Page 90 of Barbie: Dreamscape

Hoping to Add “Hero” to My Transcript

“This is your home, Barbie. It will always protect you.”

I’m five years old, running through the halls, trying to hide from bedtime.

Hurried steps sound behind me, the clicking of Robin’s heels as familiar as these corridors.

I know all the best places to go. I hide in them sometimes to watch the students and teachers.

I’ll be a student at the school next year. Then I’ll have plenty of friends.

For now, it’s just me and Robin, who wants me to finally go to sleep. And she’s getting closer.

I turn a corner, then burst into a closet, beneath the spiral staircase.

The door whispers closed behind me, and I curl myself into a ball, on top of a folded-up tapestry coated in a layer of dust. Stale air tickles my nostrils, but I scrunch my face to keep from sneezing. That would definitely be the end of this game.

I put my hands over my mouth to keep from breathing too loudly. I sit very still.

I tense as a single footstep sounds right in front of the closet… before disappearing.

I smile beneath my palms. I got her! She didn’t find me… I’ll never have to go to sleep; I can just stay awake forever!

Just when I think I really fooled her, the door flies open. The carpet beneath me unfurls like a tongue during a doctor’s exam (I try to hide from those, too), sending me right toward her.

“There you are!” she says as I crash into her legs.

I race to my feet. “I don’t want to go to bed! You can’t make me!” I yell over my shoulder. I keep running. She sighs and shakes her head.

Even then, I knew running and hiding was useless. This was her school. She had magic.

She would always find me.

And back then… that used to be an almost comforting thought.

I land back in Swancrest in a burst of light.

My feet hit the ground with a thud, the necklaces’ charms clashing together. My heart hammers as I whirl around, expecting Robin to have sensed me coming somehow, to find her waiting for me—

But all I find is quiet.

I’m in a hall at the center of the school. It isn’t far from the dormitories.

Callie. Sunny.

Are they okay? Fingers trembling, I risk a second to check the compact, and there they are in the mirror, still trying to find a way out of their rooms.

I have to help them escape. Then hope they can help me end this.

Slowly, I inch forward, turning the corner, pulse racing.

No one is there. The corridors are dark and empty. Not even Robin’s birds are around.

Strange.

Robin controls this entire school. She must know I’m here. She must be feeling my steps through these halls like pinpricks against her magic.

But still—nothing.