Page 119 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

Rat Bait
Clara felt she was trapped like a fox in a box or snagged like a fish in a net. Then she realized she hadn’t fallen for the bait – she WAS the bait. And the way the Prince was looking at her made her cover the back of her neck with her hand. Because he was sure he wanted to bite the bait. At that point, Clara decided she was going a little wonkers and she’d better get a grip on reality.
She told herself the Prince was a perfectly normal royal offspring and she was being foolish, imagining he was a rat. Just because she didn’t want a prince didn’t mean she needed to villainize the man. Even if his eyes were beady and tinged with red, that didn’t mean he was an evil monster. It just made him scary. Clara couldn’t understand why everyone else wanted to snuggle up – couldn’t they smell his breath? Maybe it was just her. Maybe she was just a bad person being mean to someone she didn’t know.
Clara was at the point of going against her own instincts. We’ve all been there. Something tells us to keep our distance from the whatever – car, alley, door, person or bushes – and we try to tell ourselves we’re being silly, or
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