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Title Page

The Frog Prince

Warts And All

“Warts and All”

A Fairy Tale

Melissa McShane

Introduction: The Frog Prince

I’ve had a soft spot for this story since I was young, despite the fact that the princess is a spoiled brat. After all, she reneges on her deal with the frog when he retrieves her golden ball for him, has to be shamed by her father into being his “friend,” and ends by throwing him into a wall. There’s really no reason for her to end up marrying the poor young man, and really, why would he want to?

So my version is, like most of the stories in this collection, more inspired by the fairy tale than a retelling of it, and the main character is quite a bit nicer than her counterpart in the original. That meant coming up with another solution to the frog’s problem—and for that I drew on several other sources. But now I’m wondering about a more faithful retelling of “The Frog Prince,” one in which the princess’s behavior makes sense and her happily-ever-after is earned. A story for another time…

Warts And All

The weather forecaster had predicted a cool, overcast spring day. What a liar. It felt more like high noon on the hottest July day you could imagine, the sun beating down on me like a brass hammer, raising a sweat beneath my hair and my arms and down the middle of my back. I surreptitiously hiked up my uniform skirt an inch and flapped my arms to raise a breeze, which died immediately. Heavy, unmoving air that smelled of mown grass enfolded me in a damp embrace. It made me think pitying thoughts about the gardeners who cared for the palace grounds, though they’d probably mowed the lawns early that morning before the brutal sun could torment them as it was doing me.

The hedges, clipped into perfect geometric shapes, gave off a scent, too, though it was sharper and more resinous. I rounded another bank of hedges, following the sound of water, and found what had been taunting me for five minutes: a marble fountain, spraying cool water higher than the hedges from a brass fish perched atop its pillared basins. I sank gratefully to sit on its rim and dropped my backpack at my feet. Bring your packs, Miss Brenley had said, you never know when you might be seized by inspiration, but I’d been hauling my pack containing notebook, pen, wallet, and water bottle for an hour and hadn’t been seized by anything but a desire to sit on the bus until this field trip was over. Though the bus was probably hotter than outdoors, with all those glass windows that didn’t open and the leatherette seats that soaked up sunlight like a drunken sailor and gave it back in butt-blistering waves of pain.

I opened my backpack, which promptly fell over, and took out my water bottle. Its metal sides were cool to the touch, but the water it contained was lukewarm. I didn’t care. I drank deeply, capped it off, and closed my eyes. The mist of the fish’s spray caressed my face, and for a minute I thought about taking off my socks and shoes and going for a wade. But they’d warned us about the palace’s security measures, how they weren’t limited to the guards patrolling the grounds, armed with batons and magic wands, and I was sure wading in the fountains would result in some kind of magical retaliation.

My own magic wand rested in its sheath at my hip, ready for use. Not that I was capable of doing much with it. I’d only had it two weeks, since my fifteenth birthday and official recognition as a witch. But it was there, and I was licensed to use it. I ran my fingers over its smooth length, then whipped it out of its sheath and aimed it at a nonexistent attacker. “That’s right,” I said, “just try it. I dare you.”

“You’re talking to invisible people again, Chloe,” Stacy said, coming around the hedge in time to see this piece of theatrics. She dropped onto the fountain’s edge and stripped her backpack off. “I can’t believe we’re still here. What brains I had have boiled away inside my skull.”

“We’re supposed to be Inspired By Nature,” I said, pitching my voice high to match our creative writing teacher’s dulcet twitter. “I’m inspired to find a shady corner for a nap.”

“This is hardly nature. It’s the best-groomed patch of earth in the city,” Stacy said. “We should have gone to Lancet Park. That’s got animals altered by the Wilder War. Tell me you don’t love the idea of Miss Brenley being chased by a manic squirrel.”

“You know I do.” I took another drink and considered dousing myself with the rest of the water. But no, I’d just look bedraggled.

“I look awful,” Stacy moaned. She had out her compact and was examining herself in the tiny mirror. “I can’t believe you let me go out looking like this.”

