Death of the Mad Hatter (22 page)

“
You teamed up with Hearts not because you wanted to, but because she blackmailed you, didn’t she?” I asked. My thoughts were rapid. Was Alice Mae to blame for my dad leaving his birthplace? Had she instigated the events that caused my uncle’s murder? Who was M.H? Why did she insist on me keeping Mr. Ruth? Was Chez a bigger player in this messed up game Hearts instigated? Why did she put so much clout in the prophecies? So many more question boiled up, but I began with one—the one that always seemed the most important to me. “How do you know my dad, Alice Mae?”

“I was his deliverer before everything went wrong.”

“His deliverer? For what? Newspapers? Pizza?”

“Candies.”
A tear fell from her eye. She quickly wiped it onto her fingers. Holding her breath, she looked at the tear stain like she expected it to grow into this great flood or something. When it didn’t, she fidgeted. “Can I please have my candies back? I need one. I can’t focus. I can’t breathe!”

She
began to hyperventilate. I pulled her up next to me and hugged her ferociously—even though I knew I shouldn’t. Torn was the perfect word to describe how I felt. I knew I should be level-headed and get to the bottom of her mischief, but all I wanted to do was keep her from shedding another tear.

“
You don’t need any sweets, Alice Mae—not right now anyway. You just need a distraction from yourself.”

“
Are you trying to distract me from my past? It’s far too haunting. You won’t succeed,” she said, and took several deep breaths as she fiddled with the collar of my shirt.

“Won’t I?” I said.

“It is doubtful.”

“
Bring me to Wonderland,” I said. If I could just get there, perhaps I’d find someone who was more willing to share the secrets Alice Mae kept.

“
You can’t. I told you that I’d never bring you there, even if you begged me,” she said, and then bit her lip. She was contemplating a deep thought. “Your father has forbidden it.”

“
That’s not my dad’s decision to make.”

“
Yet, he made it all the same. If the Queen finds out that I told you any of this, I’ll be in so much trouble… Why do I keep telling you the secrets I promised never to speak about?” she said frantically and then kissed me before I could ask any more questions about the dangerous and manipulative World of Wonderland.

We didn
’t stop kissing until my lips were raw. It just happened to be the exact moment that the fire alarm went off.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
N
INE

(
Ryley: Present Time)

There were times
I just wanted to press rewind in life and start over. This was one of those times. Trapped in the school, the alarms were blaring so loud I could hardly think straight. I was going to get suspended and Alice Mae would probably be expelled if we didn’t get out of here quickly. We’d be the only two morons in Rockingham history who had broken
into
the school and got caught. Yep, we were so busted.

“
Oh good, you hear bells too?” Alice Mae asked, covering her ears with her hands.

I
frantically disassembled the book-table by tossing the novels and textbooks around so it no longer represented a table and chairs. Alice Mae stopped me. She held up her phone and insisted that we capture the moment.

“
You want to take a photo
right now
? The cops are probably on their way over!”

“
Well, the chance of us getting expelled and never getting to see each other again is most probable. We’re likely never to step foot inside this building alone, so we might as well cherish the moment,” she said, digging into my pockets to retrieve my phone. “Besides, you have an incriminating photo of me breaking into a police station. Why shouldn’t I have one of you committing a crime?”

Like
I said, this was one of those times I wished that I could just press rewind. That way, I could suggest us taking a photo-op earlier in the evening so we didn’t have the urgency of
capturing the moment
when we were literally minutes from walking out of the school in handcuffs.

Alice Mae held
up my phone and smiled blissfully at it. I tried not to throw up. Just as it flashed, I glanced at her. There was no arguing it; Alice Mae was particular. After I promised to text her the picture, she handed the phone back and grabbed her coat off of the floor.

“
Don’t just stand around, Ryley! We need to hurry, unless your plan for our date included a visit behind bars.”

And, there it was—my urge to strangle h
er
again.
She bent over and retrieved a thin piece of candy from her boot cuff. A Fruit Roll Up. She plopped it in her mouth. I knew she didn’t give me all of her sweet stash.

