Unhinged

by A. G. Howard

  Then, with a flutter of wings, he’s out of my door and out of my life—gone as fast as he stormed into it.

  The instant Morpheus leaves, I’m slammed with regret. The more I think about it, the more it seems clear: He hasn’t been in my head once since he showed up wearing Finley’s image. Even in my dream at the hospital, it wasn’t his voice I heard. It was a whisper that could’ve belonged to anyone. Even me.

  He was telling the truth. He opened his heart, and I gutted it. All he wants is to save Wonderland, and I can’t stop acting like a coward.

  Sunset filters through my blinds and reflects off the glass on the floor, casting soft pink designs onto the walls. The serenity is out of sync with how I feel. I can’t bring myself to pick up the mirror’s pieces. So much has broken today. So many things, I don’t know how to begin fixing them all.

  The sound of snoring distracts me from my guilt and leads me to my closet. Rabid is curled in a ball on the floor. Some clothes have fallen off their hangers, and I arrange them over him for camouflage. He smacks his lips and snuggles deeper into the bed of shoes and belts. As creepy-weird as he is while awake, he’s adorable when he’s sleeping—vulnerable, even.

  His safety is my first priority. I need to send him back through the rabbit hole. We can’t risk Dad or other humans stumbling upon him.

  Butterfly Threads has full-length mirrors along the walls. If I take Morpheus’s car before Dad gets home this evening, it will buy me some time before I have to explain what it’s doing in our driveway.

  I can smuggle Rabid into the store. He’s the size of a rabbit. He’ll fit inside my backpack. We can get there before Jen closes and locks the doors. I’ll take my prom dress, then suggest that I close up so she can leave early to finish it.

  The plan’s foolproof. But the question is, what happens after I send him back? Morpheus is gone. That means I have to go to Mom, have to try to trust her. Maybe she has some idea how we can stop Red and her zombie flowers.

  Also, it’s time to tell Jeb everything like I’ve been wanting to all along. And Mom’s going to help me convince him, whether she likes it or not.

  I grab my backpack from the living room and stop to peek at her out the back window. She’s sitting in the grass beside a clump of silver licorice, whispering all of her secrets into their feathery ears. Tears roll down her face.

  If only she could confide in me or Dad as intimately as she does them. All these years they’ve known a side of her that we never have. I bite the inside of my cheek, because even I’m not too far gone to realize how ridiculous it is to be jealous of a plant.

  Back in my room, I slide two schoolbooks from my backpack and lay them on my desk, leaving only a half-empty bottle of water and my cell inside. I call Jeb so I can lay out the groundwork for him to come over later. The phone goes to voice mail. Afraid to leave a message with my voice so shaky, I text him instead.

  I tried to call like you asked. Mom’s OK. I pause. I can’t tell him via a text that I’m off to work so I can send a bald, skeletal creature through the looking glass. Instead, I improvise.

  I’m tired … going to study, then take a nap. Txt me when you have time. I need to see you tonight.

  A percentage of what I said is true. I am tired. I need a shower to rejuvenate myself.

  Inside Mom’s pink-and-pearl-toned master bathroom, I take off my prom gown and underthings. I step into the shower and twist the faucet head to massage. The heat works its magic on my aching bones and muscles.

  Scented like a sugar cookie, I step out and dry off. My mind is clear, but my body is still heavy and sluggish. There isn’t time for makeup or blow-drying, so I twist my wet hair into a loose braid that leaves only my red strand to hang long and wavy in the front. I slip into some skinny jeans—vertical stripes of deep red and black running the length of the stretchy denim. They were a Christmas gift from Mom. It’s the first time I’ve worn them. Jeans and no makeup. She’ll be so proud.

  As soon as I’ve dragged a black, holey T-shirt over a purple tank and knee-high lace-up boots into place, I loop my necklaces around my neck.

  In my room, I put my gown away and drape the dress bag at the foot of my bed, then crawl under the covers—clothes, boots, and all. It doesn’t matter that the sheets are damp or that they smell of old bones and aquarium water. I’m too exhausted to care.

