by Alex Flinn
I move forward. Calm. Calm.
The frog hops onto the second stair.
No!
Calm. Calm.
I take another, larger step. It brings back memories of playing Mother May I on the beach with Meg, sneaking forward, hoping not to be noticed. I hold the cloak out farther, ready to throw.
The frog hops onto the porch.
The inn’s door opens, and the frog hops inside.
“No!” I can’t stop the shout. The old lady who opened the door stares at me, perplexed. I try to smile, and she lets the door close behind her.
It’s okay. The frog’s inside now. Trapped. I can get him.
Calm.
Maybe they’ll even chase him out.
I try to imagine the prince, getting hit with a broom. Better get moving.
I stuff the cloak in my backpack, then start up the stairs.
Inside, it’s all blue flowers and white wicker, but there’s no frog anywhere, only a group of tourists, balancing plates in their laps, eating muffins. They stare at me, and I imagine how I must look, seventeen, backpack on back, dirty, and stinking of garbage. I look homeless.
It’s okay. I’m not staying. I’ll just take my frog and leave.
“May I help you?”
A middle-aged woman with a leather tan, Birkenstock sandals, and a pot of coffee approaches me. She’s trying to look friendly, like nothing’s wrong.
“No,” I say. “I mean, sorry. I mean, I’m trying to catch a frog.”
“Frog?” She wrinkles her nose.
“The one that hopped in here when that last guest left.” I look around. I don’t see it, nor do I see the grossed-out faces of guests whose breakfast has been invaded by a frog. No. They look calm. I bend over and start looking under the tables (all of which have tablecloths) and chairs (all of which have people on them).
“Young man, there was no—”
“There was.” I pull the cloak from my backpack. Something—garbage, food, falls off of it, and I get a whiff of the smell, like beer and B.O. The breakfast eaters wrinkle their noses while still trying to pretend they don’t see me. They’re very accepting here in the Keys.
Still, the coffeepot lady swats at my cloak. “Please put that away.”
“I’m sorry. It’ll just be a minute.” I can’t get thrown out of here, not without my frog. I get on hands and knees and start crawling around, through the Clarks and Easy Spirits, brands you’d never see at the Coral Reef. There’s a big, wicker sofa with three people on it. Bet he’s under there. My knees ache, but I crawl toward it.
“Young man! Young man, please!”
The guests squirm and look at the coffee lady. They move their legs aside.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “but do you want a frog loose in your place?”
“Frog?” A shriek from one of the sofa ladies.
“There’s no frog,” the coffee lady says. I crawl through a forest of legs, looking from side to side, Topsider to Mephisto.
I reach the sofa. “Excuse me. Would you mind if I look under that cushion?”
A lady in Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville sandals jumps up.
There’s no frog under the sofa or tables. There’s no frog under the buffet or television. There is no frog anywhere.
“Maybe it went back out,” says the coffee lady. “Why don’t you go look?”
I realize I should. With one final glance around, I start toward the door.
But when I try to leave, the door won’t open. I tug at it, then harder. I pull the knob back and forth. Nothing.
“It’s stuck,” I tell the coffee lady.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” She puts down her pot, laughing through gritted teeth. “Of course it’s not.” She opens it easily and gestures me out.
“Thanks.” I brush past her and step onto the porch.
When I do, my stomach is seized with a knifing pain. I double over, then stagger back into the room, clutching my gut.
“Are you okay?” I see the coffee lady’s Birkenstocks, her clenched toes.
“Fine.” The pain has subsided. I pull myself up and try to step outside again.
Again, the pain pierces through me. But now, it’s in my head as well. I stumble back. “I’m going. I’m fine.” I take another step forward. My field of vision narrows so it seems like I’m looking through a toy telescope. My stomach and guts roll inside each other. My head has a heartbeat. I have to go. Have. To. I can barely feel my leg. But still, I take a step.
That’s when my legs buckle under me.
