I don’t look at her, speaking instead to the hazy green of the horizon. “I’ve spent every day since second grade with you, Charm, and I’m grateful for every second of it.” I scuff my shoe against a dandelion, staining the earth yellow. “But even at the very best of times, there was a part of me that was just … playing out the clock. Waiting. Wishing I could save myself somehow, but never thinking I could aim higher.”
“Higher?”
I clear my throat, wishing the truth was just a little less cheesy. “Saving others. I should have gone to all those stupid protests with Roseville’s Children, I should have at least tried, and now it’s too late.” Last week a reporter from CNN asked to do a profile of me as “the oldest surviving victim of GRM.” I never wrote back, but the word victim burrowed under my skin and itched at me, a brand-new allergy.
Charm doesn’t say anything, so I keep talking to that green horizon. “I can’t stop thinking about the others. Not just the other kids with Roseville’s Malady, but the other sleeping beauties. The girls in other worlds who are dying or trapped or cursed, who deserve better stories than the ones they were given. Who are all alone.” I run my fingertips across the point of the splinter and I know by the sharp sound of Charm’s breath that she understands. That she sees the infinite pages of the universe turning before me, a vast book filled with a thousand wrongs that need righting, a thousand princesses that need rescuing, or at least a hand reached toward theirs in the darkness. “I don’t know how much time I have, but I know what I want to do with it.
Charm exhales very slowly beside me. “And they said a folklore degree was impractical.”
“Not if you’re a cursed fairy tale princess, it turns out.”
It’s a weak joke, but Charm smiles for the first time since she stumbled out of her Corolla. “Maybe we got it wrong. Maybe you weren’t the princess, after all. Maybe you’re the prince.” She rubs her Superman tattoo as she says it.
I shrug at her. “Or maybe we got the wrong story altogether. Maybe GRM is more like a poison apple than a curse, and there’s seven dudes waiting to put me in a glass coffin when I die. Maybe my true love’s kiss will revive me.” I kick at the dandelion again. “Maybe there’s a cure out there in one of those other worlds.”
Charm gives me a sharp, sideways glance before squinting at the rising sun. “Nice to know you’re trying to save yourself. Finally.”
“Yeah, so maybe you can stop trying to save me. Finally.”
I don’t even have to look at her to feel the mulish set of her jaw. God, she’s stubborn. I feel like I should warn Prim before I go. Then I remember the exclamation points and wonder if I should warn Charm instead. “Look, just—don’t work for fucking Pfizer. Don’t stick around Roseville. Go do something, anything else. Whatever you want. And take Prim with you.”
“You are not the boss of me,” Charm answers reflexively, but I can see the dangerous softening of her jaw at the mention of Prim’s name. She swallows and adds, casually, “Hey, by the way: I love you.” Her hands are jammed in her jeans pockets now, her eyes are still on the sky. “You don’t have to say anything back—I know about your rules—I just thought you should know before you—”
I tip my head against her shoulder, right where Superman’s hair curls against his forehead. “I love you, too.” It’s surprisingly easy to say, like the final tug that unties a knot. “It was a stupid rule.”
“Hot, but stupid, like I’ve always said.” Charm’s voice is rough and gluey, full of tears again. “Will you come home? When you’re ready?”
“Cross my heart.”
“Okay.” Charm turns and kisses me once, hard, on the top of my head. “I hope you find your happily ever after, or whatever.”
“Already did,” I say, and it’s possible that my voice is a little gluey, too. “I’m just looking for a better once upon a time.”
We don’t say goodbye. We just stand for a while, my cheek still on her shoulder, watching the sun rise over Muskingum County. Eventually Charm sighs and walks back to her car. She turns and blows me a final, brassy kiss before she gets inside.
The tower still smells faintly of roses. I find them curling and drying in their buckets, their petals gathering in drifts against the walls. I watch Charm’s car through the scummed windows, feeling the gathering heat of summer, thinking about stories that are told too often and the ink that bleeds from one cosmic page to the next and the stubborn arc of the universe. Charm’s car vanishes around a bend in the road, sunlight flashing gold against the windshield, and then I’m a girl in a tower again.