“You look fine.” Stacy looked better than fine, as always. Where I was sweating, she had worked up the finest of damp glows that made her look radiant rather than unkempt. Her makeup was still perfect, and her curly red hair hadn’t gone frizzy despite the damp heat. She even made our school uniform look stylish.

“There are a ton of cute guys from Linley Prep doing the palace tour. We should talk to them,” Stacy said.

“Linley Prep? Those guys? They’re all stuck up and too wealthy to give us the time of day.”

“That’s reverse snobbishness, that is. You should give them a chance.”

“I’d rather not get in the way of their actual snobbishness, thanks.”

“We go to an all-girls’ school, Chloe. We have to meet boys somehow.”

“Girls?” One of the palace guards, sweating harder than I was in his old-fashioned black jerkin and wool trousers stuffed into riding boots, came around the corner. He had his wand out, but held it under one arm, a non-threatening gesture. “I’m afraid I have to ask you to rejoin your group. The palace grounds are closing early today.”

I put my water bottle back in my pack and hefted it onto my shoulder. “Why is that?”

“There’s an event tomorrow the groundskeepers have to begin preparing for. It’s nothing to worry about.” He wasn’t looking at us; his eyes roved the grounds restlessly, looking for more strays to round up.

Stacy and I rose and headed toward the parking lot. “What a relief,” Stacy said. “Maybe they’ll let us go home early. It’s not like we had anything else planned this afternoon.”

“You know Miss Brenley will want us to write about our Magical Experience.”

Stacy elbowed me and surreptitiously pointed ahead and to the left. “That’s a Magical Experience waiting to happen.” A cluster of boys in Linley Prep uniforms, black with red trim and therefore even warmer than our blue and gray skirts, strolled across the lawn ahead of us.

“You realize that sounds like a euphemism for sex.”

“Whatever. They’re cute, right? Even you have to think so.”

They were cute, but I was too hot and too sweaty to give my best friend the satisfaction. “If you like that type.”

“They’re five different types, all of them cute. Geez, Chloe, you’re bent on sucking the fun out of life today.”

“Sorry. I’m too sweaty to want to meet boys.”

Stacy gave me a once-over. “You look good. Not sweaty.” But she hung back rather than cross the Linley boys’ path.

The bus driver was gone when we reached the bus, and only a few other girls hovered nearby. None of us wanted to step voluntarily into the oven. I shifted my pack and the notebook inside rubbed against the water bottle with a sound like a croak. Whatever was going on at the palace, it required the presence of dozens of guards. Most of them were gently ushering visitors to the gate. I surveyed the palace itself, a sprawling edifice with windows that shone in the fierce glare and crenellated towers bearing siege weapons that were not at all medieval. A flag flew atop the highest tower, signaling that the royal family was At Home today. If I’d been less hot and sweaty, I’d have felt awed at having been so close to his Majesty. Maybe that could be my Magical Experience for the day.

Miss Brenley, her tweed-clad figure showing no signs that she was affected by the heat, bustled up, accompanied by no fewer than three guards. “Well, really,” she twittered, “I don’t see why you have to be rude about it. We have a perfect right to be here.”

“Sorry, ma’am, we have orders,” the tall, beefy guard said. His shorter companions nodded. Miss Brenley fumed.

“I really fail to see how their crisis is somehow our fault,” she said when the three were gone. “It’s shocking how some people let power go to their heads. Come, students, everyone onto the bus, and we’ll return to school for you to write about what you experienced.”

“Crisis?” Stacy said. “They said they were getting ready for an event.”

Miss Brenley waved that off. “They were far too agitated for people who were simply interested in clearing the grounds. I think they received another bomb threat and didn’t want to cause a panic.”

I sat incautiously fast and hissed as my bare legs came in contact with the overheated leatherette. With my backpack on my lap, I said, “That sounds like an Experience to write about, Miss Brenley.”

Miss Brenley smiled and shook her head. “It’s hardly transformative, Miss Spurlock. Write about the glories of the natural world, tamed by man. Therein lies true beauty.”

