Quite Contrary (18 page)

“Always go up,” Rainbow finished, with the tone of someone trying to end on a high note. “That’s a rule too, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t want to go down.”

“Sit. Get your breath back,” Patrick urged us all. “We’ll see if we can’t find a way back to that ladder through the side passages. If not, we’ll find another exit another day. We’re all going to see the sun again, together. You too, Mary.”

figured they were out of luck. The next available turn went the wrong way. I stomped along in back, feeling itchy. I hadn’t paid attention to how much stuff was lying around until I’d been told not to take it. Even something like a fire axe in an emergency box called to me.

Maybe what bothered me was that no one was mad. We got to a room with lighted passages going off in all directions, and Patrick asked me, Maria, and Rainbow to walk down the hallways and look into the side passages while he watched to make sure we were safe.

When I came back, Francis pointed in one direction and told Patrick, “That way.”

“This might even work,” Patrick told us cheerfully. “We aren’t far out of the way, and now we’re headed back in the right direction. Or we will be, if we take that door over there.”

So we did. It hadn’t been a big loop around after all. I glanced around at the other doors as everyone trooped into the new hallway. I couldn’t get them killed if I got lost. If I got lost enough, maybe I’d end up somewhere else.

Rainbow dropped behind the others, waiting for me. Not too close. She was giving me space, for pity’s sake. Like I was the victim here.

“What happened to Maria?” I asked Rainbow under my breath, to change the subject with myself.

“Just about everything, I’m guessing,” Rainbow answered, her voice just as low, head tilted towards me. It wasn’t a bad deception. We looked like we were exchanging confidences, but not gossiping. “She doesn’t want to talk about it, and who’s going to push? It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all over and in the past.”

“I meant how does she think she died?” I pressed.

“She crawled into a haystack to hide when the barn caught fire,” Rainbow really was good at keeping a poker face. If I couldn’t hear the tone of her voice, I’d have thought she was discussing something pleasant.

“Odds the fire was an accident?” I didn’t hide bitterness that well.

“I’ve heard Patrick say she was a wreck when he found her. Didn’t want to make friends. She’d either pray nonstop or break rules deliberately, then feel guilty about it. She’s one of the people I look at and realize I didn’t have it that bad after all.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Oh, man. Is this a crypt?”

“Get used to them,” Rainbow muttered back.

We were still in naval style rooms of blue gray metal, but this one was much bigger than the cramped hallways we’d used to get here. Stone coffins with crosses on them lay spaced all the way up. They were creepy enough, but niches like bunk beds lined the walls, each with its still-dressed skeleton tucked away. I had to admit, I liked it.

Everyone scattered. Stephen wandered up and down the rows, examining the coffins. Francis held Joe cradled in his arms as he and Patrick walked over to the one hatch that hung open. Rainbow left me to go help Stephen push a stone lid properly into place.

Maria walked up to one of the bunks along the walls and pulled the skeleton’s hands off its skull face, crossing them over its chest instead.

“Leave me to suffer,” a girl’s voice sulked in the distance.

“It’s over. You don’t have to cry anymore,” Maria told the skeleton placidly.

“I wanted her to cry,” announced a boy’s voice. He sounded like he was speaking loudly from far away. “I loved her. I asked her out, and she acted like I was making a joke, then slept with a boy who only wanted her for that.”

“That’s all you wanted,” the girl snapped back, “You didn’t know me, not really.”

“You wouldn’t let me. You were beautiful, but there was much more to you, things you kept hidden. I wanted to be the one who really knew you, and you pushed me away,” he argued.

“And I paid for it. I was so stupid,” the girl’s voice sighed.

“Not as stupid as I was,” the boy answered.

“I’m sorry it turned out that way. We all have things we’re hiding,” Maria told the voices solemnly.

“Yes. She didn’t owe me anything. I had things to hide. So do you,” the boy’s voice said. I felt a faint tug on my sleeve. Rainbow jerked her head towards the door. Stephen already stood there beside Patrick and Francis, and Maria was on her way, walking slowly and watching the skeleton. Rainbow and I started moving, too.

The girl voice turned wistful. “No one respects anyone’s secrets. The others were talking about you behind your back.”

My shoulders seized up, and my spine straightened. Nobody told me that the dead were jerks. I stomped more forcefully as I joined the others.

“The sad thing is, the truth is worse than anything they suspect.” The boy was trying to pick a fight. The sharp, sarcastic tone suggested he’d be happy to tell us whatever Maria didn’t want us to hear. It made me boil. She’d tried to help them, and they were both turning on her like this? If they acted like this when they were alive, did they think they deserved to be loved by anyone? I tried to let it go. We’d be through that door in a few seconds. Beyond stretched another long tunnel. It ended in darkness, but it had a side branch. That darkness … that was the big, dark room with my monsters, wasn’t it?

“I don’t mind if they wonder. My secrets can’t hurt me anymore,” Maria assured the voices.

“That’s true,” said the boy.

