“Well, then.” I kissed him, swallowing my protest. “We’d better make good use of our time.”
We bid our good-byes to Phillip and Grace and went to walk along the Thames, as I had dreamed of doing so long ago.
“My first war was the American Revolution,” he said as we strolled together in the light of the slivered moon. London was dark, and no one was out, but we had nothing to fear. “I wasn’t involved in the Seven Years’ War. I didn’t quite understand what that one was about.”
“I see. And which side were you on, in the Revolution?”
“Oh, the American side. I was an American then. I fought in the Battle of Saratoga, along with Benedict Arnold. Nice fellow.”
The uniform. The tricorne hat. That was when I had first seen him in the mirror!
“You must have been handsome in your uniform,” I said.
“I don’t know about that.” He laughed.
“I do.”
We were passing the Tower of London now. Though it was unlit, I could see it in the moonlight. I was at the exact spot where James had stood that day I had seen him in the mirror. James squeezed my hand, seeming to know this.
“Benedict Arnold is commonly viewed as a traitor, is he not?” I asked.
“Oh, he was a traitor,” James said. “He would have surrendered West Point to the British. But in the Battle of Saratoga, he was a great hero. The Americans would not have won it without him, and that was the battle that started their winning the war. It was only later he went bad. I was sorry for it. But people have reasons for what they do, I suppose.”
I nodded. No one with my history in Salem, with my history of history, could doubt that people did strange things.
Do you have to leave? I wanted to ask, but I didn’t.
“What next?” I asked instead. I would be waiting for my soldier, just like all the other girls. That wouldn’t be that bad. That is what I told myself.
“Next was the Franco-American War.”
“Oh!” He must have been there, when I was looking for him all that time. “Was that how you happened to come to Europe?”
“Yes. And then, the Crimean War, and the Spanish-American War. Oh, but before that, I fought in the Civil War. I was back in America by then. Over fifty thousand men died at Gettysburg. I was one of the lucky ones.”
“You were a wizard,” I said, kissing him. “But I am sure you were very brave.” I remembered how brave he had been for me in Salem.
“A man can be brave when he has nothing to lose,” he said, “though, even then, I had hope that I might find you.”
This time, I did say my mind. “Then why are you leaving when you finally have?”
“Because I said I would. If only I had but known, my darling.”
“But—”
He kissed me. “This war will be a minute in our lifetimes. We have centuries to spend together.”
We went back to my flat then and spent two days together, reminiscing and planning our future and kissing and more, before it was time for him to ship out. On that day, I handed him a mirror and explained how to use it.
“Look for me,” I said.
“I will,” he said, tucking it into his duffel bag.
I did not go with him to the dock. I did not want to see him leave again, as I had seen him fade from view that night in Salem. But we spoke sometimes, though often he could not contact me for fear of being seen. And I wrote to him every day. Sometimes, he wrote back.
But then the contact stopped. His letters stopped too. When I asked to see him, I saw a battlefield, but I could not pick him out.
Had he been burned alive? My James? Or had he simply lost the mirror?
In 1945, I left London to go to the United States. It was peacetime, and I would start a new life for myself. One with no hope of James. I stopped looking for him. If he was alive, if he wanted to find me, he would look. I lived in New York City for a time, because it is a good place for those in hiding. But, eventually, I settled in Miami. Miami is a place for those with nothing to hide, and I realized that is what I was.
I enrolled in school like the obsolete teenager I was. That was how I met many friends, including a boy named Chris, who thought himself an ugly duckling.
1
Amanda Lasky Is a Badass
Miami, Florida, present day
This is the story of Amanda and me. How we met, how we became friends, how we stayed friends, and how we stopped being friends. Hopefully, it will have a happy ending.
Like the stories my mom read me when I was a kid.
When I was little, my mom put me to bed with stories every night. Her favorite was The Ugly Duckling, which was about a young duck who suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his duck peers and other barnyard animals alike because he was so ugly. But when he grew up, it turned out that he was really a beautiful swan.