Unhinged: 2 (25 page)

During Memorial Day weekend, in tribute to fallen veterans, Pleasance University MC will be reinstating vintage nurse and doctor uniforms. Any employee who has lost loved ones in past wars and wishes to participate should contact Louisa Colton in human resources for available sizes and styles. Rentals paid for by Catholic Family Services Board and supplied by Banshee’s Costume Boutique.

I close the link. That explains Nurse Terri’s costume on Monday and possibly her desolate, sad eyes. Maybe I jumped to conclusions about her. She was so nice and helpful. But what about the clown
and my stolen art from Mr. Mason’s car? Could there have been another netherling around that I didn’t see?

After zipping Rabid into my backpack along with my phone, I start toward the back entrance. The classroom windows glow yellow, muted by the closed blinds and that hazy light of post sunrise. The building looks just like it always does, even though everything is different inside, at least for me. Morpheus saw to that.

I skulk through the deserted breezeway and inhale the scent of yeast and sweet spices wafting from the cafeteria. The sounds of screeching zombies and annoying theme music drift out of my backpack. I made the mistake of showing Rabid how to play a game on my phone. Muscles tensing, I unzip my backpack, take the phone out, and mute it before handing it to him once more.

I duck into the dark gymnasium and use the flashlight on Dad’s key chain to find my way to the girls’ locker room, treading carefully so my boots won’t leave black streaks on our mascot—the giant blue and orange ram painted in the middle of the wooden floor.

As I curve around the partition entrance to the locker room, the stench of old socks and musty tile stings my nose. With a flip of the light switch, a fluorescent glow buzzes to life overhead, and I face a panel of full-length mirrors.

I unzip my backpack. Rabid clambers out, his mouth stuffed with cookie. He punches buttons on my phone in a last-ditch attempt to kill the zombies in his game. Gently, I pry the cell from his skeletal grip and tuck it into the backpack.

“Are you ready?” I ask, though it’s a rhetorical question. On the way to school I gave him direct orders to go straight to the Red kingdom and stay by Grenadine’s side until I return to help her.

Rabid fishes in his coat. His thimble clatters to the cement floor. He picks it up and starts to dig again for his key.

“It’s okay. I got this.” I hold mine up on its chain and stare into the closest mirror, picturing the Thames sundial trail in London. An image of the sundial statue boy that hides the rabbit hole from human eyes blurs in the glass—projected by my memory.

I wait for the mirror to splinter. As soon as the cracks appear, my heartbeat kicks into overdrive. I’m right where I was a year ago, standing at the doorway to madness. Only this time, I know exactly what’s waiting on the other side.

Pushing past my hesitation, I press the key into the juncture of crinkles shaped like a keyhole. The portal ripples open, and a cool breeze swishes through my hair, scented with grass and flowers.

I take Rabid’s craggy hand. We’re just about to step through, when I pause. The ground around the sundial appears to be moving, as if it wasn’t grass but a dark and angry sea, its waves thrashing against and underneath the sundial’s stand.

“What is that?” I mumble.

Rabid leans in, his bones clattering. “Fire pincers. Pinch you, Majesty.”

I lean closer and realize it’s a sea of fire ants—shimmering a deep black and red—invading the rabbit hole. There are enough to cover the ground for what looks like the length of a football field—thousands upon thousands of them.

I wonder if anyone on the sundial tour is seeing this.

I don’t have time to look around and find out; I need to get Rabid down the rabbit hole. There’s no safe place to step. It doesn’t matter that ants chat with me on a daily basis; they still won’t hesitate to
attack with their pincers if they’re angry or determined, especially if I stand in their path. And these are fire ants. The most aggressive and painful of their kind.

If I didn’t have to be quiet in the locker room, I’d shout out to them. They can’t possibly defeat Red’s zombie-flower army. Yet it’s obvious they’re on their way to try.

Unexpected voices from the gym shake my concentration. I jerk free of the mirror, closing the portal. Then I shuffle Rabid into the backpack and scoot it into a locker.

“Stay hidden until I see what’s going on out there,” I say and hand him the bag of cookies. “When I get back, we’ll come up with some way to make peace with the ants.”

The locker door won’t latch shut with the backpack in the way, so I leave it open a crack. After turning off the light, I peer around the partition wall into the gym.

