Alice in Wonderland High

by Rachel Shane

  The hospital smelled like antiseptic and staleness mixed with clean linens. Nurses in colorful scrubs poked in and out of the curtained sections. I was numb all over, drained of energy. Even my brain was too tired to come up with loopholes to get him out of here before his dad arrived.

  Stomping footsteps made me glance up a second before I spotted Lorina approaching. Her face was as white as the décor. As she got closer, the redness outlining her puffy eyes became visible. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  Lorina settled her eyes on Chess’s and my interlocked hands swinging between our adjacent cots. She used telepathy to break us apart. I clasped my hands in my lap. Chess sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed to face my sister.

  “I’m all checked out.” My voice sounded hoarse, and I wished they’d given me a glass of water and not just a tongue depressor shoved down my throat. “I’m sorry,” I added.

  The sectioned-off room felt smaller than normal, like it couldn’t fit all of us and the heaviness of what had happened.

  “The police said—but I want to hear it from you.” She put on the brave mom-face I’d always wished she would discard.

  Chess stepped in with the dry facts, the ones we’d told the police. “I’m not a bad driver,” he insisted. “It wasn’t my f—I tried to avoid—” He sighed. “My fast reactions saved us,” he said weakly. The unspoken part of his speech rang in my ears. We were lucky to have survived.

  My parents weren’t so fortunate. I pressed my fingers against the wrist of my left hand, and my pulse pounded beneath them. I let out a breath. I really was alive.

  Lorina, however, looked like she wanted to die, her face pinched from the story. Redness crept under her eyes, and she fanned her palm in front of her face to prevent more tears. She strode forward and wrapped me in a bear hug.

  “I’m glad you’re okay,” she said into my hair. She let go of me and pulled back to study my face. “What were you doing all the way out here anyway?” They’d brought us to the university hospital.

  “Alice came with me to tour the school,” Chess said, and I nodded to corroborate.

  Lorina sighed. “Alice, you should have told me you were coming here. You want me to trust you, but—” She glanced away from me and set her eyes on Chess. “A university tour?” She pursed her lips. “Were you there when the animals got out?”

  Chess and I exchanged glances, which did not go undetected by Lorina. She pushed herself off the bed and crossed her arms. “Some girl—a student at your school, actually—released all the animals. A few are still missing. Pigs and sheep and cows. I was listening to the police scanner at work. Do you know anything about this?”

  Blood drained from my face. Good thing I was in a hospital because I might have required a transfusion.

  “No.” Chess shook his head a little too vigorously.

  “That must have happened after we left,” I tried to keep the hitch out of my voice. “Is this related to your investigation?” I didn’t want to ask, and I especially didn’t want to put the idea in her head, but I had to know.

  “We don’t think so. This seems isolated. None of the other incidents involved animals. Still, we’re checking it out.”

  Sensation returned to my numb fingers. Okay, so they didn’t suspect us for anything else.

  “Alice . . . ” She crouched in front of me, placing her palms on my knees, and whispered in my ear. “The reports state there were two other people with the girl and the descriptions match you two. And you just admitted to being there today.”

  The one time I needed to lie more than ever, the words stuck in my throat like peanut butter on the roof of my mouth. They were there, but I couldn’t dislodge them. I glanced over at Chess. He looked like a wax figurine, a lifeless replica of himself.

  “That’s what I thought. Alice, what were you thinking—why were you—was this the first time—I don’t even understand.” She jerked away from me and buried her head in her hands. “I’m so disappointed—God!” She brought her hands down to her sides and balled them into shaky fists. “Let’s go.”

  I hopped off the bed and placed a palm on her shoulder, rising on tiptoes to reach. “Lorina, calm down. I’ll explain.”

  “Fine, explain.” She crossed her arms.

  A nurse shuffled by, checking the chart hanging off Chess’s bed and smiling at us before departing again. In that momentary pause, I saw an opening.

