Royal had fourteen bucks in his pocket. He put ten in the gas tank, and we stopped at a Waffle House and spent the other four on fifty-cent pancakes. My day with Royal was certainly unforgettable. I dropped Royal off in his driveway at just after ten p.m., leaving him with a dozen kisses and three long passionate ones that made my belly feel like there were a million little, yellow butterflies fluttering inside me.

Going home to my grams was unforgettable too.

She was madder than Henry’s junkyard dog. “I’m going to wear you out. Where have you been?”

I jumped over the kitchen chair and grabbed the belt from her hands. She wasn’t joking, but I couldn’t help but laugh. “Whoa, Grams. Chill out. I was with Royal.”

“You’re not allowed around that boy. You hear me? You stay away from him.”

“Gram, come on. That’s silly.”

“Silly? Silly? You skipped school. You just ruined your perfect attendance. Your last year of school and you blew it.”

“Gram, come on. Think about what you’re saying. I just had the most amazing day of my life. I’m okay with not having perfect attendance. In fact. I’m never going to have perfect attendance again. I went to school with strep throat and a fever. I thought I was dying. All for a piece of paper, an award that was supposed to make me feel special.”

“No, not to make you feel special. For you to be responsible. You don’t throw all your hard work away for a boy. Especially, that boy.”

“Don’t do that, Gram.”

Her face and her words softened, her eyes giving me a once over. “What the hell have you been doing? You look like you’ve been outside playing all day.”

Feeling safer, I stepped around the chair and gave her the belt. “I have been outside playing all day. It was great.”

My grandma smacked me on the butt as I walked away, playfully yet warningly. “I’m not kidding, Jessie. I don’t want you around that boy, and you best not be skipping anymore school.”

“He’s coming over for supper tomorrow. Night. I gotta get a shower.”

“I’m not kidding, Jessie Fenton. I’m not.”

Glancing at my reflection in the mirror, I laughed out loud at my dirty face, wondering if Royal had a dirty face too.Or was it just mine, and he let me go into the waffle house like that? I wore a constant smile while I got ready for bed, the thoughts of our entire day firing in and out of my mind. While I tried to wind down from the day, I listened to Gigi’s request hour on WTJR and cleaned my room. Air Supply played “Lost in Love”and I thought about everything we’d done throughout our day. The bumper cars, the roller coaster, the spooky clown hotel, the haunted ship, our lunch, our kisses, the game room, laughing, more kissing, the slide we rode down, the nettles, the excitement, the adventure, the horse with the beautiful mane, and the crystal brindle.

And then Royal called, and we talked about it again. We probably could have talked about it all night had my grandma not picked up the phone downstairs and told me to go to bed,then told Royal to stop calling there.

“I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Okay. Goodnight, Grandma Grace,” he said to my grams.

The only response he got was a grumble and the sound of the phone slamming. “Night, Royal. Thanks for today. I’ll never forget it.”

“Me either. Night Jessie.”

It was nearly one in the morning when I finally settled down enough to sleep, thoughts of our day the last thing I thought of before I drifted off to sleep.

As expected, it was also the first thing I thought about when I heard my grams calling from downstairs. Even getting ready, I couldn’t stop thinking about it all, smiling with every thought.

I greeted my grandma with a big hug. “Good morning, Grams. Your hair smells like strawberries. Yum, pancakes,” I said, sliding onto my seat behind the table.

“Yeah, well, I smoked yesterday because you made me.”

“Oh, stop. Look how happy I am. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“You aren’t going anywhere in life being happy. Happy don’t pay the bills. You’re getting ready to go out into the real world, and you need to keep your priorities straight. I’m only trying to make your life better than mine. I don’t want you to struggle to pay the bills, Jessie. I want you to have everything you’ve ever wanted,including that pool like Wendy’s. You can really have those things, Jessie. You just have to work for them. You can’t go through life just getting by. That ain’t no way to live, I tell you.”

“Grams, stop lecturing me about bills. I’m just having fun.”

