Death of the Mad Hatter (23 page)

Obviously
, I couldn’t say that. No one ever wants something (or someone) if it’s too easy to take. So I added, “You’re even more attractive when you pout.”

“
I’m not pouting,” she insisted, even though her bottom lip stuck out enough for me to struggle to keep my thoughts from wandering back to her kiss.

“
Then tell me what word you’d use to describe what you’re doing to me,” I said, stepping closer to the only girl in the world who could pull off wearing a combination wrestler’s and football player’s uniform and be so damn provocative.

“
I’m just being playful.” The look in her eyes was anything but innocent.

“
Playful?” I closed the distance between us. “I think you need to check out a thesaurus from the library because
playful
isn’t the word I’d use.”

I
pressed my finger against her shoulder pads. I traced my finger down until it fell off the pads. The spandex wrestling uniform accentuated the perfect formed lines of her stomach. I let my finger drift lower until I traced her hip that protruded slightly.

“
What word would you use?”

“
Inviting
.” I lifted her chin. I bent forward so my nose traced her cheek. “You are being rather inviting.” With my other hand, I tugged on the thin spandex that covered her stomach. “And I want to accept your invitation.”

“
Ryley, I’m not the kind of a girl who just sends out all sorts of invitations without...”

“
You’re not the kind of girl who falls in love?”

She pulled away.
“It would be tragic if I fell in love.”

I
let my hands fall by my side. “Would it be tragic to fall in love, period—or just with me?”

Her answer was clear in her eyes. She tried to blink away the truth, but it was too late.
I saw it. She dreamed of falling in love, but not with someone like me.

“
Read you crystal clear,” I said, backing off to look for my clothes. They had to be somewhere under the pile of knocked-over helmets.

She grabbed my arm, stopping me from throwing the football equipment all over, but
I didn’t look at her. “It’s not easy. You don’t understand, Ryley.”

“
That’s all I ever wanted—to understand! You accuse me of missing the point but offer little to no explanation!” I jerked my hand out of her grasp. “I want to understand what is so different about you and this magical place you’ve come from, but you don’t tell me anything! You are just this mess of secrets that don’t make any sense. I know you have something planned, or the queen does, or…I don’t know
something!
But, I’m sick of—”

“
Would you cordially accept my invitation?”

Ummm
, what? “Stop trying to change the sub—”

“
I like you, you big dummy!” She yelled at the top of her lungs.

I covered her mouth. If the officers were close, they
had
to have heard us. When no one pounded down the door with handcuffs, I removed my hand and stepped away from her.

“
I’m just scared because things are moving so fast and I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve never been with anyone like you. Smart. Funny. S-s-sexy,” she said, stuttering on the last word. She paced around in the wrestling uniform. “I haven’t even kissed anyone until you!”

“
Just because you’re afraid—” Wait! What? She’s never kissed anyone before?

I
tried to keep my smile from growing, but it was useless. She made a sound I didn’t think girls were capable of making—a noise mimicking a ravenous beast. The malefic sound held a hint of i
nviting
. Inviting and, for lack of a better word since my brain wasn’t working quite right, enticing.

“
One second I want to slap you across the face and the next I want to stop all your worries with a kiss, you big turd face! I don’t know the
Rules of Dating
. I’ve never been in
love
before!” Her mouth hung open. She looked like she had been ready to curse up a storm, until
that
four letter word came out.

She loved me?
I knew I should do something—anything, except stand still and hold a random helmet. I dropped it. She turned away when I approached her. I wrapped my arms around her waist. The football pads made it difficult to hold her, but a girl like Alice Mae would always be difficult in some way or another, figuratively speaking.

“
I guess we will figure out the rules together,” I whispered.

She caught her breath. She placed her trembling hand over mine. We said nothing for
one blissful minute. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable like it usually was when I was with girls. It was peaceful.

“
Ryley, do you
really
want to make the journey to Wonderland?” Alice Mae asked, wiggling out of my embrace. She batted her eyelashes, like she was trying to take attention off of
her
uncertainties. “It’s not a world filled with magical rainbows and unicorns—well, it is, but they don’t always play nice with others.”

“
I can handle a few ninja-like critters.”

“
If the queen hears of your journey, she will be…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to find the right wording.

“
Maddened?”

She frowned.
“I’m sure there will be feelings of that as well. She has unusual reactions to outside guests.”

“
So, it’s dangerous.”

“
Quite, but if
you
truly want to go there, then I’ll escort you,” Alice Mae said. “But the decision has to be yours, not mine.”

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY

(
Alice Mae: Present Time)

Tears threatened to spill
onto my cheeks. They burned my eyes like acid. I looked up at the night’s sky as I hurried home. Darkness blanketed the sky, cloaking everything in shadows. Evil could hide in plain sight, just like I could hide in the shadows during nightfall.

