“You know,” I said, “you almost let a rat eat me.”
“I’m glad it didn’t.”
Shadows went across the moon. I pulled a blanket around me. We kissed again.
The trip home went by like a flash. I lay back in Aaron’s lap looking at the sky while he stroked my hair back from my forehead. His hands were cold, or maybe my face was hot.
“Aaron?”
“Mmm?”
“What was it really? The deposit.”
“My color vision.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I figured I don’t use it much at night anyway.”
“Oh. So why didn’t you just say so?”
“Because you’re so much fun to tease.”
“Oh,
“Yes, you’re fun to tease.”
“Mmm.” We kissed again, this time upside down.
The carpet slowed down and gave a little bob. Aaron looked up. “Too bad. We’re here already,” he said.
I sat up. There was my room, with my desk lamp still on. I knelt and pulled the window open. “Well, thanks for the ride,” I said. “This was . . . fun.”
“Yeah, it was.” He put out his hand and helped me through the window—which wasn’t strictly necessary, but I didn’t mind.
I put my head back out the window. “Bye, Aaron,” I said.
“Bye, Elizabeth. Maybe we can hang out in the daylight sometime,” said Aaron. “You know, I don’t think I know the color of your eyes.”
“Yours are brown. With gigantic red blood vessels at the corners. And you have cavernous nostrils, they look like a bear’s den, and a monster hangnail on your right index finger. Or is it your left?”
“Shut up,” he said, kissing me one last time.
I leaned out the window and watched him until the carpet vanished over the rooftops.
I would like to say the prince and princess lived happily ever after, along with the swineherd and the scullery maid. And, in fact, things did get easier for Anjali and Marc—thanks to Jaya, who spilled the beans by answering Anjali’s phone in front of their parents and telling Anjali her “boyfriend” was calling. After some recriminations—Mr. and Mrs. Rao thought Anjali should have mentioned Marc’s existence herself—they invited him over for dinner and pronounced him a “nice young man.”
“They’re just using reverse psychology,” Jaya told me. “They think Anji’s dating Merritt to rebel, so if they tell her they approve, she’ll get bored and break up with him.”
“How do you know they don’t just actually like Marc?” I said. “He’s pretty likable.”
“I know my parents. They’re crazy for reverse psychology. They’re always trying it on me.”
“Maybe that’s because you’re so perverse.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes you are, silly, you just proved it.”
“I think I know my parents better than you do, Elizabeth Rew!”
“Whatever you say,” I told her. I was glad the Raos allowed Anjali to date Marc, no matter why—and even gladder that she still went to the basketball games with me, even though she no longer needed me for cover.
As for the swineherd and the scullery maid, I was so used to the princess being somebody else, I had trouble getting used to being the heroine of my own story. In a few short weeks, I had gone from having nobody to eat lunch with to having a basketball-game buddy and even—wonder of wonders!—a boyfriend. It took me a while for my self-image to catch up with my new status. But “happily ever after” doesn’t begin to describe it. Not a week goes by when Aaron and I don’t have three or four little squabbles and at least one full-out fight.
Still, for a smug, pigheaded ogre, he’s pretty darn cute, and he hasn’t stuffed me in a paper bag and fed me to a rat again—at least, not yet.
And my sense of direction? I’m still waiting.
If ever a book had a fairy godmother and a Prince Charming, they were Christina Büchmann and Andrew Nahem.
I’m deeply indebted as well to the assorted witches, magicians, and librarians without whom my mice and pumpkins would never have had a chance of transporting anyone anywhere: my editor, Nancy Paulsen; my agent, Irene Skolnick; my mother, brother, father, and stepfather, Alix Kates Shulman, Ted Shulman, Martin Shulman, and Scott York; and David Bacon, Yudhijit Battacharjee, Mark Caldwell, Elizabeth Chavalas, Cyril Emery, Vida Engstrand, Rob Frankel, Erin Harris, John Hart, John Keenum, Katherine Keenum, Sara Kreger, Shanti Menon, Christina Milburn, Friedhilde Milburn, Laura Miller, Laurie Muchnick, Alayne Mundt, Lisa Randall, Maggie Robbins, Bruce Schneier, Jesse Sheidlower, Andrew Solomon, Greg Sorkin, Jaime Wolf, and Hannah Wood.
Thanks also to my tenth-grade social studies teacher, the late Ira Marienhoff, who stopped me in the hallway one day with the words, “You! Polly! You look like a young lady who needs a job. Call this number.” And to Stanley Kruger at the New York Public Library, who hired me when I did.
