“This is the best place in Manhattan to walk, run, read, and, in the winter, ice-skate! But do you want to know my favorite thing to do here in the summer?” Pepper took both of Eden’s hands in hers as they reached an open patch.
“What?” Eden giggled.
“Dance!” Pepper spun her around in circles until they were both so dizzy, they couldn’t walk straight. Pepper crashed head-on into a studious-looking young man who looked at her like she was insane.
Eden couldn’t stop laughing. Maybe Pepper was insane—but in the best kind of way. Even though she was over four hundred years old, she acted like a kid on a playground. Eden had a feeling you could never get bored with her.
“Fancy an ice cream?” Pepper asked once she could walk straight again.
They bought cones of soft-serve from a stand, then found a clear spot and sat down in the grass.
Even after the days she’d just spent in the California summer, sunlight was still harsh to Eden’s sensitive eyes. She put on the sunglasses from her backpack and surveyed the mortals lounging around them.
One woman was facing away from her, sitting cross-legged and alone. The way her honey-colored hair cascaded down her back made Eden’s temperature rise ten degrees.
“What’s wrong?” Pepper asked, looking up from her ice cream.
“Is that—” Eden gasped. But at that moment, the woman turned and smiled at an approaching friend. She had the face of a teenager, fresh and soft-featured, without the sharply defined jaw and cheekbones Eden had been dreading. She let out the breath she’d been holding.
“Electra really got into your head, didn’t they?” Pepper was watching her curiously. She made a tsk sound. “What a shame.”
Now Eden was embarrassed. “I know I don’t need to worry anymore,” she said. “I don’t have the lamp, or even a way of knowing where it is. They have no use for me now, right?”
“You’d think,” Pepper agreed.
“Do the Loyals know I’m here?”
“Don’t think so. Xavier and Goldie said I’m the only one they told.” Pepper popped the pointy end of her ice cream cone in her mouth. “So let’s keep it that way, shall we?”
After a full day of exploring the city, they headed for Pepper’s apartment.
Pepper explained that she lived on 44th Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. That didn’t mean much to Eden. But her ears perked up when Pepper said they were going to be passing through Times Square.
Though Eden had seen photos of the world-famous intersection, they couldn’t do justice to the experience of being there in person. Light and color assailed you from every direction. Advertising covered the massive buildings. Some of them were plastered with larger-than-life movie posters; others had huge TV screens playing videos. There were tickers with headlines running eagerly across, and billboards promoting Broadway shows. And people everywhere. Like at the Empire State Building, there were people from all over the world, speaking dozens of languages. There were people in uniforms recruiting attendees for comedy clubs and bus tours, and even people dressed up like cartoon characters and superheroes, strolling around and posing for photos.
Eden was so dazzled that she had to stand still and soak it all in for a few minutes. Pepper waited patiently, answering all her questions. When she was finally ready to move on, they stopped by Pepper’s favorite pizza place and picked up a pie to bring back to her apartment building. They carried it six floors up a dark, narrow staircase to the roof so they could enjoy Manhattan’s signature food and its lit-up skyline at the same time. Then they settled in next to each other, cross-legged, with the pizza box in front of them and the night sky above them.
Eden bit into her first slice eagerly, but immediately opened her mouth in surprise and waved her hand in front of it.
“Oh no!” Pepper said. “The cheese is hot! I should have warned you!”
“Too late!” Eden swallowed and grinned. “Oh well. It’s worth it.”
“That’s my girl.” Pepper took another bite and winced. “Ouch! See, it’s so good, I keep eating it anyway!”
Eden threw her head back and laughed. She couldn’t imagine being happier.
The night was so warm that she was still comfortable in the tank top and shorts she’d been wearing since San Diego. Suddenly she realized she hadn’t slept since then. She’d gone from the amusement park showdown with the alumni, to her conversation with Xavier and Goldie in the lamp, to the middle of Fifth Avenue. Between changing time zones and the lamp’s time-bending capabilities, she didn’t even know how long it had been.
