Taken by the Cowboy (35 page)

Callie spoke nearer to
the bowl. “Hello?”

“Callie, honey,” her
dad said from the doorway, “were you just talking to your
cereal?”

She jumped back and
almost fell off the couch. “No… I, uh, had Lewis on speakerphone,
see?” She picked up the cordless from under the coffee table and
held it aloft.

“Oh.” Her dad didn’t
look too convinced. “Well, ask him if he wants to come for pizza
tonight.”

“Pizza?” Callie asked,
confused.

“Yes. Pizza. It’s a
round food item with pepperoni and cheese on it. We usually have it
for your birthday.”

It took a moment for
his words to sink in. “Oh right! My birthday. Of course. How could
I have forgotten that?” She gave a weak laugh.

Her father stared at
her for a moment, then nodded toward the phone. “Callie, aren’t you
going to ask Lewis about tonight?”

“Actually, Lewis had to
hang up.”

“Well, that was a short
conversation.” He frowned and felt Callie’s forehead. “Are you
feeling all right? You’re not running a fever or anything, are
you?”

Callie pasted on a
winning smile. She wanted to say, “Hey, if you just had a
conversation with a bowl of cereal, you’d be feeling a little
strange, too!” But she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Never been
better, Dad.”

She quickly ushered him
out of the family room, knowing in her gut that somehow the message
in her cereal and the strange dream were related.

“Now let me get ready
for school. I want to look nice for my birthday. It’s a big day for
me.” Callie put her cereal bowl on the counter, gave it a double
take to make sure it hadn’t started spelling things again, and
trotted upstairs.

Once in her room, she
flung open the door of her closet and yanked out her favorite jeans
and a long-sleeved pink T-shirt. Her dad called from downstairs,
“Callie, you didn’t eat your cereal!”

“Of course, I didn’t,”
she muttered to herself as she got her jeans on and pulled her
T-shirt over her head. “It wouldn’t stop talking long enough for me
to get a bite in.”

Callie tried to arrange
her mass of red curls into something that didn’t look like an
electrified mop, but gave up and opted for her usual ponytail.

She was just about to
turn away from the mirror when she noticed the T-shirt she was
wearing. Emblazoned across the front in dark pink, sparkly letters
was the word “Princess.”

Weird.

Callie grabbed her
backpack and headed downstairs. She had to get to school and tell
Lewis about her dream and the weird message in her cereal. What
would he say when she told him his best friend was a princess of a
mysterious land, and they needed her help to fight an evil queen’s
army?

Though most twelve-year
old girls would have jumped at the possibility of being a princess
of a magical land, Callie couldn’t shake a foreboding feeling that
went along with it. Somewhere deep inside, she knew something had
begun which she wouldn’t be able to stop.

And that scared her
more than anything else in the world.

TWO

A Mysterious
Gift

When Callie arrived at
school, she made a beeline for Lewis, who was sitting alone, as
usual, on the brick retaining wall next to the playground. He had
his nose buried in a book called Astrophysics Made Easy.

Lewis Farnsworth didn’t
exactly fit in, which was probably why he was best friends with
Callie.

“Lewis,” Callie
whispered as loud as she could.

He looked up and
brightened, his dark hair falling into his eyes. “Happy Birthday,
Cal.”

“Lewis, I have to
tell-”

“It’s hard to believe
you’re twelve now, Cal.” His eyes took on a melodramatic hue. “It
seems like just yesterday we were fighting over Lego blocks, then
making up and sharing our apple juice in kindergarten. And look at
you now. Twelve. Welcome to the other side.” He shook her hand and
then started digging in his backpack.

“Lewis, I have
something to say-”

“Got a present for you.
Use it in good health.” He handed Callie a badly wrapped gift,
which looked like a big book.

Callie unwrapped it, as
it would have been rude not to. “
Thompson’s Encyclopedia of
Medieval Warfare
. I don’t know what to say, Lew. Thanks.”

“From my own personal
collection.” He packed up his books and slung his backpack over his
shoulder. “I read it cover to cover—twice. Take it from me, it’s
fascinating stuff. Never know when it’ll come in handy.”

