirt with Aiko on it, a character from Katana Warrior, our favorite anime show. We were even writing a Katana Warrior fan fiction together.

“Hey, you,” I said.

“You were awesome, Ryker,” she said. “Like, seriously.”

My heart lifted. Shannon’s opinion mattered most of all. I met her when her family moved in next door when we were in the third grade, and we’d been inseparable ever since.

“Where are we going to celebrate?” she asked.

“I didn’t know that was a thing.”

“It is now. I just got paid tonight.” Shannon worked after school and on the weekends at Toppings, an ice cream shop in town.

“You know I’m not going to let you pay for your food, right?” I said.

Shannon rolled her eyes. “Ok, fine. Burgers and shakes at Skippy’s?”

“Oh sure, just pick out a place where we eat free anyway, so I won’t be able to pay for your meal,” I said. My aunt owned Skippy’s, the local diner, so we never had to pay for anything when we ate there. My grandpa started the place when my dad and aunt were kids, and now she owned it. When my dad lost his job at the lumber mill, he was desperate, and my aunt hired him to take over the newly opened manager position at Skippy’s. It didn’t pay as well as the lumber mill, and Dad had to work much longer hours, but since I waited tables at Skippy’s, I got to see him more than I would have otherwise.

I hated letting Shannon pay for anything. She probably would have fought me on it, but she worked herself to the bone, trying to help her mom make ends meet. I didn’t like to see Shannon suffering financially. But that had been the harsh reality of both our lives for as long as either of us could remember.

We lived on the “wrong side of the tracks,” according to Mom, who ran off when I was ten. To me, it meant that my future was severely limited. I had to miss out on a lot of opportunities that other kids had, like after-school programs and sports that cost extra money. There was never money for stuff like that. We were lucky to get a new pair of shoes for the school year.

Before Mom left, she spent a lot of time sitting on the couch watching reruns. She got really bad postpartum depression when my younger sister was born, and she never seemed to get over it. One day, eight years ago, she just snapped and left in the middle of the night. We never saw her again.

That pretty much left me to raise my little brother and sister. It wasn’t too bad. I loved those kids, but it didn’t leave me much time for working a paying job. We didn’t see my dad much. He spent a lot of time working. And when he did come home, he spent a lot of time on his phone trying to unwind. It was like he’d checked out.

I gathered my stuff backstage and then met Shannon out front. “Want to take my car?” I asked. My aunt Kristen had given me her old car when I turned sixteen. The 1998 Nissan Sentra wasn’t pretty to look at, but it ran and didn’t guzzle too much gas.

“Sure,” Shannon said. She shouldered her bag and followed me across the parking lot.

We could have invited other friends, like Camille and a few of the other cast members, but Shannon and I usually liked to hang out alone. We were the nerdy, Katana Warrior-obsessed members of the senior class at Sweet Mountain High.

Shannon and I had been writing our fan fiction together since freshman year, and we were still going strong. When we hung out, we usually discussed complicated plot points that none of our other friends would understand. That meant that I got Shannon all to myself most days. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Shannon didn’t know how deep my feelings actually went. The truth was, I’d been in love with her for a long time. I wasn’t sure when it started exactly—it kind of snuck up on me. I’d always thought she was pretty, even in third grade, when girls were supposed to be gross. But Shannon had this gorgeous honey-blonde hair that fell around her shoulders in waves that were so soft they always begged to be touched. And her eyes? They were a piercing blue the color of the ocean in the tropics.

The problem was, Shannon didn’t feel the same about me. She’d been dating Austin on and off again for the past two years. He was bad news, and no matter how hard I tried to warn Shannon about him, she never seemed to see what I was talking about. Every time he mistreated her, she always made excuses for him. It was infuriating, but there was nothing I could do about it. So I stayed by her side as much as I could to protect her from him and offered her my shoulder to cry on. He never hit her or anything, but sometimes I worried he might, from the stories she told me. Sometimes he flew into an angry rage and yelled at her, but most of the time, he just gave her insults veiled as compliments.

It was disgusting how often she cried over that idiot guy. He was my number one nemesis. All I could hope was that one day Shannon would see the light and understand who was actually loyal to her. In the meantime, I didn’t mind comforting her too much.

Shannon and I discussed some of the research we’d recently done for our fanfic while we drove the short trip to Skippy’s. I pulled into the parking lot behind the diner, and we laughed about the irony of our latest chapter. In that moment, everything was perfect. It was almost like I’d forgotten that Shannon had a jerkface boyfriend and that I’d just been offered an audition for a big Hollywood movie.

“Hey, you two,” Aunt Kristen beamed at us as we walked into the diner. “Booth seven’s open,” she said, pointing to the corner booth, our favorite spot.

“Burgers and shakes?” she asked once we were settled in the booth.

“And some onion rings,” I said.

She shouted our order to Joey back in the kitchen and turned back to us. “How was the musical?”

“You’ll never believe what happened,” I said. I told them about the big-time film director who wanted me to audition for him.

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