Multibulb fixtures beam down from the ceiling. I blink at the brightness, taken aback by the flutter of activity along the floor. A handful of students carry in white, glittery trees and doily lanterns. More follow with giant plastic tubs of lacy white tablecloths, crepe paper, and other party decorations.

My stomach drops. It’s the student council and prom committee, setting up for tonight’s fairy-tale masquerade dance. Could I possibly have worse timing?

Some of the bigger guys fold the wooden bleachers and roll them against the walls to leave the rest of the floor free for dancing. Most of the girls putter around on either side of the gym, setting up the snack area and the makeshift stage where the band will play, announcements will be made, and the prom king and queen will be chosen.

I groan as more students saunter into the gym. Any possibility of sending Rabid through the mirror before school is shot. Someone could walk in just as we step inside. I consider hiding in a shower stall till everyone’s gone, but movement in the crowd stops me in my tracks.

“Hey, you!” Taelor shouts, holding up her arm.

She’s the last person I want to talk to. I sink farther behind the partition, then exhale a relieved breath when I realize she’s not yelling at me. She waves her arm again at a dark-haired, baby-faced sophomore in the corner diagonally across from where I’m hiding. He stands next to a tree he placed on the floor, and before he can look up, he’s surrounded by Taelor, Twyla, and Kimber.

“We have to leave space for the park bench where the couples pose for pictures,” Taelor scolds him. “The tree goes on the other side of the gym, by that long banquet table where the snacks will be.”

The boy stares at her, dumbfounded, either stunned by her beauty or shocked to be addressed by a senior.

She sighs and starts dragging the tree in its pot, completely oblivious of the streaks it and her black cowboy boots are making on the high-buffed floor.

Wait.
Cowboy boots?
That’s a first.

Even her dress looks carefully chosen to impress an entomologist: a silvery mini with fluttery sleeves that look like wings. Maybe she’s hoping Morpheus will mistake her for a moth and pin her to his corkboard.

I almost smirk at that. I’d heard a rumor that she broke up with her original date to prom after M asked her to go. I never thought to ask him if it was true, but it sounds like something he would
do—lead her on just for the fun of it. She’s about to be disappointed.

“Ugh.” She whimpers when she’s a couple of yards away from me. I slink farther into the shadows of the locker room but keep her in my sights. Her arms—tanned and toned from incessant tennis and volleyball practice—shimmer under the lights as she tugs at the potted tree. “This thing is heavy.”

Blushing, the sophomore snaps out of his trance and jumps in to help, winning a stunning though sarcastic smile.

“Thanks, Superman,” she purrs and releases her side of the pot.

I can almost see stubble sprouting on his chin as he fast-forwards through puberty, following at her heels.

I duck behind the wall when they pass by.

“Al?”

Jenara’s voice brings me out again. A basket hangs on her arm. Lanterns thump together inside. She threads string through a few to form the garlands other students are hanging on the trees.

“I thought that was you lurking back here,” she says. “What’s going on? I didn’t see your name on the sign-up list.”

“I didn’t exactly sign up for this,” I say, meaning it on so many levels.

Jen smirks. “Yeah, me neither. It’s part of my penance for defacing the prom posters. As if posters have faces.” She snorts, then sobers when I don’t respond. “You never brought your dress by last night.” Her meticulously lined eyes narrow with concern. “Is your mom …?” The question trails off, falling silent beneath the hum of the busy students in the background.

“No, she’s fine.” Reluctantly, I ease out of the safety of the shadows and into the gym, trusting Rabid to stay hidden. “Something came up when we got home from the emergency roo—”

“Whoa!” Jen interrupts as I step into the light. “What’s with the au naturel?”

Only then do I remember I don’t have any makeup on. It’s the first time since I was a freshman that I’ve shown up to school without wearing my armor.

Against every instinct to run, I take a lantern from her basket and some string to start my own garland, nostalgic for the times I would string moth corpses with Morpheus in Wonderland—back when I didn’t have to wear armor. “Sheesh, Jen. Make me feel like a troll, why don’t you?”

She drops her lantern strand back into the basket and squeezes my forearm gently. “Hey, you know I didn’t mean it like that. You’ve got the perfect complexion and bone structure to pull it off. It’s just not …
you
. And your hair”—she flicks the red strand hanging free from my messy braid—“did you sleep with it like this?” Before I can answer, she inhales a sharp breath. “Oh, my gosh.”

