It’s a castle. Not a modern-looking one like Buckingham Palace, with electricity and toilets (when we visited it, the plumber was there—his truck said THE DIPLOMAT OF DRAIN AND SEWER CLEANING—and Trav and I had fun joking about what the queen had done to stop up the drains), but a real castle, the kind that comes in a set with a bunch of plastic knights and horses. It could even have a dungeon.
“Check it out.” I start toward it.
“Hey, wrong way. I want to go back.”
“Suit yourself.” I walk faster. “But I have the sandwiches.”
“Hey!” Travis starts running after me, but he’s got on flip-flops. I have sneakers, and I was on the track team at school, so I can outrun him.
The castle is farther than I thought because it’s bigger than I thought. It’s big enough to put a whole city in. I finally reach it about ten minutes later. There’s a moat around it full of brown, sludgy water.
“Oops. Can’t go in,” Trav yells from way back.
I walk around the perimeter until I see where the drawbridge is. It’s open, and there’s a castle door at the end of it. I start across.
“Are you sure you should do that? Someone might behead you.”
“Come on, Travis. What are we going to do, go crawling back to Mindy? This is the first interesting thing we’ve seen in the past three weeks. I just want to look around.”
At the door, I see two guards. Surprise—they’re sleeping. I grasp the handle and pull on it. It opens with a loud squeal. I step inside.
We’re in this huge room with three-story ceilings.
“Wow, it’s like the ballroom in Shrek 2,” Travis says.
I nod and hand him a sandwich. It lightens the load, and we’ve still got six or seven more. To be safe, I hold on to the beer.
“Hey, look.” I point at a suit of armor standing in a corner. “Let’s try it on.”
“There could be someone in it.”
I jump back. I hadn’t thought about that. I don’t think the sleeping people around here look like they date back to medieval times, but better safe than sorry. I slowly, gingerly lift the bill of the knight’s face mask.
It’s empty.
I breathe out. “Maybe this place won’t be as freaky as the rest.”
This is so cool. All the castles and towers we’ve been to, you’re either not allowed to look around inside at all, or if you are, you just get to stand behind velvet ropes and see stuff in climate-controlled boxes. This place is real, even if it is a little dusty. I start down a hallway that goes out to the side. I look in the first room. “Hey.”
“What is it? The kitchen?”
“Better.”
It’s an actual throne room like in the movies, and there are people in it, peasants maybe, waiting to see the king or something. The king isn’t there, though.
“They’re asleep like everyone else in this town,” Travis says.
“But look.”
Two guards sleep off to one side. Each has a pillow in his lap. On each pillow is a crown encrusted with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies. It’s just like the stuff we saw in the Tower of London, only it’s out where we can touch it.
“I’m trying one on,” I say.
“Are you sure you should? What if they wake up?”
“We’ve practically stomped on these people, and they haven’t woken up.”
Still, when I take the crown off its velvet pillow, I almost expect an alarm to go off or something. None does, and I place the crown on my head. “How do I look?”
Travis laughs. “Kind of stupid.”
“You’re just jealous. Try the other.”
“It’s a girl’s crown.” Still, he puts it on. We fool around, sitting on the thrones and patting the peasants on the heads. After a while, Travis says, “We should take them.”
I shake my head. I don’t like the idea of stealing anything. “Let’s look around first and see what else there is.”
We put the crowns back and go into more rooms. On the third floor, there’s a bunch of rooms with nothing in them but dresses.
“Wouldn’t you think this stuff would get eaten by rats and bugs?” Travis says.
“You see any rats and bugs? Maybe they’re sleeping, too.”
When we reach maybe the tenth room of dresses, Travis says, “This is boring. Let’s try on the armor.”
I’m about to say okay when I notice this weird little staircase going off to the side. I saw a turret when we were outside. I wonder if this goes up to it.
“Let’s go there first,” I say.
Before Travis can protest, I start upstairs. I didn’t think the staircase was very tall, but it curves around and goes higher. Then it curves again and again.
When we finally reach the top, the door is closed. I open it and find a room with nothing but a girl, sleeping on the floor.
She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.