Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children #1)

After lunch there was an assembly in the library, where Miss Eleanor praised everyone for their calm and their compassion, and thanked Jack, Nancy, and the others for disposing of Loriel’s body. Nancy reddened and sank lower in her seat, trying to avoid the eyes that were turning toward her. She was a stranger, as far as they were concerned, and as such, her willingness to be intimate with the dead had to be suspicious.

Eleanor took a deep breath and looked out upon the room—her students, her charges—with a somber expression on her face. “As you all know, my door is still open,” she said. “My world is a Nonsense world, with high Virtue and moderate Rhyme as its crosswise directions. Many of you wouldn’t be able to survive there. The lack of logic and reason would destroy you. But for those of you who thrive in Nonsense, I am willing to open the door and let you go through. You can hide there, for a time.”

A gasp ran through the room, accompanied by a few quick, choked-off sobs. A girl with bright blue hair bent double, burying her face against her knees and starting to rock back and forth, like she could soothe her distress away. One of the boys got up and went to the corner, turning his back on everyone. Worse were the ones who simply sat and wept, tears running down their faces, hands folded tightly in their laps.

Nancy looked blankly at Kade. He sighed and leaned closer to her.

“Miss Eleanor is very protective of her door. Doors can be fickle, and she’s waited so long to go back that every time she lets someone through, she risks being replaced. Now she’s offering to put all the students who can thrive in Nonsense through. That means she’s scared, and she’s doing what she can to take care of us.” He kept his voice low. The students around them didn’t seem to notice. Most were too busy crying. On the other side of the room, even Jill was weeping, propped against her sister for support. Only Jack’s eyes were dry. “Trouble is, Nonsense is one of the two big directions—she can save half the students, at best, and not everyone who’s been to a Nonsense world is suited for every Nonsense world. They’re all so different. Maybe a quarter of the kids she’s just offered to save will be able to go through.”

“Oh,” said Nancy softly. She understood a few things about false hope, however well-intentioned the offer might have been. Eleanor was trying to save her beloved charges in the only way she knew. She was hurting them in the process.

At the head of the room, Eleanor took a shaky breath. “As always, my darlings, attendance at this school is purely voluntary. If any of you want to call your parents and ask them to take you home, I will refund the rest of the fees for the semester, and I won’t try to stop you. I only ask that, for the sake of the students who remain, you don’t tell them why you want to withdraw. We’ll find a way to fix this.”

“Oh, yeah?” asked Angela bitterly. “Can you fix it for Loriel?”

Eleanor looked away. “Get to class,” she said. Her voice was soft, and suddenly old.

She stood there, head bowed, as the students rose and filed out. Some were still crying. She would seek out the Nonsense children soon, tap them on their shoulders and lead them to her door. Some would be able to go through, she was sure. There were always a few for whom her world was close enough. Still not home, not the checkerboard sky or mirrored sea that they were dreaming of, but … close enough. Close enough for them to be happy, for them to start to live again. And who knew? Doors opened everywhere. Maybe one day, the children of this world who had gone to that world to save themselves would see a door that didn’t fit right with the walls around it, something with a doorknob made of a moon, or a knocker that winked. Maybe they could still go home.

A hand touched her shoulder. She turned to find Kade behind her, a worried expression on his face. She glanced toward the seats, and there was Nancy, retreated once more into stillness. It didn’t matter. There were too many secrets here to be shy about revealing them. Eleanor turned to Kade once more and buried her face against his chest, weeping.

“It’s all right, Aunt Ely, it’s all right,” said Kade, stroking her back with one hand. “We’re going to figure this out.”

“My students are dying, Kade,” she said. “They’re dying, and I can get so few of them out of harm’s way. I can’t save you. When you found your door, I thought—”

“I know,” he said. “It’s too bad for all of us that I have a Logical heart.” He kept stroking her back. “It’ll be okay. You’ll see. We’ll figure this out, we’ll find a way, and we’ll keep the doors open, no matter what.”

Eleanor sighed, pulling away. “You’re a good boy, Kade. Your parents don’t know what they’re missing.”

His smile in response was sad. “That’s the trouble, Auntie. They know exactly what they’re missing, and since she’s never going to be found again, they don’t know what to do with me.”

“Silly child,” said Eleanor. “Now get to class.”

“Getting,” he said, and walked toward the door. Nancy shook off her statue stillness and followed him.

She waited until they were halfway down the hall before she said, “Eleanor is your…?”

“Great-great-great-aunt,” said Kade. “She never married or had children. Her sister, on the other hand, had six. Since my great-great-great-grandma had a husband to take care of her, Eleanor inherited the entire estate. I’m the first of her nieces or nephews to find a door of my own. She was so happy thinking that I’d traveled into Nonsense that it took me almost a month to admit she was typing me wrong, and I’d been in a world of pure Logic. She loves me anyway. Someday, all this”—he gestured to the walls around them—“will be mine, and the school will stay open for another few decades. Assuming we don’t close in the next week.”

“I’m sure we won’t,” said Nancy. “We’ll figure this out.”

“Before the authorities get involved?”

Nancy didn’t have an answer to that.

*

CLASSES WERE PERFUNCTORY and distracted, taught by instructors who could sense that the campus was uneasy, even if they didn’t—except for Lundy—know why. Dinner was equally rushed, the beef overcooked and dry, the fruit sliced so haphazardly that bits of peel and rind stuck to the outside when it was served. Students went off in threes and fours, arranging impromptu sleepovers with their friends. Nancy didn’t bat an eye when Kade and Christopher showed up at her room clutching sleeping bags and flipped a coin for the use of Sumi’s bed. Kade won and settled on the mattress, while Christopher rolled his bedding out on the floor. All three of them closed their eyes and pretended to sleep—a pretense that, for Nancy, became reality sometime after midnight.

She dreamt of ghosts, and silent halls where the dead walked, untroubled.

Christopher dreamt of dancing skeletons that gleamed like opals, and the unchanging, ever-welcoming smile of the Skeleton Girl.