Twin Roses
Page 2
She didn’t know why she felt the need to be coy within her sketchbook. No one ever looked at it, except maybe Ruby, and it wasn’t as if she kept secrets from her sister. Their mother had always told them to share everything, and that was what they did. Possessions, friends, information, happiness. Whatever one sister had, she split with the other.
Absently, Pearl drew a line down the center of the crown, dividing it into two halves. And then her hand hovered above the page. What was that for? She started filling in one side of the crown with shadows, and as she did, the halved crown made her problem plain.
You couldn’t divide a prince. You couldn’t share him like a cookie. Like a threesome, maybe, but there were some things she didn’t want to do with Ruby.
Quickly, Pearl filled in the rest of the crown. Who knew if the prince would even return? And if he did, if they would both like him—love him? It was silly to worry about that when she didn’t know if they’d ever see him again.
That was what she told herself. Still, she worried. It grew in her like a cancer, the one secret she wouldn’t share.
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were worried they won’t like your cake,” Ruby told her sister.
“What?” Pearl blinked like she’d just emerged from one of her dazes. There was a flour smudge on her brow and Ruby had the urge to wipe it off, but if she did, she’d drop the cake they were carrying. It was one of Pearl’s finer creations, special ordered for a Royal birthday party: a two-tiered chocolate cake frosted with almond buttercream and covered with a pattern of marzipan crowns.
They stopped on the Hansens’ front porch. Ruby made sure her half of the tray was secure, then reached out and rang the bell.
“They’re going to love it,” Ruby said. “And if they don’t, they’ll at least pretend to.”
Mrs. Hansen opened the door. “Oh, wonderful,” she said, admiring the cake. “Did you girls make that?”
“Pearl did.” Ruby nodded in her sister’s direction. “She’s the cake wizardress.”
“Well, it is a work of magic. Let’s put it in the kitchen. Careful not to trip.”
Slowly, the sisters followed Mrs. Hansen to the kitchen and set the cake down on the table. A pigtailed little girl leapt up from where she was watching TV and climbed onto one of the kitchen chairs to get a better look.
“Is that for me?” the girl asked.
“It’s for your brother, sweetie. You know that.”
“Can it be for me? I want it.”
“Hush. Get down from that chair. And don’t take any of those crowns—I’ll know.”
The girl stayed where she was, staring at the cake like it was her prey.
“I mean it,” Mrs. Hansen said before she accompanied the sisters to the door.
“She’s so jealous of her brother,” Mrs. Hansen confided. “It’s nothing to be jealous of, believe me. My son has had that awful Beauty and the Beast curse since he was six. I’m always worried that this will be the year a fairy changes him into a Beast. Can you imagine? Covered in fur, with claws and whiskers?”
“He’ll still be himself,” Pearl said. “He’ll be the same person, just hidden inside another form.”
“I know that,” Mrs. Hansen said. “But I’m not big on transformations. I like things to stay the same.”
“Better go check on that cake,” Ruby said.
“Yes. Because she would feel no remorse, let me tell you. Thank you so much for bringing it over. I already paid your mother, but here’s a little something for the two of you.”
They thanked her for the tip and headed down the front walk. “I wanted to swipe a crown from that cake,” Ruby admitted. “You should make me one like that for my birthday.”
“Our birthday. Maybe I will. If you do the dishes.”
“That could be arranged.”
They weren’t due back at the café right away, so Ruby took a detour, driving through some of the fancier neighborhoods where the cursed kings and queens, princes and princesses, and other tycoons lived. Ruby liked the Rambles’ house just fine—it had charm, and the perfect amount of space—but there was no denying the appeal of a mansion. These were the castles of Beau Rivage: rooms filled with fairy-tale heirlooms, furniture you weren’t supposed to sit on, treasure that was meant to stay in its chest.
What Ruby really wanted to see was the Wilders’ enchanted rose garden, but it was surrounded by a high stone wall that blocked it from view. Rafe Wilder, another soon-to-be Beast, threw parties all the time, but Mrs. Ramble wouldn’t let her daughters go to those.
