by Jessica Grey
“Not only that,” Alex replied, “but remember Nicholas said he didn’t see anyone on the bed when they first uncrated it. How’s that possible? Could there have been some sort of spell on you Lilia? Like hiding you?”
The princess considered that for a moment. “Yes, it would not be that hard to put an obscuring or a protection spell on me, or even on the entire bed. Although if that Nicholas person could see the bed but not me we have to assume any spell was centered on me.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Although it would have to be incredibly strong to survive intact for this long, and after such a long time it might be considerably frayed, even the original spell was quite powerful.”
“So why could Luke see through it, then? Unless we assume that once Nicholas left the room, the spell fell apart and Luke could see you. That’s awfully coincidental, but then so is Luke randomly being able to see through it when other people couldn’t. We have to assume Professor Gagnon and his people wouldn’t have sent the bed if they’d known a person was on it,” Alex reasoned.
Becca tapped her pen against her notebook. She had made a list of all the variations of the Sleeping Beauty story they had been able to find on the page across from her original notes. Alex noticed that as it got farther down the list, Becca’s pen strokes had become more bold and irritated looking. She’d even added a big question mark at the bottom of the page, circling it a few times. Alex supposed it was nice that someone was feeling as frustrated as she was. Her own notes were punctuated with comments such as “this is stupid” and “who writes this stuff?” On the other hand, that level of frustration also meant she probably couldn’t continue to count on Becca’s cool rationality quite as much.
“I feel like we’re getting nowhere with these stories,” Becca huffed. “Yeah, there are similarities. Obviously rumors of Lilia’s plight got out and inspired these fairytales, but they’ve been changed so much from what we already know is true that I’m not sure we are going to get any valuable insight from them.”
“I have to agree,” Alex shook her head, discouraged. “And unfortunately none of them have anything about magic gems, or beds, and nothing about the spell being transferrable.”
Becca tossed her pen down in frustration. “This may be the first time in my life when research has so completely failed me.”
Alex gathered up the stacks of paper that were littering her bed and shoved them into a brightly colored file folder. One of the benefits of being a total geek was having ready access to organizational office supplies.
Luke’s backpack was sitting to the side of her bed, a reminder that it wasn’t just Lilia’s life hanging in the balance of Briar Rose’s curse.
“We’ll just have to move from research to action,” Alex announced. “We have to ‘send’ Luke off to South Carolina. I might have a plan.”
~
“I can’t believe we’re doing this.” Becca stared at the front of the small, blue house in horror. “This has to be highly illegal. At this point I suppose it’s all just gravy, but still.”
The blue house was nestled about halfway up a residential street lined with Chinese elms and tiny stucco houses. Luckily, it was the middle of a workday, and not many houses had cars in the driveways. The street twisted its way up the side of a hill, before dead-ending against a rise of rocks. Alex knew that hidden behind and to the side of the white fence protecting the end of the street from the rocky face of the hill was a way up into the foothills, complete with fields that were perfect for playing catch and collecting little pieces of flint. She still had a faint scar on her left knee as a reminder of the time she had scrambled over the fence too fast and taken a brilliant fall into the rocks.
“The felonies just keep stacking up, don’t they?” she agreed cheerfully. “I would like to point out you were much more blasé about ripping off Nicholas’s credit cards than you are about a little breaking and entering.”
“That’s because he deserved it,” Becca retorted. “Luke is just sort of an innocent bystander.”
Alex raised an eyebrow.
“Fine, not entirely an innocent bystander, the kissing thing was really stupid. However, I wouldn’t think you’d be so gung-ho to commit first degree burglary.”
“I’m beginning to accept that we are likely going to have to do a lot of crap that I would not have been comfortable with this morning.” Alex dangled a key ring in front of Becca’s face. “Besides, it’s not really a crime if you have a key.”
“We don’t have a key. Your mom has a key. For emergencies,” Becca pointed out. “Although, if this doesn’t qualify as an emergency, not much would.”