  Through bleary eyes I peer at the clock on my nightstand. The red digital numbers glare 6:15 p.m. I fumble with the buttons to set the alarm for 6:45.

  Just a quick catnap … I can fit that in before Dad gets home … then I’ll be rested enough to take Rabid to Butterfly Threads.

  The moment my eyes close, my mind kicks into overdrive. I keep wondering: Could Morpheus be right, that my blood might be used as a weapon against me? He is a creature of dreams. He knows how to interpret them. And since he wasn’t behind the clown, who was?

  Who triggered that terrifying nightmare that ended in Jeb’s cocooned corpse?

  If only Nurse Terri hadn’t sedated me that night, things wouldn’t seem so muddled. If only she hadn’t had those sad eyes that made me want to please her.

  My breath sticks inside my lungs.

  Mom’s interpretation of my artwork resurfaces: three Red Queens fighting for the ruby crown, and another woman watching from behind a cluster of vines and shadows. “I could see her eyes. Sad, piercing.”

  Nurse Terri … she was dressed in that white costume uniform. She stood out. Maybe she was a Wonderland denizen in disguise. She had access to my room, could’ve brought the enchanted clown inside. She would’ve heard about and had access to the mosaics in my art teacher’s car … and my blood.

  But if she was a netherling, I would’ve seen glimpses of her true form through the glamour like I did with Morpheus.

  It’s all so confusing. But one thing’s for sure: There’s another player in this game. Someone in the human realm who doesn’t belong. I can’t go back to Wonderland and fight a battle while my family and friends are unprotected here with a mysterious netherling on the loose. The fact that they might’ve already had contact with her gives me goose bumps.

  If I go through the mirror to the iron bridge in London, maybe I can decipher the mosaics Mom hid and figure out who I’m up against. I squeeze the key at my neck, debating if I should call Morpheus back.

  He won’t come. I hurt his pride. He told me I have to find him now. He said he’d be hiding among lost memories, whatever that means.

  Yet another riddle to solve on my own.

  Strangely, it’s that thought that lulls me to sleep, as if I’ve been preparing my whole life to handle all of this myself. Come to think of it, maybe I have.

  “Butterfly?”

  I startle awake at Dad’s voice in the darkness. Light slants from the cracked door where he’s peering in.

  It takes several seconds to shake the fuzziness out of my head, to remember where I am … what I was supposed to get done before he made it home.

  The low rumble of Rabid’s snores from my closet releases a spring in my spine. I sit up, yelping in hopes of awakening my hidden guest.

  “Whoa. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Dad comes inside and shuts the door partway so my eyes can adjust. He sits on the edge of my mattress and rubs my head, just like when I was little. Rabid’s quiet now, so I sigh, contented.

  “Why are you wearing your clothes in bed?” Dad asks.

  I scrub my face and yawn. “Clothes?”

  “Are they from yesterday? Your mom said you weren’t feeling well, so I left you alone. But I know you’ve got one final left. I just wanted to check, in case you were up for going to school.”

  “School?” I’m like a parrot, mimicking everything that’s said to me.

  I glance at my glowing clock: 6:20 A.M. Only then do I notice that I set the alarm for 6:45 a.m. instead of p.m.

  My empty stomach turns over. I’ve been asleep for twelve hours. Morpheus kept his word and didn’t haunt my dreams, and I slept soundly. Too
soundly. Now I’m not going to have time to send Rabid back or look for my mosaics before school.

  My rested brain kicks into overdrive, formulating a new plan. I could leave early and use the full-length mirrors in the girls’ locker room. That would mean tucking Rabid in my backpack and taking him with me to school. The thought of mixing more of Wonderland with my real life rattles my nerves, especially because I still have Morpheus’s mess to clean up with Taelor and the other students.

  But it doesn’t matter. There’s no time to lose.

  Dad leans over to turn on the lamp. “Something keeps crunching under my feet …” He flips the switch before I can stop him. He gapes as he sees the glass sparkling on the floor. “W-w-what happened in here?”

  Busted.

  I suppress a groan. “Mom can tell you.”

  It’s shameful how quickly I sell her out, though on some level I feel vindicated. Let her justify the broken mirror. Let her be the one under the microscope. She’s proven herself adept at lying for years.