My mother was a renowned horticultural witch and our family garden was on the list of national preservation sites. I knew all about the glories of the natural world, tamed by man—or at least by woman—and the palace grounds didn’t overawe me. But I said, “I suppose so, Miss Brenley,” and settled in for the ride back to school.

By the time we returned to Villienne Academy, I felt broiled alive and ready for a bath, but as per my prediction, Miss Brenley didn’t have pity on us. I scrawled out a few lines in my notebook, Miss Brenley being a big believer in the handwritten word’s effect on one’s creativity, tried not to fall asleep, and woke when the bell rang signaling the end of another long day.

Stacy had a piano lesson, so I walked home alone. Now the promised clouds were rolling in, but the heat hadn’t dissipated, so they weren’t a relief. The air weighed on me, dense with moisture and smelling of asphalt and exhaust fumes even this far from the main roads. I trudged along and thought about getting another drink, but I was afraid if I stopped to get out my water bottle, I wouldn’t be able to start walking again.

The smell of my mother’s garden greeted me before I could see it, that wonderful scent of lilacs growing out of season just because my mother liked the way the fragrance blended with that of the roses. I came around the corner to the public gate, not yet open to the public. Mom could have opened the garden in early spring, but she thought it was bad for us children to be distracted from our schoolwork by people tromping around what was effectively our backyard. The glossy blue half-gate gave passersby a glimpse into Henrietta Spurlock’s garden paradise, every leaf and every stone laid out by her to lead the viewer through all four seasons in one day. It was just as well Miss Brenley had never connected her student Chloe with the famed horticulturalist, or she’d never stop pestering me for a private showing.

The house lay past the garden, with a modest yard that looked tiny next to its overgrown neighbor. It was practically a gingerbread cottage, with its thatched roof and white scrollwork on the blue shutters that matched the garden gate. Every other house on the street looked normal and modern, but Mom had applied for a variance so the house could be a quaint annex to the garden. There was even an outhouse, never used, twee down to the crescent-moon cutout on the door. Mom never understood why I didn’t like to invite friends over.

“I’m home,” I shouted, slamming the door behind me and sprinting up the stairs without waiting for a response. Nobody was home, probably—Mom and Dad would be at work, Jared was at football practice, Delia was no doubt hanging out with one of her many frenemies. I had the house to myself. Just the way I liked it.

I shut my bedroom door behind me and dropped my backpack, hearing that odd croak once again. It was cool and dim in the light from the oncoming storm, its white walls bare and the plum-colored carpet free of lint. Stacy said it meant something dire about my personality, that I didn’t have posters or art or anything on my walls. I thought it meant I was tidy and well-organized, thank you very much. I flopped onto my neatly-made bed and sighed at how cool the white pillow felt. Bath, yes please.

I went into my en-suite bathroom, my one perk as oldest child, and turned the taps until the water flowed lukewarm into my freestanding porcelain tub. Even the sound made me feel cooler. I stripped off my skirt, over-warm knitted vest, and button-up shirt and padded to my dresser in my underwear to find a T-shirt and shorts. Thunder rumbled, and I cast an eye on the skies. Maybe not shorts.

More thunder, and another croak from my backpack. Croak? I dug through my backpack. Water bottle, notebook, pen, wallet—

My fingers brushed something soft and pliant that moved. I sucked in a startled breath and yanked my hand away, then looked closely at the bottom of my backpack. In the dimness, the thing was visible only as a roundish blotch against the pale canvas. I reached for it, and as I got my hand around it, it croaked again. “Ohhhhh,” I said, pulling the frog out of the bag, and “Oh. Oh no!” Its skin was warm and barely moist and rubbery, and its breathing was rapid—too rapid, I was sure.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be all right,” I exclaimed, rushing into the bathroom with the limp frog in both hands. It was large for a frog, the size of my two fists together. I gently lowered it into the bath and turned off the water, which had filled the tub to a depth of about four inches. The frog floated limp and unresponsive. I knelt beside the tub, clutching the lip with both hands, and watched it drift. It was alive, I was sure of that, but for how much longer?

