Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix

love and started on my course toward happiness ever after, but because I’d made something happen. I’d done something everybody had told me I couldn’t. I’d changed my life all by myself. Having a fairy godmother would have ruined everything.
    â€œPromise you won’t tell anyone?” I said. “I mean, it probably doesn’t matter to anyone else, but if the king and queen and the prince still want to keep up the fiction that I’m foreign royalty, I don’t want to spread my story.”
    Jed nodded. “Of course,” he said.
    I started my tale.
    â€œOnce upon a time,” I said mischievously, wrinkling my nose so Jed would know I was making fun of the whole thing, “I was just a poor girl in rags. . . .”
    But somehow remembering everything transported me back, and I quickly settled into seriousness. I wasn’t even pretending to be Princess Cynthiana Eleanora anymore. I was myself again, Ella Brown, always hungry, always cold, always angry at my stepmother’s and stepsisters’ cruelties. . . .

10
    I was scrubbing the kitchen floor when the invitation arrived by royal herald. There was a smart rap at the front door, and I began debating which would make Lucille angrier: me answering the door with a kerchief around my head and water dripping from the bottom of my skirt, or me not answering the door at all and leaving her or Corimunde or Griselda to the indignity of opening it themselves. I hadn’t decided yet when I heard Corimunde gasp.
    â€œLook, Gris, out the window.”
    I heard a flurry of swishing skirts and petticoats from the sitting room as they both apparently raced to the door. Thanks to a steady diet of bonbons, they each weighed twice what I did, and they rarely bestirred themselves for anything except to waddle into the dining room for their next meal. So I was sure whatever Corimunde was gasping about was worth a peek. Opening the kitchen door a crack, I had a direct view of the young, flaxen-haired man on the doorstep. He was stunningly handsome, with a physique I’dseen only in my father’s books about ancient gods and heroes. He wore tight black pants and a rich scarlet tailcoat, with a fancy design in gold on every pocket and lapel. He held a trumpet to his lips and blew two short blasts, then one long note of exquisite tone.
    â€œYour . . . Your Highness.” Corimunde was flustered, even for her.
    â€œS-s-sir,” Griselda stuttered.
    The man gave them both looks of withering scorn.
    â€œHear ye, hear ye,” he boomed in a deep voice that somehow conveyed that he didn’t feel Corimunde and Griselda were worthy of his message, but that he was not one to shirk his work and would speak as grandly to them as he did to anyone else. “The king and queen hereby invite every young maiden in the kingdom to a ball in honor of their son, Prince Charming, on Saturday night four weeks hence, beginning at eight o’clock in the evening.”
    â€œFour weeks hence—would that be the twenty-second?” Griselda ventured timidly.
    â€œNo, silly, the twenty-third,” corrected Corimunde. “The Saturday would have to be the twenty-third, because today’s the . . . uh . . . let’s see, I think it’s the—”
    â€œFour weeks hence,” the herald repeated firmly and bowed low, preparing to go.
    â€œExcuse me,” I said from my post in the kitchen. “Did you say every young maiden?”
    The herald looked up. By his face, I could tell he was preparing to give a disgusted retort, perhaps questioning thehearing of all the women in our household. But when he saw me, his expression softened into something I didn’t want to acknowledge as pity.
    â€œAye, miss,” he said in an almost gentle tone. “Every young maiden.”
    â€œNow, wait just a minute.” It was Lucille, sweeping down from upstairs, where she’d been resting with a sick headache. “I