Chapter 3

C HAPTER 3

HOURS UNTIL I SEE THEO: NINE(ISH)

Good luck and text me when you're ready to leave," Naomi says, squeezing around Brooke and me as she dashes into the hall.

"Coward!" I yell to her retreating back. She didn't even help me think of a good lie.

Brooke waits patiently for an answer. My sister is an inch shorter than I am, her brown hair an exact match for my natural color (RIP). She has curtain bangs that she cut herself late one night over the sink while watching a tutorial online. She calls them her "crisis bangs."

"Hey, sis," I say, aiming for nonchalance. I regret it immediately. We never call each other "sis." "Your hair looks really good tonight."

She blows her bangs out of her face with an exaggerated eye roll. "You need my car, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Where are you going?" she asks, with the kind of smile that says she's reveling in having the upper hand.

"Naomi's house."

"Try again, this time with the truth."

"Campus?" I lie, and I do it badly.

"I can't cover for you with Mom and Dad unless I know what I'm covering up. Besides, we're friends now, remember. I'm not going to rat you out."

Brooke and I are friends now, or at least on our way. Our relationship is one thing that actually was changed by the world almost ending.

I sigh, acutely aware of every minute ticking by. Now that I have a plan, I don't want to wait. "I'm going to Toronto with Naomi. Just for a day or two." Because she's still blocking my path, I haphazardly throw clothes that weren't cute enough to bring to school into an empty backpack.

"Why?" she demands.

"What does it matter? I don't even live here anymore." I reach into the back of my closet and retrieve the Polaroid I keep hidden in there. I shouldn't have left it here when I moved out—not unless I want to risk someone finding it.

"It matters because you want to use my car."

"Is that a no?"

"It depends. Can I come?"

I blink up at her in surprise. "Why would you want to?"

She shrugs. "I'm bored." Before the comet, she was hell-bent on following in Mom's footsteps and was enrolled in law school. Now she's deferred her acceptance for a year while she finds herself. I don't know why she thought it was a good idea to give up her settled future for the hazy unknown, and I don't know what she thinks she's going to find in Canada with us, but there's no time to argue with her.

"Fine." I sigh. "Grab your passport and meet me outside."

Ten minutes later, Naomi crosses the street with a bag slung over her shoulder and an excited pep in her step as I lean against the front of Brooke's Camry. "You got the car!"

"Sort of."

She opens the passenger door and freezes when she sees my sister behind the wheel. Naomi turns slowly to me, a wide, fake smile frozen in place. "Why is she here?"

"Nice to see you too!" Brooke quips.

Naomi shuts the door. "Does she know about Theo?"

"No, and I'm not planning to tell her either, so don't be weird."

"No promises!" Naomi opens the rear door this time and scoots into the back seat while I take the passenger seat. "I'm surprised you don't have anything better to do this weekend than hang out with us," she says to Brooke as she buckles her seat belt. "Shouldn't you be getting ready to start law school? It's not too late to change your mind and stay here."

"I'm not starting law school," Brooke says with forced composure as she starts the car and pulls out of our driveway.

"Oh, sorry! I thought you got in." Naomi smiles brightly. I turn around and Naomi winks, because old habits die hard and she spent the last several years disliking Brooke in the name of our friendship. Brooke's knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.

I groan inwardly. At this rate, it's going to be a very long drive.

I lean my head against the window and pretend to doze off until the steady hum of the car finally lulls me to sleep for real, and I wake up a few hours later as we're crossing the Detroit River and approaching the Canadian border. We present our passports to the border agent, and she asks a series of questions about what we're bringing with us, and whether we have firearms ("No"), fireworks ("No"), fresh produce ("No"), or live animals ("Not yet").

Brooke rears her head back in surprise at my answer. "What does that mean?"

I lean across the console. "If I acquire a dog in Canada, will I be allowed to bring him into the US?"

I can feel Brooke's mind spinning as she tries to figure out what I'm up to.

"If the dog is microchipped and has had its vaccines, bringing him over the border shouldn't be a problem," the agent says.

