Death of the Mad Hatter (2 page)

C
HAPTER
O
NE

(
Ryley: Present Time)

I narrowly escaped the house before my mom attacked me with her pair of kitchen scissors—well, actually
, it was my hair for which she was gunning.
Any distinguishable young man shouldn’t have a mop of hair for the first day of school
—her words, not mine.

“What happened to the appointment I made for you at
A Little off the Top?”
shouted my mom, Lauren, as she followed me onto the rickety porch.

An old ceramic frog just outside the front door shook with each of our steps.
Etched on the suit was a spade and my dad’s initials: R.E. The frog was a novelty house key holder. Before the proverbial shit hit the fan, my dad had presented the frog to my mom. In its mouth was a silver ring that she
still
wore on her ring finger, regardless of everything that had happened.

The vibrations from our steps caused the
frog to fall onto its side. My mom stepped over it, not letting the frog steal her attention away from me, even though—for some unknown reason—she still cared about it.

She said, in her perfected
motherly tone, “You look like a girl, Ryley!”

“Mom, it’s not like my hair is halfway down my back.” I slipped on my baseball cap.

“It’s covering your ears and neck,” she said flatly, eyeing the hair.

“That’s all part of my plot so when I get this massive neck tattoo I can hide it from you. I was leaning towards a spider
tatt,” I teased and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

“You hate spiders.”

I put my hands on her shoulders. I still couldn’t get used to being taller than her. “I’m practically an adult now. I can make my own hair appointments.”

“Clearly you can’t,” she said. “And I don’t care if you turn eighteen in a couple months. You will always and forever be my baby.”

“Love you too, Mom,” I said, acting exasperated.

She fought
to keep a smile from spreading across her face, a sure sign that I’d won this battle. So, it was my most effective verbal ammunition. She was a sucker for the “L” word.

“You know
, you could drive to school if you fixed up the old beater in the garage,” she said. “It’s not like your father will notice.”

“Someday
, Mom.”

I turned to leave, taking the steps two at a time.
Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I walked the few blocks to Rockingham High, home of the mighty Ravens. One more academic year left before I could ditch this backwoods town and head off to a big-name college; hopefully, on a full-ride baseball scholarship. I kept my fingers crossed, but I’d settle for any university with a decent physics department. Even then, I wasn’t too picky in choosing a university to go to, as long as it was at least a hundred miles away from here. Of all the towns I’d lived in since my biological father checked out, I couldn’t believe my mom settled down here; in this dump of a town.

I peeled open a cherry breakfast bar I’d snuck out of the kitchen when my mom was scraping off the burnt eggs and maple syrup from a
frying pan—a breakfast experiment gone bad. The flavor of the bar reminded me of the sucker I’d
commandeered
from last year’s Miss Rockingham High, Courtney Frick, after a baseball game this summer. I hadn’t been able to land a date with the infamous redhead yet, but my chances were improving with each one of her giggles. Since my antics were lame—one notch above a knock-knock-joke—it
had
to mean that she was into me… or that I sounded so stupid she couldn’t help but to laugh.

Before everything went to hell, m
y dad told me to keep a girl at the edge of her seat so that she wouldn’t be able to walk away when I finally made my move. It was the last “normal” advice I could remember my dad giving me—

“Stop!” yelled a girl with an ear-piercing scream.

Startled, I dropped my second attempt at breakfast and stopped in mid-step. Expecting to be hit by a car or blindsided by a football, I was stunned when a girl raced over and snatched up a stuffed bunny that was inches from being squashed by my Converse shoe. It was a dingy white rabbit with a Sharpie ‘X’ in place of its missing eye.

“I almost peed myself! I thought I was going to eat the sidewalk after a car crashed into m
e, not trip over a stuffed animal!” I yelled at the eccentric girl.

Since the entire high school had
an enrollment of less than two hundred kids, I knew every girl in the female student body. This particular girl
had
to be new to the roster, but she looked familiar—déjà vu familiar.

There
was the type of girls who dressed for guys, the type who still played dress-up, the type who lived in sweatpants, and then there was an entirely different breed who wore mismatched socks with pride. This chick fell into the last category. Why would anyone possibly think bright orange and blue would go together, unless they were a Boise State fan? Her shoes were quite possibly handcrafted a hundred years ago, and her tattered skirt looked as though she found it in a dusty box tucked away in an attic. However, the zebra patterned gloves actually appeared to be from this decade.

“Well, it’s rather fortunate that you didn’t dribble. Mr. Ruth would have a fit if he became familiar with the underside of yo
ur pee-soaked shoe,” the girl said, petting the stuffed animal’s head. Her accent was none that I’d heard before—and I’d lived in a lot of different places. She sounded like a British gal impersonating a southern bell. “It’d be quite regrettable if anything happened to him on the first day of school. He must have fallen out of his hidey-hole.”

“You named your stuffed rabbit
,
Mr. Ruth
?”

She covered the bunny’s ears. “Rutherford is his
proper name, but he
hates
it and makes all the other rumperbabbits call him by his nickname.”

“Rumperbabbits?”

“Bunnies, rabbits, hares—rumperbabbits. Same thing,” she said with a wink. She had the most volatile light-blue eyes that were so electrifying I couldn’t look away.

Time out—just for reference, I didn’t believe in juvenile notions, like love at first sight.
In my book, time didn’t cease to move forward when two people fell in love. As a matter-of-fact, I’d have to be drunk (not on love) for such an irrational idea to enter my mind.