  “Not here. Maybe you can sign Chess out, too. His dad’s too far away to come get him and he needs a place to crash tonight.”

  Chess’s head snapped up.

  “Excuse me?” Lorina backed away and laughed like a crazy person. “The guy almost kills you in an accident—somehow gets you involved with . . . with . . . criminal activities! And you want to bring him home?”

  “It’s not like that.” My voice came out desperate and high-pitched. “I’ll tell you everything. He’s a good guy. But he . . . doesn’t have any place to go. For one night, please! We’ll figure something else out tomorrow.”

  Lorina aimed her eyes at Chess. “Where are your parents? Why are you in Wonderland if you don’t live here?”

  “He’s been living out of his car, it’s a long story, it’s—”

  “It’s okay,” Chess said, shooting Lorina one of his beaming smiles. She clucked her tongue. “I have an aunt I can stay with. It’s really no big deal.”

  His words hit me hard because I knew how much he didn’t want to go to his aunt’s, but now that he’d offered in front of Lorina, there was really no way around it. He was already so transparent, like a flickering hologram about to fade away. I tried to soak in all the images of him I could before he disappeared completely.

  Lorina nodded once. “Good.” She paused and eyed him. “What’s your last name again?”

  I wondered why she wanted to know. Was she going to turn him in?

  Chess didn’t say anything, just fiddled with his gown.

  “It’s not a hard question.” Lorina set her wild eyes on me.

  If he didn’t tell her, she’d only get more suspicious. “It’s Katz,” I said.

  “Katz. Katz. Why does that sound so familiar?” She slung her purse up onto her shoulder.

  “Because you’ve always wanted to own one,” I said quickly, in case she made any connections to Chess’s farm and her investigation. “Remember that play you once put on to try to convince Mom and Dad, where you had me crawl around on the floor and meow?” Oh God, I should never play poker.

  Lorina looked at me like she didn’t think that was funny at all. “Let’s go.” She huffed toward the reception desk. I glanced at her, then back at Chess, and committed what would probably be my last act of defiance for a long time.

  “Is your dad even coming?” I placed my hands on his knees.

  “He better. But I’m not looking forward to this reunion.” He let out a strained laugh.

  “Alice,” Lorina hissed. She marched back over.

  I kept my eyes on Chess and forced brave words out of my mouth. “I think maybe we should . . . take a break.” It killed me to say the next words even though they were fake. “From us,” I said loudly, for Lorina’s benefit. I suspected she might protect me, but she had no loyalty to him. She might be more apt to turn him in if she thought he’d still be a bad influence on me.

  Chess’s mouth parted in surprise. I added a wink and reassuring smile in case he thought I was serious. I also squeezed his knee for good measure.

  Lorina must have heard me because she hung back, arms crossed, and waited.

  Chess’s eyes flicked to Lorina then back to me. He gave me a brief, knowing look, then donned a stony expression. “Yeah, I thought you might say that. I won’t ask for your help anymore.”

  Ugh. He was trying to protect me, so Lorina would think this was a one-shot deal for me. Couldn’t he see I was trying to protect him with this fake breakup? I pleaded with my eyes. “Not that it matters, because it’s done,” I added.

  “Ri
ght.” He nodded. “As is this.” He pointed back and forth between us. “A bit of advice, though,” his voice was cold and hard, but his foot slid over to mine, rubbing against it in a subtle way. “Stick with Whitney,” he said in a lower voice, for my benefit, not Lorina’s. “You shouldn’t stop because I’m not there.” He glanced up at me and met my eyes. “No wait, you should stop. Don’t put yourself in danger.”

  “You just contradicted yourself.”

  “Like I said, sometimes both paths are right. The way I see it, both directions lead to the same place.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He raised his voice again at Lorina’s approach. “It means you’re not going to listen to me either way.”

  “Come on.” Lorina tugged on my arm.

  I gave him a quivering smile as I rose to a standing position on shaky legs. I followed Lorina to the reception desk, walking backward. My chest rose and fell as Chess grew more and more distant, vanishing slowly until the only thing left of him was his grin. Imprinted on my brain.