Then it moved. One leg kicked out languidly, then the other, and soon it was swimming half-submerged in the bathwater. I breathed out a sigh of relief. “Good, you’re not dead,” I said.

“No, I’m alive. Thank you,” said the frog.

I shrieked and threw myself away from the tub, scrambling to get my feet under me. “You can talk?”

“I…yes. I forgot how, for a while,” the frog said.

“Frogs don’t talk! They especially don’t say thank you!”

The room went silent. I edged forward and peered over the rim in time to get a face full of water as the frog thrashed its way to the slick porcelain side of the tub. “I’m a frog!” it croaked, in a voice that sounded like dry leaves rustling. It scrabbled its tiny fingers on the tub wall, trying and failing to get purchase. “A frog! Get me out of here!”

“Stop, stop,” I shrieked, fending off splashes of water. “Calm down!”

The frog’s harsh breathing sounded louder echoing off the sides of the tub. It flung itself at the tub wall again, its hind legs splashing up more water. “Call…somebody! Help me!”

“I’m trying to, but you have got to calm down or you’ll hurt yourself.” I pushed my wet hair back from my face and tried to calm my own breathing. “Are you…not supposed to be a frog?”

“I’m human. I think. I can’t remember.” The frog stopped struggling and floated, its legs splayed out in as perfect a gesture of defeat as I’d ever seen. “I can’t remember much of anything.”

“Human.” I sat up, realized I was still in my underwear, and scrambled away from the tub with another shriek. If it was human somewhere inside that froggy body, I did not want it seeing me half naked. I grabbed jeans and a shirt and dragged both on as quickly as I could, then returned to the tub. The frog still floated there. If not for its rapid breathing, I would have thought it was dead. “So…someone turned you into a frog.”

“I guess. I…everything’s hazy. I remember someone waving a stick at me, and the smell of grass clippings, and a dark place, and then you put me in the tub.” It moved its hind legs spastically, a jerk that propelled it toward the drain. “I think I was dying of dehydration.”

“A stick. You mean a wand?”

“I don’t remember. I think he was trying to hit me. Then everything went dark for a bit. I do remember shouting. A lot of shouting. And crawling into something shady.”

“That must have been my backpack. I set it down while I was in the palace gardens.”

“That sounds familiar. The palace, I mean. Like it’s a place I know well.” The frog croaked once, then added, “I have flashes of memory that I think are the palace. Bedrooms, and a dining room, and the throne room…but that’s all, just flashes.”

“What’s your name?”

“I…can’t remember that, either. I know I’m male, and not a kid, but that’s all.”

I sat with my head against the cool side of the tub and closed my eyes. I had a frog who used to be a man in my tub. An amnesiac frog. “But we know you had something to do with the palace. A guard, maybe?”

“I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel right. But I’m not sure of anything anymore. Could you get me out of this tub, please? Swimming is tiring me out.”

I scooped him up—he weighed almost nothing—and set him on the bath mat, where he drew his limbs in beneath him and sat as tall as he was able, which wasn’t very. “What else is there? A guard, or a servant, or…”

They were far too agitated for people who were simply interested in clearing the grounds, Miss Brenley had said. Trying not to start a panic. And the guard who’d escorted Stacy and me to the bus had been scanning the grounds the whole time, looking for something. Or someone. “Do you think you live in the palace?”

“When I think about it, the memory is comfortable,” the frog said, “like it’s familiar. Does that help?”

“I don’t know. You said you were attacked?”

“I remember someone shouting at me before pointing the wand at my head, and being afraid.” The frog let out another croak. “Excuse me.”

“You’re familiar with the palace,” I said, not paying attention, “and you were attacked by someone who turned you into a frog. And the guards were all in an uproar when we left.” It was starting to come together, a horrifying, impossible scenario that nevertheless fit all the facts. “I think…I think you may be Prince Jonathan.”