But, there was no denying the euphoric disposition of this girl; she had a
mischievous charm. I wouldn’t have said that I necessarily liked it, but it was intriguing.
She
was intriguing… and new. For a town whose newspaper’s biggest story was the harvest report, having a new girl in school would most likely be headlined on
The Gossiper’s
front page.

She crammed the animal into a mesh, side pocket of her backpack that had been
intended for a bottled drink. After securing her rabbit, she dug into her pocket. Pulling out a bright blue candy wrapped in wax paper, she introduced herself as Alice Mae and then popped the candy into her mouth.

It brought my attention to her outlandish lipstick. I didn’t know much about
makeup, except that it itched like the dickens. Last spring, I participated in the One Act Plays. It was the
only
reason why I knew the difference between lip gloss and lipstick.

Scout’s honor.

Clearly, Alice Mae wasn’t a
makeup connoisseur either, judging from her bright purple eye shadow that she paired with the light blue lipstick smudged halfway on her lips. The illusion looked like she was in a perpetual kissing state. She had the genetics to be naturally beautiful—high cheekbones, porcelain skin, pouty lips, and that silky, blonde hair that drove most men into an aphrodisiacal state of desire. Yet, she painted over it to create the illusion that she wasn’t as attractive as the girls who made this year’s homecoming candidate list, like Courtney. Remember her? I thought. Again, I couldn’t emphasize enough my disbelief in soul-mates or that meeting Alice Mae was in no way prolific. Courtney mattered, not this random girl. But, I couldn’t dismiss the fact that I’d literally stared at her lips for the better part of a minute, so I shot up a prayer hoping that she hadn’t noticed.

“You’re new here,” I said.

Good one, genius.

“Do you always point out observations, or are you simply
worried about this particularly crucial day of the educational system?” Alice Mae asked.

“Huh?”

She stuck her thumb out over her shoulder, pointing at the brick building that had our school mascot, a fighting raven, embroidered on a green flag that was hanging on a white chipped flag pole. “You’re going to be late for the first day of school if you don’t hurry along.”

Almost everyone
had left the school parking lot and had made their way inside the turn-of-the-century building. I glanced at the worn wrist watch that used to be my dad’s. Once upon a time it was bronze, but those days were long past for this timepiece. The spade etched at the top was almost worn away. Three minutes passed eight—two minutes until the second bell would ring. My usually levelheaded mom would flip out and transform into this berserk tyrant if Wittrock, the principal, called her because of my tardiness.

“Save me a
seat in the detention office, buddy!” Dax yelled from his
Yota
as he drove to a vacant parking spot a block down. The
T
and
O
had long since fallen off the clunker of a car, but it ran great considering the odometer had rolled over twice. Dax was a loyal kind of guy—even to beat down cars.

“Dax doesn’
t move very fast in the morning. He has a love affair with his snooze button,” I explained to Alice Mae. It wasn’t that I owed her an explanation, but she had given him the most perplexing look.

“I used to be
BFF’s with the snooze button too,” Alice Mae said. “But that was before I understood the importance of a ticking clock, and nonticking clocks.”

“Is that supposed to be a metaphor
about wasting time?”

“No, to convince a ticking clock to stop is just an unattainable ambition I strive to attain to end what has already
been set in motion,” she said absent-mindedly. “Of course, it’s been predicted my wrongness will overshadow my accomplishments so my impossible endeavor is just another pathetic, traitorous attempt to sway the unrelenting, apocalyptic reign of Hearts.”

Huh?

She turned her attention back to me, giving me a quick once over. I brushed the breakfast bar crumbs off my shirt and tried not to let Alice Mae know that her visual inspection had thrown me.

“
You
look like you’ve been up for hours, dressed so impeccably in your ripped jeans and stained t-shirt,” she said.

I hadn’t exactly gotten a clean shirt from my closet this morning; but in my defense,
I had given my shirt the Sniff Test. No BO, so I figured I was good to go. “A little food never hurt anyone.”

She flicked the bill of my cap up. “Attire aside, you have
his
eyes, and that’s all that really matters. See you around, Ryley.”

I grabbed her arm
when she turned to walk away. She didn’t tell me to take my hand off her, but she cocked an eyebrow and glared so viciously I was sure she’d left a number of dead in the wake of that stare.

“I don’t like to be touched after traveling from...” she said, clearly
bothered that I’d infiltrated her personal bubble. “It just stings, okay!”

“How do you know my name?”
I loosened my grip on her a little. Since I hadn’t squeezed hard, I figured the wincing pain in her eyes was an act. “Have we met before?”

“We’ve never been formally introduced.” Her eyes glossed over, like she was seeing me
, but not really. The brilliant blue of her eyes lightened, which was physically impossible and eerily chilling. Batting away my hand, she spat, “Your auburn hair is as untidy as Mr. Edgar’s. He’d be pleased you two look so alike, especially since you have a
girlish
name.”

She smiled a fierce little smirk and turned away just as Dax approached me. Her step was light and bouncy, dancing to the theme song of her life.

Dax slapped his hand on my shoulder. “Who’s the new
dame?”

“
Her name is Alice Mae,” I said without taking my eyes off of her. “She knows about my dad, mentioned him by name.”

“No one in
Rockingham knows about your old man except me and your mom. That secret is locked down tight—Secret Service style.”

“
She said I have his eyes.”

“It’s not like he is suddenly going to walk back into your life. He’d have to find you first,” Dax said, reassuringly. “Too many years have passed for him to be a part of your life again.”