  Dad crouches beside my bed, careful not to kneel in the glass. He’s not in his work clothes yet, which means he’s been making breakfast. Mom must still be asleep.

  He touches a shard with dried blood on it. “Allie … did you cut yourself?”

  “No. Mom—” I stop talking in midbreath. He’s staring at my palms. Of course. This reminds him of the time she cut me. “Dad, it’s okay.” I toss off my covers and scoot out of bed.

  His stunned gaze drops to my boots.

  I reach down and adjust their laces, as if it’s perfectly normal to wake up wearing them. “Mom bumped my mirror while she was dusting. It fell against my dresser. She cut herself a little, but she’s fine now. It was … more like a paper cut, you know? Superficial.”

  The concern doesn’t leave his expression as he picks up shards piece by piece, careful not to get sliced. “I didn’t notice any cuts. Why didn’t she tell me about this?”

  “Maybe she figured I’d already cleaned it up.” I bend to help him, but he lifts a hand in a forbidding gesture.

  “Let me take care of this, Allie.”

  He’s always done this—he’s always taken care of us, cleaned up our messes. And we’ve done nothing but keep secrets.

  Once he drops the final piece of glass into my trash can and sets my empty mirror frame upright, he turns to me. “I’m sorry, sweetie. It’s just … I was afraid it was happening again. She used to break mirrors a lot. On purpose. She wouldn’t allow one anywhere near you since you were a tiny baby.”

  The sun creeps up, and the orangey pink light softens Dad’s edges, making him look as young as Mom does. He’s never talked much about how it was when Alison started “losing her mind.” It had to be horrible for him.

  “Dad …” I touch his arm, stroking his tattered sweatshirt.

  He lays his hand over mine. “I couldn’t bear for it to start again. I can’t be away from her anymore.”

  Nodding, I brave a question. “Did she ever try to explain her aversion to mirrors? Did you ever ask?”

  He sits on the edge of my bed. After another puzzled glance at my boots, he shrugs. “It was a looking glass thing. Her explanations weren’t sane.”

  Of course her rantings would sound demented to someone who didn’t know the truth. Why didn’t she prove it to him when I was little, show him her powers? She had years to find a way to do it.

  “If she had given you some real proof that Wonderland existed,” I say, going out on a limb, “you would’ve believed her … right?”

  He shakes his head. “The blood on her hands when she cut them on the mirrors. The blood on our baby girl when she attacked her with the garden shears.” He looks up at me, his expression pure agony. “Allie, that was tangible. That was real. That was all the proof I could handle. You just don’t know.” He rubs his face, hiding his eyes behind his palm. “She kept screaming that she had to fix you. Like you were something she could glue back together. But she was acting so erratic, so high-strung—and she had just hurt you, so … I couldn’t let her near you. That was the last straw, but things had been bad for a long time before that. Even I started having nightmares about Wonderland. I knew we had to get some help … you needed one parent who was sane. One who was safe.”

  So that was why Mom didn’t heal my palms. My grudge against her thaws an infinitesimal degree.

  Dad bends over to pick up my dress bag. It must have fallen to the floor last night. He lays it across his lap.

  “Did you actually see her bump the mirror?” He runs a fingernail along the bag’s zipper. “I mean, it doesn’t make sense. She would’ve had to throw it against the dresser to cause that much damage.” He glances at the trash can. “Maybe she should talk to her doctor.”

  His suggestion makes me bristle. I won’t have her tied up in a straitjacket or drooling under sedatives again. I love her, regardless of the rift between us, and she’s suffered enough for a lifetime.

  “Wait, Dad.” I sit down next to him, feeling out my options. “I’m going to tell you something … I just don’t know how you’ll react.” Staring down at the earbuds on my floor, I consider animating them, having them wrap around his ankle like an amorous cat.

  I stare so hard, my eyes sting.

  “Allie, you’re making me nervous. What’s going on?”

  My heartbeat hammers loud enough that I hear it in my ears. I’m so close to breaking loose, so close to showing him my magic. The earbud cords tremble—a movement so minute, only I can see it. Then I lose my nerve and look at my eels instead, breaking my concentration.

