“You’re appraising them,” he said, shifting nervously under her gaze.
“No, it’s just . . .” She gave him that same curious look she’d given him in the pawnshop. Same glint in her eyes. His legs wobbled. “I thought you didn’t go to Hevlen anymore.”
Dylan’s stomach tightened. He looked down at his uniform—his brother’s uniform, pants and blazer, rolled at the hems and cuffs. Plus the Battle of the Bands shirt from the pawnshop, definitely a violation of the dress code. Was it the shirt that had given him away? Hunter never wore anything from the shop—he couldn’t be sure it hadn’t been pawned by someone from school. He was careful about that kind of thing.
Chess was still looking at him, waiting for him to say something. At any minute he might offer her a shop discount on obscure movie paraphernalia out of sheer awkwardness. He might start quoting Metropolis. Now that he thought about it, he already was. It was a silent movie.
He cleared his throat and studied the flyer for The Day the Earth Stood Still. “Are you showing the original or the one with Keanu Reeves?”
“Do you have to ask?”
Dylan laughed. “Maybe they should have cast him as the robot.” He tweaked his neck and made his face into a blank mask, Keanu-style. “The Day Keanu Reeves Stood Still.”
Chess smiled, a slow smile that had Dylan holding his breath to see how it would end. She tilted her head to the side. “Seven o’clock. In the auditorium.”
She turned back to her friend. Dylan eyed the bracelet still glinting on her wrist. Later, maybe.
His stomach rumbled. He shivered against the chill coming off the gurgling fountain—
Since when had there been a fountain around here? He turned toward the cafeteria.
The building was gone.
And the crowds of students.
The burble of water was a stream and he was in a wood.
But only for one more step, and then the buildings returned, with the deafening noise from the crowd. Dylan jerked to a stop, as if doused with a bucket of water. The mineral smell of cold dirt lingered. But the wood was gone.
He gasped for air, then doubled over with his hands on his knees. His heart was a skittering rabbit.
The Other Place. He’d stepped in for a moment, and then stepped right out again. Was that what had happened?
His skin prickled in the cold.
Rain drummed on the city bus window later that afternoon on his way home from the public library. Dylan sat in the back, whipping through the pages of a tattered book, desperately looking for the Girl Queen. He found a woodcut illustration called “The Fish-Girl.” How do I get back there? he asked her. As though a picture could answer.
Why is it so hard? he wondered. What’s keeping me locked out?
In The Blue Fairy Book, rewards always went to the virtuous, to the pure of heart. Maybe that’s my trouble. He hadn’t exactly been virtuous these past months: lying, cheating, pretending.
He’d been looking for his rabbit the first time he’d found the Other Place, so maybe that was the key: You had to look for something lost. But it wasn’t only that he’d been looking for something lost.
He’d also desperately needed to get away.
His parents had been arguing. Mom was angry at Dad for disappearing again, instead of being happy to have him home. Whenever they shouted at each other, Dylan would wish for someplace nicer. And then it would appear: the Other Place.
Like a dream.
Or a hallucination.
Am I going crazy?
He could see the Girl Queen so clearly in his mind: a half elf, winter-pale. Not perched on a throne, but out in the trees, climbing just as well as his brother could climb the trees behind their house. Scolding Dylan in a language he didn’t know but a tone he could understand—Higher, higher! Swinging by her knees, teasing him for being afraid. Her hair hanging down, a shivering flame inverted.
Someone leaned over his seat. “Fast reader.”
Dylan looked up. He recognized a girl he’d gone to elementary school with. The hood of her dingy anorak framed her face so that she looked as little like a queen as possible. The effect was so jarring that Dylan only stared dumbly.
“I heard a rumor you were going to Drury this year,” she said.
Dylan’s brain finally started working again. “True story,” he said.
“How come I never see you around?” Her cheeks were pink with the cold. Dylan remembered a brief crush, fourth grade. Some incident involving his sticking an eraser into her ear. He prayed she didn’t remember. “Are you on work release?”
“Something like that,” Dylan said. Better than telling her he’d cut school to go to philosophy class at Hevlen in the morning and hang out at the public library all afternoon.
“Me too.” She waved a hand at her black pants, which Dylan supposed was part of some work uniform. “What book is that? Looks ancient.”
Dylan clapped it shut. “They’ve got this whole collection of rare books at Washington State that they’ll mail to the local branch.”