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.
Chapter 32
I land outside in case Ranger Wendell is still there. But everything’s dark, still. It’s almost too perfect. I hear voices, people singing campfire songs far away. And crickets.
And Meg’s voice.
“You were going to marry Victoriana?” She pulls away. Against the night, I can see her silhouette. Even in the darkness, her shoulders look angry.
“I can explain.”
“Oh, can you?” The shadow’s hands move to her hips. “Go ahead.”