“You can have fun when you’ve worked for it. When you’ve saved and after you have other things. Like an education, a career, a--.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. A husband, a couple kids, a nice house by the lake in the suburbs, a pool, a golf course, a job I can stay at for thirty years, and a retirement fund. Basically, you’re saying you want me to trade my time for money, so I can have things. I refuse to do that again. I wouldn’t even use the pool, and I would still get stuck cleaning it. No, thanks. I’d rather have the horse.”

My grandma dropped the dish towel she’d been waving around, while she lectured me, to the table in front of me and walked away. “You were abducted. If you’re not on drugs, you were abducted by aliens. That’s all I’ve got.”

“Don’t smoke! And don’t forget Royal’s coming over for supper.”

“I said no!”

“I know, but I didn’t listen. You’ll love him, Grams. He’s the same old Royal.”

“Great…”

Things between Royal and I were great in every way except for school. As soon as I was there, it seemed like I turned into someone else, and I didn’t know how to be with him there. It wasn’t even anything I could explain. I knew from experience I had been pulled away from Johnny’s lips from teachers every single day, yet I dodged Royal’s kisses.

“Hey, you want to walk up to Town Hill and get a pepperoni roll? On my grams,” I teased, catching up to him in the hall right before lunch.

Royal looked into my eyes,then over my shoulder, where I turned, too. The whole gang walked right behind us: Wendy, David, Jan, Johnny, Leigh, and a couple more, all with smirks. Except, Leigh. I wasn’t even sure why she was still in that clique either. She really didn’t belong there.

“Yousure that’s okay? You seem to be a little confused when you’re around other...people,” he added, letting me know what other people he spoke of.

“Confused? I am not. What’s that supposed to mean?”

Our bantering ended when Johnny jumped in front of us with his arms out, parting the crowd of students for us to pass. “Ladies and gentlemen, make way for King and Queen Hind-ass.”

“You’re an ass. Move,” I said, shoving him to the side with my arm.

Johnny laughed and slapped Royal in the back of the head. Royal kept right on walking, and I turned in time to miss a shot to his nuts, but he still didn’t stop. “Pussy. Pansy ass, let’s his girlfriend fight his battles because he can’t. He’s too big of a sissy.”

Angrily, I walked away from everyone laughing - like anything about him was funny. I had to jog to catch up with Royal, and I wasn’t very happy with him either. “Why do you let him do that, Royal? You’re as big as Johnny. Why don’t you just deck him one?”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Yes, you did need to. I feel like I’m Jenny and you’re my Forrest.”

“Who? Never mind. I don’t care. I’ll pass.”

“You’ll pass? What do you mean?”

“I’m not in the mood for a pepperoni roll. I’ll catch you later.”

I stopped dead in my tracks, throwing my arms up in defeat. “I give up. I want to go home!” I yelled, uncaring of all the eyes staring at me like I was some sort of crazy person. I was a crazy person, and all of this was crazy.

Stomping down the front steps of the school, my plan was to go to my grandma’s old car,sit there all alone without any of this high school bullshit, or any of these immature idiots without a clue. But then I saw Royal plop below a tree with a book. I couldn’t not go to him. That’s how it felt. Like I wasn’t given a choice.

“I don’t know what you want from me, Royal.”

Without looking up, Royal opened his book. “I don’t want anything you don’t want.”

“What do you mean?”

This time he did look up. “I mean, let me get the hell out of your way.”

“I don’t want you to get out of my way.”

“What do you want?”

“Honestly, I have no idea whatsoever, but I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to share what we have with anyone. Not because I’m afraid of being judged either. Because I don’t want anyone to take anything about how special this is away. You think I don’t want to kiss you because those people might judge me. Those people have always judged me. I don’t care about that.”

“Wow. You really feel like that, Jessie?”

“I do, and I can’t explain it for the life of me. How can things be this easy with you, yet so difficult?”