“Prince? Me?” The frog croaked twice in a row. “Are you sure?”

“No. But…I can’t think of anything else that would put the palace guards in such an uproar.” I went for the phone. “I have to call someone.”

“Good. Who?”

I paused with my hand on the receiver. “The palace?”

“You can’t call them! What if it was someone at the palace who attacked me? I think the person who shouted at me was a guard.” The frog hopped from the bathroom to where I stood.

“But I have to tell someone. Someone who can turn you human again.”

“Why not you?”

“What?”

The frog bumped into my right leg, the one with the wand sheathed near my hip. “You’re a witch, aren’t you? So turn me human!”

“I’ve officially been a witch for exactly sixteen days. Removing curses is advanced stuff.” I drew my wand anyway. It looked so ordinary, just a polished length of ash with nothing visible to show its magical powers.

“You can try, can’t you? I don’t want to stay like this forever.”

“What if I make it worse?”

“There is nothing worse,” the frog said, “than sitting in a girl’s bedroom slowly drying out and feeling a growing craving for flies. Please. I feel my memories slipping away. What if I forget I was ever human?”

His raspy voice was so plaintive my heart went out to him. It wasn’t a fate I’d wish on anyone, even if they weren’t a prince. I sighted along my wand, then sat cross-legged on the plum carpet and aimed it at him. “Hold still.”

Prince Jonathan quivered, but otherwise didn’t move. I tried to remember the pictures I’d seen of the prince—tall, blond, handsome, with a smile that dimpled on one side—and held tight to that image as I flicked my wand at the frog prince.

Nothing happened. Prince Jonathan croaked. “Did it work?” he said.

“Can’t you tell?”

“I could tell. I just hoped I was wrong.”

“Let me try something else.” I stood and aimed my wand at the prince, this time picturing him not as his human self, but as a frog gradually transforming into a human. Again, nothing happened. I sighed and sheathed my wand. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Do you know any other witches or warlocks who might be able to help?”

“My mother, but she won’t be home for hours.”

“I might not have hours. I feel my memories fading.”

Thunder rumbled again, and rain began pattering the window, becoming a downpour in seconds. “What do you mean?”

“I mean when I try to recall anything, it’s like a soupy green mist. Even those memories of the palace I mentioned—they’re getting blurry.”

“I wonder if a frog brain is just too small to hold a human consciousness,” I said. “Your Highness, I think I have to call the palace. Everyone there can’t be out to get you.” I picked up the phone and realized I had no idea who to call. It wasn’t as if the palace had some kind of hotline for reporting missing princes.

“I suppose you have to,” the raspy voice said. The frog hopped over to lean against my foot. “I can’t help feeling it’s a mistake, though.”

“If you think of some other option, let me know.” I dialed the operator, and when the perky-voiced woman came on the line, I said, “I need to speak with someone in the palace. Maybe…is there a central operator there?”

“The only public number for the palace is the public relations department,” the perky woman said. “Let me give you that number, unless you’d like me to connect you directly?”

“Please do.”

There were a few clicks, and then the phone rang again. Almost immediately, someone picked up. “Public relations,” a man said.

“Hi. Um. I, ah, have someone you’re missing,” I said, and immediately felt stupid. Someone you’re missing? I might as well have started with “two million in cash or the prince gets it.”

“Excuse me?” the man said.

“You were searching for someone at the palace grounds today. I have him. With me. He’s all right, don’t worry, but he’s…not himself.”

“Who is this?”

Self-preservation cut in. “A friend.”

“Do you have a name, ‘friend’?”

“I didn’t kidnap him! He sneaked into my bag and rode home with me, I swear.”

There was a pause. “This is a prank, isn’t it,” the man said. “Miss, I can have you arrested.”

“It’s not a prank! He’s a frog and he needs help. Please—”

Click. The line went dead. I stared at the receiver for a while, listening to the dial tone. “Well?” Prince Jonathan said.

