Unhinged: 2 (17 page)

That very tree is in Wonderland, studded with diamond bark
and dripping rubies from its branches. Morpheus took me there in a dream when we were both children. I crafted the image years later, as a way to free the subconscious memory.

All my mosaics represent Wonderland landscapes and suppressed moments with Morpheus. No doubt it feeds his ego to know that he inspires my art. Or
haunts
it.

Haunts
is a better word …

“Okay. C’mon, Al.” Jen heads to my bedroom. “Prom’s tomorrow. This dress isn’t gonna fix itself.”

Before following her through my door, I stick my head into my parents’ room. Mom’s not there or in the master bathroom. It’s weird. Her perfume lingers as though she was here minutes ago. She’s always home after I get out of school. She doesn’t drive, so someone would’ve had to pick her up.

Or worse, someone forced her to leave.

I signal to Morpheus. He traces a fingertip just above the blue butterflies of
Murderess Moonlight
, careful not to touch them, completely absorbed in his study until I clear my throat.

He looks up. “Did you need something, luv?”

I glance over my shoulder into my room. Jen opens her tote and lays out measuring tape, sewing chalk, a thimble, and a box of straight pins on my bed. When I turn back to Morpheus, he’s already moved on to the last bug mosaic.

“Red hasn’t been here,” he says before I can even voice my concern. “Everything is much too tidy. You know how chaos flourishes in her wake. Besides, she wishes to see into your mind. Had she found your house, these masterpieces would be gone.”

This allays my fears momentarily. But I still can’t bring myself to leave him alone. “Morpheus,” I whisper.

He glances at me again.

“Don’t mess anything up out here. Promise.”

He frowns, as if offended by the suggestion. “I vow it. Keep your friend distracted, and I’ll look around. Perhaps your mum left a note.”

Not without some hesitation, I leave him to explore and step into my room, closing the door for privacy. Sunlight streams through my slanted blinds, revealing dust motes in the air. Everything’s in its place: my cheval mirror in the corner, Jeb’s paintings on the walls, my eels skimming in their softly humming aquarium. Yet the hair on my neck won’t lie down. Mom’s perfume is stronger here than anywhere else in the house. It’s almost like she’s standing in front of me, but I can’t see her.

I shiver.

“Yeah, that was my reaction, too.” Jen grins as she slides the dress from its plastic sleeve. “It turned out even better than the one in the movie, right?” She hugs the dress to her torso.

The gown is exactly as I envisioned it, and I let out an admiring sigh.

When Jen and I were brainstorming our “fairy-tale” costumes for prom, there was one thing I knew: I was not going to wear a princess pageant gown or some sequined, skintight Tinker Bell number.

My mind kept returning to a dress from a cheesy horror movie that Jeb, Corbin, Jenara, and I watched called
Zombie Brides in Vegas
. The gown was delicate and backless with a fitted bodice and flowing skirt—elegantly tattered and stained with bluish gray mildew from the grave. It appealed to me in ways I couldn’t explain.

As my accomplice in all things morbid and beautiful, Jen insisted on making a replica. Using some images we found online as examples, she drew several sketches, then gave a copy to our boss at the
thrift store. Persephone looked for similar wedding gowns at estate sales each time she went shopping for inventory and finally found one for twenty bucks: strapless, white, satiny, sequined, and pearled … a paragon of vintage charm. It even had a long, sweeping train. Best of all, it was only one size bigger than what I wear.

With scissors, a few tightened seams, an airbrush tool from Jeb’s studio, and dye the color of faded forget-me-nots, Jen turned out a masterpiece.

She cut triangles out of the hem to create scalloped edges. Then she cauterized the raw satin so it wouldn’t fray, leaving the scallops crinkled like wilted flower petals. For the final touch, she airbrushed dye—enhanced with glitter—along the cut edges, across the sweetheart neckline, and also at the seam where the bodice and skirt converge in a cascade of pleats.

The result is shimmery, shadowy, and moldering.

Jen rotates the dress back and forth so the flower-petal edges swish. I feel a pang of something I haven’t felt in years: the thrill of playing dress-up.