Ruby had been scanning the edge of the stone wall, hoping to catch a glimpse of just one enchanted rose peeping over the top, when Pearl yelled, “Dog!”
Ruby hit the brakes. She narrowly missed hitting a white pit bull that ran across the street in front of them.
“Thanks. I was looking at—”
“Unbelievable,” Pearl muttered. She unhooked her seat belt and climbed out of the car.
“Pearl?”
Ruby had been so elated not to have hit the dog that she hadn’t bothered to check where it went. But now she saw that the dog was attacking someone on the front lawn of one of the estates: a man stuck in a hydrangea bush. His skinny legs flailed, and purple flowers shuddered back and forth.
Pearl—who wasn’t exactly a dog person—was clapping her hands and calling, “Hey! Get away from him!”
Ruby ran up the lawn. Even from a distance, she could see that there was more than just an ungrateful bearded man in the bushes. There was also a sack of jewelry and a large framed painting balanced crookedly on a bed of mulch. A rope made of bedsheets hung from a second-floor window.
Ruby snapped her fingers. “C’mere girl!” She dropped to a crouch and went on snapping and calling, not even sure the dog could hear her over the sound of her own growls.
Finally, the dog released the man’s leg, wheeled around, and dropped onto her back for a scratch. She squirmed in the grass, head and butt wriggling in opposite directions, while Ruby patted her. “What’s your name, girl? Wonder Dog? Defender of Justice?”
Pearl made her way past them to help the bearded man out of the bushes. He was limping, rubbing his chewed pant leg, but at least there was no blood. His pants were stained with mulch and his short beard had bits of flowers stuck to it.
“Do you want us to wait with you until the police arrive?” Pearl asked. “So you can explain how that painting got here?”
“Would you like to explain what you’ve done to my clothes?” the man retorted. “I’m sure the police would be very interested to hear why you let your dog assault me—when I was simply minding my own business, sniffing these flowers.”
“That’s not what you were doing,” Ruby said.
“Do you know how much these clothes cost?” the man continued.
“Nothing? Because you stole them?” Pearl guessed.
“One hundred dollars! Just for the pants! And this sweater is irreplaceable! They don’t make garments this fine anymore. And now they’re ruined. Ruined!”
“Gosh,” Pearl said. “You’d think we hadn’t just rescued you.”
“You sic your dog on me, then expect me to be grateful once you finally call it off? The audacity!” His face was turning red; he lunged forward and spat on Pearl’s shoe.
“Hey! Watch it!” Ruby yelled. “You do that again and I’ll let this dog bite a hole in your ass.”
“It’s fine,” Pearl said, wiping her shoe on the grass.
The pit bull was lying down now, head resting on her paws, watching.
“I’m going to leave,” the man announced. “If you harlots want to turn yourselves in to the police, it’s probably for the best. Make the streets a little safer.” He bent over, giving them a view of the dirty seat of his pants, and began gathering the stolen jewelry that had fallen out of the bag.
The pit bull’s ears perked up.
“What is it, girl?” Ruby whispered.
“It’s obvious
you robbed this house,” Pearl said. “You’re not leaving with that stuff.”
“This is my house,” the man said. “I’m merely transferring my property to another location.”
“Do you always climb out your window using sheets?” Ruby asked.
“Why don’t you mind your own damn business?” In a fit of pique, he grabbed a handful of jewelry and flung it at her. Then he went still.
Ruby turned to see what had stopped him.
A fully grown black bear—about two hundred pounds—had come around the side of the house and was lumbering toward them. The man scrambled backward, shouting,
“This is a mistake! A mistake! I wasn’t the one who got you cursed, it was these girls! I’ve been tracking them down for you—searching for years! You see? I’ve finally found them. Here—take your revenge! Eat them! They have plump, round limbs and I’m all skin and bones. This sweater makes me look fatter than I really am!”
