Past Perfect, Present Tense

by Richard Peck

“You online a lot?” the girl asked.

  “. . . Not a lot,” Seb said.

  She had a fall of burnished red-brown hair. Like chestnuts by firelight, thought Seb, who had become this sudden poet.

  “Oh. You’re foreign,” she said. “I mean, no, you’re not. I’m foreign, right? You live here.”

  “All my life,” Seb said.

  “I could tell,” she said, “because of your accent.”

  “But you’re the one with the accent,” Seb said.

  “No, I’m not,” the girl said. “I’m from Indiana. We don’t have an accent. We just have a little bit of a twang. You’ve got an accent.”

  He had to keep her talking. For one thing, she had a wonderful accent. She had wonderful—

  She glanced at the other two chairs. The one for Pauli, the one for Rudy.

  “I’m alone,” Seb said. “Would you like to sit down?”

  He started up out of the chair, but she put a hand on his shoulder. Then when she’d sat down across from him, he could still feel where her hand had been.

  “Before I realized you were foreign—from here, I thought you might go to Park-Tudor,” she said. “I figured you for private school. You know. Very blond. Probably tall. And you paid too much for the jacket.”

  Seb looked down himself. When he looked up again, the girl had leaned nearer. In a lower voice she said, “Personally, I’d ditch the shades. Wraparounds are so out. Especially after dark. Especially indoors.”

  She spoke like a spy. A lovely, lovely spy.

  “Ah,” Seb said. “I think I’ll keep the glasses on.”

  “You’re like the guys at my school,” she said. “They probably wear their ball caps to bed. It’s a security issue, right?”

  “. . . Right,” Seb said. But now here came Pauli and Rudy, with the lattes. They saw her. Seb shook his head. They swerved to another table.

  “I’m Ally, by the way,” she said.

  “I’m Seb.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Sebastian, actually.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.” For one perfect moment Seb thought she might reach out and touch his knee. “But then my real name is Alicia Mae. I was named for my grandmother.”

  “So was I,” Seb breathed.

  “You had a grandmother named Sebastian?” Ally’s eyes were huge.

  “No. I mean. It was my grandfather’s . . .”

  But now she was smiling, grinning really. “You blush,” she said. “It’s like a sunset.”

  His face was hot. Strobing. From the other table, Pauli and Rudy watched like hawks.

  Seb stirred, cracking a knee on the low table. “Would you like something?” he said. “A latte?”

  He’d made it to his feet. He actually was tall, to his great relief.

  “Whatever,” she said, looking up at him.

  “How do you like it? Your latte?” Was that what you asked? His head pounded.

  “You decide,” she said.

  But Seb never decided things. He turned blindly in the room. Pauli and Rudy sat hunched at a table between him and the counter.

  “She wants a latte,” he whispered, dipping down to them, desperate.

  “Is she an American girl?” Pauli muttered, watching her back.

  “Yes.”

  “Better do as she says,” Rudy said. “They expect that. Just go up to the counter and—”

  “But I don’t have any money,” Seb said, low and hopeless. “You know that.”

  Pauli and Rudy had hardly touched their lattes. “Here, give me those.” Seb swept them up. Careful not to spill a drop, he bore them away.

  “That was quick.” Ally looked up. She was all in black. Who wasn’t? But on her it worked. “You ought to be a waiter. But that’s the only tip you get.”

  Seb stared down, openmouthed at everything about her.

  “That was like a joke,” she said. “Just sit down.” After the first sip, she said, “I think I’ve got you totally figured.”

  Doomed, Seb supposed.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Ally said. “You’re—what, seventeen, sort of?”

  Seb nodded.

  “Me too, practically,” she said. “I’ll be a senior. And all the guys at school are really, really immature, you know? But you—you’re like younger than they are.”

  Seb sank back, relieved. Shattered.

  “And I bet I know why.” Ally lasered him with a look. “You go to an all-boys school, am I right?”

  Seb nodded. “I did. You saw right through me.”

  “Did? You’ve finished school?”

  “School is finished with me.” He didn’t explain. He had his pride. “This place where you live, this Indiana,” he said to change the subject. “How big a city is it?”