  CHAPTER 22

  As soon as Lorina left for work the next day I hightailed it to Whitney’s, despite my firm grounding orders. As each second ticked by without the door opening, I worried Whitney would blame me for her arrest. Plus, I still had to tell her my boyfriend had been forced to go who-knows-where without even an overnight bag or a cell phone and I had no idea when—if ever—I’d see him again. Notify Homeland Security to change the suck levels to red.

  The multi-doors opened to loud rock music blaring in the background and Whitney’s scowl. “You’re as predictable as a chick flick.”

  I braided my fingers together. “Are you okay?”

  “Grounded for a while.” A clatter of pots and pans issued from inside, and Whitney snapped her head toward it. “Rain check?”

  “I have to talk to you about yesterday. It’s important.”

  Whitney paused, studying me. “Fine. You’re a ghost. Don’t let my parents see you.” She placed a finger to her lips for emphasis. “I’m in enough trouble.”

  I took baby steps as I followed Whitney through the hallway. The banging sounds increased the farther we went inside her house. With all the noise, I probably didn’t need to take such grand procedures to conceal my entrance, but I’d gotten a lot of practice sneaking around lately.

  Whitney’s hand perched on a door we’d never gone through. When she opened it, I spotted stairs that led to the basement.

  The stairwell started out normal. White walls. A wooden railing. Rickety steps. But then, like we’d teleported to a jungle, dracaena trees rose above us, towering over potted plants that created an aisle down the center of the room. Everything smelled fresh and flowery, attacking my nose in the same way Quinn’s over-applied perfume did. The lush lime green of the plants turned the area into a monochromatic painting except for the colorful flowers popping up every now and then.

  “It’s . . . amazing.” A soothing melody wafted through the room, classical music. I felt like I’d entered another country. Or planet.

  Whitney shrugged, then stalked to the far end of the room. Lamps hung from the ceiling, illuminating some areas with dim light, while shadows darkened others to dungeon levels. White signs were stuck in front of the plants, with their species names and various details scribbled below in her cryptic handwriting. “So what’s the self-destructing message?”

  While I told her about the hospital and Lorina forcing Chess to go to his aunt’s, she showed me where she kept the pig: happy in a back room with an unlimited supply of feed and water. And life. “Chess hasn’t contacted me yet. I’m worried.” And, oh, I missed him so much. No, Alice, focus—you have to get him back, not freak out. “Have you heard from him?”

  “Cliffhanger alert. My mom confiscated the computer and cell phone. So you’ll have to wait until I get to school tomorrow.”

  “We have to figure out how to help him.”

  “We’re at half-mast with our members.” Whitney lifted a watering can from a shelf and quenched the thirst of a plant that sagged too far toward the ground. “And your sister knows it’s us.” She set the can back down and stomped away from me without saying another word.

  I rushed to catch up. “No, she’s only suspicious of us releasing the animals. She hasn’t connected anything else.”

  “She will. As soon as she connects Chess’s name to Katz Farms, she’ll figure out the motivation, too.”

  “She hasn’t turned us in yet.”

  “And we shouldn’t give her reason to.” She led me to the far back corner of the basement, where she pushed aside several plants and revealed another wooden door that had been entirely concealed by leaves. “Trust me, I don’t like it either.”

  Inside, a miniature model of the town rested on top of a long table. Pushpins stuck all around, with strings attached to them like a cat’s-cradle game. A place carpeted mostly in green farmlands was dotted with houses and apartment buildings. Each of the buildings was modeled out of clay, artistic and delicate. Sculptures as detailed as Michelangelo’s.

  She leaned back against the table and crossed her feet at her ankles. “This is where I keep all my plans, past and future.”

  “What about the one in your room?”

  “That’s where I keep my notes for current missions, not my plans. Sometimes I put up false information there. And anyway, I paint over it constantly.”