Chapter 18
I’m surrounded by shoes. Ugly shoes. Someone puts something clammy on my head.
“Are you okay?” the coffee lady says. “I’ll call the paramedics.”
“No, don’t,” I say, because in that second, I understand. It’s the magic. Something, or someone, is keeping me from leaving the inn, maybe to stop me from following the fox’s orders about spending the night in the dive motel. Did they lure me here in the first place? Was the frog a mirage?
I know if I step out that door, the pain will come back.
“I don’t need the paramedics.” The clammy thing on my head is a washcloth. It drips down my face. “But I think I need a place to stay.”
“Oh no.” The toes clench again. “This is a hotel, not a shelter.”
I get it. I’ve reached the limits of Key Largo casualness. “I have money.” I grope for my backpack. Someone’s put it in a corner, and I gesture toward it. Finally, a lady in orange-and-white Mephisto Allrounders hands it to me.
“Thanks,” I say. “Nice shoes.”
She looks down. “Thank you. They’re very comfortable.”
“Well, you know what George Bernard Shaw said, don’t you?” When she shakes her head, I say, “‘If a woman rebels against high-heeled shoes, she should take care to do it in a very smart hat.’” I gesture at her visor, which is covered in pom-poms. “You did.”
The woman laughs. “I didn’t know young people knew about Shaw.”
I riffle through my backpack until I find money. Even though it kills me to do it, I show the coffee lady three hundred dollars. “Will this be enough to stay tonight?”
It must be more than enough, because she says, “You have clean clothes?”
“Yeah.” I must really stink.
“Good. Then once you feel up to walking, go to the bathroom and change. Your room will be ready soon. You can have a muffin while you wait . . . after you change.”
“Of course.” I look from Birkenstock to Mephisto. “Actually, I think I’m ready to change now.” I need to make another attempt to leave. I just thought of something.
“Wonderful.” She gestures me toward the bathroom.
Once there, I wrap the cloak around my shoulders. “I wish I was outside. Right outside. No tricks.”
Nothing.
“I wish I was at the other inn, where I belong.”
Nothing.
“Everything all right in there?” Someone taps on the door.
“Fine.”
Is the coffee lady a witch? Did she trap me here? One memory of her disapproving face says no. She didn’t want me to stay. But someone does. Someone cast a spell on me. And on the cloak, so it won’t work.
I change, wash as well as I can, and shake the food and garbage off the cloak. Then I head outside and devour three muffins.
An hour later, I’m in a third-floor room, looking down on the fox and the motel I’m supposed to be at. The fox meets my eyes, then looks away. The frog is nowhere in sight, and I haven’t heard screams from the lobby to indicate he’s there either. Every hour or so, I go downstairs and try to walk outside. Every time, I’m seized with staggering pain. I even try to climb out the window, but I can’t.
Finally, I wash my dirty clothes in the bathroom sink, then settle into the four-poster bed and go to sleep. I hope I’ll be able to leave tomorrow.
I sleep all day, not even bothering with meals. It’s a bed-and-breakfast, so I don�
�t expect lunch. I’m not hungry anyway, only tired, so tired I barely dream.
When I wake, it’s dark and the digital clock says eight. I stumble downstairs and try the door. No dice. I go back to bed, but now, I wake hourly. I’m trapped. God, I’m trapped. Am I ever getting out of here? I don’t try the door again until midnight. It’s the next day. Maybe I can still go to the motel. But no. I can’t pass.
I’m too frightened to go back to bed. What if I’m stuck in this alternative universe forever and never see my family. Sooner or later, I won’t be able to pay the bill, and they’ll get the police to evict me.
At sunrise, I shower, dress, then head downstairs.
“You look refreshed.” The coffee lady is setting out trays of Danish. “Ready for breakfast? We have fresh clotted cream.”
My stomach aches, a cold, raw hunger that rises from my gut like a bad smell.
I nod. “Definitely. But first, I need to check the . . . ah . . . weather.”
She smiles. “It’s a hot one, all right.”
