Chapter 2

C HAPTER 2

Any remaining expectations I had for my first week at college quickly fall apart when I walk back into my parents' home before 11:00 P.M. I am not cool or fun or wild—I am accidentally married and missing my dog.

"Home already?" Brooke asks from the couch as Naomi and I dash upstairs after taking the train from campus. We always talked about going to college together like best friends on a TV show, so at least one thing I wanted came true. (For the sake of our friendship, we won't be roommates.)

I ignore my sister and shut the door firmly behind us. Naomi sits on my bed, which is now stripped of my favorite Squishmallows and my fuzzy blanket. After moving into my dorm at the start of the week, all that's left in my high school bedroom are my old sheets and a half-empty closet. I didn't expect to be back so soon, but my blood is buzzing with familiar excitement as I turn to Naomi and take a deep breath.

The first glimmer of a plan is coming together in my mind, and it feels good.

"You're freaking me out," Naomi says. "Are you pregnant?"

"Definitely not."

"Is it your parents?"

This throws me off. "No. Wait—what about my parents?"

"Are they finally, you know—"

Oh. "Getting a divorce? No. I don't think so. They're in therapy. They go on dates now."

"Then why do you look like your dog got hit by a car?" She sees something in my expression that makes her jaw drop. "Is Wally okay? Did he run away?"

"No. Stop guessing! Your guessing sucks."

"Then tell me already!"

"I want to get out of town before school starts," I announce. "Let's take a road trip."

She raises an eyebrow. "We meet with our peer advisers tomorrow!" To her, our peer advisers might as well be the dean of admissions.

"We can meet with them on Monday, and I promise we'll be home before classes start."

She narrows her eyes. "Where do you want to go?"

"Toronto."

"Why?"

"My dog is in Toronto."

She scrunches her nose in confusion. "Am I drunk, or did you just tell me that Wally didn't run away?"

"He didn't. Wally's fine. I'm talking about the dog I rescued in Europe."

She holds her hands up. "Back up. I only drank half a beer, but none of this makes sense. I thought Theo had Comet."

"He does."

Her mouth splits into a knowing grin. "Theo's in Canada?" she squeals.

"And he's not alone." I show Naomi the articles and videos I looked at earlier, pausing on a shot of Theo, his seventeen-year-old sister, Victoria, and his eighteen-year-old brother, Henry, strolling through the park with Comet on a leash. My heart pangs at the sight of my bulky yellow Lab, with his floppy ears and goofy face. When I found Comet abandoned at a gas station in France, Theo didn't even want to bring him with us. "He's mine. End of story."

"Theo or the dog?"

"The dog, obviously," I scoff.

She narrows her eyes in disbelief. "You want to take a spontaneous trip to Canada less than four days before college starts and you expect me to believe it has nothing to do with your royal boyfriend?"

"He's not my boyfriend!"

"Sorry. I meant fake husband."

When I first got home, I told Naomi about the amazing Greek family who'd rescued Theo and me after we'd jumped off a ferry. They'd believed we were engaged and would only agree to take us to Theo's family compound in Santorini if we got married first. I'd explained to Naomi how I'd convinced Theo to marry me under the assumption that he'd sign his fake name on the marriage certificate, that the wedding wouldn't be legal, and (most importantly) that we'd be dead in a few days anyway.

That's not what happened.

"If I show you something—do you promise to keep it a secret?" I ask.

Her expression turns serious. "Of course."

"Get up." I nudge her off my bed and kneel next to it. I lift one corner of the mattress and reach for the piece of paper that's been haunting me all summer. I'd hoped moving out of this room would help me forget about it, but I couldn't even make it a full week before it drew me back like a magnet.

"This was mailed to me." I hand the paper to Naomi and sit on the edge of my bed, chewing my lip while I wait for her reaction.

It's been weeks since the marriage certificate bearing the names Wren Wheeler and Theodore Geoffrey Edward George mysteriously showed up in my mailbox with no return address. I've studied that paper every day since, as if staring at the messy script will make it make sense.

Theo didn't even want to marry me at first! Knowing our marriage wasn't real was the only way he would agree to it. I don't understand why he would protest so much, nearly leave me at the altar, and then sign his real name.

