Out of the Wild Read online

  “Julie!”

  She always locked it when they left the house! But on weekends . . . She’d been hoping that the Wild would decide to leave her bed voluntarily. Couldn’t it live in a different room? Maybe a closet or the garage? Or even the dining room? So far, they hadn’t been able to budge as much as a leaf, and she wanted her room back. “I’m sorry! But I’m sure he won’t—”

  “He can’t see it.” Mom ran past Julie up the stairs. “Don’t move!” she called to the mouse. “Wherever you are, don’t move! Just wait!”

  Julie pounded up the stairs after Mom. “Mouse, stop! The Wild is up there!”

  Mom halted in the doorway to Julie’s bedroom, and Julie skidded to a stop behind her. “Everyone, stay calm,” Mom said.

  The mouse was less than a yard from Julie’s bed. Underneath the bed, the green leaves of the Wild rustled as they shifted and writhed. One vine uncurled, reaching out past the dust ruffle toward the mouse.

  “Don’t be frightened,” Mom said softly and evenly, “but the Wild is directly behind you.” Piles of clothes, books, and papers created a canyon that led directly to the bed. If he ran . . . “Come toward my voice.”

  The mouse quivered. His fur shuddered in gray ripples. “No more knives. Please, please, please, no more knives.” A leaf crept closer.

  “No one here has knives,” Mom said.

  He inched backward. “Run, run, run, as fast as you can. You can’t catch me!”

  Another tendril of green snaked over the carpet.

  “Stop that,” Mom said sharply to the Wild.

  At her tone, the Wild shrank back, and the mouse skittered closer to the green. “Not you!” Julie said to the mouse. “Do you want to go back to life in the Wild, back to being controlled like a puppet, back to living the same story over and over again, back to losing all your memories and everything that makes you who you are?” Julie had chosen to abandon her father, the father she had missed her whole life, rather than live trapped like that. “You have a life here outside the Wild, a home—”

  “She knows!” the mouse cried. “She knows we know! She knows we know she knows! She knows we know she knows we know!”

  Okay, he was totally insane. Who knew what? What was he talking about?

  “You’re agitating him,” Mom said in a singsong voice. “Come toward my voice. You’ll be safe if you come to me. I’ll take you home to the nice, safe library—”

  Squealing, the mouse tripped over his hind paws in his efforts to scramble away. The leaves rustled in anticipation. “Or no library!” Julie said quickly. Why was he afraid of the library? It was the perfect place for the mice—their friends could visit easily and discreetly, plus Linda, the children’s room librarian, kept the mice safe, warm, and fed.

  “She’ll bring it back again!” the mouse cried. He was now framed on all sides by green. Like a wild animal, the Wild was poised to pounce. “She won’t stop. She wants it back.”

  “Bring what back?” Julie asked. Did he mean the Wild? And what did he mean “again”? Was he talking about the person who made the wish? Did he know who was responsible for bringing the Wild back? No one had confessed yet.

  Was it someone in the library? Was that why he didn’t want to return there? Was it . . . It was a crazy thought, but . . . Could it have been a librarian? Three blind mice might not have noticed the presence of a quiet librarian after hours. They could have sung or talked. A librarian could have overheard something she shouldn’t have. “Did the children’s room librarian make the wish that set the Wild free?” Julie asked.

  “Linda?” Mom said, startled. “Not Linda.”

  “You know!” the mouse shrieked.

  It was Linda! Oh, wow, how was that possible? Linda? Smiley, friendly, ordinary Linda? She made the wish that set the Wild free? She was responsible for Julie nearly losing her family, her home, everything? But how—

  “She’ll know you know!” He stumbled backward, and his hind paws touched the green. Instantly, the vines snapped around him. Leaves fanned over his face, and the Wild swept him under Julie’s bed. He vanished in a knot of green shadows.

  “No!” Julie rushed forward.

  Mom grabbed her arm. “Stop! It has a character! It’s going to grow!” She pulled Julie back into the hallway. “Boots! Precious! Get the pruners!” Mom spun Julie around by the shoulders and aimed her toward the stairs. “Go!”

  “Only if you go,” Julie said. “You go; I go. You stay; I stay.” She was not—repeat, not—going to lose Mom to the Wild again.

