She’s awake! It really is like Snow White! Holy crap! But I’m no prince. I’m just this regular guy from America—a totally prince-free country—and she’s still awake.
She opens her mouth to scream again.
“Don’t scream.” I put my fingers over her lips, not like a kidnapper or anything. “I’m not going to hurt you. Please don’t scream.”
Not that it would matter if she did. I mean, there’s no one awake to hear her.
She pushes my hand away.
“Explain yourself! Who are you? Why were you…kissing me?”
“I’m Jack. I wasn’t kissing you, exactly. You were passed out. I was giving you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.” I lie because I don’t want her to think I was attacking her or something.
“Mouth to…what? What are you saying? What is that?”
Geez, she’s stupid. Beautiful, but dumb. Isn’t that always the way?
Unless they don’t have mouth-to-mouth where—or when—she’s from.
“Jack? Are you one of the dressmakers? What is that you are wearing?”
I look down. I have on kind of junky clothes, an Old Navy Fourth of July flag T-shirt from last summer, and jeans. The shirt’s all torn up from going through the bushes. At least I pulled the jeans on over my swim trunks at the last minute. “It’s a flag T-shirt.”
She looks confused at the word T-shirt and squints at it. “Flag? From what country?”
“The United States. America. Yo soy Americano.”
“Where is that?”
“Other side of the ocean? Head west?” Maybe she hit her head.
Her eyes light up with recognition. “Oh! You mean Virginia?”
Which is weird. Colonial Williamsburg is in Virginia. Maybe all these people who pretend they’re historical figures know each other, like some sort of club. “Yeah, sort of. Not Virginia, exactly. Florida. But they’re both in America.”
“And this is your flag? It is a custom, then, to wear it on your chest?”
It seems kind of weird when you put it that way. “Not always.”
“I see. So you have come from…?”
“Florida.”
“Then you must be here to show me dresses, for you are certainly not visiting royalty.”
I’m not sure I like the way she says “certainly,” but I let it go. The girl has definitely had a bad day. “What dresses?”
She gets a sort of faraway look on her face, then stands.
“Now I remember. Before I…fainted, I suppose, I was looking at dresses, such beautiful dresses, each the exact shade of my eyes.”
She looks at me, and I notice again what gorgeous eyes she has. I imagine what it would be like to have those eyes focused on me.
“They are gone,” she says.
“I didn’t see any dresses. I swear.”
“But you were not here, either. It was just me and one other person. A boy.” She smiles. “No. That was earlier. But then there was a lady, an old woman. It was she who brought the green dresses. She was spinning thread. She told me I could make a wish.”
She stops speaking and turns away from me, toward the window. “But why can I not remember? It just happened.”
“Maybe I can help you,” I say, kneeling beside her. “Close your eyes.”
She gives me a look, like maybe I’m trying to trick her, but she closes them. With her eyes closed, it’s like the lights have gone out, and now it’s nighttime.
“Okay,” I say. “Now, try to picture it. You’re looking at the pretty dresses, and there’s an old woman there. What does she look like?”
“I could tell she was once beautiful. She had black eyes that glittered like onyx.”
“She said you could have a wish, and then what?”
She places her hand over her eyes. “Oh, I have a headache.”
“What’s the next thing you remember?”
She breathes in deeply, then sighs. Finally, she says, “A dream. It must be, for I was kissing a prince, my prince. He was telling me how beautiful I was.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“No! I have no friends, certainly none who are boys. I have been nowhere, met no one.” She shakes her head. “It was but a dream. Then I opened my eyes, and you were kissing me.” She looks down a moment, examining something on her skirt. It looks like a spot of blood.
And suddenly, her eyes open fully, wider and greener than before.
“Oh, my!”
“What?” I back away. “What is it?”
“A kiss! You say I was sleeping, and you happened upon me?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes. And did you think I was quite beautiful?” I grimace, and she says, “Oh, never mind. Of course you did. Everyone agrees that I am utterly stunning.”