“Details,” Alex said dismissively. “Luke’s truck is here so maybe his mom just hasn’t noticed he didn’t come home last night. She leaves even earlier for work than my mom does.”
“That’s Luke’s truck?” Becca asked as she checked out the dark blue Ford. “It’s nice! Why doesn’t he just drive to the museum? City buses suck.”
“Not everyone wants to pay the king’s ransom of the parking lot fee, I guess.” Alex turned to the back seat and gave an encouraging smile to Lilia who was clutching Alex’s phone in a death grip. “Do you want to practice one more time?”
Lilia nodded and pushed the call button. A second later Becca’s phone started vibrating.
“Great,” Alex praised her. “So if a car pulls into the driveway here, or even parks near you on the street within one or two houses, go ahead and call, okay?”
“Yes, I can do that,” Lilia nodded, looking nervous but determined.
Alex and Becca got out of the car. Alex, being on the passenger side, had to hop over the river that was merrily surging its way down the gutter. The way the gutter was filling up, she was beginning to be concerned for the hillside at the top of the street.
Alex sighed in relief when the key slipped into the front door lock. She hadn’t exactly called to check with her mom to confirm she still had Sherry’s key on the emergency key ring. It was good to know some things hadn’t changed in the last five or six years.
“We’re going to drip all over her floors,” Becca said mournfully as the door swung open to reveal a hardwood entry hall.
“We’ll dry up after ourselves, unless of course, Lilia calls, and then I suppose drips in the foyer are the least of our worries. I still haven’t figured out how to start the ‘Hi, your son is in an enchanted sleep’ conversation.”
“That sounds like a good start. Direct, straight to the point,” offered Becca helpfully.
Alex glared at her. “Go inside.”
Becca sighed and stepped into the hall. Alex followed, closing the front door behind them after a wave back to Lilia.
They stood silently for a few seconds, water dripping off their clothes onto the hardwood with an audible plunk plunk.
It was weird; Alex hadn’t been inside Luke’s house for years, and it was both familiar and utterly foreign at the same time.
“This way,” she finally said out loud. She led Becca down the hall, through the living room, and towards the back half of the house where the bedrooms were located. She studiously avoided looking at the family photographs on the living room walls, although she couldn’t help noticing one of Luke with his parents at graduation had already been framed and hung. Alex was pretty sure none of the million pictures her mom had snapped at graduation had even been uploaded to her computer yet from the camera.
“Alex,” Becca whispered. She was looking around nervously as if expecting someone to pop out at them any moment.
“What?” Alex whispered back.
“There’s a picture of you on the fridge.”
Alex skidded to a halt and looked toward the kitchen, which was only separated from the living room by a waist-high bar. The front of the fridge was perfectly visible from where they stood. Her face smiled back at her, along with several shots of Luke, and a couple of dark-haired teens that Alex recognized from years of birthday parties as Luke’s cousins on his dad’s side.
She hadn’t even wanted to take senior pictures, but her mom had insisted that she have something to send to the Grandparents and Aunt Stacey—and apparently Luke’s mother. The picture wasn’t the worst, but the photographer had insisted she take off her glasses, so she had ended up with a slightly unfocused look, dilated pupils staring off into the distance. Alex muttered several vicious and un-daughterly things about her mother under her breath.
“You know the worst part,” she said aloud, “is that I can’t even yell at her for it, because she’d wonder how I knew it was here.”
“It’s a pretty good picture,” Becca said diplomatically. “You look kind of sexy.”
“I look like a drug addict. Wide, crazy eyes.” Alex replied bluntly. She turned away from the offensive picture before she had a chance to give into the childish urge to grab it and take it with her, which would be about as smart as leaving a signed confession. She turned down the hall and finally came to a halt in front of Luke’s door.
The girls looked at each other. Becca nodded her encouragement, and Alex opened the bedroom door and stepped through.
