I cried, leaping to my feet. The storm had stopped. I looked around at a square with a bubbling fountain. “Where are we?” “We’re in Mantua,” said Frankie, dusting herself off and tucking the book into her dress again. “But we could be on the moon, for all the difference it makes.” I shook my head to clear it. “What do you mean? Did you tell Romeo the plan?” “Tell him the plan?” she snapped. “I haven’t even found the guy! I spent the entire time just getting to this point here! First, I flipped too far ahead, then I flipped back. When I finally wound up here, the Mantuan guards chased me all around because I had come from Verona and they thought I was carrying the plague or something.” “The plague?” I said. “Why would you carry one of those around?” She shrugged. “From the way they talked, it’s some kind of bad disease.” “Eew.” “No kidding,” she said. “Me, in my nice purple gown made by PTA moms, carrying something icky? As if. Anyway, they said that if I came from Verona, I must have passed through some sick villages between there and here.
