But luckily, I had backup.
Backup that wasn’t the least bit fazed by any of it.
And no, I’m not referring to Bodhi, or even Prince Kanta as I definitely heard them suck in a fair amount of air—I’m talking about Buttercup.
My sweet yellow Lab who, seeing the dog now grown to one hundred times his size, equated it with the game of fetch he’d been playing earlier, the game that started all this. Manifesting a lime green tennis ball, just like the one we’d been using, he sent it bouncing toward the door, down the hall, then barked and wagged his tail harder as he watched the hellhound chase after it.
The last thing I heard as Shucky ran down the stairs and out the front door was the sound of Rebecca screaming, “Nooooooo!” when she realized her dog, thanks to mine, was now on the other side of her globe.
We tried to cajole her, tried to convince her to join him, but she refused. Even after we’d stripped away the closet, the house, and tried to show her just how quickly her world had shrunk down, that besides the three of us, she was the only inhabitant left, she still resisted the truth.
Choosing to fight back by manifesting all manner of hateful, anger-making memories along with every natural disaster she could think of.
But we remained calm, focused, and united—each of u
s happily residing in the small, quiet space of silence she could no longer take from us.
“What now?” I glanced between the prince and Bodhi, looking for some wise words, if not guidance.
“We leave her.” The prince shrugged. “Now that my brothers and sisters are freed”—he nodded toward the place just outside the globe where they all stood, peering in at us—“it is time for me to go. I was hoping to reach her, but that does not seem to be possible just yet. And for that, I am sorry. It is a very great failure on my part.”
Though Bodhi was quick to agree that we should all just leave and possibly revisit that sad, angry girl on some other day, I had another idea entirely.
“I know exactly how to get her out of here,” I said, looking at each of them. “Just follow my lead.”
22
“You can’t do it,” Bodhi said, but I turned my back on him, determined to go through with it no matter how he might choose to protest. “You cannot force someone to cross the bridge. It goes against all the rules. And I can’t believe I have to repeat this to you when you already know that.”
I glanced at the prince, embarrassed to be bickering in front of him like this. Still, I had every intention to stand my ground. I’d had an idea. A good one if I might say so myself. And I was sure it would work, if Bodhi would just give it half a chance.
“No one’s forcing anyone to do anything,” I said, making it a point to roll my eyes and shake my head. “I mean, sheesh, whaddaya take me for? Some kind of amateur?” I screwed my lips to the side.
“Then what?” he asked, voice still full of the fight. “You can see she’s not cooperating, so short of forcing her to do what you want, how are you possibly going to convince her?”
I clutched my hips and gazed all around; just because he was in charge of guiding me, didn’t mean he knew squat when it came to the depths of my imagination. “I’m not going to force her, and I seriously doubt I’ll be able to convince her—though I do know something that will.”
Bodhi squinted, taking his annoyance out on the straw he mangled hard between his teeth.
“The bridge will convince her.”
He sighed. One of those big, loud, exasperated kind of sighs that was soon followed by, “Excuse me, but did I not just tell you that—” But his words were cut short by the flash of my hand.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, gazing between him and the prince. “Maybe I can’t force her to cross it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t lead her to it.”
They looked at me.
“And once she sees the promise it holds, well, there’s no way she can resist.”
“Yeah? And what if she does?” Bodhi asked, stubbornly refusing to see the absolute genius of my plan.
But I just shrugged. “Well, then I guess we’ll cross it, and leave her to stare at it for the rest of eternity. But there’s no way it’ll come to that,” I said, my voice bearing far more conviction than I actually felt.
“So how do you propose we get her there, to this … bridge?” the prince asked, still dressed in the rags he wore when we first met.
I dropped my hands to my sides and squinted at her—at the world she’d created, the one that once seemed so large and overwhelming, only to be reduced to the size of an average thirteen-year-old girl.
She glared at us, all of us. Her fists raised in anger, shouting every type of threat she could think of. And she was so furious to see her little dog Shucky (back to being the tiny version of himself) sitting right alongside Buttercup that she even included him in those threats.