“I’ll bet.” I walk to the door. As I suspected, it opens easily now, and when I step out, I feel only hunger pangs, not the stabbing pain I felt yesterday. I take a second, then a third step, then feel a familiar feeling, the same one I used to get at work. Someone’s watching me. I look across the street. It’s the fox. He’s glaring at me. His eyes meet mine. Then, he scurries into the bushes.
I climb the steps. The coffee lady’s still there, and I say, “Actually, I lost some time, what with being sick and all. Could I maybe get some muffins to go?”
“Certainly.” The coffee lady looks relieved to get rid of me. It’s probably the cloak in my backpack. Even though I washed my clothes, I only spot-cleaned the cloak so as not to affect its magic—if it even has any magic left. So it smells. “Let me get you a bag.”
When she leaves, I head for the buffet table, grab three muffins, stuff two into my backpack for the fox. For bribes. When the coffee lady returns with a bag, I grab as much food as I reasonably can, thank her, and leave.
Now, to find the fox.
Chapter 19
Do not take the golden cage. If you do, great misfortune will follow.
—“The Firebird and the Grey Wolf”
I don’t have to look very hard. As soon as I cross the street, the fox comes out from behind the Dumpster. He’s been waiting for me.
“Hey,” I say.
“I’ve got nothing to say to you,” he says.
“Look, I messed up.”
“You think?” The fox turns tail and walks away.
“But I saw the frog.”
He turns back, sneering with his little black fox lips. “The frog? Oh yeah, I’m sure it was the frog. Stupid! It was a mirage. I can’t work with someone who falls for tricks like that.” He draws back on his haunches, ready to spring into the Dumpster. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find breakfast.”
“Wait!” I remember the muffins. “Would you like something that isn’t garbage?”
The fox has already jumped, but he turns in midair and manages to land on his feet. Once straightened out, he slits his eyes at me. “What are we talking about?”
I step close, then open the bag in front of him. “Muffins. Scones. Danish. All home baked by the nice lady at the bed-and-breakfast where I’ve been captive all night.”
“Captive!” The fox laughs but reaches a tentative black paw toward a currant scone.
“Not so fast!” I pull the bag away. “Yes, I was trapped, trapped like a prisoner in a jail full of old people. And if you want a scone or a croissant with something called clotted cream, you need to listen to me, or . . .” I shut the bag and make to stuff it into my backpack.
“Or what?” The fox eyes the closed bag.
“Or you can have some leftover bar food that’s probably covered in puke.” I open the bag and use my hand to waft the scent toward the fox. Even though he’s a used-to-be human, he obviously got his new species’ keen sense of smell because he sniffs deeply.
“Please,” I beg. “I need to find this frog. It’s not for me. It’s for my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“She worries so much.” I hold the bag farther open. “Didn’t you have a mother?”
“Oh, all right!” The fox almost sobs. “But only since it’s been years since I’ve had anything sweet. The old lady in the bed-and-breakfast never throws anything away.”
“Is that why you didn’t want me to stay there, because you hate her?”
“No. The reason I didn’t want you to stay there is . . .” He stops and looks around, then jumps on the side of the Dumpster and looks there too.
“What?”
“Shh. I have to make sure no one can hear.” The fox jumps down, then runs to the corner of the building and looks around it.
“No one could understand you even if they heard.”
“Correction: No people could understand me. But there may be animals. Think about it. When you were on your way over there, did you see anything, a dog, perhaps, or a cat? The innkeeper has some really nosy cats.”
I think about it, then shake my head.
“Take one more look. But give me a cran-orange muffin first.”
“Okay, but only one.” I hand it to him, then take the bag with me. I walk around, as much to reassure myself that no one’s watching as to satisfy the fox. I haven’t let myself think about it, but now that I’m out, I wonder who trapped me there, who was watching. Will they do it again?
When I’ve looked under every bush and into every tree, I return to the fox, who has polished off the muffin and is licking his whiskers. “Enjoy it?”