“Yeah.” All of a
sudden, Callie felt funny about filling her friend in on the
morning’s events. In fact, the more time that elapsed, the more
Callie thought maybe she’d imagined the whole thing as a result of
some twelve-year-old rite-of-passage/preteen hysteria. But every
time she imagined that it wasn’t real, a little voice inside her
told her not to be foolish, that of course it had been real.

She was Princess
Calandria of Albion, and her presence was needed immediately to
thwart the plans of an evil queen and her army.

Now, why did she have a
problem saying that out loud to her best friend?

“Uh, Lew?” Callie
began.

“You know, being twelve
rocks,” Lewis said, walking ahead of her across the playground.
“Just think, soon we’ll have driver’s licenses, and cool jobs, and
we’ll be taller, Cal. Taller!”

The buzzer sounded.
Callie and Lewis were carried along into the school in a noisy tide
of students. They headed toward their classroom.

Callie’s heart raced.
She had to tell Lewis about the dream and the message in her
cereal… and what it might mean.

“Lewis!” Callie
whispered as loud as she dared.

He didn’t hear her.

“
Lewis, I had a
weird dream last night, and I think I might be a magical princess
and I have to go fight an evil queen
!”

He turned his head
then. By the confused and amused look in his eyes, Callie knew he
thought she was joking.

It was too late to
explain any more, the other kids were taking their seats. Lewis sat
next to her, occasionally glancing across the aisle, shaking his
head and chuckling.
Chuckling
! Someplace called Albion was
under threat from an evil queen (whom they needed Callie’s help to
thwart), and he was chuckling? She looked down at her desk,
pondering the best course of action. Though it was completely
forbidden—completely-Callie decided there was only one thing to
do.

She was going to pass a
note.

Ms. Randall, their
teacher, was young and pretty and well-liked, but she was very
strict with her sixth-graders. No chewing gum. No texting. No
passing notes.

As far as Callie knew,
only one other person had ever attempted it-Rosie Schwartz, back on
the second day of school this year. After “The Incident” as it was
later referred to, no one had ever seen or heard from Rosie again.
Rumor was that she now went by the name of Dorothy Swanson and
attended school in the next town.

Ms. Randall swept into
the classroom, looking crisp in an apple-green sweater set and
black capris, with her blonde hair pulled back into a low ponytail.
She was warm to the kids in her class, but she didn’t put up with a
whole lot of foolishness, either. Basically, the kids loved
her.

The thought of Ms.
Randall being disappointed in her made Callie feel almost sick, but
the thought of holding in all the strange events of the morning,
unable to talk to Lewis until recess made Callie feel even
sicker.

“All right, class,
settle down,” Ms. Randall said. “Take out your math textbooks,
please.”

Several soft groans
erupted from the class.

Ms. Randall ignored
their objections, as usual. “Page 72. Let’s go over problems three
to six….”

As the class dutifully
turned to the assignment, Callie ripped a piece of paper from her
notebook and glanced around cautiously. She hadn’t even written
anything on it yet, and already she felt like a criminal.

Callie bit her lip,
trying not to lose her place in the problems they were covering in
case Ms. Randall called on her, and at the same time trying to
write a short note that would convey the seriousness of the
morning’s events to Lewis. She wrote:

Lewis-I’m serious.
Something strange happened to me this morning.

I got a message in
my cereal that said I was a princess and I had to help this place
called Albion in their fight against an evil queen.

You have to help me
figure out what to do!

C

P.S. Dad said you
could come for pizza tonight.

She quickly folded up
the note, her heart beating wildly. This was, without a doubt, the
most daring thing Callie had ever done at school. The adrenaline
rush had been unexpected, and yet not completely unenjoyable. The
next thing she knew, she’d be jumping out of airplanes yelling,
“Whoo-hoo.”

“Psst.” She tried to
get Lewis’ attention quietly, as she didn’t want to alert Wanda
Morris, the class bully and the class snitch.

Wanda would have been
pretty if she wasn’t always in a bad mood. As a result of her
prickly nature, her friends were few and far between. In fact,
rumor had it that her friends (a grand total of two and who had
never been seen in person by anyone besides Wanda) lived three
states away and only corresponded with her via email.