Fingers crossed the royals took care of that. "Sounds great! Thank you." I sink back into my seat as Brooke stares at me.

"We're here so you can ‘acquire' a dog?" she asks incredulously.

I need to think of a believable lie, but my mind is a blinking cursor at the start of a homework assignment I don't want to do. I've got nothing.

"That's right." Naomi saves me by chiming in from the back seat. "Wren saw an adorable chocolate Lab online and she just had to adopt it."

"Like there aren't enough dogs that need adopting in Chicago?"

"This one's special," Naomi says, sticking her face between my seat and Brooke's. "He has beautiful brown hair and blue eyes—"

"Blue eyes?" Brooke asks.

I throw my shoe over my shoulder to shut Naomi up. "She doesn't know what she's talking about."

A few hours later (including one stop for gas and one stop for vegan breakfast sandwiches from Odd Burger), we're in downtown Toronto. I direct my sister toward High Park, where we're lucky to snag free street parking. Brooke parallel parks like an expert (of course) and gets out quickly, telling us she needs to stretch her legs after the long drive. I grab my backpack and go to open the car door when Naomi puts her hand out.

"Wait!" She leans into the front seat and pulls my door shut again. "Do you want to change first?" she asks. "Or, I don't know, brush your teeth?"

"Comet won't care what I look like."

"You're so unserious," Naomi huffs. "Quit living in denial and at least wipe the mascara from under your eyes." She hands me makeup-remover wipes, which I use to clean up last night's leftover smudges. Then she starts passing out one product after another, including a bottle of nail polish.

"I don't need to do all of this," I insist.

"You want to show him what he's missing," Naomi says matter-of-factly. She hasn't said his name, but we both know she's not talking about the dog. "I'll keep Brooke busy while you get ready." She shuts the car door firmly behind her, leaving me alone with all the thoughts I don't want to have.

"Don't get too close—Brooke bites!" I yell through the window. Naomi gives me the finger. Despite what she believes, I'm not doing this for Theo. Not for the reasons she thinks, anyway. I don't need him to miss me.

I glance down at my outfit. Sweatpants and an old Evanston Animal Rescue T-shirt that I cut into a crop top, an inch of my stomach showing above the band on my sweats, and a ring on a chain around my neck, hidden beneath my shirt. I can't bring myself to change. Not if doing so would signal to Naomi that I still have feelings for Theo, because I don't.

Naomi frowns when I climb out of the car. She looks at me from head to toe, taking in my third-day hair, baggy crop top, and Crocs. "At least your face looks pretty," she sighs.

Just the confidence boost a girl needs before seeing her estranged husband. I give her two sarcastic thumbs-up.

My already waning optimism falls even further as we approach the park, where guards are blocking the entrance. Brooke surveys them for a bone-chilling ten seconds before she spins in a slow circle, absorbing our surroundings. I clock the exact moment she notices the crowd-control barriers lining the street and streams of people walking by, craning their necks to see through the tree-lined fence, phones at the ready. All we need now is for the royal procession to drive by, flags flying from the roof of the Bentley.

"What's going on? Are we even allowed to be here? And this park looks huge. Where are we supposed to meet the dog?"

Brooke's rapid-fire line of questioning leaves me tongue-tied. "I, um, I—"

"There's a dog park. That might be a good place to start," Naomi says, leaping to my rescue again.

"Wren—what's going on? Do you have an appointment to meet this dog or not?" Brooke asks.

"Technically?"

She rubs her eyes with a heavy sigh. "I should be memorizing a course syllabus right now, color-coding my notebooks," she says wistfully.

"Hey, look—" Naomi points to a crepe restaurant down the street. "Why don't you get breakfast while Wren and I explore the park?"

"Fine. I am starving," Brooke concedes. "Can we please do something fun after you get the dog, though? I was hoping this trip would take my mind off school, not make me wish for it." She mutters the last sentence more to herself than Naomi or me.