I
slapped the checkout slip inside Ms. Taffy’s folder. We raced out of the library, only to stop on a dime. I couldn’t tell for sure what city officials were walking down the hall towards us, but they were swinging their flashlights right to left, scanning the halls. One shouted out when he saw me.

“
Stop!” he ordered.

We bolted.

Alice Mae led the way through the halls like she hadn’t just transferred to the school at the start of the year. She maneuvered the twists and turns like she’d studied the layout of the school. I simply kept up, until she turned down the secondary stairwell that led to the lifting room in the basement.

“
Alice Mae, there isn’t any place to hide down here!”

“
Fine, then find your own place to hide.”

S
he ran to the back of the weight room. Originally, the room had been twice as big, but a false wall had been put in to make a storage room. The leftover and old uniforms for the various sports hung from racks and filled up cardboard boxes. Alice Mae pulled out a bobby pin and fiddled with the lock. Within a split second, she had broken into the storage unit.

“
Where did you learn to do that?” I asked.

“
Like I said, Wonderland is full of mischievous creatures,” she said. “I wouldn’t make it very long if I didn’t know how to pick a lock. The Joker can attest to that.”

I
followed her into the makeshift closet. She softly closed the door shut. It clicked, locking us inside. It was dark. Only the exit sign above the door illuminated the room. We weaved to the back of the storage place and hid behind the equipment.

“
I swear I saw two kids run in here,” an officer said loud enough to hear through the thin wall.

“
That’s Becky’s uncle, Officer Pullman,” Alice Mae whispered. “His password for everything is sprinkleddonut.”

“Really?”

She rolled her eyes. “His password was his mother’s maiden name, which isn’t hard to find if you know who to talk to or where to look.”

“
I wasn’t under the impression that you knew much about electronics since you hand crafted all the missing posters.”

“
You didn’t get the impression because I didn’t want you to.”

I guessed that I was more impressionable than I thought.
“What were you looking for in the police station?”

“
I wasn’t looking,” she said. I just stared at her until she explained more fully. “I was there to upload the document indicating Robert Edgar had a brother. It wasn’t in the computer systems until then, and it was imperative that it be electronically recorded.”

“
Why?”

“
Well, how else was Becky going to uncover any dirt on your family, if I wasn’t the one to put it there? The girl barely knows how to answer her smartphone.”

I crossed my arms to keep from wringing her neck.
“
Why
did you want Becky snooping around in my family business?”

“
To keep you distracted from what I was doing.”

Pullman
jiggled on the storage room door. It didn’t budge. Another voice echoed in the weight room. “We found a window pried open in a science room.”

The officers left. We sat in silence for a few minutes, listening for any noise that might indicate that they found us.
“I don’t know the protocol for B&E, but I think we might have to bunker down here for a while until it’s safe to leave.”

“
Then let’s make the most of it,” she said, and rummaged through the clothing and tossed me a pair of tight pants. I picked up the baseball pants from the 1960’s. There was a rat hole on the side. Tossing me the uniform top she said, “Try them on.”

“
Here?”
In front of you?

“
Do you want me to wear the blindfold, again?” she said. The shadows cast darkness on her face, appearing ominous.

I
didn’t answer her, not with words anyway. Instead, I stripped off my shirt and cast it down onto the floor. Her gaze plummeted. Her mouth made an “O” shape.

“
Oh dear,” she whispered, and then turned around when I reached for my jean’s zipper.

“
Have you ever seen a guy before?”

“
Duh, I have! It’s not like male humans are an endangered species, hiding in the furthest corners of the world that only come out during a blue moon! But, if you’re asking if I’ve seen a naked…” her voice trailed off. She fidgeted with a uniform. “It’s not like I spend my free time peeping in the boys’ locker room, though rumor has it that you enjoy hanging out in the girls’ bathroom.”

“Who did you hear that from?”

“John Luke. He said you are still infatuated with
his girlfriend.”

“Are you jealous of her?”

“No,” she said a little too fast. “I just don’t like rumors about you and her, of any sort. But…were you spying on her in the bathroom?”

“No.”

“Prove it,” she said, and defiantly crossed her arms.

“Where do you think all the
bullfrogs came from? A Froggie fairy?” I leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “My plan was to dump them in the boys’ bathroom, not the girls’. Courtney just so happened to be in the room when I emptied my load.”

