Crushing on a Capulet (10 page)

“Is she really okay?” I said.

He turned to me. “Ah, Devin. Things go well, for the moment. Juliet shall soon be taken for her peaceful sleep in the tomb. It shall not be long now. I dearly hope Romeo will get my letters in time … I hope … I hope‥‥”

Even as he said this, the distant storm seemed to get louder. Lightning flashed across the morning sky, and thick clouds darkened the horizon.

“The skies themselves seem to speak of what happens here,” he said. “The heavens know our plan.”

I stepped out onto the balcony and looked up. Black clouds swirled where just the day before bright sun had shown. I knew what was going on.

It was a storm all right.

Only the storm wasn't a natural one.

It was Frankie.

At that moment—
kkkk!
—a bolt of bright white light shot across the sky and exploded over the house.

“Holy cow!” I cried, stepping back. Not quickly enough. Another bolt came flying in from nowhere—
kkkk!
—and I was sent hurtling off the balcony.

But I didn't hurtle through the plants and bushes and into the garden. I kept tumbling and bouncing until I landed on something hard. It was a street.

And Friar Laurence wasn't next to me.

Frankie was.

Chapter 16

“Am I glad to see you!” I cried, leaping to my feet. The storm had stopped. I looked around at a square with a bubbling fountain. “Where are we?”

“We're in Mantua,” said Frankie, dusting herself off and tucking the book into her dress again. “But we could be on the moon, for all the difference it makes.”

I shook my head to clear it. “What do you mean? Did you tell Romeo the plan?”

“Tell him the plan?” she snapped. “I haven't even found the guy! I spent the entire time just getting to this point here! First, I flipped too far ahead, then I flipped back. When I finally wound up here, the Mantuan guards chased me all around because I had come from Verona and they thought I was carrying the plague or something.”

“The plague?” I said. “Why would you carry one of those around?”

She shrugged. “From the way they talked, it's some kind of bad disease.”

“Eew.”

“No kidding,” she said. “Me, in my nice purple gown made by PTA moms, carrying something icky? As if. Anyway, they said that if I came from Verona, I must have passed through some sick villages between there and here. They were going to turn me back—but, of course, I did the old flipperoo and—”

“Wait!” I said. “Something just clicked in my head.”

“I hope it was your brain turning on, because mine has just about had it.”

“It was,” I said. “Listen, Frankie. If the guards were turning back all the people from Verona, it means that Romeo probably never got the letter from Friar Laurence's messenger. I mean, they don't have E-mail, right? So it's regular old-fashioned snail mail. And if it came from Verona—
fwit!
—back it goes!”

She blinked. “Whoa, Dev, you're right!”

“That's the second time in, like, a day. Pretty cool.”

“Cool, yeah, but it means we have to find Romeo pronto, or he won't get the message at all, and the plan goes up like a burger left too long on the grill.”

I took a moment to think about burgers before getting back to the issue at hand. “Okay, maybe we should just try yelling real loud. Romeo's gotta appear in this scene sooner or later. When he does, we tell him the deal, swing by Verona, beep twice, Juliet scampers out of the tomb, they zoom off on their honeymoon, and everybody lives happily ever after!”

Frankie looked at me. “You know, Devin, I'd really like the story to end that way. Let's make it happen.”

“We'll give it our best shot! Romeo! Hey, Romeo!”

Frankie, because she had been doing most of the reading, had been sort of stung by the Shakespeare bug. “Romeo!” she called out. “Romeo, Romeo, where art thou, Romeo!”

That's when we heard it.

“You there!”

The voice came from a nearby doorway. We spotted a young man just stepping into the street. “Dost thou seek Romeo of Verona?”

I gasped. “Frankie, he's talking Shakespeare!”

“Yes!” Frankie said to the man. “We do seek Romeo!”

“We need to tell him something,” I added.

He nodded. “If you speak of Juliet, I already told him that her body sleeps in the Capulet tomb—”

“So he
knows
the plan! This is great!” I cheered.

“—and that her soul now rests with the angels,” the guy finished.