Royal took my hand and pulled me to the grass with him. “Remember what the cards said? Twin flames bring out the best in you, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. We’re supposed to shake each other up and bring out the shit we can’t see in our own eyes. We’re supposed to peel away the layers until there’s nothing left to peel. You know? Like there’s nothing to hide, nothing to run from, nothing to get angry over, nothing but…”

“Love,” I quietly said, our lips meeting on their own. Only this time, I didn’t feel like we were sharing anything with anyone but each other, except the red bird off to the side, and the big old oak tree with changing leaves.

Royal pulled me tightly to his body, smiling on my lips. “Want to get out of here?”

“No way. My grams was going to take a belt to me last night.”

Royal laughed so hard his shoulders bounced, and I laughed because he laughed.

“What are you writing?” I asked, seeing the book he held wasn’t one to read, but one to write in.

Royal pulled me to sit by him and opened the book. “Sort of like a journal. I like to doodle around things I take as messages.”

“Messages? Like what?”

Laughing, Royal opened the page to an abandoned roller coaster with two figurines sitting on top, dangling their feet off the edge, but it was the quote in the middle that got me. “In the end it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.”

“Is this a message?”

“Of course, it is. It’s from the photo of Lincoln in the library. I was sitting there drawing this coaster when I looked up and read it.”

I looked at the photo, and all the detail he’d put into it, in awe, wondering why I had never before read that quote in the library. It sure hit home now. From out of nowhere, I abruptly decided I wanted to draw too.  “I’m going to take art with you.”

“Yyy you are?”

“Yes. I’ll change my keyboarding class to art. Oh, my God. Royal. You know what else we should do?”

“You’re scaring me now. What?”

“Remember the card we glued all the instruments on from the Sears and Roebuck Christmas catalogue?”

“Yes, so we could join a band.”

“Yes, let’s do it. Let’s join the band.”

“Hell, yeah. Okay, I’ll join band with you. Can you play anything?”

“No way. Band is for nerds. It’s the rule according to Honaker High society,” I teased, but I was serious about joining band.

“But you can read music?”

“No. Can you?”

We both laughed when he said no, too. Royal could play the Ukulele, but he learned on his own. It was a gift the old man from the cabbage farm brought him from the Mayans.

Royal did come to my house for supper, and besides threatening to beat his ass with the belt too, my grams was mostly nice to him. I did switch to art class the next day, and it was the best decision ever. Not only did Royal do most of my teaching, I got to spend some time with Leigh away from Wendy. And we joined band… and we sucked. We did more laughing and goofing off than anything, but we did learn to play.

We didn’t have a lot of time to do much too far away from the house because of Royal’s dad being sick, but just like when we were kids, we found plenty to do around home. One thing was learning to play the flute in the barn loft. That’s what we had been doing on a Friday night during the homecoming game. That was the night I was made valedictorian of our class. It made me a little sad thinking about not giving that speech at graduation. I’d already been thinking about what I would say differently this time.

With our feet dangling from the edge, Royal and I played, out of tune, on our flutes, staring out to a big full moon and a sky full of magical stars. Royal was the one to take our instruments and set them aside. I waited until he had his back against the side post and scooted against his chest.

“Listen, hear that,” he whispered, kissing my head from behind.

“The owl?”

“That, too. Listen to all the crickets. Can you hear how all their chirping is in unison? Every single chirp is a note in their own language. Zeke told me about this guy in Peru who recorded the crickets singing just like this, and when he slowed it down, it made the most beautiful music. Magical music, like an angelic chorus. We tried it one night while we were out on a boat. Wait until you experience it once, Jessie. It’s like they have their own band, a four part harmony they practiced daily for.You can feel the love, the sex, and the music combine into one magnificent piece.”

While my hand rested on Royal’s chest, I stared up to the dark sky with millions of twinkling stars, feeling it too. I couldn’t wait to do that with Royal, and that’s all I let myself think about. All the wonderful things I was going to explore with this beautiful creature who didn’t even know he was beautiful. Nothing else mattered but this and the experiences we shared.

I didn’t have another family, I didn’t come from the future, and I wasn’t thinking about the wand. At least, I tried like hell not to, anyway.