  Before October, Mom wouldn’t have listened. But now she nodded and released Julie. Side by side, Julie and her mom stood in the bedroom doorway. Green undulated under the bed, pulsing. Julie swallowed. Her mouth felt papery dry. It could happen again—losing her family, losing herself, all of it. She couldn’t let it happen again.

  Julie heard thump, thump, thump. Dragging two pairs of pruning shears, Boots and Precious came up the stairs. They dropped them at Julie and Mom’s feet. Eyes on the Wild, Mom reached down, picked up the longer shears, and held them ready. Julie picked up the smaller clippers and snapped them open and shut.

  Precious pranced into the bedroom. “I see no new growth.”

  “It ate the third mouse,” Julie said.

  “Oh. Best be going.” Flicking her tail in the air, the white cat bolted out of the room and down the stairs. A few seconds later, Julie heard the cat door in the kitchen creak.

  Boots hesitated. “Coming?”

  Mom hefted the pruners. “We have to try to cut it back as soon as it grows. Once it grows too much, it will be too strong to stop.”

  Boots inched backward. “Since there are only two pruners and only two people with opposable thumbs . . .”

  “You can go,” Mom said.

  Boots fled, a streak of orange fur.

  A minute passed, and then another and another. Julie’s arms began to ache from holding the pruners. Her palms sweated on the handles until they felt slick.

  “What’s it doing?” Julie asked.

  Mom shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s had enough time to force the mouse into a fairy tale. It should be growing by now.”

  They watched deep green shadows writhe under Julie’s bed in a mass of tentacle-like vines. She heard the shush-shush of leaves rubbing together. But it didn’t grow. Why not? What was it doing? “Let him go!” Julie shouted at the green. “Give him back!”

  The Wild burst out from under the bed. Julie’s heart slammed against her rib cage. Oh, no, oh, no. She gripped the shears as leaves and vines spilled across the carpet—

  And then just as suddenly, the green retreated. In its wake, it left behind a huddled lump of red and blue velvet.

  The velvet moaned. Julie saw hands reach out of the fabric to press against the rug. The figure pushed upward to kneel in the center of Julie’s carpet. He raised his head.

  Beside her, Julie heard her mom suck in a breath. The pruning shears slipped from Mom’s fingers and clattered to the floor.

  “Rapunzel,” the man said.

  “Dad,” Julie said.

  Chapter Two

  Rapunzel’s Prince

  One minute.

  Two minutes.

  Julie felt the word dad still vibrating on her lips. Beside her, Mom was an ice sculpture. Color ran out of her perpetually rosy cheeks as Julie’s father, Rapunzel’s prince, slowly pushed himself onto his feet and straightened.

  Julie felt herself pale, then flush, then pale again. Dad!

  He looked exactly as Julie remembered from her single afternoon with him: sandy tousled hair, Superman cleft chin, blue eyes that matched Mom’s, and pale scars etched on his cheeks from the thorns at the base of Rapunzel’s tower . . . How did he look to Mom? She had last seen him five centuries ago, when he’d sacrificed himself so that she and the other fairy-tale characters could escape the Wild.

  Five centuries.

  If Mom were anyone else, she would have fainted dead away. But she was
Rapunzel, and Rapunzel did not faint. She handled every situation with grace and style . . . Okay, every situation except this one. Mom didn’t move or speak. She simply stood there, pale and silent.

  Julie felt as if there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. It was hard to breathe. She felt dizzy, light-headed. She saw Dad’s eyes flick around the room at the movie posters, the strewn clothes, the floppy-eared teddy bear on the dresser, the jeans hanging from the closet doorknob, and—behind him—the tangled mass of leaves and vines that was the Wild, half hidden in the shadows under her bed. His eyes raised back up, first to Rapunzel and then to Julie.

  Julie laughed out loud. She couldn’t help it—the laugh just burst out of her as wild and shrill as a scream. Her dad was here! Here, here, here! She leapt over a stack of overdue library books, landed in a heap of sweaters, and then slammed into her father. She threw her arms around his neck. “You’re here! How are you here? You’re free!”

