“Nope. We’re going to hell.”
“Wait, what? Because Suzie Samuels said that Mrs. Benedict changed the due date for our book report and we have to write five pages for Friday and I still don’t have a novel picked out. I’m thinking something with fairies. Or elves. What do you think?” When I didn’t reply, she lunged for my arm again. I almost ran a stop sign, and a car sitting at the intersection honked. “Leo!”
“Shhh! I’m training myself to block out the sound of your voice.”
Here was the thing: I actually liked my family. I just didn’t want them to know I liked them. If they knew, they would expect things from me. They would want chores completed on time, good grades in school, birthday cards, flowers on Mother’s Day, a steak dinner on Father’s Day—and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to measure up to their expectations. What if I bought the wrong gift or the card wasn’t heartfelt enough or— Ugh!
Pretending not to care was safer. Having feelings was for saps.
THE LIBRARY WAS A NIGHTMARE. Mia picked up every single book on the shelves, smiled at the cover, read the synopsis aloud in a chipper voice that I naively assumed meant she thought the book was a winner, then frowned and wrinkled her nose and put the book down. Rinse and repeat. After she completed her ritual with book number twenty—or was it thirty?—I was ready to lock myself in the bathroom, shove my head in the toilet, and inhale.
“How about this?” Mia showed me a cover featuring a rickety house and an ominous full moon.
Mom had said no vampires. This definitely looked like a vampire book. But caring about this detail would only prolong the torture.
“It’s okay, I guess.”
Mia rolled her eyes, replaced the book, and then it was time to poke around the shelves some more. A minute later, she emerged with a paperback showcasing a raunchy, half-naked cowboy.
“That’s fine too,” I said.
“Yeah, right. Mrs. Benedict would fail me. Leo, don’t you have an opinion about anything?”
“Guess not.”
Liar. I had loads of opinions. I was just afraid of being told that those opinions were wrong.
Mia rounded the stacks, passing the travel and leisure section and coming to a stop in science fiction and fantasy. I stood on my tiptoes, wondering where the cookbooks were. I needed to salivate over a picture of a hamburger. Stat.
“This one?” Mia asked. “And be honest.”
I leaned over her shoulder. The book looked ancient, like some kind of medieval relic. There was no photo on the cover, just a few brown stains that may or may not have been blood, as well as fine golden letters spelling out “airy Tales.” I suspected the F had run away—and for good reason.
A shiver crept up my spine. I couldn’t figure out why, but I really wished she would put the book down.
“Looks great, Mia.” Another lie. “Let’s go.”
“Wait! I don’t even know what it’s about!”
“Well, read it and you’ll learn.” I reached for her arm and started pulling her down the aisle.
“But, but . . . Leo! Hey! You’re hurting me! Just give me one second to—”
The book fell from her hands, landing open on the floor. Mia reached down to retrieve it, but I moved to stop her, struck with a sudden desire to sprint out to the car.
The tip of Mia’s index finger touched the words on the page.
And time stopped.
People tend to overuse that expression: Time stopped. Like in movies, when the main characters lock eyes in a grocery store or whatever and then later they claim that the moment they saw each other time stopped. Or when a man falls asleep at the wheel and drifts into oncoming traffic and time stopped. Time can’t stop. It can’t speed up either. Time just . . . is. Or that’s what I thought.
But in that moment, time did stop. It shut right down. The books disappeared. The air around me lit on fire. For a moment I couldn’t see, like someone set off a flashbulb inside my pupils.
Then time did the impossible again: it sped back up. The air cleared. The heat vanished. I had this weird pins-and-needles feeling in my limbs, but Mia’s hand was still there, crammed between my fingers. And the library was . . . gone.
I shook my head, trying to clear my fuzzy thoughts. I thought about pinching myself, but that seemed a bit extreme. And yet . . . how had we ended up downtown?