The man had retreated so that his back was against the front door. “I mean it!” he said as the bear came closer. “These wicked girls stole the fairy’s jewels! They blamed you for the theft! Not me! It’s not my fault you were cursed, it was theirs!”
Ruby was running her hand down the dog’s back to keep calm.
She wasn’t afraid. Not exactly.
“Our prince,” Pearl whispered.
Ruby knew how the curse was broken—but she still flinched when the bear struck the bearded man across the face and his body slumped onto the porch, the life knocked out of him with one blow.
The bear prince’s voice was deeper now. “Pearl … Ruby. Don’t be scared. You know me. I won’t hurt you.”
The bear pelt wilted around him. It split down the middle and he shook it off, then stumbled away from it, unused to walking on human legs. His skin was lighter than the bear’s fur had been, but still dark: a rich brown that was tinged gold from the clothes he wore. He was dressed in a royal court uniform of gold silk, embroidered with gold flourishes, so that he looked like a prince from a storybook.
“Is it over?” the prince asked. “Is it really—”
Ruby sat there gaping at him, her eyes filling with tears from pure amazement. Before she could answer, her sister ran to the prince and embraced him like a girl reuniting with her lost love.
“It’s over,” Pearl said. “The curse is broken. The curse is broken.…”
Their arms were wrapped around each other so tightly that Ruby felt a little confused watching them. They clung to each other as if this moment was the culmination of years of longing. Ruby wasn’t sure where that left her. She had worried and missed him just as much, but now she felt like an interloper, someone who could witness their happiness but couldn’t share it.
Was it simply that Pearl had gotten there first? And the prince had such a need for human affection that he’d poured it all into that first embrace?
Had he missed them both, or just Pearl?
By the time the prince and Pearl separated—newly shy and happy—Ruby felt like the moment had been stripped of its sparkle. But she’d looked forward to the reunion for so long that she went up to the prince anyway, hugged him quickly, tried not to smell the vanilla-cake scent Pearl had left on his clothes.
“Welcome back,” she said, afraid to show how much she had missed him, too.
“You remember me,” he said, a little astonished. “You both … remember me.”
“Of course we remember you,” Ruby said. “What other enchanted bears do you think we know?”
The pit bull had gone up to nose around the bearskin; now she was rolling on top of it, getting the scent on herself. Fortunately, she had no interest in the corpse. Pearl took a step toward the blood-smeared front door, the bearded head limp against the lintel, toes pointed upward like the Wicked Witch of the East.
The prince was turning to look at them, to take everything in with human eyes. It reminded Ruby of the time Pearl had first entered the lobby of the fancy hotel where their junior prom was held: she’d tilted her head back and turned in a circle, mouth open as if to breathe in all that beauty.
“I can’t wait to go home,” the prince said. “See my family again. I want you to meet them. Both of you.”
“We’d love to,” Pearl said. “But we can’t just leave this body here. We have to call the police. They’ll want to see our marks, to prove it wasn’t a regular killing.”
“You’re right,” the prince said. “Of course. How could I not think of that?”
“You’re allowed to be overwhelmed,” Ruby said. “I think you’ve earned it.”
“Thanks. I am overwhelmed.” His smile was lovely, warm and genuine. None of the posturing Ruby was used to with boys. He’d missed that part of growing up—the competitive years, when so many people developed an attitude, a too-cool-for-you coldness.
“Um, so … do you have a name?” Pearl asked. “One you’re finally willing to tell?”
“You said you were ‘just a bear.’ We had to come up with all those nicknames.”
“Theo,” the prince said. “Theo Trevathan. I didn’t want to be called that back then because … I wasn’t that person. I was something else. Something in between.”
“Theo,” Pearl repeated, trying it out.
