Chapter 6 Perchance To Dream
AFTER LUNCH WAS FINISHED and the dishes tidied away, Sumi seized Nancy’s hand, chirped, “In case you don’t remember the way,” and pulled her out of the room, leaving the others behind.
It was easier not to resist, and so Nancy let herself be pulled, out of the dining hall and toward the nearest flight of stairs, Sumi chattering a mile a minute about everything that had happened since she’d left the school.
Some of it didn’t make any sense at all, body thefts and skeleton keys and resurrections—so many resurrections, it was like the people who went to this school thought death was something optional, something to be recovered from, and Nancy could admire their conviction, if not their flippant approach to something so important—and stores operated by talking birds from another reality.
By the time they reached the room they had once shared, Nancy was exhausted just from listening.
Sumi opened the door and waved her inside, as grandly as if she were welcoming her to a palace. Nancy moved straight toward her old bed, which was neatly made if slightly dusty, and delicately folded forward, landing facedown on the waiting pillow.
“You are tired,” said Sumi. “Do you want another blanket? Only you’re on top of the one the bed comes with, and I don’t know how squirmy you’re feeling.”
Nancy made a noncommittal noise.
“Okay,” said Sumi. “I don’t need to take your shoes off because you’re not wearing shoes, but I’ll get you that blanket.”
Nancy didn’t respond.
Sumi left the room and went down the hall to the closet, removing one of the spare blankets and bringing it back to the room.
Nancy was already asleep, somehow even more motionless than she normally was.
Sumi spread the blanket over her, not bothering to tuck it in, then stepped back to just look at her former roommate, watching her sleep.
A small frown on her face, she turned and walked out of the room, leaving Nancy to her rest.
Like many of the Nonsense children who genuinely wanted to go back through their doors, Sumi wore her bright colors and irreverent comments like they were a shield, but she was still the girl she’d been before Confection, would always be that girl on some level, no matter how hard she tried to bury her in a shallow grave at the back of her mind and forget what it had been like to brush her hair and confine her feet in sensible, somewhat uncomfortable shoes.
She was haunted, as they all were. Her ghost was just quieter than most.
Maybe it was seeing Nancy again, but that ghost was awake, and asking all the questions she didn’t want to hear.
Questions like You always say you’re not afraid because you know you’re going back to Confection to have your daughter when you’re ready, but don’t you remember how cold it was in the Halls of the Dead?
How lonely you were? That’s where the ghosts rise.
Who’s to say I won’t rise up with them? And Can you really trust Talia on a quest?
She’s a poet, not a warrior. You could be leading her right into danger.
She didn’t like those questions any more than she liked the voice of her former self, who was normally content to haunt her memories and leave her to get on with the messy, delicious business of being alive.
So she walked back to the dining hall, hoping to catch at least some of the others before they scattered.
What she found was Kade, still picking at his chicken, head hanging low in that way she knew meant he was giving altogether too much thought to something heavy.
His thoughts weighed him down a lot, and she guessed that was a good thing, when he wanted to be anchored to the world where he was living, not drifting aimlessly and waiting for a Door that might never open.
She threw herself into the chair next to him, hard enough that she virtually assaulted it, and planted her elbows on the table.
Kade looked up. Sumi grinned at him, wide and wild and white as anything.
Her teeth were made of white peppermint, and had been since her resurrection; they couldn’t decay, and didn’t stain.
Her smile would have been the envy of Hollywood, and all she had to do was die.
“How’s it going, Kade?” she chirped. She eyed the mess on his plate.
“Did your chicken make you angry? Only you seem to be stabbing more than swallowing, and that’s not the greatest way to get full.
Unless you’re on a diet. More diets should be violence-based.
Why do we call them diets when everybody has one?
I’m on a diet of almost entirely sugar, but that doesn’t mean I’m trying to lose weight.
Justice for the word ‘diet’! Free it from the chains of the weight loss industry! ”
Kade listened to all this with a weary, accepting smile, letting her words wash over him, as he so often did.
