by Shelby Bach
I couldn’t think about that now. Not yet.
She hesitated, and then added, “No one else will tell you this, so even though it is not my place, I will: You have done well. I am proud of you. I am proud of the person you are becoming.”
To my embarrassment, tears rushed to my eyes before I could even decide if that statement made me feel awkward or grateful. “I’m sorry. I keep crying. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
I sincerely hoped Chase wouldn’t see. I was turning into such a girl.
“You are tired,” Rapunzel said gently. “You have survived much. But you must remember what you have accomplished. Your parents’ worry will trouble you, because you love them. They will not understand.”
Mom and Dad were going to be furious. And Amy—she would be the worst of all. I had no idea what I could tell them. “I should have told them the truth a long time ago. Explaining would be so much easier if they knew.”
“Perhaps,” said Rapunzel. “Or perhaps you would still be convincing your mother to let you return here. Perhaps you would not have become Ben’s Companion, and his Tale would have Failed. Your actions saved Lena’s life today, and the lives of hundreds of others.”
It was strange—to think that lives depended on me. Or on whether or not Mom let me come back to EAS, actually.
“Believe your father when you speak to him next. Now prepare yourself.” I looked up, sure that Rapunzel was about to tell me something else helpful and scary about my future. She just smiled. “For the party. Your time here today is short, but I will be here when you return.”
took the fastest shower in the history of EAS.
Then, while Lena set up in the courtyard, I ran around inviting as many newly healed people as possible. I had just slipped the final and most important element of our surprise in my pocket when I ran into Lena and her grandmother in front of the ballroom-infirmary door.
“Now Miss Rory, it’s about time for you to go home,” said Mrs. LaMarelle. “I told your mother that Lena’s appendix burst, and you came back to wait with us in the hospital. I promised to put you on a plane as soon as we were sure Lena would pull through.”
For thirty minutes, being busy had kept the guilt at bay, but now I was pretty sure I was the worst daughter in the entire universe.
“Please, Gran,” Lena said.
Mrs. LaMarelle shook her head. “I don’t approve of lying, you know, and I certainly don’t plan on breaking any promises.”
“But remember that super-secret project?” Lena whispered.
“You can’t expect me to keep track of all your super-secret projects, honey,” said Mrs. LaMarelle fondly. “You have hundreds going on at one time.”
“You remember this one.” Lena stood on tiptoes to whisper in her ear.
“We won’t be together again for another month or so,” I added. “You’ve been on the phone with my mother. I bet she told you that I’m going to be grounded.”
“Hmm,” said Mrs. LaMarelle thoughtfully. I held my breath as she inspected the brooch pinned to her lapel. It looked like a B with three lines through the bottom—Madame Benne’s symbol. “Well, Ellie and I will need about forty-five minutes to get the portal to the airport all set up and, say, another ten to get your mother on the phone. If you promise to come with us as soon as we fetch you, with not even one more excuse, I suppose it’s all right.”
“You’ll have to keep that promise. Gran’s promises are like Binding Oaths. You pretty much die if you break them in my house,” Lena said.
I grinned. “Promise.”
Mrs. LaMarelle shooed us away. Lena and I sprinted under the Tree of Hope, to the table where the golden harp and all the other seventh graders waited, plus a few eighth graders. Even Adelaide had come, but as soon as she saw me, she told Daisy again, “They must have made a mistake. Chase would’ve told us if it was his birthday.”
The triplets had managed to dig up some cone-shaped party hats. Kyle offered a fourth one to Paul Stockton, who replied, “I am not putting that on my head.”
“I will.” Bryan reached over Paul’s shoulder. Someone had given him some clothes, but he still hadn’t taken off his spiked collar. He put the hat on, tucking the elastic strap under his chin. “Ah, hands. I’ll never fail to appreciate opposable thumbs ever again.”
“You know, if I’m going to have human friends, I need a spell that gives me legs when I want them.” Chatty had dragged herself up onto the beach as close as she could, her tail shining blue on the sand. “Not the sea witch’s, though. Every step feels like a stab in the foot, and you turn to sea foam after only a week? Not worth losing my voice.”
