Kiss in Time 12 page

After Fairchild, we come home and kiss some more and discuss what to do about the huge problem of her not being able to stay here after a week. We decide to think about it tomorrow. Dad’s working late, and Mom’s shopping with Meryl. So we get some pizza, then watch television.

It all falls apart when the eleven o’clock news comes on. The newscaster is saying something about a father searching for a missing daughter. She was last seen with an American youth.

Talia gasps. “Father!”

I look. It’s the king. He’s standing on a street corner. He wears a crown and his king clothes. He holds a painting of a beautiful blond girl.

Talia.

The headline onscreen says MISSING GIRL.

Talia stares, horrified, at the screen. Then she moves closer, as if she has forgotten the difference between television and reality.

“Father,” she says. It’s a whimper.

“Maybe it’s not that bad,” I say.

But I know it is. They show the king again, looking tortured worse than when he ate the tough peacock. “How long has the girl been missing?” asks the reporter.

“She is not a girl,” says the king. “She is a princess. The heir apparent to the Euphrasian throne.”

“Ah, a princess. I see.” The reporter smirks. “From Euphrasia. ”

“They do not believe him,” Talia says. “They think him insane.”

“And she has been missing several days, a week,” the king says.

“Had you argued?” the reporter asks. “Could the princess have run away?”

They’re flashing a 1-800 number over the king’s head, to call with tips.

“Argued, yes,” says the king. “You could say that. But my Talia, she would never run away. She was sheltered, innocent in the ways of the world. She could not go out on her own. She would . . . she would . . .” He looks like he’s going to cry. “She was the light of my life! Of all our lives!

No matter what. If she has been kidnapped, or worse, I do not know what I shall do.”

“Do you suspect foul play, then?” the reporter asks.

“I do not know,” says the king. “Perhaps. There was a boy. . . .”

I groan. “He thinks I kidnapped you.” The news goes to another story, a story about the sudden decline of a forest on the Belgian border, but Talia still stares at the television.

“It’s okay, Talia. We’ll fix it all.”

“Okay? It is most assuredly not okay. While I have been 275

frolicking in America, my parents, who have lost everything, believe I am lost to them as well. I have frolicked, Jack! And drank and partied. And my parents are in such agony that my father—who has never seen a car or a bus, let alone a television camera—has somehow gotten out of Euphrasia and found this Belgian news station, all in the hope of finding me, his most beloved daughter. The light of his life.”

“Yeah.” It does sound pretty bad when she puts it that way.

“We must call.”

“What?” I’m thinking of what they said about foul play.

I didn’t kidnap Talia, but sometimes things get messed up.

What if they think I did? “I don’t—”

“We must call. My father is suffering.”

“Wait!” She’s leaving. She’s going to get on a plane, and I’ll never see her again. “I understand. You’re right. You have to call.”

“I am horribly selfish and thoughtless.” She tries to grab the phone from me.

“No, you’re not.” I hold it away from her. “You’re nice.

You’re going to call now that you know he wants you back.

But couldn’t we just wait until morning?”

“Morning?”

“It’s the middle of the night. It’s later there. Everyone’s probably asleep. That news show wasn’t live. It couldn’t have been. And I’m just a little worried that they’ll think I kidnapped you.”

“But you did not. I will tell them you did not.”

“But they might not believe you. They might think you have . . .” I try to remember the name of it, this thing I heard about on television, where victims bond with their captors. “. . . Stockholm syndrome.”

“Impossible. I have never even been to Sweden.”

“Still, your dad threw me in a dungeon once. What’s to say he wouldn’t . . . misunderstand again? Couldn’t we just wait until tomorrow when my dad’s home?” It sounds crazy, but I’m thinking maybe Meryl was right. My parents have bailed me out a bunch of times when I’ve screwed up. No, they haven’t been perfect. Sometimes they’ve been total jerks. But they’re the only parents I have, and I don’t want to go through this alone.

“I promise,” I say, “I’m not trying to get you not to call them. I know it’s the right thing to do. It’s just . . . I want my dad here, too.”

Talia nods. “All right. Tomorrow, then.” 277

Chapter 28:

j Talia

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow I will speak to Father, perhaps even go back to Euphrasia. Will it be the same Euphrasia I have always known, or will it be irreversibly changed?