  His arms closed around her as if by reflex. She pressed her cheek against silk and velvet and breathed him in. He was real! He was here! He smelled exactly as she remembered: like pine sap and ancient dust. Tears in her eyes, she tilted her head up to see his face. He wasn’t looking at her. Why wasn’t he looking at her? He was staring over Julie’s head at Mom. Oh, of course, she thought.

  Releasing him, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and then tugged on his silk sleeve. “Come on. Say hello to your true love.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She led him across the room to the doorway where Mom stood, frozen.

  Mom lifted her hand halfway toward him, and then her hand fell back down. Julie had never seen her look so pale. She was as ghostly as a reflection in a window. “You’re not dreaming, Mom,” Julie said. “He’s real. See, here.” She grabbed his hand and Mom’s hand, and she put them together.

  Their fingers intertwined.

  Julie stepped back. Wow. She stared at her parents’ hands, their fingers laced together for the first time in five hundred years. Mom’s fingers were thin and smooth, with nails tapered in half-crescent moons. Dad’s fingers were calloused and brown, and he had soft, pale hair across the veins on the back of his hand. Julie looked up at her parents’ faces. Both of them were staring at their hands.

  “Rapunzel,” Dad said, more a breath than a sound. “My Zel.”

  Mom raised her face, and Julie saw her eyes glisten. But she didn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry, Julie knew. In Mom’s original story, Rapunzel cried when she was reunited with her prince. Her tears were the final moment of her story. In the Wild, that meant that once she cried, she would forget who she was, and she would be caught in an endless cycle of reenacting the same tale over and over again. After living through that, Mom wasn’t going to cry now.

  Dad was crying. Tears zigzagged down his scars. Slowly, gently, Zel reached up and touched the tears with her fingertips. Lightly, she brushed them away.

  And now her parents were inches away from each other. Julie hadn’t seen them move. Only their hands touched. Zel’s free hand hovered by her prince’s face, almost but not quite touching. In each of their eyes, Julie could see the reflection of the other, filling the blue. Their breathing fell into unison, exhales mingling in the space between their lips.

  Julie felt as if a bubble had closed around them, and she was outside looking in. But that’s okay, she told herself. They deserve a moment. I should leave them alone.

  She didn’t move. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t stop staring at them. Her parents were together!

  “You’re here,” Mom said.

  “Yes,” Dad said.

  Again, silence. Mom traced the curve of Dad’s cheek with her fingers. He ran his hand through her wheat gold hair. “You are free,” Dad said.

  “Yes,” Mom said.

  Silence.

  “Whoa!” a voice said from the hallway. Julie looked down. Fur on end, Boots lashed his tail from side to side. “What the . . . How’s this . . .” Rising onto his hind feet, he pointed at Dad with his front paw. “You are so not a mouse.”

  Dad inclined his head. “Puss-in-Boots. It is good to see you.”

  Bending, Julie scooped up her brother. “Come on. Let them say hello in peace.” She carted him out of the room and down the stairs.

  He squirmed in her arms, shedding orange fur on her shirt. “Just for the record: I didn’t abandon you,” he said. “I had to be sure that Precious was safe, and then I was coming back to fight alongside you.”

  Uh-huh. “You were curious,” Julie said, carrying him into the kitchen. “You didn’t see the Wild take over the house so you came to see why not.”

  “That too,” Boots said. With a final twist, he wiggled out of her arms and landed on the kitchen table. “Now, explain the whole miracle-escape thing to me.”

  It was a miracle. A bona fide, inexplicable miracle. She remembered the moment she last saw Dad: in front of room thirteen, a motel room door in the middle of a castle. It had led magically to the Wishing Well Motel, where she had made the wish that had banished the Wild back under her bed. She had chosen to walk through that door and make that wish. She had never expected to see him again. “I can’t explain it,” she said. “The mouse ran in, and Dad came out.”

  He licked his fur back flat. “That is the most unsatisfying explanation I’ve ever heard,” he said. “Did he say how he escaped? Did the mouse rescue him? Was it more like a hostage exchange?”

  “Maybe,” Julie said. “I don’t know. We didn’t ask.”