“Yeah,” Darcy said, looking as horrified as I felt. “You got ripped off.”
Chatty smirked a little. She obviously enjoyed freaking people out as much as Chase did. “It would be nice to jump out and yell surprise, though. When is Chase getting here?”
“Any minute,” I said. “Ben’s bringing him.”
Then Chase burst out of the guys’ bathroom and into the courtyard, yelling back over his shoulder, “Ben, I get it. We bonded in Atlantis. I think you’re cool too, but if you follow me into the little dudes’ room one more time, I’m going to—”
I held up one finger, then two, then three. At the same time, we all screamed, “SURPRISE!”
Chase whirled around. Open-mouthed, he took in the partygoers, the streamers hanging on the tree, the banner that read HAPPY (BELATED) BIRTHDAY, CHASE!, and the cake on the table.
“Oh, good,” said Chatty. “We surprised him anyway.”
Ben nudged Chase closer to the rest of us.
“I—” Chase looked a little bit like Iron Hans had when the Pounce Pot had kicked in. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say we’ll have cake first,” Kyle suggested.
“It came out of the Lunch Box of Plenty, so it’s poison-free,” Darcy said.
“Oh, thanks. I’m totally in the mood for cake now,” said Bryan.
“There are no presents!” Lena clearly felt like she needed to apologize for this up front. “But only because we’ve been stuck in the infirmary all week. We’ll do better next year.”
“Okay.” A smile grew on Chase’s face, more ginormous than usual.
“But we have cake!” Grinning, I pulled the birthday candles out of my back pocket and began decorating that cake with thirteen candles. So enthusiastically that I broke the first one. “Whoops.”
“And I invented a game.” Lena opened a box of long, skinny sticks that looked suspiciously like wands. “At least I think I invented it. I’ve never read about magic laser tag before. I set it up in the obstacle course—the one that looks like a dwarf city behind the silver-and-granite door.”
“Magic laser tag?” Paul said so scornfully that I considered uninviting him.
But about five other boys dove for wands at the same time. “That is your best invention ever,” said Kevin.
Chatty sighed. “I wish I had that spell for legs now.”
Chase stared up at the banner, grinning in a dopey sort of way. Speechless. I’d never thought I would see the day.
“Can we keep it in the fake dwarf city forever and play it at all birthdays?” Kyle asked Lena eagerly.
“I doubt it. The Director doesn’t exactly know about it yet,” Melodie said, and Lena shot her a look that clearly said, Why are you telling them that?
“A once-in-a-lifetime event.” Ben snatched up a wand and sat on the sand next to Chatty, who made a valiant effort not to look too pleased. “It will be epic.”
“Are we going to sing now or later? I’m hoping Melodie knows a spell for lighting these candles, because I couldn’t find any matches.” I was kind of focused, so I almost had a heart attack when Chase gave me a hug.
Chase never did hugs. In fact, he usually shot me and Lena weird looks when we hugged each other. For a second I thought something serious was going on. Like he was going to tell me he didn’t want any cake.
Bu
t then he let go, grinning. “You did this, right? You’re the best.”
“I just had the idea,” I said, slightly weirded out. “Lena did all the work.”
“And me,” Melodie said.
Then Chase hugged Lena. “You’re both the best.”
“And me,” Melodie repeated, but apparently Chase had reached his hug quota for the rest of the year. He just gave her a slightly dorky high five and grabbed the nearest wand. “Okay, someone explain what laser tag is, because I’m going to kick all of your butts.”
• • •
I only had time for one and a half games before Lena’s gran came. Everybody at the party protested when she ushered me over to the Door Trek portal, so it was really easy for me to keep my promise not to complain. “Gretel cast a spell over your parents and her mother’s assistant to help them believe the story, but—” Lena’s gran said.
