by Kristy Tate
Kyle and Robyn began talking at the same time. They looked at each other and laughed. They’re nervous, Petra thought. She imagined an electrical current running between them. They talked too fast and laughed too much; she barely understood them.
Pushing herself up on the bed, Petra saw her reflection in the window. With her singed hair, chapped, red skin, and the swollen lips, she looked like someone else. She was ugly. She was ugly and she didn’t care.
Zoe plopped the pony at the foot of the hospital bed. “This is supposed to be your stallion, and Kyle’s supposedly your knight in shining armor.”
Robyn rolled her eyes and pushed Zoe into the chair where moments earlier Doctor Graham had sat. “Zoe! You’re totally ruining it!”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “As if she cares about prom. Look at her! She can barely sit, let alone dance!”
Petra laughed and it sounded wheezy and it hurt, but she couldn’t help it.
Kyle stepped in front of Zoe, and cleared his throat. He shifted from foot to foot, and a pink stain flushed his cheeks. He began.
“When the moon first shines pale in evening’s light,
At the senior prom we’ll discover delight --”
“Did you write that?” Petra interrupted.
“Wait, there’s more,” Robyn said, waving her hands and shushing her.
Kyle looked uncomfortable but started again.
“Your beauty --”
“Please stop!” Petra held up her hand. Robyn pinched her lips closed and looked cross. Petra smiled and said, “Thanks, Robyn, Kyle, that was great. You guys are great, but I really, really need to speak to Zoe.”
“Zoe?” Robyn and Kyle asked simultaneously.
Petra smiled at Kyle and then with a hand that felt like it weighed a hundred pounds she moved Kyle so that she could see Zoe. “Zoe, I’m so incredibly sorry I lost you at the fair. I worried and worried. I’m so glad you are safe.” She took a deep breath. “And you’re right. I don’t want to go to prom.” She turned to Kyle. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to go. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.”
Zoe beamed and shot Robyn and Kyle I-told-you-so looks.
Petra studied Robyn and Kyle. They looked so much like Garret and Anne, she decided that as soon as possible she’d learn about their ancestry to see if they were distantly related. Oh, after she found out if Anne and Garret Falstaff had even existed anywhere other than in her imagination.
A flash of pain and loss zipped through her that had nothing to do her injuries. She settled against her pillows. “I think that you two should go to the prom together,” Petra said.
Robyn’s mouth dropped open, and Kyle flushed red and looked out the window.
“But I’m going with Zack Pepper!” Robyn said.
Petra watched her friend, her tele-buddy. They’d always prided themselves on being able to read each other’s thoughts. How had she been so clueless? How could anyone know what someone else thinks?
Petra realized she’d probably been projecting what she wanted Robyn to think, which, when she thought about it, really wasn’t very nice because it made Robyn less of her own person. “Do you want to go with Zack?” Petra asked, even though she was pretty sure she knew the answer.
Robyn looked at her shoes.
“You guys should be together,” Petra said, her gaze going from Robyn to Kyle.
“What?” Kyle said at the same time Robyn said, “You don’t mean that!”
Laurel pushed through the door, carrying an enormous basket of fruit. She also had Trader Joe’s grocery bags tucked under each arm, most likely filled with whole grain crackers, cartons of hummus, and loaves of gluten-free bread. Petra knew Laurel would turn up her pointy nose at hospital food. Petra smiled watching her tiny stepmother wrangle the groceries. Everyone shows love in their own way.
“You should help her,” Petra said to Kyle.
“Robyn doesn’t need my help.” Kyle looked unhappy.
“Not Robyn.” Petra shook her head. “Help Laurel. With the groceries.”
Laurel sighed a thank you as Kyle took the basket and set it on the wide window ledge. Laurel settled the Trader Joe’s bags on the counter. “Now, you probably won’t need all of this since hopefully.” She crossed her fingers, “Your dad will get his way and have you out of here tomorrow, but you never know.”