It matters not. As soon as I saw Father’s dear face on that television, all thought of anything else evaporated, replaced by only one notion: I must find him. I must let him know I am all right.

I settle down on the air mattress. Finally, it has just the right consistency, the correct amount of air, and now I am leaving. I remember that first night when I was visited by the Jell-O demons and Jack came in to comfort me.

Dear Jack . . .

Will I ever see him again?

In my time, if someone journeyed from Euphrasia to 278

America, one might never return. But now, there are airplanes, cellular telephones, even something called email.

Surely, I will be able to see Jack again. After all, we love each other.

For the first time since waking from my long sleep, I am able to rest.

The Jell-O demons do not return. Instead, when I open my eyes, it is morning and Malvolia stands before me.

“You got away,” she says.

“I was rescued,” I reply, “by my true love’s kiss.”

“Rescued? You cannot be rescued.”

She grabs my hand, and I see a spindle in her other.

“No!” I scream it, but nothing comes out. Still, my throat hurts as if I have screamed. It feels flaming and raw.

The old woman’s claws dig into my hand.

“No!” I manage to say. “I must go back to Father.” It is probably best that Malvolia does not know this, for it is not a sentiment destined to win her over. Still, I struggle. The room is dark, and I can see little. The old woman pulls at me, and although I try to rise and struggle against her, I am unable to find purchase on the tight air mattress. I fall backward. My arm feels as though the veins are being stripped from it, and I hit my head upon something, a chair.

Then everything goes from black to blacker.

Chapter 2 :9

j Jack

“ Jack!” Meryl’s banging on my door. I look at the digital clock, and the number burns my eyes. Seven o’clock. In the morning? Seven AM shouldn’t even exist, especially in summer.

“Go away!” I yell.

“It’s important! Mom wants you downstairs.”

“And I’ll be there in an hour or three.”

“It’s about Talia!”

Talia. I’d forgotten about Talia and the news, but now it all floods back—the euphoria of loving her, the agony that she’s leaving, that I’ll lose her.

“Jack!”

“Give me a second, okay?”

When I get downstairs, Mom and Dad are both there. Both.

“Where’s Talia?” Mom holds up a newspaper. It’s open 280

to an article called “Leads Sought in Case of Missing Belgian Girl.”

“It’s Talia,” Meryl says. “She’s a runaway.”

“Did you know, Jack?” Mom asks.

“No. I mean, yes, sort of. I mean, not exactly.”

“What, exactly, Jack?” Dad asks. “Did you help this girl run away from her family? You didn’t . . . kidnap her?”

“It wasn’t that way,” I say.

“What way was it?” Dad asks. “This sort of thing could ruin your whole life, keep you out of coll—”

“Must we make everything about college, Evan?” Mom says. “The girl clearly wasn’t kidnapped. Did she look kidnapped to you? She was having a great time.” I give her a grateful look, and she says, “Why don’t you just tell us what happened, Jack?”

I nod. They’ll find out, anyway. “But you have to sit down, and you have to believe me.”

Dad grumbles that he’s not sure he can believe me about anything now, but Mom gestures for him to sit. I pour out the whole story of Talia and me, and how we met, and how we escaped. At the end of it, he says, “That’s impossible.”

“I wouldn’t believe me, either, not if I hadn’t been there and seen it with my own eyes. But it’s true. There was a castle and a king and a queen, and Travis wanted to try on the crowns, and there was this princess. It was Talia.”

“It’s not that we don’t trust you, Jack,” Mom says. “It’s just that it seems so—”

“Look!” I hold up the newspaper. “This picture they 281

put of her. It’s not a photo. They didn’t have photos then.

It’s an oil painting. And look what she’s wearing.” I point. In the portrait, Talia’s wearing a crown.

“Hey,” Meryl says. “Here’s the story again.” Channel six is running last night’s interview, but the reporter’s saying, “The man, mad with grief, claims that he comes from another world, another time.” And there’s Talia’s dad. He has no crown on, but other than that, he looks pretty much like the Burger King again—especially in his robe. It’s that red and gold curtain material they wear only in pictures of royalty.