“I know. Expect trouble.” I checked my jeans pocket to make sure Lena’s spare M3 was still there. She had given it to me after magic laser tag, telling me she wanted to make sure we could stay in touch even if my cell phone got taken away.
Mrs. LaMarelle opened the ruby door. “Rory, I need to thank you. You saved my grandbaby’s life, and I’m sure it won’t be the last time.”
I half smiled. Something else to remember when I got to the other side of this portal, Mom cried, and Amy shot me her thin-lipped glare of doom.
With a deep breath I stepped through. I came out in baggage claim, the little one in the upstate New York airport nearest the house Mom was renting. I knew they’d be there, so I searched the crowd. They would probably be standing right at the bottom of the closest escalator, anxiously watching every person come down and discussing how they would never let me leave my room again.
But it wasn’t Mom and Amy waiting. It was Dad.
His hair was going in a thousand different directions—definitely stressed, but then he would have to be, if he was taking time away from his work to pick me up from the airport across the continent. He wouldn’t have come all this way just to yell at me, I was pretty sure.
Suddenly, I felt smaller even than Sarah Thumb, exactly how I had when that casting director had been yelling at me. Hundreds of lives today, I reminded myself firmly as I walked over. What Klonsky said doesn’t matter at all.
But of course it didn’t. Klonsky was a stranger. It was what Dad hadn’t said that made me want to cry.
He didn’t notice me until I was close enough to grab his arm. As soon as he looked up, though, he threw his arms around me. “You’re okay.”
I nodded against his shoulder, kind of wanting to squirm out of his grip, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings and make him even madder at me. So I just kind of hugged him back awkwardly.
Then he stepped back and looked me in the face, so I could see how serious he was. I braced myself.
“If there were an award for worst dad in the world, then I definitely got it this week. Don’t even try to deny it.” Actually, I was so stunned I was speechless, so Dad just plowed on ahead. “I whisk you off to a casting call you don’t want. I just sit there, dumb as a stump, when Klonsky yells at you. Then I spring a stepmother on you without even telling you first.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you at the casting call.” The excuse came quickly now. “I . . . fell in the memorial fountain. I was running around to find a signal so I could call and check on Lena, and I just slipped. I didn’t have enough time to change—”
“Rory, forget about that. I don’t care about the movie.” Dad took my duffel and steered me outside. “I told them to take me off the project.”
“You did?” Dad had never dropped a film before.
“Of course I did,” he said, surprised. “Do you think I would want to work on it now? I can’t even think about it without feeling ashamed of myself.”
It was slowly starting to sink in. Dad wasn’t mad at me. He felt bad.
“Here. Take a look at this.” He slipped his phone out of his back pocket, pushing a few buttons to pull up a video.
I recognized the stage area of the casting call. I turned away, chest tight. “I really don’t want to see this, Dad.”
“No. I mean, please? It’s part of my speech,” he said. “This is your audition clip.”
Watching myself stammer wasn’t exactly appealing, but I looked anyway. I couldn’t bear to lie to him and disappoint him after worrying him for two days.
He pushed play, and the Rory on-screen was . . . well, she was fine. Her voice sounded kind of weird, but not shaky. But I felt again exactly what I had felt then. My nose prickled. The tears were coming back.
“You were good, Rory. Better than most. You weren’t rattled at all. Just like your mom,” Dad said softly.
If he meant my acting talent, he had just edged into the sucking-up portion of his apology. “Even if I don’t look upset—”
Dad nodded. “Right. You’re just like your mom. I could never tell when she was upset either. And me, I just froze in there. I couldn’t believe anyone would lose their temper like that with a kid, and then my mouth just wouldn’t move, and you seemed like you were okay. I mean, at least until we got outside,” he said, running his hands through his hair again. We headed through the automatic doors to the parking lot. “I did finally tell that Klonsky woman to go to hell, but don’t tell your mother that, please. At the time I was just so stunned, you know?”
“It’s okay,” I said automatically. He seemed so shaken.