“Uh-oh. We’re in trouble,” Jen teases, picking up on my unspoken reverence. “Is that excitement I see? Alyssa Gardner, looking forward to wearing a gown and tiara and hanging out with her peers? Definitely a sign of the prom-pocalypse.”

Smirking, she spreads the dress out on the bed and shakes a netted periwinkle underskirt out of a plastic bag. It reminds me of the iridescent mist that lingers on the horizon after a storm, just before the clouds clear and the sun emerges.

“Gotta tell you, Al. I’m really glad you’re not backing out.”

She’s wrong. I am backing out. But not because I want to.

None of this is helping my frazzled nerves. I’m worried about my
mom, my blood mosaics, and Red … I’m worried about telling Jeb the truth and leaving him alone to spend time with Ivy instead of me. I’m worried about
everything
.

The last thing I should be doing is pining for a silly dance.

I can’t just keep pretending everything’s normal and okay.

“So, let’s see those boots,” Jen says, referring to the pair of knee-high platforms I found online about a month ago.

Moving mechanically, I drag them out of the closet. After stripping down to bra and panties, I tug the underskirt over my head and arrange the elastic at my waist. Then I step into the dress, and Jen zips up the back.

Seated on the mattress’s edge, I slip my left boot into place over my tattooed ankle and run my hands along the synthetic leather. It’s the same faded blue-gray as the dye on the dress, with three-and-a-half-inch soles and utility buckles that run the length of my shin—the perfect foil to all things princess.

“What do you think?” I ask Jen halfheartedly once I get both boots secured and my periwinkle fingerless lace gloves pulled up to my elbows.

Her smirk is both proud and conspiratorial. “I think all those poser frog-princesses are going to hatch tadpoles when they get a load of you.” She bursts into a fit of laughter while helping me stand. I do my best to fake a carefree laugh, but it feels flat and transparent.

Jen adjusts the clear elastic bra straps she sewed on to keep the bodice in place and sets a tiara made of artificial forget-me-nots and baby’s breath on my head. She was meticulous down to the last detail, even draping fake spiderwebs along the flowers to hang over my neck and upper back like a veil.

When she turns me to face the mirror, my breath catches. Her admiring reflection over my shoulder says she’s every bit as impressed.

The dress looks exactly like I hoped it would, yet even better because she modernized it by scalloping the front hem so it would touch the top of my knees and spotlight my boots. With the addition of the netted slip, the back of the dress barely drags on the floor so I won’t trip while dancing.

Or I
wouldn’t
trip, if I really was going to prom.

I drag Jeb’s locket from my bodice. The key necklace catches on it and pops out, too. Studying them both, I’m struck by how the chains are tangled together, inseparable, like my two identities have become.

Jen repositions the tiara. “Now tell me what
you
think.”

I’m determined not to disappoint her, knowing I’ll be leaving her soon, that all her work was for nothing. So much of her time went into this masterpiece, and so much of her affection for me. “You’re a genius,” I whisper. “It’s perfect.”

She fluffs out the back. “Just wait until you’re wearing the mask.”

I glance at the half mask of white satin laid out on the bed, airbrushed to match the dress.

“You’re going to look like one of Jeb’s dark fairies come to life. I wouldn’t be surprised if you two end up being crowned king and queen.”

Her words take me back to a time I wore a gown dripping with jewels while translucent butterfly wings sprouted from behind my shoulders, a time I was crowned as a real dark fairy queen. I can’t decide which title—the high school or netherling one—comes with more prestige, scrutiny, and pressure. That moment in Wonderland
changed my future and my past … who I am in the present. I thought prom night would be just as life altering. Jeb and I were finally going to be together in every way.

But it was all a lie. He doesn’t know the real me—he only knows half of me. I haven’t made peace with the other half yet. Until I do, how can I hope to truly connect with anyone?

I have to stop wasting my time, craving an experience that feels so far out of reach now.

“How’s Jeb’s tombstone tux coming along?” I ask, trying to keep myself from spiraling into a funk. I’m supposed to be distracting Jen, after all.

“Just needs a little more distressing,” she answers with a comical lift of her left eyebrow. “And to think you used to say you wouldn’t be caught dead at prom. Now you’ll have to eat those words because you guys are going to be the hottest dead couple there.”

