Whatever After #4: Dream On by Sarah Mlynowski Read Free Book Online

piggyback?” I ask. “When you carry someone on your back?”
    Felix stomps his feet. “Horseyback! Horseyback!”
    “Same thing,” Bri says with a nod.
    “Fine,” Jonah says with a shrug. He stands up. “Horseyback does make more sense if you think about it.”
    Felix jumps up and onto Jonah’s back in about three seconds flat. Then he hits my brother on the head with his spoon. “Go, horsey, go!”
    Jonah frowns but obeys.
    Giddyup.

F elix insists that if we want him to go upstairs, Jonah will have to horseyback him all the way there.
    There are about eighty stairs.
    By the time we’re halfway up, my brother’s face is the color of a tomato. No — of a red rose.
    “So now you know what it’s like to have a little brother,” I tell Jonah with a laugh.
    He grunts in reply.
    “Faster, horsey, faster!” Felix commands.
    I have met a lot of princes through the magic mirror, but he is the most demanding BY FAR.
    Once we’re finally at the top, Felix hops off and Jonah slumps against the wall.
    “This better work,” Jonah mumbles.
    Felix launches himself into another cartwheel. “There’s a girl sleeping on the bed!” he cries.
    “Yes. We need you to help our friend Robin wake up,” I say.
    His face scrunches up in horror. “Nooooooo!” he shrieks. “No way! I’m not helping a girl!”
    “You said you would help us,” Bri says. “That was the deal. Jonah gave you a horseyback and now you have to help us.”
    Jonah, meanwhile, has spread out on the stone floor. He is panting.
    “No,” Felix says. “I said I would come with you if he gave me a horseyback. I did not say I would help a girl.”
    “Jonah will horseyback you around the room again if you help,” I pipe up.
    Jonah groans. “I will?”
    “No,” Felix says. “I want his box.”
    “His what?” I ask.
    “His box! The box that fell out of his pajamas when he was horseybacking me up the stairs. I want it.”
    “No way,” Jonah snaps. “He can’t have my game.”
    “Yes way,” Felix says. “Or forget about me helping you!”
    “But we need it to tell the time,” Jonah says. “Right, Abby?”
    “Not technically,” I say. “Since we know that time here is the same as time at home. And I spotted a clock on top of a pile of plates downstairs.”
    Jonah gives me the stink eye.
    “Give it to me,” Felix orders.
    Jonah reluctantly hands over the game, grumbling to himself.
    Felix runs up to Robin and stops short in front of her ear.
    “WAKE UP!” he screeches. “WAKE UP!”
    She doesn’t move.
    “Can I pinch her?” he asks.
    “Um … gently,” I say.
    He pinches her, not so gently, on the arm.
    She still doesn’t budge.
    “She’s not waking up,” he tells us. “Should I poke her with my spoon?”
    In the story, it’s the prince’s kiss that finally wakes up Sleeping Beauty. “Can you try, um, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek?” I suggest.
    I brace myself for a shriek. I expect him to fall back on the floor and throw a tantrum. I expect him to ask for a million dollars.
    Instead, he leans over and kisses Robin’s cheek with an ear-shattering smack .
    Bri shrugs. “He likes giving kisses.”
    We wait for Robin to open her eyes.
    She doesn’t.
    “Robin?” I ask. “Are you awake?”
    No answer.
    Argh! “It didn’t work,” I say. “Why didn’t it work? A prince tried to wake her up! He even kissed her! That’s what happened in the original story! A prince kisses Sleeping Beauty and she wakes up!” I turn to Bri. “What did the twelfth fairy say, exactly?”
    “That I would be woken up in a hundred years by a prince,” she says.
    “Then maybe a prince can wake her up only after a hundred years,” Jonah says, still on the floor. “Not today.”
    That is a big problem. Huge. Ginormous! We can’t wait for a hundred years to pass! How are we ever going to wake her up?
    “There’s only one thing that’s going to fix our problems,” I say.
    “What’s that?” Bri asks.
    I sigh. “Magic. We