Cloaked (14 page)

Chapter 30

When we get a suitable distance away, Meg throws her arms around me. “Oh, Johnny, I’m sorry I got you into that. I had no idea . . .”

“It’s okay. I’m not killing any giants.”

She laughs. “I sort of figured you had a plan. What is it?”

“We disappear for the day, pretend we’re staking it all out, then come back at night and steal the frog.”

“Disappear? Where to?”

I think about it. “We should set up the tent, to make it look good. Then maybe we could go back to the hotel and get you some decent shoes, in case we need to make a quick getaway.”

She looks down at her flip-flops. “I messed you up, didn’t I? You’d have just grabbed the frog and left if it hadn’t been for me. Are you sure you want me along?”

“Sure. You already saved my life once. Besides, I like having you around.”

“You do?” She looks surprised.

“Of course. You’re my best friend.”

“Oh.” She looks away quickly and starts walking faster. “Oh, of course.”

We walk in silence. I wonder if there really could be giants. I have no reason to believe there aren’t. But if there are, I want to avoid them. “Let’s check this place out.”

We reach a tall tree. Meg nudges me. “Maybe we should use the cloak to get up.”

“No. This one’s not tall enough.”

“It’s pretty tall. How do you know?”

“A person’s foot’s about fifteen percent of his height. So a five-foot-tall woman has about a nine-inch foot. Those footprints were about one and a half feet long, judging from the way they looked next to the Key deer. So the giants were roughly ten feet tall. We need a tree twice as tall as that, so they won’t see us.”

“Wow, that’s really smart.”

I feel myself flush and look to see if she’s joking. No one ever says I’m smart. Usually, the adjectives people come up with are words like “nice,” “reliable,” or “sweet,” words you’d use to describe a yellow Lab or an economy car. Even Victoriana called me a good boy. But Meg doesn’t seem to be goofing. Okay, being called smart isn’t like being called hot, but it’s way better than reliable.

So I say, “Thanks.”

We walk until we find a taller tree. Then, we wish ourselves into it. The wind’s picked up, and the sun is higher. It burns my eyes, so I shield them, squinting off into the distance. When I do, I see something totally unthinkable.

“Look,” I whisper.

“I see it.” But when I glance at her, she’s facing the opposite direction.

I pull out Wendell’s binoculars. A giant. Two giants because what Meg’s looking at is the other one. I see them through the viewfinder, hunting through the brush.

“No way I’m spending the night out here,” I say.

“Nuh-uh,” Meg agrees.

But we decide to pretend we’re going to, to satisfy Wendell. So I say, “We’d better pitch the tent before they get closer. You stay here in the tree. If you call, I’ll come up with the cloak.”

“Shouldn’t I help?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Ummm . . .” I shake my head. I was going to say I didn’t want her to put herself in danger. But Meg won’t like that. She’s not some girly girl like Victoriana, who wants a guy to protect her. So I say, “We need a lookout.”

“Okay, but hurry.”

I wish myself down and start to pitch the tent. Finally, I finish, and I’m staking it when I hear Meg. “Johnny!”

Her voice is hoarse, like she’s been yelling for a while. She gestures frantically to her left. The giant is close enough that I can see the dark hair covering much of his body, his only clothing the hide of an enormous animal tied at the waist. His face is dirty and stained with deer’s blood. I think of the line in “Jack and the Beanstalk”: “I’ll grind your bones to make my bread.” He could easily, though he seems like more of a meat eater than a carb guy. He steps toward me. Stay calm. We had a plan. Get the cloak. But when I reach for it, it’s not there. I look around and finally spot it a few feet away. Now the other giant’s advancing. I know he sees me because there’s a gleam in his eye. I think he has only one—the other is gouged out and sealed shut.

No time to think. I grab at the cloak, but it’s caught on a branch. The one-eyed giant is walking faster now. I smell a powerful nasty odor, like rotten eggs, skunk spray, and human feces. The stench alone would kill a deer. The ground shakes. I tug at the cloak. It holds fast. Above me, Meg’s yelling, “I’m coming down! I’ll distract him!”

