The Icarus Girl

Jess is late for school. As Jess’s mother hurries with her through the park, Jess asks her mother why she never tells her fairy tales. Jess’s mother answers that she tells Jess African fairy tales, but Jess asks why her mother doesn’t tell her ones like Sleeping Beauty. Jess asks her mother why everyone in Sleeping Beauty falls asleep at the same time as the princess, and her mother says the good fairy didn’t want the princess to wake up years later and find everyone dead. Jess isn’t satisfied with the answer, still frightened by the concept of “a whole castleful of people falling asleep just because one girl had” (185), but she runs into school before she is late.

At school, Jess finds herself cutting pictures of twins out of books to show TillyTilly. She doesn’t realize what she’s doing; she’d “known that she’d been cutting the pictures out, but only on a detached level, like someone within a dream” (186). Another student finds Jess to tell her that they are going to watch videos. When the other student sees what Jess is doing, Jess suddenly becomes afraid of getting in trouble. She runs out of the school and tries to unlock the front gate to escape, but her teacher, Miss Patel, catches her.