But she still wasn’t tired. The city’s energy had her buzzing. She wondered if she’d ever need sleep again.
“I used to work at this pizza place,” Pepper said as she took another slice. “I wish I still did. The food at the diner where I’ve been working for the past few months is awful. But tomorrow’s my last day! Xavier and Goldie told me to quit, so I’ll have all the time in the world to show you around.”
“Hold on. You work?” Eden couldn’t imagine it.
“Of course! I may be immortal, but I’ve got to pay bills!”
It was a good point, Eden supposed.
“I’ve worked at hundreds of places all over the city: restaurants, bars, cafés, boutiques, department stores, jewelry stores, barbershops, cupcake shops…”
“Do you like those jobs?”
“Well, there’s good to be found in anything,” Pepper said. “Friends to be made, things to be learned. But the jobs themselves?” She wrinkled her nose. “No, I wouldn’t say I like them.”
“So why not get a job you like?”
“I do have a job I like—just not at the moment. But it won’t be long now. Almost fifty years have passed.” She flushed with pleasure.
Now Eden was really confused. “Does this have something to do with how you said to call you Quincy?”
A sneaky smile spread across Pepper’s face. “You’re a smart kid, you know that?”
Grinning, Eden took another slice of pizza and got comfortable. She had a feeling there was a good story coming.
“Each of us is born with a specific destiny. For me, that destiny was, of course, to be a genie; but after that, to become an actress.”
Things started to click into place. Pepper’s melodious voice. Her contagious exuberance. The way she weaved and danced through crowds of people.
The closest Eden had come to the theater was hearing Xavier belt show tunes in the morning. But from what she’d learned, Pepper being a performer made perfect sense.
“How did you know it was…your destiny?”
Pepper hushed her voice and looked around to ensure they were alone on the roof. “I learned it on my very first granting. My first wisher was William Shakespeare.”
“That’s right!” Eden remembered. “I read about that in the course guide! There was a question about it on a quiz.”
“What was the answer?”
“I think it was 1592.”
“Correct,” Pepper said with a smile. “Each of his wishes,” she recalled dreamily, “was for his career. And he wished brilliantly. Well, from the way things turned out, that’s obvious. But honestly, I don’t think any other mortal, dead or alive, could wish like that man.”
Even though Eden knew essentially what had happened, Pepper brought the story to life. Her wonderful voice was so enthralling, Eden would have listened to her read the dictionary.
“He took his time, pondering his wishes, and we started to talk. He was thoughtful and careful—not manic, like most of them. You know what I mean. And kind. Even though I was ten years old, just a child, he gave me respect.” Pepper lay back on the roof’s rough surface and rested her head on her folded hands. Eden did the same. With all the lights of the city, you couldn’t see many stars, which was disappointing. Back in the lamp, she’d dreamed of picking out constellations in the sky. But in a way, this was better. Whereas stars were eternal and immovable, electricity was evidence of real,
present, fallible mortal life. And wasn’t that what she’d come here for?
“He showed me the play he was writing: A Midsummer Night’s Dream. There were kinks to iron out with the verse, and he wanted to hear it read aloud. So I did it, changing voices for the parts. I acted for him. He was my first audience. And he loved it.” There was pride in her voice. “He even asked me for suggestions. Helena’s line ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce’—that was mine. He told me that someday I’d make a fine actor.” She turned toward Eden, propping her head up on one hand. “So I listened.”
“Who wouldn’t?” Eden rested her own head on a hand too. Shakespeare was one of a select few mortals she genuinely admired.
“When I finished my nine hundred ninety-nine wishes, I wished to live on Earth forever and perform onstage for generations. I wished that they’d love me the way William loved me.”
Eden was touched that Pepper had confided her thousandth wish so freely. In the lamp, Xavier and Goldie guarded the genies’ thousandth wishes like precious secrets.