  “Your dad suddenly appears after being imprisoned for five hundred years, and you don’t ask? I know you’re not a cat, but do you have zero curiosity? Don’t you wonder what this means?” He leapt off the table and wound around chair legs—the cat equivalent of pacing—and continued with questions: Did this mean that the Wild was weakening? Was this a white flag of surrender, or was it part of some elaborate plot? Had the Wild felt pity, or had the prince escaped on his own? Was it an accident? The Wild had never released anyone willingly before. Why now?

  Good questions. But Julie had another one: What would it be like to have a dad? She tried out the word: dad. This is my dad. This weekend, my dad and I . . . what? What would they do now that he was here? Anything. Everything.

  “Yoo-hoo, Julie. Talking here,” Boots said.

  Julie focused on her brother. “Sorry. What?”

  He sighed theatrically. “Never mind. You’d better call your grandmother. You’re lucky that Zel talked her out of her trip to Europe. She’ll want to know what happened. Maybe she’ll know why it happened.”

  Right. Yes. “And I should call Gillian. She’ll never believe this.”

  “She hangs out with a dancing bear,” Boots said. “You could tell her that Santa Claus is your roomie, and she’d believe you.”

  “Point taken,” Julie said, and smiled. Once she started smiling, she couldn’t stop. She felt like her innards were about to burst out, like her skin was too small to hold in all the shouting and jumping inside her. Dad, Dad, Dad! How many times had she imagined him here? A million times. A billion. She wanted to race back upstairs and see if he was still here. But no, Mom deserved a moment with Dad. Julie had waited twelve years, but Mom had waited five hundred. On the other hand, he was Julie’s dad, and she’d only met him once—and then chosen to leave him in the Wild. Her smile faded. Did he understand why she’d done it? Did he blame her?

  “Okay, Attention Deficit Girl, you just ignore me,” Boots said. “I’m going to tell Precious it’s safe.” As he squeezed his bulk out the cat door, he said over his shoulder, “By the way, the mice are in the fridge.”

  That caught Julie’s attention. She sprang across the kitchen. What was he thinking? Mice in the fridge? She threw open the refrigerator door.

  Two tail-less, shivering mice fell out into her hands.

  “So cold,” one said. “So very, very cold.”

  “Winter, winter, go away, come again another day,” the second one said.

  She winced.
“I’m so sorry.” Kicking the fridge door shut, she cupped the mice in her hands and carried them to the counter. She needed a box in case they freaked out again. She fetched the shoe box from her new sneakers out of the trash, wrapped the mice in a dish towel, and laid them in the box. “Better?” she asked.

  “Thank you, kind maid!” one of them sang.

  She made a face. They weren’t going to think she was so kind when they heard what had happened. She might have gained a father, but they’d lost a brother. Who knew how long he’d be trapped in the Wild? It had kept Rapunzel’s prince for five hundred years.

  Julie’s eyes shifted toward the ceiling. Wow, Dad was here.

  Was she a bad person for not feeling worse? Honestly, if she had known that all it would take to have her family together would be one talking mouse, she would have chucked all three rodents in years ago. Ugh, did that make her a horrible person? Taking a deep breath, she told them the news as quickly as she could. The two mice began to sob. “I’m so sorry,” she repeated. “We’ll take you two someplace safe . . .” She trailed off. They’d promised to take the third mouse home to his nice, safe cage in the library . . .

  She’d nearly forgotten: Linda had made the wish! Linda. Perky, cheerful Linda, the children’s room librarian who always remembered every kid’s name and had been known to skip around the library singing when new books arrived. She always seemed so harmless, so . . . librarian-like. How could she have been the one who had turned Julie’s world upside down? It was crazy, nearly as crazy as Dad returning. Why had Linda done it? What did she want? Did she know what would happen when she made her wish? Did she know her wish would come true?

  Gently, Julie closed the lid on the shoe box. The mice murmured to each other, whimpering and moaning. Once they recovered, Julie could ask them more about the librarian. How much of the truth did Linda know? Did she know about Julie’s family? Did she know that Mom was the original Rapunzel and that she had defeated the Wild at the end of the Middle Ages? Or, more accurately, that she and Dad had defeated the Wild, though it had cost Dad his freedom . . .