“No!” The scream rips at me as I pull. Footsteps boom. I tug harder.
Please, please don’t come down, Meg.
The giant is so close I can see it has full lips the color and texture of a dog’s paw pad, and very sharp teeth. I yank the cloak. It gives way with a rip just as the closer giant reaches toward me. I wrap the tattered fabric around my shoulders. “I wish I was in the tree with Meg.”

And then, I’m beside her. She didn’t come down.

“You’re safe!” she says, and I can see she’s been crying. But the giants have seen us. The one-eyed giant has reached the tree. He pushes it, making it swing harder than any wind. The smell is so overpowering that even when I breathe through my mouth, I can taste it. I lose my grip on Meg and grab the branch. The giant butts his head against the tree.

Now the other giant’s there too. We’re doomed. I try to spread the cloak around both of us, but a gust of wind takes it off Meg’s shoulders.

“Just wish yourself away,” Meg says. “At least one of us should live.”

“Not an option.”

The second giant rams the tree. I know any second, they’ll start acting together, shaking it back and forth. One might even crawl on the other’s back and climb toward us.

But something else happens. The one-eyed giant sees the other giant. He lets out a roar and runs toward him. They both hit the tree, and it sways back and forth. By then, they’re on the ground, fighting each other like two kids tussling over the last cookie. They roll away from the tree, and in that second, I’m able to wrap the tiniest scrap of cloak around both our shoulders. Over the giants’ roars, I wish to be the first place I can think of.

And then, I’m there.

Chapter 31

“Where are we?” Meg looks around. “I feel like I’ve been here, but . . .”

I grab the cloak from around our shoulders and start to fold it before anyone sees it. It smells much better here. “We’re in Penn Station.”

“Penn Station?”

“New York City? When you went last year, you told me people were all over this place like PETA members at a fur convention, so I figured it might be a place where they wouldn’t notice two kids crash-landing dressed as the Phantom of the Opera.”

And truly, they don’t notice. A professor type in a tan jacket seems to stare right at us, then turns and buries his face in a newspaper. A gangsta-looking guy does a double take, then turns away, saying into his cell phone, “I gotta call you back. I don’t feel so good,” and rubs his eyes. A guy toting a bass knocks into me. I start to say, “Excuse me,” but he yells at me in another language.

I turn to Meg. “Guess I was right. We need to kill some time before tonight. So maybe we should see the sights. Like, go to the Statue of Liberty. My great-grandparents came in through Ellis Island.”

Meg accepts this pretty readily. “Should we take the subway or use the cloak?”

In an instant, we’re in the statue’s torch. It’s not open to the public, so it’s empty, and we stare down. From the torch, we can see the top of the statue’s crown, the bridge of her nose, and down her pretty green size-two-thousand dress to the star of the pedestal.

“Look,” I say to Meg. “The book in her hand has a date on it. July, then some Roman numerals . . .” I squint to see them.

“July fourth, seventeen seventy-six,” Meg says. “The date of the Declaration of Independence.”

A moment later, she points at the bay. “You can see the shadows of the clouds. They look like continents.”

I grip the railing and lean down. Meg’s right. They do look like continents.

“We were in Europe today,” I say. “And now we’re in New York. How surreal is that?”

“Real surreal,” she agrees.

I could be with Victoriana, traveling with her and seeing these things. She’s probably seen it all, done it all, been everywhere.

Meg grabs my hand. “This is so exciting, Johnny. Thank you for letting me come.”

I feel suddenly dizzy at the height. But I grip Meg’s hand, and she squeezes back. I feel better. “I’m glad you’re here.” And I am.

After we’ve had our fill, we switch to the pedestal. As in the train station, people see us when we land, but as before, they sort of don’t. A kid crashes into us. “Hey, I didn’t see you.” His mother yells at him to be careful, completely oblivious.