Laurel rummaged through a bag and pulled out a bottle of Vitamin E. “To facilitate healing,” she said, holding it up. Then she returned to her bags, still talking. “I talked to the nurse about what they’ve been feeding you through that IV, and it’s a wonder you’re still alive. And do you know what they were going to give you tonight? Clear chicken broth! Nothing but flavored salt water!” The thought of all that sodium made her shudder.
Petra caught Kyle and Robyn’s glances and smiled. “You guys should go before she tries to tofu you.”
“Are you sure?” Kyle asked, and Petra knew the question was loaded.
“Yeah.”
Robyn turned to Kyle. “Is she breaking up with you?”
“I’m right here, guys,” Petra said.
“I think so,” Kyle said, not looking hurt but confused.
“Why are you doing this? I don’t think you’re thinking straight,” Robyn said, turning to her and taking her hand.
“I’m still me. I’m still your best friend. Only now I’m Kyle’s friend, too.” She swallowed. “You know, I don’t think I was before and I should have been.”
Kyle looked at Robyn and shrugged. He turned to Petra. “I always thought of you as my friend.” He flushed. “And more, of course.”
“I just want the friend part, now,” Petra said. “I can’t handle any more. I’m sorry if that hurts you…but I don’t think it does.”
Kyle bit his lip, and Robyn put her hand on his arm.
Laurel, oblivious as usual, held up a carton. “I bought this Greek yogurt. It’ll help your GI tract, which is really important because after so many days in bed you must be constipated.”
“Seriously,” Petra told her friends. “You should go. This might get ugly.”
“Oh, it’s already ugly,” Zoe said, touching Petra’s foot that had escaped the bed sheet.
Petra hadn’t noticed that her feet were wrapped in bandages. One black and charred-looking toenail had torn through. She stared at the foot as if it belonged to someone else. An alien perhaps.
“Your feet are the worst.” Laurel took a seat on a chair beside Petra’s bed.
“No dancing.” Zoe gave Robyn and Kyle now-get-out-of- here-looks.
“Well, I guess we’ll go then,” Kyle said, shuffling.
“See you soon,” Robyn said, stooping to kiss Petra.
Laurel stopped her, shaking her head. “Infection,” she warned.
Robyn blew a kiss. Kyle picked up Petra’s hand and kissed the tip of her pinky finger. She waited for the rush she felt with Emory’s touch but felt nothing other than overwhelming relief when they walked out. In the hall, Robyn reached out and took Kyle’s hand.
Petra closed her eyes and lay against the pillows, thinking about what she’d do when she got home, when she was well. She opened her eyes and saw her little sister watching her intently. “I want to know everything that happened to you, Zoe. How did you get home from the fair? What was the fire like? How did it start?” Petra had heard the story from doctors, nurses and her parents, but she wanted to hear her sister’s version.
Zoe leaned forward, her elbows propped on her knees. “Well, the whole ground shook and the animals went absolutely crazy. People were screaming and running around. The horses were screaming too. Chickens and goats from the petting zoo escaped. There was this pig – E-nor-mous – just running loose, well, almost all the animals were loose. And the Horse Guy, remember the Horse Guy?”
Emory, images of him floated through her. A figment of my imagination, she thought, remembering Doctor Graham. A random firing of neutrons, whatever that means.
“He save
d me. He took me home.”
“Wait, what?”
“Yeah. They didn’t want to let him through the guard gate, so we just rode around and JUMPED THE FENCE!”
“You jumped the fence? The fence to Bear Ranch?” Eight feet high, wrought iron, topped with spikes and monitored by security cameras.
“On his horse!” Zoe bounced on her chair. “Remember his horse!”
“Zoe, you know better than to go with a stranger,” Petra said, sounding like Laurel and not caring.
Zoe put her hands on her hips. “What was I supposed to do? The funnel cake stand tipped over. The glass blowers oven literally exploded. Everything was on fire. And no one could find you.”
Petra looked away, fighting back a wave of guilt. The guilt for leaving Zoe alone on a stump while she waited for Kyle made her sick.