I turn to Dad. “Do many of the guys you hang with dress like this? I’m telling you, he’s a king. When Talia and I saw the report last night—”

“Last night?” Mom says. “You saw the report last night?”

“Uh-oh,” Meryl says.

“You knew about this last night, and you did nothing?” Dad demands. “Jack, I knew you were irresponsible, but—”

“I’m not being irresponsible, not this time. Talia wanted to call her dad, and I agreed she should. But I was scared, too. I was worried they’d think what you thought, that I kidnapped her or something. So I wanted to wait until you were here and ask you what to do.”

“You wanted what?”

“I guess it sounds lame now, not doing something right away, but you hear all the time about teenagers getting interrogated by the police without their parents there and 282

even confessing to stuff they didn’t do just because the police think they’re guilty, and I don’t know, I just thought maybe you’d know the right thing to do. You usually do. So I told Talia we should wait.”

“You thought that I could help you? Well, that’s . . .

something.” Dad looks surprised, and for the first time since I got up this morning, maybe the first time in a year, that line he gets between his eyebrows when he talks to me disappears. He looks at the television where, once again, King Louis is crying. The line returns. “But now, I believe we must call and reunite this man with his daughter.”

Mom nods. “Why don’t you go get Talia?” I start toward the study. I’m surprised Talia isn’t already awake, considering she’s been up and eating pancakes hours before me every day. But maybe, like me, she’s trying to put off calling her dad for as long as possible. Maybe she doesn’t want to leave.

I knock on the door of the study. “Talia?” No answer. I knock louder. “Talia? Wake up, sleepyhead!”

Nothing. “Talia?”

I try the door. Locked. Why locked? She wouldn’t lock it. I’m not even sure she knows how to use the lock. I beat on the door, screaming, “Talia! Talia! Talia!” Nothing. Nothing. Nothing!

She fainted yesterday. What if it happened again? Or she choked? Passed out?

“Talia!”

Finally, Mom shows up with a hairpin. We pick the lock, and I open the door.

The room is empty.

Chapter 30:

j Talia

Iam in blackness. It is not like sleep but like being inside a coffin, away from everyone, everything, closed in with no light anywhere.

Was this what it was like when I slumbered before? Do I slumber again?

No. I am certain there were no dreams in my three hundred years’ sleep. But were there visitors? Did the fairies check on me or did Malvolia herself? Did they see me?

In the still, black nothingness, I return to sleep.

Chapter 31:

j Jack

“ She must have left,” Mom says. “She was probably anx-ious to talk to her father, and she locked the door to keep you from finding out she had left.”

“She wouldn’t do that, and she’d tell me if she did.” But I wonder if that’s true. Talia was hot to call her dad, and I stopped her because I was afraid. But maybe she wanted to call so bad she sneaked out and found a pay phone. After all, she’s already run away once.

I hear my cell phone ringing in my room. Thinking it’s Talia, I bolt out the door.

“Talia?”

“Dude, you’re in a big mess.”

Travis! Travis, calling from Europe.

“Where are you? Do you know anything about Talia?”

“I know King Kong and his goons tracked me down 286

with the tour, and they’re trying to torture me for information. I keep telling them I don’t know anything. They finally let me use my phone, so I’m calling you. You’ve got to make her call home.”

“She’s not here.”

“She didn’t go with you?”

“No. Are you with her parents?”

“I’m with her dad in Brussels. It’s been a super barrel of laughs, let me tell you.”

“Sorry. She hasn’t called there? It’s been all over the television stations here.”

“Here, too. They all think she’s with you, but they don’t know who you are. They keep calling you ‘the American youth.’”

My sister Meryl comes in. She’s carrying something in her hand, two somethings. The first is Talia’s jewelry box.

Her jewelry box! She’d never leave without that, so she must be coming back.

I can’t see what the other object is, on top of the box. I walk closer.

“Jack? Jack, are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. She’s not with me, Trav, honest.” I’m standing in front of Meryl now. I pick up the object on top of the box. It’s long and slender and looks hundreds of years old, and even though I’ve never seen one before, I know exactly what it is.

It’s a spindle.

“I have to go, Trav. I’ll call you later.” I close the phone.

“What is it?” Meryl demands.