“Modest, too.”
She ignores me. “So you saw me, and I was so beautiful that you immediately fell in love with me.”
This girl’s pretty full of herself, but it’s not far from the truth. “Well, not—”
“You fell in love with me, and you leaned over and kissed me. Love’s first kiss. And when you kissed me, I woke immediately. Is that true?”
“Yeah.”
And suddenly, she begins to cry. “Oh, no. Oh, no. I am a fool. Old pudding-faced Lady Brooke was right. I am a stupid girl and ought never have been trusted for even a minute on my own.”
“What are you talking about?” I want to put my arm around her or something, but I get the feeling that wouldn’t be a good idea.
“The curse, stupid!”
“Now I’m stupid? What happened to you being stupid, and what curse?”
“The curse. The curse. Everyone knows about Malvolia’s curse. Oh, my father will kill me. They will probably lock me up in a convent!” She begins to sob again, and then seeing that I am still not with the program, she says, “Before her sixteenth birthday, the princess shall prick her finger on a spindle and die.”
“But you’re not dead.”
“No. The fairy Flavia changed it so I would merely sleep. The whole kingdom would sleep, to wake only when I was wakened by true love’s first kiss.”
“Uh-huh.” She’s nuts.
“The old lady was Malvolia, do you not see? She came with the dresses, gained my trust. She had probably been watching me all my life. She brought with her a spindle. She knew I would make a wish, and when I did…”
“You’re saying she stabbed you with that spindle thing?”
“Exactly. It is the curse. I have made the curse come true.”
And she starts blubbering harder.
“Hey, calm down,” I say. “It’s going to be okay.”
Now she stands and begins pacing. “They warned me so many times. It is practically the only subject upon which I conversed with my parents. It was their worst fear, and it has come true.”
I try to think of what my parents’ worst fear is—me not getting into college, maybe. Or having to go to one of those community colleges that’s near a good school, so they could just tell everyone “Jack went to Boston” or whatever. They’d die.
But I say, “Exactly. It’s over. You went to sleep, and you’re awake now because of me and my magical kiss. Your parents will probably be so happy you’re okay that they won’t even be mad.”
“Do you really think that?”
“Sure. It’s like this one time I totaled my car. My mom was driving by, and she saw the wreck. She was so happy I wasn’t dead that she didn’t even…” I stop. The princess is staring at me like I’m speaking in tongues. “Anyway, I’m sure they’ll just be okay with it. You’re their little princess, right?”
She’s stopped crying, and now she nods. “Perhaps you are right.”
“I know I am.”
“What is the date? I need to know how long I have slept.”
I check my watch’s date feature. “It’s June twenty-third.”
“Oh, that is not so bad then. A month. I missed my birthday party, which is a shame, and they will need to explain to the guests, but still…”
Her eyes fall on my watch. “What is that?”
“A watch.”
She picks up my wrist, examines it, then holds it to her ear. “A clock? On your wrist? How strange.” She pulls back from me and examines my clothes, the flag T-shirt.
“What is that?” She points to the numbers on the shirt.
“The year. Old Navy puts the year on all their flag T-shirts. It’s sort of a racket, I guess—you have to buy a new one every year.”
“That…is…the…year?” She looks sort of sick. Her face is suddenly almost the same color green as her eyes.
“Well, I got it last year. We always get them for when we go watch fireworks. But I probably won’t get one this year, come to think of it, because—”
“That is the year? The year!”
“Well, last year.”
She begins to shake. “Oh, my…oh, no.” She crumples back onto the floor, as she was when I first saw her. “It cannot be true. It cannot.”
I kneel beside her. “What’s the matter now? I thought you were fine.”
She looks at me, then starts screaming. “Fine? Fine? I have been asleep nearly three hundred years!”
Outside on the stairs, I hear a commotion, people running, then yelling.
“Stop! Thief!”
Travis appears at the door. “Jack, we gotta go. They’re all awake, and they’re after me for stealing the crown!”