To compensate for her
unpopularity, Wanda took pride in bullying the kids on the
playground and tattling on everyone in class. But Wanda was smart,
and did her bullying in a sneaky way. To date, she had never been
caught by any of the teachers, and even though Ms. Randall went on
record as not approving of tattling, it was difficult for the
teacher to ignore Wanda when she reported incidents like, “Morton
Dengler just set fire to his pants,” or “Toby Taneli put spiders in
your desk.”

Wanda sat directly
behind Lewis. She was very thin as she took no enjoyment out of
eating-not even candy. She had beady eyes that, due to habitual
frowning, almost disappeared into her face, and those dark,
glittery eyes saw things no normal kid’s did.

Wanda also had a keen
sense of smell, and could differentiate between flavors of
contraband gum from clear across the room. Wanda often used her
super senses in the classroom to blackmail kids at recess. She had
a repertoire of meaningful looks, some of which said things like:
“I see you chewing gum. Hand over your lunch money or I’ll tell Ms.
Randall,” and the ever-popular, “Passing notes? That’ll be five
bucks.”

Getting a note past
Wanda was going to be harder than getting it past Ms. Randall.

Callie stared at Lewis.
Her friend was staring straight at the board, completely engrossed
in Math Problem Number Four.

“Lewis,” she
whispered.

Nothing.

“Lewis,” she tried
again.

This wasn’t working.
She had to think of something else.

Then a brilliant idea
took hold. She put the folded note inside her notebook and wrote
look inside on the cover lightly in pencil. It was a risky plan,
but she thought it might work. She pushed the notebook off her desk
so it went kerflop into the aisle, right at Lewis’ feet.

A couple of kids turned
to look. The commotion got Ms. Randall’s attention, too.

“Oops, sorry,” Callie
said innocently. “I dropped my notebook. Lewis, will you get it for
me?”

That seemed to do the
trick. Ms. Randall went back to the equations on the board.

Lewis picked it up and
smiled at Callie.

She gave him a look
that said, “Read the hand written message on the scribbler,
idiot!”

Lewis nonchalantly
slipped the note out, then turned to Callie with his trademark
smile and handed the notebook smoothly across the aisle.

Callie breathed a sigh
of relief, but couldn’t help glancing at Wanda to make sure they’d
gotten past her, too.

Wanda’s beady eyes
peered at Callie through her narrow little glasses. She knew they
were up to something, but it was obvious she didn’t know what.

Callie felt dizzy. Her
blood pressure was going through the roof. She stared at Lewis as
he read the note, and was completely unprepared for his
reaction.

He laughed.

Out loud.

Then he tried to cover
it up by coughing, but he’d gotten the class’s attention, and in
particular, Ms. Randall’s.

“Are you all right, Mr.
Farnsworth?” she asked flatly.

“Fine,” he croaked,
taking out his asthma inhaler. “Just a little coughing fit,
preceded by the memory of a humorous moment.”

“I see,” Ms. Randall
said, looking like she didn’t.

Callie was stunned. Not
only had Lewis laughed at her plea for help-laughed!-he’d botched
her brilliant note-passing plan by getting everyone’s attention.
She glanced back at Wanda, who was staring straight at her with a
look that said, “Try that again, and I’m going to tell, big
time.”

Knowing it was risky,
Callie unzipped her pencil case and wrote, It’s true on her eraser.
“Sure, you can borrow my eraser, Lewis,” she said, handing it to
him.

Ms. Randall glanced
behind her, watching Lewis take it and immediately use it to erase
part of the problem he was working on. Their teacher returned her
attention to the board.

Callie gave Lewis the
best “dagger eyes” she could muster. Lewis read the note, his light
blue gaze meeting hers. Now he understood she was serious. He
quickly used his own eraser to get rid of her pencil-written
message. He wrote one of his own on it and passed it back to
her.

We’ll talk at
recess.

“Ms. Randall?” Wanda
said sweetly, or as sweetly as a calculating bully can, “I forgot
my eraser, too. Could I borrow Callie’s eraser, since she doesn’t
seem to mind lending it out?”