“You’re disgusting!” She might have thought I was a gross boy, but her tone of voice gave away her true feelings. She was impressed—or at least amused.

“Not to change the subject, but something you said piqued my interest. Haven’t you ever been with someone before?” I said more than asked, slipping on a pair of baseball pants that were five inches too short.

She
glanced over her shoulder as I zipped up the pants. Our eyes locked. It was impossible not to see that she was thinking about
it.
So, it was impossible for me to think of anything else as well. She didn’t look away when I slipped on the uniform top. The hunger in her eyes made it difficult to keep putting clothes on, but I managed.

“
Have
you
ever been naked with a girl before?”

There was no right answer to that question. If
I told her I’d been with girls before, the conversation would derail to the most undesirable discussion I dared to have with a girl, but it wasn’t like I could just stand there like a mute monk. I needed to say something! Anything!

“
I’m experienced.”

“
Well, then I’m in need of a crash course,” she said, and reached for the oh-so-small strap that held up her dress.

Her shoulders were so small and delicate that it would be a small movement to simply brush her strap
aside. I imagined it falling to the floor, revealing her… She brushed it off, but the dress stayed on. I didn’t have the thought capacity to logically figure out how it stayed up. Why did women wear attire that defied physics? To tease men, I thought. The thin material should have fallen to the ground!

She turned around and moved her hair to the side.
“I could use a hand with the zipper, Ryley. It’s in the back.”

Oh
. That’s how the dress stayed up.

“
It’s your turn to turn around,” she said after I pulled the tiny zipper down, revealing the curves of her back. She had such a beautiful art-worthy body. To draw the contours of her figure… I let my hands fall to my side, even though I wanted to trace my finger along the small of her back where two perfectly formed dimples interrupted the smooth…

“
Ryley?” She clutched her dress in the front to keep it from falling. I finally convinced myself that looking at her face was where my gaze
should
be.
Actually
convincing me of that was another thing entirely.

Alice Mae
’s grin filled her face, but her cheeks were flushed. “I don’t care if you close your eyes or turn around, but I’d like a little privacy, or you won’t see the remarkable outfit I picked out for you.”

“
No problem.” I didn’t move.

The corners of her mouth twitched. She raised her hand in the air and twirled her finger.

“What?”
I asked.

“Privacy?”

Yep, brain to mush. “Turning. Turning,” I said, raising my hands in the air as if to say
you caught me.

I
faced away from her. I tried to think about foot fungus, dirty diapers, and rotten watermelons—anything that was unappealing. I heard her dress fall. I grabbed the nearest stack of cardboard boxes for support and tried to think about anything other than her perfectly sculpted ass-ets. Behind me was a half-naked girl, just prancing around in the school’s athletic over-sized closet. I lost the battle of my wills. I
had
to steal a peek—just one. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see her disappear behind a stack of football gear.

“
No peeking!”

“
You have a knack at temptation, Alice Mae.”

“
Temptation is a word made up by desperate men, with lustful thoughts, to sound less crude to women.”

“
Many words have been created to replace crude words like lust.”

“
Yet, the words to describe love have fewer synonyms.”

“
If there are fewer words, it is only because men are left speechless at the beauty women bestow,” I said, contemplating another glance. “Our puny brains stop working when in the presence of desirable women.”

A box fell to the floor with a
bang! I turned around in time to see helmets hitting the floor, burying Alice Mae’s dress. She was nowhere to be seen.

“Are you hurt?” I called out.

A tap on my shoulder alerted me otherwise. I shouldn’t have been surprised when she burned past the cheerleader uniforms and headed for the football pads. I burst out laughing when she paired the shoulder pads with a wrestler’s uniform.

“
Words escape me in the presence of your beauty.”

She pretended to be mad
. She even put her hands on her hips and scowled, which made her more attractive. There was no denying Alice Mae’s magnificence. She could compete with models in natural beauty, but it wouldn’t be a competition when considering her quirky personality. She wasn’t definable. She was complicated. She had so many different levels, uncharted territory, to her. She was a mystery, and I wanted to spend all eternity trying to solve her, if I wasn’t fighting with her.