“Yes! More! More!”
“After you help me.”
“Well, I shouldn’t. You haven’t proven yourself very trustworthy.”
“But . . .” I take a scone. It’s still warm from the oven, and I blow on it.
“Oh, okay.” The fox sits back on his haunches, eyes never leaving the scone. “But since you failed the first test, I need you to do something else. Now, instead of just staying in the motel, I want you to steal something for me.”
“Steal?”
The fox nods. “In the bar lives a golden bird, the bartender’s pride and joy. It sleeps by night in a golden cage, by day in one of wood. The bar is closed for three hours, from four in the morning until seven o’clock. The bar is locked, but the door is unsupervised, so a guest in the hotel could get in—particularly if he had a magic cloak.”
“But I don’t steal.” I think of the swans at the hotel, how Farnesworth loves them. Maybe this bird is like that for the bartender. I also think of the guys who could beat me up or worse. “I can’t.”
“Fine.” The fox turns away.
“Wait! There’s nothing else I could do?”
“Nothing. You already failed once. If you want the information to find the frog, I need that bird. I’m trying to help you, you and your poor mother. But no one ever said winning a princess was easy.”
The scone in my hand is cold now, and hard. “Are you going to kill the bird?”
“What if I was? Is a bird’s life worth a prince’s? But no. I won’t kill it. I just want to look at it.”
I think about that. It must really stink to be turned into a fox and have to eat garbage. Maybe the bird is a used-to-be too. “Is the bird a friend of yours?”
“What difference does it make? Do you want the information?”
I do. It doesn’t matter. If that’s the only way to get the frog, I’ll steal the bird. Sometimes you have to be a little less picky about things to get what you need.
“Okay,” I say.
“Atta boy. There’s only one thing you have to remember. The bird sleeps in a golden cage. His regular, wooden cage waits beside him for morning. Before you take him, you have to transfer him from one cage to another. If you don’t, the bird won’t go with you.”
“Wooden cage. Got it. But why?”
“It’s part of the te
st.”
I nod. I’m trying not to think about the part where I actually have to steal something from those scary bar guys.
“And give me that scone now.”
I do. I keep some muffins for myself and give him the rest of the bag. I start to walk away, leaving him feasting on a croissant, when his voice stops me. “Johnny?”
I turn back.
“What is your mother’s name?”
The question takes me by surprise, but I say, “Marie.”
The fox nods. “Pretty name.” He goes back to his scones.
I start toward the motel. It’s a long time before nightfall, a very long time. But I don’t want anything to mess me up today. The fox might not give me another chance. As I walk up the path to the motel, I see a frog. The frog! It looks right at me before hopping toward the bed-and-breakfast. I start to take a step toward it. It lingers there, staring at me.
No. It’s not real, and I need to ignore it. I turn my back and go to the door of the motel. To my relief, it opens. When I look out the door, the frog has vanished.
Chapter 20
I enter through the side door, a different door than the one that leads to the bar. Hopefully, a safer door. No one’s at the desk, so I wait. Nothing. After a few minutes, I ring the bell. I do it softly, so as not to enrage whatever disturbed individual might work in a place like this. Still nothing.
I sit on the floor (because there’s no chair) and wait. An hour later, I realize no one’s coming. I also realize I’m hungry. I’ve had nothing but muffins in the past day, and I gave the fox most of those. I hear rough laughter from the bar. My watch says ten a.m. Those guys get an early start. I smell something like food, and I need it bad. I’ll ask where the desk clerk is too.
I stand and walk to the bar entrance. It’s dark enough to look like night. I linger in the doorway, not wanting to go in. But what are they going to do? Beat me up? I’m a nice, polite person who never gets beat up.
The guys at the bar are the same ones from yesterday, and they’re wearing the same clothes. The golden bird, which looks like a canary, hangs over the bar, asleep in his wooden cage. I wait (politely) for the men to finish their conversation before I approach the bartender.