“Those aren’t your parents?”
“They are. But they’re not my biological parents. I was adopted,” she explains.
Alistair nods. “I wish someone had adopted me.”
“Someone did,” says Jack. “Me.”
Alistair laughs.
Meanwhile, Jack wishes Filomena were more enthusiastic about going back to Never After with them. You’d think she’d be curious about it, he reflects. But at least now she doesn’t seem to keep questioning their very existence. Jack is patient, but if he were being honest, he’d say it was getting old, trying to prove he was really there, alive, in front of her all the time.
“Okay, so now you know our story. Are we done?” asks Alistair. “Can you help us hunt for cheeseburgers now? Yesterday we couldn’t find any.”
“You haven’t eaten since yesterday?” she asks.
“No,” says Alistair, whose stomach growls loudly as if to agree. “Pardon.”
“We found a few things people left in these big bins,” Jack says. “Some kind of cheesy bread?”
“You ate trash pizza,” says Filomena, trying not to gag.
“Trash pizza—is that some sort of delicacy?” Alistair wonders.
“Where did you sleep?”
“There’s a meadow not far from here,” says Jack with a shrug. “It was quite adequate.”
“Um, no. We really need to get you guys something to eat,” says Filomena, who looks like she’s starting to regret running away from him yesterday.
Jack and Alistair had seen the big house she calls home. It sure looked comfy. They argued all night over ringing the doorbell, especially when it had started to rain.
“Yes! Eat!” says Alistair.
“No time. We need to get back to the tree as soon as possible,” argues Jack. “And we were hoping you could point us in its direction.”
“Oh right, because I have the tree on my backpack,” says Filomena. “Unfortunately, I have no idea where the tree might be.”
“None?” Alistair gasps.
“Nada. I told you I thought the books were fiction. Fantasy.”
“Yes, yes, fiction, fantasy, all the F words,” says Alistair. “I learned a few more … They have four letters.”
“But if you went through the tree to get here, don’t you remember where it is?” she asks.
“It was dark!” Alistair says defensively. “And we were running for our lives! Excuse us if we didn’t take notes.”
“I thought I knew where it was, but we kept getting farther and farther away,” says Jack, feeling embarrassed to admit it. Filomena seems to think he’s some kind of hero, and he’d hate to disappoint her.
“Do you remember anything about it at all?” she asks.
“I remember there were letters against the hill. Tall ones,” he replies.
“Olly … something,” says Alistair.
“Olly?” Filomena repeats. “Hmm…”
“And we were on a hillside, high above a village,” says Jack.
Filomena looks like she’s deep in thought when a spark of recognition lights up her eyes. “Olly … Holly … Hollywood? The Hollywood sign! Were you near the Hollywood sign?”
“Is that how you say it?” Alistair says.
“How would you say it?” Filomena spells it out. “H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D.”
“Hollywood. Right,” says Alistair.
“I know where it is,” she tells them. “Let’s go. Oh, wait! First, we should hunt down those cheeseburgers. There’s a place not far from here.”
CHAPTER TEN
PIE ’N BURGER, PIED AND PIPE
Filomena takes them to the Pie ’n Burger, one of the oldest restaurants in the adjacent and much larger town of Pasadena. (Yes, there is a Pasadena, a North Pasadena, and a South Pasadena, but she thinks one of them might be fictional.) At the diner she chases down three delicious cheeseburgers, as well as generous helpings of pie. Jack declared the meal as good as a giant’s feast.
Afterward, Filomena used her saved-up allowance money to hire a cab to take them to the Hollywood Hills, where the sign is located.
“Most people think of Los Angeles as Hollywood, and Hollywood as a place where movies and television shows are made. I don’t think you guys have those in Never After, do you? It’s like, make-believe things that people watch to pass the time,” she tells them when they’re comfortably seated in the back seat of a taxi.
“Like puppet shows!” says Alistair.
“Yeah, sort of,” says Filomena. “But anyway, Hollywood isn’t just where they make movies or, um, puppet shows. It’s a neighborhood, just like North Pasadena, where I live.”
Jack looks out the window thoughtfully. “Like a different village.”
“Exactly!” says Filomena, pleased.
It takes about an hour to get to their destination, and when they arrive, it’s a long hike on foot to the top of the hill near the Hollywood sign. The three of them peer up at the sign.
“Yup, that’s it. That’s where we landed,” says Alistair.
“I knew you’d know the way to the portal,” says Jack with a smile.
Filomena smiles back, even though she doesn’t feel like she’s accomplished anything great, but it’s nice to be appreciated for once.
Jack leads the way, walking quickly through the brush while Alistair huffs behind him.
Filomena checks the time and is relieved that it’s not as late as she thought. She can get back to school for pickup at the usual hour, and her parents won’t suspect anything. She turns off her phone during school hours—students aren’t allowed to use their phones at school—which is convenient. If her mom were watching the tracker on her phone, she would surely have freaked out to see that Filomena is miles away from school, where she should be, and Filomena doesn’t like worrying her parents.
One time she wasn’t outside for the usual 3 P.M. pickup, and her parents almost had a meltdown. They’d forgotten she had band practice. What if she gets back late today? She can picture them now, running around the house, then the neighborhood. All the calls they’d make to all the parents they know who have children at her school.
At least her list of friends isn’t long, so they won’t have an abundance of phone calls to make. In that way, her antisocial behavior and apparent inability to form genuine friendships is finally coming in handy. You’re welcome, Mum and Dad!
Filomena’s thoughts are disrupted as she trips over a rock. Jack catches her arm just as she’s about to fall, and their eyes meet for a moment. Shyly, they both look away.
When they arrive in front of the sign, Alistair sits on the curve of one of the Os and wipes his forehead.
“So where’s the tree?” asks Filomena.
Jack waves toward a particularly large and shady oak, but neither of them seems to be in any hurry to head toward it.
“So I guess this is goodbye, then,” says Filomena tentatively.
“Uh, not quite,” says Jack.
“We lost the key to the tree,” explains Alistair.
“The Pied Pipe! That unlocks the portal! Of course!” says Filomena joyfully. Until Alistair’s words set in and joy turns to aggravation. “What do you mean, you lost it?”