Chez
was waiting for me, perched on the apple tree. He was pawing at one of the apples that still clung to the branch. Most apples had fallen to the ground. They rotted next to an ordinary looking rabbit hole. His yellow eyes turned gold when he saw me wipe an escaped tear off of my cheek. Just because he couldn’t communicate with me via the conventional verbal method in this realm, didn’t mean that I couldn’t take a guess at what he was thinking… and I didn’t need him running to the queen with “false” information.

“
I haven’t fallen for the boy,” I said. “The tears are for show in case anyone is watching. It’s all just a part of my plan.”

Chez
meowed.

“
I’m
so
not crying because I feel bad about what I have to do. My plan is in place and is working. It’s working so well, in fact, that Ryley actually begged me to bring him to Wonderland,” I said, walking past the cat and onto the front steps of my aunts’ house.

The cat reappeared in front of me, effectively blocking the entrance. He didn
’t make a sound, but he stared at the fake hickeys I had created. He jumped on my shoulder and sniffed my neck.

“
The hickeys are merely flare. I’m an actress. If he wasn’t jealous that would be a bad sign, but he is. He’s falling for me, not the other way around,” I said, pulling the cat off of me. Chez dug his claws into my shoulder. “You don’t believe me?”

The cat hissed.

“Tell the queen to prepare iced tea, just the way Ryley likes it, for he will be in her court by the week’s end.”

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-
O
NE

(
Ryley: Present Time)

Screaming that thirteen and a
half flamingos would drown in the great flood that had been bestowed upon us, my dad sat on the table’s edge with his feet on the chair. He used a spoon as an oar to row himself to safety. A nurse tried to reason with him in an effort to get him sitting upright on the seat, but it was useless.

“
Dad, there’s no great flood or drowning birds here,” I said, fiddling with the candies that Alice Mae had given me before we walked to the school.

“
Blasphemous!” he cried.

“
Dad, if you sit in the chair, I’ll give you some candy,” I said. When he didn’t budge from his spot, I added that it had a
wondrous
flavor.

He sat his butt down on the chair faster than
I could retrieve a rolled candy from my pocket. I tossed it to him. He peeled away the wax paper wrapper, revealing a faint pink Tootsie Roll. He popped it in his mouth. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as he sucked on the candy.

“
Why don’t you want Ryley to know about Wonderland?” I asked, hoping to sound casual. He wasn’t in his right mind and clearly he didn’t want
me
to know about it so I pretended to be a random visitor.

“
To protect him from the Queen of Hearts.”

“
Why does he need protection from her?”

“
She meddles with lives even though she is not privy to do such. She was not born into royalty, even though she’d let you think such,” he said, and then opened his eyes. They weren’t unfocused or dilated. He reached out to me and spoke with clarity. “Ryley? Is that really you?”

We stood up and hugged each other.
He placed his hands on my shoulders and told me that I’d grown so much.

I said,
“Tell me about Wonderla—”

My dad slapped his hand over my mouth.
He moved his hand to press his finger over my lips. “How do you know about that place?”

I
removed his hand. “A little bird whistled in my ear and told me the secrets of that realm.”

“
Was it an actual talking bird or was that a metaphor?”

Maybe
the candy wasn’t working. “Birds don’t talk, Dad.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. Whatever knowledge he gained from my comment pleased him.
The innocent smile turned into a dark smirk. “The birds here aren’t much for conversation, are they?”

Dismissing
his comment, I said, “I’ve come to the understanding that you and Hearts weren’t the fondest of friends.”

“
I’m not going to discuss
her,”
my dad spat
. He acted like I had violated some heavenly rule by bringing up the queen. He crossed
his arms. “How is your mother doing?”

I
crossed my arms too. Like father like son, I guessed. If he wasn’t going to bargain with me, perhaps a little guilt would do the trick. I pulled out my wallet. Inside was a picture of Mom and me that was taken at the church’s last photo shoot. I showed it to him.

“
Mom misses you.”

He handed me the photo back.
I shook my head and told him to keep it. I had a hundred different questions brewing about Wonderland, but I kept them to myself for now. Instead, I told my dad about the past few years. I told him about the colleges I wanted to attend. “I’m hoping to get into a school with a decent physics department.”

A
broad smile spread across his face. “Following your old man’s footsteps I see.”

I nodded. The questions were burning on my tongue. I couldn’t keep them suppressed any longer.
“Dad, why don’t you just make candy like this and come back home? You could have your old life back.”

He sighed one of the sigh
s a truly broken person is capable of doing. The failure and realization was as evident as the wrinkles in his face. If he was a younger man, he’d look like tears were seconds from forming in his eyes, but he wasn’t a young man anymore. All the tears about his situation had already been shed.

“You’re not going to stop until you get answers, are you?”

“Nope.”

“You’re stubborn, like me,” he said, and then smiled weakly. “I can’t have my old life back, because
I can’t get my hands on the ever-changing recipe since the Maude sisters took over M.H’s candy operation.”