The mixed feeling of unfamiliar and known was even stronger here. There were still baseball posters on the wall, but this room obviously belonged to a man and not to a little boy. For one thing, it was a heck of a lot tidier than it used to be. The bed was neatly made, covered with a navy comforter. A wooden desk had taken the place of the half-height table that had held young Luke’s Lego building station. The desk had a few framed pictures on it, a tidy stack of notebooks, but no computer. There were bookshelves on either side of the desk, one stuffed to capacity with books, the other with vinyl records. The bottom shelf of the one on the right held a turntable.
“Is that a record player?” asked Becca in awe. She looked around the room. “Hasn’t he heard of mp3 players? Or…” she paused in shock, “wait, does he not even have a computer?”
“I have no idea,” Alex said. “When he was a kid he was never even into PlayStation, or whatever those game things are called. It used to drive his cousins crazy, but he always wanted to be outside, playing baseball or whatever.”
“This is hilarious!” Becca was examining Luke’s record collection. “He’s got a bazillion records here,” she laughed. “Is Luke a Luddite?”
Alex snickered. “Luke the Luddite. That is kind of funny, but he must have typed papers for school.”
“He could use the lab at school; I assume you guys had one?” Becca opened the desk drawers one by one, looking in before sliding them back closed. “Well, if he has a laptop, we need to take it with us. But honestly, it looks like the most recent technology in this room is this turntable and I’m putting it seventies at the latest.”
Alex got down on her knees and looked under the bed. She pulled out a huge duffel bag and unzipped it. It was filled with bats, an extra glove, and some baseballs.
“I guess we should take this.” She dragged the bag toward the door. “And at least five days worth of clothing. For realism’s sake.”
Becca crossed over to the dresser as Alex swung open the closet door.
“Oh look, there’s a duffel bag in here too, we can use this for the clothes,” Alex said.
“Um, it just now occurs to me that this means I have to touch Luke’s underwear,” Becca said as she gazed down at the contents of the top dresser drawer.
Alex grabbed some shirts off hangers and stuffed them into the bag. “You can do it, I have faith in you.” She grinned. “You can tell your little brother you got your hands on the great Luke Reed’s underpants.”
Becca snorted and grabbed several pairs of boxers and tossed them at Alex. She caught most of them mid air, but had to rescue a few off the floor.
“Mature,” she scolded Becca, trying not to think about the fact that she was holding Luke’s boxers as she quickly stuffed them into the bag under the shirts.
“There are jeans in here too.” Becca grabbed several pair of jeans and socks from the other drawers as Alex added another pair of sneakers and some black Converse All Stars to her stash in the duffel bag. “Think that’s it?”
Alex looked around. “I guess so, he had the travel info with him, so we don’t need that. We’ll just grab some stuff from the bathroom.”
“Okay, I’ll go grab the bathroom items,” Becca offered. “You should probably do another check to make sure we didn’t miss anything totally obvious.”
Alex looked around the room, what would Luke take with him on a long weekend? He didn’t seem to have a laptop or mp3 player like a normal person. Even the cell phone in his backpack had been a tragically base model. Alex walked over to the bedside table and pulled open the drawer. It was filled with reading material. There was a sports magazine, a biography of some baseball player Alex had never heard of, and a thick volume with no title on the front. Alex picked it up and glanced at the spine: The Once and Future King.
“Guess he’s still into the knight in shining armor stuff,” she muttered. There was what felt like a bookmark in the book, so Alex let it fall open to the marked place. She looked down in shock. It wasn’t a bookmark. Or at least it hadn’t been originally. It was a small braided bracelet made with blue and red thread, two strands blue, one red. Alex ran her finger over the uneven braid of the friendship bracelet she’d had made for him at summer camp when they were ten, memories flooding though her. She’d been afraid he wouldn’t like it, but he’d had her tie it on his wrist and had worn it all summer.