  Now her eyes were enormous. “City? It’s a whole state. Like—the United States, okay? It’s only about four times the size of this whole country of yours.”

  “. . . Ah,” Seb said. Ally had a white mustache now, from latte foam and double whipped cream, the way Rudy liked it. Chestnut hair, enormous eyes, white mustache. Seb felt faint.

  She was telling him about this school “study tour” of Europe her class was on. They allowed three days for each country. The next stop was Norway, or Luxembourg, one of those.

  “And you’ve enjoyed my country?” Seb strained to hit his stride.

  “It’s really small,” Ally said. “Everybody in our group keeps bumping their heads. But it’s nice.” She dropped her voice and leaned nearer. “Though just between you and me, I’ll never need to see another moat.”

  “. . . Moat?” Seb began to drown in her eyes.

  “Moat,” Ally said. “You know. That wet area around castles.”

  Does she like me a little? he wondered.

  “Are you seeing anybody?” she asked.

  Through these glasses he was straining to see her.

  “Like are you going out with anybody? A girl?”

  Seb couldn’t get it together. Ally was wearing some kind of perfume or something.

  “Do you know any girls?”

  “. . . Not really,” Seb said. “But there’s this one girl. Her family . . . my family . . . we’ve always known each other.”

  “Oh, right,” Ally said. “One of those deals. What’s her name?”

  “Irmgard.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad.” Now she did reach out and touch his knee. But then she checked her watch. “Listen, I’ve got to get back to the dorm. Your buses stop running at midnight.”

  “They do?”

  Her eyes were huge again. “Hello. You don’t get out much, do you? You must have been in a boarding school. This is the capital of the country, and it shuts down at night like Kokomo.”

  “Oh,” Seb said. She was on her feet now, dabbing off her mustache. At their table Pauli and Rudy stirred.

  Seb remembered to hold the door for her. After a light rain, the cobblestones gleamed like little moons. A historic building across the street leaned quaintly over the pavement. “Shall I walk you to where the bus stops?” Seb’s hand and hers brushed.

  “Do you know where the bus stops?”

  “. . . No.”

  Ally pointed the way. A few people were up on ladders, draping streetlamps with flags in the national colors.

  “Tomorrow’s a holiday, right?” Ally said.

  “Right,” Seb said.

  “There’ll be a parade?” Her hand brushed his again.

  Lightning struck in Seb’s brain. Was she hinting that maybe they could watch the parade together? He panicked. “I can’t,” he blurted. “I’m . . . all tied up.”

  “Whatever,” Ally said, and the bus loomed. Too soon, too soon. “And the next day we leave.”

  “For Norway,” Seb said bleakly.

  “Probably.”

  The bus doors wheezed open. She had one foot on the step when she looked back. “Tell me one last thing.”

  He’d tell her anything now.

 
“Do those other two guys follow you everywhere?”

  The doors closed, and the bus lumbered away. Seb turned back to a large stone pillar. Behind it would be Pauli and Rudy.

  But all that was last night. Ally had since morphed into being both girls in Seb’s hot tub dream. Now it was gray dawn. The birds were gone, but something stirred. A shuffling noise came from below the window, the sound of a lot of feet. Seb braced himself in bed.

  Then in an ear-splitting explosion, a full brass band struck up. The courtyard echoed and bellowed. The brass drum throbbed. Bagpipes whined. Cymbals crashed. It was deafening. The band had burst into HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU.

  The full choir of the National Cathedral erupted into song: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, QUEEN MOTHER, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

  Seb grabbed his head.

  It was a national holiday because this was the Queen Mother’s big birthday. She was a hundred years old today. So of course it was a national holiday, but it wasn’t a day off for Seb. Because Seb was the Queen Mother’s great-grandson.

  And heir to the throne.

  II

  Three rousing cheers rose from the courtyard, to wish the Queen Mother, rather unnecessarily, long life. As the last cheer died away, Seb’s bedroom door flung open.

  They never knock, he thought. They barge in like this is public property. Though being a palace, it probably was.

  They were here in force this morning. In came the aged Head Deputy Master of the Royal Household. “Your Royal Highness,” he said, giving Seb his first bow of the day.