“What if I could get you the recipe?”
I said, thinking of all the ways to break into the Maude sister’s house and steal it.

“It’s written in the
Sweets for the Rabbit Hole Voyager,
which is secured in Hearts’ master library,
”
my dad said. “Besides, since Wonderland is always changing, thus, the recipe and ingredients change as well.”

Of course it did.

“Certainly someone changes the recipe. It’s not like the book just knows when to change the recipe,” I said.

My
dad gave me a look that indicated otherwise.

“
What if I could get my hands on the book?” I asked.

My
dad waved the idea away like it was a fly in the air. “No, that’s a terrible idea. It didn’t work out so well last time the candies were delivered, I don’t want to think about the repercussion you’d face if you took Hearts’ book.”

“
It’s just a candy recipe, Dad,” I said. “It’s not like I’d get into major trouble if someone caught me.”

“
If you believe that, then you understand nothing,” he said, glancing at the nurses’ station. “Care for a walk?”

The medical staff was watching
us interact with great curiosity. I suppose it would be a bit odd for a mental patient to suddenly act lucid. So we made our way outside before anyone started asking questions. Dad chose the cement bench furthest from the facility.

“
If someone caught you stealing candy for
me
, there would be repercussions to pay to the queen. And she wouldn’t give you a slide because you’re family,” he said. When I didn’t react to the news, he commented, “The little bird that told you about Wonderland must have been quite the talker if you already know the queen has a tiny heart.”

“
It was more like pulling teeth from the little bird,” I said, dismissively. “So, why wouldn’t my family ties matter?”

“
Hearts killed her husband and blamed it on his clumsiness. She claimed that Eddie tripped on a guillotine. I heard the truth come from a grasshopper before a villainous cat did away with the insect,” he said. “I publicly accused her of the crime, but had no evidence. Besides, it was a logical explanation given to creatures who don’t usually warrant rational thought. Long story short, I was banished—not beheaded—but only because I was next in line to the throne. I would live out my life in this realm, and she would rule from her court. Neither party should pass into each other’s chosen realm… which meant I needed a truck full of candies to offset the consequences of living outside of Wonderland.”

“
So when you ran out of sweets, you lost your mind,” I said, piecing together the story. “Which is why you needed someone to deliver your candies… What happened to the last
deliverer
?”

“
You’re skipping ahead in the story,” my dad said. “I had an infinite number of sweets, but that was recalled by Hearts after you fell down a rabbit hole. The queen had ordered the rabbits to put in overtime digging. I suspect that she wanted you to wander into her court.”

Excuse me?
“I’ve been to Wonderland?”

“
As a child. I gave you an Eraser Tracer, an unforgettable-forgettable sweet to make you lose recollection of that night,” he said, and then sighed heavily. “Wonderland is a magical world filled with evil creatures who have pretty faces. It’s filled with delicate, yet violent, creatures. Hearts is at the top of that list, so when I discovered that she had you, there was no alternative. I had to give up my infinite number of candies to get you back.”

He gave up his sanity for me?
“And then you needed a delivery person. Which meant you still had loyalties… Who did your deliveries?” I asked even though I had a suspicion. “What went wrong?”

“
M.H. befriended Rutherford, a loyal Hare of mine back then, who dug him secret holes so he could travel back and forth, delivering sweets to me.” Dad closed his eyes like recalling such memories were painful. “Everything was fine until the Jack gave M.H. a prophecy warning him that the queen would catch on from his Comings and Goings, so he needed an apprentice—someone to carry on with the deliveries. Per M.H’s request, Rutherford found an innocent looking child from this realm who had family ties to Wonderland. What better candidate as an apprentice, than a child whose aunts were close allies to the queen? She’d only been to Wonderland a handful of times before you fell down a rabbit hole.”

My
dad’s pupils were dilating—probably because the candy he was sucking on was now gone. I had forgotten how intimidating he could be when lucid. Somewhere inside him, he was still my dad—not just a crazed person. Guilt overcame me. He basically ended his life because I tripped and fell down a rabbit hole.

“
You asked me what went wrong. Several things went wrong. A mess of ghastly events rolled into one, forming a great big disaster, creating a wrongful doing,” he said. His voice wavered like he didn’t trust the words that were coming out. I could tell I was losing him. “So that’s not the question you want to ask. You won’t like the answer.”

“
What should I have asked?” I asked and handed him another candy.

He shook his head. I
didn’t think he wanted to remember anymore. His past life, his life in Wonderland, had to have been quite painful.

“
Who
was Wrong, not
what
went wrong. Rutherford brought a stupid, young girl to M.H. She was to be his apprentice.
She
was the Wrong choice
,”
he said, through gritted teeth.

“
Who was the girl?”

“
The girl with a boy’s name,” my dad said and then swatted the air like he was being attacked by kamikaze bees.