“One bite of the apple and you’ll find your heart’s desire. That’s it- no fee, no questions asked. So do you want to try it?”


Tara shook her head and bit the inside of her cheek, not completely convinced in the old woman’s supposed power. “Let me get this straight. This apple will help me find true love?”

“Yes,” the woman crooned, reaching down to stroke the black cat lying half-hidden in her cloaked lap. “Just one bite will do the trick. Come on, lover, take your pick- either live the rest of your life always falling for false darlings, or live your life with the certainty that one of them is the one for you.” She leaned forward imploringly, and Tara shrugged, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She wasn’t sure she believed in magic anymore- she had only approached this woman to see what her booth at the fair was about. This talk of true love was interesting, but fairy stories didn’t do much for her.

The woman continued to peer at Tara with a hard edge in her watery green-blue eyes, and her gnarled fingers offered the blood-red apple in such a way that Tara felt it would be rude to refuse her. She narrowed her eyes, staring at the apple and trying to judge if it had a razr or anything hidden inside it. “Just tell me you’re not going to pull a Snow White on me and have me keel over as soon as I eat the apple.”

The old woman laughed, a harsh, cackling sound. “Oh, no, lover. Do you really think I would play such a nasty trick on you?” Her finger tapped a laminated sign stuck onto the front of the booth, which Tara strained forward to read. Malificient Deaddreams is not responsible for any illness that may follow after eating the apple.

“See?” the woman said when Tara looked back to her. “The only way you can die is if you’re allergic to apples. Now go ahead and take a bite, lover. Haven’t you always wanted to find the love of your life?”

Shrugging again, Tara took the proffered apple from Malificient’s (so that was her name?) hand and, against her better judgment, took a bite. Instantly her vision darkened and she stumbled back, losing control of her motor skills.

“You liar-“ she gasped before her body fell to the floor and she knew nothing more for a long, long time.















*

When Tara awoke, it was in her own bed at her own house, far, far away from the blasted fun fair that she still remembered. She rubbed the sleepiness out of her eyes, smoothed her hair back into a semblance of neatness, and thought for a while. Had the entire fair been nothing more than a dream? But she remembered it as being real, right up to the bite of the apple that she had received from the witch woman. The bitter taste seemed to fill her mouth again with the mere thought of it, and Tara shuddered. True love had to be overrated. What was worth a bite of a fruity knockout drug, an apple roofie?

Downstairs, Tara ate a bowl of milk and Cheerios and directed a question to her mother. “When did we get back from the fair?” Her mother was at first too occupied with kissing her father and sending him off to work and getting Tara’s brother rerady for the elementary school bus to pick him up, but a soon as she had a spare moment Tara repeated her question, and her mother gazed at her with a frazzled look in her eyes. “What do you mean? We went yesterday afternoon and got back last night.”

“Mom,” Tara began, although she knew it would sound crazy, “I don’t remember it. I thought I dreamed the whole thing.”

Her mother laughed. “You were there with us all night! I made mac and cheese for dinner. You did your homework and watched The Simpsons. Of course you didn’t dream going to the fair.”

“Did- did I act weird around you?” Tara asked. “When did I go to bed?”

Now Tara’s mother’s brow furrowed with confusion and worry. “No, you weren’t acting any different from how you usually act. You went to bed at ten.” She stepped forward, searching Tara’s face with her eyes. “Did you… take anything at the fair?”

“No, Mom,” Tara mumbled, lowering her eyes and saying nothing more. She didn’t want to tell her mother, for fear she would be scared, but she didn’t remember anything that her mother had just described. But she chalked it up to a memory lapse caused by some drug that had been in the apple, thanked God it hadn’t affected her behavior, and pushed the disturbing encounter with the witch woman out of her mind. How silly to think of her as a witch, even- she had merely been some crazed bag lady passing off drugs as the key to true love.

It wasn’t until Tara got to school that she realized that the witch’s spell had been real, and she realized what it had done to her. The apple had sapped every ability to notice attractiveness on other humans, and the ability to feel romantically towards any of them.

The change wasn’t immediately noticeable, of course, especially since Tara hadn’t been crushing on anyone at school. But she did notice that whenever she passed guys whom she had previously thought were cute, now she felt… nothing. She was impartial to the idea of their looks. When she sat with her friends at lunch and they talked about boys, she found herself saying “He’s… okay,” to each person mentioned, and was then confused because she truly had nothing charitable (or unfavorable) to say. Her friends too were confused by Tara’s sudden lack of interest, ad more than a little bit miffed. The feeling was the same for girls, too. Tara hadn’t had any romantic or sexual preference towards her own gender previously, but now she couldn’t even recognize beauty in any of her friends. Everyone looked average to her, and nothing in their personalities attracted her either. She imagined dating someone- anyone, in a desperate attempt to make herself feel normal again- and found the idea distasteful.

Tara was disturbed by this new emotional development, or lack thereof, and practically raced home as soon as she got off the bus, concerned about her feelings for her family. What if she had lost the ability to love her parents and brother, too? But her fears were quelled as soon as she burst through the door and found her brother sitting on the couch by the TV, ignoring the pile of homework in his lap in favor of the Spongebob Squarepants episode he was watching. As soon as Tara caught sight of him, her still heart swelled with warmth that she hadn’t felt all day. She had never loved her brother as much as she did at that moment.