The sun was setting, throwing shadows across the familiar Pittsburgh skyline. Reflections of bridges and tall buildings glinted in the river. The water churned, splashing against the hull of the— Hang on. I looked down, eyes widening at the deck of a massive vessel beneath my feet, then up, taking in the skull-and-crossbones flag flying from a wooden mast high above my head. This time, I really did pinch myself. Or I tried to. Two very important things were wrong with this picture.
One, since when was there a pirate ship on the Ohio River?
Two, since when were my fingers made of . . . wood?
I wasn’t on drugs, was I? I’d never taken drugs before. Well, actually, there was that teeny-weeny bit of weed after homecoming last year, but that barely counted. I took one hit, then puked in a bush. But this . . . this was something else.
Wooden fingers, wooden toes. I ran my tongue across my bottom lip, wincing when something pricked me. A splinter?
This was a serious LSD-level trip.
“Mia?” I squeezed her hand. “Does my face look funny to you?”
In reply, she stared at me, mouth gaping.
“We’re still in the library, right?” I asked.
When she shook her head no, my stomach plummeted.
Just as she was about to speak, a pair of hands darted out, seized her shoulders, and pulled her back.
“Leo!”
“Mia!” I tried leaping after her, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate. They got tangled up beneath me, and I crashed down, smacking my chin on the deck of the ship.
Mia’s kidnapper laughed. He was joined by several men and women wearing knee-length leather jackets and ripped trousers. Some had teeth missing; a few pulled pistols from their belts.
“The princess is found!” The captain—judging by his stupid floppy hat—threw his hands in the air.
His crew followed suit.
“Princess!” he exclaimed.
“We’re going to be rich!”
“Rich!” they echoed.
“Whoa! Hey, that’s my sister! She’s not a princess!” I tried to stand, but a stumpy man darted forward, pushed me back, and quickly handcuffed me to the ship’s mast. “Hey! Who do you think you are?”
The captain grinned, showing off two golden teeth. “My apologies. We’re often inconsiderate when treasure is involved. I’m Sal, and these”—he swept out his arms—“are the Pirates of Pittsborough!”
“You mean Pittsburgh?”
“Never heard of it. Sounds like a vile place. You’ll find that Pittsborough”—he rolled his tongue around the final syllable—“is far nicer.”
I struggled to wrap my head around his words. This place—Pittsborough—looked nearly identical to the city I called home. Same buildings, same three rivers. The only major differences were that here my body resembled a tree trunk, and Pittsburgh had the Pirates baseball team whereas Pittsborough just had . . . real pirates.
If my arms hadn’t been restrained, I would have pinched myself again.
I glanced across the deck to Mia. She was being held in place by two women, and she was shaking. She caught my eye and mouthed, “Help!”
“Look, man,” I told Sal. “You have to let her go. She’s . . .” My brain told me to say that my sister was young, innocent, only thirteen. All logical pleas. But at the last second, my mouth did a one-eighty and spit out, “She’s annoying! Mia’s a pain, and I guarantee you don’t want her any more than I do!”
Yikes. How did that happen? I mean, it was true, but I didn’t want to confess it.
“Oh dear,” said Sal. He frowned at Mia’s watery eyes. “The truth hurts, yes?”
“Mia! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—” My voice got lodged in my throat. I couldn’t speak, and somehow I knew it was because to continue speaking would be to lie.
Mia gave me a dirty look. “I can be a princess,” she told Sal defiantly.
“Princess!” the crew repeated, stomping their feet.
“Stop it,” I said. “I don’t know who you’re looking for, but Mia’s nowhere near royalty.” Crap. Bring on the word vomit. “She picks her nose at the dinner table and leaves hair balls in the shower and burps the alphabet backward. Frankly, she’s disgusting.”
I liked my sister just fine, but that was the truth. She was gross. But I never shared my opinions regarding her habits. Indifference was easiest. Indifference didn’t hurt people; it didn’t make Mia cry.
“On the contrary, she looks exactly like our princess.” Sal showed me a photograph of a girl with Mia’s blonde hair and brown eyes. “We’ll take her to the queen and she’ll decide. Toodle-loo!”
The crew piled into rowboats attached to the side of the ship. Mia followed, her head held high.
