Page 79 of The Broken Mirror
Filomena laughs. “Stranger things have happened in Never After!”
The ceremony begins. The choir starts to sing. Filomena leans back in her seat and watches Princess Jeanne take her rightful place as queen of the North.
Finally—finally—all is right in Never After. At least for the moment.
CHAPTERFORTY-ONEOLGA’SMAGICPOTION
Now that things have calmed down in Never After—the ogres have backed off and returned to their kingdom, and the rightful heirs are crowned—it’s time for Filomena to return home. It’s hard to know how long Filomena will be saying goodbye to Never After for, but she’s leaving Mary Contrary in charge as regent while she goes home. Or goes to one of her homes, at least.
Leaving Never After is never easy, but this time it’s particularly hard. After Princess Jeanne’s coronation party, Filomena knows it’s time. She’ll be back, of course, but she can’texcuse staying when her mom is sick. She needs to see her, hug her, see how she is, if she’s improving. Saying goodbye to Jack, though, feels nearly impossible.
Jack and Filomena kiss one more time, sheepishly and in front of their friends but without caring. Everyone’s standing by the portal to send Filomena off. She’ll hold on to these moments for a long time. She hopes there will be more—she needs there to be more. Will it always be this way?
That’s the thing about being from two worlds, Filomena realizes as she’s walking up her street in North Pasadena. You always have to choose between them.
Walking in the front door, Filomena notices things are quiet. This is pretty usual at her house, since both her parents, Carter Cho and Bettina Jefferson, are writers who spend much of their spare time reading. But the air is still in a way that gives Filomena a feeling that things haven’t changed much since she was last home. She figures her parents might be at the hospital. They didn’t know she was coming home, after all.
“Hello?” she calls.
Filomena’s Pomeranian puppy, Adelina Jefferson-Cho, comes running up to greet her. Adelina’s little pink tongue gives Filomena’s ankles lots of licks. Filomena scoops her up and nuzzles her. It feels like months since she’s been home, though she knows that’s not true.
“Mum? Dad?” Filomena repeats.
“We’re in the bedroom, sweetie,” she hears her dad say.
She’s so relieved. They’re not at the hospital anymore! Things must be better.
“You’re home!” he says when she walks through the bedroom door. He gives her a big bear hug. “How are you? How’s Never After? What’s happening there? Are you safe? Are your friends safe?”
Filomena still can’t believe that, after being so protective in the mortal world, they were willing to let her go off on her own to an infinitely more dangerous world. But her parents have always understood the mechanics of narrative, and they seem to understand Filomena’s importance in the real-life narrative of Never After.
Before she can answer her dad’s questions, though, Filomena looks to her mom, whose eyes are closed. Her mom takes top priority here.
“How is she? Is she asleep? What’s going on?”
Carter motions for Filomena to take a seat next to him on the couch that he’s set up near her mother’s bed. Filomena notices his laptop on the floor, stacks of papers and notebooks piled around the bed, and not to mention a few takeout boxes. It looks like he hasn’t left her side in days.
“Sweetie, your mom isn’t doing so well,” he says. He begins to tear up. Though she’s seen her dad cry before—he’s not the kind of man who refuses to cry—it still shocks her.
“What do the doctors say?” Filomena asks desperately. “What’s going on?”
“They still don’t know. But every day, she seems to getweaker. They told me to keep her at home, to keep her as comfortable as possible. But they don’t know what’s happening to her.”
So there’s no news. No news is said to be good news, but this no news is the opposite of good. Things are still as they were the last time she was here. Instead of feeling sadness, right now Filomena feels a deep anger. Why can’t they figure out what’s wrong with her mother? What’s modern medicine good for if not to figure out what’s wrong and solve it?
“I think I need to get some water,” she says. She has to be alone for a second.
“Of course, sweetie,” her dad answers.
“Do you need anything?”
“If you could grab a towel with some cool water on it from the bathroom, I’ll put it on her forehead. Helps with the fever.”
Filomena gets a glass of water, then walks back upstairs and into her parents’ bathroom. She shuts the door and sits on the cool tile floor for a second, curling up into a ball. She puts her head on her arms and starts to cry. She can kill ogres, rule a kingdom as queen, travel across Never After, and break curses—and yet she can’t do anything for her mother. Filomena would do anything to save her… anything. She wishes she’d never gone to Never After in the first place. This all happened when she left! Maybe if she’d never left, this never would have happened.
Filomena lifts her head, remembering the towel for her mom.
As she’s wetting the towel with cool water at the bathroom vanity, she notices some products she’s never seen before. Usually her mom swears by all-natural face washes and creams. But these look different. They’re completely white with small green type.