Out of everyone at the school, Kade was the happiest to sit and simply be babbled at, a willing receptacle for all the nonsense she wanted to spill.
Even Eleanor never wanted to listen that long, and she adored Eleanor, the first adult child of Nonsense she’d ever met.
“You got a point in all that, Sumi, or do I just need to be a good listening ear? I can manage, if that’s what you’re wanting.”
“I want to know why you’re not eating, and why you look so sad,” said Sumi.
“That’s a complicated question.”
“I’m a pretty straightforward girl, so no matter how complicated it is, I bet I’ll be able to find a way through it. Try me.”
Kade sighed, putting down his fork. “You don’t know how to take no for an answer, do you?”
“I do,” said Sumi, sounding faintly affronted.
“People I want to have sex with tell me no all the time, and I always respect that. Some people don’t want me to touch them, and I respect that too.
But when my friends want to get stuck and sucked into the molasses swamps of being sad, I don’t think it’s bad or wrong or pushing the boundaries of consent to try and convince them to talk to me.
Toddlers have to wear coats in the winter, children need to get enough vitamin C to skip scurvy, and teenagers sometimes need to talk about our feelings.
It’s the medicinal part of being a person.
I know it sucks. Now answer the complicated question. ”
Kade sighed heavily. “You know I love you, right, Sumi?”
“Sure do,” chirped Sumi. “If I weren’t already getting married to Ponder just as soon as I’m ready to be a mother, you’d probably be trying to wife me up by now. We’d bake beautiful babies together, you and me.”
For a moment, Kade’s expression twisted, like he was trying to puzzle his way through what she’d just said. Then he let the moment go, and frowned, and asked, “Sumi, you do know where babies come from, don’t you?”
“I know where they come from for people who are made out of flesh and blood and sinew,” she said.
“I’m modeling chocolate-and-cereal treats on a scaffold of bone.
Am I going to have Rini the normal way, or am I going to have to travel to the Baker and assemble her from scratch?
That’s the part I don’t know, and I don’t think anybody can.
It’s too strange a question to have ever been answered before.
I’ll find out eventually.” She rolled one shoulder in half a shrug, and added, “Stop trying to dodge the question. Why do you look so sad?”
Kade scowled at her for a moment, then sighed again. “Nancy’s back.”
“I know. I just put her to bed.”
“Nancy’s back, and Nancy was the first of us to be absolutely bone-sure enough to find her door back to where she believed she belonged.
She was the one who showed everyone else that it could be done.
And look at us now. Jack and Jill, Cora, Antsy—even Stephanie, I guess, even though she never made it to the school.
She was sure, she believed, she went home. ”
“Don’t forget Nadya,” said Sumi.
“Nadya didn’t find her door. We abandoned her in the Halls of the Dead in exchange for your ghost so Rini could finish her quest to bring you back.” He paused when he was finished speaking, looking briefly baffled by the words that had come out of his own mouth.
“Wait,” said Sumi, sitting up a little straighter, eyes going wide with the kind of realization that only follows something you already know being restated in a way that makes it begin to make sense. “Wait-wait-wait. You left Nadya in the Halls of the Dead.”
“Yes?”
“And the ghosts in those Halls are all angry and eating people up like bonbons,” said Sumi with growing urgency. “Oh, we need the ghostie-girl to be as sure as snowflakes when she wakes up, because we need to get to Nadya while she still has skin.”
Kade blinked, a flicker of alarm entering his own eyes. “I didn’t even think about that,” he said.
“But we said we’d let her sleep, so now you get to tell me why Nancy being back makes you sad.”
Kade slumped. It was clear from the way his mouth twisted that he had momentarily believed he was going to get out of explaining his unhappiness, and was now even more unhappy because that wasn’t happening.
“I guess because if she was so sure and now she’s back, how can any of us be sure of anything? ”
Sumi smacked him in the shoulder.
“Ow!” Kade rubbed his shoulder, frowning at her. “What gives?”