I stopped cheering. “Wait. Say that last part again?”

“I was in Verona to see dear Juliet laid in the Capulet vault. I came here at once to tell Romeo that his beloved Juliet is dead.”

I staggered back. Frankie staggered forward. Between us, there was a whole lot of staggering going on.

“WHAT!” I shouted. “Dead? Dead! You told him Juliet is dead!”

“Of course!” the guy said.

“But she's not dead!” I practically shrieked. “She's just pretending with a sleeping potion that Friar Laurence gave her! We have to tell Romeo the truth before he does something dumb! How did he take the news?”

“He was sad. If I remember correctly, he said something like, ‘my life is over.' Maybe not exactly those words, but something like that.…”

“WHERE IS HE?” Frankie shouted at him

The guy's forehead wrinkled and he scratched his chin. “He was going to … going to … someplace.…”

Frankie gave the guy the sort of brain-piercing look she usually reserves for me when I act like a total doofus. “Define
someplace!
” she snarled.

His face showed fear, then suddenly cleared. “I remember now! He was going to find an apothecary.”

“Is that the camel with one hump or two?” I asked. “And why would he want a camel anyway?”

Everyone looked at me like I was the doofus again.

“Never mind,” I whispered.

“An apothecary is not a camel,” the man said. “He is a maker of medicines and potions—”

Frankie gasped. “Medicines and potions and—poisons! Devin, you know Romeo. If he's all bent out of shape thinking Juliet's dead, he might want to, you know, keep her company—”

“In other words, make himself dead, too?”

“Exactly. He might take poison. You know those kids. They're way into overdoing it. Remember Juliet and that dagger she pulled out at Friar Laurence's place?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

We pondered that as we took off in search of an apothecary shop.

The first four places we found were closed. The sign over the fifth one was old and peeling, but it told us that it was the one we wanted. The sign was in English.

“A dead giveaway,” I said. “The lingo of Shakespeare.”

We raced up to the door. The place was awesomely seedy. There was a dead turtle hanging in the grimy window, a stuffed alligator on the counter, dusty bottles and rusted boxes all over the floor. The place stank something awful, too. It was like a combo smell of a garbage can and the sharp sting of a doctor's office, mixed with after-game locker room. Not my favorite smells.

We pushed our way in and found sitting behind a counter what must have been the thinnest man alive.

“Um, excuse me, sir,” I said. “Did a guy come in here looking really sad?”

The man grinned, showing a bunch of teeth not there. “Fellow by the name of Romeo?”

“That's him!” said Frankie. “What did he want?”

“He asked for two things,” the man said, coughing slightly. “But I told him it's against the law for me to sell him the first thing he wanted.”

I gulped loudly. “What did he want … exactly?”

“Poison—”

“I knew it!” yelped Frankie. “Romeo wanted poison! I hope you didn't give it to him—”

“Of course, I didn't give it to him!” said the man.

“Great!” I said.

“I
sold
it to him.”

“Oh, no!” we gasped.

“Strong stuff, it is, too,” the old man said. “Even if you had the strength of twenty men, it would strike you down in an instant.”

“Yikes!” I cried. “We're too late!”

“Maybe not,” said the man. “I just remembered what the second thing he asked for was. But I didn't have one anyway. So he's probably still looking for it.…”

“Well?” said Frankie. “What was it?”

“An iron bar,” said the man.

“An iron bar?” I said. “What does he want an iron bar for? Is he changing tires?”

The old man did what I think was a shrug of his bony old shoulders. “He said he had to move a heavy door.”

Frankie jumped. “Devin! The tomb! Romeo wants to open the door to Juliet's tomb! To die with her!”

The guy opened his mouth slowly to say something else slowwwwwly, but we weren't there to hear it.

We were busy flipping the pages of the book—
kkkk!
—and on our way back to Verona.

Before it was too late!

Chapter 17

It was nearly nighttime when we got tossed back to the next scene in Verona. We tumbled down just outside the city walls, not far from Friar Laurence's hut.

We peeked inside, but he was gone.