  She trusted me enough to say this. “So the part about flooding the school to cut off the power supply was fake?”

  She smirked. “No, that was real, and apparently Kingston carried it out on his own without informing me.”

  “What do you mean? He flooded the school a second time?” I ran my fingers over the sharp edges of one of the houses, painted with a red X on top, miniscule trees covering the front like enclosing vines. This must be the house I’d nearly fallen off of.

  She opened a file cabinet and extracted a newspaper clipping. “Town Hall workers are baffled by a break-in last night, blah blah. Here we go: At press time, power still wasn’t restored and emergency workers are . . . ” She put the clipping back in the cabinet. “Some files also went missing so it had to be Kingston. When you failed at cutting off the power to the school, he must have taken it upon himself to do this instead. It certainly got notice.”

  Huh. Was that what happened when the heat suddenly shut off? Great, I didn’t just burglarize Town Hall and vandalize it; now I was an accomplice to private-property damage. “Why did you want to shut off the power?”

  “To remind Town Hall that the plant is still closed, yet nothing’s in its place.” She waved her hand over a replica of what I assumed was the parking lot that had replaced the power plant. “No new energy solution, no farm.”

  I fought back a smile. “So this town replica is why you wanted to keep me away from here?”

  “That, and Kingston’s marijuana closet is a few doors away. Was, I mean.”

  I perked up. “He got rid of them?”

  “No, I did. Early Christmas present.”

  My body grew hot. “Why?”

  “I was arrested. They might link me to the other crimes. Might go all fancy with a search warrant. I saved his butt.”

  I swallowed hard. “What did he say?”

  “He doesn’t know yet. That should be fun.” She swept her hand over the mini-houses. “Hope you have a photographic memory, because after today I’m making sand art out of these.”

  I snatched my hand back from the table. “What?”

  “I don’t need them anymore. I’m done with the missions.” She bent beneath the desk and opened a drawer.

  My mouth went dry. “What about Chess? He needs us!”

  On the table, she fanned out five sets of manila envelopes, each labeled with cryptic phrases. “This isn’t a riddle. You have the answers.”

  “We have to get Chess back. He needs a house. And . . . ” I couldn’t believe I was about to suggest this. “Kingston needs us, too. I want to help him.�
��

  She scooped up the file folders and tore them in half, papers separating like broken hearts. “Kingston seems fully capable of doing things on his own. And Chess, well, he has a house now. Not his own, but . . . ” She started to tear the folders into fourths, but I yanked them out of her hands. Shrugging, she plucked a house from her town model and chucked it at the wall, shattering it and everything we had built into pieces.

  “Then let’s do this my way,” I said out of desperation, my voice rushed. “We’ll start an eco club at school.”

  She paused, another miniature house clutched in her fist. “An advertisement in school would be evidence.”

  “We’ll do things that are completely legal, like . . . I don’t know. Start a petition or something. Things that even the township can’t get us in trouble for.” Except for possibly murdering us to shut us up, but I still had hope that speculation was false. The only negative thing a petition might bring was unpopularity, something I’d gladly take over death. Or juvie.

  “Petitions are worthless. So is a club with only two members.”

  “We’ll recruit more.”

  “Have you met the other students at school?”

  I let out a huff. “Maybe . . . maybe we don’t need anyone else to join.” I nodded like my words made sense. “If we make a big campaign to get people involved, it could get notice, even if no one actually signs up.”

  Whitney set the figurine down. “That’s an interesting idea.”

  “What?” A moment ago she’d hated it. But hey, I wasn’t complaining. I surrendered the papers to the table as a peace offering.

  “Using the start of an eco club to voice our opinion might work.”

  The smile wouldn’t leave my lips. “We can make signs and stand outside the school and—”

  She shook her head. “No, people won’t care if we do that. We need to make them pay attention. Intrigue them. Tout this as the coolest new thing to hit the school so everyone wonders why. That would get notice. Maybe if it turned out to be popular, people would actually join.”