“It’s not okay,” Dad said, so loud that a few people waiting for cabs looked over at us. “I told Brie, as soon as you went to the bathroom for your backpack, that I thought I’d screwed up. And she basically told me I’d done the worst possible thing anyone could ever do to a seventh-grade girl. I made you feel like you weren’t important in my life, right? Like you didn’t matter?”
I just nodded, throat aching, because I was pretty sure that Dad would handle me crying even worse than Chase.
“That is never, ever okay, Rory. Nobody should make you feel like that, especially not me,” Dad said, and then it looked like he was going to cry. “I had to come see you. If I didn’t, if I left it like that, you would probably never speak to me again, and nobody would blame you. I was really wrong. You’re the best thing—no, not thing. But you’re the best of everything I’ve ever done, and I’m so mad at myself for making you feel like anything less.”
I was really crying now, possibly harder than I had in the mirror vault. Dad stopped, right in the middle of the parking deck, and held me even though we were probably in danger of getting run over.
“You’re what I’m most proud of every second of every day, and I’m so sorry,” he said softly.
Maybe you never really outgrew bullies. Maybe Dad wasn’t that tough.
But he loved me. And he was trying.
I took several breaths, slow and deep. “I’m glad you came, Dad.”
“Me too,” he said, relieved.
“And I’m sorry I left L.A. without telling you first.” I still felt guilty about that part.
“Yeah. What was that?” He asked, suddenly angry. “You just hailed a cab and booked a flight all by yourself? And I get to the airport and none of the airlines have any record of Rory Landon. If you ever run away again—”
He stopped, shoving a hand through his hair. I stared at him, and he looked a little taken aback too. He’d never yelled at me like that before. Of course, I had never done anything to deserve it before either.
I wished I could say it would never happen again. “I am sorry.”
“I’m not perfect either, so I’m going to leave the yelling to your mom. But you’re just a lot more independent than any twelve-year-old has a right to be. Don’t tell your mother I said that either.” Dad pressed the button on the rental-car keys, and something beeped several rows over. “There we go. Anyway, honey, the good news is that when I told your mom what I did, she aimed all her anger at me instead of you. It’s totall
y my fault. You should be okay.”
I wiped my face with my sleeve and gave him a look. We both knew I would never get out of this without punishment.
“Mostly okay?” Dad tried. “More okay than you might have been if I hadn’t talked to her?”
I nodded. “I’ll give you that.”
“You’ll give me that,” Dad repeated with a wobbly sort of grin. “We’ve reached the age where you give me stuff. The next ten years of your life will be rough on me, I can tell. Here.” He pulled something white out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“Since when you do you carry tissues?” I blew my nose.
“Since Brie.” He said it so simply, like she dated a whole era in his life. He said it the way I said, “Since EAS.” “She has the worst allergies of anybody I ever met. It’s safer for everyone if I carry tissues, believe me.”
He paused, and I knew exactly what he was going to ask next. “Does it bother you that I’m marrying her?”
It did bother me a little, to be perfectly honest. But the only reason I could think of was that I didn’t want a Tale with a stepmother in it. Of course, Brie Catcher didn’t seem like wicked-stepmother material. “Not really. I think—well, keep in mind that I only had maybe ten minutes around her, but I think I like her.”
I liked that she told Dad the truth. She couldn’t help it. She probably told everyone the truth. I liked that she made him see other people a little better. I liked that she made him happy.
Grinning again, Dad unlocked the car. “Then do you want to be my best man?”
“Depends on whether or not I have to wear a tux,” I said, kind of shocked, and I didn’t even realize it was a funny thing to say until Dad started laughing.
• • •
Dad was right about helping on the Mom front. As soon as we got out of the car, Mom ran out and held me, just like Dad had at the airport. Dad was clearly the bad guy—even though they tried to be civil, all the glares went to him and not me.
Then we sent Dad back to the airport—he had a red-eye flight so he could catch a morning meeting in L.A. He was really glad of an excuse to get away, but he asked me to think about being his best man. He offered to list me as “best daughter” in the program, if I wanted.