I desperately called out to her.
She ignored me.
Sal and I were the last two on board. I jiggled my wrists in their restraints behind me. “Aren’t you going to make me walk the plank?”
He smirked. Underneath the dark beard and matted mess of hair, he slightly resembled my father. “Sorry, wooden boy. If you jump, you’ll float. An easy escape.” He stroked his mustache.
Why did the evil guys always have mustaches? Hitler, my statistics teacher, this guy . . .
Sal swung his legs over the side of the ship and started his descent. “I think it would be more villainous to let you starve instead . . . although with any luck the dragons will eat you first.”
“Wait, what?” I yelled.
Sal’s honking laughter was the only reply I received.
“Hey! Your mustache belongs in a porno!” The words burst forth before I could stop them. “And your coat makes you look like a flasher. Are you wearing underwear under there?”
I tried to squash down the little voice inside of me, the one demanding the truth that no one wanted to hear. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t lie.
FOOD. I DIDN’T KNOW if my wooden body was capable of consuming it, but after being left alone for eons, it was all I could think about. I wanted it. All of it. Greasy potato chips, a footlong hot dog, a liter of pop. I wasn’t picky. By my count, it had been . . . Hmmm, let’s see . . . thirty-seven plus twenty-five, carry the one . . . a whole hour since I ate last. A man could only withstand so much torture.
I thumped the back of my head against the mast, groaning at the dull thud of wood smacking wood. I’d caught a glimpse of my reflection in a puddle on the deck ten minutes earlier. My skin was covered in dark circles, like knots left behind by tree branches. My hair had grown rough and dark, like bark on a walnut tree. My skin was lighter, resembling oak, or maybe maple. Only my eyes were unchanged. Blue as the ocean, my dad always said, but nowhere near as deep.
I shifted my weight, stretching my legs. My limbs were stiff (obviously), and moving them made me feel clumsy. Like a baby learning to walk.
Wooden legs, pirates on the river, and my sister kidnapped. Could this get any worse?
My stomach growled.
Apparently, yes.
But at least the dragons hadn’t eaten me . . . yet.
I scoffed. Dragons. What next? Dwarfs? Talking animals?
“Hi there!”
My head snapped up. I scanned the deck, finding nothing.
“Hey! Over here!”
I had to be hallucinating. I needed to eat something; that was it. Once I got some food in me, I could find Mia and—
“Are you stupid? Look down here!”
Feeling like an idiot, I obeyed. But the deck was empty.
Something slimy touched my hand. “Back here, you moron.”
The mast bumped my head as I struggled to turn around. And there, sitting on my manacled wrists, was a fat green frog.
“Hi!”
Hallucinating. Definitely hallucinating. That thing did not just talk. My arms ached as I reached blindly behind me to capture it. Talking frog or not, I’d just found a food source.
“Whoa, buddy, I’m not a stripper. Keep your hands to yourself!”
I was mad with hunger. Seeing red. I didn’t think twice when my bonds fell away. I crawled across the deck to where I’d spied a knife and a lighter left on a barrel, but my progress was halted as the ship tilted port side, throwing me onto my stomach. The barrel wobbled precariously, and the knife fell, plunging into the river. I dove for the lighter, breathing a deep sigh of relief when it landed safely in my outstretched hand. Things were looking up. Food—and something to prepare it with.
The frog’s bulbous yellow eyes blinked. “Dude, think about this. I just saved your shiny wooden ass.”
Still hallucinating. Eating would fix that. I had frog’s legs once when Mom went on a foreign-food binge. They weren’t half-bad.
The frog jumped when I lunged. My hand-eye coordination was awful, but somehow I managed to pin one webbed foot to the deck. I clicked the lighter. The frog shied away as the flame neared its back.
It exploded.
No, not like that. Not in a mess of blood and guts or anything. But it grew. In two seconds, the frog went from a slimy green amphibian to—poof!—a not-slimy, but still green, girl.
A really cute girl. With curly red hair and yellowish, hazel eyes. But her skin was still as green as a traffic light.