“She hasn’t called home,” I say. Now Mom’s joined Meryl in the kitchen. “I think she’s been kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?” Mom says. “That’s impossible. I looked at the windows in that room, and they’re not broken. They haven’t even been unlocked. And we have alarms on the doors.”

“A witch wouldn’t need to break a window or, if she did, she could fix it.”

“A witch?” Meryl says.

I nod. “Her father and his goons aren’t going to be able to find her. We have to go to Euphrasia.” 288

Chapter 32:

j Talia

When next I waken, it is daylight, and I am alone. I feel the mattress beneath me. It is not made of rubber, nor filled with air. As I run my hand over the coarse ticking (for there is no sheet), I feel a small, sharp pain. A pinfeather! The mattress is made of down!

I look out the window. At first, all I see is blue sky and a large chestnut tree shadowing the grass. Then my eyes grow accustomed to the light, and I make out shapes—a holly bush, the thatch of a cottage roof hanging down, and in the distance below, the spire of a castle.

I am home! I am in Euphrasia!

Chapter 33:

j Jack

“ Euphrasia?” my mom says. We’re back in the kitchen, telling Dad.

“That’s where she’s from. Her country.” I remember Talia’s words: She took me to her cottage on the highest hill in Euphrasia, where I used to picnic with Lady Brooke.

“But there’s no way she could be back in Europe,” Mom says. “She couldn’t get a flight out that late, even if she left the second you went to sleep.”

My parents still aren’t believing the magical princess stuff. “I know. I know it sounds crazy. But I’m not saying she took a commercial airline.”

“What are you saying, son?” my dad asks.

I feel completely stupid telling him what I’m thinking.

It is stupid, thinking Malvolia took her through some portal to Euphrasia. It’s more than stupid—it’s crazy.

But so is a princess who sleeps for three hundred years only to be awakened by a doofus like me. Crazy things happen.

Just not to Dad.

Still, I have to try and make him understand.

“She said the witch was taking her to Euphrasia, yesterday when she fainted at Fairchild. I thought she was crazy.

I told her so. But now she’s gone. She’s gone, and it’s my fault for not believing her.”

“Jack . . .” My mom rubs my shoulder. “We can look around the neighborhood. She can’t have gone far without a car. But if we don’t find her, I think you’ll have to accept that she ran away again.”

“She didn’t,” I say. “She wouldn’t run away, and she especially wouldn’t run away and leave this.” I gesture toward the spindle. “And all her jewelry, too.”

“Hey, here’s what I was looking for,” Meryl says from the computer. She points to a Wikipedia article she’s been reading.

“Not now, Meryl,” Dad says. He’s taken out one of Talia’s necklaces and is examining it.

“No, listen for once!” She reads, “‘Carlo Maratti drew ridicule at the end of his life for claiming to have been the art master to Princess Talia of Euphrasia, a nonexistent country. And then, one day, he lost his memory entirely.’

That was Talia’s art master.”

“I don’t understand,” Dad says. He holds up a sapphire to the light.

“So, Carlo Maratti died in 1713. Jack’s telling the truth, Dad. She’s really from the seventeenth century. She’s really a princess, too! If you’d talked to her, you’d know it’s true.” Dad looks at the computer screen, then at the necklace.

“Dana, maybe we should listen to the boy.”

“What?” I say.

“What?” my mom echoes.

“He seems pretty sure of himself, and besides, I wouldn’t mind seeing the place.”

“What place?” Mom asks.

“Euphrasia. It sounds fascinating.”

“So you actually believe me?” I forget for a second how upset I am about Talia. I’m glad my dad doesn’t know how Wikipedia works, that anyone can just add stuff, that Meryl could have put those sentences in the article.

“You believe what you’re saying, don’t you?” Dad asks me.

I nod. “Talia told me that Malvolia would take her to a cottage on the highest hill in Euphrasia.”

“But why can’t we simply call her parents and tell them to check there?” Mom asks.

I think of the empty air mattress, the pillow with the indentation of Talia’s head. The spindle.

“Because I may need to be there, to rescue her.” 292

Chapter 34:

j Talia

“ What do you want from me?” The words are a cry to the room, to no one, to Malvolia, whom I know is there somewhere, looming like a black bat.

But there is no answer.