Pepper blinked. She lay flat on her back again and murmured, as if to reproach her younger self: “If I’d only known then what I know now.”
“What do you mean?” Eden asked. “That sounds like a good wish to me.”
There was a sign across the street with a flashing light that illuminated Pepper’s face. The light blinked pink, then purple, then blue. Pink, purple, blue.
“Well, there were challenges right off the bat. I started out in London, where I’d first met William. I couldn’t wait to see him again. It was only after I got there that I found out…he was dead.” The colored light played on her face: pink, purple, blue. “That was when I realized, even if we’re immortal, death can still hurt us.”
Something sharp twinged in Eden’s heart, like a guitar string snapping.
“Once I’d mourned him, I decided the next best thing would be to honor his memory. I could act in his plays. But then I found out I wasn’t allowed to.”
“Because you were a woman.”
“Right. It was 1636. The English thought having a woman onstage would be scandalous. Men played all the women’s parts. And I have to admit, some of them did a fine job. Once, during a production of Romeo and Juliet, I absolutely sobbed when Juliet leaned over her balcony and professed her love to Romeo. I’d completely forgotten Juliet was a boy with a wig! There’s a testament to the power of theater.” Pepper nodded, seeming to agree with herself. “Women were acting in other parts of Europe, but I wanted to be in London.” A smile played on the corners of her mouth, and she sat up again. “So I changed the rules.”
“How?”
“In 1660, I was the first woman to act onstage in England. I was Margaret Hughes, playing Desdemona in Othello. What a night that was!” For a moment, Pepper seemed to have drifted right back there.
“Margaret Hughes?” Eden prompted.
“That was the name I used for those first twenty years—my first career. In a job where people see you onstage every night, that’s about the longest you can get away with before they start talking about why you never age.” She rubbed her nose.
Eden had never thought much about the logistics of immortality on Earth. Perhaps, like most things, it wasn’t as simple as it seemed.
“So what then?”
“Then I changed my name to Emily Bankman. I moved between tiny towns in England, working as a governess and cleaning houses. When I could save up enough for it, I’d put on a big hat and a scarf to hide my face, and steal away to London to see a show.” She clasped a hand over her chest. “It broke my heart to be away from the theater. But I knew that eventually my time would come again.”
“And did it?”
“Fifty years later. I moved back to London as Emily, and did it all over again.”
“Didn’t people remember you?”
“No. I’d been away for fifty years, remember. I generally do fifteen to twenty years of work, then fifty years waiting to work again. The way I see it, I have to keep a cycle of approximately seventy years—a pretty average life span for a mortal. Mortals rarely pay attention to their parents’ icons. If I happen to look like another generation’s star, no one’s the wiser.”
“And that works?”
“So far, so good.” Pepper shrugged. She picked a piece of pepperoni off a pizza slice. “Of course, nowadays it’s tougher, with the Internet. I’ve got to be more careful this time around.”
“So after Emily Bankman…”
“After eighteen years performing as Emily, I became Rosalie Handelman and boarded the Patience. When I arrived in New York, I didn’t know a soul; I realized I could start afresh. So I started Rosalie’s career immediately. It was a risk, with so many people coming from London. I had to wriggle my way out of a few sticky situations. But it all turned out right. And those were beautiful years. Broadway was just getting its legs. It was the only time I got to work for so many years straight. Pure bliss. After that, I knew I’d be a lifer in New York.”
“I want to see you perform!” Eden said.
“Well, God willing, it won’t be long. Next month, fifty years will have passed. Very soon, I’ll start auditioning—with my new name, Quincy Abbott.”
“Quincy!”
“It all comes together now, doesn’t it?”
It was a crazy story—but what wasn’t, these days? Best of all, it showed that Pepper was different from the other alumni. Immortality hadn’t made her bitter and jaded, like the Loyals at the pool at Mission Beach Middle. She didn’t spend her centuries in mad pursuit of vengeance, like the alumni members of Electra. She spent as much of her life as possible living out her dream in her favorite city. She loved the world, and she loved her place in it. To Eden, that seemed like a good way to live.
