Wonder (Insanity Book 5) (17 page)

“No, I wasn’t.”

“As you wish, my lovely husband.” Mrs. Tock rubs her hand on my eyes. “Now close your eyes and count to seven. Can’t guarantee you’ll wake in heaven.”

Chapter 64

T
HE
P
AST:
A
LICE’S HOUSE IN
O
XFORD, A DAY BEFORE THE ACCIDENT

The best thing about the past is that I’m not crippled. I wake up in a bed in a room I now remember well. The room on the second floor of the house where I’ve spent most of my adult life with my foster family.

The sun outside is shining brightly. There are no hints of the possibility of rain or greying skies. It looks like a beautiful day — unfortunately, the day I will kill my classmates.

I take a moment in front of the mirror, admiring my seventeen-year-old look. It boggles my mind how innocent I look. If I were the Bad Alice all this time, why don’t I feel like it in the past? Is it really the fact that the Pillar exposed me to the possibility of becoming a better person in the future? Do I really have a chance to rewrite my evil ways? To change the world?

I dress up for school and descend the stairs.

“Alice, darling,” my mother addresses me, fixing me sandwiches in the kitchen. Either I managed to fool her into thinking I’m innocent, or I really have the power to change. “I fixed you the tuna sandwich you love.”

“Thanks.” I take it and then slowly say, “Mum?”

She kisses me on the cheek. “Please forgive your sisters,” she says. “They’re horrible. One day they will know your worth.”

“Forgive them?”

“For what they did yesterday, locking you in the basement. Don’t you remember?”

“Ah, that.” I wonder if I should confront her with the knowledge that they’re not my sisters, and that she isn’t my mother. But what’s the point, really?

I need to ask practical questions. “Did you see Jack?” She must know him at this point — or doesn’t she know about my relationships at this time?

“What about Jack?” Lorina descends the stairs.

“I wonder where I can find him.”

“Why?” She snatches my sandwich and tucks it into her bag. “Tuna. Yuck!”

“Do you know where he is or not?”

“You better stay away from Jack, Alice.” Edith arrives.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Jack is mine,” Lorina says. “All mine.”

“And you’ve been looming for some time,” Edith says.

I thought we were a couple by now.

“It boggles my mind why you think he’d be interested in you,” Lorina says. “He is mine.”

“Not yet,” Edith reminds her.

“I always get what I want,” Lorina says, chin up.

I don’t have time for this nonsense.

“And what’s with the thinning hair?” Edith points at my withering hair. I guess it haunts me everywhere I travel in time. I think it has something to do with the time I have left alive.

I comb my head with hands. No time to be embarrassed about it. My mother has already disappeared somewhere.

“We shouldn’t lock her in the basement too often,” Lorina says. “It looks like rats are ripping out her hair.”

“Looks better that way,” Edith says. “She looks mad. To the point.”

The sisters giggle.

I need to know where to find Jack, couple or no couple. Or should I just stay away from him? If we’re not a couple, why would he get on the bus with me later? I’m confused here.

“I know he’s yours,” I tell Lorina. “Can’t you just tell me where I can find him? I need to return a pen I borrowed.”

“A pen? Such a lame excuse.”

Why can’t I just be the Bad Alice and choke both of them right now?

“Tell you what,” Edith says. “I’m suggesting you forget about school today.”

“Yeah,” Lorina says. “I’m seducing Jack into kissing me today. Better find something else to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like your favorite mad professor at Oxford University.” Edith giggles. Lorina giggles back.

“Mad professor?”

“The one whom you trust over everyone else,” Lorina says. “The one you think understands you.”

“Aren’t you too young for him?” Edith laughs.

“Who are you talking about?”

“Don’t pretend you’re naive.” Lorina waves her hand, dismissing me. “Go to him. Professor Carter Pillar, who believes that Wonderland exists, like you do.”

I am speechless.

“Honestly, it’s a joke,” Edith says to Lorina. “You won’t believe how many young girls attend his free lectures, escaping school. Each one of them believes she is Alice.”

They both laugh and walk away.