“He thought it was a prank. He threatened to have me arrested.” I set the receiver down and sat on my bed. “Now what?”

Prince Jonathan leaped onto my bed and sat next to me. “I never asked your name,” he said.

“It’s Chloe.”

“Thank you for trying to help me, Chloe. I wish we could have met under better circumstances.”

“Me too.” It wasn’t entirely true. I wasn’t royalty-mad like Stacy, who would have gone into hysterics at having a prince in her bedroom no matter what shape he was in. But the frog was…sweet, actually, and nice, and there was a part of me that couldn’t help wondering if princes were ever attracted to ordinary girls like me. If I could figure out how to reverse the spell, he’d be grateful, and maybe that gratitude would turn into something more… I shook myself.

“Something wrong?” the frog prince said.

“Just trying to think of a solution.” In the stories, princes fell in love with ordinary girls all the time. But those were just stories. I had to live in the real world, in which princes never even met ordinary girls, and if I restored Prince Jonathan, he’d say thank you and we’d never see each other again. And now I was being stupid. He’d lost most of his memories; suppose his real personality were something abrasive and horrible? In which case, I was developing a crush on a jerk. No, I was developing a crush on a frog. I needed the prince to return to his human self and get out of my life before I did something stupid.

Something stupid.

Just stories.

What was it all the stories had in common? A kiss. The miracle of true love’s kiss, able to wake sleeping princesses and rouse the dead. Or return someone to his true form.

“I have an idea,” I said.

The frog croaked.

“It’s probably stupid, but it can’t hurt.”

He croaked again, then hopped into my lap, a trusting gesture that made my heart ache. “I’m not your true love, so maybe it won’t work, but I think…” I picked up Prince Jonathan. “Do you understand?”

The frog prince croaked again. Fear struck me. “Can you speak? Say something!”

He croaked rapidly, his small sides heaving. “Oh, no,” I said. I puckered up my lips, realized if this worked, I’d be holding a full-grown man at eye level, and set the prince on my bed. Leaning way down, I pressed my lips to his mouth. It was soft, and unpleasantly moist, and tasted bitter.

Lightning flashed, followed immediately by the loudest thunderclap I’d ever heard. I cried out and flung my hands over my ears, squinting against the brightness. In the next moment, I realized the lightning had actually been inside my room, which stank of ozone. I jerked away from the frog to find him gone. In his place, a young man sprawled across my bed, his dark hair standing on end, his blue eyes wide and horrified. He was definitely not Prince Jonathan.

He was also completely naked.

I shrieked and closed my eyes. “I’m sorry!”

“I’m sorry!” the young man said at the same time.

I grabbed handfuls of my bedspread and threw it over him. He snatched it up and wrapped it around his waist. “Who are you?” I shouted.

“I don’t remember. Why can’t I remember? What did you do? Did you kiss me?”

Wonderful. He wasn’t a frog anymore, but he wasn’t the prince and he still didn’t remember who he was.

Footsteps sounded outside my room. “Chloe? Are you all right?” my father called.

My eyes met those of the stranger. “I’m fine,” I said. “Just, um, startled by the lightning.”

“Mom called and said she’d be late. You want me to pick up dinner?” The footsteps drew nearer.

The young man’s face was almost comical in its dismay. He headed for the bathroom, tripping over the trailing ends of the bedspread. “Um, yeah, sure,” I said. “Anything’s good.”

The bathroom door swung shut just as my door opened and my father stepped inside. “Jared and Delia want Thai food, if that’s all right,” he said, then, “What happened to your bed?”

“I, ah, spilled grape juice on the blanket,” I said. “It’s soaking in the tub before I put it in the wash.”

“You should be more careful, pumpkin,” Dad said. “I’ll let you know when dinner’s here.” He gave me a hug and left the room.

I stood perfectly still in the center of my room, listening to his receding footsteps until the only sound was the rain on my window and my rough breathing. Slowly, I walked to the bathroom door and pushed it open.