"Anything you want," I tell her, though now that I've seen the security measures in place, I've lost all faith that I'll ever get Comet back. When she's out of earshot, I turn to Naomi. "This is the worst idea I've ever had. I'm tempted to call the whole thing off."

"We did not drive all this way just to give up so easily. Do you want Comet back or not?"

"Obviously."

"Do you want to yell at the king of England for maybe marrying you and then leaving you alone in Greece and then ghosting you when the world didn't end?"

"It sounds bad when you say it like that."

"Wren." Naomi puts her hand on my arm, holding eye contact for several excruciating seconds. It makes it a lot harder to pretend away my feelings. "It sounds bad because it was bad. As much as I joke about it because you're living my royal dreams of falling in love with the prince-turned-king, I can't imagine what you've been through, and I'm sorry that he broke your heart."

"I broke his first," I admit, blinking tears out of my eyes. I lied and turned him in to the authorities. I watched his own bodyguards handcuff him and drag him out of my life. And given the choice, I'd do it again.

Naomi links her arm through mine. "As your best friend, it's my prerogative to hate him, no matter what you did first. Now, let's find him so you can give him a piece of your mind before absconding with his dog."

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't lain awake night after night, imagining what I'd finally say if I saw Theo. But I never settled on the right words to explain how much I miss him, and how I'm glad he seems happy but also shocked that he could be, and how I'm sad that our week together turned out to be so easily erased from history and his life.

Maybe when I see him today, the right words will finally come.

Naomi leads me down the shaded sidewalk, away from the guards and the largest concentration of crowds, until we find another, smaller entrance. We enter High Park and the noise from the crowds and cars is muffled by dense trees. Naomi finds a park map and traces the path toward the off-leash dog park with her finger. My nerves wind tighter as we pass the greenhouse and then the zoo, and I hold my breath as we enter the dog park.

We stop cold and Naomi looks around skeptically. "I'm sorry, I just can't picture them here."

The dog park is a small patch of sand with a couple of picnic tables and benches scattered throughout, and not a member of the royal family in sight.

"Should we wait?" I ask uncertainly.

"They are not doing a royal photo op here," Naomi says, gesturing to a large pile of dog poop. "Let's double back, there's nothing on the north side except a sports complex."

We turn around and follow the paved path to an elaborate circular garden with a maple-leaf-shaped flower bed at its center. "Okay, Canada, that's very on-brand," I say, ignoring the familiar itch to take a picture of the trees on the banks of a rippling pond. After the comet didn't hit, I thought I wanted to keep memories of everything, but if this rescue mission is unsuccessful, I won't want any record of this temporary insanity. "That has to be a good sign." I point to the crowd-control barriers lining the walkway.

Naomi has her phone out. "Wikipedia says that Theo's grandmother opened this garden in the 1950s. Maybe he'll repeat history."

I'm immediately annoyed with myself for not doing any research. "I need a minute." I pace around the garden, trying to summon whatever magic I had in Europe that got Theo and me out of so many impossible situations.

I used to be the girl with plans A, B, C, and D—backup plans for my backup plans—but now? My brain is a ghost town. As hard as I try, I can't think of a single way to track down and steal the most famous dog in the world.

"I'm broken," I tell Naomi when I've completed my lap around the maple leaf. She's sitting on a bench, and I glance over her shoulder at her phone, where she's watching another orientation video for school I haven't seen. (Northwestern emails us approximately three dozen times per day. It's impossible to keep up.)

"What's wrong?" she asks, shutting off the video and giving me her full attention.

"I don't know how to do this anymore."

"Did you ever know how to steal a dog?"

"I don't know how to think on my feet. My brain feels like a sieve, everything is sliding through. I—"

The atmosphere in the park shifts; a hush falls over the crowd, followed by a buzz that travels like a flame on gasoline. Our gazes fly to the far entrance of the garden. A group of men in black suits is ushering spectators to either side of the walkway.

"Is that…" Naomi trails off as she grabs my forearm and squeezes, her nails biting my skin. She doesn't need to finish the sentence. Everyone in the vicinity knows what's happening.

The royal family is approaching.