The three of them sat on the curb while they waited for the police, Theo in the middle, the pit bull stretched out beside Ruby. Theo picked at the gold embroidery on his jacket while Pearl described all the treats he had to try at their café, and Ruby glanced at the blood-covered door and hoped the police would arrive before the homeowners did. Every time Ruby let her gaze travel from the street to the house and back she paused on Theo’s face, memorizing another part of it: the curl of his eyelashes, the gold glow on his cheekbones, the curve of his lips. He was so busy talking, reacquainting himself with civilization, that he didn’t notice her staring. She almost wished he would catch her. It would mean he was looking at her, too.
A few of the neighbors appeared on their lawns, some squinting at the body on the porch, others making their way over to ask questions. Normally, Ruby didn’t mind nosy strangers—she could talk to anyone—but right now she wished they’d go away. She was worried someone would ask Theo, “So which of these girls is the lucky one?”
Because everyone knew that, traditionally, Snow White married the prince and Rose Red married the prince’s brother.
The curse didn’t always play out that way, but in the fairy tale, that was the happy ending. In real life, it was the worst consolation prize she could imagine.
“Do you have a brother?” Ruby asked Theo, once the nosy neighbors had wandered over to inspect the bearskin. She hoped he’d say no.
“I do. He’s a year older.”
“Are you a lot alike?” Pearl asked.
“Probably not anymore. He hasn’t been living as a bear for the past ten years.”
“What was it like, being a bear?” Pearl asked. “We used to play with you, but we never asked.”
“It was … lonely. Except for the two of you. I was hungry a lot. And scared. Scared that I’d be shot, that I’d never break the curse. Or that I would, but I wouldn’t know how to be human anymore.”
“You were always human,” Pearl said. “You never stopped being human.”
“When things got really bad, I used to think about the winters I spent at your house. How nice you were to me.”
“Hitting you with sticks,” Ruby said. “Rolling you over with our feet. Real nice.”
“Yeah, but you gave me Pop-Tarts. And let me watch cartoons. That was worth a few beatings.”
“Snow White, Rose Red, will you beat your lover dead?” Pearl murmured.
“When I said that, it felt so strange. Natural, in a way … but the words weren’t mine. It was like the curse was speaking through me.”
Finally, a police car pulled up. Two officers got out, a woman and a man. Ruby recognized the woman from the café; she came in occasionally and ordered a coffee and a cranberry scone.
After a few more questions and an examination of the bearskin, the officers told them they were free to go.
“Enjoy your happily ever after,” the scone-loving officer called after them.
“Don’t forget to invite us to the wedding!” her partner said.
“There’s not going to be a wedding,” Ruby said. “We’re seventeen.”
“What’s the matter, you don’t like this guy?” the partner asked.
Pearl gave the soft, vacuous laugh she used whenever she was humoring someone. “We’ll send you an invitation.” Then she took Ruby and Theo by the hand and led them to the car.
“Thank you for your help!” the prince called over his shoulder.
Pearl had never seen so many tears, hugs, startled cries; Theo’s reunion with his parents was one emotional torrent after another. Pearl smiled supportively and watched her sister out of the corner of her eye. Ruby: her best friend, the girl she would give anything to, the girl she felt she was stealing from now.
Ruby had been uncharacteristically quiet since Theo had transformed, and Pearl had to admit that during those precious minutes she’d lost track of her sister and had completely forgotten she was one half of a whole. In Theo’s arms, she’d just been Pearl—not Ruby’s sister. And she had, just then, wanted something for herself.
Now she felt sick over it. Not because she regretted those feelings, but because she still had them.
She wanted Theo to love her. Not to love them both. And she couldn’t decide if that was normal or horrible.
After the reunion, Mr. and Mrs. Trevathan invited the sisters to stay for dinner—“We know Theo doesn’t want to be separated from his heroes”—but Pearl declined, explaining that they needed to get back to Twin Roses. Privately, she hoped that being away from Theo would help her to get a handle on her feelings—and on Ruby’s feelings. There was so much to sort out, and she figured she’d have a better sense of whether her sister was hurt or angry once they were alone.