  Behind him came Seb’s valet. After a quick bow, he backed into the bathroom to draw Seb’s bath. The barber bowed in and backed to the bathroom after him. You couldn’t turn your back on royalty, so there were a lot of people Seb had only seen from the front. Two footmen brought in his breakfast, under silver covers.

  Then a beat behind, Seb’s lords-in-waiting—his equerries—jostled each other through the door. They were in double-breasted suits, and their shoes were polished to mirrors. But one equerry’s necktie was practically around his ear. And the other one in his haste had buttoned up his suit jacket wrong. He seemed to list to starboard. They were Viscount Cricklemere and the Baron of Budleigh.

  Pauli and Rudy.

  * * *

  His Royal Highness, the Prince Sebastian, sat in the carriage beside His Royal Highness, the Prince Reginald—Seb’s little brother, Reggie. Seb and Reggie sat backward, across from the Queen Mother, who took up much of her seat. It was her personal state carriage, gold with cupids.

  The parade got a late start. Seb and Reggie had been dressed, brushed down, and delivered on time. The King and Queen, their parents, already sat in the carriage with roll-up windows so if they started in on each other, the public couldn’t hear it. The King and Queen appeared together only on national holidays and postage stamps.

  The Queen Mother herself had held up the show. She was just being hoisted up into the Cupid Carriage when the old dear remembered she’d forgotten her cough medicine. So stop the world. She went nowhere without it, carried in a silver flask inside her giant handbag. She was deaf as a post, but had a tongue in her head, and she wasn’t going anywhere without her cough medicine. Footmen were sent.

  Seb and Reggie could only sit there, smelling the horses. The Queen Mother looked suspiciously around under a hat the size of a satellite dish. Her mammoth handbag slid off her knees. Reggie reached down to get it for her, but Great-granny was quicker. She snatched up the handbag and gave him a sharp clout across the ear with it.

  “Yeow!” Reggie exclaimed.

  “And you’re supposed to be the smart one?” Seb remarked. “Even I know not to mess with her when her flask’s missing.”

  It was said that while Seb would inherit the throne, Reggie had inherited the brains. Who from, Seb couldn’t imagine. At ten, Reggie seemed nowhere near puberty, but he talked like a dictionary. He went to a special Swiss school for Gifted Royalty who were reading on grade level.

  The day was warming up, and the horse smells were getting to be unbearable. “Why do we have to go through this?” Seb sulked. “I could be—”

  “Because you are the Heir Apparent, Seb,” Reggie explained in his high, annoying voice. “And I am the Heir Presumptive. We’re the Heir and the Spare. When Daddy pops off, you’ll be King, and I’ll be—”

  “Beheaded,” Seb muttered.

  The flask was handed up, and Great-granny’s gloved claw grabbed it out of the air. Unscrewing the lid, she knocked back a shot, and the Cupid Carriage began to roll.

  The parade ahead of them had been going on for some time. Every marching band in the kingdom marched. Then came the Royal Navy, with oars, and most of the army, on foot, displaying their only Hummer. Footballers marched in their shorts. The Royal Girl Guides pulled a float like a giant birthday cake with a hundred candles, unlit to prevent a firestorm.

  After a drum and bugle corps passed by, the Cupid Carriage clattered out of the palace yard, behind plumed horses, toward the roaring crowds. Cameras flashed, and Great-granny snapped to, becoming the Queen Mother. Her gloved hand, rattling diamonds, came up, and she gave her roaring subjects her sweetest smile.

  The breeze stirred the plumes on her stupendous hat. “Like a grenade going off in an ostrich farm,” Seb muttered. Reggie was practicing his nod and his wave, like a little wind-up prince-doll. Seb slumped.

  A heavy foot in a large high-heeled shoe shot out from under Great-granny’s skirts and connected with Seb’s ankle. “Give them a grin, you little git,” she snapped, smiling in her modest way at the crowds.

  So Seb had to pull himself together and play Prince.

  He gave the crowds a small smile and shoulder-level wave. When he ran a hand through his hair, several girls in school uniforms, perched on a wall, shrieked.

  “Who are those silly girls?” Reggie looked around at him. “Could they have been cheering for you, Seb?”

  “I wondered about that,” Seb admitted modestly.