In my mind, I think that finding the Pillar isn’t a bad idea. He always has a way out in these situations. I follow them out. Going to Oxford University wouldn’t be a problem.

Chapter 65

T
HE
P
AST:
L
ECTURE ROOM,
O
XFORD
U
NIVERSITY

The girls swarming outside the lecture hall are all teenagers. Most of them are certified nerds. A few pigtails here, thick glasses there, and of course they all carry an Alice in Wonderland gadget. Several goth-like girls are also present, loud talkers and jokers, wearing silver piercings and black tattoos, hair dyed in pink and dressed like rock stars, and wearing t-shirts about an evil Alice. Last but not least are the girls in costumes. All Wonderlastic masks, disguised as the Hatter, the Rabbit, and Queen of Hearts, and more.

Oxford University has turned into a simple Comic Con, waiting for Professor Carter Pillar. What can I say? It’s the Pillar. Always influential and doing what he likes to celebrate madness.

I walk among them, hugging my books and strapping on my backpack. The girls talk about their crushes on the professor. His free spirit, and the fact that he understands them.

“I hope you don’t end up in an asylum,” I mumble, chugging through.

“You know Alice is real?” a girl suggests to her friends. “Professor Pillar says so. There is a Wonderland War coming.”

I roll my eyes and stay silent. I think we’re all waiting for the lecture room’s door to open. There is a bulletin board that talks about the Pillar’s theories on insanity. It basically spreads the idea about the world going nuts. It also promotes hookah smoking.

A few professors, wearing ties and smoking pipes, pass through the corridor. They stare at us, Wonderland believers, as if we’re parasites. One of them mentions the committee’s disgust with the Pillar’s ways, wondering how the university permits him to gather those teenagers and poison their thoughts.

Then the doors open.

The girls compete to be first inside. I wait for the clatter to subside and follow in. The lecture hall is almost full, so I resort to a lonely bench in the last two rows, and watch the Pillar enter.

My plan is to wait for a chance to approach him and talk him into helping me with finding Jack. But my plan is thrown out of the window when I take a better look at the professor.

How could this be?

The vicious serial killer is nothing but a nerdy professor like I have seen before.

Chapter 66

Professor Pillar wears a multicolored jacket too short at the waist. It’s battered and probably hasn’t been washed since Wonderland. His trousers are pink, too large, and he wears flip-flops. His eyes hide behind thick glasses with black frames. Glasses that desperately need wiping. The man stutters when he welcomes his students. He has a tic of adjusting his glasses whenever he says something. For God’s sake, the Pillar blushes when a girl compliments him.

I sit, mouth agape, unable to fathom what’s going on. How is this going to help me? I suppress a shriek when he mentions his idol is Indiana Jones.

I spend the lecture in a terrible kind of awe, waiting for him to finish. I need to go talk to him. Wake him up.

When he is done, all I have left is seven hours. I slither through the crowd and pull him by the arm. “Professor!”

“Yes?” He adjusts his glasses. “How may I help you, kiddo?”

“I need to talk to you.”

His eyes dart sideways. “Aren’t we already?”

“In private,” I whisper.

His eyes widen. He blushes and worries. Says nothing.

“It’s important,” I whisper. “I’m Alice.”

“Alice?”

“I’m the Real Alice you’re looking for.” I grit my teeth.

He backs away, suspiciously scanning me from head to toe. Then he slouches, hugging his book, about to leave.

“We need to talk alone.” I pull him back again. “I need your help.”

“Who are you?” He stops, irritated now.

It’s going to be hard to explain things to him among all those girls. Then I remember seeing a poster out in the streets of the upcoming
Star Wars
movie. It gives me an idea. “I have tickets for the next
Star Wars
. Front row. Premiere day.”

His eyes widen again. Immediately he excuses himself and pulls me into his office. He locks the door behind us, gets behind his desk, and glares at me. “Is Darth going to be there?”

Really? I fist one hand. Is this really happening, or is he making it up?