Then again, my skin had turned to wood, so I didn’t have room to talk. We were a match made in heaven, the green girl and I.
Until she slapped me across the face.
“That was for touching me without permission,” she said. “And for not even bothering to thank me for rescuing you.” She held out the rusty screw she’d used to sever the rope. “I’d give you another one for trying to eat me, but in the end you broke my curse so . . . thanks, I guess.”
“Your . . . curse?”
“You’re quite slow, aren’t you? I gathered that.” She gave me an artificially cheerful smile, like she thought I was a total dunce, and slowly enunciated, “Thank . . . you . . . for . . . help . . . ing . . . me. What . . . is . . . your . . . name?”
“Uh . . . Leo. You don’t need to do that. I can understand you fine.”
Green Girl shrugged and held out her hand. She wore a dirty brown smock. Her fingers and toes were webbed. “I’m Corinne. Nice to meet you, Leonard.”
I cringed upon hearing my full name.
“It’s Leo.”
“Which would be short for Leonard, wouldn’t it?”
I wanted to say no, but I found the truth pushing its way out instead.
“Yes.” But the last person, besides my mother, who called me that was Billy Simmons, in kindergarten. He made fun of my name. I made fun of his butt after pulling down his pants during recess. An even trade.
My classmates never dared to call me Leonard again.
Corinne studied me, a hint of a smile on her lips. “Then Leonard it is.”
I wanted to scream. I needed to distract myself.
“So . . . I broke your curse by nearly killing you?”
“Good guess, but no. I think fire is the key. Whether that be literal fire or the fiery passion of true love’s first kiss.” She rolled her eyes. “The wording on the curse isn’t picky, apparently.”
“Some curse.”
She laughed. “Yeah, well, the witch who cast the spell didn’t include sufficient clauses. Not that I’m complaining, but she was a total dud. She was also an unpaid intern, and you know how unreliable their work ethic can be sometimes.”
“Sure . . . ?” I wondered if getting rid of my wooden feet would be as easy as chopping down a tree or something. “Listen, Corinne, you gotta help me. My sister’s missing, I can’t tell lies, I’ve turned into a tree stump—”
“You’re cursed?�
�
And she thought I was an idiot.
“You can never be too sure,” she continued. “Being wooden isn’t an automatic guarantee, you understand. We get all kinds in Pittsborough. Hmmm . . . let’s see . . .” She knelt beside me. “Hold still a sec.”
If I was still human, my heart would have raced as she neared. I might have sweat a little. I would have curled my fingers into her hair, holding her close while my breath fanned out across her cheeks.
But I didn’t know what I was anymore. And so there was no throbbing heart. No sweaty skin. My rough wooden fingers stayed clenched in my lap as she quickly, but firmly, pressed her mouth to mine.
Nothing happened.
“Huh.” She pulled back. “Definitely no kissing clause. What did the witch get you for anyway? Vanity? Greed?”
“What?” The contrast between her bright red hair and bright green skin was awfully distracting. “No, there was no witch. I showed up like this.”
“I don’t follow.”
Anger bubbled inside me. “I’m not from here! I’m from Pittsburgh. Not borough or whatever. We have sports where I’m from, not magic.”
“Oh!” Her eyes widened in understanding. “You’re from an alternate universe! Why didn’t you say so? We’ve had your kind before. The last guy who passed through didn’t make it out before his time was up. He’s living in the Enchanted Sewickley Forest now.”
My anger turned to dread. “What do you mean ‘before his time was up’?”
“Well, if past experience is any indication, you have until midnight—or, like, three hours—to return home or else you’re stuck here. That clause is pretty much automatic, it seems.”
Corinne said it so simply. You’re stuck here. Just like: Yes, I’d love fries with that.
Three hours. I had three hours to get home.
“I can’t be stuck. My sister’s kidnapped, and Mom’s making pot roast.”
Did Mom even know we were missing? Dad was likely too busy watching baseball to notice.
“No biggie,” Corinne said. “I’ll help you find her. Where’d you last see her?”
Once Upon Now Page 12