Some people are naturally this way, Tara thought over in her mind as she lay in her bed a few minutes later, her backpack from school discarded at her feet. Some people are aromantic, asexual. It’s not unheard of…

But she had never been this way before, and she didn’t know if she would ever go back to being her old self. Damn that witch. Damn her for telling me I was going to find true love, and then removing my ability to ever do so.
















*

The following week was a struggle for Tara to cope with as she moved from home to school and back again. For six days she tried desperately to feel something, anything romantic towards any boy or girl that came her way. But no emotions would come, and she was frustrated. Tara’s friends eventually accepted, though they didn’t understand why, that Tara was no longer in the mood to discuss recent crushes. They assumed she merely wanted to keep her opinions to herself.

Yes, the first week was definitely a hard time, but Tara soon got used to her new lack of feelings by the time week two began. Though she still wished in the back of her mind that the witch hadn’t stolen her love, she eventually found benefits of not loving anyone romantically or finding anyone attractive. For one thing, the lack of preference was very liberating. She no longer had to worry about talking to cute guys, afraid to sound stupid in front of them, because everyone looked average to her. Cutting out the romance also made Tara a better judge of character. When she fell for guys in the past, she had looked past their flaws because she wanted to continue liking them. Now, Tara knew which guys to hang out with and which to avoid, because she wasn’t seeing anyone through a filter. Her friends subconsciously realized this and began asking Tara for her opinions on certain people, which made Tara slightly more popular among the general crowd.

There were occasional drawbacks with Tara’s new lifestyle, though most had to do with annoyance at other people and not herself. The main problem was when guys hit on her and flirted with her, and she had to explain to them that she wasn’t just interested in the one person, but she was truly not interested in anyone. Most guys found this hard to understand, and so Tara just ignored them for the most part. She realized that anyone who kept persistently trying to get with her was a creep who should be avoided, something she had had a harder time of realizing before losing her romance.

For the most part, besides the boys that she inadvertently angered by refusing them, Tara’s adaptation went unnoticed in society. Her family didn’t perceive much of a difference, most likely because she had never discussed her crushes with them before, and her friends had grown to accept her new ways. Finally Tara gave up the idea that something essential and meaningful to her had been lost when she ate the apple. What good did loving someone romantically do to her? She could get along just fine by herself and with her friends. Romance and sex only got in the way of her schoolwork and socializing with people who really meant something to her. And so the days rolled by, and Tara rolled with them, not tied down to any commitments to others.

It was only when she got to college that she realized that maybe the witch had been right after all.















*

After living for a year and a half without crushes, dates, boyfriends, or girlfriends of any kind, the time came for Tara to graduate from high school and head off to college to study art in Baltimore. Her family drove her up from Virginia and hugged her goodbye after helping her move into her dorm in a bittersweet manner, while mixed feelings of embarrassment, sadness, and excitement overwhelmed her. Once Tara’s parents had disappeared from sight, Tara busied herself in making the place her own and greeting her roommates. It was an eventful, exhausting day, and so Tara had no time to think of what she had pushed from her mind a year before.

The next day she traveled down the halls relying on the words of students to get her to her destinations, as she was wary of carrying a map in fear that it would point her out as an obviously clueless freshman. Despite a few setbacks, Tara got to her first class just before the teacher started talking and listened dutifully to her lesson for the next minutes, taking notes occasionally. It wasn’t until class let out and she spilled into the hallway, buoyed along by other students, that she noticed it.

Sweeping her eyes across the crowded hall, Tara was about to just walk off when her vision zeroed in on the sight of one person. She found herself staring at a girl who didn’t seem particularly special. Like everyone else, she carried a bag full of supplies for class and seemed to be searching for the correct room. Her hair was long and dark and fell in waves about her shoulders, and except for a nose piercing there was nothing outwardly remarkable about her. But upon gazing at the girl, Tara felt a warm feeling grow inside her, and her heart gave an unfamiliar by this point flutter.

Having spent so long without being able to romantically involve herself with anyone, Tara had forgotten how to recognize the signs of a crush (as she had never experienced love before). Now, as the emotions came full force and multiplied by ten, they nearly swept her off her feet. She couldn’t look away from the girl across the hall from her, who had slowly raised her blue eyes to meet Tara’s and had ceased walking. Her palms began to sweat, and before she knew it she felt the doors of a long-dead portion of her heart open up and let this girl fall inside of it.

Suddenly a mysterious force seemed to take hold of her entire body, and she gravitated straight into the girl’s arms, pushing past the throng of students to reach her. She was powerless to stop the motion. At once the girl was hugging Tara, holding her as if she never wanted to let go, and Tara’s arms snaked around her body to grip her in the exact same way. She leaned back and stared into the girl’s eyes, which appeared to be dazzled, blinded.

“Hello,” she said breathlessly. “My name is Tara, and… I think I’ve been waiting for you.”

The girl blinked. “My name is Charm. I’m so glad to meet you at last.”

Charm? Tara would have laughed at how coincidental the name was, but she was too busy angling her head so that her lips met Charm’s, her true love. She knew in her heart that she had found her heart’s desire after all, as she would never feel love or desire for anyone but Charm from that point on. She had found her true love without even having kiss a few frogs.