Lucky Caller(20)

“I wasn’t.”

“You were,” I said as we made our way down the hall. “I was running the board. I should’ve been able to figure it out.”

“We were all at fault. Or…” Jamie scrunched up his face. “None of us were, actually. It was a freak malfunction. We were just unlucky.”

Maybe that was true. But either way: First it was the job at Pipers, and now he was taking the blame for this. I didn’t want to owe Jamie anything. It wasn’t specific to him—I didn’t want to owe anyone anything. But something about it being him specifically made it worse.

“I don’t need anyone … rescuing me, or whatever,” I said after a moment.

“I know.” He glanced over at me with a hint of a smile. “Believe me, I remember.”

I was reminded all at once of our childhood game of Kingdom, and there was no way Jamie wasn’t thinking of it too. Kingdom had always had a rescue component, but it was very rarely a rescue of my sisters or me. Instead, we focused our efforts on saving Jamie.

Kingdom was invented out of boredom, as most childhood games are. It was one of those weird sorts of imaginary games that you get into at nine or ten, when you’re old enough to think up some truly ghoulish things but young enough to still want to play pretend.

My sisters and I were obsessed with fairy tales at the time, and we wanted to make our own. We decided being princesses or whatever was too played-out, so we took on different roles: Rose was a rogue bounty hunter named Iliana. Sidney, only six at the time, was a troll, because she was obsessed with the trolls in Frozen. I remember her glaring up at us when she declared that she wanted her name to be “Quad.”

“Why?” Rose looked baffled.

“Because that’s the name I want!”

“But—”

“Quad! Quad! Quad!” she chanted, her little fists beating in time against her thighs.

We were forced to relent eventually and decided that Quad the Troll had very specific powers—camouflage, communication with animals, and super strength.

I established an intricate backstory for my character, Aurelie. She worked in a bakery by day, but by night she practiced all manner of magic—predicting futures, making potions, casting spells. I remember tying dental floss around a rock we found outside and holding it over a map that Rose had drawn, shushing the others while I focused my energies. I liked the idea of a seemingly normal person with hidden powers that they only revealed at incredibly crucial moments. I liked, I suppose, the idea of being underestimated and then exceeding people’s expectations.

Jamie joined our game since Gram watched us pretty regularly after school. We gave him little choice in the matter, but Jamie usually went along with whatever we wanted to do anyway. It was no fun having Jamie rescue us, so we decided we would rescue him—the errant prince always getting himself into scrapes with dragons that were after his gold, or sorcerers who gave him poisoned fruit, or witches who put him into trances. We dubbed him Prince Hapless, after one of Rose’s vocabulary words. Hapless meant unlucky.

Jamie’s portrayal of Prince Hapless was amazing. He seemed every inch the charming, funny, completely brainless prince. The kind who’d accidentally fall in thrall to a witch because he’d stopped to help her fix a wagon wheel or something and didn’t realize he was being hexed.

Prince Hapless would frequently slip into a coma, or a trance, and sometimes it was a counter-spell that brought him out of it, or the breaking of a cursed relic. Sometimes it was a kiss.

I was the only one willing to “kiss” Jamie—I would rest my hand over his mouth and peck the back of it, making an overexaggerated smacking sound. His eyes would spring open. For a second, as I hovered there, still close, they would be all I could see.

I liked that second.

Maybe it was nostalgia or spending more time with him lately, maybe it was the weirdly potent memory of Jamie wearing one of Papa’s white dress shirts with a scarf for a sash. Whatever the reason, as we walked past the auditorium, then the administrative offices, I couldn’t help but ask: “So … What’s Prince Hapless up to these days?”

Jamie smiled almost reflexively, but it faded after a moment. “He’s dead,” he said.

“Dead?” I repeated.

“Mm. He’s entombed in a majestic field next to this, like, super clear lake. The flowers growing around his grave bloom for just one day every spring, and it’s an official day of mourning for all his people. And then after that, they throw like a really dope music festival there.”

A pause. “Sorry to hear that. That he died. The music festival sounds cool, though.”

He grinned.

“What about, uh…” Jamie’s expression shifted to more of a grimace, some embarrassment tingeing it, like maybe he didn’t want to acknowledge my fake fantasy character name even though I just acknowledged his fake fantasy character name. Or maybe he didn’t remember it. Maybe he had forgotten Aurelie, the baker by day, enchantress by night. “Your person.”

“Oh, you know. Probably just … baking bread. Hustling people at magic pool. That kind of stuff.”

“Nice.” It was quiet. Jamie cleared his throat eventually. “So.” He looked around as we reached the end of the hallway, and stopped at the doors to the parking lot. “Where are you headed?”