In any case... I had a bigger shock waiting for me.

---

 

18. The Stowaway Princess
 

We settled into our seats. Once again, Wiggy and I were together, and once again she'd given me the window.

"Are you going to sleep through this flight, too?" she asked. "You still look kind of sleepy."

"No," I replied. "It's a short flight anyway, right?"

"Compared to the last one, yeah. It's five and a half hours. And the sun is up."

I looked out the window. We were flying over the ocean. There was nothing to see but water. "For some reason I'm still sleepy," I agreed, "but I don't think I could fall asleep; I'm a little afraid to."

She laughed. "Afraid you might end up back in California, with that girl smacking your butt?"

"Maybe," I said.

Her eyes twinkled as she looked at me. Then she said, "That dream really shook you up, didn't it?"

"Yes," I said.

"It didn't sound so bad, though," she said. "It sounded like a lot of it was wish-fulfillment, you know? Like, you said you wished you were a part of that family, and you liked living back there in California, and all that."

"Yeah, but Jerry wasn't there," I objected. "He was the big reason I liked that family."

"Right," Wiggy agreed, "BUT, if he had been there, he would have been your brother, which would make the whole, um, romantic thing impossible."

"Yuck!"

"Yep," she agreed. "And you REALLY wanted and needed to get away from Frickenitch..."

"Flickerbridge," I corrected.

"Sorry! Flickerbridge... so in your dream you got as geographically far from New Jersey as you could get."

I listened to the whine of the jet, and said, "But I'm doing that in real life, now. I'm going farther... Wiggy!" I said in a melodramatic voice, "I'm going farther than I ever dreamed of!"

She rolled her eyes and smiled.

"You know, Wiggy, the problem with the dream wasn't what it was about. That's not what upset me. The reason it shook me up was because it was so real."

She shrugged. "Dreams can be that way," she said. "But they alway fade away."

"So what did you do while I was asleep?" I asked.

"I read Lord Of The Flies," she replied. "We have to read it for school. Have you read it?" I shook my head. "No? Well, don't. What an awful book! It isn't even written well!"

"I think I might have seen the movie," I told her.

She nodded. "It's one of those cases where the movie is better than the book. You know, they make high-school students read that thing, but there's NOTHING TO LEARN in it! I'm convinced that the only reason they make us read it is because it's short."

Not having read it, I couldn't really comment.

Wiggy went on, "What else did I do? I slept some. A little. There was a meal, a movie, another movie, another meal..." She shrugged.

"So, now that you read that book, are you out of stuff to read? Because I have some magazines that I brought..."

"Let's see what you've got," she said.

I reached down and pulled my bag from under the seat. Once it was between my feet, I tugged the zipper open, and found...

"What is that?" Wiggy asked. "A present? Who is it for?"

It sure looked like one: gift-wrapped, with a ribbon and a bow... and a card addressed to me.

Wiggy spotted the name on the card. "Oh, it's for you!"

In a flash of memory, I saw my mother fiddling with my bag while I was on the phone with Dad. Until now, I hadn't had a chance to see what she'd done.

"Oh, yeah, my mother must have stuck this in," I told Wiggy.

"Ooh!" she said in an excited voice, like a little girl. "Open it! Open it! I LOVE presents!"

"Okay," I said, smiling at her child-like enthusiasm. "Do *you* want to open it?"

Her eyes goggled. "Can I?" she asked in breathless disbelief. "Can I really?"

"Sure," I shrugged, and as I handed her the packet I said, "It feels like a book. Maybe it's something you'd like to read."

She gave a quiet squeal of excitement, and looked at it lying in her lap. Her hands were poised in the air as if she hardly dared touch it. The wrapping paper was gold-colored, with the words Merry Christmas! printed all over it. The ribbon was red, tied in shoelace bow.

First, she pulled off the card, opened it, and read it aloud. Luckily, I was the only one who could hear her.

"Dear Marcie," she read, "I meant this to be a Christmas present, but it didn't arrive in time. Now, it's your bon voyage gift. I hope you enjoy reading about other girls like you! Love, Mom."

My jaw dropped, and I froze like a statue. "Other girls like you"? Mom! How could you!? I thought. Are you trying to out me to all the girls on the trip?

"Girls like you?" Wiggy repeated, wondering what it could possibly signify, but she didn't look at me as she said it. Her eyes were on the book, which still lay wrapped in her lap. She was one of those people who take forever to unwrap a gift.

I wanted to grab it away from her and stuff it into my bag. Once we landed, I could toss it, unopened, into the first trash can we came across.