“It’s Red Riding Hood who has the dangerous secret.” The girl voice sounded snippy and smug now.

“Her secret is catching up with all of you,” the boy’s voice warned.

“SHUT UP!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

The echoes of my voice bounced around the metal room, deafening me. The screech of metal cut over my echo, and the gentle rocking of the floor became a sudden, violent tilt, throwing all of us off our feet. The hatch we’d been about to exit through slammed shut, and with a clang, another door on the opposite wall snapped open. A door leading away from where we wanted to go. I tried to push myself to my feet, but the floor swayed too badly. The screeching changed. Now it came from a coffin that had come loose from its resting place, grinding down to lodge itself in front of the now shut hatch.

“No!” I yelled. The swaying of the floor eased, and I managed to force myself upright. Keeping my feet well apart, I staggered over to the coffin and yanked on it with both hands. It had to move! This time it really was my fault!

“It’s not your fault!” Rainbow barked at me like she could read my mind. She’d gotten this far, but fell and clung to the coffin desperately for balance.

“I hate it when people lie to me to be nice!” I snarled at her.

“Everyone does,” said Maria. The rocking settled gradually, but the floor might as well have been rock still for all the difficulty she had walking up and sitting on the edge of the coffin. “It is your fault, but it’s understandably your fault. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard the dead try that hard to get us to kill ourselves.”

“I honestly think they’re trying to help.” Patrick panted, testing his footing as he walked up beside us. “They’re just so screwed up and unhappy, everything they say will get you killed. All they can do is trap you like they trapped themselves.”

I kicked the coffin bitterly, but stopped when I saw Rainbow’s wince. Swinging around, I stormed across the crypt to check out the other door, but between my gonging stomps I heard a scratching noise.

I swung my head around, following it. One of the bodies in a bunk along the wall had shifted when the ship rolled, and its arm hung down off the ledge. The skeleton didn’t make any noise. The noise came from the mp3 player it had dropped.

I crept over to it. The scratchy noise was music. Something fast and raucous. Punk rock. It sounded like punk rock. That was fine. I liked punk. I liked musicals more, but I liked punk.

I wanted it so badly. I pushed the skeleton back into position and laid its arm beside its body to cover for the war raging in my head. Music. We were only supposed to take what we needed. I needed music. Being lost meant too much walking, meeting too many strangers. I needed music to smooth things out again.

“Take it. She doesn’t need it anymore,” a voice whispered in my ear.

I wasn’t going to take it just because I’d been told to. I wasn’t going to leave it just because I’d been told not to. Oh, crap. None of that mattered, because I knew, I just knew, the voice had lied to me.

Bending down, I picked up the player, tucking the headphone’s pads around where I thought a skeleton had its ears. Then I hit the shuffle button and slid the player into a bony hand. It wasn’t mine, and she had a lot more boredom ahead of her than I did.

“The passage bends right there. This might still work,” I heard Francis say. Guardedly After two denials, he didn’t want to believe it. Who would?

I tromped along into the next of these endless, mazelike metal hallways. Rainbow rested with her back against the corner by the door, and Stephen ran down past two open doors to where the passage turned. “There’s an intersection!” he shouted back.

“Don’t run ahead!” Patrick yelled. Stephen jerked upright. He’d been about to bolt. Well, at least I wasn’t the only person dumb enough to need watching.

We all walked, together. Nobody said anything as we turned the corner. Maria started to fall behind from where she normally walked in front, but Patrick’s hand reached out and took hers, pulling her back up. Stephen had been right. This hallway dead-ended at a T intersection, and the light looked wrong, and something weird hung on the wall.

“Wait, that’s a window!” I realized out loud.

“A porthole, at least,” Francis corrected me.

For once, I didn’t much care.

Stephen and Joe both leapt forward, but Patrick and Maria caught their shoulders. “We’re going to be careful,” Maria said, firm and patient. “When we see the sun, it will be because we were patient and did things the right way. We don’t rely on luck.”

As we got closer, Stephen and Joe tugged at the hands on their shoulders, and Maria and Patrick let them go. They ran the last ten feet to the window, and Stephen hoisted Joe up in both arms to help her look out. From here, it looked wrong. Everything was green.

Still, everyone crowded around it. That green was water. The window was underwater, but that bright, gleaming green meant we were near the surface. They hadn’t been this close to sunlight in so long, I didn’t blame everyone their fascination. But the ladder I’d seen should be down the left branch, and I peered down it, and—

“Oh, crap. No way.” I clenched my teeth in frustration.

A gate. There was a stupid gate. Made out of crossed bars, it blocked the whole hallway. Down, way down past it, I saw the circle of brighter light that was the way out, but the gate was in the way.

Please let it be unlocked. Please let it be unlocked.

“Mary?” Rainbow called after me as I walked quickly, stiffly down to the gate. I grabbed the bars and yanked. It didn’t move. It didn’t have a handle, but I found the lock. Yes, it was locked.