Is she away? Would she take me here, all the way to Euphrasia, and simply leave me, free to come and go as I please? It is impossible. It is too simple.

And yet I hear no sign of Malvolia. Indeed, the room is perfectly silent, silent as only Euphrasian rooms are. American rooms always had noise, the blare of the television, or even at the dead of midnight, smaller sounds, like the tick of a clock, the buzz of a computer, or the constant whoosh of air-conditioning.

There is no air-conditioning in this cottage, Malvolia’s cottage, but it is cool nonetheless, for it is high up in the 293

Euphrasian hills and is shaded by a chestnut tree. I breathe in the fresh air, Euphrasian air which has not been processed or filtered in any way. It smells like my childhood, and I sigh as I remember Mother and Father. After the sigh is true Euphrasian silence. Can the cottage be empty? Dare I chance walking about?

What have I to lose? And the cottage is small. Surely, if she were lurking, I would hear her. She would hear me.

I rise.

I am still dressed from last night, in a pair of blue sleep trousers and a T-shirt. My feet are bare, and I step lightly on the unpolished wooden floor. I tiptoe to the door, which has a window in it, and then stand by that window, gazing out. No one in sight, not even a shepherd boy with his flock. I will leave. I will go to my family.

I glance behind me. No one there. I open the door.

“Going somewhere, Princess?”

Chapter 35:

j Jack

Even though I say it’s not necessary, Mom insists we drive around the neighborhood, looking for Talia. We even look at the nearest Trailways bus station and ask if they’ve seen her. “I didn’t even know there was a Trailways bus station,” I tell Mom. “What are the odds that Talia would find it?” But Mom says we should leave no stone unturned.

So when we’ve finally turned every stone (and haven’t found Talia), we head back home and go online to order a plane ticket.

“Get two,” Dad says.

“Two?”

“One for me, one for you.”

I heard Dad before when he said he wanted to see Euphrasia, but I didn’t think he was serious. The thought of 295

ten plus hours on the plane with Dad doesn’t do it for me.

“Don’t you have work or something?” I ask him. He always has to work.

He shrugs. “I can move some things around.”

“But I can go by myself. I went by myself before.”

“The last time you went on a trip by yourself,” my dear little sister says, “you sneaked away from the tour group, went to a nonexistent country, and kidnapped the heir to the throne. So, understandably, Dad’s worried about what will happen if he sends you back.”

“Shut up,” I say.

“That’s not it,” Dad says.

“What is it then?”

Dad thinks a minute. “I want to see this Euphrasia.

Besides, if it’s really like you say, with witches and curses and kidnappings, it could be dangerous. If this Malvolia has really been plotting against Talia for three hundred years, she’s not going to give up easily.

Wow. He actually listened and believed me.

“Okay. Then I guess we should get going.” And that’s how I end up spending the next twenty-four hours alone with my dad, flying to Brussels and then driving to Euphrasia.

Chapter 36:

j Talia

Caught! I feel Malvolia’s icy fingers upon my bare arm.

“Going somewhere?” she says.

“Merely home. I thank you kindly for bringing me this far.”

“I am afraid not.” With her claw, she draws me around, then into the room.

“What interesting . . . attire,” she says, her black eyes scanning my pajamas. “You cannot go home like this. It is hardly what one would expect of a princess.”

“Are you going to torture me? Chain me to the wall?” Then I realize I may merely be giving her ideas which she had not yet considered. So I am quiet.

“Nay, Princess. You have done me no harm.”

“Then you will allow me to leave?”

She shakes her head. “It is upon your father I seek revenge. You are merely a pawn.”

I, who have studied the game of chess, know that it is no good thing to be a pawn. Pawns are eliminated quickly while kings and queens stay to fight the battle.

“So you plan to . . . kill me? But surely this is not necessary. My father adores me, and he will pay whatever you wish for my safe return.”

“Whatever I wish?” Malvolia looks into space, considering. “What I wish is to see your father miserable and heartbroken, as he has made me.”

She leads me to a table set up for sewing. Cuts of fabric lie all around, and I realize they are meant to be parts of a dress, a dress the exact shade of my eyes. The gown is unfinished, panels unsewn, buttons lying beside it on the table.