On the other hand, I could just ask Wiggy to give it back, to not open it. I'm sure if I told her that it was something personal and embarrassing, she'd understand.

Somehow, I didn't do either of those things. I could have, but I didn't.

Maybe I let her open it because I was still tired and disoriented. Maybe I let her open it because I'd been thinking so much and so hard about being outed on national TV. It hadn't happened, of course, but it probably would. And so... I don't know. Somehow it seemed connected.

Maybe I was curious to see how Wiggy would react.

Please understand: I didn't want her to know. At the same time, I could have stopped her. But I didn't.

In any case... I had a bigger shock waiting for me.

With an excited smile on her cute little face, Wiggy tore the paper off.

And what did she find, but a brand new copy of Princess Marcelline!
 

---

 

"So you're transgendered?" Wiggy asked, in the quietest, most discrete voice imaginable.

I nodded.

"You don't want to be a boy, do you?" she asked, her brow wrinkling in incomprehension.

"No!" I said. "No way!"

"Oh," she said, the light dawning, "You used to be a boy?"

"Yeah," I admitted, in the quietest possible voice.

She nodded, and I could almost hear the gears whirring inside her head as all the recalibrations took place.

"So...," she said, almost to herself, as her mental data shifted and realigned, "That explains the dream..."

"Wiggy," I said, "If you don't want me to be your roommate, I—"

"No!" she said, with sudden force. She gripped my arm. "No, I want you to be my roommate! I need you to be my roommate." Her eyes searched my face. "You still want to be my roommate, don't you?"

"Yes," I said, "I just thought—"

"To me," she said, "everything is the same as before." She looked at the book, which was still in her lap, resting in the nest of ripped wrapping paper. "I like you. You just have an... um... interesting... uh, history."

Then she looked up and smiled at me. "I can't believe your mother would send this with you on the trip, though! Was she trying to out you to all of us?"

I blushed. "I wondered the same thing," I replied, "but I don't think so. Sometimes she just doesn't think."

Wiggy nodded, and said, "Mothers," as if that explained everything. And I guess it did. "Well, I won't tell the other girls," she confided. "As far as I'm concerned, it's *your* business."

"Thanks," I said.

Her eyes returned to the book. "Do you mind if I look at this for a bit?"

"No, go ahead," I said. "But can I tell you something weird? In my dream, I had that book already. But I swear I've never seen it or heard of it before."

She gave me a look full of doubt. "You must have. You must have. You might have seen it from the corner of your eye. You weren't aware of it, but your brain registered it. Your subconscious probably made all kinds of elaborate connections, and figured out that this is what your mother stuck in the bag."

"Yeah, but, in my dream I read two of the stories in that book. What if in real life the stories are the same?"

She looked at me and frowned for a moment. "I don't know," she replied. "But Let's see if the stories are even in here."

"Okay, well the first one was called The Puir Laddie And His Godmother."

She gave me a glance that said, Are you for real?. Aloud she said, "I doubt there's any such story... with a crazy name like that? 'Puir' isn't even a word."

I didn't reply. She opened to the table of contents. "Nope," she announced. "No godmothers, no laddies, no puir anything. See?"

I looked, and she was right. "Weird," I commented.

"No," she replied. "NOT weird. It would have been weird if the story *was* here."

"I guess," I said.

"What was the other story?"

"Princess Marcelline," I said.

"Well, duh," she replied. "That's the title. You know that one's there."

"Let me see how the story goes," I said, grabbing the book. I quickly scanned the pages, up to the point where I'd stopped reading to Nina. "It's the same!" I said, dumbfounded. "It's the same story I read in my dream!"

"So?" Wiggy retorted. "That doesn't mean anything."

"It doesn't?" I asked in astonishment. It sure meant something to me!

"No," she insisted. "Look." She took the book from me, closed it, and pointed to the cover. "See this word? Retold. That means that this lady took some fairy tale that already exists and changed it around a little. You probably heard it or read it, but you forgot."

"No," I said. "The story was so bizarre! How could I forget something so bizarre?"

"We forget all kinds of things," Wiggy replied. "Otherwise we'd go crazy from having too much stuff in our heads."

"No way," I retorted.

"Yes, way," she replied. "Did you ever hear of Remembrance Of Things Past? It's a novel. Well, it's seven books long, and it's full of stuff that this guy forgot about completely."

"If he forgot it, how did he write about it?" I asked.

"Ah!" she laughed. "He dips this... kind of cookie called a madeleine into some tea, and the smell makes him remember it all."

"Oh, brother!" I scoffed. "Like that could happen!"

Wiggy chuckled.
 