Laurel pushed to the bed waving a glass of a green liquid. “How are you feeling?”
Petra shook her head, blinking back hot tears. “Zoe, I’m so, so, so sorry I lost you that day.”
“You already said that.” Zoe looked confused. After an awkward moment she shrugged. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” Petra said, trying to stop her tears. “It’ll never happen again. I promise.”
“If you hadn’t gotten lost, I wouldn’t have gotten to jump the fence.”
And I wouldn’t have met Emory. Sobs welled in Petra’s chest.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Once upon a time and happily ever after are stock phrases common in fairy tales, but what is the definition of “time” and “ever after?” How does time work? Is it linear, or does it fold and overlap like a Chinese fan? How can you have an after if the ever doesn’t exist?
—Petra’s notes
Petra spent the next two weeks in bed looking at the wallpaper and reading books from the library and researching on her laptop. Frosty and Zoe kept her company. Frosty wanted to walk. Zoe wanted to go to the stables. Petra could do neither.
She made lists of books for Laurel to pick up, anything on time travel and anything on the England’s 17th century. Laurel happily obliged, and books grew like small teetering towers on Petra’s bed.
One morning Petra’s dad stuck his head in her room to deliver a lecture on a pursuit in history or literature versus the practicality of a business degree. “In today’s world, a woman needs to be able to stand on her own financial feet. An intellect like yours shouldn’t be wasted on yesterdays’ mistakes and—”
“I’m not picking out a career, Dad,” she said, not looking at him, her nose buried between the cover of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. Beside her, her laptop had the flickering image of King James.
“Well then, what are you doing?” he asked, hanging in the doorway and waving at the books.
“I’m just…” She didn’t know how to explain it. “Other kids play video games. Laurel reads romances. Zoe rides horses. This is how I waste time. You should be happy I’m not reading gossip magazines.”
Her dad didn’t look happy or convinced, but Petra had at least another week before she could go back to school, so he said goodbye, shrugged and walked away with his shoulders set, as if he bore the world’s financial weight.
Petra put down her book and pulled her laptop closer. There were so many things that she hadn’t known; how had she imagined them? Hampton Court was a real place, a huge place. And hell hounds: there were innumerable accounts of hell hounds, including the English legend of Black Shuck. The chained oak, gypsy hunts, ecclesiastical examiners, witch prickers. They had all once existed beyond her imagination. She hadn’t known about a controversy surrounding the publication of the King James Bible, so how had she become involved?
At a conference held in 1604 in Hampton Court Palace, a few miles from London, King James I appointed a committee to make a new translation of the Bible. The result, published in 1611, drew heavily on the works of Tyndale and Coverdale, martyrs who had dedicated and sacrificed their lives to bring the word of God to mankind. It is impossible to overestimate its beauty, power and influence. As Galileo's work opened the door allowing science to freely discover God's universe, so did The King James Bible set mankind free to discover God and man's place in His universe. Science and the Bible coexisted in relative comfort alongside each other for the next 200 years.
Two hundred years. She’d read in one of her books that the original translation of “once upon a time” was two hundred years. Curious, she typed ‘once upon a time’ on her computer’s search.
“Once upon a time" is a stock phrase that has been used in some form since at least 1380 (according to the Oxford English Dictionary) in storytelling in the English language, and seems to have become a widely accepted convention for opening oral narratives by around 1600.
The phrase also is frequently used in oral storytelling such as retellings of myths, fables, and folklore. These stories often end with "... and they all lived happily ever after", or, originally, "happily until their deaths".
But what if no one dies? Can there be a happily ever after? Petra lay back against her pillows, suddenly tired of research, tired even of the wallpaper.
Zoe popped her head in. “Can you take me to the stables?”
Petra opened one eye. Zoe had on her riding boots and breeches. She carried a helmet under one arm and a whip in her hand. Petra smiled, wondering if Zoe would turn the whip on her if she said no. “Why aren’t you in school?” she asked.
Zoe rolled her eyes. “It’s Saturday, dummy.”