The bedspread lay puddled on the floor next to the tub. The window was open, and cold rain spattered me with every gust of wind that whipped the curtains into a froth of fine white gauze. One of my towels lay in a peach-colored pile by the window. The other was missing. I walked in a daze to the window and looked out over the garden, but saw no one, no flash of peach, no tousled dark head silhouetted against the shrubbery. I stared out the window for a good five minutes, getting solidly drenched, before shutting it and going to change my clothes.

***

“I can’t believe you didn’t call me,” Stacy said. She tore the top off her straw’s paper wrapper, held the straw to her lips, and blew the rest of the wrapper like an arrow at my chest. I half-heartedly swiped it aside. “A prince in your bedroom.”

“He wasn’t a prince. I don’t know who he was,” I said, discarding my straw’s wrapper in a more conventional way and then stabbing it into my drink’s plastic lid. I sucked down frosty pink lemonade fast enough to give myself a twinge behind the eyes.

“Prince, not a prince, the point is, you had a cute guy in your room and you didn’t even get his name!” Stacy leaned back and examined me with narrowed eyes. “You’re really bothered by this. You saved his life! You should be celebrating.”

“I know. But I’m worried. Suppose he never regained his memory? He was mostly naked and all alone—anything might have happened to him.” I hadn’t been able to forget his face, those wide, startled blue eyes. Worse, I hadn’t been able to forget how his lips—the boy’s lips, not the frog’s—felt on mine, soft and warm and, for a moment, moving in an unmistakable kiss.

“He remembered who he was and made it home safely. Do you know how I know? Because a cute naked boy wandering the streets who doesn’t know his own name is news, and even your family gets the news.” Stacy took a long drink of her soda and let out a feminine burp. “So don’t worry. Unless what you’re worried about is that you’ll never see him again.”

“Why should I see him again? There’s no reason for it.”

“If he’s as nice as a person as he was as a frog, he’ll be back. If only to return your towel.”

“It doesn’t matter to me whether he does or not.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m serious. I’m satisfied that I did a good deed.”

“And it’s just my imagination that you’ve taken a second look at every dark-haired young man who passes.” Stacy leaned forward. “Oh, I’ve just thought of something awful. What if he’s a Linley boy?”

“Stacy!”

Stacy laughed and drank down the rest of her soda with a slurp. “I’m off to ballet,” she said. “If you see him again, I insist you burst in on my lesson and drag me away to give me the gory details.”

My cheeks were hot enough to melt the last of my ice. “Don’t hold your breath.”

I walked with her the few blocks until our paths diverged, then trudged on alone. Today was as cold as yesterday should have been, with clouds showering the streets with an intermittent drizzle that was worse than the outright downpour had been. I turned up my collar and shoved my hands into my jacket pockets, feeling like a private eye from some ‘30s noir film. I’d go home and finish my homework, which included inventing a Magical Experience for Miss Brenley. She’d never believe the one I’d had yesterday.

“Chloe?”

I stopped and turned, wondering who was calling my name. Then I felt rooted to the spot, struck by the same lightning bolt that had shattered my room the day before. He stood across the street, his dark hair mussed by the wind, shoulders hunched into a Linley Prep letterman’s jacket. He held a plastic shopping bag that was so prosaic I had a moment’s doubt that this was happening. Surely this was some stranger who just happened to look like my frog prince, and when he turned away, the spell would be broken.

The young man looked both ways, then loped across the street between cars, arriving at my side a little out of breath. “Hi,” he said, then looked as if he’d exhausted his conversational reserves.

“Um. Hi,” I said.

“Ethan,” he said. “My name, I mean. It’s Ethan. It took me a while to remember it. Ethan Arbuckle.”

“Oh.” It was a nice name. It suited him far better than Jonathan.

He held out the shopping bag. “Your towel. I washed it, just in case…I mean, it seemed like the thing to do.”

I took the bag. “So you…remember everything? You’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Embarrassed, but fine.”

“Why are you embarrassed? I’m the idiot who thought you were the prince.”