---

 

After the steward had distributed the snacks, I noticed that Wiggy was staring at something as she munched her peanuts. So I asked her what she was looking at.

"It's Cakey and Ding-Dong," she said. "They're sitting together, and they're talking."

"Is that bad?"

She twisted up her mouth. "I don't know. I guess if you can't *hear* them, it's not bad."

"Can you hear them?"

"No, but I can *see* them, so I know what they're up to...

"Oh, hey!" she exclaimed, interrupting herself. "I didn't tell you! Cakey and Ding-Dong are *not* natural blondes. Isn't that scandalous?" She giggled.

"They're not?"

"No! And everyone knows. Not just the Amazons, but the whole school. But... everybody pretends that they are. Somehow, the entire school has forgotten... and if their roots get dark for a few days, every month or so... well, it's just one of the mysteries of nature."

I chuckled.

"So," she quipped, "they're actually on our side of the hair-color divide. The traitors!

"Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah! Cakey, I have to warn you, is a HUGE practical joker. She can drive people right up the wall, and she's made Mirina loose her cool in a big way more than once. One of her favorite things to do is to get Ding-Dong talking, and that's what she's doing now."

"Is that a bad thing?"

Wiggy made a face like you don't want to know!. "The bad thing is that — especially if she has no idea what in the world she's talking about — she will go on forever. And I mean, forever. It's like she's reading an imaginary encyclopedia where all the facts are completely wrong." Wiggy shook her head. "One thing Cakey loves to do — and I'm sure she'll try it on you — is that she sits down with you and Ding-Dong, and says something to set Ding-Dong off. You know, something Ding-Dong doesn't understand. Then, once Ding-Dong gets going, Cakey gets up and walks away, leaving you holding the bag, so to speak."

"Ah," I said.

"One day, after we talked about Jackie Onassis in class, Cakey and Ding-Dong sat down at lunch with me. That alone should have made me suspicious, but then Cakey wondered whether, when Jackie O. was First Lady, whether the taxpayers paid for all her clothes."

"Did they?" I asked.

"Who knows?" she replied hotly, "Who cares? The point is, that Ding-Dong went on for fifty minutes on the subject. First she explained why the taxpayers must have paid for them, then she changed her mind and went on about why they couldn't have paid for them. Then she ran through some other daffy things that, even if I *wanted* to listen to, I couldn't, because my brain went into overload and shut off for the rest of the day.

"The thing to do," Wiggy said, "if you see it coming, is to leave before Cakey does. Then she'll be the one stuck listening to Ding-Dong."

"I'll try to watch for that," I said. "Hey, you don't want to look at that book any more, do you?"

"Uh, no," she said, handing me Princess Marcelline. I began to shove it roughly back into my carry-on, so Wiggy said, "Oh, I thought you asked for it because you wanted to *read* it."

"No," I replied. "I want to BURY the Princess in the bottom of my suitcase. She can stay there until I get home."

Wiggy popped another peanut into her mouth.

"Maybe I can throw her overboard while we're on the boat," I groused, as I settled the book on the very bottom of the bag.

"Oh!" she said. "That reminds me! The trip! I haven't told you our itinerary."

"That's right!" I agreed. "You said something about an island?"

"Yup! So, we land in Bora Bora around lunchtime today, which is Friday, in case you forgot. Then we get on the boat, which is a big sailing ship, and we'll spend three nights onboard. Monday, which is New Years Day, we'll land on this little island where we'll stay for three days and three nights. Then, back on the boat for a day and a half, and on Friday after lunch we take the flight back to Honolulu. We'll be back home on Saturday evening."

"And then we have one day to recover before school starts on Monday."

"Unfortunately, yes."

"That's a lot," I said. "It doesn't sound like it will all fit in the time we have."

"Oh, it does," she said, and showed me a calendar. "See? One day plane, three days boat, three days island, two days boat, one day plane. More or less."

I had to agree. It all worked, at least on paper.

"What if there's a storm or something?" I asked.

"Or if the boat gets a flat tire?" she joked.

"No, really."

"Well, as far as we can plan, everything ought to work. If there are unforeseen difficulties, we'll just have to deal with them. I mean, it's not hurricane season. The boat makes this trip a lot, and they're used to having passengers who don't know anything about sailing, so... you know, everything should be fine. And if it's not, we'll deal with it."

"Okay," I said. "I just don't want to get stranded on Gilligan's Island, you know?"

"Well," she quipped with an impish grin, "Let's see what the sailors look like before we rule that out!"

"Good point, Wiggy! Good point!"

© 2008 by Kaleigh Way

[OTHER STORIES]