Naomi looks at me with wide eyes. "Are you—" She cuts herself off and looks back down at the paper. "Does this mean—" She glances at it one more time before collapsing onto the bed, howling with laughter. "Are you married to the literal king of England?" Tears gather at the corners of her eyes.

"I don't know! But thank you for laughing at my misery." I moan and pull a Squishmallow over my face.

She yanks the stuffed squirrel out of my hands and hits me in the face with it. "Ah yes, the absolute misery of being married to the hottest, richest, most eligible bachelor on the planet. How will you possibly survive?"

"It's not like that."

"It's exactly like that. You're the queen! Of a whole damn country! Mazel!"

"I don't think they let random eighteen-year-old Americans be the queen. "

"Maybe not, but you're going to be famous, at the very least. Imagine the followers you'd get if you casually dropped this online."

"Not to mention stalkers and death threats. Some of those royal watchers are unhinged." I raise an accusatory eyebrow at her. Naomi used to be a royal fanatic. Not the kind who would stalk anyone, but definitely the kind who would swoon over every picture in the tabloids. Of course, that was before she got together with her boyfriend, Levi, whom she's obsessed with, and before Theo and I got into this… situation.

"Okay, okay, but hear me out—imagine how much money the royal family would give you to keep quiet."

"I'm not going to blackmail my hu— Theo. "

She shrieks gleefully. "You almost said ‘husband'! I knew it! You love him! You're his American queen! Alexa, play Taylor Swift's ‘King of My Heart.'"

"First of all, I don't love him. Second, I don't want to be ‘the queen.' Third, he doesn't want anything to do with me!" The pathetic truth is, I tried repeatedly to call the palace and leave a message for Theo after his mom died and got nothing but silence in return. If he wanted to contact me, he would. He knows my name, where I live, and where I'm going to school. He has every resource in the world for tracking me down.

"That certificate says otherwise," Naomi counters.

I sigh and scrub my hands through my hair. There was a time when I thought that Theo and I were in love—shortly after we signed this paper—but that was just a rush of adrenaline and hormones. I fell in love with the moment and mistook it for being in love with him. The truth is, I trusted him with my life, and he kept secrets and lied to me and almost left me alone to die in Greece. "I don't want to be the queen of anything. I just want my dog back so I can unsubscribe from royal news and move on with my life."

"Who sent it to you?"

"I don't know."

"Was it him?"

"I don't know!"

She rolls to the edge of the bed and reaches for my phone, which one of us has accidentally kicked across the floor. She swipes through the pictures of Theo and his siblings. "Canada, huh?"

I nod.

"If I email my peer adviser and tell her I won't be in town tomorrow, she might be willing to set up a time to meet next week." She mulls this over for a moment before leveling me with an accusatory stare. "I suppose you have a full itinerary and master plan for how we'll find him and pull this off?"

"Would you believe me if I say no?"

She pretends to gasp, as if I haven't been acting out of character all summer. "Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?"

"The only itinerary we need is his, which is conveniently posted under the ‘Future Engagements' section of the royal family's website."

Theo and his siblings are visiting High Park tomorrow to tour the zoo and gardens. It's not as detailed a plan as I'd like, but it's more than I've had since June, and for now it's enough. I need to find Theo, get my dog back, and figure out if this marriage is even real. "As for how we'll maneuver around his bodyguards and royal entourage to get close enough to actually speak to him… I don't know yet."

She grins. "I trust you to figure it out. You always do."

"And I trust you to summon some of that positive energy and convince your mom to let us use her car." I smile hopefully.

She crosses her fingers on her left hand and starts texting with the right. "On it. When do we want to leave?"

I jump off the bed and open the door to my room. "Ten minutes ago." It's about an eight-hour drive to Toronto, and we need to get on the road if we're going to meet Theo at the park in the morning.

Naomi grimaces as her phone lights up with a new message. "My mom needs the car tomorrow."

"What about Levi?"

"He sold his to help pay for tuition last week."

I groan.

"You know what this means," Naomi says.

I do not want to involve my family in any of this, but at this point, we're out of options. "Fine. I'll ask Brooke, but we're going to need a good cover story."

"Now this sounds interesting," a voice behind me says. I whirl around to see Brooke standing in the open doorway, her arms crossed over her chest. She arches an eyebrow. "Ask me what?"