“Nothing,” lied Freddy blandly. “It’s just … well, we just spent a year and a half together, didn’t we?”
“You’re breaking up with me?” said Josiah. “Really? Your gossipy little classmates will be so disappointed. There may be texting.”
She stopped in the middle of the hallway and faced him. “I have to go to the bathroom,” Freddy announced. “You can’t come. If you try to come, you may end up expelled, which I know you want, but I doubt you want it today.”
“Okay, yes, good point.” Josiah threw up his hands. “Do go and pretend to empty your bladder. I’ll see you in the cafeteria, which is, I suspect, where you will put your diabolical plan into action.”
“There isn’t any diabolical plan,” said Freddy.
There wasn’t any diabolical plan. There should have been. Sitting in a bathroom stall, Freddy chewed her lip and ran over her options. Cuerva Lachance and Josiah knew she and Mel and Roland knew who Three was, and it was only a matter of time before one of them slipped up and revealed the truth. Would that be so bad? asked the rebellious part of Freddy’s brain. She was pretty sure it would be so bad, but she had only slivers of evidence that she was right. She knew it couldn’t be as simple as it seemed. I mean, what’s the point? These two people live for thousands of years, with this one other person being reincarnated again and again and every time having to make one little choice. It’s not even a complicated choice. Just: are you on the side of order or of chaos? It can’t even make all that much of a difference. It must balance out in the end. Then why do I keep feeling as if it’s so wrong? Why does Roland think he’s being hemmed in and trapped? Why is Ban sniffing around, flicking mysterious hints at me? Ban is the same person as Cuerva Lachance, so why would she even want to do that? Doesn’t Cuerva Lachance remember doing that as Ban? She may have attention deficit disorder, but she puts a lot of it on. She really remembers things at least as well as Josiah. Wouldn’t she remember being all contradictory?
“Are you sitting in there musing about how to get the better of us?” asked Cuerva Lachance, who had apparently just materialised in the third-floor girls’ bathroom for reasons of her own.
Freddy sighed, flushed, and emerged. She sometimes thought nothing would ever truly surprise her again. “Get the better of you?” she asked as innocently as she could. “Why would I need to do that?”
“Well, it’s a mystery to me,” said Cuerva Lachance, tapping a finger against the brim of her hat. “I have a feeling you may think we’re criminal masterminds. Do you? I’ve often wanted to try being a criminal mastermind, though I’ve never quite had the opportunity.”
“That’s nice.” Freddy turned on the tap.
“If I were a criminal mastermind,” said Cuerva Lachance, who evidently just liked saying “criminal mastermind,” “I would call myself Zorbon and grow a moustache. Zorbon is also a good name for a Dark Lord in a fantasy epic. Does your stepbrother play role-playing games?”
Freddy was pretty sure her face gave nothing away as she said, “What? Why?”
“It’s just a random and completely innocent question,” said Cuerva Lachance. “I found a twenty-sided die under a chair the other day and thought he might have dropped it while he was being terrified in our living room.”
“I don’t pay very much attention to him. Could you get out of the way so I can dry my hands?”
“With alacrity,” said Cuerva Lachance, and moved aside.
“You’ve followed me to school,” said Freddy as she teased out a paper towel. “You’ve never done that before. Is it going to become a thing?”
“I hope not,” said Cuerva Lachance. “I’ve never been very good at school. I can’t go home yet, though. I’ve misplaced my keys.”
“Oh yeah?” said Freddy absentmindedly, drying her hands. She would have expected Cuerva Lachance to have lost interest by now.
“I have a lot of keys. I don’t have the least idea what any of them are for. I go out of my way to lose them over and over again, but Josie always finds them and brings them back.”
Freddy thought, The last time she went on about her keys to me was that day in the park when I was ten.
This time, her face did give her away, though Cuerva Lachance was peering into the mirror and didn’t see. Freddy threw out the paper towel and picked up her backpack. Inside, her brain was screaming at her. Cuerva Lachance was the crazy lady in the woods! Why haven’t you ever seen that before? It should have been obvious right away; no one talks like Cuerva Lachance. No one acted like her, either, or was as liable to turn up in the middle of a forest without anybody being able to tell how she had got there. More clearly than ever before, Freddy saw herself running towards that bench. That empty bench. Of course there had been no one on it when she had sat down.
“I always want to go into the world behind the mirror,” said Cuerva Lachance. “Alice didn’t explore half the possibilities.”
There was no excuse for her not having seen this before, Freddy told herself as she shrugged the straps over her shoulders. Well, okay, it had been four years ago, or five and a half on her personal timeline, and she didn’t think about the crazy lady much. She didn’t remember what she had looked like at all. The woman’s face had been hidden behind hair practically the whole time, and she hadn’t been wearing a hat or a trench coat. Even so, she had been Cuerva Lachance.
It had been obvious right away. Before Freddy had gone time travelling, she had made her mind slide away from impossibilities.
I hate to bother you, said the annoying rebellious bit of Freddy’s brain in polite but sarcastic tones, but the really important question right now is: does she know? Does she remember being there? Did she mention her keys just now for a reason?
That’s three questions, Freddy informed her brain. However, it had a point. The crazy lady had said, “Whatever you do, don’t tell me I’ve given you that.” It didn’t make sense. Cuerva Lachance did have a memory. And the key … was the key important? Freddy had always thought of it as just a key. It was inconceivable that Cuerva Lachance should have turned up when she was ten, years before she and Josiah had begun to sense Three, just to give Freddy something meant solely to make her feel better. There was yet another something going on here.
Cuerva Lachance could travel in time. Would she give Freddy the key later, though still four years ago? Why would she do that?