“We will create a beautiful dress for you, Princess. That is what is important to you, nay? To have the most beautiful dress? Now you shall sew it yourself. And then I will deliver it to your father, wrapped around your dead body.”

“My dead body!”

“Revenge is not a pretty thing, Princess.” She means not only to kill me, but first to use me to sew my own shroud. I look into the old woman’s black eyes, and I see something I have never seen before: hatred. This is what Father and Mother sheltered me from, protected me from.

I realize, too late, that Father and Mother were right.

They were right, and I shall never be able to tell them. I shall never see nor speak to them again.

Out the window are the verdant Euphrasian hills. I shall never go home.

No. This is impossible! It is impossible that I should live three hundred years only to die in this manner. Perhaps it was my destiny for my life to end like this, but must I accept this fate?

“Was it not enough to make me sleep three hundred years?” I ask. “Can you not consider yourself avenged and let me go?”

“Come now, Princess.” Malvolia’s voice is like the rocks under carriage wheels. “It is time to sew your lovely dress.” Why should I sew? I want to ask her. Why should I, a princess destined to become queen, sew a gown for myself only so I can be killed?

But then I look at the dress. It is pieces, only pieces, which would take days, maybe a week, for even a skilled seamstress to sew. I have never sewn anything in my life, and if my skill at painting is any indication, my hands are lacking in dexterity. It will take a long time—long enough for someone to rescue me?

Jack. I dare not hope that Jack . . . and yet, I told him the exact location of Malvolia’s cottage. Of course, he thought me daft at the time, but now perhaps he will remember.

Perhaps he will come here in time to rescue me before Malvolia . . .

“Time to sew,” the witch repeats.

“I do not know how to sew,” I say, sweet as pie to this old lady who would murder me. “You will need to teach me.”

“I fully intend to.”

“But please . . .” I remember the story of Scheherazade in Arabian Nights (which Lady Brooke tried to prevent my reading), who put off her death night after night by dawdling at her storytelling until her captor changed his mind.

“Might I have breakfast first? I will sew better on a full stomach.”

The old woman’s eyes appraise me, attempting to catch a lie. But finally she says, “You do look thin, Your Highness. I will fix you breakfast. You may set the table.” I glance out the window again. There is no one in the distance, no chance of rescue.

No chance but Jack.

Chapter 37:

j Jack

After we book the plane tickets, I call Travis and ask him to tell Talia’s dad to look on the highest hill in Euphrasia, where Talia and Lady Brooke used to go for picnics. He says he’ll tell them.

“But . . .” I say.

“What?”

“Be careful, okay, when you go there. Talia was really scared of this Malvolia chick. She could be dangerous.”

“What’s she going to have—an assault weapon?”

“Worse,” I say. “She’s got magical powers.” In all the activity, I try not to think about the fact that Talia’s gone, that I might never see her again, that she might even be dead, and that if I’d just listened to her in the first place, I might have been able to prevent it.

But I have lots of time to think about that on the airplane.

I wonder how many times in my life I would have been able to prevent something, change something, do something different, if only I’d listened to someone. I don’t know, but when this is over, I’m going to try and listen a lot more.

I spend about three hours sitting in the plane seat (one good thing about going with Dad—he sprung for first class), listening to my iPod and contemplating life. That’s a lot of contemplating for me, but I can’t sleep. I’m too worried about Talia. I wish I could use my phone and call Travis. I wonder if it really would interfere with the plane’s signal. Still, it would suck if the plane crashed, and if Travis is back in Euphrasia, his phone won’t work, anyway.

Dad’s been sitting doing work, paying zero attention to me, which is what I’m used to, anyway. So I take out my garden design and start working on that. But even then I can’t concentrate, because when I try to decide what kind of flowers would grow around the trees in front of the castle, that gets me thinking about Euphrasia and that hill. Where is it? And is Talia really there?

Dad taps my shoulder. “What’s that you’re working on?”

“Huh?” Instinctively, I cover the design with the sleeve of my hoodie.

“That.” He points. “What is it?”

“Oh.” I try to look casual. “Homework. Math.” This is the best way to get rid of parents, I’ve found. They don’t 302

want to get stuck helping with math.

“In the summer?”

Stupid.

“I’m trying to get ahead.” He should like that.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 539