The basket slides off her arm and tips over, and lanterns roll onto the floor. Ignoring the mess, she grabs my shoulders.

Her lips tremble on a half smile. “No way. You finally
did
it!”

Her outburst echoes louder than the chatter around us. Several of the students turn in our direction. Twyla and Deirdre pause in the act of setting a navy blue sign with silver foil letters on an easel next to the picture cove. They whisper and point; then Twyla heads to the gym’s entrance, where Taelor’s too busy digging through boxes of donated toys to notice us.

“Way to be subtle, Jen,” I say, frowning.

She glances over her shoulder and lowers her voice to a whisper. “Sorry. It’s just … this is so huge!”

“What are you talking about?”

“You spent the night with Jeb. Right? That’s why he wouldn’t answer his phone after he went to the studio. Why he didn’t come home last night. Ha! I knew once he saw you in that dress—”

“Jeb didn’t come home last night?” It’s my turn to interrupt. Heat rushes to my cheeks as I realize how loud I spoke. Even more of our classmates are watching us now. Taelor’s tuned in, too. She and Twyla wind their way through the crowd. By the pompous look on Taelor’s face, I’m guessing she heard what I said.

She’s the least of my worries. I drop my lanterns to the floor with the ones gathered around Jen’s feet.

“I wasn’t with him,” I whisper to her. “You think he spent the night at the studio?”

Her face falls. “I—I just assumed.”

“You don’t know for sure? Didn’t your mom go ballistic?”

“She worked the late shift at the convenience store and crashed as soon as she came in. I didn’t even know he was gone until I walked by his room this morning. His bed hadn’t been slept in. You know he never makes it up.”

My first thought is Ivy. What if she only
said
she was going out of town? I know Jeb would never cheat on me. But it’s not my mind behind the thoughts, it’s my netherling instincts. They
know
something is off.

Maybe it’s never been just that I’m jealous of Jeb painting Ivy. She appeared at the most inconvenient time, when Morpheus started haunting my dreams with news of Wonderland’s demise. She has to be a real person—I’ve looked her up—but I’ve never actually met her. So a netherling could’ve kidnapped her and could be wearing her imprint as a glamour like Morpheus did with Finley’s. Maybe
it’s the same someone who’s in the shadows in my mosaic, and the same someone who’s been taunting me with the clown.

My blood chills. I grab Jen’s arm. “We have to find him …”

She nods and we start for the entrance, but the volunteers surround us, looking between us and Taelor. There’s no clear path to the gym door. Rage starts to build inside me.
Get out of my way,
I want to scream, but everything shuts down the minute Taelor steps into full view.

She holds a toy in her hands—my stalker clown, complete with miniature cello and strange, squared hat.

The walls seem to shrink.

“Nice, Alyssa,” Taelor says, stepping into my personal space. “We ask for new toys, and you bring this piece of secondhand junk. What’s it stuffed with, rocks?” She drops the clown at my feet. It hits the floor with a metallic clang. The red, black, and white checked outfit is dirty and smudged.

“Where did you get that?” I manage, my voice trembling. I can’t look away from the toy for fear it might move. That beady black gaze gawks up at me—mocking.

“Don’t play dumb. Your name is on a piece of tape on its back.” Taelor rolls her eyes when I don’t respond. “Leave it to you to be cheap. This isn’t gonna get you in the door tonight. The signs specify
new
toys. Not thrift-store rejects. And by the way, what’s with you? Did you sleep in the locker room? This is even worse than your usual mortician style.”

It takes me a second to catch on that Taelor’s referring to my wrinkled clothes and lack of makeup. But I can’t respond with the clown still staring up at me.

Jen steps between us. “At least Al’s fashion sense isn’t dictated by her flavor of the week.” She gestures to Taelor’s cowboy boots.

A few snickers break from our spectators. Taelor glares over her shoulder at them. “Don’t you all have stuff to do? Could’ve sworn there are assignments posted on the task sheet. Did you forget how to read?”

As the students disperse, Taelor exchanges a smug grin with Twyla, then turns to me again. “So, Jeb was out all night, huh? Maybe he’s sick of you cheating on him.”