“After Rosalie, I had three more careers. By the most recent one, musical theater was in full swing. I got to sing and act and dance! It was a dream come true.”
“Xavier loves musicals,” Eden said.
Pepper’s eyes grew wide, and she squeezed Eden’s forearm. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m serious! He used to sing a show tune every morning to wake me up.”
Pepper laughed like crazy. “I never would have guessed it!” She wiped an eye. “What was your favorite?”
“I always liked ‘On the Street Where You Live.’”
“From My Fair Lady! Divine! I played Eliza Doolittle from 1957 to ’59.”
Now that Eden thought about it, Xavier must have learned about musicals like he learned about everything else on Earth: through trips made when he climbed out of the lamp’s spout. Although operas had existed for centuries, modern-day musicals weren’t performed until the twentieth century. The morning songs couldn’t have been going on for long.
How many evenings might he have spent in Broadway theaters, maybe even on this very street? He would have bought his ticket quietly and sat in the mezzanine, or one of the back rows, enjoying the show among mortals who would never have suspected he was collecting information to bring back to an enchanted lamp.
Could Xavier have watched Pepper perform in one of those shows? It was certainly possible. Maybe he knew more about the alumni than he let on, even to them.
“Speaking of Xavier,” Pepper said, “we should send them a message to let them know we’ve found each other. Did they give you some parchment?”
Eden opened the backpack she’d arrived with and pulled out the roll of parchment paper. Pepper expertly tore off a section and held it in front of them so it could record their message.
“Here we are!” she said sunnily. “Bright lights, big city! We found each other just like you planned, and we’ve been exploring together ever since.”
“Hi! Thanks for the backpack!” Eden added, waving.
“Hey, what’s that?” Pepper asked, noticing the wrapped-up carrot cake in the backpack. Eden pulled it out and unwrapped it. Pepper tore off half the piece, then tapped it against Eden’s. “Cheer
s!” They both took a bite. Pepper’s eyes rolled back in bliss. “Heaven! You’ve still got it, Goldie!” She wiped frosting off her lips. “Anyway, if you need us, you know where to find us!” Pepper and Eden blew a kiss toward the parchment paper; then Pepper rolled it up, gave it a squeeze, and off it went to its magical destination.
“Now,” Pepper said, taking another bite of carrot cake, “I want to hear more about you! Tell me about San Diego. Not the bad things—let’s not think about them. Only the wonderful parts.”
There was a pang in Eden’s heart. Despite what had happened with Electra and the Loyals, parts of her trip to San Diego had been wonderful. All day, thoughts of Tyler and Sasha had tugged at the back of her mind. So she told Pepper all about them: how Tyler would surf all day if he could; how Sasha was fiercely competitive, and even more fiercely loyal. The way they cared for each other and their dad. The way they’d tried to keep her on Earth.
“I’m so glad!” Pepper burst out. “Friends make everything better, don’t they?”
Eden smiled and nodded, remembering. Suddenly, something occurred to her. She reached into the back pocket of her shorts and felt a stiff piece of paper. She pulled it out and laughed. It was the photo of her and Tyler on the roller coaster. It had traveled from San Diego to the lamp with her, and now it had made the trip back to Earth with her too.
In the picture, their hands were raised high in the air and their faces showed pure elation. Pepper gasped when she saw it. “How wonderful!” she exclaimed. “You look so happy!”
“I was,” Eden agreed.
“When do you think you’ll see them again?”
All of a sudden, Eden was nervous. “I don’t know. I mean, how would I? They live on the other side of the country.”
Pepper laughed. “You’re a genie who just changed the ancient rules of her lamp! How could the width of one little country stop you?”
Eden’s cheeks flushed. Pepper had a point.
“Let’s take a trip to the West Coast!”
Eden's Escape Page 2