“I got his deodorant, toothbrush, razors and stuff. I stuck my head in his parent’s room, and they’ve got a master bath, so at least know we aren’t snagging his dad’s stuff,” Becca announced as she came back into the room holding a gray zip pouch. “He even has a toiletries travel bag.” She dumped the bag into the duffel and surveyed the room. “I begin to think something is wrong with Luke; no teenage boy is this freakishly neat and organized. I have brothers, I should know.”
Alex laughed. “I wouldn’t know, only child and all that, but he’s definitely neater than I am.”
“I think we’ve got everything; it should look like he just packed up and left.” Becca hoisted the bag of clothing up over her shoulder, then indicated the duffel of baseball equipment with a nod of her head. “Think you can lift that thing?”
Alex nodded. She started to set the book down, and at the last minute changed her mind, reopened it, and removed the friendship bracelet, stuffing it into her pocket. She slid the slim sports magazine into the book as a marker and quietly set it back into the drawer. When he woke up, Luke would appreciate still having his place saved. A brief image flashed into Alex’s mind of the book sitting for months in the drawer, never to be picked up again as Luke lay helplessly trapped in the enchanted bed. She quickly banished it.
They were half way through the living room when Becca’s phone started buzzing. They both froze.
“It’s Lilia,” Becca whispered frantically as she glanced down at her phone.
Alex felt all the color drain from her face. She dropped the bag and sprinted towards the front door, peeking out the glass on the side. A dark sedan was pulling into the driveway. Alex shot a glance toward Becca’s car and couldn’t see Lilia in the back seat. She must have hit the deck when the car came into sight.
“It’s his dad!” Alex stage whispered as she caught a glimpse of the man in the driver’s seat. “We are going to have to go out the back and around the side yard.” She unzipped her hoodie, balled it up and quickly wiped up as much of their watery footprints off the hardwood as she could before running back to where Becca was standing looking sick to her stomach. “Come on!” Alex picked up the huge duffel again. Becca seemed rooted to the floor, so Alex grabbed her hand and tugged. “This way,” she hissed, pulling Becca after her through the kitchen to the back door.
Her fingers almost betrayed her. They were shaking so hard, she had to try turning the lock on the back door three times before she successfully opened it, shoved Becca out, and followed her
into the pouring rain. As she was closing the door, she heard the key turn in the front door and said a quick prayer of thanks that she had thought to lock it behind them.
She jumped off the side of the little cement porch quickly, in order to make sure she couldn’t be seen through the glass on the door. Becca was pressed up against the stucco back wall of the house.
“That way,” Alex mouthed gesturing to their left. They snuck around the side of the house, bent over to avoid any windows, and reached the gate that opened out to the front of the house. Alex undid the latch, opened the gate, and leaned out slightly, checking to make sure Luke’s dad hadn’t reopened the front door.
She gave Becca a nod and they both ran as fast as they could while carrying the bags, crossing the soggy grass and sprinting to Becca’s car. They didn’t even bother to stash the bags in the trunk, just threw them over the seat backs into the back seat as they jumped into the car.
A small “Ooof!” came from the floor in the back as one of the bags landed on Lilia. She sat up as Becca started the car and peeled away from the curb. “Oh my goodness! Did that man see you?”
“No,” Alex hurriedly pulled her seatbelt on. Her glasses had fogged up the minute she hopped into the car, but she was pretty sure, even without being able to see, that Becca was driving pretty fast. She tried uselessly to dry her glasses on her soaked shirt. All she accomplished was spreading the water around in different patterns on the lenses.
Abruptly Becca pulled the car over and stopped. She silently leaned over Alex, fished in the glove compartment and handed Alex some tissues for her glasses. The she burst out, “I have never been more freaked out in my life! Doesn’t that man have a job? It’s the middle of the day!”
Alex dried her glasses and shoved them back on, pushing her sopping bangs back so they wouldn’t drip onto the newly cleaned lenses.