I rap my hand on the desk and lean forward as he slumps back in his seat. “Look, whoever the Jub Jub you are now, I’m Alice Pleasant Wonder. Mary Ann. I used to know you in Wonderland. We go back then. Not in Wonderland, but in the future. I have seven hours to save myself from dying because of a lapse in time travel. According to the
Hitchhiker’s Guide to Wonderlastic Time Travels
, I need to find my Wonder or I will die. But even if I can’t find it, I need to save Jack. You know Jack? In fact, I need to save my classmates, probably the hordes of girls outside, from killing them in a bus accident a few hours from now. I need you to stop me from doing that. No, this isn’t right. I need you to help me stop me from killing my classmates and ending up in an asylum for the next two years. Do. You. Get. That?”

The Pillar sinks deeper into this chair, shielding his face with his arms. The look on his face is priceless. He stares at me and says, “Is the hookah you’re smoking that good?”

Chapter 67

T
HE
P
RESENT:
I
NSIDE THE
I
NKLINGS,
O
XFORD

“What’s going on with her?” Fabiola said. “What’s happening to Alice?”

“Not good,” Mr. Tick said, reading the paper, some unearthly publication called
Newsweek
. No, it was actually called
Nextweek
. “Tell her, Mrs. Tock.”

“Alice can’t find Jack,” Mrs. Tock explained.

“So?” Fabiola said.

“She can’t save him.”

“I don’t care about Jack. What about her Wonder?”

“Well, she can’t find that either.” Mrs. Tock seemed worried. Unlike earlier when she had all the fun, now she knew if Alice died, they couldn’t get the keys.

“Good,” Fabiola said.

“Good?”

“As long as she can’t find her Wonder, she will die in the past.” Fabiola sat down, relieved.

“Really?” Mrs. Tock said. “You want her to die?”

“The Real Alice must die.”

“I thought you loved her,” Mrs. Tock said. “You’ve repeatedly helped her fight monsters.”

“Thinking she was a regular girl doing good in the world.”

“And letting her think she is Alice?”

“We’re all delusional.” Fabiola didn’t mind her blunt deflations. “If it serves the good cause, so be it.”

“And now you want her to die in her past, even though you know she may change and become good in the future? Aren’t humans always redeemable? What about absolution?”

“Don’t feed me the words I fed the world when I was in the Vatican,” Fabiola said. “Evil has to be cut from its roots.”

“Well, she still has a chance to live,” Mrs. Tock teased her.

“How so?” Fabiola stood up.

“She found the Pillar.”

“The Pillar? The day of the accident?”

“Yes.”

“The Pillar was useless that day,” Fabiola said. “His memory was wiped out a year earlier at the time.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Tick lowered his newspaper. “I don’t quite remember it, Mrs. Tock.”

“That’s because we’ve got a lot of things to remember. Hundreds of thousands of years of memory mess up our memories.”

“What happened to him?” Mr. Tick scratched his cantaloupe head.

“I think someone secretly fed him a string of Lullaby pills to put him to rest.” Mrs. Tock scratched her head as well, hoping to
scratch
a memory out of it. “I wonder who.”

“Maybe if you scratch my head you will remember,” Mr. Tick offered.

“Thanks, dear husband, for allowing me to scratch your head,” Mrs. Tock said. “But I’m afraid if I scratch it you’d lose one of your hairies, and blame it on me.”

“Wise woman,” Mr. Tick said. “Remind me again, why did I marry you?”

“That was a long time ago.” She sighed. “I don’t even remember when.”

“Not even me,” he said. “But I think I remember a big bang rocking this world that day.”

“That’d be our wedding bells, Mr. Tick.” Mrs. Tock patted him, turning back to Fabiola. “So anyways, even though Alice found the Pillar, she can’t make it, right?”

“I don’t think so,” Fabiola said. “At this point the Pillar hardly remembered anything.”

“I’m disappointed. I really wanted to see the Real Alice live,” Mrs. Tock said. “I still can’t understand who was able to fool the Pillar into swallowing Lullaby pills. This has to be someone as devious as devils.”

“It was me,” Fabiola said. “I had to do it.”