  “Mom and I had a fight yesterday,” I mutter. “I—I pushed her, and she fell into the mirror. That’s what made it hit the dresser. That’s why I shut myself up in my room. And she told you I wasn’t feeling well to cover for me so I wouldn’t get in trouble. I’m really sorry.”

  Dad’s skin flushes dark pink. “You pushed your mother?” His gaze deepens with disappointment and apprehension—a look that makes my confidence shrink to the size of an ant. “What’s with these violent outbursts?”

  “Outbursts? This is the first one.”

  “It isn’t. I heard you yelling at your mom in your hospital room. Was this over Jeb again? Did you sneak out last night to see him? Is that why you’re wearing your shoes in bed?” The color in his face isn’t a blush anymore. It’s bordering on purple.

  I stand up. “No! None of this is about Jeb.” I can’t have him doubting Jeb again, not now that they’ve finally worked things out. “I took a couple of sedatives after my fight with Mom. I guess they kicked in before I had time to undress.” A full-blown lie.

  When he keeps watching me, unconvinced, I add, “I hate that we fought, that I almost hurt her.” Even more, I hate that I’m defending her when she should be defending herself to both of us.

  Dad’s fingers drum the dress bag—unconsciously keeping rhythm with the nervous twitch in his eyelid. “What was this fight about? It had to be big, to make you push your mother into a mirror.”

  “Well. I didn’t exactly push her …” I want to say more but draw a complete blank.

  A look of discernment crosses Dad’s face. “Wait. It was over the car, wasn’t it?”

  “Huh?”

  “The Mercedes that was in our driveway when I got home.”

  “Uh …” I don’t know what to say. Mom’s apparently told him something, and I have to go along with her story.

  “Your mom said you wouldn’t give her the keys when she asked for them.”

  I glance over at the corner behind my door where Morpheus’s vest, shirt, and hat lay crumpled last night. They’re gone, along with his keys, and Mom just handed me my alibi on a silver platter. “Did she tell you she tried to take the keys from me and I wouldn’t let go?”

  Dad’s gaze hardens. “No.”

  “They slipped out of my hand and caught her off balance.”

  “You mean that’s how she fell into the mirror?”

  I nod, despisin
g myself with every move of my head.

  Jaw clenched, Dad stares into me. “Look, I agree with your mom. It’s generous of that exchange student to offer you his car until Gizmo’s tire is fixed, but you can’t drive it. If you were to get even a dent in it, he could turn around and sue us for more money than your college education is worth.”

  “All right,” I whisper, relieved the explanation for the car is out of the way. But that’s the only relief I get because now Dad’s looking at me like I’m a stick of dynamite he needs to defuse. “Dad, I get it.”

  “I don’t think you do,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m guessing you think your mom got overemotional about the car.”

  “Like she does about everything,” I mumble.

  “Well, this time she has a reason. When we were first dating, I had a wreck.” He glances down to where his toes wiggle inside his woolly socks. “It was in a sports car … not as nice as the one in our driveway but similar. I took a curve too fast and hit a tree. The car was destroyed. I was in a coma for months.”

  My breaths become shallow. I can’t risk inhaling too deep and missing even a word. This is something sacred, a part of their history they’ve kept from me.

  “I know you wish I’d talk more about my mom and pop,” Dad continues, though the change of subject throws me.

  “No, Dad. I get why you don’t like to.”

  “It’s because of the wreck, Allie.”

  I stare dumbly at him, trying to connect the dots. “They were in the car with you?” He never told me that's how they died …

  The dress bag crunches as he crosses his ankles. “Well, no. It’s because of the wreck that I don’t remember them. If it wasn’t for your mom, I wouldn’t remember anything about my childhood. She put a photo journal together for me so I would know my parents’ faces, since they had passed away before I met her. I couldn’t remember that I have no sisters or brothers, or cousins or relatives who were interested in knowing me. I didn’t even remember meeting your mom. That’s how bad the damage was. Is. My life before I crashed that car, before your mom … it’s just gone. As if I never lived it.”