The Salt Princess

Sunday is movie day. Among all the rules and conventions of the household Condé-Dietrich, this one is the most sacred. Fridays are for inviting friends from school and doing sleepovers, Saturdays are for recovering from sleepovers or going to the supermarket, but Sunday mornings are reserved for family breakfasts and a movie afterward. This Sunday, six-year-old Evie fought tooth and nail to watch her favorite fairytale movie The Salt Princess. Coralie, her older sister by four years, eventually gave in out of spiteful pettiness. Now, the two sisters sit in different corners of the living room, Evie in front of the TV (too close, their mother would reprimand) with huge eyes glued to the screen and Coralie at the dinner table, sitting with her back turned to the movie in protest. She’s scribbling down notes in a blue sketchbook. Last week, she agreed to write a book with her best friend Mila. Mila loves books like Twilight and Fallen, and Coralie is trying to create similar characters that Mila will love just as much. The main character is a clumsy girl with straight brown hair and freckles who goes to an American high school, because no main character ever goes to a boring school in Potsdam. Her best friend is a funny, reckless redhead. Currently, Coralie is working on the love interest, the most important character. Drawing on all the books she has read, she comes up with a raven-haired, blue-eyed boy who has pale skin like a vampire, and… Coralie’s thought process is interrupted by Evie’s loud laughter. She whips around to snap at her but loses momentum in the face of Evie’s vibrant, uncomplicated amusement. The Salt Princess is about a young princess who, while wandering through a forest, meets an African prince from a kingdom called Bokanda, and they fall in love. The first time the sisters watched the movie, Evie was quiet, enthralled, and Coralie assumed that she didn’t like it. But when she asked, Evie shook her head, mouth splitting into a grin, and said, “The prince looks like Papa.” Then, at the end of the movie, when the princess married the prince, she said again, “Look, Lili, they’re like Mama and Papa!” 

Coralie used to love the movie as much as Evie but now she squirms uncomfortably in her seat. When she showed the movie to her friends, Mila wrinkled her nose and asked loudly for everyone to hear, “Why does the prince look like that? He doesn’t look like that at all in the real fairytale. And Bokanda isn’t even a country.” That made Coralie flush hot with embarrassment and now she doesn’t like to watch the movie anymore. Part of her resents that Evie still enjoys it. It feels horribly unfair that Coralie is stuck with Twilight, where everyone who is pretty looks exactly like Mila, while Evie can have The Salt Princess. Anger and sadness clog her throat and she closes the sketchbook roughly. She doesn’t want to help Mila with her book anymore. Teary-eyed, she slides off the chair and wants to bolt for her room, but Evie calls excitedly, “Lili, Lili! Look, Amélie is going to meet Prince Thabo again!” Coralie freezes, torn between her shame and her desire to join Evie. Evie’s attention is on the TV but she scoots aside automatically to make space for Coralie. The knot in Coralie’s throat unravels. She dabs away her tears, vows stubbornly to banish Mila’s comments from her mind, and sits down next to her sister.