In the mirror, I notice that the red strand of hair has caught in the spiderweb veil, looking too much like the blood sword I used to free Jeb’s cocooned corpse. I bite back the whimper climbing my throat.

Pinning a pleat next to the zipper to tighten a small gap in the waist, Jen peeks around me in the mirror’s reflection.

“This M thing is weird,” she says, digging through her pin box. “I thought you didn’t know anyone in London. And he never mentioned to Jeb at the storm drain that he knew you. Yet he’s a family friend.” She clamps her teeth down on some straight pins and continues to mold my bodice to my waist, taking pins from her mouth as needed.

“Well, my mom met him when she was a kid.”

Jen’s eyes widen, and my tongue locks up. I can’t believe I said that.

“I mean his
dad
. My mom met his dad. M and I had never met, so he didn’t recognize me that day.”

Liar, liar, wings on fire
.

“Ah,” Jen mumbles around the pins. She tugs at the dress to ensure the pleats are secure, spits the pins she didn’t use back into the box, and stands. “Well, I think our limey cowboy is drooling for your bod. Things are going to get real interesting once Jeb gets here. Guys have a way of sniffing stuff like that out.”

This is the perfect segue to tell her about the bathroom episode. The perfect time to cough up yet another lie and cover my tracks again. “I don’t think he likes me like
that
. He’s just kind of … eccentric.”

Jen picks up her sewing stuff and laughs. “Whatever you say, queen of denial.”

Before I can even answer, either to lie or to finally tell the truth, she’s out the door.

Weighed down by all the secrets I’ve been carrying for almost a year, by all the new ones piling up, I stare at myself in the mirror, hoping to find something other than the dress to like. Because right now, I’m not my favorite person.

Dust motes float around my reflection—tinted a glowing orange by the sun. They drift like pieces of scattered magic. I wanted to be an anti-princess for prom. I nailed it by looking like a netherling—the antithesis of all things fairy tale.

It hits me that maybe this is why Mom doesn’t like the way I dress, because it makes me look like them.

My stomach drops. It’s not Morpheus forcing the elements of my two worlds together. It’s me. It has been all along. And I’m starting to realize it’s not so much a choice as a necessity.

I’m so lost in thought, I barely notice the dust motes coming
together, forming a miniature feline-shaped silhouette in midair. Beating wings shake me out of my trance.

In a blink, Chessie hovers beside me, his sharp-toothed smile inquisitive and contagious. I smother a yelp and rush to shut my door, locking it in case Jen gets back before I can convince him to disappear.

Satin and netting rustle around me as I spin to face him. “We can’t let anyone see you,” I whisper. “Let’s find a place to hide. Okay?” I hold out my gloved palm.

He perches there on the lace, a warm bundle of glimmering gray and orange fur, like embers on ashes. His big green eyes watch me as I carry him to my dresser and open a drawer. I settle him atop some soft socks and pat his tiny head. Before I can close the drawer, he launches back into the air—wings a blur. Smile widening, he beckons with his front paw, then wriggles through the glass of my cheval mirror, his tail the last thing I see before he vanishes.

For an instant, the reflection shows his destination: a metal bridge over a dark, misty valley and a quaint village on the other side. Then the glass splinters and crackles, showing only broken images of me.

In spite of my inner alarms, I reach a hand toward an intersection of cracks and jerk back upon contact. Even though I knew to expect the broken glass to feel like sculpted metal and look like an intricate keyhole, it still startles me. It’s been so long since I’ve traveled via mirror.

In the human realm, one mirror can take you anywhere in the world, as long as there’s another mirror big enough to fit through at the destination you’re aiming for.

In Wonderland, they travel by mirror, too, but their rules are different.
The glass there can spit you out anywhere in the netherling realm, whether there’s a mirror on the other side or not.

The one rule that is constant is that you can’t take a mirror from one realm to the other. The only way to come into the human realm from Wonderland is via one of the two portals—one located in the Ivory castle, and the other in the Red. And the only way to get to Wonderland from here is the rabbit hole, which is a one-way entrance.

Knowing all that, I shouldn’t be nervous. Wherever Chessie wants me to follow is here in the human realm, at least. Fingers trembling, I take aim with the key at my neck. Jeb’s heart locket dangles just below. Seeing it makes me imagine what he would say in this situation.