“Looks like he left in a hurry,” said Frankie. “His stew is only half eaten.”

“That doesn't mean anything,” I said. “Have you actually smelled that stew. I mean … uck! What does he put in there—”

“Devin? Focus?” said Frankie.

“Right. Sorry. Okay, let's see. He probably found out that Romeo never got the letter he sent. Which means that Romeo is on his way to the tomb to use the poison he got. Oh man, it's all happening too fast. Frankie, we're losing it!”

“I'm not giving up!” she said. “Let's go!”

We flashed out of there and went straight for the Verona city graveyard. I imagined that even in the full sunlight, it was a spooky place. But now, with night falling on the tombs, and every sound seeming to be the noise of some spooky creature, it was truly frightening.

Finally, we came to a small square house built of shiny red stone. At the top of a shallow set of wide stairs, was a black iron door set between two columns. Above the door the name C
APULET
was carved into the stone.

“Whoa, do you think … Juliet's in there?” I said.

Frankie nodded, her frown growing deeper and deeper by the minute. “Not a nice place to sleep.”

“None of this place is nice,” I said, looking around at all the other vaults and gravestones, some with weeping angels carved on them. “If I have my way, there will be two less dead folks in this story.”

“You mean you and me, right?” asked Frankie.

“Then four,” I said. “I meant Romeo and Juliet.”

Suddenly, a low moaning sound came from up ahead.

We dived behind a small hedge of bushes lining the path to the tomb.

“A ghost!” I gasped. “A ghost? I knew it—”

“Will you shhh?” Frankie hissed, peeking out through the leaves. “It's not a ghost. It's Paris. And a boy. The boy's carrying a bunch of flowers.”

I looked. “Okay, he's not a ghost. And the flowers make sense. Paris was supposed to marry her.”

We watched Paris walk quietly up to Capulet vault.

“Give me thy torch, boy,” he said. “And hide here. The night watch is on patrol tonight, for fear of some new trouble between the Montagues and Capulets. If you see anyone, whistle then to me. I want to put these blossoms on Juliet's grave.”

The boy gave Paris the bunch of flowers and scurried off into the shadows on the far side of the tomb. Paris stepped up to the cold carved stone of the vault.

He knelt before the door. “Juliet, sweet flower, with flowers I decorate your resting place, and water them with my tears. Every night shall I do this for you—”

Eeeeoooeee!
The boy whistled loudly.

Paris jumped to his feet. “Something doth approach!” He ducked around to the back of the tomb.

“Frankie, I'm scared,” I said.

“You and me both,” she said.

As we crouched behind the bushes, another figure approached. We knew right away who it was, and why he was there.

“Romeo!” said Frankie. “Psst! Watch out!”

I shook my head. “He can't hear us. We'd better get closer, without the guards seeing us.”

The night watch was everywhere, marching around between the tombs. I could see their torches blazing red against the black night. We couldn't shout at Romeo, in case the guards heard and went after him. And maybe us.

Romeo looked both ways and then pulled out a long, metal rod. It was the iron bar that the apothecary said Romeo was looking for. He set it under the door, and after lots of groaning and grunting, and bending and lifting, the iron door ground its way across the surface of the stone.

“Open, jaws of death!” said Romeo as he beheld the darkness within. “I'll cram thee with more food—”

Frankie gasped. “He means himself!”

Paris crept around the side of the tomb. “What?” he said. “This is that banished, haughty Montague, that murdered my love's cousin. He is come to do some villainous shame to the dead bodies!”

Paris leaped up from around the vault, pulling out his sword. “Condemned villain, I do apprehend thee! Obey and go with me, for thou must die.”

Romeo turned to him, his face visible for the first time in Paris's torchlight. It showed how pale and thin he had become. But his eyes had a strange sort of fire in them.

“Paris,” he said. “Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man. By heaven, I love thee better than myself, for I come hither armed against myself—”

“Put down that torch and take up thy sword,” said Paris.

Frankie screamed as Paris jumped at Romeo, his sword drawn. Romeo dodged the swinging blade, sending Paris stumbling forward.