I love Meg. Not Victoriana. Definitely not Victoriana. Meg. Meg, who tried on my shoes and encouraged me. Meg, who showed me the parade route from the top of the Empire State Building, Meg, who saved me from Sieglinde. When I picture myself being with someone, maybe for the rest of my life, it’s not a glamorous blonde in thousand-dollar shoes. It’s a skinny, dark-haired girl in an apron. All those times, in New York, in the tree, at Mallory Square, I should have kissed her.
I realize I thought Meg loved me. And yet, she kissed the frog, and he became a prince. She did say he was hot when she saw his photo. Is that love? My only hope is that he won’t like her back. Then I’ll help her get over it.
But the prince stands and offers his hand to Meg. “Ah, oui. I did not recognize. I was so dazzled by ze beauty before me zat I did not see . . .”
And Meg, who never giggles or act girly, stares up at him. “Wow, you’re so . . . tall.”
“And I have an excellent physique. I lift weights on every morning, except in ze past few weeks, when I have been a frog. But now, I start again to please my beloved.”
Meg giggles. Giggles! “Aw, that is soooooo sweet.”
“No sweeter zan you, fair lady. You have saved my life and broken ze spell. Now you will haf your reward. I will take you back to Aloria to become a princess. A queen, even. You are a lucky girl.”
Lucky girl? Ha! I wait for Meg to tell this clown where to get off. But she doesn’t. She just sits, mouth slightly open, and stares.
And, I realize, he’s hot. It’s exactly like me with Victoriana. Meg’s seen this guy on the cover of magazines they sell in the lobby. He’s inches taller than me with a build you don’t get from repairing shoes. Meg might be immune to the hotness of a guy like Ryan, but Ryan’s not a prince. A handsome prince—isn’t that what every girl wants?
“Close your mouth, Meg,” I tell her.
“What?” Her eyes never leave the prince’s face. “Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about how lucky we are. Now we can both go to Aloria, me with my sweet prince, you with your princess.”
My princess. I think of Victoriana. Can I be happy with her? Do I have a choice?
“We should leave,” I tell Meg, who’s still drooling over Prince Philippe. I have to repeat it because she doesn’t hear me the first time. Or the second.
Finally, though, she says, “But how? I don’t think the cloak works.”
I wrap what’s left of the cloak around me and quickly wish I was home. I do wish that. I wish I was anywhere but here. But she’s right. It doesn’t work. Taking us a few yards away from the cemetery was the cloak’s last-gasp act. Now, we’re stuck here with no transportation, and this miserable prince, easy prey for Sieglinde.
“Hey! Who the heck is in here?” Someone else is in the room. “Meg, look out!” I pull Meg away from the prince, in front of me, and we start to run.
“I have a gun, and I’m not afraid to use it,” the voice continues. Caroline!
“Caroline, it’s us!” I start to stand, but she turns on the light, and I dive behind a papier-mâché SpongeBob so no one can see through the window.
“You coulda knocked on the door,” she says.
“I’m sorry. We’ll get out of here right now.” Though I have no idea how.
“Wait! Wait! I was looking for you anyway. You have to tell me about the swans!”
I look at her. She’s holding something strange in her hand, like fat Hawaiian shirts. She’s out of breath, but in between pants, she says, “I have to see the swans! I believe you now.”
I start to hatch a plan. “What changed your mind?”
“The names. That was what he called them. Harry, Truman, Ernest, Jimmy, Mallory, and Margarita. Those were their names. Key West names, like my name, Caroline.”
“Who is zis fool?” the prince asks. Meg takes his hand.
Caroline ignores him. “That’s what he was calling the day I saw him at the pond. My father was devastated when they left. He made me promise something.”
Beside me, Philippe and Meg hold hands. He murmurs something that sounds like “my dear leetle mongoose.” I wish he’d turn back into a frog and hop away. But I don’t want Sieglinde to stick me back in that hole, so I say, “Could we go in the other room, maybe? I’m a little worried about being seen through the window.”
“Sure. Absolutely.”
Once we get to the living room, and Caroline has closed the curtains, she shows me what she’s been holding.
Shirts made out of flowers.
That’s what Margarita said. Their sister had to find them and make shirts out of flowers! She did it. She knew.
“After the swans left,” Caroline says, “my father went on a long journey. He took me with him. I knew he was looking for the swans, but he never found them, and he returned home in despair. That summer, he sat me down. I was only a little kid, but he told me I had to remember what he said.”
“Which was?” But I know.
“That someday I must find the swans again. Before I did, I was to make six shirts of flowers to give to them. When I did these things, the curse would break. He never told me what the curse was.
“He died soon after. I didn’t make the shirts until I was grown-up. By then, I knew my dad was nuts, that I’d never see a swan in Key West again. But I still felt like I had to make them, as a sort of tribute to him.”
“He wasn’t crazy.” I examine the shirts. They’re made of bougainvillea and hibiscus. The flowers still have a lot of color, and I remember my mother, drying flowers and hanging them upside down. “The shirts were the way to turn them human again. But they had to come from you.”
“If you believe in witches and magic,” Caroline says.
“Oh, zere are witches, milady,” Philippe interrupts, and we all turn to look at him. “Witches are where you last expect them. I, like you, did not believe, and I have been a frog zese three months, until my leetle grackle . . .” He turns to look at Meg. “My leetle crow made me human again.”
Please let me slap this guy. Please. Just once. But I think I’ve figured out a way home, and I can keep my promise too. That’s good, at least. “If you drive us back to Miami, I’ll show you where the swans are.”
Caroline looks at the prince, then at me, and shrugs. “I guess it can’t hurt, but . . .” She looks the prince up and down. I look too. He must have been riding when he got enchanted. Either that, or he’s a pretentious jerk because he has on jodhpurs and a red riding jacket and carries a crop. “Is he going to wear that, though?”
Chapter 41
The swan skins flew off, and her siblings stood before her, alive and well.
—“The Six Swans”
Two hours later, we’re in the car. The prince has, with great protest, been talked into a pair of old jeans, a T-shirt that says “I’m a drinker, not a fighter,” and some flip-flops. He’s very confused by the flip-flops. He and Meg are crammed into the backseat of Caroline’s ancient Toyota Tercel, kissing. I sit in front with Caroline, holding some of the flower shirts that wouldn’t fit in the trunk.