I wonder if people at home would react the same way, if I would. Have I ever seen anything strange and unusual—and magical—but just ignored it because I didn’t believe what my eyes were telling me? I’ve been hearing stories about giants and yeti and Sasquatch all my life, but who believed them? Maybe it’s all real—the Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, everything. Maybe the crazy people are the only ones who know the truth. If human beings can transform into swans, what
can’t
happen?

“Are you glad you know that magic is real?” Meg says, reading my thoughts.

“I am,” I say, “even though people would think I was on drugs if I told them.”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t, even if I wasn’t here.” And I know it’s true. She’d believe me because she’s my best friend.

After we look up my great-grandparents on the monument at the Ellis Island Museum, we go to the Museum of Natural History and find the dinosaurs. Then, it’s off to the Central Park Zoo.

It’s there that Meg asks me about the earphones. “I didn’t know you had those things. Can you talk to this guy?” She points to the polar bear in his environment.

“No.” I hesitate. “I mean, maybe. It only works on animals who used to be human.”

“Are there a lot of those?”

“More than you’d think.” I tell her about the swans in the lobby, the rat at the Port of Miami, and the fox.

“No way. The swans? Seriously?”

“Totally serious.”

She takes the earbuds from me and leans forward. “Hey! Hellooo! Mr. Bear?”

The bear swims slowly around, and Meg adds, “Maybe after this is over, we’ll go to the North Pole together. We should see the bears while they’re still there.”

I nod, even though I know it won’t happen. I’ll be with Victoriana.

We wander around awhile longer, looking at animals, trying to talk to them (none talk back), and eating zoo food until finally they announce they’re closing.

I look at my watch. Six. “There’s still time. I don’t want to go back too early.”

“I hear New York pizza’s good. And then, maybe the top of the Empire State Building.”

An hour later, we’re there. We don’t use the cloak. I wanted to feel what it’s like to be in the elevator, zooming up 102 floors. We can see Central Park on one side, all the way to New Jersey on the other.

Meg points at something down below. “Look at that!”

“What?” The street in one place is painted white.

“That’s where the Thanksgiving Day Parade is.”

“Wow. From up here, it looks even smaller than on TV.”

Meg climbs onto one of the telescope things. “It’s like being a bird.” She spreads her arms and stands straight, the waning sun behind her, wind ruffling her short hair. She looks wild and suddenly beautiful, not like the girl I’m used to. She rotates so she’s facing the street.

I grab her hand. “Watch out!”

“For what?” She gestures at the chain-link fence that comes up over the wall, to keep anyone from jumping, I guess. “It’s completely safe.”

“You could trip.”

She laughs. “Only if I was a klutz, or drunk.” She holds out her other hand, the one I’m not already holding. “Come on up. You can see better.”

I do, and I can, far above the wall. I wobble a bit, and Meg steadies me, her hand on my waist. It reminds me of when we played together as kids, all the times she was more mature, more of a girl. I straighten up, and for a second, we are nose to nose, with only the wind between us. I can feel my heartbeat, or maybe it’s Meg’s.

“Do you remember,” Meg says, “when I asked you to take me to the eighth-grade dance to make Ben Abercrombie jealous?”

I look down. The people and cars below are so small, like toys. “Sure.”

“You know, Ben asked me to that dance.”

I look at her, and her short hair flutters around her face like brown butterflies. “Huh?”

“He asked me, but I said no because I was going with you.”

I laugh. “You never told me that. I’d have understood if you’d canceled on me to go with your dream guy. You were so hot for him.”

“No, you don’t get it. Ben asked me
before
I asked you. I told him I couldn’t go with him because I was going with you.”

I shake my head. “Okay, I’m confused. So you used me as an excuse to get out of going with him?”

“No.” She drops my hand and moves away. “Never mind. It was stupid.”

