Chapter 11 #2
Except nothing was actually happening. I was only moving through the street, never slowing down or speeding up, never living. Just…walking.
I tried to push myself back, away from the man—and it worked. Drawing in a sharp breath, the ballroom and the music and the people returned all at once, and I was no longer touching the mask of the guy I’d been dancing with.
This time, I knew enough to step back, to let go, to move farther and farther away until he realized that I didn’t want to dance with him anymore.
He did.
His hand was still raised as if he were considering running after me or something. At the last moment, he thought better of it, simply turned around and disappeared into the crowd, dancing all the while.
I released the breath I’d been holding and brought my hands to my chest to try to calm down my racing heart.
But I only got a short moment before another man grabbed my hand and spun me around, and pulled me behind one of the partitions. My feet moved, danced on their own while he guided me, his pulls smooth, gentle, his hands cold. I didn’t even have a second to be afraid.
This one was shorter, and he wore a dark red suit almost identical to March’s, except his hair was far lighter, almost as light as mine from what I could see.
He wasn’t March by any means, but he spun me around and there was less of a crowd here between the partitions, though the music reached us with the same volume.
The man suddenly let go of my hand and tapped his fingertip to my mask.
This time I expected it. This time, I wasn’t as shocked when he stopped for a second, froze, gasped, then continued dancing like nothing at all had happened.
A moment’s glitch, that’s all. Just a moment’s glitch.
I wondered if I froze the same way, and for such a short time, too. To me it had felt like hours passed while I was inside the memory of my first dance partner.
Not that it mattered, anyway. By now I knew that I had no other choice but to touch his mask, too.
I did.
The ballroom fell away just as quickly as the first time.
Suddenly, I was in a small room, sitting at a table beneath a single lamp spilling warm orange light.
Rain traced neat lines down the window in front of me, and in my hands I could just feel something cold, something that had sharp edges, yet when I thought to look down to see what it was, I couldn’t.
These eyes didn’t respond to me, either, because they weren’t mine.
And just like before, every single thing about me was perfect.
The way the rain fell, the sound of it—tick-tick-tick-tick, and the lines it drew on the glass. The way the light fell everywhere, yet there were no shadows on the wall or the hardwood floor.
Wet on my cheeks, and I thought the man might be crying, but there was nothing in my chest at all. No sorrow, no pain, no longing. Just…the sound of a heartbeat that sometimes felt hollow.
Nothing about it changed with the passing moments, not even the rhythm of the raindrops.
I pulled myself back, wanting away from that confined place, from that cold body. Nothing stopped me, and when I was back to myself again, I was no longer touching the man’s mask.
The strangest thing, though—when I let go of his hand and moved back, I lost balance, slammed against the edge of a partition, and almost fell.
The man reached out to help, I thought, and when he did, something shimmered on his skin.
The back of his hand, his knuckles. Like they suddenly changed color. Changed substance.
Like he suddenly wasn’t real.
Words came back to me as I moved farther and farther away, and he only took a couple steps toward me before he lowered his hands again.
I myself cannot wait to see you tangled in a waltz of illusions—wasn’t that what Johnny the speaker had said before we entered the dome?
I hadn’t understood what he’d meant then, thought it was just a figure of speech, but what if he’d meant it literally? What if I was truly dancing with illusions?
Time’s Teeth, they’re not real, I thought, and would have said it out loud if the ballroom allowed. As it was, I stayed by the partition and watched the people closely as they danced and touched each other’s masks, then turned and switched partners again and again and again…
I watched closely, and I began to notice how their skin shimmered here and there, how an entire limb disappeared for seconds at a time while they danced, how their bodies moved in a way that wasn’t all natural. It wasn’t like we moved at all.
I knew then what the point of this game was. I knew I had to find a real person among the illusions, possibly one of the Hands.
Except to stop and analyze each one of them was impossible—they moved so swiftly that I couldn’t hope to keep track of whom I’d seen and whom I hadn’t. It was on purpose, I supposed.
There was no other way to find someone real other than to dance, and to touch as many masks, to see as many memories as I could.
When I turned around, hoping to find more water for my dry mouth, a man wearing a white and red suit was already waiting for me.
He grabbed my hand, wrapped his around my waist, and he pulled me toward the dance floor with such ease you’d think I weighed but a feather.
My own body was to blame for it, too—the moment they touched me, I began to dance no matter what I felt like.
If they led, I was moving, and I didn’t even need to think, or worry about stepping on any toes.
So be it, I thought. Water would have to wait. I needed to find what was real in this strange place first.
Time passed so fast, and far too slowly at the same time as I danced.
Forever-forever-forever—the word echoed in my head, and I had to remind myself that the Heart man hadn’t meant it when he said the ballroom would keep me here forever if I chose wrong.
This was all part of the game. Nobody in the history of the Turning Trials had ever even been hurt badly, let alone stuck inside a ballroom forever.
I was going to be out there again in no time. There was no other option.
In the meantime, I walked through a field of bright yellow flowers at dawn, where every blade of grass bent at the same angle at exactly the same time, but the body I was in didn’t feel any wind at all.
Then I stood at the edge of a celebration—music, movement, color—yet I couldn’t see any of it.
It was all a blur, like the eyes I looked out from were perfectly out of focus, or maybe in need of some glasses.
Or maybe they weren’t real eyes at all.
I watched snow fall onto outstretched hands and never felt the cold, sat beside a fire that crackled while the flames danced all in the same way, in the same rhythm, but the heat of them never reached me, and ran through rain that never soaked me, too.
Over and over again, I hopped from one memory to the next and lost a little bit of myself in each.
It got me thinking, what if I couldn’t even tell what was real? What if I was the problem? What if I felt way too much, and this was normal?
But how was I supposed to even know, when this was what I’d felt my whole life? I was lost in a sea full of things that looked real but weren’t—and I wasn’t even twelve-hours certain of it.
How ridiculous to think that this trial would be easy. How ridiculous to think about what they’d taught us, lessons about courts and timekeeping, running laps and climbing ropes. Useless. All of it had been perfectly useless!
Forever, whispered the voices in my head, making my skin crawl. Not proud of the way I was about to break down—but then I didn’t.
Because just as I had decided to sit in one of those vacant chairs and scream on the inside until I let everything out, my eyes caught someone…not moving. Not dancing.
My heart jumped.
There, in the distance, too far away, two people were standing in front of one another. Two people I recognized.
Mimi and Cook.
They’d stopped dancing, and they’d taken their masks off. As I watched in awe with my mouth open, they each put theirs over the face of the other. They exchanged their masks, smiling all the while.
Real people. Mimi and Cook. Real-real-real.
I ran.
Slamming onto bodies, pushing them away, elbowing them to get them to move faster, I did whatever it took to get to the other side of the ballroom on time, and I still failed. When I finally stopped where Mimi and Cook should have been, they were no longer there.
They’d just…disappeared.
I was all alone again.