“Hmm.” She’d lost all sense of time since she’d been home. The days and nights melded into each other, and she realized with a start that today must be the prom. She wondered if Robyn was at that moment having her nails done, or her hair, or her make-up. She wondered in a detached other-worldly way where her friends had bought their dresses, where they were going to dinner, who’d they’d hired to take their pictures. It seemed amazing that just a few weeks earlier it’d all seemed so important to her. The clothes, the hair, who was seen with whom. She’d been a part of it. She’d lived in the walking, talking fashion drama.
Soon she’d have to go back to school and make up all the work she’d missed. She didn’t care. She supposed she’d have to go to summer school and maybe take classes at the junior college. She’d overheard her parents arguing over hiring a tutor, yet she still didn’t care. She’d get into a good university eventually. If that was something she still wanted.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know what, or who, she wanted. She just didn’t know how to get him.
“Stables?” Zoe flicked the whip in her direction.
Petra bit her lip. “You know I can’t risk infection.”
Zoe sighed. “You didn’t use to be all obey-the-rules-or-hell-breaks-loose.”
Bored to distraction and tempted, Petra sat up and moved the laptop off her bed. Zoe broke into a happy jig when Petra swung her legs from between the bed sheets. Frosty, who’d been lying nearby, jumped up, as if something momentous was about to happen and he didn’t want to get left behind.
Zoe stopped dancing and frowned. “I’ll wait for you to shower.”
Petra touched her frizzled hair. “Shower?”
“You know, stand under a stream of water so that you don’t smell like poop.”
“I don’t smell like poop!”
Zoe raised her eyebrows. Frosty sat and cocked his head, as if he agreed with Zoe.
“Fine.” Petra limped toward the bathroom. Frosty followed, nails clicking on the tile. “Where’s Laurel and Hardy?” Petra asked over her shoulder.
“They’ve gone to the car show, so we’ve got loads of time.”
Loads of time. Two hundred years. Once upon a time. There’s no such thing as happily ever after. Petra locked the bathroom door and turned on the shower full blast.
A few minutes later she found Zoe watching TV in the family room. Zoe clicked off the TV and looked her up and down. “Is that what you’re going to wear?”
Petra
looked at her black toenails sticking out of her flip flops, the jeans that hung on her hip bones like a saggy gray flag below her Blue Man Group t-shirt. “What?”
“At least let me do your hair.” Zoe grabbed a hairbrush and elastic from off the table as if she’d been expecting to do Petra’s hair.
“Zoe, why am I getting dressed up to watch you ride horses?”
“It’s not like you’re getting an up-do. I’m just combing it. For once.” Zoe twisted an elastic band around Petra’s hair.
Looking in the glass doors at her scrubbed clean face and pulled-back hair, Petra decided she looked better than she had since the accident. Frosty even wagged his tail at her.
“You’ll do,” Zoe said, gathering her whip and helmet.
***
“This is as far as I go,” Petra said, staring at the stone-and-timber building across the muddy parking lot.
“Come on,” Zoe whined, her hand on the door handle. She gave the stables a mournful look before turning her large green eyes to Petra. “You’ve come this far. You showered.”
Petra laughed. “I know. It’s all remarkable and amazing, but I can’t ride, and watching someone else ride is boring. Besides, the stable is a pretty infectious place.” Leaning over Zoe, she pushed open the passenger door. “You have your phone. Just call when you’re done.”
Zoe leaned her head against the seat and wailed. “You promised you’d never leave me again!”
Stunned, Petra said, “I’m not leaving you alone. Pete, Rose and probably half a dozen of your friends, human and equine, are just through that gate.”
“Come and make sure,” Zoe wheedled.
“You know I can’t.”
“What if someone abducts me?”
“It’s ten yards! But if by some random chance someone tries to carry you away, scream and I’ll come to your rescue.”
“Triple-dog-dare promise.” Zoe’s mouth was a grim straight line. “Say it.”
Petra pushed Zoe’s shoulders. “Get out of the car.”
Zoe said, “Repeat after me. I, Petra --”