I remember that dance, three years ago. Meg got her hair done at the hotel salon, and she wore a black lace dress that made her look grown-up and glamorous. Ben Abercrombie glared at us the whole night. I’d congratulated Meg on making him stew. But there was one moment on the dance floor when I was holding her, and I forgot I was there to make Ben jealous. I’d wanted to kiss her.

I look at Meg and understand. I could have. And it would all have changed.

She steps down. “We need to get going.”

“No, wait.”

The sun is setting, and down below, the lights of Manhattan, which are always up, seem brighter against the gray semidusk. From here, you can only hear the horns and the people on the ground if you really concentrate, and I don’t. I don’t want to think about anything but where I am, who I’m with. I don’t know whether it’s that I don’t want to leave, or that I want to stay, but I grab Meg’s elbow, pull her toward me, and help her up. She leans against me, head against my shoulders, and in that second, I know, against the lights and the bright and the heat and the gray, I really want to kiss her.

No, I don’t. Me? Kiss Meg? I can’t. I want lots of things. Money. Adventure. Victoriana—a princess, for God’s sake. I want more than I’ve always had.

Don’t I?

And yet, Meg’s in my arms, like she was that night at the dance, and for more than an instant, I think
this
is
what I want.

I lean closer. “I wish we could stay here.”

“Why can’t we?” Meg leans closer too.

“Excuse me? Are you using that?” Below us, a man and a little girl gaze up at us. “My kid wants to see. Can you find someplace else to make out?”

“Oh, sure.” I don’t even correct him about the making-out part. But, in that second, I’m glad for the interruption. Kissing Meg would have been a big mistake. It would change everything, things I don’t want to change.

I step down and hold out my hand to her. “You’re right. We should go.”

All the way down two elevators, Meg doesn’t look at me. Is she mad at me because I almost kissed her? Or is she mad at me because I didn’t? In any case, I violated some boundary between us, so now I have to earn back her trust.

So when we reach the bottom, I say, “Sorry.”

“For what?” She still doesn’t look at me.

“For ki . . . your friendship means a lot to me, Meg. More than almost anything. I wouldn’t want to do anything to mess us up.”

She looks down at the marble floor, tracing the alternating marble squares with her toe.

Finally, she sighs. “No, me neither.”

“Do you want to go now?” I don’t want to leave yet, not with her mad at me. And also, I want today, this day, to last longer. Victoriana’s beautiful, and rich, and I promised her I’d find her brother, that I’d marry her. But once I do, it will never be the same, being with Meg again like this, being a kid. Am I making a huge mistake? I wanted my life to change, but now that I’m on the verge of it, I’m frightened.

As long as I stay here, I don’t have to decide.

So when Meg says, “Let’s walk a little,” I’m happy to.

We walk toward Times Square because that’s where the lights and horns and taxis and people are all converging. Darkness has fallen now, but it’s hard to tell because it’s so bright with red and pink and green and gold, all combining to make the sky look still blue, or maybe it’s because the buildings are so high you can’t see the sky anyway. We nudge past a crowd looking at a mostly naked guy in a cowboy hat playing a guitar. Horns honk. Traffic whooshes.

Above us are lit-up signs and letters scrolling a news headline.

And suddenly, they say something I can’t ignore.

PLAYGIRL PRINCESS TO MARRY ZALKENBOURGIAN HEIR

Victoriana! She’s marrying Wolfgang! The cat torturer.

She’s marrying him. But why? I did all this work, stayed in the bed-and-breakfast, got sick, stole a bird, all so she wouldn’t marry him.

“She said she was marrying me,” I say before I remember Meg’s there.

“What?”

“Nothing. We need to go.”

Then she sees the scrolling news too, and I see her face registering that she understood what I said. “Marry you?”

“We’ve got to go.” Before she can protest, I wrap the cloak around us. Compared to the Naked Cowboy, we might as well be invisible.

And then, in a second, we’re back at the park in Florida.