“That was a perfectly reasonable assumption, given that I had no idea—” He shook his head. “Look, do you want to sit down for a minute? Let me buy you coffee, or something to drink, anyway. You must have a million questions.”

I nodded. We set off down the road. After a few paces, he took the shopping bag from me without a word. It was such a sweet, chivalrous gesture I was struck mute, or would have been if I’d had anything to say.

We stopped at a coffee shop and ordered drinks, coffee for me, hot chocolate for Ethan. We sipped, and stared at each other for a while, until Ethan said, “I spend a lot of time at the palace, studying art—it’s like a museum, you know? So it’s almost as familiar to me as my own home. But it means I’m used to going places the public can’t. I was taking a shortcut across the grounds and startled a guard. He was new and reacted without thinking. Those wands they carry are set to turn intruders into frogs, or squirrels, something small, anyway. It’s a non-lethal deterrent that’s meant to be short-term. But the guard panicked, and I got away. Climbed into your backpack, and…you know the rest.”

“So all that activity…they were looking for you?”

Ethan saluted me with his cup. He was really very handsome, with his thin face and bright blue eyes, and I felt myself blushing and drank more coffee to hide the fact. “They couldn’t let it out that a guard had accidentally zapped a student. They’d gotten as far as calling my parents when I finally made it home. I think there’s talk of reparations, though I tried to stop them firing the guard.”

“I guess you can’t have someone that trigger-happy in a sensitive position.”

“I guess.” Ethan drained his cup and set it down with a decisive tock. “I wanted to say thank you. You know, now that I’m in my right mind and not a frog, or naked, or anything like that.”

“You didn’t have to flee out my window. You might have been hurt.”

“I didn’t want to make trouble for you after all you’d done. I very nearly forgot I was human, so I owe you my life.”

Handsome, sweet, and considerate. I felt my assumptions about Linley boys dissolve like chalk in the rain. “My parents would have understood. But…thanks.”

He pushed back his chair. “Can I walk you home?”

It wasn’t necessary, and there was no way I was turning him down. “All right.”

We walked in silence again, and I searched for something to say that would make me sound sophisticated and interesting—sound like anything other than a fifteen-year-old beginner witch with, I had to admit, an epic-sized crush on the boy walking next to me. Nothing came to mind. The closer we came to my home, the more convinced I was that we would reach my door, he would say goodbye, and I would never see him again. And I wanted so desperately to see him again.

Ethan slowed as we neared the blue garden gate. “I’ve heard of this place,” he said. “Your mother’s?”

“Yes. It’s more beautiful in the height of summer.”

“I’ll have to come back then.”

We walked a few more paces to the front door, and I held out my hand for the shopping bag. He looked at it as if he’d forgotten he had it, then gave it to me. “Thanks again,” I said. “For coffee, and the explanation…and everything.”

“Like I said, I owe you my life.” He pulled the edges of his jacket closer together against the cold. “Which makes this awkward.”

“Makes what awkward?”

He blew out his breath. “Asking you to go out with me.”

I once more felt rooted to the spot, my face numb and my eyes dry because I’d forgotten how to blink. “I mean, I was a frog, and you probably remember that every time you look at me,” Ethan went on, “and you saw me naked, and that’s got to be an interesting memory, and basically I feel I’ve humiliated myself as much as anyone can in front of a beautiful girl and still manage to face her and—”

I laid my fingers over his lips, stilling his torrent of words. “You think I’m beautiful?”

He blinked. “Of course. But it’s more than that. I don’t know any other girl who’d be willing to kiss a frog on the off chance it might save someone’s life. That makes you amazing.”

I blushed. “I panicked. And it shouldn’t have worked, anyway. It’s supposed to be—” I stopped, embarrassment tangling my tongue.

“True love’s kiss,” Ethan finished my sentence. “I read the stories, too.” He took my hand. His was warm and dry, not at all damp or froglike. “Maybe the stories are wrong.”

I twined my fingers with his. “This is just the beginning,” I said. “Who knows where the story ends?”