  “They must be brain-dead,” Reggie said.

  With the hand that wasn’t waving, Great-granny unscrewed the cap on her flask.

  III

  Cassandra Conway clung to the top of an ornamental fountain. Surrounded by spouting dolphins, the fountain stood in the capital’s central square, the best place in town for watching the parade. Cassandra usually managed the best place for herself.

  Clinging just below her was her more-or-less best friend, Ally Bidwell. The footballers of the Royal Playing Fields Alliance marching in their shorts had brightened Cassandra’s day. But the parade was in a lull after them—large girls dragging a plastic birthday cake. Cassandra and Ally clung to the top of the fountain above a sea of fluttering handheld flags.

  “Could you kill for a Big Mac?” Cassandra said down to Ally. The capitals of Europe blazed with Golden Arches. But the American embassy had warned them against ground beef.

  “Cass, get your boot off my shoulder,” Ally said. They’d been dorm-mates on this trip through seven countries. Things were growing thin between them. At home, Cass had her own bathroom.

  “Honestly, look at those dorky girls pulling that bogus birthday cake.”

  “Cass, shut up,” Ally said. “We’re not supposed to act like ugly Americans until we get home.”

  A drum and bugle corps passed endlessly by. Then behind feathery horses came a knockout of a solid-gold carriage, with cupids. Spoke wheels. Footmen with powdered wigs. The works.

  “Here she comes,” Cass cried, “the old woman!”

  “I believe she’s called the Queen Mother,” Ally said.

  “Whatever. Yikes, can you see her hat? It’s like a giant auk. And who are those two with her. Are they like the princes?” Cass hung far out from the fountain. “Oh, wow,” she said. “Look at the big one!”

  A well-timed sunbeam struck Seb’s blond hair. He’d picked up the shy smile from Great-granny. He was perfecting her backhand wave. Cass nearly pitched off her pinnacle. “What are their
names?” she yelled down to Ally.

  “I don’t know about the little one,” Ally said. “But the big one’s Seb.”

  “Seb?”

  “I think I had a latte with him last night.”

  “In your dreams,” Cass called down.

  “No. For sure. He looks just like the guy I—”

  “You wish, Jack,” Cass replied.

  By chance, Seb’s gaze swept the top of the fountain where two foreign girls clung, one on top of the other. The top one hung far out into space. It was the one she was standing on who caught Seb’s attention.

  He lurched, and Reggie thought he might leap to his feet. “Don’t upstage Great-granny unless you want a thick ear,” Reggie advised. Seb subsided.

  But his eyes met hers. It was—

  “Ally!” Seb called, loud over the crowd, though Great-granny wouldn’t hear.

  “Hey, Seb!” Ally yelled back. “How about a latte?”

  Cass swayed. Her parents had laid out three grand for this trip, and it was Ally who got to meet a prince? Cass felt like both of the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella. She ground a boot heel into Ally’s shoulder.

  But Ally didn’t feel a thing because as the gold carriage passed below, Seb blew her a kiss.

  Seventy girls in the central square vicinity blew kisses back. But it was a kiss for Ally, and she knew it. She only nodded down to Seb, a little mock bow for His Royal Highness or whatever, and sent him a smile she hoped he’d keep in mind.

  He was still looking back as the carriage went by.

  And in her carry-on bag of souvenirs, Ally tucked away a first kiss from a prince. True, he’d had to hurl it fifty feet. Cass said it didn’t count.

  Ally said, excuse me, but it did.

  The Three-Century Woman

  “I guess if you live long enough,” my mom said to Aunt Gloria, “you get your fifteen minutes of fame.”

  Mom was on the car phone to Aunt Gloria. The minute Mom rolls out of the garage, she’s on her car phone. It’s state-of-the-art and better than her car.

  We were heading for Whispering Oaks to see my great-grandmother Breckenridge, who’s lived there since I was a little girl. They call it an Elder Care Facility. Needless to say, I hated going.

  The reason for Great-grandma’s fame is that she was born in 1899. Now it’s January 2001. If you’re one of those people who claim the new century begins in 2001, not 2000, even you have to agree that Great-grandma Breckenridge has lived in three centuries. This is her claim to fame.